LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE: Report: Cuomo aide broke gun law for months, was predictably given waiver. “Note that the apparent criteria for carrying a gun is whether Cuomo is your buddy and hired you for a government job.”
David Gregory was unavailable for comment.
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY: Vulnerable Senate Dems Ask IRS To Save Them From Tea Party.
Related: Did IRS anti-tea party activities sway 2012 election?
Hey, they don’t call him “President Asterisk” for nothing.
Also, a flashback: Census ‘faked’ 2012 election jobs report. It’s like the entire bureaucracy has been politicized and weaponized.
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: The Golden Egg: The Hillary Papers And The Death Of Mainstream Media. “That a conservative online newspaper could have understood the significance of the archive, and actually examined its public contents, seemed too much an embarrassment for the staffs of the major newspapers and networks and magazines to bear. By being the first to report on the papers, the Free Beacon exposed the inanity and irrelevance of the mainstream media. We beat them. And they are sore losers.”
AN ACCUSATION AIMED AT RAND PAUL THAT WAS so weak it was debunked by MSNBC.
MSNBC debunked a charge leveled against Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and his legal team that the lawsuit they filed against the National Security Agency was “stolen from its author.” The network did so by contacting the author, who explained that he is part of Paul’s legal team.
“I was working on a legal team, and have been paid for my work,” Bruce Fein, who helped write the lawsuit, told MSNBC in an email.
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reported the accusation, which was leveled by Fein’s ex-wife, Mattie, against former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, the lead counsel on the lawsuit.
Relying on an accusation from an angry ex-wife, without checking with the author, looks a lot like reckless disregard. Has the WaPo’s general counsel’s office gone downhill?
JAMES TARANTO: The Tired Ones: ObamaCare is taxing in more ways than one.
Which raises a question: What made Fournier and Powers think they had to defend ObamaCare in the first place? In Powers’s case, an answer suggests itself: Cast in the role of “Fox News liberal,” perhaps she feels obliged to stay on that side most of the time (though one suspects her Fox bosses would be tolerant of that particular heterodoxy).
But Fournier? He’s not supposed to be a partisan. “Like so many political columnists inside the Beltway, Fournier regularly exhibits a devotion to even handedness,” notes Mediaite.com’s Noah Rothman. “With a near pious commitment, no criticism of the Democratic Party can be issued without a commensurate nod to the faults and foibles of the Republican Party, and vice versa.”
True, during a two-decade career at the Associated Press, including a stint as Washington bureau chief, Fournier moved the venerable wire service away from straight news and toward more-opinionated writing, which he called “accountability journalism.” This column has been highly critical of that effort, beginning in 2007, but Fournier insisted back then: “We can be provocative without being partisan. We can be truth-tellers without being editorial writers.”
In his current role as a columnist, he is free to be partisan or ideological if he wants. But Rothman is right to observe that Fournier continues to prefer the role (or perhaps it is a mere conceit) of above-it-all centrist.
As I’ve said before, he’s significantly better than the average, actually, but the bar is very, very low.
IT’S GETTING INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT TO TELL THESE TWO APART:
The Nation: Why the Curious Right-Wing Silence on Michael Sam?
WELL, AT LEAST THEY’RE INCREASINGLY ASHAMED. THAT’S SOME PROGRESS: Transparency: Senators’ Debt Limit Votes Kept Off Microphones; Reporters Protest.
On an average day, any C-SPAN viewer would know how senators voted in real time because votes are read aloud. (See our post on the six senators who appear to have changed their votes.)
But on Wednesday, the clerks did not name names. Instead of announcing the rolling vote tally as the vote went along on the critical motion to limit debate on the debt limit measure, senators were allowed to cast their votes in relative secrecy. Overlooked at the time, it has since caught the attention of numerous reporters.
After organizations representing journalists complained and a few hours after this story was published, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s spokesman Adam Jentleson gave CQ Roll Call a statement explaining the switch.
