FURTHER DAMAGING HARVARD LAW SCHOOL’S BRAND: Another Wendy Davis Gaffe? Democrat Touts as Her New Idea, a Policy That Is Already State Law. She even voted for it. . . .
Archive for 2014
January 22, 2014
FOR CAMPING “WHERE THE CRITTERS ARE BIG ENOUGH TO EAT YOU:” Smith & Wesson unveils monster .460 caliber gun: The ‘Backpack Cannon.’
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WE’D WIND UP LIVING IN A CORPORATE-FASCIST POLICE STATE. AND THEY WERE RIGHT!: MPAA & ICE Confirm They Interrogated A Guy For Wearing Google Glass During A Movie.
As we said in the initial post, this certainly fit with the MPAA’s insane “guidelines” to theaters and their “zero tolerance” policies towards anyone possibly recording anything. However, the involvement of ICE is particularly insane. We’ve been particularly critical of ICE and the group’s over-aggressive campaign to seize websites based entirely on Hollywood’s say so.
Even so, it seemed incredible that ICE would take direction from the MPAA on something as small as a guy in a movie theater, rushing to the theater to help with the interrogation of someone there, but we underestimated the willingness of ICE to say “how high” when the MPAA says “jump.” Yes, we should know better by now, but we thought we’d actually give the MPAA and DHS the benefit of the doubt here. Our mistake.
We find it difficult to believe that there aren’t more important things for ICE to be doing than hassling a guy out attending a movie with his wife. Hollywood has gotten ICE into trouble in the past with its over-aggressive claims about websites. You’d think that ICE would have learned by now that the RIAA and MPAA are not exactly trustworthy when they insist someone is a “filthy pirate” who needs to be investigated. There is simply no reason for federal investigators to be involved at all, let alone called in to interrogate some guy wearing a new piece of technology that the MPAA has overreacted to.
Sure there is. Hollywood got their boss elected.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO Allan Lockheed, Race Car Driver and Aviation Pioneer.
READER BOOK PLUG: From Ann Simas, Chloe’s Spirit.
I THINK I’LL STICK WITH A DUMB TOILET, THANK YOU: Efforts are underway to make your smart toilet—and other connected devices—less vulnerable to hackers. And from here, it looks as if the hackers have pretty much free rein these days. So I’m not very excited about giving them new stuff to hack.
CONTAINMENT HAS FAILED. REPEAT, CONTAINMENT HAS FAILED. WaPo: Why Wendy Davis’s Resume Issues Matter.
#GOOGLEFAIL: Chrome Bugs Allow Sites to Listen to Your Private Conversations. We need hardware on/off switches for microphones and cameras.
NO MORE BATTERY CHANGES: How Your Internal Organs Could Power Implanted Devices.
I GUESS OBAMA DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT THIS WHEN HE ORDERED THE PULLOUT, BECAUSE HE HADN’T READ IT IN THE NEWSPAPER: Petraeus, Crocker predicted the violence now sweeping post-war Iraq in 2007.
Four-star Gen. David Patraeus and former Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker effectively predicted much of the conflict that is sweeping post-war Iraq in a 2007 report.
The report named troop withdrawal, an issue that has divided U.S. voters and politicians since 2004, as a major turning point in deciding state stability.
In the joint Petraeus and Crocker report, released Sept. 10, 2007, the pair questioned whether the divided country could withstand the inevitable sectarian violence that a majority-Shia led government was expected to take on, without the backing of substantial U.S. forces.
Haste makes waste. In this case, Obama’s haste to get out wasted everything that had come before.
DETROIT BANKRUPT: You can see the documentary trailer here. “Decisions have consequences.”
THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY, WE’D HAVE AN AMERICA IN WHICH EVEN SUPERSTAR BLACK ENTERTAINERS WOULD FEEL UNCOMFORTABLE. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Kanye West Threatens To Leave United States Due To Racism.
GANGSTER GOVERNMENT: Geithner Threatened S&P After U.S. Downgrade. “An executive with Standard & Poor’s parent company said in a new legal filing that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned him that the credit rating firm would be ‘looked at very carefully’ following its decision in 2011 to downgrade the credit rating of the United States.”
Reminder: In 2009, Barack Obama “joked” about auditing his enemies.
