Mitten-gate.

Michigan insists it's the state that looks like a mitten. Miffed at Wisconsin's horning in on the mitten iconography.

Goodbye to Harry Morgan.

He died today, at the age of 96. Maybe you think of him in "M*A*S*H" or "Dragnet," but I liked him in "Pete and Gladys":

Mumia Abu-Jamal escapes the death penalty.

He'll remain in prison for life, but...

... a federal appeals court in April declared the death sentence unconstitutional, ruling that the jury instructions at Abu-Jamal's original 1982 murder trial were unclear.

And prosecutors have decided not to redo the sentencing phase with a new jury and appropriately clear instructions. The murder conviction stands:

Witnesses testified that Abu-Jamal shot Faulkner in the back and head after the officer pulled his brother over during a late-night traffic stop. He was wounded in the encounter and later confessed to the killing, according to other testimony.

Blagojevich gets 14 years.

Even though he's saying he's "unbelievably sorry."

"There is a line between routine politics, horse trading and campaign politics... I thought they were permissible and I was mistaken."

He's sorry he misunderstood where the line was. Unbelievably sorry.

78 right-of-center bloggers respond to a poll about the 2012 Republican candidates.

At Right Wing News. I'm one of the respondents, by the way, and I don't usually answer RWN polls, mainly because I don't have answers to the questions John Hawkins tends to ask. Let me highlight the Gingrichy results:

If you had to pick a 2012 GOP contender today, which of the following candidates would you select?... 1) Newt Gingrich: 39.2% (31 votes)

Romney came in third, with 10 votes. Rick Perry got in at second place with 21.

Do you consider Newt Gingrich to be a conservative?

Yes: 63.6% (49 votes)
No: 36.4% (28 votes)...

Do you consider Mitt Romney to be a conservative?

Yes: 33.3% (26 votes)
No: 66.7% (52 votes)

If you had to choose between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, which candidate would you select?

Mitt Romney: 26.3% (20 votes)
Newt Gingrich: 73.7% (56 votes)

Which candidate do you think would be more likely to beat Barack Obama in 2012?

Mitt Romney: 42.3% (33 votes)
Newt Gingrich: 57.7% (45 votes)

So there you have it. The right-of-center bloggers are gaga for Gingrich.

"Wound licking is an instinctive response in humans and many other animals to an injury."

"Dogs, cats, rodents and primates all lick wounds. The enzyme, lysozyme which is found in many tissues is what is the aid for the wounds.... Wound licking can clean wounds and accelerate healing, so it can be thought of as a form of animal self-medication (zoopharmacognosy)."

Wow! What a great Wikipedia entry. I can't excerpt all the cool stuff, but here's a taste (if you know what I mean)(links within the passage omitted):

In an unusual case, an Oregon teacher was reprimanded after licking blood from wounds on a track team member's knee, a football player's arm, and a high school student's hand. An Oregon public health officer commented that "We do know that animals lick their own wounds, and it may be that saliva has some healing properties. But my very strong recommendation is that you confine yourself to licking your own wounds."...

The Saint Magdalena de Pazzi is said to have cured a nun of sores and scabs in 1589 by licking her limbs.... Pliny the Elder in his Natural History reported that a fasting woman's saliva is an effective cure for bloodshot eyes....

There are potential health hazards in wound licking due to infection risk... The practice of metzitzah during circumcision is controversial as it can transmit the herpes virus to the infant....

Dog saliva has been said by many cultures to have curative powers in people. "Langue de chien, langue de médecin" is a French saying meaning "A dog's tongue is a doctor's tongue"... appears in a 13th century manuscript....

To "lick your wounds" means to "to withdraw temporarily while recovering from a defeat."

The phrase was spoken by Antony in John Dryden's 17th century play All for Love:

“They look on us at distance, and, like curs
Scaped from the lion's paws, they bay far off
And lick their wounds, and faintly threaten war.”

Licked any wounds lately?

"A skeleton, dressed as Santa Claus, nailed to a cross" — on display at a Leesburg, Virginia courthouse.

It's controversial, and a lady ripped it down, but "Skele-Claus" was accepted by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors. The creator of the anti-Christmas display, Jeff Heflin said: "It depicts how society's materialistic obsessions and addictions are killing the season's peace, love, joy and kindness."

The leader of the Northern Virginia Atheists, Rick Wingrove, says tearing down the display was illegal, and people should keep an open mind.

"Offense is in the eye of the beholder. We're offended by the religious displays on government  property. We think it's constitutionally improper," Wingrove said.

See, this is why you don't want to turn government property into a public forum for speech in the form of unattended displays. If that's what you've got, free speech law proscribes viewpoint discrimination. (There are ways to have Christmas decorations without running into this problem, but they risk running into Establishment Clause problems.)

I don't like these "atheists" who are really religion-haters. If you really only think there is no God, why are you so hostile toward people who think otherwise? Find something else to do. Why obsess about religion? And why can't you enjoy festive displays of things that you don't actually believe in? Virtually everyone who puts up a Santa Claus display doesn't believe in Santa Claus. It's just a lightweight seasonal amusement. What's to hate? I wouldn't dignify virulent religion-haters with the neutral appellation "atheist." It's not fair to all the amiable, well-balanced atheists out there.

