Althouse

At the Events Garden Café...

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 22:03:00 +0000

... you could walk down the aisle.

"I can’t find it in me to remand him to state prison that houses people convicted of offenses such as murder, armed robbery and rape."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 19:32:00 +0000

"I don’t believe that that fits this case. I believe that he has to be punished, and he will be."

Says Judge Glenn Berman, show sentenced Dharun Ravi to 30 days in jail for spying on his roommate Tyler Clementi (who shortly thereafter killed himself).

[The judge] argued that the legislature intended prison terms to be attached to bias crimes that were “assaultive or violent in nature,” not invasion of privacy.

“I also know his age,” Judge Berman added, calling it a mitigating factor.

“I believe justice compels me to deviate from the guidelines,” he said.

"Walker leads Barrett 52% to 45% in new Marquette Law School poll."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 18:40:00 +0000

Likely voters. Margin of error +/-4. In early May, Walker led by 50% to 44% in this poll.

The same Marquette poll that showed GOP incumbent Walker leading in his recall fight also showed Democratic President Barack Obama leading in his re-election fight against Republican Mitt Romney, 51% to 43%. The two were tied in Marquette’s early May poll.

That's a big advance for Obama. Not surprising Obama wants nothing to do with the Wisconsin recall election.

ADDED: More here:

Majorities supported increases in public employee contributions to health and retirement benefits, with 75 percent in favor and 22 percent opposed.... A smaller majority, 55 percent, said they favored limiting collective bargaining for most public employees, while 41 percent opposed such limits. A subsequent question found a closer division on collective bargaining, with 50 percent wanting to keep the current law on bargaining and 45 percent wishing for a return to the previous law prior to last year.

So on main issues that fired the protests last year, the people clearly support Walker.

"Chicago distances Obama from Wisconsin recall."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 17:17:00 +0000

Chicago? Chicago = the Obama campaign. Isn't that weird?

Anyway, Chicago wants you to know that the Walker recall business has got nothing to do with Obama.

"This is a gubernatorial race with a guy who was recalled and a challenger trying to get him out of office," Obama deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter said on MSNBC Wednesday. "It has nothing to do with President Obama at the top of the ticket."

A guy... and a challenger... don't even say the names in the same breath as you say the name of The One.

Asked whether the recall showdown means anything for the November general election, Cutter told host Chuck Todd, "No, I don't think so."

Some Wisconsin Democrats and labor officials have privately groused that the Obama campaign has not sufficiently been involved in backing Walker's challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. Neither Obama nor Vice President Biden have been dispatched to campaign on Barrett's behalf.

Not even Biden! What a gulf! What a vast, yawning chasm there is between Chicago and Wisconsin. Chicago, which sent busloads of Chicagoan union types up to inflate the crowds in the protests of yore.

"I must say this venture of mine into this Intrade market has been worthwhile."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 16:49:00 +0000

"I have never really interacted directly with you wingnuts before, and the expression, 'shit for brains,' now has a meaning I never quite appreciated as much before now. Thank you for making it real for me."

A comment, just now, on the Intrade market "Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to win the 5 June 2012 recall election," which just hit 94.5%.

Hey, remember the new civility? The weird thing is: Tom Barrett (Walker's opponent) has made his main issue the prospect of restoring civility — ending what he repeatedly calls "the civil war." But I'm only seeing incivility from the anti-Walkerites. Walker fixed the budget, and (some) people flipped out, mainly over an issue that Tom Barrett doesn't even want to talk about anymore (because the clear majority of Wisconsinites agree with Walker).

Check out what happened over at the Isthmus forum (Isthmus is our local "alternative" newspaper) when Meade — responding to a guy who'd said "What do you know personally about the rest of Wisconsin? Little, I think." — said:

Tell you what, Mr. Henry. A week from tomorrow, June 6, if your guy Tom Barrett has more votes than Governor Walker - you name the place. Anywhere on Monroe Street. I will buy you a beer. And I'll listen to anything you feel like teaching me about Wisconsin.

Incivility ensues.

ADDED: Sorry about leaving out that last link until just now.

