Drudge pushes Walker.

The link under the picture goes to WKOW's "Walker gets standing ovation in NH, but most in attendance still undecided."

Other links at the top of Drudge:

1. "THRONGS OF SUPPORTERS GREET GOV..." goes to the Weekly Standard: "Throngs of Supporters, Media Greet Walker in New Hampshire/Presidential candidate talks of riding his Harley in N.H.." That comes with a 6-minute video:




2. "TESTS MESSAGE IN $1 SWEATER..." goes to The Hill's "Walker tests his message in New Hampshire":

In his first trip to the second-in-the-nation presidential nominating state since 2012, Walker donned a sweater he said he bought for a buck from Kohl's, a big retailer founded in his home state, and cast himself as an executive willing to roll up his sleeves to streamline government and protect the homeland.

3. "JEB JABS 'FRONTRUNNER'..." goes to The Boston Herald's "Jeb Bush takes jab at Scott Walker as both continue N.H. tour""

“I’m not a candidate. I don’t think — maybe he is — I don’t know. You can’t be a front-runner until you start running,” Bush said after touring Integra Biosciences here yesterday.

Bush’s remarks were in response to Walker’s comments earlier this week to Breitbart News. He said President Obama’s recent criticism of Wisconsin’s so-called “right to work” law “suggests maybe we’re the front-runner if somebody is taking an active interest in what a state governor is doing, particularly in light of the fact that we’re not the only one.”

4. "Early Intensity In Race..." goes to the NYT's "New Hampshire, Shaping Up as Free-for-All, Gets Early G.O.P. Attention": At the link, a photo of Jeb, grim-faced and surrounded by grim-faced media types poking microphones at him, and a photo of Walker, smiling in a baseball cap and listening to one person at the  New Hampshire Republicans' 2016 Kickoff Grassroots Training at Concord High School. Key sentence: "Talking to a motorcycle aficionado afterward, he even mused about coming back to campaign here on his Harley-Davidson."

5. "Does road to White House start in Wisconsin?" goes to the Weekly Standard's John MacCormack's "See Scott Run/Does the road to the White House start in Wisconsin?"

Do you know who isn’t an ordinary person? Hillary Clinton. “Saying you’re broke when you’ve got two homes, or you’re making a quarter of a million dollars a speech, or you haven’t driven a car in 18 years, those are all things that I think further embolden that theory that someone like Hillary Clinton who is of Washington—who lives in Washington, who worked for the last term for President Obama in Washington, who served in the Senate in Washington, who lived in the White House in Washington, who spent the early days of her career in Washington—this is someone who embodies Washington,” Walker told me during our March 8 interview. (Like an ordinary guy, Walker sometimes says a word like “embolden” when he means “emphasize.”) 

"You think L.A. is Hell, this awful place of corruption and anti-creativity, and when I look at Wisconsin..." said Matt Groening...

... to Lynda Barry (who teaches at the University of Wisconsin), and she said: "It’s its own kind of Hell... colder than Scott Walker’s tit... When I look at your place in Malibu, and you can see the ocean, I just think, I’d rather die than live here."

Groening and Barry, cartoonists who have known each other for a long time, were doing an appearance together in a bookstore in NYC, where, I presume, the audience looks down on both Wisconsin and Malibu.

"And they handcuffed me to the electrical box for seven hours... At first I was panicking, and then I started singing 'I Shall Be Released' by Bob Dylan."

"I don't know how long I was singing that damn song for, but it was quite some time.... I don't want to be remembered for this alone... I'd like to be remembered for the good things I've done. I'm a husband, a father of two really cool kids. But they're saying it's half a billion worth of artwork. And ultimately I'm the one who made the decision to buzz them in. It's the kind of thing most people don't have to learn to cope with. It's like doing penance. It's always there."

Said Rick Abath, who was 27 a quarter century ago, when he was a night-time guard at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.


(The police photograph you before they un-duct-tape you.)

What's your sign?

3 signs — seen yesterday on State Street — bespeak 3 quite distinct frames of mind. What's your sign?

1. Believing in basketball...



2. Coffee and sado-masochism...



3. Wistful robot with a blue flower...

"Charles Barkley Says Paying NCAA Athletes Is A Turrible Idea, And Americans Still Agree."

Can someone explain to me why the Huffington Post used that "turrible" spelling? Is it mocking Barkley's speech? It it mocking the idea?

The idea sounds right to me, by the way:

"There’s only a couple of players on the college team that actually can really play in every sport, so sometimes you have to look at the big picture... All of those kids are getting a free education. But let’s say we do it your way … we have to pay the diving team, the swimming team. That’s crazy. Less than 1 percent [of college basketball players] are going to play in the NBA... What about the other 99 percent that are getting a free education? Think about it."

I'm looking at the comments now and see that the top-rated comment is:

The spelling of terrible in the article title ("Turrible") diminishes both the point of Mr. Barley's opinion and his education. Further, given how some in his country have worked to to portray African American men, it can also be interpreted as racist.

That gets the response "but that's how he says the word" — which is something I wondered about, but didn't know — and the original commenter comes back with "And in how many instances have journalists used regional accents when writing on a commentary's opinion?" — which is exactly how I would have responded to the assertion that Barkley happens to pronounce "terrible" like that. I mean, he'd have to be awfully famous for that word, pronounced that way before it wouldn't seem disrespectful and a cheap way of discounting what is a damned good argument. He's not famous enough for saying "turrible" that I knew it. Are there any other cases of famous people so famous for a way they pronounce a word that the respelled word would be used like that in a headline? The only thing I can think of is a bunch of dumb old headlines about Ed Sullivan and his "really big shew."

A proposed Women-of-the-Supreme-Court Lego set is rejected as a violation of Lego's policy against "politics and political symbols, campaigns, or movements"...

... which prompts NPR to delve into whether what the Supreme Court does is (or looks like) politics:

"I honestly understand having a policy in place like that," said [science journalist Maia Weinstock, who designed the set]. But Weinstock said she looked at the policy before submitting and didn't think that her project was political.

"The U.S. Supreme Court is supposed to be separate from political considerations," she said. "People are appointed for life specifically so that they don't answer to the changing whims of politics."

Of course, that's especially silly when you are celebrating the presence of women on the Court. They are there because Presidents appointed them, and it's obvious that the final selection from the pool of qualified candidates is political. Ronald Reagan had made it a campaign promise that he would appoint the first woman to the Supreme Court. And when has any President simply nominated the person with the best judicial mind or some such entirely neutral concept?

The Milwaukee Brewers ban high fives.

Can you guess why?

How much can Romney help Rubio?

WaPo reports:

Sen. Marco Rubio has been cultivating a relationship with Mitt Romney and his intimates, landing some of the 2012 Republican nominee’s top advisers and donors and persistently courting others as he readies an expected 2016 presidential campaign.

In a crowded field of contenders, the imprimatur of Romney could help clear Rubio’s path into the top tier. Since Romney announced in January that he would not run for the White House again, he and Rubio have had at least two lengthy phone calls in which Romney encouraged and mentored the 43-year-old Florida senator about the political landscape, according to a Romney associate.

Rubio and Romney have built a warm and trusting rapport, in contrast to the frostiness that exists between Romney and the two current GOP front-runners, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker. When Romney said in January that it was time to turn to the “next generation of Republican leaders,” it was widely interpreted as a swipe at Bush and a boost to a fresher face, such as Rubio.

What's the evidence of frostiness toward Walker?

"Dell Williams, who in 1974, after being humiliated by a department-store clerk when she tried to buy a vibrator, was moved to start Eve’s Garden..."

"... the New York boutique widely described as the nation’s first sex shop catering specifically to women, died on Wednesday at her home in Manhattan. She was 92."

