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Virginia Postrel notes
yet another case of university professor plagiarism, the plagiarizee
being… Virginia Postrel! But not only that:
It's scandalous that a tenured English professor would lift my prose--scandalous whether it was intentional theft or incompetent research. But it's particularly galling that he changed the passage just enough to make it inaccurate.
We've noted before that faculty should not get away with academic behavior that would land one of their students in very hot water. -
Up at Granite Grok, Skip notes
the reported efforts of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission
to get a blogger to register as a Political Action Committee
because he sinfully endorsed election candidates.
Skip also notes the recently introduced Blogger Protection Act of 2008 which exempts "uncompensated Internet activity by individuals from treatment as a contribution or expenditure under the Act, and for other purposes."
Skip thinks this is swell, and you may well agree, but I'm a little more fundamentalist on this issue. Patterico said it best: this is too much like asking our masters for permission to speak. So no thanks.
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George F. Will's latest
column is on the same topic, concerning
Coloradans "who expressed a political opinion without first
getting their state government's permission for political activity."
I especially liked this aside:
The regulator's motto is "Dirigo, ergo sum" -- I boss people around, therefore I am.
Read the whole thing, especially the last paragraph, which perfectly encapsulates one reason I will have to hold my nose very hard to vote for John McCain this November.But Will's proposed motto applies to more than the Speech Police.
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For example,
behold the awesome judgment of the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade
Bureau, a division of Your Federal Government: their functionaries have
ordered the Mt. Shasta Brewing Company of Weed, California to
cease and desist!
Mt. Shasta's crime: sealing their bottled product, "Weed Ales and Lagers" with caps that say "Try Legal Weed."
Pun Salad's proposed FY 2010 budget for the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau: $0.00. [Via Kip Esquire.]
Apr
28
2008
URLs du Jour
2008-04-28