“FEELING ISOLATED AND CAST ADRIFT IN THE HOME OF THE FREE”: In the Daily Beast, Nick Gillespie explains the Reason.com subpoena case and why it matters. Then Ken at Popehat schools Daily Beast commenters on how subpoenas actually work. (Hint: the citizens on the grand jury aren’t particularly involved.)
UPDATE: Scott Greenfield has some choice words, including “Niketh Velamoor brought humiliation down on the office.”
HOLY, MOLY PEOPLE LOVE FOOTBALL: So much that it defies predictions Gabriel Rossman’s seemingly sound predictions of what should happen in the era of DVRs and streaming. What’s he missing?
WHY DO CHEMISTS WEAR WHITE COATS? In photos, at least.
THE POWER OF GLAMOUR TAKES LONDON: I’m headed to London, where next week I’ll be giving three talks on my book The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion. Details here, for those in the area.
“A REALLY PROTEAN TIME IN AMERICA”: Q&A with David McCullough, whose new book is The Wright Brothers, on the aviation pioneers and their era.
THAT CYBERATTACK IS LOOKING WORSE and worse.
UPDATE: A Facebook friend comments on my FB post of this: “I got my OPM letter 3 days ago. I left federal employment in 1990, & am thinking how many more recent fed employees’ data may now be compromised.” [Emphasis added.]
WHY DO (AMERICAN) WAITERS CLEAR YOUR TABLE SO FAST? The WaPo’s Roberto A. Ferdman calls it “the most annoying restaurant trend happening today.” Tyler Cowen (quoted in the article) and commenters speculate on the reasons.
The related question of why they’re so quick with the bill is a favorite topic on Quora. If you’re following my advice for enjoying Florence, on the other hand, you may be wondering whether you’ll ever see il conto.
JUST GOOGLE IT: The precipitous decline in reference inquiries at college libraries.
GOING TO FLORENCE IN THE SUMMER? At Bloomberg View, I’ve got advice for enjoying some less crowded sites, including where to see Galileo’s telescope–and his finger.
COMING SOON, A ROBOT TO MOW YOUR LAWN: The WaPo’s Andrea Peterson reports on how John Deere, not Google, is the real leader in self-driving vehicles.
Some farmers aren’t shy about their enthusiasm for the tech – even uploading videos showing it off online. One appears to show a tractor hauling a planter making a tightly choreographed turn without a driver in the cab. In another, the driver takes pictures, throws paper airplanes and balances a water bottle on his nose before appearing to nod off while the tractor keeps working his field.
The systems come with their own risks, including concerns that they could be hacked. But because farm-equipment makers operate almost exclusively on private land, they’ve been able to bring products to market much quicker than consumer automakers – and without the same level of regulatory scrutiny.
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PREPARE FOR LIFE AFTER THE NATIONAL RAISIN RESERVE: How can we hope to survive?
REASON DIDN’T “STAND ALONE,” but some people were very, very quiet. Contrary to the impression co-guest blogger Randy Barnett got, numerous media outlets and individual journalists, from across the political spectrum, supported Reason against the overreaching subpoena for its commenters’ identities. Some wrote articles and others supportively tweeted links to Popehat’s posts and my Bloomberg View column. On the radio, Reason‘s cause garnered sympathetic coverage from both NPR and Rush Limbaugh, thanks to guest host Mark Steyn. It was covered well on major tech sites. Patrick of Popehat compiled a partial list of coverage here; see the comments for additions. But the issue definitely received more attention in the online media than in the traditional print press, and notably silent voices included the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal, which surely wasn’t reserving its concerns for a Republican administration. Some of the indifference surely reflects political tribalism, some reflects insider-outsider status, and some I’m sure comes from the the fundamental difficulty of covering a story when the people involved are forbidden to talk to the press.
WHAT’S THE POINT OF GUEST BLOGGING if you can’t indulge in gratuitous personal posts? Happy 29th anniversary to my wonderful husband (and devoted Instapundit reader) Steven Postrel. You’re the best.
OVERTURNING A NEW DEAL INSTITUTION, the Supreme Court frees growers from the government-enforced cartels that gave us the California Raisins.
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Walter Olson has been tracking this case at Overlawyered.
MORE OUTRAGEOUS THAN WE THOUGHT: Ken White of Popehat, who broke the story in the first place, is spitting mad about what how the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York abused its power to go after Reason.com commenters.
What, you might ask, could be more outrageous than the United States Department of Justice issuing a questionable subpoena targeting speech protected by the First Amendment, and then abusing the courts to prohibit journalists from writing about it?
The answer lies in the everyday arrogance of unchecked power.
Throughout this story some people have suggested that there may be hidden facts, unknown complications, that justify the government’s conduct. Now that Reason’s journalists can speak, we can see that there’s no there there….
Saturday I interviewed Mike Alissi, publisher of Reason, who confirmed that Velamoor never suggested that he had any basis to view these as true threats. In fact, he seemed uninterested in the distinction between protected speech and true threats, and refused to narrow the subpoena to carve out the patently non-threatening “special place in hell” commenter. There is no secret ticking time bomb, no wizard with a woodchipper, no classified justification.
This was the Department of Justice targeting speech because it could.
And this:
The commenters targeted in the subpoena are probably worried about a knock on the door. That knock may come. I don’t think it will be accompanied by an arrest warrant, but it will be accompanied by petty thuggery and the threat of power, banal or not. Commenters: shut up. Ask to talk to a lawyer.
And drop me a line: there are many defense attorneys outraged by this, and we’ll find you counsel, pro bono if needed.
Read the whole thing. This story is bigger than Reason or Velamoor.
A (BLACK) CHURCH, A (KOSHER) SUPERMARKET: My Bloomberg View column on what the praiseworthy rhetoric of common humanity leaves out
STEPHEN CARTER EXPLORES WHITE SUPREMACIST SITES so you don’t have to. He finds a lot of self-pity.
To those who are suffering, they offer succor. To those who are outcasts, they offer an explanation: The white race is being oppressed, and is in danger of extinction. Those feelings of being left out, they suggest, are being intentionally fomented. Every other race is encouraged to celebrate itself. Whites are encouraged only to feel guilty about themselves. They are blamed, the sites say, for all the world’s ills.
A message so framed might prove attractive to an angry and frustrated young white loner. It’s not his fault that he’s feeling isolated and hopeless, his new friends tell him. Those feelings are being imposed upon him by others. And those others, the new recruit quickly learns, should be considered the enemy.
Not that different from the appeal that works for Islamic supremacists, minus the religious angle. Jane the Actuary has some thoughts on those parallels.
THE POPE IS WRONG ABOUT AIR CONDITIONING: It saves lives. And he uses it himself.
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