In the early ’70s, Ms. Williams took a workshop from the sex educator Betty Dodson, an advocate of women’s masturbation. So that women might experiment in private, Ms. Dodson recommended the Hitachi Magic Wand, a cylindrical vibrator nominally sold for aching muscles.

Off Ms. Williams went to Macy’s to buy a Magic Wand. There, she wrote afterward, she found herself face to face with a “pimply 20-something” male sales clerk.

“What do you want it for?” he asked in a carrying voice.

“I left Macy’s that day,” she wrote, “clutching my precious, anonymous brown shopping bag and thinking: Someone really ought to open up a store where a woman can buy one of these things without some kid asking her what she’s going to do with it.”

It's interesting that she needed to say that the man had acne, considering the folk belief that masturbation causes acne. Was Williams subtly insinuating that the sales clerk was seeking the camaraderie of a fellow masturbator? Or did she feel a compulsion to humiliate him after he (accidentally?) humiliated her?

I went looking for a good link for the proposition that masturbation causes acne — which has got to be one of the all-time great correlation-causation misperceptions. I'll go with this page from "Acne For Dummies."

I also ran across — why have I never noticed this before? — Mark Twain's "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism" (a speech given in 1879 at The Stomach Club, a group of American writers and painters in Paris):

The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: a disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke and tell indelicate stories — and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures. The results of the habit are: loss of memory, loss of virility, loss of cheerfulness and loss of progeny.

Of all the various kinds of sexual intercourse, this has the least to recommend it. As an amusement, it is too fleeting; as an occupation, it is too wearing; as a public exhibition, there is no money in it....

And yet, there was money in it... for Dell Williams.

"I'm going to argue here that removing 'women' from the language of abortion is a mistake."

"We can, and should, support trans men and other gender-non-conforming people. But we can do that without rendering invisible half of humanity and 99.999 percent of those who get pregnant. I know I'll offend, hurt and disappoint some people, including abortion-fund activists I love dearly. That is why I've started this column many times over many months and put it aside. I tell myself I might be wrong...."

For the annals of hand-wringing, I offer you this, from Katha Pollit in The Nation.

You know, if you're going to fret about "erasure" in the context of abortion... well, good lord, how blind can you be?!

"This is the best example of animals being jerks that I think I have ever seen."

Top comment for this.

I'm blogging this mainly because I have a tag for animals are jerks. 

IN THE COMMENTS:& Michelle Dulak Thomson put up the URL to this excellent video in which the cats are only scantily jerky:

"We had Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney. If it's just whoever's next up, that hasn't worked so well for the Republican party in the past."

"Jeb's a good man. You're not going to hear me speak ill will of Jeb. He's a friend of mine.... I think highly of him. I just think voters are going to look at this and say, 'If we're running against Hillary Clinton, we'll need a name from the future — not a name from the past — to win.' "

Said Scott Walker.

Hey, what if it's not Hillary Clinton? Is a name from the past okay then?

(The phrase "a name from the future" amuses me.  It's like the GOP needs someone coming in from a time machine.)

The sign says "Memorial Union Terrace/CLOSED/For The Winter" but it's 60° here in Madison.

A man in shorts waits for a lake and a snowball to melt:



Many people have crossed the chain with the "CLOSED" sign, perhaps because the "CLOSED" sign is subject to interpretation — it's not substantively winter — or maybe because they don't care about your signs, man....



And here's another chain crossed:



That little yellow sign says "CLOSED," but come on... you can't close a lake...



Welcome to spring, everybody!

"Did she seem to you a happy, hungry warrior? She couldn’t make eye contact with her questioners..."

"... and when she did she couldn’t sustain it. She looked at the ceiling and down at notes, trying, it seemed, to stick to or remember scripted arguments. She was shaky. She couldn’t fake good cheer and confidence. It is seven years since she ran for office. You could see it.... This wasn’t high-class spin. These were not respectable dodges. They didn’t make you grudgingly tip your hat at a gift for duplicity. "

Peggy knocks Hillary.

A delightful payoff for research prompted by random curiosity about language.

Sasha Volokh is bemused by the phrase "still and all" in Supreme Court cases.

It sounds slang-y because "and all" occurs in casual speech (like "and stuff"), but it's actually old-timey (like "It cannot be gainsaid").

Sasha consults the OED and finds the the phrase goes back to 1829. And he searches the entire Supreme Court archive to find that there is — after 2 recent iterations of the phrase "still and all" — only one other appearance of those 3 words in sequence, a 1961 case about the search of a distillery:

Indeed, the officers here could have abated the nuisance without judicial help by destroying the still and all of its paraphernalia....

"Many of the women who use the website have a great deal in common. They were almost all 'skeptical' of the concept at first..."

"... and, while their biggest fear is still being judged by society for what they do, every single one of them insisted that there is a very clear distinction between prostitution and being paid to date a man – even when they have sex with them."

"Honestly, I don't think it's any different than a marriage with a house wife," Rachel explains to Daily Mail Online. "If the wife is not working, she is being paid and supported by her husband, and of course they have sex. Does that make her a prostitute?"

ADDED: A husband and his stay-at-home wife are an economic unit in a single-earner household. The income-earning spouse isn't paying the home-based spouse. They've divided the contributions within a shared enterprise, and they have substantial mutual obligations if they decide to end the arrangement. Rachel doesn't mean to disrespect traditional marriage. She just does that by accident as she tries to distance herself from prostitution and makes an old-fashioned everything's-economic argument.

In case you're researching Postmodern Jukebox...

... because you enjoyed Joey Cook last night...

... they just put out their version of "Gangsta's Paradise":



If you're wondering if you ever noticed these people before, I'll bet what you heard was the Sad Clown With The Golden Voice version of "Royals."

Even?

"Bailey and Harvey found that even men who fancy My Little Pony cartoon characters are likely to scrap with each other using similar terms and putdowns to 'normal' men, even to the point of using the same terminology, such as 'faggot,' to police their environment."

What's the basis for saying "even"?

They've misplaced Putin!

Where is that man?

You'd think they'd care about public opinion... or... no, you don't need public support when you're shutting down.

"Seattle’s $15 minimum wage law goes into effect on April 1, 2015. As that date approaches, restaurant across the city are making the financial decision to close shop. The Washington Policy Center writes that 'closings have occurred across the city, from Grub in the upscale Queen Anne Hill neighborhood, to Little Uncle in gritty Pioneer Square, to the Boat Street Cafe on Western Avenue near the waterfront.'"

Those places all sound so sweet and trendy, and to maintain their image, if they needed to maintain their image, they would want to support nice, progressive things like a jacked up minimum wage law.

Restaurant owners, expecting to operate on thinner margins, have tried to adapt in several ways including “higher menu prices, cheaper, lower-quality ingredients, reduced opening times, and cutting work hours and firing workers,” according to The Seattle Times and Seattle Eater magazine. As the Washington Policy Center points out, when these strategies are not enough, businesses close, “workers lose their jobs and the neighborhood loses a prized amenity.”

A city dies, but — oh! — what a beautiful corpse!

Why is it so hard to see atheists?

Do they have some God-given invisibility power?

Kevin Bacon is everywhere.

(Via The Telegraph, whither I sojourned to read "Marvin Gaye's daughter says court ruling 'is a miracle,'" because of The Volokh Conspiracy's "Blurred lines and copyright infringement.")

"In order to source her materials, Meza-DesPlas runs her fingers through her hair every morning, holding onto the strands that fall out."

"She also collects her hair from the shower and, when it’s time to get to work, she sorts it from shorter hairs to longer hairs. It’s become a ritual for her."

“I like the dichotomy of using hair because there’s the idea that hair can be sexy and engaging to people and then on the other hand it can be repulsive, like a hair in your soup or a hair on your hotel pillow,” Meza-DesPlas explained....