"Losing It: In which an Aging Professor laments his shrinking Brain..."

That's the name of new book — buy it here — by Michigan lawprof William Ian Miller, who has ripened to the age of 65 years. He gives a fascinating (and not decrepit) interview:

Because we no longer have mandatory retirement, we... must take ourselves out of the game; we have to figure out when we no longer are up to it, no longer worth our salary, no longer wanted, no longer really count for much. How can you rightly read where you stand when your ability to think is decaying at an accelerating pace?...

The book has six parts. The first deals with mental decay.... The second takes on wisdom and casts a fairly jaundiced eye in that direction. What wisdom is to be expected from people whose brains are shrinking, who cannot remember much very well, and who tediously repeat stories, or in the manner of Polonius, give advice the young find boring and manifestly ignorable?...

The third part deals with complaining, the various styles of complaint, such as pissing and moaning, kvetching, lamenting, whining, etc.... The fourth is about retirements from revenge; it is the medieval stuff that got me going on this project.... The fifth part has me dealing with going soft... And last: how to go out in style....

This sounds great. I'm going to read this book. Miller is very sharp, despite his advanced age. You could also read this excerpt from the book if you don't have much time (left).

Miller scoffs at the studies that purport to show that oldies are especially happy folk: "My suspicion is that if there is in fact happiness, it is a symptom of the brain shrinkage that comes with old age, of no longer being able to think very precisely. "

"[Scott] Walker implies recall workers are paid."

"I’ve assumed all along that between activists and paid circulators, if they paid enough people they’d ultimately be able to get that number."

IN THE COMMENTS: Don't Tread 2012 said:

Being paid for something is the result of a simple business transaction between 2 parties. Last time I checked it is not illegal.

Questionable and illegal are different.

If a person exchanges his/her time for pay collecting signatures I have no problem with it, provided the signatures are valid.

It (used to be?) is the American way.

Fine. Work for pay is honorable, even in politics. A political campaign isn't carried out entirely through volunteers. But money in politics matters. In fact, Scott Walker's antagonists lambaste him for his connection to monied interests. Some folks stress getting the money out of politics. They rail about Citizens United and so forth. That's one way to go, the wrong way I think, because it's not going to work and it violates freedom of speech. But part of freedom of speech — key to the majority's opinion in Citizens United — is the public's interest in receiving information. In this light, what is crucial when it comes to money in politics is that we the public receive information about who's spending the money and where.

Thus, what I want is to know to what extent signature-gatherers are being paid. Who is being paid, how much, and by whom? I want to follow the money.

December 7, 1941 — 70 years ago, today...

... 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time:

About 120 survivors will join Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, military leaders and civilians to observe a moment of silence in Pearl Harbor... the moment the attack began seven decades ago....

President Barack Obama hailed veterans of the bombing in a statement proclaiming Wednesday "National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day."

"Their tenacity helped define the Greatest Generation and their valor fortified all who served during World War II. As a nation, we look to December 7, 1941, to draw strength from the example set by these patriots and to honor all who have sacrificed for our freedoms," he said.

One survivor's story:

“As quiet a day as you’ve ever seen... Beautiful sunshine, nothing going on.”

Suddenly, not far from his seat in the dining hall: bang, bang, bang.

“Somebody says, ‘It’s the Chinese New Year,’ ” he said.

But then, a bullet broke through the glass window of the dining hall. Another flew just past [Army Private Francis ] Stueve and knocked the butter dish off the table.

The survivors who remain are now very old:

For more than half a century, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered here every Dec. 7 to commemorate the attack by the Japanese that drew the United States into World War II. Others stayed closer to home for more intimate regional chapter ceremonies...

But no more. The 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will be the last one marked by the survivors’ association....

“We had no choice,” said William H. Eckel, 89....

“We just ran out of gas, that’s what it amounted to,” [said Harry R. Kerr.]  “We felt we ran a good course for 70 years. Fought a good fight. We have no place to recruit people anymore: Dec. 7 only happened on one day in 1941.”

At the Side-View Café...

... don't look back.

"The Mitt Romney campaign is making an immediate shift in tactics..."

"... a move that is necessary because, as one Republican close the campaign put it, 'What they are doing now isn’t working.'"

"'Baby It's Cold Outside' is known as the Christmas Date Rape Song."

"Bitch Magazine wonders: does She & Him's gender-reversed version make it less creepy and less rape-y? Meanwhile, Persephone Magazine's 'Listening While Feminist' has an alternative take on the holiday classic."

The most popular gifts...

... from Amazon.

Bob Woodward said "sitting next to Gore is taxing... In fact, it's unpleasant."

He was stuck sitting next to him at the Organization for International Investment’s annual dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in D.C.

The article at the link is minimal, so I can't tell what's so taxing and unpleasant about sitting next to Gore at the Ritz-Carlton, but when I think about the taxing, unpleasantness of Gore, I always drift back to this:



Ha ha. That will never not make me laugh. "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?" That makes a hilarious household catchphrase, whenever anything's amiss: "What about the Dingell-Norwood bill?" Try it!