Obama's Poland gaffe — you know, it was a Poland gaffe that lost the election in 1976 for Gerald Ford.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:46:00 +0000

What Obama said was "Polish death camps," a terrible misstatement, carelessly referring to the geographic location of the camps without noticing the implication that that the Polish people ran those camps.

What Gerald Ford said, in a crucial debate with Jimmy Carter, was: "There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, an there never will be under a Ford administration." In a 1989 interview, Jim Lehrer asked "why did you say that?"

There's no question I did not adequately explain what I was thinking. I felt very strongly, and I, of course, do so today, that regardless of the number of Soviet armored divisions in Poland, the Russians would never dominate the Polish spirit. That's what I should have said. I simply left out the fact that at that time in 1976, the Russians had about 10 to 15 divisions in Poland. Well, of course the presence of those divisions indicates a domination physically of the Poles, but despite that military occupation of Poland by the Soviets, it never in any way ever destroyed the strong, nationalistic spirit of the Polish people. And I felt, and of course, I'm pleased now the Poles are going to throw the Russians out And the quicker they do it, the better. And I'm proud of what they're doing, and, of course, I get a little satisfaction that maybe I was right in 1976.

JIM LEHRER: Let's go back at the time you said that. I'm sure you've replayed this in your mind a million times. I don't have to remind you what happened. You gave that answer, and then there was a follow-up, and you repeated it, so my question is did you have any idea that you had said something wrong?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at the time. Not at the time, because as you may remember, I included Yugoslavia, and Hungary, I believe, and Poland in the initial answer, and I said the Soviet Union does not dominate these countries. They're autonomous, and of course, it related to an earlier comment I had made about the Helsinki accord, which had established the borderlines of all the Eastern and Western European countries. So at the time, I did not feel that I had made an error. In retrospect, obviously, the inclusion of a sentence or maybe a phrase would have made all the difference in the world.

JIM LEHRER: When did you realize that you had made a mistake, or at least or do you honestly believe you made a mistake, now, sitting here now?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Well, I can see that I made a mistake in not adequately explaining what I had in mind. I have never had any doubts, none whatsoever about the strength of the Policy people to throw the Soviet or the Russian forces out, and to reestablish an independent Poland. I felt after the debate was over that I had overall done well because we had pointed out that Mr. Carter had been calling for significant reductions in military expenditures, which, of course, was not the right policy, and I pointed out his lack o experience in foreign policy military decision making. So when I finished the debate, I felt very comfortable. But the press focused in on that one exchange, and I happen to think that most of the press distorted the facts, and overly emphasized something that was not the most substantive issue in the whole debate.

JIM LEHRER: Do you happen to remember that just as the debate was over, when you first talked to your aides, your family, or whatever, did anybody say to you, Mr. President you made a mistake, you did bad on this one statement.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The first comments by my staff were that we had done very, very well overall. But then when the press, in their own analysis --

JIM LEHRER: Immediately, you mean right after the debate.

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: The press that were making the post debate analysis focused in on that, and made very adverse comments about my comment. Well, when that press reaction became the dominant one, of course, the whole feeling that I had won this debate overall changed quite dramatically.

JIM LEHRER: How important do you think that was to the outcome of the election?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: It was a factor. As you also know, we ended up losing by only a point and a half, or maybe two points. So any one of a number of problem in the campaign could have made the difference. The second debate might have made a difference. The pardon of President Nixon might have made a difference. The timing of certain economic news that came out in October that indicated we were not doing as well in coming out of the recession if the news we got in because through mid-November on the economy had come in mid-October, I think we would have won, because through November, economic news was good. The October news just before the election was not very good. So any one of a number of three or four problems, difficulties could have made a difference. We only had to change 6,500 votes in Ohio out of 4 million, and about 20,000, as I recall, in Hawaii and we would have won the election.

JIM LEHRER: When you lost the election, did you ever fly back some night by yourself thinking if I just had not said that in that debate about Poland and Eastern Europe, it might have come out differently? Did it haunt you?

