October 2011

A beer on Sunday while watching the game seems like the simplest and purest pleasures available. I’m grateful to live in California where I can get my beer on without having to worry about what day of the week it is, and where there is also a good network of distributors of quality stuff readily available at my grocery store instead of the flavorless barley pop that gets sold on the (admittedly, often amusing) commercials. What rational, secular purpose do blue laws serve? I haven’t been able to think of one; such laws exist (in states other than my own) because other people wish to deny me the pleasures I choose out of fear that I will neglect to adhere to their lifestyle choices.

But then again, I’m pretty much pro-booze. Much like our esteemed editor. Looks like he’s found a winner of a beer (read his review, despite the fact that every time I try to jump from here at LOOG to his articles at Forbes, the Forbes website crashes and must reload annoyingly; Forbes.com’s technical issues do not reflect on Erik’s crisp prose about a crisp beverage). So much so that we’re looking to inaugurate a new tradition: celebrating ratification of the Twenty-First Amendment, the fast-adopted repeal to the only time the federal Constitution has been used to restrict individual freedom.* For that purpose, I’m soliciting cocktails that were popular in the 1930′s. I’m already well-versed with the aviation cocktail — but if you know of more like that, please post the recipe in the comments section!

* Debatably, the Twenty-Second Amendment prohibits the freedom of voters to elect a President to a third term of office; two popular Presidents (Reagan and Clinton) would have had reasonable shots at third terms. However, limiting the amount of time a single person can hold on to that much power, IMO, safeguards rather than diminishes liberty.

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I’m not condoning anything that may have happened in Oakland. But this is not only a sub-optimal response, but is positively cringe-inducing:

The right response to police abuse is, of course, to file a lawsuit. Cops actually fear that sort of thing.

Video found at Vodkapundit.

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In response to a comment on a Dutch Courage thread, Burt says:

There are lots of good reasons to accept foreign students. Not the least of which is to cause “brain drain” from other nations.

They send their best and brightest here to be educated. They pay a premium for it, subsidizing in part education to be provided to U.S. citizens and in particular to Californians (in this case). Along they way, they find out that life in the U.S.A. and economic opportunities here after graduation far exceed what is waiting for them back home.

Some go home, after they graduate, and typically maintain contacts with the U.S. citizens they befriended here, doing business with them, and thereby trading with us. That trade contributes to our economy.

But the real goal is for them to decide to stay, or at least to come back. It’s just plain better here. I have friends — industrialists from Sri Lanka, doctors from India and Pakistan, pharmacists from South Africa, lawyers from the UK — all of whom have taken their advanced training and come here to the States, and now they work here. Their labor, their brainpower, their contributions to the economy are to the benefit of the U.S. and are not to the benefit of those nations with whom we compete.

I wish we had more foreign students in our public universities.

I am quite sympathetic to this line of reasoning… except as it applies to California in particular. Theoretically, a state university system exists in good part to educate the residents of that state. That’s why state tax dollars go to this institution and why in-state students typically have lower tuition than out-of-state. This is true for California as it is for the other 49 states. Unlike most other states, however, California’s universities are filled to the brim. This is especially true of the University of California schools, which are selective by their nature. They are reserved for the top 1/8th of students. However, even if you look at the Cal States, a lot of them are comparatively selective as well. Fresno State accepts a little more than half of its applicants. The same for San Jose State and Sacramento State.

To take me as an example, a good but not great student, I would have been able to get into SJSU or Sac State, but even other CSU schools like Cal Poly or San Diego State would have been tough. Now, maybe I’m not “good college” material, but… nowhere comes close to California in this regard. If I were a Californian being told that there just isn’t room for me at one of the state’s premier schools despite the grades to get me into a Michigan State or Texas A&M, I would be resentful as heck that slots are being given to people from lands far away. At the very least, the money they make from doing so should be geared towards letting more Californians in so that they’re not shuffling off to Nevada-Reno or Arizona State. It very much becomes a case of “a spot for them is one less spot for me.”

Now, for states that are not California, I personally think that Burt’s comments are spot-on. Particularly for states that have trouble filling in their universities. Montana and Idaho don’t have a single university with over 20k (Boise State is closest, but is a thoroughly mediocre school), the Dakota schools have trouble with 10k. Of course, if we brought the foreign students in to those states, they might high-tail it back home as soon as they can. So okay, states like Oregon and the under-utilized public universities in the northeast. You get the idea.