“Hair has an unruliness to it, we try to control it and make it do certain things and hair has a mind of its own, it snakes out when it wants to and does certain things when it wants to,” she said. “It has a sense of life to it and I feel like my drawings have a sense of life to them."

Making art out of things that are not art materials is a very old idea. The trick is to support the old idea with verbal bullshit. And I'm sure people have made drawings/paintings out of actual bull shit.

Googling for something to link to support my assertion that this is a very old idea, I found a Cracked listicle titled "7 Horrifying Uses of the Human Body to Create Art" ("#4. Drinking Painted Milk and Puking It Onto a Canvas"). And I'm not going to use this precious segment of a Friday morning to research all the feminist art that has been made from menstrual blood.

IN THE COMMENTS: Lemondog says "Nothing new just a different style," pointing to a page showing the work of modern day practitioners of something called Victorian hair art, which I'm guessing had something to do with remembering the dead, similar to hair in a locket, but much more labor intensive. Okay, here's "The Lost Art of Sentimental Hairwork":

"I don't know if David realizes this, but you have the magical mike... this microphone can make me be Little Stevie Wonder again."

Last night on Letterman (via Jaltcoh):



Half a century ago:

As Hillary's inevitability collapses into vulnerability, Sanders steps back and O'Malley steps forward.

It's not that we thought Bernie Sanders was ever a serious candidate. He was always only a place keeper/a voice in the debate, so that Hillary would have to speak to the left as well as the right/an old man in a dim spotlight, crying out I exist!

But the scenery has changed and it's time to exit the stage. He tells Politico:

"If I run it has to be done well.... And if it’s done well, and I run a winning campaign or a strong campaign, it is a real boon to the progressive community, because I believe that the issues I talk about are issues that millions and millions of people believe in. On the other hand, if one were to run a poor campaign, didn’t have a well-funded campaign, didn’t have a good organization, did not do well, because of your own limitations, then that would be a setback for the progressive community."

If...

In other words: Don't look at me.

Meanwhile, Martin O'Malley is shouting ME!:

“Well sure, it would be important to me,” he said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” when asked about Hillary Clinton’s email practices at the State Department. But he said getting the economy working would be more important.

O’Malley said he didn’t “feel compelled to answer” a follow-up question about Clinton’s actions from Bloomberg Politics’ John Heilemann. “Secretary Clinton is perfectly capable of defending her own service in office,” he said.

And Martin O'Malley is perfectly capable of going on the offense. He's right here to topple the quaking edifice of the Hillary Clinton candidacy.

He also addressed his underdog status in the nascent Democratic race for president, saying the “inevitable front-runner is inevitable up until he or she is no longer inevitable. So I think you’re going to see a robust conversation in the Democratic Party,” he said.

O’Malley said American voters are more interested in economic policies than email policies. “After 12 years of declining wages, people want executive leadership that knows how to get things done,” the former governor said, adding that he would make his decision on a presidential run this spring.

There's your candidate, Democrats. You know you need to coalesce around someone other than Hillary, and he's offering himself. MOM is your man.



(That's my screencap of the top of the middle column at Drudge.)

"Woman Slaps Period Pads All Over Her Town For A Very Important Reason."

A HuffPostWomen headline.

1. I'm telling you — and I've told you before — the job of cranking out one "feminist" post after another is not easy. And isn't it just what you'd expect in a phallocracy? — that they'd relegate this job to women. How I pity the slaving female scribes of HuffPostWomen.

2. Great name, by the way: Elonë Kastratia.

3. Is "period pads" really an expression? Never heard it, perhaps because I've sojourned scantily in Europe.

4. Here's a better story about sanitary napkins: "How do you cut the school dropout rate for girls in a remote pocket of Uganda? And how do you create jobs for village women? The answer to both questions: sanitary pads. The story begins in 2009, when 26-year-old Sophia Klumpp and her husband-to-be Paul Grinvalds – she's from the U.S., he's from Canada — began working for a nonprofit group in a rural village in Uganda. Klumpp saw that many of the teenagers in school used threadbare rags or tufts of mattress stuffing as sanitary pads. The embarrassment and the fear of an accident kept many of them away from school for the four or five days of their period each month...."

5. Great name, Klumpp. Good work. Much better than protest-littering in Europe.

Governor Jindal and the state legislature remind James Carville of "2 over-sexed teenagers dry humping in a backseat of car parked behind a levee wondering how far they can go while maintaining their purity or virginity."

"We are literally at the mercy of buffoons and comedians."

"An all-male Harvard final club is facing criticism over a sexually suggestive party invitation..."

"... that university administrators say raises concerns about 'sexism and bigotry' at the institution," reports The Boston Globe:

Members of the Spee Club canceled a pajama-themed party Saturday at their house on Mount Auburn Street amid backlash over an e-mail and video depicting scantily clad women, according to The Harvard Crimson student newspaper.

The invitation encouraged partiers to “stay the night.”

Scantily clad, eh? Scantily clad is the first language issue ever discussed on this blog, here. I clicked through to The Harvard Crimson:

The drawing, titled “Playbear,” depicted a bear wearing a robe, pants, and hat, with its arm around a woman dressed in tights and a sleeveless top. The email linked to a video that included multiple clips of women wearing underwear and male and female models walking a runway, as well as a clip from the song “Stay the Night.” The video, which was previously public on YouTube, was made private and then removed Thursday evening, after it prompted criticism from students and other social club members.

Somebody emailed me that Boston Globe link. So that means this is the kind of thing I'm supposed to have an opinion about [OR: this was an old reader who remembers my fixation on "scantily clad"]. I'm not going to jump through that hoop. I'm not that kind of girl. I'm just going to tell you about the 3 things I googled as my mind circulated around the prospect of writing this blog post:

1. Final Club. Never heard of it. Doesn't seem to be about studying for finals. I see at Wikipedia that this is a special Harvard term. There are lots of social clubs at Harvard, dating back to a time in the mid-19th century when Harvard banned fraternities. Final Clubs were the "last social club a person could join before graduation.... Years ago Harvard College freshmen could join a freshman club, then a 'waiting club,' and finally a 'final club.'" Wikipedia lists 8 all-male clubs and 5 all-female clubs (including "Isis Club (2000 - no affiliation with the Islamic extremist rebel group of the same name)").  Here's an article from 2014 in The Atlantic: "Still White, Still Male: The Anachronism of Harvard's Final Clubs."

2. Playbear. Is this a character I'm supposed to be familiar with? I picture the Owsley acid bear often seen connection with The Grateful Dead, but Google seems to be pointing me to a variation on the Playboy rabbit logo. I feel simultaneously old and young, because back in the days when I went to college — not Harvard, but the University of Michigan — it was the era of the Grateful Dead and LSD. Playboy was a relic of the previous generation (notably, my father, who was a longtime subscriber and unabashed fan). To think that Playboy has currency among young people today, that is just — as we hippies used to say — so weird. But what I love most about my Google search on "playbear" is that among the first few hits was the play "The Bear" by Anton Chekhov. ("You're a boor! A coarse bear! A Bourbon! A monster!")

3. "Stay the Night." This is a song sung by an empowered-looking woman with lyrics that seem to be about the situation in which sex was already had and the question is whether there's going to be a more substantial relationship. That is, staying the night isn't like "Let's Spend the Night Together" — in which The Rolling Stones were inviting the woman to have sex. The singer, Hayley Williams, is asking "Are you gonna stay the night?/Doesn't mean we're bound for life." So, staying the night raises the prospect of being bound for life, that is, married. So it seems to be along the lines of the great old Prince song "Let's Pretend We're Married" ("Ooh, little darlin' if you're free for a couple of hours/If you ain't busy for the next 7 years... Ooh-we-sha-sha-coo-coo-yeah/All the hippies sing together....").

In other words, there was a sniper aiming at the police who were overseeing a protest in Ferguson?