PRESIDENT GERALD FORD: Not at all, Jim. I have always had the attitude, what's gone past you have to forget, and you have to look down the road and build for the future. Of course, Betty and I hated to lose. We did our best. But once the verdict was there by the voters we had no remorse. We didn't sit around and moan and groan. We had a new life to lead, and we started planning whatever our future would be.

By the way, I watched the debate at the time, and I understood what he meant as he said it. I heard how the spinners spun it immediately after the debate and saw how it played in the media and how much it hurt him. If only there had been bloggers back then to push back!

"It's capitalism vs. crony-capitalism."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:32:00 +0000

"Romney: I’ll See Your Bain And Raise You A Solyndra."

Why did Bob Dylan wear sunglasses to the White House?

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:18:00 +0000

Caitlin McDevitt (at Politico) simply notes that he did, but we watched the video (over there), and this was the dialogue at Meadhouse:

ME: Look how emotional he is. That's why he's wearing sunglasses...

MEADE: He doesn't want people scrutinizing him...

ME: He's crying. He doesn't want people to see him cry. Oh, jeez, look at Obama. That smug look on his face... compared to Dylan... who is shaking and crying... [Blogging the conversation:] Did you say he didn't want people peering into his soul?

MEADE: No, I said he doesn't want people scrutinizing him. He's very expressive. He doesn't want people to be able to see that.

ME: Oh, I'm mixing it up with Bush and Putin. [Bush said: "I looked the man in the eye... I was able to get a sense of his soul..."]

MEADE: "Please don’t put a price on my soul... I know you’ve suffered much/But in this you are not so unique.... And if you don’t underestimate me/I won’t underestimate you..."

ADDED: And if you don’t misunderestimate me, I won’t misunderestimate you...

ALSO: What Bob Dylan said about Barack Obama in June 2008.

"A lot of politicians can go negative without losing too much altitude, but President Barack Obama doesn’t seem to be that guy."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 15:04:00 +0000

Writes Glenn Thrush in Politco:

Obama’s sag — and it’s definitely more of a sag than a collapse — is a natural function of reluctant Republicans finally coalescing behind Romney, who clinched the nomination Tuesday night with a victory in Texas.

But the president’s enemies, and a few of his friends, think his in-your-face negativity, on display in his attacks on Bain Capital and a snark offensive that included comparing Romney’s statements to a “cow pie of distortion,” have produced a backlash among independent voters who have finally given up the image of Obama as a new-breed politician....

Nowhere has Obama’s slide been more dramatic than in supposedly safe Wisconsin — currently in the throes of a highly contentious gubernatorial recall election — where Obama’s margin over Romney has plunged from as much as 17 points in the early spring to about 3 points, according to Real Clear Politics’s average of the last four polls in the state....

Well, now don't blame the Wisconsin collapse entirely on Obama. You've got to put some of the blame on the pumped-up protesters who stormed the Capitol last year and banged on drums and chanted for months, until they conjured up of vision of taking down Governor Scott Walker in a recall election. That delusive mission has flooded the people of this state with all manner of propaganda, left and right, and who knows what that does to the precious, all-important independent voters?

"Father's death made Obama realise he could do more with his life than smoke pot Michelle tells Jon Stewart."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:52:00 +0000

A Daily Mail headline. Details:

On the Daily Show, Stewart joked that the stories about the president as a young man resembled the 'script of a Cheech and Chong movie.'

While the First Lady didn't directly address the claims in Maraniss' book, she did say that her husband underwent a change during his college years.

Mrs Obama responded by saying: 'By the time he was in college, like so many young people, he realised that he could do more with his life.'

'He had a mother that was always saying you're so gifted, you're so talented, slap him on the head, "get yourself together."'

Watch the clip at the link. After she gets that far and Stewart tries to push her farther, she says "I'm not taking the bait," and Stewart says "Don't worry. It's organic."

By the way: "slap him on the head" seems to take domestic violence as a joke.

Everybody's talking about cannibalism.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:40:00 +0000

I'm just checking the front page over at USAToday, and I'm struck by the top entry on the "most popular" list:

"Police: Woman killed her infant, ate part of brain." Has the country gone mad? More of this bath salts, the new LSD business? No, it's a story from 2009, revived because... Well, I'm promoting it now, and if you clicked on it, you're pumping its popularity.

