April 2, 2014
IN THE MAIL: From Michael Rubin, Dancing with the Devil: The Perils of Engaging Rogue Regimes.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 328.
REALLY? BECAUSE I UNDERSTAND THAT FREE BIRTH CONTROL IS. Kirsten Powers: Yoga pants isn’t a civil right. I do love the argument that a middle-school ban on yoga pants is “rape culture.” Then again, isn’t everything rape culture now?
K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Cuomo 1, De Blasio 0.
The first round of Governor Andrew Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s fight over the city’s charter schools has ended with a decisive victory for Cuomo. De Blasio made hay during the campaign with his pledge to end the city’s practice of allowing charter schools rent-free access to public school facilities. But the new budget deal that passed yesterday in Albany takes the matter out of his hands, requiring all cities to provide space, free of charge, to charter schools if it is available. If not, the cities will be required to pay up to $40 million in rent to install them at alternative accommodations. Even more pointedly, it explicitly authorizes the three Success Academy schools that de Blasio rejected earlier this month. . . .
De Blasio and Cuomo are still on good terms in public, and the Mayor has taken pains to say that these new developments will not derail his plans. But this is a major blow to his education agenda. Less than six months after winning on an anti-charter platform, de Blasio’s New York City will be even more hospitable to charter schools than it was under Bloomberg.
The contest between Cuomo and De Blasio is the contest between the suicidal and non-suicidal wings of the Democratic Party.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: The Myth of Working Your Way Through College. “Once upon a time, a summer spent scooping ice cream could pay for a year of college. Today, the average student’s annual tuition is equivalent to 991 hours behind the counter.”
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TAXPAYER-SUPPORTED RACISM: Being a white person is “like being an alcoholic.”
UPDATE: I’ll bet nobody thought to invite Tom Kratman.
SOHRAB AMARI: The Turkish Ballot-Box Revolt That Wasn’t: Young, secular and unhappy with the Erdogan government, but without a credible agenda to win over their countrymen. It takes more than dissatisfaction to overturn a regime, something that people in America should remember, too.
ASHE SCHOW: Critics want to silence film exposing the real war on women in the Middle East. Of course they do. It’s an inconvenient truth, on many levels.
JAMES TARANTO: Yes, We Can — Wait: Want medical insurance? Get in line.
But it was the line photos that we found arresting. And it’s clear McGuinness was advancing a White House line. Press secretary Jay Carney opened his daily briefing yesterday with the following gasconade: “As you can see by the lines around the country this weekend, we are seeing a surge in enrollment.”
The first thing we thought of when we saw the pictures was the photos we’ve recently seen on Twitter of Venezuelans waiting in bread lines. Waiting in line to purchase necessities is a characteristic not of a prosperous free society but of command economies under repressive regimes. Closer to home, one doubts even the Transportation Security Administration would be so tone-deaf as to advertise long airport lines as an indication it’s doing a great job.
So what in the world could the White House have been thinking? Here’s a guess: They look at the ObamaCare lines and think not of communist subjects queuing up for bread or toilet paper, or Americans for driver’s licenses, but something more like the lines of consumers eager to be the first to get the new iPhone or the latest Harry Potter book. Affluent people often wait in line for things about which they have a particular enthusiasm–or for special experiences, like an amusement park ride, concert or meal at a favorite restaurant.
One obvious difference is that whereas the iPhone and Harry Potter queuers are eager to get the new thing first, the ObamaCare ones are presumably anxious not to miss the deadline (even if it’s not rigorously enforced). ObamaCare lines might have been impressive if they’d begun to form in the last days of September. At the end of open enrollment, the White House boast is akin to the IRS’s citing a “surge” in filing of tax returns two weeks from now as evidence that the income tax system is popular and well designed.
Well, as Chief Justice Roberts informed us, ObamaCare is a tax.
THEY’RE ACTING TERRIBLY BECAUSE THEY’RE TERRIBLE PEOPLE: Compassion: Anti-Obamacare cancer patient smeared by Harry Reid now receiving death wishes from liberals. “Indeed, unleashing left-wing wrath on ordinary people for the sin of speaking out must be a pretty effective method of stifling dissent — which is precisely what Reid wants.”
WAPO: Here’s Why It Doesn’t Matter If 7 Million Signed Up For ObamaCare:
Of course, we still need to learn how many paid their premiums to complete enrollment. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Monday said it’s anywhere between 80 and 90 percent, so official enrollment (and not just signups) could be anywhere between 5.7 million to 6.4 million. Those numbers would still likely rise over the next few months for those who can sign up later because of hardships or changes in life circumstances.