HOPEY-CHANGEY: Comments on proposed IRS rule targeting the Tea Party reflect fear, anger. “At the time of this writing, not one public comment on a proposed IRS rule for 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups is positive. The proposed rule, ‘Guidance for Tax-Exempt Social Welfare Organizations on Candidate-Related Political Activities’ does not impact labor unions or the Chamber of Commerce, but does impact the Tea Party and other conservative groups.”
You can see the comments — and leave one of your own — here.
IN THE MAIL: From Steve White, Sunset of the Gods.
FIRST THERE WAS THE “WALK A MILE IN HER SHOES” GAFFE, NOW THIS: Wendy Davis Supporters: Our Paraplegic Opponent, Greg Abbott, is “running scared.”
Related: ‘Does she even LISTEN to herself?’ Wendy Davis has ‘obscene’ Twitter meltdown.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 258.
MEGAN MCARDLE: Resolved: Obamacare Is Now Beyond Rescue.
Last Wednesday, Scott Gottlieb and I debated Jonathan Chait and Douglas Kamerow on this proposition: “Resolved: Obamacare Is Now Beyond Rescue.” I was feeling a little trepid, for three reasons: First, I’ve never done any formal debate; second, the resolution gave the “for” side a built-in handicap, as the “against” side just had to prove that Obamacare might not be completely beyond rescue; and third, we were debating on the Upper West Side. Now, I grew up on the Upper West Side and love it dearly. But for this particular resolution, it’s about the unfriendliest territory this side of Pyongyang.
Nonetheless, I greatly enjoyed the debate. I’m not ashamed to admit that the other side had a lot of powerful moments. Kamerow, a doctor who is also a former assistant surgeon general, made good points about the problems with the previous status quo. In the other seat, Chait was as passionate, witty and well-reasoned in his arguments as ever. (You can read his account of the debate here.) Given the various difficulties, we went in assuming that we would lose, so we were pretty surprised and pleased when we won.
What was the winning argument? We argued that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is an unstable program that doesn’t deliver what was expected. For a lot of people, that hardly needs proving, given all the recent technical and legal gyrations. But for others, it does, and because most of them weren’t at the debate, let me elaborate. Scott spoke eloquently about the ways in which narrow networks and the focus on Medicaid are going to deliver an unacceptable quality of care. I talked about why this, among other things, makes the system so unstable.
In a nutshell, Obamacare has so far fallen dramatically short of what was expected — technically, and in almost every other way.
Pretty much like Obama himself.
Plus: “Many of the commentators I’ve read seem to think that the worst is over, as far as unpopular surprises. In fact, the worst is yet to come.”
KILLING THE GOLDEN GOOSE STICKING IT TO THE ONE PERCENTERS! San Francisco approves new regulations for ‘Google buses.’ Here’s a hint: If San Francisco isn’t a good place for middle-income families, it’s not because of Google.
Related: Sunshine Law Violated at SFMTA GoogleBus Fee Meeting. “The class warfare of San Francisco came to this afternoon’s meeting of the Municipal Transportation Agency at the City Hall, where the most controversial agenda item was whether to assess a paltry fee on the private buses clogging up public transit stops, and a shocking display of willful violations of the City’s open meeting law took place.”
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USING BOGUS “FEARS OF VIOLENCE” TO SILENCE CRITICS IS NOW POPULAR AMONG UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS:
Colorado State University at Pueblo is being criticized not only by faculty leaders on its own campus, but by advocates for free speech nationally over its removal of the email account of a professor who has criticized budget cuts at the university. The university removed the email account of Timothy McGettigan, a professor of sociology, after he sent out an email to students and faculty members in which he urged them to fight the cuts. His subject line was “Children of Ludlow,” referring to a 1914 massacre of striking coal miners in southern Colorado. McGettigan compared the way the central system administration was treating Pueblo to the bloody way coal mine owners treated their workers 100 years ago. Although McGettigan used that violent incident as a metaphor for the way the university administrators were treating the campus, and did not call for violence, university officials invoked Columbine and Virginia Tech to justify the need to act and remove his email account.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education on Tuesday sent a letter to Pueblo Monday in which it said there was no justification for removing the email account.
Always good to see FIRE on the job. Sad that there are so many opportunities for them to work.
HOPEY-CHANGEY: The Techno-Militarization Of America. The trend predates Obama, of course, but it has accelerated under him, though he seemed to promise the reverse.
LOSING TRUST in Higher Education. “The entire higher education ‘system’ operates on trust, and the public has been finding more and more reasons to be mistrustful.”