Archive for 2016
July 12, 2016
IT’S COME TO THIS: #FishBra Is Now A Thing As Women Are Posing Topless With Their Catches.
CLINTON LAWYERS TRYING TO AVOID UNDER OATH DEPOSITION: Of course they are. The FBI conducted a criminal investigation but failed to put her under oath. Judicial Watch intends to. What she did put national security at risk. It is reasonable to ask if adversaries like Vlad Putin hacked her email system and are positioned to blackmail her.
I’M SURE THE FAMILIES OF THOSE DEAD COPS APPRECIATED THE CONFRONTATION: The Hill: Obama uses Dallas memorial to confront nation on race.
GIVING THE PEOPLE WHAT THEY WANT, GOOD AND HARD, PART II: Venezuelans Living Life on the Line.
The average Venezuelan shopper spends 35 hours waiting to buy subsidized goods each month. That’s three times more than in 2014, the polling firm Datanalisis says.
As Venezuela’s lines grow longer, they also grow more dangerous. More than two dozen people were killed in line in the past 12 months, including a 4-year-old girl caught in gang crossfire. Vasquez once had to run down the block to avoid getting caught up in a knife fight that broke out when a woman was accused of cutting the line.
And what’s missing from the AP’s heart-wrenching report?
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: “Former University of Virginia Rector Helen Dragas is accusing U.Va. of maintaining “a $2.3 billion slush fund” for pet projects with money that instead should have been used to reduce tuition.” “University spokesman Anthony P. de Bruyn issued a statement in response that did not directly address Dragas’ allegations.”
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LEADERSHIP MATTERS:
In the wake of the Dallas slaughter, community and civic leaders, especially the exceptional Dallas Chief of Police David Brown, provided first decisive then reassuring and unifying leadership.
Chief Brown gets credit for decisive leadership in crisis: He saw good men murdered in a sophisticated ambush. The sniper occupied a fortified position and promised to fight to the death. So Chief Brown gave the order to kill the sniper using a bomb delivered by an unmanned ground vehicle. No more good guys were at risk. The bomb limited collateral damage—Dallas wouldn’t repeat Philadelphia’s 1985 mistake when a police helicopter dropped a bomb on a bunkered position occupied by an armed black militants shooting at police. The bomb caused a fire and destroyed over 60 homes.
In Ferguson 2014 and Baltimore 2015, violence continued unabated.
Leaders in Ferguson and Baltimore were confused, lacked decisiveness and feared their own people. They also feared the accusation of racism and fascism from radical activists. If anything, they magnified a highly questionable yet fashionable media narrative, that police in America kill young black American men at statistically heinous rates. (They don’t, but major media have been slow to recognize the fact.)
In Dallas, however, there is sadness, not riot. The language of Dallas’ civic leaders has been somber and reflective. A somber, reflective peace has settled on Dallas.
Read this, too.
ANSWERING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Is Dry Shampoo Really Making Its Devotees Bald?
WITH DNC IN MIND, CITY BANS CARRYING OF URINE, FECES:
Shot: The EPA is Telling You to Pee in the Shower?!?
Chaser: This gadget will revolutionize the way you poop: “In yoga groups and at brunch spots around the city, in-the-know New Yorkers can’t stop sharing their love for the Squatty Potty, a footstool that helps users squat while on the toilet, allowing for better bowel movements.”
This isn’t the 21st century I was promised.
TRUMP TWEETS, “Bernie Sanders endorsing Crooked Hillary Clinton is like Occupy Wall Street endorsing Goldman Sachs.”
But isn’t that exactly who Occupy endorsed? At no point in 2012 did the leftwing movement call for the ouster of President Goldman Sachs while protesting and pooping on police cars.
PEOPLE RUIN EVERYTHING: A malicious version of Pokemon Go is infecting Android phones.
THE SCIENCE OF SEXYTIME IS SETTLED: Why regular sex can help you stay slim: High levels of ‘cuddle hormone’ stop you binge-eating
It’s science. You wouldn’t want to argue with that, would you?