Other things we don’t know yet: How many of the previously uninsured signed up for private plans or Medicaid? How many people skipped the exchanges and signed up directly with insurers? How well did insurers predict their mix of enrollees in 2014? Will people actually like the coverage they now have?
How many people who signed up did so because they lost better insurance because of ObamaCare mandates?
UPDATE: Shikha Dalmia: Don’t Pop The Cork For ObamaCare: Untangle the administration’s enrollment numbers to see how overstated they are. “So, to recap: ‘Obamacare’ has extended coverage to a far smaller portion of the uninsured than expected, caused millions of others to lose coverage, raised out-of-pocket costs for many middle-income consumers, diminished patient choice of doctors and hospitals and exposed Americans to future premium hikes. This is why Americans are not popping the cork. Nor should the administration.”
POST-GUN-SMUGGLING INDICTMENT, those old Leland Yee press releases take on a different flavor.
My favorite: Senator Yee Named Clean Money Champion. But there are many to choose from.
PRESIDENT GOLDMAN SACHS: Obama subsidizes private jets for high-flyers abroad.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Indicted Charlotte mayor used access to White House in making plans for pay-offs.
Plus: “The AP did a round-up of ‘big-city’ mayors caught up in corruption cases, which may be the single greatest example of Name That Party ever executed.”
THAT’S NOT A JAB. IT’S MARCHING ORDERS. Obama jabs press: Future HealthCare.gov outages ‘won’t be news.’
MICHAEL BARONE: Why is Obama administration blocking Detroit River bridge? ” One possible reason: to propitiate Matty Maroun, the Michigan billionaire who owns the Ambassador Bridge and profits handsomely from tolls and concessions. He has financed Michigan ballot propositions designed to stop funding the new bridge, to which he remains strongly opposed. Or perhaps the Obama administration is indulging in a fit of pique against the government of Canada, which keeps pressing for approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which has been pending now for five years (longer than the time from Pearl Harbor to the surrender of Germany in 1945). Or maybe the administration is just letting this project fall through the cracks through sheer incompetence or inertia.”
SPYING: Intelligence Director Appears to Concede NSA Searched Americans’ Communications.
Related: Democratic senators: Obama was ‘misleading’ about NSA surveillance.
THIS STORY IS ABOUT MEXICO’S LIME PROBLEM:
As a result of high prices and rampant lawlessness in some Mexican regions, criminals who may be linked to drug gangs are plundering fruit from groves and hijacking trucks being used for export, said Bill Vogel, president of Vision Produce, a Los Angeles-based importer. A truck headed for Vision’s sister company in Texas was hijacked two weeks ago in Mexico, he said, and growers and shippers now are hiring armed guards to protect their green gold.
The produce wars on the ground are not limited to limes. Criminal cartels now control, to a shocking extent, the growing and packing of much of the Mexican produce on which United States consumers depend. An article last November in the Mexican newspaper Vanguardia reported that the Knights Templar drug cartel has used kidnapping, murder, money laundering and terror to take over the lucrative avocado business in Michoacán, the top state for production and export of the fruit.
Criminal elements also have significantly infiltrated the Mexican mango industry to launder money, said Richard Campbell, a horticulturist and mango expert who travels to Mexico several times a year as a consultant. “Many growers don’t go to their fields because they’re afraid,” Mr. Campbell said. “I’m sure that this has lowered the quality of the mangoes, because it’s harder to control quality.”
Basically, though, it’s telling us that we have a failed state on our southern border.
YA THINK? Bryan Preston: The Media Won’t Cover Leland Yee’s Alleged Gun-Running Because They’re Democrat Operatives with By-Lines. So far, he’s still getting almost exclusively local coverage. Plus: “If he hadn’t been forced out of the race by being arrested, what would Leland Yee have done with the California secretary of state post? There’s a question that no one in the media will even think of pursuing.”
Plus: “Everyone knows why MSNBC isn’t interested in the Leland Yee story. He’s a Democrat and they’re open leftwingers. But CNN is still supposed to be a news network. They have no excuse for omitting the Yee story. It’s obvious that the only thing stopping them from covering Yee is that, if the charges against him are true, the anti-gun gun-running Democrat is the biggest hypocrite in the political universe. But the likes of CNN are right behind him.”