School lockers are becoming extinct.

Students aren't using them anymore.

Obama in Kansas: "It's great to be back in the state of Texas."

He was there to give his big speech, doubling down on class politics. (Growing — "gaping" — disparity in income "gives lie to the promise at the very heart of America: that this is the place where you can make it if you try.")

Want to talk about comments?

Here's the permanent location for complaints and suggestions and discussions about the comments here on the Althouse blog. Meade and I will pay attention and participate, so you don't need to email us anymore. Just comment at that link. The thread will go on indefinitely. Enjoy the meta-conversation!

Left-handedness.

From the Wall Street Journal:

•Six of the last 12 U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush, have been lefties.

• Left-handed people earn on average 10% lower salaries than righties, according to a recent study. Findings of some earlier studies on income have been mixed.

•Despite popular misperceptions, lefties aren't more accident prone than right-handed people and don't tend to die at a younger age.

•Left-handedness has been linked to increased risk of certain neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia and ADHD. Mixed-handedness is even more strongly associated with ADHD.

•Most people's brains have a dominant side. More symmetrical brains of mixed-handed people may explain the link to some neural disorders.

"Die, Penny, Die!"

(Via Instapundit.)

The NYT presents liberal fear-mongers as if they were intelligent, sober critics of Republican policy.

Monica Davey, reporting for the NYT from Madison, Wisconsin, looks at why "Many Workers in [the] Public Sector [Are] Retiring Sooner" and what it will mean for the states. Excerpts:

“You start to feel like, ‘What will they do next?’ ” said Bob McLinn, 63, a labor union president who left his job with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections in March, earlier than he planned, after political leaders pressed to cut benefits and collective bargaining rights for workers.

“There’s always been this promise that if you came to work and did your job, at the end there would be your reward — a defined retirement. The idea was you could retire with respect and dignity. But that whole idea has been slashed now, and I felt like, ‘What is the point?’ ”

What demagoguery! We have to contribute more to our pensions as we get each new month's pay, but there was no cut in the ultimate reward. Getting out early isn't a way to preserve the retirement benefit. It's just a decision not to continue putting a chunk of your pay into your pension as you go along working before retirement. If McLinn's communication is typical of labor union presidents, no wonder so many people freaked out and protested last winter.

Now, are states better off if a lot of older workers leave their jobs?

“What we’re going to see is a lot of young people reinventing the wheel,” said Karen Gunderson, 56, who retired this year from her information technology job with the State of Wisconsin after 26 years, a few years sooner than she had intended, saying she felt that public workers were being “turned into scapegoats” for a troubled economy.

“We’re going to waste a lot of tax dollars with young people attempting things that were tried before. You can get people cheaper, but whether you save money, I don’t know.”

I'm mostly curious why the NYT chose to feature this quote and the one above. This isn't serious analysis of what the state did and the real effect on workers. It's more of an effort to propagate hysteria. What did Gunderson — a woman who thinks she was scapegoated — do in "information technology" that younger workers — working at lower pay — would do more expensively? The secret wisdom of the elders is lost, apparently, when somebody retires, and their replacements must puzzle over how to do the complicated work the oldsters had down pat. Is that what it's really like?

[H]ere, in Wisconsin, the battle over public workers may have been the loudest... Union supporters pushed back, leading an effort to recall Gov. Scott Walker next year over the issue. But government workers also left: 16,785 workers filed retirement applications as of Oct. 31, while in all of 2010, 11,750 workers had done so.

“It’s about fear,” said Jim Palmer, executive director of the Wisconsin Professional Police Association. “A lot of people are seeing this war on public employees and saying, let’s get out.”

Where did that all that irrational fear come from? A lot of people are seeing this war... why? Why are they seeing the governor's effort to fix the budget as a "war"? Why do they see themselves as "scapegoats"?

Remember "The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid of the Wrong Things"?

Why are so many fears in the air, and so many of them unfounded?...

We compound our worries beyond all reason....

We had better learn to doubt our inflated fears before they destroy us. Valid fears have their place; they cue us to danger. False and overdrawn fears only cause hardship....

Any analysis of the culture of fear that ignored the news media would be patently incomplete, and of the several institutions most culpable for creating and sustaining scares the news media are arguably first among equals....

The link goes to a long passage from that book at the "Bowling for Columbine" website. "Bowling for Columbine," you may remember, was the Michael Moore movie about guns in America, and the point was that the gun-clinging sector of America was seized with irrational fear.

I'd like to see some balance in the diagnosis of fear in the media, for example, the New York Times.

"Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue..."

From a 1951 essay by Bertrand Russell:

1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.

2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.

3. Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.

4. When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavour to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.,,,

"Liberal" meant something once!

"There goes the balls again!"

Rejected post title: "Hard to keep your pucker up if it's not lubricated."

(Via Metafilter.)

System One and System Two — the brain's " two independent sytems for organizing knowledge."

