February 09, 2008

A SUPERDELEGATE THREAT FROM CHRIS BOWERS:

If the institution that exists to resolve disputes within the American center-left does not operate according to democratic principles, then I see no reason to continue participating within that institution. If that institution fails to respect democratic principles in its most important internal contest of all--nominating an individual for President of the United States--then I will quit the Democratic Party. And yes, I am perfectly serious about this. If someone is nominated for POTUS from the Democratic Party despite another candidate receiving more poplar support from Democratic primary voters and caucus goers, I will resign as local precinct captain, resign my seat on the Pennsylvania Democratic State Committee, immediately cease all fundraising for all Democrats, refuse to endorse the Democratic "nominee" for any office, and otherwise disengage from the Democratic Party through all available means of doing so.

Ann Althouse asks: "What's morally wrong with following the rules that everyone knew all along? Parties aren't morally obligated to use a purely democratic approach to picking a nominee. The Democrats set up a system with some delegates who were there because of their position in the party and not as representatives of people who voted in primaries or caucused. They were authorized to exercise their independent judgment about who the party should nominate, in what looks like a check on freewheeling democracy. Why should they now be told to subordinate their independent judgment?"

Speaking as a fellow professor of Constitutional Law, Althouse makes perfect sense to me. But this attitude is not going to be shared by many people who've spent the last nearly-8 years claiming that winning the popular vote is more important than winning the electoral vote.

A REPORT ON HOW THE Science Debate 2008 effort is going. There's some useful advice from my Dewey Ballantine compatriot Tom Kalil: "The research community needs a more compelling message than 'give us 7% more money than last year.'"

THE GROVEL CONTINUES: MSNBC airs an hour-long campaign ad biographical feature on Hillary Clinton. "This pre-empts the regularly scheduled programming, a show called Deadly Encounter. Not joking."

UPDATE: Jake Tapper reports that the Clintons don't want Shuster fired after all. Of course not. Now that they've shown they can yank his chain whenever they want, it's much better to keep him on the job, properly subservient!

BUT OBAMA DOESN'T HAVE TO SPIN: "The Hillary Clinton campaign is now, in a new press release, spinning away her losses in Washington, Nebraska, and Louisiana as 'expected.'"

UPDATE: Reader Joseph Ingrassia emails:

I am in medical school now, but I remember when I used to watch the WWF (WWE as it is called now) about 10 years ago and I have to say Obama's victory/campaign speech tonight in Virginia is utterly reminiscent of any "face" (good guy) speech as he arrived in the ring in a new town.

"My it's good to be back to (insert city/state)...I'll tell you you guys have the best (insert sports team/governor)..." the speech then goes on about being an underdog and more importantly winning against the odds et cetera, et cetera. The best part about it is that the crowd in both instances, fake wrestling and politics, always screams and applauds in the same spots and eventually breaks into chanting the hero's name. I understand this isn't a speech meant to unveil any type of policy specifics (when are his speeches ever about that really?) but the similarities were striking for about five minutes.

On another note, as a future doctor their health care plans SCARE me. I can't wait to treat people that don't have to pay a dime (directly at least) for care...you think I'll be seeing a lot of people with the common cold and other such common illnesses that don't need medical attention?

Now he's promising to reduce the cost of living, eliminate poverty, create "millions" of new green jobs...maybe he can teach me to walk on water too.

The way people talk, you can't rule that out.

THIS ARTICLE CALLING FOR professional attire for professors is ground we've covered before -- but the comments are fun to read.

UPDATE: I say, go for the natty college-professor look!

OVER AT DAILYPUNDIT'S WEEKEND COOKING THREAD, the topic is favorite foodie mags, books, and TV Shows. At the moment, as it happens, I'm watching Giada de Laurentis tour the Greek islands in a variety of skimpy outfits, in HD. While I believe the Insta-mom is lukewarm on her cookbook, the TV show does not disappoint.

UPDATE: Now she's drinking Raki, a grape-based jetfuel they distill on Crete. My brother used to bring it back when he worked there. When you get the good Raki, it's really good. When you get the bad Raki, it tastes like carbueretor cleaner. And pretty much is. If you've got a really dirty carbueretor . . . .

OBAMA CHARGES election irregularities in Louisiana.

UPDATE: The Anchoress emails: "Doesn't it strike you that this guy is utterly fearless in the face of the Clintons, and completely on his game, intending not to let them get away with a thing? I must say...I like the cut of his jib. Don't think I like his policies...but there is a lot to admire there." He's brave where the Clintons are concerned. We'll see how that works out for him.

IS RON PAUL saying so long, suckers? That seems a bit harsh. Apparently, he's facing a real challenge for his Congressional district.

HMM: "A new study finds that when it comes to financial success, you're better off being a moderately happy person rather than someone who's chronically ecstatic." Hmm. Well, that's me. So where's my great wealth?