Compare and contrast: Chris Christie and the eternal bridge investigation.
Well, it takes a lot of money to stand up for the poor against the exploitative rich.
April 1, 2014
JUSTICE: Woman Who Fabricated Rape Story Gets Break. “A Suffield woman who reported a sexual assault last spring but eventually confessed that it was an elaborate fabrication was admitted to a special program Thursday in Enfield Superior Court to potentially drop the charges in the case.”
IF HEALTH FOOD IS SO GOOD FOR YOU, WHY ARE THE PEOPLE WHO WORK IN THOSE STORES ALWAYS SO THIN AND PALE? Study: Vegetarians Less Healthy, Lower Quality Of Life Than Meat-Eaters.
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THE FIRST THING WE DO, LET’S SUE ALL THE LAWYERS: Chevron v. Patton, Boggs.
SUBJECTING KOBE BRYANT to racial discipline.
STILL NOT ON CNN: The Unbelievable Story Of How An Anti-Gun Politician Ended Up Arrested For Alleged International Arms Dealing.
SO, KINDA LIKE THE OBAMACARE NUMBERS, THEN? Senate Report Says CIA Repeatedly Lied About The Fact That Its Torture Efforts Were Useless In Finding Bin Laden.
GENDER RELATIONS AT THE WASHINGTON POST: “See? Mona Charen, Mollie Hemingway and Karin Agness shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads. They should just outsource their thinking to the gallant Sir Dana Milbank, and let him speak on their behalf. He’s got an Honorary Vagina, you know.”
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: An App That Generates Your Casual-Sex Ad For Craigslist. You might hold out for the later versions. . . .
21ST CENTURY RELATIONSHIPS: On ‘Late’-In-Life Virginity Loss. “What eventually made him feel ready was practicing orgasmic meditation, which entails stroking a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes. The class, which he joined after hearing about it from a friend, eased McDorman into being sexual in a permissible environment where he felt safe. Soon after, he lost his virginity to a girl in this community and later met his current girlfriend.”
MY USA TODAY COLUMN Takes CNN To Task Over Its Leland Yee Non-Coverage.
THOSE CARING FOLKS AT THE GOVERNMENT WILL KEEP YOU SAFE: The government knew about GM ignition problems and did nothing.
MY BACON DEFICIENCY IS BAD ENOUGH, NOW THIS: Five a day is not enough fruit and veg for best health.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN Takes CNN To Task Over Its Leland Yee Non-Coverage.
VIKINGS, CHRISTIANS, and crucifixion.
COPYRIGHT ABUSE: Telemundo & Univision Copyright Claim On YouTube Takes Down US Congressional Appropriations Hearing.
It is difficult to see how anything in a US Congressional appropriation committee hearing on the budget of the US court system would likely infringe on the copyrights of these two television stations. It seems likely that there was some sort of mess up involving YouTube’s ContentID. Yet, once again, we see how an overaggressive copyright system, combined with automated tools like ContentID can lead to censorship of content that is in the public interest.
Soon after Schultze pointed this out, the message on the video’s page switched from being a copyright claim to that the video had been made “private.” So, it’s likely this is in the process of being sorted out. And, yes, in the long run, it seems unlikely that a random House Appropriations Committee hearing on the court system’s budget is so important that it needs to be available immediately. But just the fact that a questionable copyright claim, combined with an automatic takedown system appears to be making information disappear from public hearings in the US Congress should raise alarm bells.
Yes.
WELL, IT MAY NOT SEEM LIKE A VIOLENT CRIME, BUT IT IS: California man who lasered two helicopters to face 14 years behind bars. People could die, and pilots could potentially suffer long-term blindness.
NEWS YOU CAN USE. How To Make Your Headlights Shine Like New.
ANOTHER SETBACK FOR GOVERNMENT MOTORS: Cadillac recalls ELR coupe over stability control problems.
BECAUSE NARRATIVE: Scott Shackford: Why Is California State Senator Leland Yee Not Yet A Household Name?