Writes Freeman Dyson, explaining Daniel Kahneman's new book "Thinking, Fast and Slow":

System One is amazingly fast, allowing us to recognize faces and understand speech in a fraction of a second. It must have evolved from the ancient little brains that allowed our agile mammalian ancestors to survive in a world of big reptilian predators. Survival in the jungle requires a brain that makes quick decisions based on limited information. Intuition is the name we give to judgments based on the quick action of System One. It makes judgments and takes action without waiting for our conscious awareness to catch up with it. The most remarkable fact about System One is that it has immediate access to a vast store of memories that it uses as a basis for judgment. The memories that are most accessible are those associated with strong emotions, with fear and pain and hatred. The resulting judgments are often wrong, but in the world of the jungle it is safer to be wrong and quick than to be right and slow.

System Two is the slow process of forming judgments based on conscious thinking and critical examination of evidence. It appraises the actions of System One. It gives us a chance to correct mistakes and revise opinions. It probably evolved more recently than System One, after our primate ancestors became arboreal and had the leisure to think things over. An ape in a tree is not so much concerned with predators as with the acquisition and defense of territory. System Two enables a family group to make plans and coordinate activities. After we became human, System Two enabled us to create art and culture.

The question then arises: Why do we not abandon the error-prone System One and let the more reliable System Two rule our lives? Kahneman gives a simple answer to this question: System Two is lazy. To activate System Two requires mental effort. Mental effort is costly in time and also in calories. Precise measurements of blood chemistry show that consumption of glucose increases when System Two is active.

This is a fabulous article with lots of great stuff worth reading, but I just want to lock onto the point about consuming calories. Yes, we're lazy, but we do all manner of ridiculous things to consume calories and they tend to require overcoming laziness. If activating System Two is a substitute for trudging on a Stairmaster or whatever, maybe even lazy people will do it. Can we lose weight by thinking hard? I'll leave it to others to collect and analyze the evidence. That's just my instant, intuitive take on the matter.

"Donald Trump Mulls Third-Party Bid as He Enjoys GOP Kingmaker Role."

According to the Wall Street Journal.

If that's his attitude, he should not be moderating a debate!

Cain to endorse Newt.

Today. They're saying.

The Supreme Court is a group project.

I'm just repeating something I said 2 days ago, on the occasion of creating a new tag — in the previous post — for "group projects."

I tested out the pollcode.com site again, and it's still not working. Here's the poll I concocted for the test:

Is the state supreme court a "group project"?
Yes, but in a good way.
Yes, and it's a damned shame.
No, these are fiercely independent individuals.
No, but they should start acting like one and let the smartest kid do all the work.

"You could ask, ‘Why should it be free?’ But why shouldn’t it be free?"

"The core of our mission is to give material to people who need it," says Salman Khan of the Khan Academy, described in this NYT article:

Mr. Khan’s critics say that his model is really a return to rote learning under a high-tech facade, and that it would be far better to help children puzzle through a concept than drill it into their heads....

Today, the Khan Academy site offers 2,700 instructional videos and a constellation of practice exercises. Master one concept, move on to the next. Earn rewards for a streak of correct answers. For teachers, there is an analytics dashboard that shows both an aggregate picture of how the class is doing and a detailed map of each student’s math comprehension. In other words, a peephole.

Diane Tavenner, chief of the Summit chain of four charter schools, said that at first she was ambivalent about using Mr. Khan’s software. It would require buying laptops for every student and investing in more Internet capacity. And she found the Khan Academy model of instructor and blackboard — albeit a digital one — to be a bit too traditional.

Rote learning. Teacher and blackboard. Traditional. You'd think the teacher herself would be perfect at doing what this website does.

In the past, math class at the Summit schools was always hands-on: the class worked on a problem, usually in small groups, sometimes for days at a time. But getting an entire class of ninth graders to master the fundamentals of math was never easy. Without those, the higher-level conceptual exercises were impossible.

That is where the machine came in handy. The Khan software offered students a new, engaging way to learn the basics.

So.... let the website do the traditional work of teaching the fundamentals so the teacher can spend more of her time subjecting the kids to group projects?

ADDED: Pollcode isn't working right now. The options should be:

How do you feel about group projects in school?

1. Loathe them. What this article does is point the way to home-schooling.

2. They're part of a nice mix. It's good to free the teacher to spend more time on what she loves.

3. Love 'em. Let the computer do the technical stuff and bring on the group projects!

I'll turn it into a poll if I can get the site to process the code.

IN THE COMMENTS: TMink says:

The Kahn Academy stuff is killer. I use it with my kids and recommend it at work every week. There is nothing about the Kahn approach that necessitates group work in my understanding.

The thing that teachers HATE about the Kahn approach is that it is detail rich and gives tons of info regarding how well each student is doing at the touch of a button. It requires the teachers to teach because it takes away excuses through data.

"In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009, but rose by just over 4 percent last year..."

"This country is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pumping 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last year."

As Joni Mitchell sang in "Big Yellow Taxi": "Don't it always seem to go/That you don't know what you've got til it's gone?"

How about a little love for recession when we've got it?

Newt + Obama = the largest possible "how smart they think they are" minus "how smart they really are"...

... according to Dan Drezner.