WHY GOOD PEOPLE DON'T GO INTO GOVERNMENT: "Howard Krongard worked his last day at the State Department recently, having learned a hard lesson in the ways of modern Congressional 'oversight.' To wit, if you don't follow Henry Waxman's orders, he'll try to ruin you. . . . Mr. Waxman doesn't much care if any of this is true, because his larger goal is to send a message to every Inspector General in government: They answer to him." Kind of like the Clintons and MSNBC. It's too bad that it's so easy to gin up fake scandals and "ethical" problems in the service of political witch-hunting. Somebody should write a book on that!

ALI ETERAZ WRITES opposing Sharia arbitration courts in the U.K. Rowan Williams probably should have touched base with him prior to mouthing off . . . .

PROFESSOR BAINBRIDGE: "What is it lately with Democrats and the Marine Corps?" But follow the link for the story he finds really disturbing.

ERIC SCHEIE: "I'm a bit concerned about the new president of Bryn Mawr College."

"OR, YOU KNOW, there's just more of us."

POLAROID GETS OUT OF THE INSTANT FILM BUSINESS. (Via Eye of the Heretic.)

DOING RIGHT BY our newest veterans.

SOME MOVING ADVICE from the Great White North: "Don't ship things in plastic when it might be -40 outside. It cracks." Brr.

CONTINUOUSLY UPDATED PRIMARY NEWS, here.

HOW TO blend an egg. Everything's better when it's blended!

A NEW MIDDLE EAST, after all. What hath Bush wrought?

MORE ON TOLEDO AND THE MARINES, from Roger Kimball. And a reader from Toledo emails: "The really rich part of this is that our downtown still has many vacant buildings. One of Carty's 'arts' initiatives was to get artists to paint scenes that would be put up inside the windows of the vacant buildings so they wouldn't look so 'vacant'. Oh, and did I mention that the City and County were pleading with the Feds a couple of years ago not to move the local Air National Guard Base (and its jobs/payroll taxes) out of Toledo Express Airport? Pray for us." This won't help with that.

Meanwhile, at BlackFive they are not amused.

I.R.S. GETS PUSHBACK FROM COURTS over special treatment for Scientology.

UH OH: "Turns out the punishment might hurt DNC more than it hurt Michigan and Florida. In stripping those states of their delegates for moving up their primaries, the DNC has created a crisis."

UPDATE: Much more here.

BIOFUELS WORSE FOR THE ENVIRONMENT? That's the gist of this report, and it's no doubt correct as far as crop-based biofuels go. It doesn't seem to address ethanol or methanol from waste biomass, though. Those should have a considerably more benign profile. Also, there are advantages to weakening OPEC even if there's no environmental benefit from doing so.

HAS THE ARCHIBISHOP gone bonkers? That would be the kindest assessment. But . . . "gone?"

UPDATE: More here. And note this followup comment. It's more of that Gramscian damage, I guess.

GLOBAL WARMING JUJITSU.

PLOTTING IN the Internet age.

MORE ON SHUSTER'S GROVELLING: It's the Clintons' network. You just broadcast there.

UPDATE: From the comments: "This incident is a tool the Clinton machine is using to remind the media that, when they cover the Clintons, they are covering people who can destroy their careers. These reporters may as well be covering their bosses." [LATER: Point expanded upon here.]

ANOTHER UPDATE: James Joyner: "I’m no fan of Shuster. Indeed, he’s a total and utter hack and MSNBC should be ashamed they can’t find a more serious journalist to put on their air. But these remarks aren’t worthy of tut-tutting, let alone firing."

MORE: A roundup at TV Newser includes this: "An NBC insider close to the situation is outraged at the suspension. 'This is the second time in a month we've caved to a political campaign, kowtowing under pressure for what were basically legitimate observations,' the insider tells TVNewser. 'We're not even pretending to be journalists anymore.'" It's the Clintons' network. You just broadcast there.

MARK TAPSCOTT:

George Will delivered a powerful argument at last night's CPAC banquet on behalf of conservatives sucking it up and being "happy warriors" on behalf of John McCain and the Republican presidential ticket. I listened and for the most part found myelf nodding, reluctantly, in agreement.

But I noted that Will did not talk about the one issue on which the Washington Post columnist might be expected to be most concerned: Would President McCain be as aggressive an advocate of campaign finance reform regulation as Senator McCain was? There are four things to consider on this issue.

Read the whole thing.

WELL, IT'S A DUMB LAW: National Parks gun ban under fire.

BILL QUICK'S AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE PARTY SITE is up and running in fullbore Drupal mode.

SETTLING FOR Mr. Good Enough.

UPDATE: Several readers were amused that the item linked above isn't about the G.O.P. and John McCain. Meanwhile, Eugene Volokh has thoughts.

YES, THERE ARE MORE PRIMARIES TODAY: Roundup here.

HEH: "Some things aren't in the news because — unexciting as it may be to the mind of the conspiracy buff — they didn't happen."

PFIZER, TURNABOUT, AND FAIR PLAY: Pfizer, which played an unfortunate role in the Kelo case, is now finding itself bitten by dubious eminent-domain practices. Ilya Somin cautions that two wrongs don't make a right -- which is true, but on the other hand sometimes they make the practitioner of the first wrong more aware of its wrongness. . . .