The downfall of Calif. State Sen. Leland Yee of San Francisco should be an utterly captivating, fascinating story, and the national media should be sinking its teeth into the details. I joked when Yee was first arrested about how he is destined to be parodied in Grand Theft Auto. That was before the FBI’s report was even released. Now, I’m convinced the report could be the outline for an entire Grand Theft Auto installment (have they set a game in a parody of San Francisco yet?). Yee’s story of corruption, attempted gun-running and accusations of vote-selling (an undercover FBI agent posing as a medical marijuana clinic owner wanted him to support legislation introducing new barriers to entry for potential competition) is actually just a small part of a larger story about the crime scene in San Francisco. Beyond Lee’s role, the whole story (pdf) is full of drug transactions, stolen booze fencing, a home invasion by apparently Mexican gangsters, what appears to be counterfeit credit cards supplied by a Russian hacker, and more. It has everything. There’s even a money-laundering scene that takes place inside a massage parlor. It’s part FBI report, part Hollywood pitch.
And yet, it has not captured as much national media attention as one might think. Not long after the story came out, every Republican I follow on Twitter was noting how stories about Yee’s arrest were burying the fact that he’s a Democrat. I’m not particularly interested in an argument over which party is more corrupt. In the Corruption Olympics, each party is full of stellar athletes whose gold medals were paid for by taxpayers, manufactured by a company with cozy ties to both parties, and cost 300 percent more than they would in the private market. Nevertheless, given the media coverage of every time a conservative Republican politician on the state level says something dumb or controversial, it is worth noting.
Indeed it is.
LAWS ARE FOR THE LITTLE PEOPLE, especially in deep-blue Massachusetts: City worker promoted one month after being charged in bank robbery.
ROGER SIMON: The Silence Of The Liberals. “They are bewildered and embarrassed. Some are even ashamed of themselves, not that they will readily admit it. The man who was their hero has now been unmasked in every direction as the worst president since the Civil War and possibly earlier. Not only is he a cheesy liar, everything he has done, domestic and foreign, has failed, sometimes to extraordinary degrees. . . . Hence the silence.”
IN THE MAIL: From Michael Mandelbaum, The Road to Global Prosperity.
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MY USA TODAY COLUMN Takes CNN To Task Over Its Leland Yee Non-Coverage.
TAXPROF: The IRS Scandal, Day 328.
DEBT-INFLATED FALSE PROSPERITY: Easier Loans: Haven’t We Seen This Movie Before?
Here are words that would warm the cockles of any financial reporter’s heart: “It’s easier to get a loan these days for a new home or new car than it’s been in five years.”
I mean, the financial crisis may have been hell on the rest of y’all, but for business journalists, it was the Full Employment for Reporters Program.
OK, so maybe we’re not headed into “Financial Crisis II: The Legend Returns.” But given all the damage done by loose loan standards, I think this is worth some heavy eyebrow-knitting.
It’s also worth thinking about the secondary effects.
Is the Fed?
PHONE SEX FOR DEAF PEOPLE — NOT AN APRIL FOOL’S: Covered California Sends Deaf Callers To Hotline Offering ‘Hot Ladies.’ Train wrecks all the way down.
POLL: BRAZILIANS THINK WOMEN IN REVEALING CLOTHES DESERVE TO BE RAPED. “Keep in mind, 66.5 percent of the respondents were women.” That doesn’t surprise me at all. Women have always been the main enforcers of rules against female sexual display.
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BOB ZUBRIN: The Folly Of Blocking Natural-Gas Exports.
NEW HAMPSHIRE: Rep. Annie Kuster’s Townhall Problem.
BUT REMEMBER, MALE TEACHERS ARE RARE BECAUSE PEOPLE THINK THEY’RE MORE LIKELY TO BE SEXUAL PREDATORS: Coerced Sex Not Uncommon for Young Men, Teenage Boys, Study Finds. “A total of 43 percent of high school boys and young college men reported they had an unwanted sexual experience and of those, 95 percent said a female acquaintance was the aggressor, according to a study published online in the APA journal Psychology of Men and Masculinity.”
ED DRISCOLL ON FARMER-HATING IOWA SENATE CANDIDATE BRUCE BRALEY: I’m Lionel Hutz, and I Approve this Scrotal Torque-inducing Spin.
JAMES TARANTO: Laboratories of What? The clichés of ObamaCare coverage.
Ironically, before ObamaCare the medical-insurance industry functioned very much according to Brandeis’s “laboratories of democracy” model. “Thanks to the McCarran-Ferguson Act, which was passed in 1945, each of the fifty states has the exclusive power to license health insurance within a state’s own borders even if, in doing so, a state directly burdens interstate commerce by shutting out-of-state insurers out of the market,” as Steven Calabresi explained in a 2013 article for the University of Cincinnati Law Review.