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An observation and a question.

The cigarette is weird.

Is it me, or does Cain’s smile look a little bit… villainous?

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Hey there trivia fans. Quick: what is the median seniority of members of the United States House of Representatives? That would be January 3, 2003.

Only 164 of the 434 members have more than five terms of service under their belts. Only 17 current members were initialy elected in the 1970′s and only 37 were initially elected in the 1980′s. Of these 54 members, a half dozen have interruptions in their lengths of service for various reasons.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing is a question I leave up to you.

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Dandridge, Smith, Wayles, Payne, Kortright, Johnson, Donelson, Hoes, Symmes, and Christian are the first ten names that appear on what list?

Note: there are forty-five entries in the entire list. There may be some controversy over Wayles, depending on how membership on the list is precisely defined.

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A point of etiquette:

When I comment on someone’s blog post, my comment is generally addressed to everyoen who is reading. That’s how I understand comments left by other people as well. My requests are that you adopt a respectful and intellectually charitable tone when you comment, and that you address someone else’s idea fairly understood as opposed to a strawman. But adding your opinion to a back-and-forth between commenter X and commenter Y is not disrespectful. Far from it. It is a recognition that someone has said something worthy of comment (even if what you believe the comment deserves is strenuous disagreement).

If a commenter addresses a particular other person, then my understanding is that the named person’s response is solicited, but that does not exclude third parties from jumping in. Blogging is a free-for-all.

So if you see a thread of comments going back and forth between X and Y, and you feel moved to comment on something in that thread, then by all means comment. You aren’t “butting in” and there is no need to apologize for interjecting your thoughts. If you have something of substance to say, then you are contributing.

I realize some people enjoy seeing the back-and-forth between two individuals, and that’s cool, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s no rule that any territory is reserved. I would rather that Readers err on the side of commenting too much rather than on the side of holding their tongues. If your idea does not withstand the barbs and thorns of intellectual combat, so be it; your personal pride should be only minimally at stake. So throw your thoughts into the crucible, should you wish, and add your twopence where you please even if that is into a back-and-forth between two other commenters.

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By way of the Volokh Conspiracy, an interesting glimpse inside Zuccotti Park:

As the communal sleeping bag argument between Lauren Digion and Sage Roberts threatened to get out of hand, a facilitator in a red hat walked by, brow furrowed. “Remember? You’re not allowed to do any more interviews,” he said to Digion. She nodded and went back to work. But when Roberts shouted, “Don’t tell me what to do!” Digion couldn’t hold back.

“Someone has to be told what to do,” she said. “Someone needs to give orders. There’s no sense of order in this fucking place.”

Leaderless anarchy is not sustainable. Voluntary compliance with rules established by consensus sounds great, until someone stops voluntarily complying and enforcement becomes necessary. The OWS’ers say they are building a new community, a new kind of community. Fair enough, but communities eventually need some kind of governance, as the OWS’ers are discovering.

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Our Secretary of State, not acting like the grownup she is purported to be:

How many times do I need to say this? The death of a human being should not be applauded, celebrated, or congratulated. I join my brother member of the bar in taking the killjoy stance that celebratory statements and remarks about a man’s death, which seem to be coming from left of the aisle this time around, are not appropriate. Certain folks on the right, who ought to know who they are, have been similarly adomonished in the past here and elsewhere, e.g., applauding the multiplicity of executions in Texas in Presidential primary debates.

The liberation of Libya is properly cause for applause. The apparent end of the civil war, especially with what appear to have been the good guys winning, is certainly to be celebrated. Qaddafi is not to be mourned and perhaps his death will spare the world a farcical show trial as we were treated to with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

Unfortunately, as with Saddam, we have now been treated to the spectacle of another gruesome and seemingly lawless execution performed by an angry mob. While the anger directed at Qaddafi is more than understandable and it may well be that someone simply let their emotions get the better of them, founding a new government upon what looks all too much like murder is not an auspicious beginning.

There is much to be pleased about concerning Libya after Qaddafi. But Qaddafi’s death is not one of them, and the manner of his death is disturbing. Let us encourage our new friends there to quickly adopt the rule of law rather than the rule of the mob.

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