BERKELEY EAST? Toledo to Marines: Get Out.

UPDATE: Reader Ryan Kelley thinks this is unfair:

There's a huge difference between Berkley giving Code Pink a parking spot in front of a recruiting center and the mayor of a city which has been hosting Marine training since 2004 getting miffed because -he- wasn't informed that they were going to train. The rest of the City was perfectly fine with it.

This is Ohio - not California. That kind of behavior towards our armed forces isn't tolerated. Unfortunately the ignorance by Ohio city leaders on display in Toledo is tolerated.

True, this seems to be more about petty personal pique on the Mayor's part. Several readers also noted that this is a Name That Party scenario, and that, unsurprisingly, the Mayor turns out to be a Democrat.

PIMP MY RIGHT: Extreme Mortman wonders why Keith Olbermann never got the Shuster treatment.

DO DEPARTMENT STORES have a future? "I can’t help wondering if the decline of local brands didn’t sever some psychic bond people had formed with the very concept of department stores. In the short run, I’m sure they made money streamlining the brands, but in the end they made them interchangeable and rootless." Yeah, when Proffitt's in Knoxville turned into a Belk's, I found I liked 'em less.

HERE'S A FRIENDLY HEADLINE: Old Friends Say Drugs Played Only Bit Part in Obama’s Young Life.

Plus, flip-flops on drug decriminalization.

February 08, 2008

BARACK OBAMA, in Being There.

WHY PAPER CUTS hurt so much.

FRED THOMPSON ENDORSES JOHN MCCAIN.

IN THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE David Sirota notes that Obama is the corporate fave: "Though Obama certainly is less industry-owned than Clinton, the Washington Post noted last spring that he was the top recipient of Wall Street contributions. That cash is hush money, contingent on candidates silencing their populist rhetoric. . . . Obama, who was schooled by the same organizing networks as Cesar Chavez, is being endorsed by hedge fund managers." Actually, that makes me feel better about him . . . .

MITT ROMNEY 2012?

OBAMA DEIFICATION?

IF HE WERE A REPUBLICAN, this would be a bigger story.

STEVE CHAPMAN says that threats of terrorism are exaggerated. I certainly hope he's right, but haven't we heard that sort of thing before?

LEPROSY IN ARKANSAS, imported from the Marshall Islands. Fears of an epidemic seem overstated, though, as leprosy is not terrifically contagious.

Dan Collins notes the tornadoes, followed by plague, and concludes that God is mad at Mike Huckabee.

IN HIS CAPACITY AS PRESIDENT OF THE SENATE, Dick Cheney has signed a pro-individual-right amicus brief on the D.C. gun ban case that was joined by a majority of both the House and Senate.

THEY TOLD ME THAT IF GEORGE W. BUSH WERE RE-ELECTED, TV News correspondents who angered the First Family would be booted by network brass afraid of offending the powers that be. And they were right!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ACE, who won the CPAC Blogger of the Year Award.

A BUNCH OF CPAC PODCAST INTERVIEWS, over at Captain Ed's.

HMM: "As the late Yusuf Bey built Your Black Muslim Bakery into an empire of wealth and influence, he also orchestrated a systematic welfare fraud scheme at his Oakland compound, three of his former wives have testified. By the wives' sworn account, Bey directed many of the 100 women whom he considered his wives to make fraudulent applications for government aid programs intended to assist poor families, then diverted the benefits to himself."

IF YOU'VE GOT KIDS, you're probably very familiar with Margaret Wise Brown's Goodnight Moon. Now it turns out that there's a new sequel, which was discovered in her papers after her death.

A POST-TRAUMATIC Presidency.

TENFOLD HEALTHY LIFE EXTENSION in nematodes.

VICE PRESIDENT SARAH PALIN? "How can you not like the idea of a Vice President who looks comfortable bagging a deer?"

WHY JOHN MCCAIN just might win.

IN THE HELLER CASE, an amicus brief on the racist history of gun control laws from the Congress On Racial Equality. Direct PDF link here.

STILL NO LINK between cellphones and cancer.

MOVIES BASED ON VIDEOGAMES: Just how bad are they?

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: A look at where the candidates stand on earmarks:

John McCain abhors them. Hillary Rodham Clinton embraces them. Barack Obama does a little of both.

The leading contenders for president cover the spectrum in their attitudes toward political pork known as earmarks.

In recent years, earmarks have become mired in controversy and scandal — from a $220 million earmark for a "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska to the corruption convictions of lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Rep. Duke Cunningham. Still, members of Congress continue to parcel them out, arguing that part of their job is to bring federal dollars back to their states.

Legions of lobbyists coax lawmakers each year to drop thousands of earmarks for their clients into spending bills with little to no scrutiny or debate. The 2008 defense bill bulged with more than 2,100 earmarks, costing $8 billion, according to the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense.

The use of earmarks and the powerful influence of lobbyists on Congress have been hotly debated in the presidential race. As that debate has continued, the top presidential candidates dealt with earmarks as senators in starkly different fashion from each other.