“The McCarran-Ferguson Act purports to allow state governmental discrimination against inter-state commerce that would otherwise violate the Dormant Commerce Clause,” Calabresi argues, referring to the doctrine that states may not regulate interstate commerce. “It is this statute that has created the state health care oligopolies and monopolies and which is the cause of all our health care woes.”
But while McCarran-Ferguson deprived consumers of the benefits of competition across state lines, it did allow states considerable leeway to experiment. Some enacted coverage mandates; others didn’t. Some imposed “community rating”–a ban on charging higher premiums to policyholders with pre-existing conditions–and some repealed that requirement when it proved uneconomical. Massachusetts established an individual mandate, which most critics concede was (in contrast with the federal version) a constitutionally permissible exercise of state police power.
ObamaCare left the state-based regulatory scheme in place while overlaying upon it a panoply of new federal mandates. One of the few policy choices states have–to opt in or out of the Medicaid expansion–was not even part of the law until the high court found, also in NFIB v. Sebelius, that Congress had exceeded its powers in threatening to cut off existing Medicaid funding to states that did not go along.
So what we have with ObamaCare is the worst of both worlds: state monopolies without the flexibility to innovate.
Too bad nobody read it before they passed it so we could find out what was in it.
PROF. BAINBRIDGE: The Failed Florida Dean search: Was Alex Acosta Rejected Because He’s a Republican?
THE SLATE COMMENTERS ARE CALLING HIM A MALE CHAUVINIST PIGOVIAN: Reihan Salam: Tax the Childless: We should slash taxes on parents by jacking them up for nonparents.
So now, as a childless professional in my mid-30s, I often reflect on the sacrifices working parents make to better the lives of their children. And I have come to the reluctant conclusion that I ought to pay much higher taxes so that working parents can pay much lower taxes. I believe this even though I also believe a not inconsiderable share of my tax dollars are essentially being set on fire by our frighteningly incompetent government. Leviathan is here to stay, whether I like it or not, and someone has to pay for it. That someone should be me, and people like me.
Who should pay more? Nonparents who earn more than the median household income, just a shade above $51,000. By shifting the tax burden from parents to nonparents, we will help give America’s children a better start in life, and we will help correct a simple injustice. We all benefit from the work of parents. Each new generation reinvigorates our society with its youthful vim and vigor. As my childless friends and I grow crankier and more decrepit, a steady stream of barely postpubescent brainiacs writes catchy tunes and invents breakthrough technologies that keep us entertained and make us more productive. The willingness of parents to bear and nurture children saves us from becoming an economically moribund nation of hateful curmudgeons. The least we can do is offer them a bigger tax break.
Raising children is not exactly a thankless undertaking, I realize. As many parents will tell you, the satisfactions of parenting can be their own reward. Parents appear to be very into the supposed cuteness of their progeny. I wouldn’t know, but that’s the word on the street. We as a culture still hold parents, and particularly working parents, in high esteem.
Yet it is also true that we’ve stacked the deck against parents in all kinds of ways. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has found that raising a child born in 2012 will cost a middle-income family a cumulative total of $301,970 over 18 years. As high as this number sounds, it is actually a massive understatement, as it fails to take into account the cost of postsecondary education. It also fails to factor in the value of forgone earnings and career opportunities.
Read the whole thing.
LIFE IN THE JUDICIAL BRANCH: Justice Department will not prosecute retired Sixth Circuit judge.
SHE SEEMS REFRESHINGLY FREE-SPIRITED BY CONGRESSIONAL-DAUGHTER STANDARDS: I Want to Marry Michael Eggman’s Daughter.
MOST TRANSPARENT ADMINISTRATION EVER: Outrage as V.A. hides names of hospitals where vets died from delays.
March 31, 2014
ED DRISCOLL interviews Andrew Bostom about his new book, Iran’s Final Solution for Israel: The Legacy of Jihad and Shi’ite Islamic Jew-Hatred in Iran.
CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Linking Sen. Leland Yee’s Voting Record To Major Donations.
On Facebook, Charles Glasser comments: “Bloggers who write about politics could pick up a tip from this kind of story. After a scandal breaks, editors want a ‘second day’ story, something that looks deeper into the ‘who’ and ‘why’…donation databases are low-hanging fruit to come up with more details.”
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SO IT WAS REALLY MORE LIKE . . . HOW I MET YOUR STEPMOTHER.
Kathy Shaidle has a new book out called Confessions of A Failed Slut.