“After the vote began, it was quickly clear that Republican leaders were struggling to deliver enough votes to clear the 60-vote hurdle upon which they had insisted instead of a simple majority, and a potentially catastrophic default suddenly seemed possible. At Senate Republicans’ request, the clerk did not call the names during the vote to make it easier for Republican leaders to convince their members to switch their votes,” he said.
Jentleson said the request ”is consistent with Senate rules.”
“Senator Reid believed that protecting the full faith and credit of the United States and avoiding a default that could have disastrous consequences for anyone with a bank account were the most important objectives. For this reason and as a courtesy to his Republican colleagues, he consented to Republicans’ request,” Jentleson continued.
Well, they should be ashamed.
THE INSTAWIFE ON Bachelor Pad Economics.
PERHAPS THIS REALLY REFLECTS THE DECLINING VALUE OF HIGHER EDUCATION: More Educated Women “Marrying Down.” “Nearly 21% of married women in 2012 were better educated than their spouses, a threefold jump from 1960, according to the Pew Research Center. By contrast, a bit less than 20% of men had more formal education than their wives.”
If they’re marrying plumbers and electricians, while holding degrees in women’s studies, they’re marrying up in terms of income. And, in fact, we find out this: “About 58% of better-educated women earned less than their husbands. Only 39% of women earned a higher salary.”
That suggests that they are not receiving all that much value for their educations.
MARK WARNER POSTS EMBARRASSING TWEET, DELETES, BLAMES STAFF. #LEADERSHIP
DEBLASIO BLEW THE SCHOOL CLOSING CALL, got savaged by Al Roker.
ED DRISCOLL: Best Commercial Ever. The anti-Prius.
A GENETIC BASIS for intelligence?
CHANGE: Ice Expert Predicts Lake Superior Will Completely Freeze Over This Winter. “Austin attributes the large amount of ice on the lake to the ‘extraordinary cold winter we’ve had,’ pointing out that Duluth recently experienced an all-time record of 23 straight days of below-zero temperatures. The previous record of 22 days was set in 1936 and tied in 1963, according to the National Weather Service. . . . As of February 10th, ice covered 80.4 percent of all the Great Lakes, compared to 38.4 percent last winter, according to NOAA. That’s considerably higher than the lake’s long-term average of 51.4 percent under ice.”
BETTER LIVING THROUGH CHEMISTRY: Chemical Cures For The Lovesick. I always figured that’s what the ceremonial drunk with your buddies after a breakup was for.
YOUR SUPPLEMENT QUESTIONS ANSWERED, SORT OF. People are always writing to ask what I take — especially, for some reason, since this Thanksgiving picture — and I’ve been reluctant to post on it for two reasons: One, I’m often changing things; and two, the science on a lot of this stuff is kind of iffy, and so I’m a bit reluctant to recommend it to others, as opposed to experiment with it myself. But since people keep emailing, here are a few things I feel pretty good about:
1) Coenzyme Q10. This is the single best thing I take, I think. As I’ve mentioned before, I have more energy, fewer migraines, and just generally feel better since I started taking it. I went off it for a while, and noticed the difference. I generally take the Nature Made, though I’ve taken the Swanson too and it seemed just as good.
2) Vitamin D. The evidence that supplementation helps seems pretty good to me. I take 4000 units in the winter and 2000 in the summer. I usually take the Nature Made, but that’s mostly because I can get it either at Amazon or at the drug store. I seem to have gotten sick significantly less often since I started taking it.
3) Pycnogenol, citrulline and arginine. These are basically bodybuilding supplements. They’re supposed to improve recovery. I do seem to get less sore since I started taking them. For the pycnogenol, I usually take the Swanson but I often just pick up a bottle at Earth Fare in their house brand. For the citrulline and arginine, I like the Source Naturals brand, but I’ve taken a variety of others that were okay. (Note: If you have any form of herpes, you may want to avoid arginine, which may trigger or exacerbate an outbreak.)
4) Vitamin K2: The arguments for taking this seem pretty good, so I sometimes take a supplement from Jarrow. I also use real cream from grassfed cows in my coffee, which has the added advantage of being delicious.
