Jul
16
2012

URLs du Jour

2012-07-16

  • Air Wonder Stories (April 1930) .....item 1..UFOs seen in London skies: viral video spotlight (June 28, 2011) ... Steven Landsburg titles his post "Charting the Tax Plans", but it could just as well be "Why Nobody Should Take Ezra Klein or Paul Krugman Seriously". Key sentence: "But no such thing is remotely true."

  • Bradley Smith takes a look at the latest incarnation of the "DISCLOSE" Act, and finds it to be (still) offensive to anyone who takes free speech seriously.

    It's an election year, and incumbents are nervous. And so, in a classic sign of political weakness, Senate Democrats have scheduled a vote on legislation that would manipulate campaign-finance laws to silence their opponents.

    The original DISCLOSE Act was bad enough for even the ACLU to oppose it. (Yes, that does sound funny.)

  • Article VI of the US Constituion requires most elected officials, and many appointed officials, to be "bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution". The requirements for the President (in Article II, Section 1) are even stricter: he or she must swear (or affirm) "to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

    How lonely it would suddenly get in Washington if all those folks were required to resign upon breaking their oaths.

  • People of a certain age will remember poet Richard Brautigan. If you frequented decent bookstores in the late sixties/early seventies, you couldn't avoid his prominently displayed works. At the American Spectator, Bill Croke reviews William Hjortsberg's Brautigan bio.

    Although we didn't overlap there, Brautigan was briefly "poet in residence" at my alma mater, and will always be remembered by students for this poem, reproduced in its entirety, sue me: 

    I don't care how God-damn smart   
these guys are: I'm bored.

It's been raining like hell all day long   
and there's nothing to do.

    It only took him 17 more years to blow his brains out.

  • Speaking of my alma mater, she's currently the focus of a huge sports scandal, and in big big trouble with the NCAA.

    Well, I'll survive. If you want a hint before clicking over, the phrase "once lost 310 consecutive conference games" appears near the end.


Last Modified 2017-12-02 7:44 AM EDT