"Two police officers were shot here early Thursday morning as gunfire rang out in front of the police station, throwing into panic what had been a spirited — and at times tense — but largely peaceful night of protests. Demonstrators and police officers alike hit the ground when the gunshots echoed through the crisp air. Many people ran for cover. The police, clad in riot gear, dragged their wounded fellow officers to safety. Others crouched behind cars and walls, drawing their handguns or rifles as they rapidly swiveled their heads every which way to survey their surroundings.... The shots, which witnesses said they believed originated from the top of a hill about 220 yards directly across from the station, came just hours after the Ferguson police chief, Thomas Jackson, announced that he would resign, a move greeted with praise from protesters...."

UPDATE: A CNN "breaking news" email says: "St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar called last night's shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Missouri, an 'ambush,' saying the gunshots were directed at the police."

"Will the students sue? I would. Right now they’re tarred as racists. If they win, they’ll be First Amendment heroes."

Says Instapundit, about the University of Oklahoma students, expelled for singing racist lyrics (to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It").

ADDED: They're self-tarred as racists. Should they use a lawsuit to elevate themselves into heroes? That has risks! They'll be keeping their names and faces in the news, when what would help them most is a fresh start. I recommend a quiet settlement with the university — lawyers help with that too — with a return to the university, where they should earnestly study, make friends, and do good works. Atone. If these young men get inflated into seeing themselves as heroes — or victims — what happens next? Where do their lives go when the free-speech advocates move on? What have they learned? What have they become? I say settle and try to find your way back to a good life, the kind of good life the University of Oklahoma must surely want for all its students. Accord.

"Indiana Democratic lawmaker forced to apologize for sexting with the same woman who was at the center of Anthony Weiner's sexting scandal."

Link.

Details here:

According to Fox411, [Justin] Moed sent graphic sexual texts to [Sydney] Leathers using the Twitter handle "Bitch Boy." The sexting relationship started when Moed responded to Leathers' Twitter post in February in which she said she was looking for a "new, legitimate #findom slave. Must actually be willing to spend money or you are useless to me."...

"I’m a little speechless," [Leathers] said. "I Googled him and found out he’s a lawmaker. Apparently only politicians can pick up on my pheromones.... Is he displaying poor judgment by sexting me of all people? Obviously... But should sexual situations define politicians? They are human, after all."

"Wednesday Addams would have killed these men. It would have been a horrible, comical double murder. But murder nonetheless."

"She wouldn't waste that much time talking. She'd burn their house down."/"And end their suffering so soon? Doesn't sound like the Wednesday I know."/"Classic Addams are more about slow torture than quick killing."

Comments at a HuffPo/Women piece titled "How Wednesday Addams Would React To Catcalling."

How grim it must be to have the assignment to crank out one pop-culture feminist item after another. The mind turns to dark places.

ADDED: I should say that I did not watch the video, which could possibly be funny in a way that doesn't require us to laugh at torture and murder.  Metafilter has some background about the actress in the video and the Metafilter folk seem quite enthused about her grown-up Wednesday routine.

UPDATE: I've watched it, and I don't think it was particularly good or funny.

At the Big Dog Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want.

(The photo is by Meade, from a set of 7. See all 7 here at The Puparazzo.)

"To mount, I kneel down and put my head between Charlotte's legs from the front and then stand up. She doubles over and grabs my waist, so unfortunately for her, her head is pretty much on my backside."

Said Jon Schwochert, the husband half of the winner of the UK's wife-carrying race. Notably, he's from Milwaukee.

"Top-performing boys score higher in math than the best-performing girls in all but two of the 63 countries in which the tests were given, including the United States."

"Test scores in science follow a similar, if somewhat less lopsided, pattern.... But... [t]he most perilous statistic in the O.E.C.D.’s report is about the dismal performance of less educated boys, who are falling far behind girls."

Six out of 10 underachievers in the O.E.C.D. — who fail to meet the baseline standard of proficiency across the tests in math, reading and science — are boys. That includes 15 percent of American boys, compared with only 9 percent of girls. More boys than girls underperform in every country tested except Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.

Across the board, girls tend to score higher than boys in reading, which the O.E.C.D. considers the most important skill, essential for future learning.

At the bottom, the gap is enormous: The worst-performing American girls — who did worse in reading tests than 94 out of every 100 of their peers — scored 49 points more than bottom-ranked boys, a 15 percent gap. And the deficit across the O.E.C.D. was even bigger.

I'm Hillary Clinton, and I'm deleting your email.

It's 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there's a computer in the White House, and it’s got mail. Who do you want answering that email?

2 gapingly inadequate answers at Hillary Clinton's press conference about her emails.

1. John Althouse Cohen focuses on Hillary's answer to the question about "how the public can be assured that she withheld only personal emails, not work-related emails that might be 'unflattering'":

Her answer is that "you would have to ask that question to every single federal employee," since they all have the responsibility to decide whether to use their personal or work email addresses, depending on whether they're talking about something work-related or not....

When she decided which emails to turn over, a long time had passed since she had sent them. She's had the time to reconsider things she said before. She's gotten to see which subjects have become controversial over time. She's had time to reflect on strategy for an upcoming presidential campaign. After all that time, then she decides which emails to call "work-related" — knowing that as long as she assigns that label to a given message, the public will likely see it.

And which kinds of messages have the most potential to be "unflattering" to a political candidate? Messages she sent on the spur of the moment, without much reflection or political calculation. Or messages about something we now know is a hotly debated issue, but that she didn't realize at the time would end up being a big issue.

None of that is true of a federal employee deciding whether to use their work email address or personal email address to send a message.

2. I've been fixated on Hillary's statement she destroyed her personal email, which I noticed she slipped in at the beginning of her press conference. Did she really mean that? Why would a woman who values her friends and family — and who has written 2 memoirs of her life — not want to preserve personal correspondence? The 9-page statement put out by her office is quite clear on this subject. It said, the L.A. Times reports, that there were "62,320 messages that she had sent or received between March 2009 and February 2013" and that "30,490 of these were provided to the State Department, and 31,830 were private records that were destroyed."

Now, maybe it's just a lie. She didn't really destroy these records and is only claiming that she destroyed them so that we won't attempt to gain access to them. But if she really did destroy them, why would she sacrifice so much? It could be that everything she cares about went to Chelsea and a few others who she knows will keep all of her email. Thus, it's retrievable. Maybe it's not such a huge sacrifice. But 31,830 private records destroyed? That sounds quite drastic, and it stokes the suspicion that she did shunt damaging work-related email into the "personal" category, then destroyed it all so that no one could ever check her work.

But if those damaging emails were sent, couldn't the recipients produce them? Hillary is fighting for the presidency, and the door is closing in a year and a half. The press would need not only to acquire these emails from recipients, detect that they were not somewhere in the pile of printed-out 30,490 emails given to the State Department, and then face the defense that it's not really surprising that in the sorting of 62,320 messages an inadvertent miscategorization could be made... and what difference at this point does it make?

The evidence is limited because she limited it, and I'm forced to infer that she is hiding some very important things — important enough that it was worth destroying the evidence. You know, President Nixon did not destroy the Watergate Tapes. He considered it though:

"I had bad advice, bad advice from well-intentioned lawyers who had sort of a cockeyed notion that I would be destroying evidence," Nixon said years later in a videotaped interview. "I should have destroyed them."

Live and learn. 

"A group of unions filed a lawsuit Tuesday seeking to block the newly signed right-to-work law, claiming the law is unconstitutional."

"The lawsuit argues that the right-to-work law is an 'unconstitutional taking of private property' without adequate compensation, which will bring harm to the unions."

The lawsuit says the law requires unions to represent those who are not required to pay union dues, who then receive an inequitable benefit....

In a statement, Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, said... "Allowing some workers to get fair representation for nothing is unfair, un-American and not our Wisconsin."