"Yeah, that’s just who I want helping me out with my legal problems. A guy who technically isn’t even a lawyer yet..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:28:00 +0000

"... and has absolutely no experience. Experts believe there has been a huge disconnect between the learnings in the classroom and what goes on after passing the bar."

Says The Weakonomics blogger who just had to find the right picture to illustrate his musings.

(Man, I have been working on that Federal Courts take-home exam, with my legal pad, my Pelikan fountain pen, my "Annie Hall" glasses, my self-cut bangs, and my lactating breasts since 1981!)

"New Jersey man stabbed himself, threw skin and intestines at cops..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:21:00 +0000

Reports the Daily News, where comments in the "That took a lot of guts" vein are accumulating.

Don't tell me... bath salts... the new LSD....

"The first of the three eyasses (chicks) to fledge took off this morning (May 30, 2012) at 6:59 a.m."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:14:00 +0000

Here at the University of Wisconsin—Madison:

Thanks to kcom in the comments over here for pointing to that video. We — especially Meade — have been watching the hawkcam a lot, and we were checking it out at 7:30 a.m. We've seen them almost take off a few times, but the helicopter-like total liftoff in that video is truly cool. We'd have loved to witness that live.

"If you're over 70, you should be able to go and say, 'Just give me some diamorphine and I won't mither you any more.'"

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 14:01:00 +0000

Said John Cooper Clark, the "great punk poet," in this long and fascinating piece in the Guardian. The subject of opiates arose in connection with the years he lost to heroin addiction. He's asked if he misses heroin, and he says he does:

A lot of times I remember it as fabulous. But I can't do that and have the life I have. And I ain't gonna sink the ship just so I can feel a bit better. If I live 'til I'm 80, I fully intend to reacquaint myself with the world of opiate drugs. I think it's ideal for the elderly. It should be there for the asking.

In his heroin days, he lived with Nico — lived with, it wasn't sexual.

Ach, that's disappointing. He smiles and says that's everybody's response. "Who wouldn't like to think you were with one of the 10 most beautiful women in the world, official – and that was in the day of Brigitte Bardot and Julie Christie."

Did Nico ever make a pass at him? "Well, we were junkies so it doesn't really come up. It's not a physical world. It's just not a sex drug, heroin. You just don't get round to thinking about it." Do any junkies have an active sex life? "I've known it happen. Yeah, but not guilty. Ha ha ha ha!"

Here's a great documentary about the very beautiful and self-destructive Nico.

And here's an article about how hard the old folks are hitting narcotics these days.

In 2009, the American Geriatrics Society joined others in advocating for greater opioid use to treat chronic pain in seniors, especially those 75 and older....

So they're basically on the same page as the punk poet genius Clark.

Andrew Kolodny, a New York psychiatrist and addiction specialist, said the American Geriatrics Society guidelines were likely influenced by the panel's financial ties to drug companies and, as a result, they mistakenly recommended opioids over traditional, anti-inflammatory drugs.

"Finding prominent experts without these conflicts of interest isn't very hard," said Kolodny, president of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. "Looks like (they) didn't even try."

Drug dealing, a complex economic topic. Discuss!

Back to the Clark article:

In the past, he has proposed that, for National Poetry Day, all human affairs be conducted in rhyme, with the exception of the emergency sevices. But now he's decided there need be no exception. He grins. "You go to the doctors, the doctor says, 'I understand your question./ Now here is the answer./ It isn't indigestion./ You have stomach cancer.' To which you reply, 'My imminent estrangement/ has come as quite a shock/ I'll make the relevant arrangements./ Thanks for the information, doc.' What d'you think of that? It's good, isn't it? It could even bring a much-needed smile to the cancer sufferer's face."

And you're probably still wondering about the word "mither." It's a word going back to the mid-19th century, a regional word used in northern England, meaning — obviously — "to bother, pester, worry, irritate" (OED)("1879 G. F. Jackson Shropshire Word-bk. 286 Them women's clack mītherd the poor chap tell 'e didna know whad 'e wuz sayin'.")

