Monthly Archive: June 2016

Here’s the problem: the judges are human, and they’re humans who have enjoyed enough good fortune to become judges. The quality of their mercy is strained through their life experiences, which don’t resemble the life experiences of most of the defendants before them.

Judge Aaron Persky empathized with Brock Allen Turner and could easily imagine what it would be like to lose sports fame (as Persky enjoyed), to lose a Sanford education (as Persky enjoyed), to lose the sort of easy success and high regard that a young, reasonably affluent Stanford graduate (like Persky was) can expect as a matter of right. Judge Persky could easily imagine how dramatically different a state prison is from Stanford frat parties, and how calamitous was Turner’s fall. That’s how Judge Persky convinced himself to hand such a ludicrously light sentence for such a grotesque violation of another human being.

Brock Allen Turner: The Sort of Defendant Who is Spared “Severe Impact

“In the beginning when we told people about this project they just laughed at us,” says Ole Sommer Bach, curator of Randers Rainforest zoo, referring to his institution’s plan to introduce a population of...

A poll in 1976 found that 90 percent of Republican state chairmen judged Reagan guilty of “simplistic approaches,” with “no depth in federal government administration” and “no experience in foreign affairs.” It was little different in January 1980, when a U.S. News and World Report survey of 475 national and state Republican chairmen found they preferred George H.W. Bush to Reagan. One state chairman presumably spoke for many when he told the magazine that Reagan’s intellect was “thinner than spit on a slate rock.” As Rick Perlstein writes in The Invisible Bridge, the third and latest volume of his epic chronicle of the rise of the conservative movement, both Nixon and Ford dismissed Reagan as a lightweight. Barry Goldwater endorsed Ford over Reagan in 1976 despite the fact that Reagan’s legendary speech on behalf of Goldwater’s presidential campaign in October 1964, “A Time for Choosing,” was the biggest boost that his kamikaze candidacy received. Only a single Republican senator, Paul Laxalt of Nevada, signed on to Reagan’s presidential quest from the start, a solitary role that has been played in the Trump campaign by Jeff Sessions of Alabama.

Ronald Reagan Was Once Donald Trump — New York

he Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement will be familiar to anyone politically active on a college campus. Spearheaded by anti-Zionist activists, the movement aims to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israeli goods and businesses...

When the U.S. economy slowed during the recession, so did one of the major demographic shifts of the last several decades. For a brief respite, the Northeast and Midwest stopped shedding quite so many...

Today’s topic (inspired by Short Circuit) is an article about U.S. Army Corps of Engineers v. Hawkes published by the same group.*  Generally, I read Short Circuit because the summaries are great and the politically motivated asides are easy to ignore.**  This article, though, takes a well-earned victory lap after securing an order that I believe everyone should support.

*Lest you think my title is facetious, both the Institute for Justice (google blurb: “An U.S. libertarian public interest law firm. Dedicated to advance economic liberty, school choice, property rights, and free speech.”) and the Pacific Legal Foundation (wikipedia: ” the first and oldest conservative/libertarian public interest law firm in the United States”) appear to be unabashedly libertarian.

**For example, the June 3rd summaries accurately describe the Ninth Circuit’s rebuke of Arizona’s attempt to punish the Arizona Students’ Association for its speech, but can’t stop without noting the case makes “[n]o mention of the First Amendment rights of students compelled to fund advocacy with which they may not agree, who are not parties to the case.”

From: A Libertarian Victory Everyone Should Love – Common Law

The grandson of Hamas founder Said Bilal, Calvin changed his name to both protect himself and separate him from his family’s past. Calvin fled the West Bank, where he grew up, at age 14...

In 2005, both of us became fixated on a late-night infomercial that promised access to “hundreds of billions of dollars” in “free government money.” As journalism grad students at the time, our evenings often ended with a couple beers as we decompressed by watching whatever was on our tiny 13″ TV. And what was on at the time—repeatedly—was a half-hour advertisement for an outfit called “National Grants Conferences” (NGC).

Why did the NGC infomercial captivate us? It wasn’t the charisma of the commercial’s star, ex-football player and former Congressman J.C. Watts (R-Okla.), who was busy making a mockery of whatever credibility he once had. And it wasn’t the enthusiastic couple who founded NGC, Mike and Irene Milin, proclaiming that numerous government grants were there for the taking.

No, we couldn’t stop watching because NGC just felt so sleazy. Even in comparison with other get-rich-quick schemes competing for time in the twilight TV hours—the obnoxious guy with the question marks all over his suit, the insufferable smile factories bragging about their real estate conquests from tropical locales—this one seemed suspect.

Source: Trump University and the art of the get-rich seminar | Ars Technica

One of the current debates is over “cultural appropriation” – The idea that white people should not appropriate the culture of ethnic and racial minorities. I know that you don’t like the term “blue eyed soul.” Have you followed this conversation?

Are you trying to say that I don’t own the style of music that I grew up with and sing? I grew up with this music. It is not about being black or white. That is the most naïve attitude I’ve ever heard in my life. That is so far in the past, I hope, for everyone’s sake. It isn’t even an issue to discuss. The music that you listened to when you grew up is your music. It has nothing to do with “cultural appropriation.”

I agree with you entirely, because…

I’m glad that you do, because anyone who says that should shut the fuck up.

Well, this entire critique is coming back…

I’m sorry to hear it. Who is making these critiques? Who do they write for? What are their credentials to give an opinion like that? Who are they?

Much of it is academic.

Well, then they should go back to school. Academia? Now, there’s a hotbed of idiocy.

Anyone who knows about music, about culture in general, understands that everything is much more natural. Everything is a mixture.

We live in America. That’s our entire culture. Our culture is a blend. It isn’t split up into groups. Anyone who says otherwise is a fool – worse than a fool – a dangerous fool.

From: Daryl Hall has a message for critics crying cultural appropriation: “Shut the f*ck up” – Salon.com