In Keene, N.H., a handful of activists are harassaing the town's two parking officers, tracking them with two-way radios, following them with video cameras and feeding expired meters before $5 tickets can be written. As partly a libertarian (on most days), I could resent the headline on the story and the general thurst of the narrative.
This seems to be the day for radical political ideas. First we have Alec MacGillis, a senior editor at the New Republic, who wants to do away with mid-term elections:
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the No. 4 House Republican, is walking back comments attributed to her that ObamaCare can’t be repealed. But she’s not the only one suggesting Congress merely make changes within the framework of the health law. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says the goal is to get the law “fixed.” It seems many GOP lawmakers still haven’t read the law, or they’d know the framework is corrupt.
Washington already has the highest minimum wage in the nation at $9.32 an hour, and now Seattle seems poised to set one of $15 an hour. Instead of going through all the usual pro and con arguments over a minimu wage, let's just take note of a very interesting sentiment from one of the supporters:
Why we probably won't be seeing Mike Pence's name on the presidential ballot in 2016:
What a load of ignorant crap -- "Obamacare just saved the U.S. economy from contraction":
Those of us in the "it means what it says" camp who resist the doctrine of a "living Constitution" must nonetheless acknowledge that interpretations of the document must be flexible to the dictates of changing circumstances. The Fourth Amendment, for example, protects us against "unreasonable" search and seizure. Courts have always been a little too deferential to police power by letting them search through everything in our possession at the time of arrst. That has seemed reasonable to a majority of justices in the past.
Forgive me if I don't join in the hand-wringing by the New York Times over the botched execution of Clayton Lockett:
Yes, please, as quickly as possible:
Michelle Malkin, a longtime opponent of Common Core, isn't buying the whole "we scrapped Common Core and did our own better version" scenario. In fact, she calls ig "Big Government GOP's Common Core rebrand hustle."
Another of life's great mysteries solved -- women wear too much makeup because they mistakenly think men men like it:
The female participants thought the models looked better with slightly more makeup than the male participants did. However, all of the participants thought male observers would want the models to be wearing more makeup than female observers would.
Who didn't see this coming? "U.S. regulatory costs are world's No. 10 economy":
Don't know what you're thinking, but I'm pretty sure you're up to no good, so I just might do something about it. Here's Karrem Abdul-Jabbar on the "finger-wagging olympics" surrounding Donald Sterling's racist whines to his mistress/girlfriend.whatever:
Sometimes it's possible to not think about how insane it's getting on college campuses. But when there are three crazy stories on the same day, the culture of oppression becomes pretty hard to ignore. First up, Duke University:
A new word-discouragement campaign at Duke University has labeled phrases such as “Man Up,” “That’s So Gay,” and “Don’t Be a Pussy” offensive language that “delegitimizes” homosexuality and oppresses and insults people.
Wow. The NRA convention in Indianapolis is expected to draw 70,000 people this weekend. My first though was that it would be pretty cool to have the convention here sometime, but I doubt the city could even handle that many visitors over a couple of days. And it probably wouldn't thrill Mayor Henry since he's an enthusiastic member of Michael Bloomberg's Mayors Against People Killing People With Guns or whatever the hell it's called.
It's usually at least irritating and sometimes infuriating when arguments are pushed to the absurd extreme. But once in a while, it provides a learning experience. Here, for example, is an article from a gay man and strong supporter of marriage equality who writes that "Opposing gay marriage doesn't make you a crypto-racist": His first reason is that marriage has always been gendered but it has not always been racist:
This "teach writing in every class" idea is so commonsensical that I wonder why it hasn't been done always at every college in the country. The fact that it's such an innovative concept that they have to give it a name is a little sad:
