"A former law student has won a bid in bankruptcy court to discharge nearly $340,000 in education debt..."

"... because her diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome rendered her unable to repay the loans."

[Carol] Todd, who received her high school general equivalency diploma during the late 1980s, at the age of 39, began attending law school in 1992 but did not finish, according to the opinion. She went on to obtain a master's degree from Towson University and a Ph.D. from an unaccredited online school in 2007. She filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2009. At the time of her trial, she was 63 and owed $339,361 to three student loan creditors....

"[T]o expect Ms. Todd to ever break the grip of Autism and meaningfully channel her energies toward tasks that are not in some way either dictated, or circumscribed, by the demands of her disorder would be to dream the impossible dream," [wrote U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Gordon.

It's extremely unusual for student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. This is one individual's case, but it makes me wonder about the many people with mental disabilities who take on education debt. Does the judge mean to send them the message that they are dreaming an impossible dream?

IN THE COMMENTS: Patrick answers my question:

No, but it sends the banks a message that they risk losing their money if they don't discriminate against people with mental illness.

Peonies, today.

George Lucas: "I’ve been surprised to see some people characterize this as vindictive."

"I wouldn’t waste my time or money just to try and upset the neighbors."

Very funny. The liberals of Marin County blocked his expansion of his film studios, and he gave up and said he'd sell the land to a developer to bring "low income housing" to the area.

Ha ha ha. Whatever you do... don't call them "hot tubbers."

"Nonlegal Arguments for Upholding the Individual Mandate."

Ilya Somin describes and refutes arguments based on enhancing the Court's "legitimacy," avoiding the appearance of "partisanship," and avoiding "judicial activism." Actually, calling these arguments "nonlegal" is part of the refutation.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to win the 5 June 2012 recall election: 90%.

It's just Intrade.

Men are turning to jobs in fields long dominated by women.

The NYT reports:

[T]he trend has spread among men of nearly all races and ages, more than a third of whom have a college degree. In fact, the shift is most pronounced among young, white, college-educated men...

To the extent that the shift to “women’s work” has been accelerated by recession, the change may reverse when the economy recovers. “Are boys today saying, ‘I want to grow up and be a nurse?’ ” asked Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress. “Or are they saying, ‘I want a job that’s stable and recession proof?’ ” 

In interviews, however, about two dozen men played down the economic considerations, saying that the stigma associated with choosing such jobs had faded, and that the jobs were appealing not just because they offered stable employment, but because they were more satisfying....

Several men cited the same reasons for seeking out pink-collar work that have drawn women to such careers: less stress and more time at home. At John G. Osborne Elementary, Adrian Ortiz, 42, joked that he was one of the few Mexicans who made more in his native country, where he was a hard-working lawyer, than he did in the United States as a kindergarten teacher in a bilingual classroom. “Now,” he said, “my priorities are family, 100 percent.”

"Democratic Newark Mayor Cory Booker... [t]he articulate, reform-minded, anti-partisan urban legislator..."

"... known for his chummy relationship with Republican Gov. Chris Christie and heat-of-the-moment heroics, looks to have found himself tangled with Democratic Party elite over the last 24 hours."

Why did the two-term mayor, who many considered the likely first African-American president pre-Obama 2004 convention speech, draw the ire of his fellow Democrats? During an appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday, Booker called the Obama campaign’s attack against private equity “nauseating,” going on to compare the strategy to planned media attacks on the president by outside conservative groups referencing Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Within hours the mayor put together a nearly 4-minute Youtube soundbite clarifying his support for the president and the vetting of presumptive GOP-nominee Mitt Romney’s business record, but still reiterated his frustration with negative campaigning and his feeling of nausea. Many have speculated that Booker’s video explanation came following immediate behind-closed-door rebukes from DNC and Obama campaign headquarters, as the Morning Joe men have since compared the footage to a ‘hostage video.'

ADDED: Allahpundit asks the key question: Why did Booker do it? Why did he go so "wildly, wildly off-message, so much so as to draw a public rebuke from Axelrod and a thinly veiled one from The One himself"?

I assume his thinking was that, since he’s planning to run for higher office sooner or later, he should take advantage of his MTP spotlight to make a splash with potential Wall Street donors. He was bound to tick off a bunch of Obama campaign staff and other powerful Democrats in the process, but he knows they’ll forgive him soon enough if he looks primed to beat Christie or replace Lautenberg in the Senate.

Isn't he better off now than he was before?

"On Friday, a company called SceneTap flipped the on switch enabling cameras installed in around 20 bars to monitor how full the venues are..."

"... the mix of men and women, their ages — and to make all this information available live via an iPhone or Android app. Privacy advocates are unimpressed, though, as the only hint that people are being monitored is via tiny stickers on the windows."

Sorry, I think this is a great idea. I checked out the website, and it's not just 20 bars in San Francisco. They've got lots of cities, including Madison, with 6 bars. I think it's great to be able to see which places are crowded, what the sex balance is, and what's the average age of the men and, separately, the women. This is very helpful information for customers and for businesses. I approve!

As for privacy, people are out in public, and they know they are being looked at. Even though cameras are being used to capture faces and the faces are analyzed for sex and age, no one's picture (or name) goes up on the website. It's simply technology, cleverly applied for a useful purpose.

Dharun Ravi gets 30 days in jail (for spying on his roommate with a webcam).