"I think they're both actually reasonably intelligent guys, but I think both of them have a much higher opinion of themselves than they actually are."

Okay. Hmmm. Can you think of any other pair of individuals with a greater self-esteem/merit gap when it comes to intelligence?

In my experience — and I'm old, so it's long — people who make a noticeable exhibition of their smartness are not the most intelligent people. They're not the dumbest people. But the smartest people are strategic about displaying intelligence. That's how they outsmart you.

Senator Coburn finds it "difficult" to support Gingrich.

On Fox News Sunday:

"I'm not inclined to be a supporter of Newt Gingrich's having served under him for four years and experienced personally his leadership... I found it lacking often times....

"There's all types of leaders. Leaders that instill confidence. Leaders that are somewhat abrupt and brisk. Leaders that have one standard for the people they are leading and a different standard for themselves. I just found that his leadership lacking."

Did you realize there was another GOP debate last night?

I didn't! But here, you can watch the whole thing — which took place on the Fox News "Huckabee" show.  Romney, Bachmann, Gingrich, Santorum, Paul, and Perry were there. Missing were Cain and Huntsman, Cain more understandably than Huntsman.

Here's the LA Times report:

In a Saturday night Fox News forum hosted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, the contenders appeared one at a time, under strict orders to avoid mentioning rivals by name. But the questions from a panel of three GOP state attorneys general did elicit some major policy differences among them, most notably on illegal immigration, a major point of contention on the campaign trail.

Here's the NYT:

Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, was pressed on how conservatives can “trust that a President Gingrich will not advance these sorts of big government approaches” that he had advocated, including his one-time support for a mandate that citizens obtain health insurance. Mr. Gingrich noted that he did so in league with other conservatives and that “every conservative has in fact left that kind of a model.”...

And Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was asked pointed questions about his health care overhaul there, and what he would say to President Obama if Mr. Obama were to note during a general election debate its similarities to the federal health care law so hated by Republicans. “Why didn’t you give me a call?” he said, reprising a well-worn line from the campaign trail.

Politico:

Asked why conservatives should trust that he won’t advance “big government approaches,” given his history of supporting an individual health-care mandate, climate change policies and a larger federal role in education policy, Gingrich said it was his years in Washington that made him best-suited to transform government.

“You cannot get the scale of change we want, and you can’t get the scale of change the tea parties want, by just appointing good people who have no understanding of the fight they’re about to be in,” Gingrich said.

Shopping?

Get some shopping done today at Amazon (and, by using that link, show some love for the Althouse blog).

"If any judge wants to pack, I think the next thing I'd put on the agenda is to have security cameras in every chamber and in the corridors."

Said Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson as the Wisconsin Supreme Court addresses the question of guns in the courts.

What's so terrible about internet comments?

Rebecca Rosen complains about the structure of the commenting systems, which, she says, tend to make even well-written comments feel "more like lists of unconnected ideas than genuine conversations." In other words, chronological order is such an old, boring, and obvious order. But it's clear and comprehensible. Do you prefer comments "nested" under the comments they're supposedly responding to or comments that are re-ordered based on commenters voting on comments?

Does chronological order bother you — in comments sections and elsewhere? You know, you have to live your life in chronological order. And that's what's so cool about blogging. Like life, it's in chronological order. I used to resist chronological order. I have an old fantasy of living life out of order, having the power to reshuffle one's allotted days. But you can't do it. And if you abandon chronological order for you blog, it's not a blog anymore.

Respect chronological order. It's the order to beat. You think you have a better order? Prove it.

IN THE COMMENTS:Peter Hoh said:

There ought to be a way to highlight or star a comment like Freeman's "weird out, future man" comment.

That way, someone who is part of this community, but having a busy day, could still read a comment like that without having to plow through the whole thread.

Of course, one could do like I do when there's a long thread -- use the "find" function in my browser to see if Freeman stopped by to leave a comment.

My way to highlight or star a comment is front-paging! Now, you might think I should front-page Freeman's comment, which — I agree with you — was great, but under the circumstances — "standing between two mirrors" — it makes more meta-sense to front-page you.

The Althouse that won $100,000 at the Big Ten championship game last night.

Yes, the University of Wisconsin football team eked out a win against Michigan State last night, and we were thrilled and amazed. But I was stunned to see the name Althouse pop up in the context of a football-throwing competition:

Kaitlyn Althouse, an Eastern York High School graduate and Lancaster General College student, won the grand prize scholarship of $100,000 during a halftime competition at the Big Ten championship game Saturday night in Indianapolis.

Althouse won the tuition giveaway, sponsored by Dr Pepper, by throwing the most footballs into a two-foot-wide target five yards away in 30 seconds. Althouse made 10 of the throws, while her competitor, Antron McCullough of Ocklawaha, Fla., made nine.

Click through to see the video showing why she was given a chance. Here's McCullough's video. Good luck to both Althouse and McCullough in the future. One of them had to lose, and Michigan State had to lose. So... onward to the Rose Bowl, where it will be Badgers and Ducks.

The Wisconsin protesters "are exactly the people that the O.W.S. crowd should not learn from..."