Chagas Disease — the “new AIDS of the Americas.”

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:38:00 +0000

The "new AIDS"... and "[n]ew research suggests Chagas may have led to the death of Charles Darwin — one of the great medical mysteries." Doesn't sound so new!

Darwin wrote in his diary that he was bitten by a “great wingless black bug” during the trip in 1835. He died 47 years later of heart failure.

"In an embarrassing blunder, Romney's campaign misspelled the word 'America' on its new 'With Mitt' iPhone app, launched Tuesday."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:18:00 +0000

Ouch.

"Serpent-handling pastor profiled earlier in Washington Post dies from rattlesnake bite."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 13:08:00 +0000

WaPo reports:

Mark Randall “Mack” Wolford was known all over Appalachia as a daring man of conviction. He believed that the Bible mandates that Christians handle serpents to test their faith in God — and that, if they are bitten, they trust in God alone to heal them....

The son of a serpent handler who himself died in 1983 after being bitten, Wolford was trying to keep the practice alive, both in West Virginia, where it is legal, and in neighboring states where it is not....

And so they were gathered at this evangelistic hootenanny of Christian praise and worship. About 30 minutes into the service, his sister said, Wolford passed a yellow timber rattlesnake to a church member and his mother.

“He laid it on the ground,” she said, “and he sat down next to the snake, and it bit him on the thigh.”...

“I promised the Lord I’d do everything in my power to keep the faith going,” he said in October. “I spend a lot of time going a lot of places that handle serpents to keep them motivated. I’m trying to get anybody I can get involved.”

With "bath salts" — "the new LSD" — there have been 3 or 4 cases in Miami like the naked cannibal.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 01:30:00 +0000

According to Armando Aguilar, head of the Miami Fraternal Order of Police:

[H]e said the people have all taken their clothing off, been extremely violent with what seemed to be super-human strength, even using their jaws as weapons....

In many of the cases, [emergency room Dr. Paul] Adams said the person’s temperature has risen to an extremely high level, they’ve become very aggressive, with logic and the ability to feel pain lost in their reactions. Some have used their jaws as a weapon during attacks.

Dr. Adams said the patients were in a state of delirium.

“Extremely strong, I took care of a 150 pound individual who you would have thought he was 250 pounds,” Dr. Adams said. “It took six security officers to restrain the individual.”

At the Rose Fly Café...

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Wed, 30 May 2012 01:13:00 +0000

... you can talk all night.

President Obama ties the Medal of Freedom around Bob Dylan's neck.

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 29 May 2012 21:02:00 +0000

Photo.

Bob looks so old and frail! Also there and getting the same award but not shown in the picture: Justice Stevens.

"The UW's Teaching Assistants' Association has declined to endorse Democratic challenger and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who faces Walker in the June 5 recall election..."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 29 May 2012 20:26:00 +0000

Hot news! (You may have to wait a while for the stressed Isthmus website to load.)

"Through his use of Act 10 against the workers in Milwaukee [Barrett] has shown that he is not deserving of support of unions in Wisconsin," says Dan Suárez, a member of the TAA and a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UW-Madison. Barrett made use of Walker's collective bargaining restrictions in Act 10 to increase pension and health care contributions for workers employed by the city of Milwaukee. Barrett has said he took those steps to avoid layoffs of public workers.

Without an endorsement, the TAA won't expend any of its volunteer or financial resources on electing Barrett, although individual members are still free to contribute as they wish.

"What this means for the TAA is that the conversation is going to shift back to how to meaningfully and effectively rebuild our membership [instead of wasting] time and money on supporting a candidate who doesn't care about us," says Suárez.

Democratic Party of Wisconsin spokesman Graeme Zielinski bristles at the suggestion that Democrats aren't committed to defending organized labor. "The attack on collective bargaining was the original sin that sparked this movement," says Zielinksi. "Scott Walker's total dishonesty with the public on the matter of collective bargaining informs every inch of what we do going forward."