The maximum sentence was 10 years in prison. The judge criticized Ravi for a while before announcing the light sentence:

“You lied to your roommate who placed his trust in you without any conditions, and you violated it,” the judge, Glenn Berman of State Superior Court, said. “I haven’t heard you apologize once.”

In addition to jail, Judge Berman sentenced Mr. Ravi to three years’ probation, 300 hours of community service, counseling about cyberbullying and alternate lifestyles and a $10,000 probation fee, to be used to help victims of bias crimes.

Counseling about alternative lifestyles? How is that meted out? Government indoctrination on lifestyles?

Prosecutors appeared angry — they and the Clementi family canceled a planned post-sentencing news conference — and said they would appeal...

Steven Goldstein, the chairman of Garden State Equality, a prominent New Jersey gay rights group, was displeased. “We have opposed throwing the book at Dharun Ravi,” he said in a statement. “But we have similarly rejected the other extreme, that Ravi should have gotten no jail time at all, and today’s sentencing is closer to that extreme than the other. This was not merely a childhood prank gone awry. This was not a crime without bias.”...

Mr. Ravi, who is a legal resident of the United States but a citizen of India, could face deportation, but the judge said he would add a letter to his record encouraging the immigration authorities not to deport him.

Click the Dharun Ravi tag if you want to know more about what I think about this case. Basically: I think the judge did the right thing, which is punish him appropriately for the crime he committed. Making a scapegoat or an "example" out of him is an abuse of the legal process.

The new wave of purple.

Just as the allium — seen here in the cast shadows — fade to green-brown, the irises pop.

"Don't get too excited, Meade. It will be this kind of kiss."

I wrote in September 2008 (before I'd met Meade in person) in the comments to a post based on the NYT headline "Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates," which I'd said "put a picture in my head of Obama releasing an army of programmed fembots." That was some crazy "war on women" the last time around.

I love running across old byplay between me and Meade. And I also love running across these old political things that bear some relationship to what's happening today. But the women stuff was much more fascinating back then, when Obama had crushed women's dreams of the first woman President and McCain had released The Palin.

The new headline, "Obama Camp Turns to Clinton to Counter Palin," flips the image. It's not Obama, but the Obama camp -- a large, faceless group -- and now it's not a large, faceless group of women, but one particular woman, Hillary. Don't pin anything directly on Obama, and don't disrespect women by portraying them as nonindividuals.

Can you guess what got me to that old post? I'd searched my blog for the word "faceless" — trying to get to this blog post I'd written a week or so ago about the 3 times Obama called people "faceless" in "Dreams From My Father." That post followed on an inquiry into the story (from Obama's book) about how, as a boy, he'd shouted at and shoved a little girl.

There were faces then — big faces. Hillary. Sarah.

I Am Big, It's the Pictures That Got Small
Sunset Blvd. at MOVIECLIPS.com

They used to be big. It's the politics that got small.

"Ron Paul Decisively Wins Minnesota..."

"... and Carries Delegates in Multiple Other States."

Obama 47%, Romney 44% — the Rasmussen daily tracking poll...

... reverses direction.

And the approval/disapproval tips back toward approval.

The same-sex marriage and born-in-Kenya distractions are working?

Another new Rasmussen poll: "51% Predict U.S. Government Will Go Bankrupt Before Budget Is Balanced."

Relax!

A second-grader's idea for the student newspaper: "How about a story about why people are transgendered?"

Described, in the WaPo, by a mother who was volunteering in her son's class.

I had no idea that the girl’s younger sister was about to officially become her little brother.

The next day, my son came home from school and said: “Mom, you know how you really didn’t know what transgender is? It’s just when you have a boy mind in a girl body. Duh.”...

At a birthday party a few weeks later, I saw the transformation. The 4-year-old’s hair was shorn, the clothes were mini-macho and the child was bouncing and wrestling with the pack....

A week later, the mother e-mailed me, asking whether The Post would be interested in doing a piece on their struggle....

ADDED: Whatever happened to just being a tomboy?

Google hires lawprof blogger Eugene Volokh to make the argument that Google search results are protected speech.

There's no pending case, but Google anticipates litigation... and regulation:

[Volokh's] argument, fundamentally, is that when Google assembles search results, it is communicating with its readers, and making selections about what to communicate. In that way, it is the same as a print newspaper that prioritizes news on its front page; a guidebook that selects local attractions to highlight; or an online news aggregator like the Drudge Report.
Yes, the decisions by those kinds of organizations are made by people, while Google’s search results are made by computers that apply a supersecret algorithm, but who created that algorithm? Mr. Volokh asks.

40,000+ "ultra-Orthodox Jewish men, all dressed in black suits and white shirts" rally — at the Mets' stadium — about "the dangers of the Internet."

The NYT reports:

For the attendees, many of whom said they came at the instructions of their rabbis, it was a chance to hear about a moral topic considered gravely important in their community: the potential problems that can stem from access to pornography and other explicit content on the uncensored, often incendiary Web....

“Desires are out there,” [said Shlomo Cohen, 24, of Toronto], adding that men could be particularly susceptible. “We have to learn how to control ourselves.”...

Eytan Kobre, a spokesman for the event, delivered a more intense message to reporters outside the stadium. “The siren song of the Internet entices us!” he pronounced in a booming voice. “It brings out the worst of us!”