"Protesters in Madison" are "asking high school students to again leave class to attend Wednesday afternoon's rally" about "over the fatal shooting of an unarmed biracial man by a white police officer."

According to a very brief article at Channel3000, a local press outlet.

I think it's terrible for students to skip school to go to a protest, and whoever is advocating this deserves condemnation. But who, specifically, is calling on students to put protest above education and respect for rules? I need some names. It's not fair to attribute this bad behavior to all of the protesters.

Somewhere, a decision was made to begin referring to the dead 19-year-old (Tony Robinson) as a "biracial man." Perhaps that's how Robinson self-identified or what his family has requested.

Channel3000 also has an article titled "Network journalists say Madison is not Ferguson":

"I’ve been impressed here by the way everyone’s worked together: the police, the police union. And, of course, the family of the man who was killed,” CBS News field producer Mark Hooper said. “All asking for calm. All saying they trust the police department. Everybody working together to keep things calm.”

“One of the things I saw in Madison was older African American males sitting down with younger African American males. And they shared their experiences and fears, and hopes, in order to have a conversation for how they could go forward and how they can take action,” CBS News associate producer Ryan Corsaro said. “And I think that helped the situation to remain calm.”...

“When it came to the (Ferguson) protest side and the police side, things escalated very quickly. And things continued to do so night after night after night,” Corsaro said. “Here in Madison we didn't see the type of fervent anger with uncontrolled crowds. We still had crowds in Madison that were loud and fervent, but they weren't committing any acts of violence or theft or destruction of property.”

"Running for president requires having the mettle to keep your boots on, not change into flip-flops when it starts getting hot."

"I think the flip-flop label hasn’t yet stuck to Walker because unlike Romney, until now he’s had a low profile nationally."

WaPo quotes "Bush ally Ana Navarro" in an article officially titled "Jeb Bush, Scott Walker emerging as front-runners for GOP nod — and rivals."

I believe the unofficial title is: Oh, how we wish the top 2 GOP candidates would destroy each other!

Did you know Scott Walker gave "a subtle poke" to Jeb Bush recently by saying that there should be "a new, fresh approach"? Did you know that a lawyer who is a longtime Bush supporter recently tweeted: "Did u know S Walker was for path to citizenship. Now not? Did u know he was against ethanol subsidy, now he is for? Do u really know him?" Did you know that back in 2012, Bush called Walker "the real deal," but shortly afterwards expressed "growing concerns about the modern GOP and its 'orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement'" and then Walker said that Bush "e-mails him 'quite a bit on things out there," but "Since then, the two have been more cordial than chummy"?

So... they were chummy, but now they're cordial.

"The care and maintenance of the Milwaukee Catholic cemeteries are a fundamental belief of the Catholic faith, and this decision casts a shadow over religious freedom."

"These are sacred places that require perpetual care, and the trust believes both the First Amendment and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protect the exercise of these specific religious beliefs."

But the trust lost in the 7th Circuit yesterday, and that means that $55 million has become available to pay claims brought by victims of sexual abuse against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

At the Mendota Sunset Café...

... you can talk about anything you want.

(And, please, if you've got any shopping you need to do, use The Althouse Amazon Portal.)

"No, it’s not constitutional for the University of Oklahoma to expel students for racist speech."

Eugene Volokh argues strenuously.

"Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams owe Marvin Gaye’s family $7.4 million for ‘Blurred Lines,’ jury decides."

"The trial was notable primarily because it’s unusual that these battles to go to public.... But this case was messy from the beginning. In August 2013, Thicke, Williams and T.I. filed a preemptive suit claiming no infringement."

Then, after Gaye’s family sued them, Thicke made headlines last year when his deposition leaked with his shocking, embarrassing defense: The singer claimed he was “high on Vicodin and alcohol” during the writing process.

As for all those interviews where he boasted about helping write it and how he was specifically inspired by Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up”? Well, he was lying, Thicke said, and just envious that Williams, also the producer of the song, would get all the glory.

Hillary will hold a brief press conference today.

Link.

UPDATE, 1:43 CT: The news media are waiting for Hillary to show up. Here's a live feed. Hillary is late, and there are hundreds of reporters, so of course, they're all filling the air space with lots of talk about Hillary and her emails.

UPDATE, 1:50: What's up with all the flags in front of Picasso's Guernica? Bad visual jumble, but the setup for Hillary's speaking is to the side of that, with a neutral backdrop.

UPDATE, 2:01: Hillary tries to focus the press onto the Iran letter, then turns to the email controversy. 1. She "opted for convenience." 2. "The vast majority of" her work email went to work email addresses and were therefore preserved. 3. She has provided the State Department with all her emails "that could possibly be work related." She seems to be conceding that she has destroyed her personal email. (How are we to know what she shunted into that category?) 4. There's a fourth point, something about wanting things to become public.

UPDATE, 2:05: The first question is from a Turkish reporter, asking why she didn't use 2 different devices... and also whether she's getting attacked because she's female.

UPDATE, 2:07: Andrea Mitchell asks how she decided which emails were public and why people should accept her being arbiter of what was public. Hillary says she's "very confident of the process that we conducted" and that Americans will be satisfied because they'll see the email that is going to be released. These are nonanswers, of course. The questions make the point and hang there.

UPDATE, 2:09: Hillary is asked if she will say that she made a mistake and, if so, what she's learned from that mistake. She says even if she'd had 2 devices to keep work and personal separate, people could still question her decisions what to put on the personal device. There is no real concession of a mistake. "The server will remain private."

UPDATE, 2:12: A questioner raises the oddness of having her own server. Hillary says it was set up for Bill Clinton's office, which made it secure in a way that other private servers might not be. "I feel that I've take unprecedented steps."

UPDATE, 2:14: How do we know you didn't delete work emails? "I went above and beyond what I was requested to do... and people will judge for themselves." (I'll have to finish this later... I've got to run to class.)

UPDATE, 7:12: I'm back. I've watched to the end. There wasn't much more beyond what I'd already described, and it's really too boring to belabor. Maybe tomorrow morning, I'll make some distanced observations. For now, I'm done with this.

"Hall and Oates have sued a company that's making 'Haulin' Oats' granola."

"We'll have to wait to see if the court will make their dreams come true, or whether they'll be told 'I Can't Go For That (No Can Do).'"

"Our gender identity non-discrimination policy states that members and guests may use all gym facilities based on their sincere self-reported gender identity."

"The manner in which this member expressed her concerns about the policy exhibited behavior that management at the Midland club deemed inappropriate and disruptive to other members, which is a violation of the membership agreement and as a result her membership was cancelled."

Do you have a problem with the Planet Fitness policy? If so, why? I've been avoiding talking about this particular controversy of the week. I'm writing about it now because Planet Fitness has put into words something very close to the way I was thinking about it.

First, I don't know how the woman who complained expressed herself (and that is something you need to know to understand what happened). But second, Planet Fitness has a particular brand, using slogans like "Judgment Free Zone" and "no critics." That's what it offers and that, it seems, is what it delivered. There are other gyms. If you want a gym with a strict no-penises-in-the-ladies-room policy, shop for one. If there is none, then the product you want isn't in the marketplace. You can exercise at home.

By the way, I think there are many people who use health clubs and avoid the locker rooms. Show up in your gym clothes, leave in them, and shower and change at home. There are plenty of people who prefer privacy when undressing and bathing, and the same-sexitude of even a traditional locker room is not privacy enough. 

"City of Madison facing cyber attack, likely related to Tony Robinson shooting."

"The attack is similar to those that have happened in other cities after incidents like the controversial fatal shooting of Tony Robinson by a Madison police officer Friday night," the Wisconsin State Journal reported 4 hours ago.