5) Resveratrol: I take the Biotivia Transmax. I may rethink the resveratrol, because the evidence on it is looking more complex than it did a few years ago, but I haven’t quit yet.
6) Fish Oil: I actually just take the stuff from Earth Fare, which seems pretty good. It has about 1000 mg. of DHA and EPA combined. This, which I’ve taken in the past, is pretty similar. Also seems to help with achiness post-workout.
Do these help? I think so — I feel significantly better than I did a decade ago. That’s partly due to a better exercise routine and a better diet, of course, but I think the better exercise, at least, is partly made possible by the supplements.
It’s also possible that they’re doing nothing whatsoever, and this is entirely a placebo effect. If so, well, I can live with that, too. . . .
Things I’ve tried and didn’t like:
1) Creatine. Lots of bodybuilders take it, but when I tried it years ago, I got a series of nasty migraines that let up when I quit. I should probably repeat the experiment, since it could have been a fluke, but I haven’t.
2) Magnesium. The laxative effect, for me, is too pronounced. Doesn’t seem to make much difference what kind I took.
3) Niacin. I took the slo-niacin, but the impact on my cholesterol, etc. was minimal. And my doctor said I didn’t need it.
4) Tongkat Ali. An herbal supplement many lifters favor. The only noticeable effect was that all-out lifts felt kinda good instead of painful, but it didn’t seem to do anything else. Expensive, and, it turns out, often contaminated with mercury, so I gave it up pretty quickly.
5) Chromium picolinate. Also popular with many lifters. Used it for a while some years ago to no visible effect.
So there you go. That’s my experience for what it’s worth, which is quite possibly nothing at all.
UPDATE: Well, I don’t know what you got out of this, but in the comments there was a reference to something I had somehow completely missed on fish oil and prostate cancer. This seems significant enough that I’m going to stop taking the fish oil.
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY THIS WOULD HAPPEN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Has The IRS Legalized Polygamy?
VIDEO: Camera Falls From Airplane Into A Pig Pen. “This footage was found 8 months later by a farmer.” The pig seems disappointed that it’s not edible.
AT AMAZON, deals on bestsellers in Kitchen & Dining.
Also, coupons galore in Household Supplies.
Plus, prepare for the next big storm at the Amazon Emergency Essentials Store. Some of you probably wish you’d done this a week or two ago.
A LOOK AT THE ECONOMICS OF SELF-PUBLISHING: “What this chart shows is that indie and small-publisher titles dominate the bestselling genres on Amazon. We can clearly see that the demand from readers for more of these works is not being fully met by traditional publishing. . . . Some obvious things immediately jump out. The first is that Amazon has an incredible ability to market their own works, which shouldn’t be too surprising, considering it’s their storefront. We see from this and the previous chart that their 4% of titles command an amazing 15% of the sales. That’s impressive. It’s nearly 4 times the average unit sales volume per book. Now look at the Big Five, who with all their marketing efforts and brand recognition actually end up with pretty average per-book sales: a mere 1.2 times the overall average. The other eye-popper here is that indie authors are outselling the Big Five. That’s the entire Big Five. Combined. Indie and small-press books account for half of the e-book sales in the most popular and bestselling genres on Amazon. . . . Indie authors are earning nearly half the total author revenue from genre fiction sales on Amazon.”
Boy, someone should write a book on this phenomenon.
NANOTECHNOLOGY UPDATE: Nanomotors are controlled, for the first time, inside living cells.
FROM BUGATTI, an Art Deco aircraft. “Veyron owners take note: your vehicle will no longer be the fastest Bugatti in existence. Some 77 years after it was originally conceived, a completed Bugatti 100P airplane will see the light of day at the Mullin Automotive Museum in Oxnard, California as a part of the Art of Bugatti Exhibit. Designed to reach speeds of nearly 500 mph, the beautiful and technologically advanced 100P was a collaboration between Ettore Bugatti and Belgian engineer Louis de Monge. Development of the 100P began in 1937 but World War II and the advancing German army forced Bugatti to put the plane into hiding in 1940.”
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