DON SURBER: The Joys Of Becoming A Hundredaire.
CONTRARY TO POPULAR IMPRESSIONS, earthquakes don’t seem to be becoming any more frequent.
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KNOW YOUR PLACE, PEASANTS! Deputies search wrong home, then the real fun begins:
Huron County Common Pleas Court Judge Timothy Cardwell issued a secret gag order March 21 to seal the search warrant. The gag order is also secret, Cardwell’s court clerk said after the Register asked for a copy of the order.
And the criminal complaint that was filed with the Huron County Sheriff’s Office also is secret.
The Register learned the search warrant was gagged after Huron County Sheriff’s Capt. Ted Patrick failed to deliver on assurances he made Thursday, when he said he would follow up on the Register’s requests for the initial complaints that led to the search warrant.
Incident reports and search warrants are generally public record that cannot be withheld from release.
“You send me a records request via email and I’ll be happy to get what you need,” Patrick said Thursday.
Patrick did not respond to the email the Register then sent and, when a reporter went to the sheriff’s office Friday, the incident reports weren’t available.
Patrick, who for the past three years has routinely failed to follow the public records requirements of the Ohio Revised Code, was also unavailable.
Tar. Feathers.
QUICK — SUE HIM INTO OBLIVION! A Futurist on Why Lawyers Will Start Becoming Obsolete This Year.
Schroeder points to efforts like the Ethereum project, which uses block chains—the technology behind bitcoin—to create smart contracts. Such contracts live online, beyond the control of any single entity, and anyone can check their operating parameters at any time.
“It’s a kind of automaton,” says Schroeder. “It will follow the rules that have been laid down for it to the letter. It will never cheat.”
Uh huh.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: In Wake of 70% Enrollment Decline, La Verne Adopts Flat-Rate Law School Tuition Model.
SELF-DEFENSE COURSES FOR WOMEN ONLY: Obvious sexism. Well, it’s a benefit for one sex, based on a stereotype of the other.
ANOTHER NARRATIVE DIES, I GUESS: Science: Women Fake Orgasms For Pleasure. “A study published in the Journal of Sexual Archives says women will fake orgasm not just for the relationship, or their own insecurity, but to feel sexually excited.”
READER BOOK PLUG: From reader Miriam Sawyer, Nothing Much: Life with Mother, Bubbe & Mr. Charm.
PARASITIC MIND CONTROL: Sexually Transmitted Virus Sterilises Insects, Turns Them On.
Why would a sterile male cricket mate with an infertile female? On the surface, this behaviour makes no sense: sex takes energy and effort, and there’s nothing in it for either of these partners. Neither one can foster the next generation.
Shelley Adamo from Dalhousie University has the answer. Her team have shown that one particular insect virus can sterilise crickets, but also change their behaviour so they continue to mate with each other. By doing so, they pass the virus on to uninfected hosts.
So it’s sort of like Cosmo for bugs then. More seriously, from the comments: “I do find myself wondering about how many STDs in humans also alter host behavior. And other pathogens too, for that matter. I know this isn’t easy to study and answers probably aren’t forthcoming any time soon. My guess is ‘more than we realize.’”
DISASTER PREP WRIT LARGE: Civilization’s Starter Kit.
THAT’S SILLY, SINCE I’VE BEEN DRINKING NITRO BREWS FOR YEARS: Left Hand Brewery Attempts To Trademark ‘Nitro’ For Its Beer Line.
DESIGN IS A PROCESS, NOT AN EVENT: Fire Fighter: Tesla Model S Upgrade Adds Titanium Shield and Aluminum Deflector.
More here: “We believe these changes will also help prevent a fire resulting from an extremely high speed impact that tears the wheels off the car, like the other Model S impact fire, which occurred last year in Mexico. This happened after the vehicle impacted a roundabout at 110 mph (177kmh), shearing off 15 feet (4.5m) of concrete curbwall and tearing off the left front wheel, then smashing through an eight foot tall buttressed concrete wall on the other side of the road and tearing off the right front wheel, before crashing into a tree. The driver stepped out and walked away with no permanent injuries and a fire, again limited to the front section of the vehicle, started several minutes later. The underbody shields will help prevent a fire even in such a scenario.”
MORE ON THAT FAILED FLORIDA DEAN SEARCH: President ‘Crushed Hopes of Law School’ by Rejecting Dean Candidates Approved by Faculty. That said, I think the Florida faculty was probably unfair to Alex Acosta, too.