"... if they aspire to appeal to a wider audience than left-wing activists usually reach," writes Ross Douthat in the NYT. They represent "the decadent left, which fights for narrow interest groups rather than for the public as a whole."

The Wisconsin protests didn’t defend American workers’ right to bargain for their fair share of company profits, as traditional union protests have. They defended government employees’ right to negotiate with elected officials over the division of taxpayer dollars — a recipe for profligacy that even liberal icons like Franklin Roosevelt and the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s George Meany once opposed....

Whatever your politics, there’s arguably more to admire in the ragtag theatricality of Occupy Wall Street than in that sort of self-righteous defense of the status quo. Even if it has failed to embrace plausible solutions, O.W.S. at least picked a deserving target — what National Review’s Reihan Salam describes as the “moral rupture” created by Wall Street’s and Washington’s betrayal of the public trust.

Badgers...

... win the Big 10 Conference Championship!

Alan Sues "tended to perform with over-the-top flamboyance on the show, displaying stereotypically gay mannerisms."

"It wasn’t because he was ashamed of being gay; it was because he was surviving as a performer... Many gay men came up to him and said how important he was when they were young because he was the only gay man they could see on television...."

We loved him on "Laugh-In." Alan Sues, dead at the age of 85.

At the Corona Café...

... you can get lost here for a while.

The "microhome"...

"... 7 by 12 feet stem-to-stern, including a wood-burning stove, an antique parlor chair that also serves as a seat for the compost toilet beneath it, and a shower under the bed....."

Herman Cain is about to speak.

I guess that means I'm live-blogging it.

12:18 Central Time: I'm watching Fox News, and they're talking about what it will mean if Mrs. Cain is not standing by his side. But she's never standing by his side, so that won't me anything. If she is... well, that would be unusual.

12:29: Gloria's there!

12:41: "It hurts... We know that these false and unproved allegations are not true... I am at peace with my God. I am at peace with my wife. And she is at peace with me. And I'm at peace with my family. And I am at peace with myself."

12:43: "I am suspending my presidential campaign because of the continued distraction, the continued hurt caused on me and my family, not because we are not fighters, not because I am not a fighter...."

12:45: "I am not going to be silenced and I am not going away." He has "Plan B: The Cain Solutions dot com."

12:46: I get the feeling Plan B is Sarah Palin mode.

12:48: Drudge: "No, We Cain't."

Christine Todd Whitman encourages Jon Huntsman to run as a 3rd party candidate — but wouldn't it hurt Obama?

Although Huntsman and Whitman are nominally Republicans, I can't read this without assuming their agenda is to help President Obama win reelection. If you're with me this far, then, consider whether they've got a good strategy. Would Huntsman, running as a 3d party candidate, draw more voters away from the Republican (presumably Romney) or from Obama? I'm picturing dissatisfied Democrats going for Huntsman in protest... people who feel that Obama has abandoned their segment of the "Obama Coalition." It's harder to picture voters who'd be thinking of voting for Romney who'd get the idea of switching to Huntsman. Why would anyone do that?

Mic check... old style... with Vicki McKenna...

...and New Media Meade:

"Aaron, Aaron, we all sing your glory."

"Aaron, Aaron, I could be your Jordy."

ADDED: I resist tag proliferation, but this is the post where I finally broke down and made an "Aaron Rodgers" tag. In honor of this blog breakthrough, I extracted this clip from a diavlog recorded February 1, 2011:

"The next time Dylan played nearby, he invited Jobs to drop by his tricked-up tour bus just before the concert."

"When Dylan asked what his favorite song was, Jobs said 'One Too Many Mornings.' So Dylan sang it that night. After the concert, as Jobs was walking out the back, the tour bus came by and screeched to a stop. The door flipped open. 'So, did you hear my song I sang for you?' Dylan rasped. Then he drove off."

Another bit from that Steve Jobs bio.

What has happened to Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser?

He's taking a month off "to recover from a serious [but not life-threatening] health issue," we're told.

That will leave six justices to hear several cases, raising the possibility of 3-3 splits on the deeply divided court....

Prosser did not participate in orders this week in a fast-moving, politically charged case over recall elections...

Prosser is the conservative justice who was involved in that bizarre "chokehold" incident. (There was no actual chokehold, apparently.) He won a hotly contested campaign for reelection this summer after the Wisconsin protesters focused their energy on defeating him. At present the protest effort is aimed at various recall elections, and there is a current controversy before the court about whether the next round of recall elections against legislators will use the newly drawn legislative districts (which favor Republicans) or the old districts that were drawn back in 2002, when Democrats controlled the process.

I wonder what is wrong with Justice Prosser. Based on what I've read about the "chokehold" incident, I imagine an intense degree of interpersonal conflict and stress inside the court. One could speculate about the kind of health problems such a workplace environment might cause or exacerbate. Is this month off a prelude to resignation? If he were to resign, the Governor — the Democrats' nemesis Scott Walker — would have the power to appoint the person who will replace him, but that person will need to stand for reelection next year. [NOTE: Text edited for accuracy.]