In the defense bill, for example, The Seattle Times found that Clinton sponsored 66 earmarks totaling $150 million. Obama sponsored six earmarks totaling $34 million; all were for nonprofit organizations. McCain didn't ask for any earmarks this year.

Read the whole thing.

FACTCHECK.ORG: "The Democratic National Committee proposes to spend unlimited amounts of money to 'tell the real story' about John McCain before Republicans can 'start smearing' the eventual Democratic nominee. But the line of attack the Democrats outline to their potential donors in an e-mail contains some claims that are false or misleading."

MAJOR JOHN TAMMES: Right, then, I'm off! Godspeed, Major John.

MORE ON climate change fears.

THE L.A. TIMES got more than 94 million pageviews in January. Wow, that's more than 10 times what InstaPundit got. Sadly, their most-viewed item was about Britney Spears. . . .

TIES TO HILLARY PROVE TENUOUS at Yale Law School.

IN THE VERY UNLIKELY EVENT that I ever drive a big-rig truck, I'd want something like this one. Fuel-efficient yet luxurious!

UPDATE: Mike Hendrix isn't buying.

WHO'LL RUN AGAINST LAMAR ALEXANDER? Nobody, on the Democratic side, so far.

MICKEY KAUS: "Remind me again, what is the evidence--in terms of policies, not affect or attitude or negotiating strategy--that Obama is not an unreconstructed lefty (on the American spectrum--a paleoliberal or a bit further left)? For example, would he roll back welfare reform if he could?"

AT ADVERTISING AGE, some advice for Hillary.

TOM BEVAN does the Veepstakes roundup. Plus, some related thoughts from The Anchoress.

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND AND the failure of liberal multiculturalism. It's interesting, however, that Rowan Williams need have no fear for his personal safety after saying that Sharia is inevitable in England, while had he said bad things about Sharia the reverse would have been true. Under such circumstances, is behavior like his surprising?

UPDATE: Demands for Rowan Williams' resignation.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More thoughts from Johnathan Pearce: "Frankly, a man of such supposed learned views as Dr Williams should know that a religion that has a legal code that applies to women in the way that it does is outrageous; doubly outrageous, considering that the Church, with all its faults, has in the past acted as a moral beacon on stirring up consciences on issues like the slave trade. I am sure there are admirable aspects of sharia: it is hard to believe that it would not have died out were it not to have contained such features. But let's be crystal clear: if the Archbishop thinks it is right that whole groups of the UK population can choose to deal with issues like marriage, divorce and treatment of women outside the structure of the English Common law and its insistence upon treatment of women as consenting adults in matters of marriage, then he might as well hang up his cassock."

MORE: Archbishop receives an almost universal and appalled No.

Plus this: "I've just been speaking with a Muslim friend who has always opposed sharia law. 'Where does it leave me', he asks, 'when the Archbishop of Canterbury is calling for sharia?' The beautifully hostile press reaction to Rowan Williams' disgusting views is the only aspect of this story that could provide any hope. But the story is running big across the Middle East, and people there are seeing Britain's surrender to sharia played out on a news-loop. Do we think that Islamic extremists in the Middle East and beyond will be be more demoralised or more emboldened by this news?"

STILL MORE: Williams issues a clarification of his remarks.

MORE STILL: Eugene Volokh offers a defense of Williams. I think, however, that he misses the explosive context -- marked by domestic violence and a concerted campaign by some hard-core Muslims in Britain to establish sharia law for everyone, not just contractually consenting parties -- that made sure that Williams' remarks would have an explosive impact, as they have, both within Britain and in the Middle East. It's true, of course, that decrees of religious "courts" are often enforced in the same fashion as arbitrations and other mutually-agreed-upon dispute resolution mechanisms. However, with honor killing reportedly on the rise in Britain, we may rightly wonder whether women in Muslim immigrant communities are likely to freely consent to a regime that is generally much, much less favorable than existing English law, and whether this approach makes problems of assimilation worse. As head of the Church of England, Williams' words matter, and these words were quite unwise and damaging. Which is why he has even drawn criticism from among his own bishops: "The Rt Rev Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, who holds dual British and Pakistani citizenship, said Britain should learn from the example of Canada, where Muslim women's groups managed to crush attempts to introduce Islamic law in matrimonial cases."

Still more here: "The Archbishop of Canterbury was facing demands to quit last night as the row over sharia law intensified. Leading bishops publicly contradicted Dr Rowan Williams's call for Islamic law to be brought into the British legal system." Even Tariq Ramadan thinks he should have kept his mouth shut.

FINALLY: A reader emails:

This reminds me of a Monty Python skit called "The Bishop" in which Terry Jones played a crime fighting Anglican bishop who roared around in a right-hand drive Pontiac along with four young vicars as assistants. When they came to a locked door, three of them picked up the fourth and used him as a headfirst battering ram.

The vicars were not credited on screen, but the fourth was undoubtedly Dr. Williams.