Minutes ago, WKOW.com reported: "Madison Police Spokesperson Joel DeSpain tells 27 News the group 'Anonymous' is claiming they are responsible for the cyber attack." Also: "'Anonymous' posted a YouTube video Sunday that they want all audio recordings released in the recent shooting of Tony Robinson."

"The Wisconsin Union Directorate welcomed Ezra Klein, editor-in-chief of the news website Vox.com, as part of its Distinguished Lecture Series Monday to explore American politics and its downfalls."

"Klein opened his discussion by explaining that one core problem in politics is the way it is portrayed in the media. 'Washington is terrible because we do a shitty job telling you why Washington is terrible.'..."

Although he was not always a hard worker, Klein said finding something he’s passionate about has helped to motivate him.

“The reason I’m into it is that in this moment doing this thing, it is in some weird way easier for me to work hard on it than not,” Klein said. “I just find it really interesting and compelling.”

The Democratic Party's future's so bright, it's gotta wear shades.

Screen capture from Memeorandum earlier this morning:

"'Crop' was the wrong word, implying that the original framing was not used."

"They selected a shot that was framed the way they liked it. The NYT defense is entirely semantic, no?"

"The U.S. military is studying the woman who received a federally funded face transplant after she was attacked by a rampaging chimpanzee..."

"... hoping the findings help seriously disfigured soldiers returning from war."

The Pentagon paid for Charla Nash’s full face transplant in 2011 — two years after she was horribly disfigured by a chimp attack — and is underwriting her follow-up treatment at a combined cost estimated in the hundreds of thousands of dollars....

Nash jokes about sometimes feeling like a science project. But the 61-year-old daughter of an Air Force veteran said she gets real satisfaction out of letting the doctors use her for research, and sees it as an opportunity to help wounded soldiers and "do something good out of all of this bad."

"They asked me, could they? I said, 'Yeah, I'd be thrilled to help out in any way I could,'" said Nash, a former Connecticut resident who now lives on her own in Boston with the help of part-time aides.

Good for her. I'm impressed by her spirit. She looks great in the first picture you see. Her face looks mobile and expressive. Be careful scrolling past the first screen, because there are pre-transplant pictures of Ms. Nash. The chimp attack blinded her, so she has never seen the damage or the vast improvement. Her fight to inhabit a new face is rewarded not by looking in a mirror but by how the face feels from the inside, her relationships with other people, and the knowledge that she is contributing to the treatment of others who are suffering and who will suffer.

"Thank God Sigma Alpha Epsilon's University of Oklahoma chapter dared to go above and beyond to prove their racism."

"Thank God they actually sang a song. Because they pretty much could have done anything else without anybody suspending them or even complaining about racist behavior. Think about the chant: 'There will never be a n**** SAE.' You think they just came up with that?"

Writes Elie Mystal at Above the Law.

UPDATE: Breaking news email from CNN:

Two University of Oklahoma students were expelled today for their alleged "leadership role" in a racist chant by Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members, a decision that President David Boren says speaks to his school's "zero tolerance" policy for such "threatening racist behavior."

The painter of the Chinese propaganda image "Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland" has become the Vatican's portrait artist.

The story of Shen Jiawei:

Shen was in his final year in high school when Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution, the 1966-1976 campaign to restore ideological purity to China’s anti-capitalist revolution. His hopes of attending art school dashed with the closure of China’s universities, Shen joined the Red Guards and then the People’s Liberation Army, fully embracing the communist spirit of the times. In the PLA, his self-taught artistic talents were recognized, and he became one of the legions of propaganda artists who glorified workers, farmers, and soldiers in the Socialist Realism style of Soviet propaganda.

In 1974, during a tour of duty in remote Heilongjiang Province, Shen painted his most famous work, “Standing Guard for Our Great Motherland,” featuring three soldiers guarding the Sino-Soviet border from a watchtower. The piece was included in a 1974 exhibition at the National Art Museum in Beijing that was organized by Mao’s wife, who personally praised it.

Shen recalls, though, that when he eventually saw it hanging in the museum, he was stunned: The soldiers’ faces had been altered to adhere to the regime’s standards for revolutionary art: Their faces were fatter and redder to make them appear more healthy and heroic.

With the more robust soldiers in place, the picture was reproduced and turned into propaganda posters and Shen shot to fame; in the 1970s and ’80s, he was one of the best-known artists in China.

What are we to think of the Vatican's choice of this man? If Shen paints the Pope, is it propaganda? Of course, it's propaganda. All official portraiture is propaganda! To say it's not propaganda is propaganda.

Shen laughs and says, "I stopped my propaganda work in the 1970s.... Even Church commission work, this is part of normal artwork, part of commission, and part of history." Yes, normal artwork, commissioned by powerful institutions and individuals, is propaganda. Whether Pope Francis is a saint or a devil or somewhere in between, this is propaganda:



ADDED: All right, Mr. Shen, I'm ready for my portrait...

"The story that I’m trying to create for myself, just through my life, is I want to be the granddaddy of mean right-wing street art, guerrilla art."

"I want people to say five or 10 years from now, 'Yeah, that guy Sabo, he really influenced me.' ... I just want to cement that for myself."

The new U.S. News law school ranking is out.

Read and react.

My school stayed in exactly the same place, so... boring. Good boring, I guess. An interesting thing is that where we are is one slot below UC Irvine which appears in the ranking for the first time:

UC Irvine Law debuts at 30: University of California’s Irvine School of Law opened its doors in 2009, but this is the first time it was eligible to be ranked. The school was granted full accreditation by the American Bar Association in June. So how did it do? Not too shabby. It placed 30th, just behind William & Mary and a spot ahead of its sister public school, University of California-Davis.

ADDED: From the Above the Law analysis:

There’s a three-way tie for #31, a six-way tie for #34, a four-way tie for #42, a three-way tie for #47, a tie for #50, a four-way tie for #52, a three-way tie for #56, a four-way tie for #59, a four-way tie for #63, a four-way tie for #67, a four-way tie for #71, a three-way tie for #75, a four-way tie for #78, a five-way tie for #82, a seven-way tie for #87, and an eight-way tie for #94. There are 22 rankings ties within the Top 100 alone. UGH!

What the hell is with all of these ties?

All those ties are going to play havoc with the minds of applicants who were planning to make their decisions based on ranking.

On that last ski across Lake Mendota...

... please share whatever it is that comes to mind.

Just call me Elaine Glad.

I'm using the "Chelsea Clinton Fake E-Mail Name Generator: your mother’s middle name and the first thing you see when you open the kitchen drawer."

"The Islamic State released a new recruitment video today with deaf fighters using sign language asking other deaf followers to join them."

"While one message is that being being deaf is not an excuse not to come and fight, I think there's a more subtle and deeper one...." writes Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft.

This isn't a blood and gore video designed for adrenaline junkies. It's a video aimed at those seeking acceptance and a family. Its message is "You have a home with us, we will welcome you and accept you and you will be one of us."

It's too bad the video is for ISIS. Otherwise it would be a great public service announcement for the hearing impaired, showing prospective employers that being deaf doesn't hold them back and they can do a job just as well as the non-hearing impaired, while at the same time showing fellow deaf citizens and the rest of us that the inability to hear or speak doesn't stand in the way of leading a fulfilling and joyful life.

"We have come to a strange place in our separation-of-powers jurisprudence."

"Confronted with a statute that authorizes a putatively private market participant to work hand-in-hand with an executive agency to craft rules that have the force and effect of law, our primary question—indeed, the primary question the parties ask us to answer—is whether that market participant is subject to an adequate measure of control by the Federal Government. We never even glance at the Constitution to see what it says about how this authority must be exercised and by whom."

So begins the concurring opinion by Clarence Thomas in the just-issued Department of Transportation v. Association of American Railroads. 

