While for all that I wouldn’t hire Hopwood as a paralegal in a position that involved other peoples’ money, it’s a beautiful story.

Via Orin Kerr.

- It is a cliche to say a city bleeds their football team’s colors, but it is true for New Orleans. I was there when the Saints were awful (and Mike Ditka gave away the entire draft for Ricky Williams) and still it was all the sports anyone talked about. I used Saint’s box scores to teach my students math. It was a lot easier to understand averages if you were figuring out yards per rush.

- Celebrations are just different there. Before the winter break, the school district had us send home a letter to parents reminding them that the bullets they shot in the air would come down somewhere, and might be dangerous. Note: the letter was not silly enough to suggest they not do so, merely that they be careful.

- Somehow, things that are bad ideas still get done in New Orleans. Example, for St. Patricks Day they have a Mardi Gras style parade. Along with the usual cups, beads, the various floats throw heads of cabbage! While watching this parade I witnessed two windows broken by flying cabbage, to the general amusement of all.

- In short, New Orleans is not like the rest of the world. Congratulations to all the Saints fans out there, party safe, but still party.

I did enjoy the comments suggesting how he might make the photo better with photoshop. I’m sure the ISS has photoshop installed and ready to go.

The picture really makes the article.  Tell me you aren’t surprised a dude like that would’ve either A) killed his parents because they wouldn’t let him raid in WoW anymore or B) use his advanced AI program to design a robot that you can hump.

I think we found the man to pull us through these tough economic times.

Reality TV star Heidi Montag had massive amounts of plastic surgery to remake herself. She waited a long time to show her family her new look. Here (in Ms. Montag’s own words) is what happened:

“She was looking at me almost like a zoo animal. It wasn’t like I was her daughter anymore. She was looking at me like I was a circus freak. I tried to leave it as best as I could, but my heart was breaking.”

Hmm. I wonder why she would look at you like that? Maybe the problem is with you, not her.

[O]rganized protest was impossible. But many expressed their anger by discarding the worthless currency.

Some threw it into the wind from motorbikes, others made bonfires or tossed the money into the ocean, according to North Korea Today, a newsletter produced by a Seoul-based Buddhist charity with sources in the country. Arrests followed, the newsletter reported, and at least one man was executed — not only because the law requires the old notes to be turned in, but because desecration of the image of the nation’s late founder, Kim Il Sung, whose portrait was on the currency, is considered treason.

But that’s not all.

Even in the days of communism, there were reports from Eastern Bloc and Cuban diplomats about the paranoid character of the system (which had no concept of deterrence and told its own people that it had signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty in bad faith) and also about its intense hatred of foreigners. A black Cuban diplomat was almost lynched when he tried to show his family the sights of Pyongyang. North Korean women who return pregnant from China—the regime’s main ally and protector—are forced to submit to abortions.

There is a story that could only have come from Stalinist Russia, in which a rural Communist Party holds a gathering to celebrate Stalin’s birthday.  After the first toast, to Stalin, the assembled burst out in rapturous applause.  And applause.  And applause.

No one wants to be the first to stop clapping.  Finally, after ten minutes, a high-ranking official ends the ovation by sitting down, to the relief of everyone in the room.  Several days later, that official is arrested.

That story couldn’t have come from North Korea because the Kim regime, unlike Stalin, has succeeded in killing off humor.

The next time someone tells me that communism is “good in theory,” but wasn’t applied properly, or that the noble experiment was corrupted by Stalin or some defect in the character of the Russian people (because the Germans would have carried it out so well), or just some idiot wearing a Che t-shirt, I’m going to point out the example of North Korea, where communism hasn’t just been properly applied.

It’s been perfected.

Scott Roeder is not an activist. He is a “murderer,” or most accurately, an “assassin”.  Please amend your headlines accordingly.

I recognize that the appearance of objectivity (as opposed to actual objectivity) is important to journalists, but please, show a little perspective.

Next week, we’ll discuss the word “militant”.

Peet’s policy is: “While Peet’s Coffee & Tea respects and values all individuals’ rights under local, state and federal laws, our policy is not to allow customers carrying firearms in our stores or on our outdoor seating premises unless they are uniformed or identified law enforcement officers. Like most other private businesses, particularly retail establishments, we believe this policy is in the best interests of all of our customers, regardless of their personal beliefs. In no way does this policy conflict with or discriminate under the law, and it does not take a position on the law.” And CPK’s: “CPK does not allow guests other than uniformed officers to display firearms in our restaurants. CPK is a family oriented restaurant and the comfort and well being of our guests is a top priority. We are concerned that the open display of firearms would be particularly disturbing to children and their parents.”

Both of these policys are 100% legal and make perfect sense. And yet, the open carry folks are angry (as is their natural state, it seems..) They are perfectly within their rights to call for a boycott, and (as customers of both those chains) I hope they do. I enjoyed this sign they are running.

P.S. – Guess where else asserts it’s rights to say you can’t bring a gun onto the premises? NRA headquarters. I think I’ll see about organizing a boycott.

“We have seen a year of ethically challenged appointees, haphazard attempts at keeping America safe from terror, failed “stimulus” plans, budget busting deficits, back room deals with special interests, and Obama’s blatant attempt to continue binge spending with unprecedented debt.”

So, sort of like the 8 years before it then. The more things change…

By the way, the fact that Obama & Shrub are easily grouped together should not make anyone feel good.

