DAVID BERNSTEIN: Why Eric Posner Is Wrong About Speech Codes.

See, the problem with arguing that 18-22 year olds are too immature to handle free speech is twofold: First, it calls into question whether they’re mature enough to assume six-figure debt, and second, it converts prestigious Higher Education into an extension of high school, grades 13-16. Who’ll pay $60,000+ per year for high school?

Plus, the corruption behind it all: “To elaborate slightly, speech codes (and crackdowns on sexual behavior) are for the most part not demanded by students or faculty, but by administrators (sometimes in cahoots with a small faction of radical students) who have a symbiotic relationship with federal regulators that implicitly or explicitly encourage such crackdowns using the excuse of largely legally irrelevant civil rights laws. The feds get more control over the schools, bigger budgets, and satisfy particular political constituencies that support their existence and expansion. The internal university bureaucracies likewise get more control over campus life, bigger budgets, and, importantly, carte blanche to use vague, ill-defined rules to destroy academic careers for reasons ranging from ideological to venal.”

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: President Franklin Delano Obama Addresses the Threat of 1930s Violent Extremism.

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ED DRISCOLL: Obama is Most Certainly Made of the Wright Stuff. Jeremiah Wright, that is.

THOMAS LIFSON: Rudy Giuliani And The One-Way Taboo. “Democrats are free to impugn their opponents’ decency and patriotism while Republicans never are allowed to do so. . . . The reason why the taboo against criticizing the love of country applies only to Democrats is because the question cuts too close to home for them, and they control the media enforcers of the taboo.”

Democrats use “civility” as a shield because they know that conservatives care about civility, while Democrats don’t. Thus, reproached for incivility, Republicans will retreat, while Dems will say “screw you, I’m stickin’ it to the man.”

RICHARD FERNANDEZ ON BARACK OBAMA: A QUESTION OF PERSONALITY:

When Giuliani told an audience ”I do not believe – and I know this is a horrible thing to say – but I do not believe that the President loves America,” he was inadvertently doing more than criticizing a president; he was in a manner of speaking, committing treason. The unprecedented firestorm of opprobrium that greeted Giuliani suggested that he had somehow hit a switch. It was like pushing an ordinary button in the wall and watching the skyscrapers out the window suddenly crumble in dust down into the ground.

What Giuliani had done was undermine Obama’s legitimacy. Because so much of Obama’s “power” comes from his special-ness that to question his patriotism is to strike at the basis for his governance. It was, as in a monarchy, tantamount to rebellion. The reason that similar remarks by Obama about George Bush’s patriotism evoked simple shrugs was because Bush was just an ordinary president, the latest in a line of politicians to occupy the office since George Washington.

But Obama is different. One cannot understand, for example, the vituperation vented by Dana Milbank at Scott Walker, calling him out for “cowardice”, arguing for his “disqualification” (yes those are the words) for the simple act of refusing to publicly repudiate Giuliani’s words about the president, unless one grasps this essential fact. Obama is different. The Obama phenomenon is founded so completely on his legend that to attack the legend is to undermine the very foundations of the tower on which he stands.

But this is not the first time the Obama myth has been directly impugned. The first major political figure to accidentally touch the Third Rail was Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu has become an extraordinary hate object in the press, not because of any views he may hold on policy, but because Netanyahu had the temerity to disrespect Obama. Netanyahu must have been astonished by the charge of electricity that gave back on him.

Disrespect America, even attack it if you want, and you will not receive a tenth such voltage as did Netanyahu.

Obama is the New Class Idol, the embodiment of all the nomenklatura’s hopes and dreams — not so much for America, as for itself. Point out that he has feet — and ankles, and thighs, and torso, and head — of clay, and you threaten the whole feedlot.

JAY CARUSO: The Media: When You Attack Obama, You’re Attacking Them. “In Obama they see themselves. What he wants to carry out is what they want and they are going to do what they can to make sure these last two years he gets to do just that, the consequences be damned. So whether it is going after Rudy Giuliani or going after a Congressional staffer for a slight against the Obama daughters, the media is going to be out to defend Obama at all costs. That’s what the palace guard does.”

MY USA TODAY COLUMN FOR TOMORROW: Unpatriotic voters elect unpatriotic leaders.

With references to Robert Frank’s Passions Within Reason: The Strategic Role Of The Emotions, and also to Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers.

HEH:

The narrative is we have a chance to elect the first woman as president of the United States, something I think we should have done a long time ago.

I just don’t think it should be Hillary Clinton. There’s a lot of other women I can think of in the Republican Party who would be a much better alternative to that and some day will be. But if it’s a narrative like that, I think we run into trouble. If we shift the narrative, and I think, Hillary Clinton, you even saw with this story, with her book tour, the statements about her and Bill being broke when they came out of the White House. …You see the size of the fees she’s asking universities and colleges to pay, when you look at some of the other things, when she talks about not having driven a car in all those years, I get why that’s true, but it’s why I like to get on my Harley Davidson… every once in a while to drive myself and not have someone else do it for me. I just think those are all things that penetrate this out of touch persona. And to me to win I think the argument has got to be change it from a narrative of two personalities to Hillary Clinton represents Washington.

Said Scott Walker, on the important question of how the GOP candidate plans — or is willing to say he plans — to defeat the presumptive Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton.

WOMEN WHO COMPLAIN ARE FEMINISTS, MEN WHO COMPLAIN ARE WHINERS: Why don’t dads complain about parenthood like moms do?

TEACH WOMEN NOT TO RAPE! (CONT’D): Middle School math teacher, 30, charged with having sex with her 15-year-old student allegedly ‘pulled him from classes during school hours.’ “Police say that Connors began an inappropriate relationship with the boy in January that began with kissing and later led to fondling. As the relationship progressed Connors and her student allegedly began having sex during school hours in classrooms. Connors is said to have used administrative powers to have the boy removed from his classes so that the two could rendezvous.”

THE MORE DANGEROUS THE WORLD LOOKS BECAUSE OF OBAMA’S FECKLESSNESS, THE MORE LIKELY THE ANSWER IS TO BE “YES.” After Barack Obama’s celebrity presidency is America ready for a hard man in the White House?

FASTER, PLEASE: Patient, Heal Thyself: Treatments from our own cells could cure many diseases—if Washington will only allow it to happen.

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WELL, WE DID THE SECOND AMENDMENT LAST YEAR, SO. . . . Tennessee Law Review to host Third Amendment symposium.

ONWARD, CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS: From Cheekies nightclub in Staines to fighting ISIS in Iraq: British bouncer sells his home and joins Christian militia. “Speaking to MailOnline, Mr Locks revealed that he made his decision to relocate to Iraq last August after watching the news reports about the plight of Yazidis on Mount Sinjar. . . . When asked whether he was motivated by religion, Locks said he wasn’t religious but had no problem fighting for a group with strong Christian values. He said: ‘I had no specific wishes to join a specific group. I just wanted to help people out here. Any society which kills people, cuts people’s heads off needs to be challenged.’ . . . Mr Locks explained how he joined Dwekh Nawsha after speaking to Brett, a 28-year-old former US veteran who was the group’s first foreign fighter. The American’s honestly and approachable manner appealed to Mr Locks, who liked the openness of the group as well as its stringent recruitment process of only recruiting veterans or people with valued skills like construction.”

DUDE, I’M ALREADY DOING MY BEST: It’s official: Americans should drink more coffee.

VIDEO: Jerusalem Mayor Takes Down Knife-Wielding Terrorist.

THIS SEEMS LIKE A POOR TACTIC: Cabs Strike In Chicago Against Uber; Uber Drivers Presumably Report Uptick In Business. Next: Burger King goes on strike against McDonald’s.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 654.

IT’S LIKE HOLLYWOOD AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY ARE JOINED AT THE HIP OR SOMETHING: Dems cash in with Oscar noms. “Democrats are the biggest winners when it comes to raking in political donations from Academy Award nominees. Some of the Oscars’ most famous contenders — including this year’s hopefuls Reese Witherspoon, Edward Norton, Mark Ruffalo, Bradley Cooper, and Meryl Streep — are delivering big bucks for the left.”

JAMES LILEKS BRAVELY FACES AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE:

If blogs are dying I suppose I shall go with them, he said, using “shall” to put you in mind of someone tossing a scarf over his shoulder and facing the bracing wind. There’s been a few stories here and there about the expiration of the form, occasioned perhaps by Andrew Sullivan stepping away, and noting how everything is going Social and Sharable. I’ve thought of adding social buttons to the bottom of the post again, but it would make more sense to add them to individual pages so people could share links to whatever caught their fancy. There are thousands of pages.

So no.

Am I worried about time and trends passing me by? Not at all. This has always been just what it is since the very first entry, and while it’s expanded in length and subject, I am not going to convert it to a series of sharable snacks for Facebook feeds. Perhaps that’s unwise. But I hate Facebook and have no desire to spend any time there, so tailoring the Bleat or lileks.com for Zuckerberg’s dull blue borg cube would be like spending a lot of time and money getting fitted for clothes I don’t like so I can blend in amongst people I don’t know in a country I don’t like. . . .

Anyway: it worries me a little that “blogs are dying,” because if so we lose the idea of a place where people speak their piece, as oppose to speak in pieces.

While most blogs weren’t deathless examples of great writing, there was the opportunity for individualism, and you don’t get that from a Pinterest page. You don’t get it from a feed of things snipped and reblogged and pinned and shoveled into The Feed. The web turns into bushels of confetti shoveled into a jet engine, and while something does emerge out the other end, it’s usually made impressive by its velocity and volume, not the shape it makes.

Nothing really dies on the Internet. New layers just fall on top of it, like the veils of Azlaroc.

ED DRISCOLL: So, About The Man in the High Castle.

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