That would explain a lot. Of course, so would this . . . .

ARNOLD KLING: "John McCain is no Dwight Eisenhower." It's hard to argue!

AT TAXPROF, some details on the "stimulus" package.

DEMOCRACY: A luxury we can't afford in light of climate change!

IN THE MAIL: Troy Dunn's Young Bucks: How to Raise a Future Millionaire. Interestingly, sending your kids to expensive schools isn't the key.

MATT DUFFY NOTES THAT WE WERE HEARING A LOT ABOUT THE DEFICIT until the bipartisan "stimulus" package came up. Then, suddenly, it was no big deal.

Meanwhile, Tigerhawk notes that oil prices are doing the job on their own:

The price of oil may be the best automatic stabilizer that we have. The economy soars and the price of oil increases, imposing an automatic synthetic "tax" that dampens growth. The opposite is also true; the price of oil now falls because the economy is softening, and that will put a lot of money in the hands of American consumers. Oil is already down almost 12% from its peak. If a typical suburban family buys, say, 2000 gallons of gasoline a year, the price savings embedded in a 12% reduction will exceed the silly one-time payment from the stimulus package that passed the Senate today. If oil were to retreat to $60 with concommitant declines in the price of gasoline and heating fuel, the savings for a typical family would dwarf the artificial stimulus in the rebate bill.

But Congress couldn't take credit.

UPDATE: Though it doesn't seem to be helping them much: Bush, Congress hit bottom in AP poll.

FROM NAME THAT PARTY to Name That Hijacker!

JOE TOBACCO: Right-wing Establishment Failed to Deliver for Romney.

ROGER KIMBALL: Who will rid us of this troublesome priest? "The triumph of Islam in Britain is eminently avoidable. But the triumph of civilizational Quislings like Rowan Williams might just change that."

UPDATE: More here.

ALFRED KAHN on The Threat of Latter-Day Progressives to an Authentically Liberal Economic Policy.

OBAMAMANIA!

IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM SATELLITE RADIO LAST NIGHT, you can still listen to this week's PJM Political online today.

IRAQPUNDIT on the loneliness of the Al Qaeda terrorist in Iraq.

OUCH: "Troubled British singer Amy Winehouse is the perfect poster girl for the current state of the music industry." I sent in my Grammy ballot this year, but I have to say that there was nothing on there that hugely moved me.

IOWAHAWK REPORTS from the Chicago Auto Show. Among other things, "The perfect motorcade hoopty for taking you from the private jet hangar to the big UN Global Warming conference!"

BUSH AT CPAC: Cheney is the best VP ever.

THE CLAREMONT INSTITUTE files a Brandeis brief in the D.C. gun-ban case. Direct PDF link here.

THE BERKELEY CITY COUNCIL: Paper Tigers.

STEPHEN GREEN: "McCain’s pick for vice president might be the most important decision any nominee has ever made. . . . Right person: Fred Thompson, or any other principled federalist who understands there’s a war on. This is a short list. Tom Coburn would make the cut, too. So would Duncan Hunter."

UPDATE: Veepstakes thoughts from Michael Graham.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Darin S. Morley writes: "I think Michael Steele fits all of Michael Graham's requirements for VP." Yeah, the Insta-Wife likes him as a running mate too.

WEATHER VS. CLIMATE: "Whatever your personal weather, around the planet January 2008 was the second coldest in 15 years. The linked post, complete with graphs and everything, does not suggest that this says anything in particular about the climate or the long-term direction of local temperatures. To me, the most interesting thing about this story is the complete absence of discussion in the mainstream media, which manages to induce a scientist or politician to blame anthropogenic global warming for any bit of idiosyncratic weather. See, if you can stand it, the latest comedy gold from John Kerry. If you are going to live by idiosyncratic weather, you should die by it."

DELIVERING DNA VACCINES via tattoo guns.

February 07, 2008

RED-LIGHT SHOOTING SUSPECT represents self.

BAD NEWS FOR HUGO CHAVEZ: "Exxon Mobil Corp has moved to freeze up to $12 billion in Venezuelan assets around the world as the U.S. company fights for payment in return for the state's takeover of a huge oil project last year."

INDEED:

The U.S. just dodged a bullet in Iraq.

Recently it was reported that Pentagon leaders were considering Gen. David Petraeus, commander of the Multi-National Force Iraq since February 2007, for a prestigious redeployment to Europe. It is good news for Americans and Iraqis alike that Gen. Petraeus decided to stay in Baghdad through the fall.

What's depressing is that top political and military leaders in Washington asked him to consider the move in the first place.

Yes. Several possibilities: (1) Somebody's jealous of his prominence; (2) This is just rotation as usual and they're clueless about the importance of continuity here; or -- most disturbing -- (3) there's a bad enough prognosis for Europe that some people thought we needed him there more. I'd say that last is fairly unlikely, notwithstanding the unhappiness of NATO leaders at the moment.

REMEMBERING Negro League baseball.