Walker, of course, is facing a petition drive to force him into a recall election some time next year. Under the circumstances, it would be interesting to see what kind of justice he would pick to replace Prosser. Prosser is the 4th vote in the conservative group that determines the outcome in all of the ideologically split 4-3 cases. Obviously, Walker would want a reliable conservative. But beyond that, he should want to burnish his own reputation by picking someone with impressive legal credentials. And considering the situation inside the court, he should want someone with strong leadership skills and a great capacity to operate in a psychologically stressful work environment.

ADDED: Maybe something else happened, something like the "chokehold" incident, and he's been pressured to get that "anger management" treatment he was previously told to get.  There could have been an ultimatum: Get that treatment now, or we'll go public.

Sandusky gives the NYT a 4-hour interview.

Here. Excerpt:

"They’ve taken everything that I ever did for any young person and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or whatever... I had kid after kid after kid who might say I was a father figure. And they just twisted that all."...

He... characterized his close experiences with children he took under his wing as “precious times,” and said that the physical aspect of the relationships “just happened that way.”

Great horned owls, hooting outside our house, just now.

Meade shot what is more audio than video, but you can catch a glimpse of me in the light of my iMac.

Donald Trump will moderate the Dec. 27th Republican debate.

How very strange... but interesting!

De-stressing law students by getting them to cuddle with the homeless...

... puppies.

"You have embarrassing material in your supposedly professional journal that is out there festering right now."

"And I really don't care about amends you 'may' make next year."

A little shopping today, perhaps?

If you must shop, start here, and you'll be demonstrating your appreciation for what I do here on this blog. (A nice percentage of your purchase price will be sent my way, at no cost to you.)

May I recommend?

The new Kindle Fire.

The "daily deal" on Kindle books.

Kindle accessories.

WaPo's Jonathan Capehart says Gingrich made an "unbelievably disgusting" "blanket condemnation of 'really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods.'"

But what did Newt say?

"Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday...

"They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it is illegal"....

Now, obviously, it's Newt's style to provoke people like Capehart, and, indeed, Capehart's denouncement of Newt in the pages of WaPo leverages Newt's message for him. Capehart lambastes Gingrich for his wealth and for his disrespect toward "the overwhelming majority of those children and their families who live their lives with far more integrity and far less cash than Gingrich ever will." Capehart is doing what he is hired to do, and he gets some cash for that.

Both Gingrich and Capehart probably care to some extent about poor children. It's impossible to say how much. There's nothing about Capehart's liberal orientation that guarantees that he's more caring, though it's liberal style to pose as if you are. It's conservative style to offer love in "tough love" form, and that's what we get from Gingrich.

Liberal style, Capehart stirs up emotion: What a bad, greedy man Gingrich is! He condemns and disrespects children! Conservative style, Gingrich risks that we'll think he's mean as he invites us to think beyond those initial reflexive emotions.

Capehart declines the invitation.

"That sound you hear is an uptick in pens scratching signatures on recall petitions."

Says Triangle Man, commenting on the last post.

When 4 or 5 are gathered against my name, I'm going to require a permit, applied for 72 hours in advance.

Sayeth Scott Walker. (Compare Jesus: "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.")

The rule applies inside the Capitol, where lengthy, noisy, wild protests raged last winter. Outside the Capitol — where there have been many spontaneous gatherings of tens of thousands — the permit requirement kicks it at 100. Even worse:

Groups holding demonstrations could be charged for the costs of having extra police on hand for the event. Costs associated with a counterprotest could be charged to that second group. The costs would be $50 per hour per Capitol Police officer - costs for police officers from outside agencies would depend on the costs billed to the state. The police could require an advance payment as a requirement for getting a permit and also could require liability insurance or a bond....

Any damage or cleanup after a demonstration could be charged to organizers. During the court fight earlier this year over access to the Capitol, Walker's administration said the demonstrators had done $7.5 million in damage to the building with the signs and other wear and tear. But almost immediately the administration sharply backpedaled from that claim, conceding the damage was significantly less.

Conservative politicians, forced to meet in Madison, Wisconsin, have the problem that the sudden, troublesome crowds consist overwhelmingly of their antagonists. The Governor's seemingly neutral rules obviously fall heavily on his opponents. The stricter the limitations — and these are absurdly strict — the more non-neutral they really are. But even if you can pretend these rules are as neutral as they look on the surface and need only be reasonable to satisfy the First Amendment, these rules are plainly unreasonable.

This is craven repression and a shocking violation of free speech rights.

"And... my video is now leaking like an old tampon."

Tweets Lady Gaga... feigning displeasure or actually displeased that her new video is available on line.

ABA Journal, listing 100 law blogs, identifies 2 as "conservative" and none as "liberal."

The 2 identified as conservative are mine and Volokh Conspiracy.

Do you find that odd?

ADDED: Here's email I sent in response to email sent to me by an ABA Journal editor:

Thanks for responding.

Your description of my blog is embarrassingly inaccurate. What "altercation" are you even talking about? The one where I was filming other people arguing and a man suddenly assaulted me? You portray me as jumping at every chance to say conservative things, but I've blogged about why I voted for Obama, written continually in support of same-sex marriage since the first month of my blog, written in support of abortion [rights], and many, many other things that challenge conservative readers. And my comments section has many liberal readers who argue with the conservatives. I resent the crude label, which wasn't imposed on any other bloggers.