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ONLY TRAINED LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO POSSESS FIREARMS: Two guns were stolen Sunday morning from an FBI-issued vehicle in Northeast Washington, authorities said.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: ‘Avoiding the sun is as dangerous as smoking.’ “Our research indicates that people who are both non-smokers and non-sunbathers have the same risk of death as those that are both smokers and sunbathers. Avoiding the sun thus puts you at as great a risk of dying as smoking does. We also find that women who avoid the sun double their risk of cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks, strokes and blood clots. Twice as many who don’t sunbathe also contract ‘other’ illnesses, such as diabetes, multiple sclerosis and lung disease. . . . One thing many guidelines for sunbathing have had in common is that they have been poorly founded in science.”
Not long ago, dermatologists were actively persecuting people who expressed this opinion. Will they take responsibility for the millions who have sickened or died because of their advice?
But because Ginsburg believes in speaking plainly, then let us return the favor: This was a remarkably stupid and egregious comment for a sitting Supreme Court justice to make on the record. Say what you will about Justices Antonin Scalia, who died in February, or Clarence Thomas, but they never weighed in on presidential politics quite like this. The closest example I can find is that in January 2004, during an election year, Scalia went on a hunting trip with Vice President Dick Cheney. That action alone got legal ethicists into a lather.
What Ginsburg did was way worse, though. Indeed, I can find no modern instance of a Supreme Court justice being so explicit about an election — and for good reason. . . .
As I noted earlier this year, trust in the Supreme Court was bound to take a hit after the death of Scalia and the partisan deadlock over filling his seat. But if eroding trust was a slow-burning political fire, Ginsburg just poured gasoline on it. There are certain privileges that one sacrifices to be a sitting member of the federal judiciary and making explicitly partisan comments about presidential elections is one of those privileges.
I cannot see any possible defense of what Ginsburg did, given that she violated Canon 5 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges. Supreme Court Justices are not strictly bound by that code, but they nonetheless act as exemplars for the rest of the judiciary, and this canon seems pretty important. She should repair the damage and apologize for her remarks as soon as possible. Otherwise, she bears almost as much responsibility as Trump for the slow-motion crisis in American democracy.
Trump is a symptom; the responses to Trump reveal the nature of the disease. But this is really a big deal. Right now I’m writing a looking-ahead-to-the-next-term piece for the Cato Supreme Court Review, and although it’s mostly about coming cases, natch, I did mention Ginsburg’s comments. Here’s a bit of what I said:
The comments were injudicious, and though they are unlikely to become relevant in the coming term, should they in fact matter – because of a contested election, with the nation closely divided – her recusal, or worse, her refusal to recuse herself, would undoubtedly have explosive results, both for the nation and for the Court itself, an institution that depends on public regard and that has been growing less popular already in recent years. The comments are an iceberg that most likely will never meet its Titanic, but worth noting here because, should that meeting come to pass, the results would surely be the most significant event of the coming term.
Almost no one, it seems, in our terrible political class has any sense of propriety, or of the fragility of the institutions that they infest.
UPDATE: Link was wrong before. Fixed now. Sorry!
I THINK I SHOULD HAVE SOME TO DEFEND MY HOME: Should The Police Have Killer Robots?
THIS ISN’T THE 21st CENTURY I WAS PROMISED: “Holocaust Museum to visitors: Please stop catching Pokemon here.”
DIVERSITY PROBLEM: NY Times: Liberal Profs Outnumber Conservative Profs 28:1 In New England.
JAMES LILEKS ANSWERS THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: What exactly are the etymological origins of Steve Miller’s infamous nonsense phrase, “the pompatus of love?”
DALLAS OBSERVER: After The Ambush: Dallas Regroups, Mourns and Looks Ahead After a Long Night of Pain. Some really good deep-dive local journalism.
DNC PLATFORM: Global Warming Is Too Important To Wait For Democracy.