JUST SO YOU KNOW, MY FONT COLOR IS #000. Charlie Martin: A Little Typographical Rant: #666: text color of the beast. A lot of Web design is done by 20-somethings with excellent eyesight, using gigantic monitors. This doesn’t always do so well out in the real world.
ASKING THE IMPORTANT QUESTIONS: Why the Hell Did I Sleep Through High School Physics?
IN THE MAIL: From Hiawatha Bray, You Are Here: From the Compass to GPS, the History and Future of How We Find Ourselves.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 326.
PETER BEINART: Hillary Doesn’t Deserve A Free Pass From The Media.
The media loves conversion stories. So when David Brock, who once rummaged through Little Rock in pursuit of Bill Clinton’s dirty laundry, returned to the city yesterday to speak at the Clinton School of Public Service at the University of Arkansas, both The New York Times and Politico took notice. Brock, Politico reported, came to Little Rock to “explain his transformation” from Clinton-hater to Clinton-defender. But his speech inadvertently did something else. It showed that in his approach to politics, David Brock hasn’t changed much at all.
Brock’s core argument was that as we approach 2016, mainstream journalists must stay far away from the anti-Clinton attack journalism peddled by the partisan right. In explaining why, Brock cited his own work in the early 1990s for the Richard Mellon Scaife-funded “Arkansas Project,” in which he dug up “a kitchen-sink-full of preposterous allegations,” many of which entered mainstream publications, but “almost none” of which “turned out to be true.”
Really? Many of the Arkansas Project allegations—that the Clintons oversaw a cocaine-smuggling ring, that they ordered the murder of Vince Foster—were of course preposterous. But Brock also uncovered a woman named “Paula,” who later alleged that while working as an Arkansas state employee, she was escorted by Governor Clinton’s bodyguard to his hotel room. There, she claims, Clinton exposed himself and demanded sex. When Paula Jones leveled her allegations, mainstream reporters like The Washington Post’s Michael Isikoff and The American Lawyer’s Stuart Taylor did exactly what Brock now says the media should not: They looked into it. And they concluded that—although Jones was clearly being used by Clinton’s political enemies—her story had merit. (If you doubt that, read Taylor’s summary in Slate of his much-longer American Lawyer investigation into what likely transpired between Clinton and Jones on May 8, 1991. It’s horrifying).
Clinton ultimately settled Jones’ sexual-harassment case for the entire amount she requested. U.S. District Court Judge Susan Webber Wright found him in civil contempt of court for “intentionally false” testimony, which led to the suspension of his Arkansas law license. Despite this, Media Matters, the journalism watchdog organization that Brock founded in 2004, after his ideological conversion, still occasionally savages Isikoff and Taylor for the reporting they did.
The lesson for journalists covering 2016, Brock told the Little Rock crowd, is that “Clinton-hating had nothing to do with what the Clintons did or did not do.” If only it were that simple. . . . Clinton’s behavior wasn’t irrelevant. He used the powers of his office—both as governor and president—to solicit sex and cover it up. He lied under oath and he urged others to lie. That’s far worse than sexting, which destroyed Anthony Weiner’s career.
Of course, Bill Clinton won’t be on the ballot in 2016. But not everything Clinton-haters said about Hillary was wrong either.
Read the whole thing. As Beinart notes, Hillary’s biggest problem isn’t her checkered past, but her us-against-them approach to politics.
And whenever I see David Brock’s name mentioned, I wonder if he was accompanied by an aide with an illegal gun.
MICKEY KAUS: 3 Predictions I Couldn’t Make If I Had An Editor!
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Students Seeking Skills, Not Degrees. “Schools are responding to these students by creating specialized programs, including short-term programs to help the unemployed return to the workforce with updated skills. Some colleges may even offer certificates, though the skills learned will probably be more valuable than the credential.”
AT AMAZON, new releases in Video Games.
Also in Movies & TV.
HE DIDN’T QUALIFY FOR THE DAVID GREGORY EXEMPTION: Replica Bullets, Dud Shell Earn Weapons Conviction For Former Washington Man. “The Judge and Prosecutor didn’t know what a muzzleloader is.”
WELL, IT ALREADY APPEARS TO BE BEYOND REPAIR: Is ObamaCare Beyond Repeal?
If it were impossible to ever cut off an expensive entitlement that goes to the middle class, TennCare would never have been cut.
True, but Tennessee is more civilized and sensible than many places.