MEN WITHOUT CHESTS. "Nowhere was this more clear than at the recent men’s wear shows in Milan and Paris, where even those inured to the new look were flabbergasted at the sheer quantity of guys who looked chicken-chested, hollow-cheeked and undernourished. Not altogether surprisingly, the trend has followed the fashion pack back to New York." And there's this diagnosis: "“People are afraid to look over 21 or make any statement of what it means to be adult."

UPDATE: A reader suggests that this explains Brooks Brothers' latest flop.

WHAT WOULD BACON DO? Continuing a theme of the last couple of days.

BAH: "Stimulus" bill passes. More properly known as the "buying votes with borrowed money" bill.

"Is the job of Vice President to a Clinton worth having?" Not for Obama. He'd be the next Al Gore, only Hillary would be far more jealous and worried about being upstaged than Bill ever was where Al was concerned. And then, of course, there'd be Bill as the real Vice President.

TIM BLAIR: Tolerance On The March!

RATING SCHOOLS, USING A "Multiculturalism-to-Math Ratio:"

To determine just how unbalanced teacher preparation is at ed schools, we counted the number of course titles and descriptions that contained the words “multiculturalism,” “diversity,” “inclusion,” and variants thereof, and then compared those with the number that used variants of the word “math.”

Sounds useful.

AN OBAMA BACKLASH?

MICHAEL YON EMAILS: "I'm in South Baghdad and this is accurate:"

Signs of improved security in Baghdad go beyond the obvious dampening of street battles and bombings: It's in the smaller transformations taking place in neighborhoods that the seeds of possibility are starting to take root.

Read the whole thing.

SURELY STREETWALKERS are next.

A LOOK AT Putin's new Cold War.

JAMES PETHOKOUKIS: Wall Street is Unprepared for a Dem Sweep.

UPDATE: A reader who runs a hedge fund emails: "Anecdotally, this is hogwash. When trader talk turns to politics, it's all gallows humor and discussions about moving to Switzerland or Singapore after November. And it's no coincidence that stocks are down more than 10% since the primary season began in earnest."

RAND SIMBERG: "Did Romney save us from Vice-President Huckabee?"

TOM BLUMER SAYS IT'S THE ECONOMY AGAIN, and the GOP doesn't have a clue.

ONE DAY TO STOP HILLARY? You can substitute Obama if you'd rather.

FOLLOWING UP YESTERDAY'S BACON POST, Jennifer from Mellow-Drama emails:

I laughed when I read your bacon candy blurb, because I remember writing about a Women Lawyer's Association event I went to when I was newly licensed, and they served a giant platter of sweet-glazed crispy bacon at the reception. I marveled over it at the time, but since then I've been to a lot more events and judged all of them inferior due to a distinct lack of bacon. I'm so glad I'm not the only one with the bacon obsession!

So how about some delicious Bacon Peanut Brittle? Yum, yum.

BOB KRUMM: John McCain really could win . . . maybe that's why some Republicans are so scared!

MITT ROMNEY'S swift and graceful exit.

JAMES LILEKS: "Love of country must always be qualified these days, lest anyone think you are unaware of slavery, insufficiently regulated railroad stock offerings, Lester Maddox or the attempt by Philip Morris to conceal the addictive nature of cigarettes."

THOUGHTS ON JUNO, from Kyle Smith.

T.M. LUTAS: "Why are the generals getting restless all over NATO? . . . I can see no other explanation than a profound, international vote of no-confidence in the political class of the West by heavily experienced military minds that live, breathe, eat, and sleep the problem of defending us all from violent threats to our liberties and very existence."

RON BAILEY ON techno-optimistic environmentalism.

JOHNATHAN PEARCE: "The Archibishop of Canterbury is an ass."

MORE ANIMAL-RIGHTS TERRORISM: "The house of a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles was damaged by a firebomb left at the front door early Tuesday, the university said in a news release, and an animal-rights extremist group has claimed responsibility for the attack. "

THOUGHTS ON FISA RENEWAL from Jacob Sullum.

A contrary view here.

POWER LINE'S LUCRATIVE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD goes to Norman Podhoretz for World War IV. "The biggest cash prize in American letters isn't the Pulitzer or the National Book Award--prizes which are unlikely ever to go to a conservative writer. It's the Power Line Book of the Year Award." And there's a swell event in NYC, too.

ROMNEY suspends his campaign.

UPDATE: Mark Hemingway: "Just finished watching Romney's terrific speech, and I bet a lot of people are wishing that he displayed more of that inspirational quality and verve in the campaign."

Also here: "He's giving an amazing speech. A really, really good speech - unlike any that I've seen him give during the course of this campaign. . . . He's speaking with passion and conviction. Now that it's over. For some reason, it seems like Romney seemed free only to be himself once it was over." Video here.

FROM N.Z. BEAR'S KITHBRIDGE, a CPAC blog feed.

DO YOU MIND IF I check your badge again? They told me that if George W. Bush were re-elected, clueless cops would be confiscating computers willy-nilly. And they were right!

IN THE MAIL: A.J. Rossmiller's Still Broken: A Recruit's Inside Account of Intelligence Failures, From Baghdad to the Pentagon. There have certainly been plenty of those.