You "admire" my blog, but you don't know much about it. As for "reader engagement," I believe you do admire/envy that, and I think that is why I was included on the list. I have the capacity to send traffic to your website, which, I would assume, is the main reason you do a top 100 list and set up a voting process.

I am not impressed. And I really don't care about amends you "may" make next year. You have embarrassing material in your supposedly professional journal that is out there festering right now.

"RJ Reynolds v. FDA and the Hidden Danger of Denying Free Speech Protection to Corporations."

Aaron Worthing has an excellent post about the litigation over the FDA rules requiring new warning labels on cigarettes.

IN THE COMMENTS: caplight said:

This is great, so now the government can require abortionists to post pictures of the developmental stages of a human being in utero and pictures of chopped up baby parts. Oh, and the link between abortion and breast cancer too.

Exactly!

"But homeownership and college aren’t causes of middle-class status, they’re markers..."

"... for possessing the kinds of traits — self-discipline, the ability to defer gratification, etc. — that let you enter, and stay, in the middle class. Subsidizing the markers doesn’t produce the traits; if anything, it undermines them."

37 Christmas trees in the White House.

And, yes, they persist in calling them "Christmas trees"... as if they hadn't noticed how divisive such terminology can be... in Wisconsin.

"If I see somebody who’s earning over $50,000 a year, who has made the calculated decision not to buy health insurance..."

"I’m looking at somebody who is absolutely as irresponsible as anybody who was ever on welfare."

Because what they’ve said is, a) I’m gambling that I won’t get sick, and b) I’m gambling that if I do get sick, I can cheat all my neighbors.

Now when you talk to hospitals, a very significant part of their non-collectables are people who have money, but have calculated that it’s not worth the cost to collect it.

And so I’m actually in favor of finding a way to say, if you’re above whatever — whatever the appropriate income level is, you oughtta have either health insurance, or you oughtta post a bond. But we have no right, we have no right in this society, to have a free-rider approach if you’re well off economically, to say we’ll cheat our neighbors.

Who said it?

"My Governor's a Jedi."

I don't know about your governor, but...



(Via yoSAMite says.)

A little lunch hour shopping?

Some gift ideas in the book category.

Kindle books... daily deal.

A nice Kindle "Fire."

And everything else at Amazon.

The 2012 presidential race was supposed to be really expensive, but it's been incredibly cheap.

The reason is obvious: It's been done with debates.

Wouldn't it be funny if after all the hand-wringing and Constitution-violating drama about getting the money out of politics, the problem solved itself, because televised debates replaced all the in-person campaigning? And, at some point, viral web ads, boosted by reporting, should become more important than those paid ads on television... the ones we fast-forward through, unless we decide to watch them, the way we decide to watch the things on the internet, like this:

If you'd called something "unadultered complete nonsense"...

... would you highlight that phrase in a self-promoting ad?

You would if you were Wisconsin legislator Brett Hulsey, who's made himself the central character in his new ad against Governor Scott Walker. And the non-word "unadultered" is not the most embarrassing thing about the ad:

The ad continues with Hulsey saying, "I stood up to Gov. Walker. I went to his press conference and said, 'What you have just heard is unadultered [sic] complete nonsense.'"

... The governor did hold a news conference that day, but Hulsey never directly confronted him. What actually happened was that Hulsey waited until the governor had left the room, took over the podium and directed his comments to reporters.

ADDED: I Googled "unadultered" and the first hit took me to some unbelievably evil song lyrics apparently written by a band significant enough to have a Wikipedia page. I have no idea whether Hulsey is into this "Illinois-based hardcore punk, grindcore, and death metal band," but sometimes song lyrics give someone the idea that a non-word is a word. It can be embarrassing. For example, maybe you thought it made sense to call something "swonderful."

IN THE COMMENTS: David said:

Althouse speaks the pompatus of truth.

ADDED: Instapundit links with "WHEN ILLITERATE YAHOO STATE LEGISLATORS attack."

Building a better thermostat...

The Nest Learning Thermostat.

You can also use a free iPhone or Android app, from anywhere you happen to be, to see the current temperature and change it — to warm up the house before you arrive, for example....

Over the course of a week or so, the thermostat learns from your manual adjustments. It notes when that happened, and what the temperature and humidity were, and so on. And it begins to set its own schedule based on your living patterns.

When you set a new temperature, it tells you how long it will take for the room to reach that temperature, which "is intended to discourage people from setting their thermostats to 90 degrees, for example, thinking that the temperature will rise to 70 faster." That is, it's smart enough to know how stupid we are. I mean, seriously, what is wrong with people?

I can't tell you how many times I have walked into a sweltering classroom and found that someone has set the temperature above 80°, presumably under the delusion that he/she was turning on a more powerful heating process. How can you be teaching/attending law school and not understand what a thermostat is?

Email: "From: Michelle Obama/Subject: Me, Barack, and Ann."

"I really hope you give this a shot."