Here's Sasha Volokh with some detail on the case, in which he'd filed an amicus brief:

I argued in my brief that, regardless whether Amtrak is public or private, the delegation is fine under conventional non-delegation doctrine: Currin v. Wallace (1939) validated a delegation to a private actor, and so the usual “intelligible principle” test applies. Under that test, the delegation is valid because Amtrak’s power is sufficiently constrained by the requirement that it act to maximize profits....

[The majority Court decided] the case based on the boringest, most Amtrak-specific grounds... Justice Alito’s concurrence is interesting and deserves a separate post. Justice Thomas’s concurrence in the judgment provides the complete rethinking of the non-delegation doctrine on originalist grounds....

Beautiful ice conditions on Lake Michigan in March — speedskating past icebergs and the Grand Haven Lighthouse.

Via Metafilter:



Grand Haven Lighthouse is just about exactly due east across the lake from Milwaukee.

ADDED: Those conditions — on March 2d — look very similar to the wonderful conditions we experienced on Lake Mendota in early January 2011, when Meade video'd me slow-skating.

AND: It's funny to put this up today. Winter can be lovely, but we're happy that winter gave way to spring here yesterday, as if it got the cue from the switch to daylight saving time. Temperatures at 49 and over all week, with lots of sun. Meade took the ice skates out of the car yesterday and stowed them in the house somewhere.

Scott Walker signs the Right-to-Work bill.

Watch it live here, right now.

8:45 CT: They're milling about on a factory floor in Brown Deer as jaunty Latin music plays over the PA system. I assume it's a PA system and not an off-camera combo.



9:01: Where is he? He's late! Late for Right to Work.



9:02: Ah, here he is.



9:05: "This is one more big tool," Walker says of what he's calling the "freedom to work" law (not "right to work," for whatever reason).



9:09: He's good at speaking without a teleprompter or a lectern.

9:12: He's saying "hardworking people of Wisconsin" and mentioning specific hardworking people so I know he's bringing it in for a landing.

9:13: He sits down at the little table and starts using multiple pens to sign the bill.



9:20: Bills signed, pens distributed, back to milling about. Walker hangs around talking to the speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly Robin Vos.



Other people there look like they're ready to go but can't go until he goes.

9:30: The deed is done!

"[Y]ou think you can take it all, like, 'oh my god, that’s so funny, somebody called me a fat cow who deserves to be dragged through the street,' but it does affect you internally."

Said Lena Dunham, about everybody who uses Twitter — "whether you have a million followers or whether you have seven followers, because we all deal with the complexity of people being able to say things to you anonymously from behind the veil of the internet."

"I was like ‘the spelling’s so bad, I’m not taking these people seriously; they have eggs for avatars, I don’t care!’ And you walk through the day and these horrible phrases are being repeated through your head… There are things that affect me; I’m weird, I’m affected by violence, threats of rape, I’m a mess!"

Her solution is not to look at Twitter at all. She writes her own tweets (she says), but sends them to someone else to post for her and to let her "know if there’s an important response."

This corresponds to what I was saying to that philosophy professor, quoted in in the NYT, who was dismayed about the insults she read about herself on Yik Yak. Don't look at it! Stop mentally engaging with it.

And this is a cue to quote 2 of my mother's favorite expressions: 1. "You're only encouraging them," and 2. "He's just trying to get a rise out of you."

"People need to be emotional. People need to be angry. But we can't tear this great city apart when a situation like this occurs."

Said Boys and Girls Club CEO Michael Johnson, speaking about the fatal shooting of a black teenager by a police officer here in Madison last Friday, heard in a video accompanying a news article titled "Mourners hold vigil for Robinson; Group makes demands/Shooting under investigation."

ADDED: The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story titled "Man dead in Madison police shooting had been subject of violence complaints," that begins:

According to a department incident report, Robinson, then 18, was arrested [on April 25] with the two other men and one woman shortly before 6 a.m. as they were fleeing an apartment with electronics, a shotgun and other property. Police were called when a witness saw several men, one armed with a long gun, enter the building. No injuries were reported in the case, police said. Robinson pleaded guilty to felony armed robbery and received three years of probation, according to court records.

"Toddler Survives 13 Hours in Upside-Down Car in Frigid Utah River."

"Emergency crews tipped the car on its side and found the baby in a car seat in the back... The baby's mother, Lynn Jennifer Groesbeck, 25, was found dead in the driver's seat...."

"The baby was in a car seat in the backseat on the passenger side... The vehicle was on its top, so the car seat could have been out of the water. The car was on the embankment, so I don't know how much water was getting into the car."... [T]he water was so cold that the rescue crew members could only stay in for short periods of time.

"George W Bush cropped out of New York Times front cover image of Selma march."

"US newspaper accused of 'liberal bias' after using image of Selma anniversary march on front page showing Barack and Michelle Obama, but with George and Laura Bush missing."

"I have been defamed, my reputation besmirched. I have been sexually harassed and verbally abused... am about ready to hire a lawyer."

Wrote the professor who saw what her students were writing about her in Yik Yak, quoted in a NYT article about an app that displays anonymous comments.

I think this is the kind of thing professors should simply ignore. There's meaningless, mindless chatter out there. Getting mad or hurt about it is pointless. It's like worrying about every last thought that might be rattling about in the students' head. Chalk it up to freedom and move on. Teach better classes. Count yourself lucky to be a professor in the first place. Take advantage of the opportunity to grow a thicker skin. It's quite useful!

"As a constitutional law professor myself, I'd like to say that being a constitutional law professor is likely to lead you to disrespect the layperson's belief that there are any significant constitutional limits on presidential power."

"At least being a governor, a person learns respect for the role of state government and one gets executive experience. A conlawprof doesn't have to run anything of any significance. It's a one-person show and it's mostly based on observing how other people have manipulated language over the years. I think that's a dangerous background!"

A comment I left in a Facebook thread based on that WaPo titled "Scott Walker gets a crash course in foreign policy," which displays in Facebook with the decidedly different title "The making of Scott Walker, statesman." Upthread, there was discussion of Obama's lack of foreign policy experience and a suggestion that being a conlawprof might have counted for something.

"So, it's strange credibility to believe that if you're on your way to Libya to discuss Libyan policy that there's not a single document that has been turned over to Congress."

On "Face the Nation" today, Bob Schieffer, interviewed Congressman Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the committee investigating the Hillary e-mail controversy. This is what I found most striking:

"Fridge caught sending spam emails in botnet attack."

"Fridge caught sending spam emails in botnet attack."

Via "My toaster hates you."

Out in the hinterlands of Wisconsin.

Past Titus Lane...



... and Argue Road...



... we noticed some things in decline ...

This morning on "Fox News Sunday," Hillary Clinton's surrogates failed her badly.

Earlier today, I said that "Lanny Davis (on 'Fox News Sunday') was the definition of flop sweat," and now I have the transcript. You need the video [HERE] to get the full effect of Davis's agitation and aggression, which is heightened by his blindingly white, fake-looking teeth. Davis was combative and insulting, and resorted to assertions like: "Hillary Clinton today is the most popular politician in the country. And you're discussing a non-scandal, nothing illegal, full access. And it's all politics."

Also on the show to defend Hillary was Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. Like Davis, she let the stress show and it undercut her arguments (especially as Kimberley Strassel, sitting right next to her, kept giving her the stink eye and undercutting her with quick surgical strikes):

WALLACE: [T]he rules were pretty clear, your e-mails should be preserved.... You think that's with keeping of the spirit if you don't turn these over while you're secretary of state, you don't turn them over when you leave as secretary of state? You don't turn them over until two years after you leave, and it's only after the State Department lawyers confront you?

TANDEN: OK, that's also faster than any previous secretary of state passed over the e-mails... So, I'm saying that now we'll be able to see, turned over, taking the act of actually turning over the e-mails to the public. I think let's, you know, I know it's hard to imagine, but let's take a breath, she what are in those e-mails and then decide.