BOB OWENS ISSUES A ringing endorsement of John McCain. Plus, at the end, a slogan that belongs on bumper stickers everywhere!

CORRECTING THE C.I.A.

MOMENTUM: "A controversial idea to require colleges and universities to pay out more from their endowment assets annually seems to be gaining traction among both Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives."

WHY MEN WON'T GET MARRIED: The latest Ask Dr. Helen column is up! Plus, we hear back from the 47-year-old virgin.

BOB KRUMM on weather vs. climate.

BYPASSING SECURITY with cloned trucks.

WHAT BURKLE BOUGHT? "The Clintons always seem to live at the nexus of questions regarding cash and politics."

AN IDEA FOR A NOVEL, from Charles Stross. I like it.

"BE NICE. BE POLITE. HAVE A PLAN TO KILL EVERYONE YOU SEE." Bob Owens reports on weapons training.

UH OH: Sun Stays Sluggish as Weathermen Fight for Anti-Ice Age Funding.

I swear, it's only a work of fiction. Or so I thought. . . .

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY ROLLS OVER for the music industry.

Plus, an eBay uprising.

DEMOCRATS: Pitched fight looms over delegates: "The race for the Democratic presidential nomination between Senator Clinton and Senator Obama of Illinois is becoming a pitched delegate-by-delegate battle, which is likely to drag out for months and may even be unresolved heading into the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August." Will the superdelegates stick with Hillary, or will they dump her for Obama?

MEGAN MCARDLE: "To date, Mark Penn's firm has received $4.3 million from the Clinton campaign. Obviously, the thing to do, if you want to be in politics, is not to be a candidate, but a consultant. You don't have to shake hands or kiss babies, and no matter what happens, you never really lose." This doesn't include money not yet paid by Hillary's campaign, and it doesn't include the commissions on media buys that consultants generally get. So he may well be doing even better . . . .

BRR. 260 DEAD in record cold in South Asia.

February 06, 2008

PORKBUSTERS UPDATE: There's going to be a big earmark vote in the House tomorrow:

Disappointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) rejection of House Republican calls for an immediate moratorium on all taxpayer-funded earmarks, House Republicans will force a vote on the issue tomorrow, House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) and Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) announced this afternoon. The leaders said House Republicans will force the earmark reform vote as a higher education authorization bill comes to the floor containing what many argue is a taxpayer-funded slush fund for colleges and universities. . . .

Three GOP members of the House Appropriations Committee — Reps. Jack Kingston of Georgia, Frank Wolf of Virginia and Zack Wamp of Tennessee — have authored legislation that would bring the earmark process to a halt and establish a panel to identify ways to permanently change the spending process. Kingston-Wolf-Wamp has been cosponsored by 129 House Republicans, including the entire House Republican leadership team. However, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who as leader of the Democrat-controlled House has the power to shut down the chamber’s earmarking process immediately, declined to support the measure or the proposed moratorium.

It'll be interesting to see how the vote goes.

MARK LEVIN: "I think one important focus of Reagan conservatives should be to do all they can to protect as many Republican seats in the House as possible. There needs to be at least one elected part of our government that might be in a position to stem what could be a very unpleasant four years."

MIKE BLOOMBERG IS RUNNING PETITIONS for a third party run. Meanwhile, I notice that the book I got in the mail and linked today is something of a ground-preparer for Bloomberg. Judging by its Amazon sales rank, I'd say he'd better reconsider . . . .

BRET STEPHENS: "American 'decline' is the foreign-policy equivalent of homelessness: The media only take note of it when a Republican is in the White House."

Related item here. The New York Times asked readers to produce a six-word slogan for America and got such gems as "Number One? Smells like number two." Though I kind of like this one: "Luckily, our parents left your country.”

UPDATE: From the comments to this post, a six-word slogan for the European Union: "Ouch! Boris, stop! We’re socialists too!"

BRINGING A SHEET OF PAPER TO A GUNFIGHT: "Disarmament always gives the advantage to the thugs. Europe has been disarming itself, militarily and morally for six decades now. It will be interesting to see if they can stand up to even a second-rate thug like Russia."

STIMULUS BILL IN LIMBO: Since I see it as a complete waste, that sounds good.

UPDATE: Heh.

FIGHTING NUCLEAR TERROR WITH CELL PHONES:

Such a system could blanket the nation with millions of cell phones equipped with radiation sensors able to detect even light residues of radioactive material. Because cell phones already contain global positioning locators, the network of phones would serve as a tracking system, said physics professor Ephraim Fischbach. Fischbach is working with Jere Jenkins, director of Purdue's radiation laboratories within the School of Nuclear Engineering.

Hmm.

A BAD REVIEW FOR JUNO from Neo-Neocon.

TONY KRONMAN'S Education's End gets reviewed by George Leef.

HOW MCCAIN CAN BEAT THE DEMOCRATS -- with Vice President Thompson.

Or there's always J.C. Watts.