But a well-publicized memo (PDF) outlining the Democrats' messaging strategy for the recall election makes little mention of collective bargaining and lays out a range of alternative issues as the recall campaign's focus. In an interview for Mother Jones magazine, Zielinksi defended the strategy, stating, "Collective bargaining isn’t moving people."

Wisconsin recall voters "shouldn’t be basing their decisions on recent job growth, which owes far more to individual entrepreneurs and chance than to anything the governor has done."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:39:00 +0000

"They should be making their choices based on the things the governor does control, not on short term economic data, which are neither perfectly measured nor under the governor’s control."

Says Harvard economics prof Edward Glaeser, who looks at the controversy between the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers and the Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development numbers, which are being used, respectively, by Tom Barrett and Scott Walker.

One way to judge between the numbers is to look at alternative data sources and see whether they tend towards gloom or growth. The BLS itself provides an alternative estimate of job growth from its household survey, which is generally less accurate than the employer survey and suggests strong job growth between 2011 and 2012. According to the household survey, Wisconsin’s unemployment rate has dropped significantly over the last year, and employment has increased by 22,000 between March 2011 and 2012, again not seasonally adjusted, which is closer to the figure Walker is promoting than the BLS’s own establishment survey.

The BLS Mass Layoff database also shows that between the first four months of 2011 and the first four months of 2012 the number of mass layoffs dropped by about 30 percent and the number of new unemployment insurance claims from those layoffs fell by 36 percent. Wisconsin’s total personal income grew by 4.5 percent nominally, or about 1 percent in real terms, between the fourth quarter of 2010 and the fourth quarter of 2011. Wisconsin’s rental vacancy rate was down to 6.6 percent in 2011, down from 8.6 percent in 2010.

My best guess is that the truth lies between the two figures, but closer to the upbeat Wisconsin state numbers than the BLS estimate.

"Will a Mormon president treat constitutional clauses as divine injunctions?"

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 29 May 2012 19:12:00 +0000

"If so, what grounds will we non-Mormons have for interpreting with secular arguments what is presented as God’s will? For that matter, what right will the Supreme Court have to treat the document as anything less than a divinely inspired covenant? Does the First Amendment actually separate church and state, or does that not count, since it is merely an amendment, not the original word of God? But why, then, did a mere amendment change the first inspiration that made slaves less than full persons?"

Garry Wills, he's not anti-Mormon. He just has questions. A lot of questions. Can't blame a man for asking questions, can you? I'd say you can. This is an effort to smear Romney with some really silly insinuations. Why would the fact that the President is a Mormon — even assuming Wills states the belief correctly and Romney himself holds that belief — affect what the Constitution means, what non-Mormons will be able to think about what it means, and how the Supreme Court would interpret it?

In any case, isn't the belief that the framers of the Constitution were divinely inspired fairly common? Where does it get you... other than to profound reverence and dedication? What's wrong with that? The President is supposed to be dedicated to the Constitution. The original Constitution is structured around the existing institution of slavery, but what's the point of bringing that up? Wills is asking questions, not making arguments, which let's him be very slippery. He knows that the part of the Constitution that liberals care about is all in the amendments, and perhaps he'd like to separate the good part of the Constitution — the amendments — from the bad part — the part with slavery... and all the structural safeguards that conservatives would like to see enforced.

"Telling young people that some jobs are 'menial' is a huge disservice to them and to the whole society."

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Althouse) — Tue, 29 May 2012 18:28:00 +0000

"Subsidizing them in idleness while they wait for 'meaningful work' is just asking for trouble, both for them and for all those around them."

Also: "The college-for-all crusade has outlived its usefulness. Time to ditch it. Like the crusade to make all Americans homeowners, it's now doing more harm than good."

ADDED: This idea of working when and only when it is meaningful relates to the women's movement. We were told that staying home with the children was unfulfilling and satisfaction was to be found in the workplace. (I've been reading the old feminist classic "The Feminine Mystique" recently.) If women are free to choose — that's what they keep telling us — and it's all about what fulfills us, then of course, work must be meaningful.