Today it’s Culpeper, Virginia. School authorities there pulled the full version of the Diary of Anne Frank, apparently with the intent to replace it with the bowdlerized version that Otto Frank originally published in 1947. The school had been using the definitive, complete version released upon the fiftieth anniversary of Frank’s death in a concentration camp.

So — why did they pull it? Were there grim stories of Nazi atrocities? Vivid descriptions of heaps of dead spied out of the garret window? Horrific but apt speculations about the millions of Jews who were not hidden?

Nope. Anne mentioned her Bad Bad Place in a context other than identifying it as a font of pure evil, and a parent was offended.

Citing a parent’s concern over the sexual nature of the vagina passage in the definitive edition, Allen said school officials immediately chose to pull this version and use an alternative copy.

“What we have asked is that this particular edition will not be taught,” Allen said from his office Wednesday morning. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this. So we listened to the parent and we pulled it.”

Apparently, Anne’s father, Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the “Secret Annex,” felt the need to censor his daughter’s most intimate thoughts as well, eliminating about 30 percent of the original diary published in 1947.

He omitted parts where Anne criticized her mother and other Jews living in the confined quarters as well as some sexually suggestive references.

May I say entirely inappropriately JESUS CHRIST.

The school district is not backing down. Quoth the ironically named Bobbi Johnson:

“The essence of the story, the struggle of a young girl faced with horrible atrocities, is not lost by editing the few pages that speak to adolescent discovery of intimate feelings,” Johnson wrote in an e-mail to the Star-Exponent Thursday. “While these pages could be the basis of a relevant discussion, they do not reflect the purpose of studying the book at the middle-school level and could foster a discussion in a classroom that many would find inappropriate.”

Of course, most people who read the Diary of Anne Frank recognize that it is precisely the juxtaposition of the raw feelings of an adolescent girl and the horror of the Holocaust that makes it remarkable. If people wanted to learn more about how much Hitler sucked, they could just Tivo the History Channel at random. There are tens of thousands of written accounts of the fate of Jews in World War II. Anne’s is gripping precisely because of who she is and how she expresses herself.

Now, bear in mind that it is eighth-graders in Culpeper who are reading this. What kind of language is the school district classifying as “explicit”, justifying a retreat to a different version that cuts out 30% of the content? This blogger quotes the Washington Post:

There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can’t imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!

Oh my God. If eighth graders read that, society will be DOOMED.

I agree with the recent cliche that we’re in another golden age of television — particularly with the addition of cable as a dominant player, the last decade has seen a flood of high-quality, sophisticated, literate, well-written, and gripping and/or hilarious shows.

But there’s no denying that television, to swipe and modify E.B. White’s famous comparison, is like humor or frogs — it does not benefit from being picked apart. In fact, nearly everything on television suffers badly from close analysis. A good show is a windswept romance, not a stable long-term relationship. I’m not saying that you can only enjoy TV if you are dumb — though it certainly helps in many cases. I’m simply saying that examining its premises too closely will spoil your enjoyment. That doesn’t mean its a uniquely crass or stupidity-inducing form of entertainment. Have you closely analyzed the lyrics to your favorite song recently? No, it simply means that if you’re going to watch TV with a skeptic’s eye, you’re going to wind up disappointed or, possibly, freaked out by the hidden premises.

One of the best places to observe this phenomenon is the blog Overthinking It. Today, they take on Cartoon Network’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars, illuminating a level of dramatic irony that borders on the grotesque. My eight-year-old LOVES this show, but I don’t think I can watch it again without shuddering now. Enjoy!

“Other presidents have spoken out and scolded the Court before, usually liberals, like Franklin Roosevelt,” says Olson. “It’s not appropriate. Presidents should respect the justices.” The Citizens United case, he adds, “was not about corporations taking over the political process, but enabling everyone to participate in the political process and protecting free speech.”

I happen to think Mr. Olson was on the right side in Citizens United — a case I’ll try to blog about when I’m not quite so under the gun. I also like the policy view he is taking in Perry v. Schwartzenegger, even if I think his legal theory is rather more tenuous under current law than he does.

That said, I have to ask: really, Ted, really? It’s liberals who mostly scold the Court? Because I could have sworn that I heard over the last decade that the Supreme Court was making Americans less safe whenever they took the most modest step to place limits on executive power to conduct the Great War on Terror. I can also remember a whole lot of caterwauling over SCOTUS abolishing the death penalty for juveniles, or saying that consensual adult same-sex intercourse can’t be criminalized. I could have sworn that most of that criticism didn’t come from “liberals”, whatever that word means any more.

Of course, as illustrated by a recent example Radley Balko pointed out, political characterizations that require the terms “liberal” or “conservative” to operate can generally be relied upon to be bullshit.

Indy: “We’re already spackling the wall where the NOMA loan will hang,”

New Orleans: “Max Anderson must not really believe the Colts can beat the Saints in the Super Bowl. Otherwise why would he bet such an insignificant work as the Ingrid Calame painting?”

And my personal fave from New Orleans: “I am amused that Renoir is too sweet for Indianapolis. Does this mean that those Indiana corn farmers have simpler tastes? If so why would Max offer us that gaudy Chalice — just looks like another over-elaborate Victorian tchotchke.”

They settled on a bet, with New Orleans offering up a Claude Lorrain painting for loan and Indy meeting that with a JMW Turner painting. I have to admit, this bet might be the funnest thing about the Superbowl this year.