Or Bionic Dick Cheney! Okay, I'm pretty sure that last suggestion wasn't serious.

Some related thoughts from Sissy Willis.

UPDATE: A reader emails: "Sounds similar to Lincoln's cabinet in 'A Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln' by Doris Kearns Goodwin."

NOBODY HAS TRIED HARDER FOR ROMNEY, OR AGAINST MCCAIN, THAN HUGH HEWITT. But now he's beginning the reconciliation process: "These aren't the years to wish a pox on your primary opponents' heads beyond June."

UPDATE: Thoughts on talk radio from A.J. Strata.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More from John Hinderaker.

MORE: Dan Riehl isn't following Hugh's lead.

SO PEOPLE HAVE BEEN ASKING IF THE TORNADOES WERE NEAR US: Nope. We got some wind but nothing serious. But this cool gadget was on the job, displaying a bright yellow light and a scrolling "Tornado Watch" display that gave the times, etc. It would have made an audible alarm, but I silenced it for all the silenceable events -- it would have made a lot of noise if there had been a tornado warning as opposed to a watch. Or a tsunami. And, well, if East Tennessee ever gets a tsunami warning I guess I'd want to know, although, jeez. . . .

OBAMA GIRL didn't get around to voting.

HERE'S SOME MORE INTERESTING PROPOSED LEGISLATION relating to higher education:

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) proposes significant new reporting on the admissions processes and decisions at colleges, aimed at exposing potentially illegal affirmative action. King’s amendment asks “whether federally funded institutions of higher education are treating student applications differently depending on the student’s race, color or national origin, and if so, the way in which these factors are weighted and the consequences to students and prospective students of these decisions.”

I'm sure that will be well-received.

AUTOBLOG IS COVERING the Chicago Auto Show.

A LOOK AT THE CANDIDATES' POSITIONS on free trade.

ANOTHER HILLARY FUNDRAISER embarrassment.

UPDATE: And a different Hillary financial issue, here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hillary loaned her campaign 5 million dollars.

YUM, YUM: Bacon candy!

LET'S HOPE PAKISTAN'S NUKES ARE more secure than its prisoners.

A MESSAGE FOR CONSERVATIVES, from Bob Krumm.

UPDATE: What conservatives could learn from McCain.

ANOTHER UPDATE: John Podhoretz on why they hate McCain.

DANIEL DREZNER IS HAVING A Super Wednesday!

REMEMBERING WHEN INDIANA tried to legislate Pi.

J.D. JOHANNES'S DOCUMENTARY, Anbar Awakens, will be having its world premier at CPAC on February 9. He'll be doing a panel with Jeff Emanuel and Bill Roggio, too.

BILL ARDOLINO LOOKS inside Iraqi politics.

THE ULTIMATE outdoor home theater.

THE FOUNDATION FOR INDIVIDUAL RIGHTS IN EDUCATION launches a new multimedia project, including a video from Evan Coyne Maloney. It's called F.I.R.E. on Campus. If this stuff interests you, I think they're worth supporting with donations. I've donated to them myself.

UPDATE: Speaking of F.I.R.E., here's their letter to the Brandeis trustees.

THOUGHTS ON HIGHER EDUCATION and the role of students from Prof. Kenneth Anderson. "The poltiical discussion over university tuitions is being conducted almost entirely as though the students in question are, and will continue to be, American students. That is unlikely to remain the case, particularly at the elite universities with endowments large enough to be relevant to the fees question. The composition of those student bodies needs to enter the discussion, not just tuition levels."

What if the student body is composed of the Governor's daughter?

HELLER'S BRIEF (that's the pro-gun side) has been filed in the Supreme Court. Direct link to the brief (PDF) is here. Plus, some thoughts from Dave Hardy on standards of review.

A LOOK AT PROGRESS ON plug-in cars.

IN THE MAIL: Douglas Schoen's Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System.

MICHAEL SILENCE: "They say John McCain will have to start courting the social conservatives. Seems to me the social conservatives should start courting him."

FOOD THAT BOTH TASTES GOOD and kills intestinal worms! You can't ask for more than that!

MORE HIGHER EDUCATION NEWS:

The idea of requiring colleges to spend a minimum proportion of their endowments has gained some political currency of late, promoted mostly by Sen. Charles Grassley, and higher education officials have suspected that the alluring notion might make it into legislative form some time in the not-too-distant future. Little did they know it would be tomorrow. . . . among the 61 amendments to the Higher Ed Act bill that lawmakers said they would seek to offer on the House floor Thursday was one, offered by Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.), that would require colleges, regardless of wealth, to spend at least 5 percent of their endowments each year in ways that would reduce what students pay to attend college.

Welch’s amendment had college officials in a full-fledged tizzy Tuesday.

I can see why. But after decades of supporting the intrusive regulation of every other industry, higher education is in a poor position to resist.

THIS IS INTERESTING: "Just one corporation (Exxon Mobil) pays as much in taxes ($27 billion) annually as the entire bottom 50% of individual taxpayers, which is 65,000,000 people!" I wouldn't have guessed that.