STRASSEL: Well, the e-mails she's chosen to give to the State Department.

TANDEN: Well, just to be clear about this. If a cabinet secretary today was using private and public e-mail, right, and the other cabinet secretary, they're making the decision when they decide to use public e-mail, right? So, that's the decision they're making. There's no private -- there's no public record of their private e-mail.

STRASSEL: Which is exactly why the Obama administration said use your government e-mail –

TANDEN: Where appropriate –

STRASSEL: -- because these e-mails belong to the public. They don't belong to them.

TANDEN: Exactly. And she's turning them over. So, that's what we'll see.

STRASSEL: The ones she chose to turn in.

Strassel ruled that exchange.

Wallace then turned to George Will and asks him "How big a deal is this?"

GEORGE WILL: It's big because it is axiomatic that the worst political scandals are those that reinforce a pre-existing negative perception... The Clintons come trailing clouds of entitlement and concealment, and legalistic, Jesuitical reasoning, the kind of people who could find a loophole in a stop sign. The -- her obvious motive was to conceal. You conceal in order to control. And that's what makes this literally, strictly speaking, Orwellian. In George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Oceania's regime, the totalitarian regime had an axiom, "He who controls the past controls the future. And he who controls the present controls the past." This is a way of controlling what we will know about the history of our country and it is deeply sinister.

Tanden attempts damage control and it's quite painful (though funny):

TANDEN: Orwell, sinister, I mean, why don't we ask her, instead of attacking and deriding. See the e-mail and then make judgment.

STRASSEL: Why do you think she did it?

WALLACE: But don't you agree that there's a problem –

TANDEN: This is unbelievable to me, Orwellian. We can all use these words –

WALLACE: -- when the e-mails we're going to see, these 55,000 pages, are only what she and her lawyers decided to turn over.

TANDEN: Again, they're the public e-mails. She has e-mails I'm sure about the bridesmaids dresses. Do we have a right to see those e-mails? She has friends like me that said, how is my sister doing? Do we have the right to see those?

See how Tanden is unwittingly making the argument against Clinton? It's quite obvious at this point that Clinton has reserved for herself the power to determine which of the mixed public and private emails will be called public and handed over. What's to stop her from putting anything she doesn't want us to see in the private category? Benghazi... bridesmaids... what's the difference?  Wallace drives this home:

WALLACE: No, but I'm saying to you that she sat there -- what if there's an e-mail about Benghazi and she gets –

TANDEN: And that's what the lawyers will see those, exactly.

WALLACE: Not if she didn't turn them over.

TANDEN: The State Department going to see those e-mails and any e-mail on Benghazi to a public e-mail, other people had documentation as well.

STRASSEL: So, you're saying the State Department is going to see her server?

TANDEN: No, I'm saying that –

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: What do you think bout the idea of allowing an independent person to go in as you heard Lanny Davis talk about to see her server?

TANDEN: So, I would just see what the e-mails we have are and make decisions on that. We have two years into a presidential cycle, why don't we actually get these e-mails out in the public and see if there's a -- we will have more public e-mails. We'll have more e-mails public than any secretaries of state in the history –

STRASSEL: Possibly none that actually matter?

TANDEN: No, not possibly none that actually matter.

WALLACE: Let me bring Juan in-- Juan.

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I must say first of all, Hillary Clinton seems to me to be very entitled and privileged and she broke the rules. So, I don't think there are any questions. As to whether or not she broke the law, that's not clear.

WALLACE: I agree.

WILLIAMS: But I will say this, in terms of the politics of 2016, which is really what I think we're driving at here, is that Hillary Clinton scares Republicans to death. I think that's what we've seen. Initially Democrats, including the Obama White House this week, did not defend Hillary Clinton, because the Obama White House wanted to make it clear they had set a clear rules of the road for Hillary Clinton, and they backed off. There was radio silence. I was over there this week. Radio silence on this. But by the end of the week, with all of this talk of subpoenas on Benghazi, and then all of the stuff about, doesn't this remind you of how technical and Orwellian the Clintons are -- suddenly, the Democrats, and we see this with Neera this morning, have become more defensive. And I think the idea is, you know what? Republicans are feasting, they are in a frenzy. They think this is Watergate redux, and it's not.

WALLACE: OK. But you know sometimes when you feast, it's Thanksgiving.

"There was outrage in a 4-hour rally as hundreds of marchers chanted 'The whole damn system is guilty as hell'... "

"... as they moved from Downtown to 1125 Williamson St., where Robinson of Madison was shot by a white officer."

“If you want me to be poised and patient and polite, you’re not getting that today,” said [Kaleem Caire, former head of the Urban League of Greater Madison and founder of One City Early Learning Center], his voice rising with passion. “When you walk out of here today I don’t want to have unity, I want to have action. I want to have purpose. I’m tired of holding hands. Hold these babies’ hands.”

Caire said his anger grew in recent days as he heard about the gang-related shooting last Saturday outside West Towne Mall and then about another man firing shots at police officers Friday on the Southwest Side.

“When these boys shot up that mall, I wanted to round them up and give them an old-fashioned butt whuppin’,” he said. “I am dead serious. You can’t come into this city and do this mess. But we don’t tell our kids this. Our own people don’t do enough for our kids. We sit back and let tragedy strike.”

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"Someone told me some secrets early on about living. You have to remind yourself that you can do the very best you can when you’re very, very relaxed."

"No matter what it is, no matter what your job is, the more relaxed you are, the better you are. That’s sort of why I got into acting. I realized that the more fun I had, the better I did it, and I thought, Well, that’s a job I can be proud of. I’d be proud to have that job, if I had to go to work and say, ‘No matter what my condition or what my mood is, no matter how I feel about what’s going on in my life, if I can relax myself and enjoy what I’m doing and have fun with it, then I can do my job really well.’ And it’s changed my life, learning that. And it’s made me better at what I do. I’m not the greatest or anything. But I really enjoy what I do."

A quote from Bill Murray, used to compose the 6th of 7 rules for "Living a Bill Murray Life," which Instapundit linked to this morning. The whole thing is very entertaining, but I found that the most intriguing rule. I'm not sure I trust that rule. Not for every job anyway. From my perspective, for example, it's a great rule for blogging, but it's close to unethical for teaching, depending on your idea of fun.

A Drudge screen-grab.

This jumped off the page at me:



Elements that caught my attention: 1. Cropping the photo to give the impression that the big word over Hillary's head is "universe," as if she's running for Mistress of the Universe, 2. The crushing banality of a daughter defending her mother, 3. The atrocious green "housecoat" Hillary has on and its contrast with Chelsea's studiously youthful get-up, 4. Hillary's grandiose hail-to-the-people wave in contrast with Chelsea's little-girl ooh-I-see-somebody-I-know-in-the-crowd wave, 5. The subtle similarities and differences between Chelsea's big toothy grin and Warren Beatty's famous smile, 6. The sense that Warren Beatty stands in for and represents all of the Lotharios of this world, including the (Bill) Clinton fool, 7. I wrote "the (Bill) Clinton fool" because the words, as cropped, behind Chelsea's head are "the Clinton fou," and fou = fool, 8. And now I'm getting into weird flights of possibly over-educated fancy, but the Swedish playright August Strindberg wrote an autobiographical novel in French that was titled "Le Plaidoyer d'un fou," which translates to "The Defense of a Fool." Wikipedia says (somewhat ineptly):

As his stormy marriage to Siri von Essen was coming to an end, August Strindberg feared there was a secret conspiracy between the women of Europe, and they were planning to silence him by conducting a campaign to make people believe he was insane. Strindberg therefore decided to hurridly write a book revealing the truths about the marriage.

Oh, what fun we would have if Bill Clinton came to believe there was a vast female conspiracy that was planning to silence him by convincing us that he's insane and he had to hurriedly write a book to reveal the truths about his marriage.