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On a visit to New Zealand, Princess Anne has been attacked, in language too fruity for this column, for her dress sense, “cottage loaf” coiffeur and lack of height and personality. All this from a Brit who has chosen to live in a country so far removed from the cutting edge of anything, that a sheep-shearing competition passes for high culture.

Nobody out-snoots the British.

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Why, wonders Joe Weisenthal, are we only finding out about this now? The National Restaurant Association sought the measure — which constricts the freedom of its own membership — in hopes of gaining uniformity instead of “a potential patchwork of conflicting requirements adopted by states and cities,” to quote the Times. It can be reliably predicted, though, that the ever-growing battalions of “food policy advocates” will home-made cherry pie white backgroundnot feel constrained by any supposed national deal to refrain from pushing for further piecemeal extension of state and local requirements, thus rendering any seeming uniformity but temporary.

The requirement kicks in when a restaurant chain reaches ten units, and will foreseeably make it harder for 15-unit local chains to compete with the 1,500-unit behemoths who can spread the nontrivial costs of compliance over a much larger base. Like earlier calorie-labeling laws, it will also encourage standardization by making it hazardous for owners not to prescribe and control, e.g., precisely how much topping local employees are to spread on each sandwich or pizza. Earlier here.

People just never learn.

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On the one hand, correlation does not imply causation.

On the other, it doesn’t surprise me a bit.

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I am not making this up.

Bryan Caplan is puzzled.

I would add a fifth possibility: People on the Left, for all their soi-disant intelligence, are actually rather dimwitted and unperceptive — which is why they’re on the Left in the first place.

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By ‘jobs’ of course they mean ‘non-government jobs’.

Unionized workers receive considerably more generous retirement benefits, averaging $2.42 an hour, than nonunion workers, who get just 75 cents an hour. State and local government workers receive $3.19 an hour toward retirement benefits.

As John Derbyshire never ceases to say, ‘Get a government job!’

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Why not? It works for Muslims.

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First, it alleges that Congress, in passing the bill, overstepped its authority; that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not grant Congress the power to pass so sweeping a law;

Second, the plaintiffs allege something we, frankly, didn’t see coming — that the bill deprives the states a “Republican Form of Government,” in violation of Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution;

Third, it asserts that in passing the law, the feds have encroached on state sovereignty, in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution;

Fourth, it alleges that the provision of the bill mandating that all Americans purchase health care or be fined constitutes an unconstitutional tax that violates Article I, Sections 2 and 9.

Well, that didn’t take long. Of course, under the old system, whereby the Senators were chosen by the state legislatures rather than the rabble, this health care takeover would have been laughed out of the Senate. (As, indeed, much of the stupider Federal legislation of the past 80 years would have been.)

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Anybody who lives in an area with a Home Owner’s Association is a willing slave and ought to be traded to the Europeans.

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Ah, those hotblooded Italians….

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Teachers are proposing industrial action and a wave of protests to block an expansion of academies and the creation of new-style “free schools”.

In Brit-speak, ‘industrial action’ means strikes and ancillary union hooliganism. Obviously the ‘teachers’ are more interested in preserving their grip on educational jobs than in actually, you know, producing educated children.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Fox News reported the allegations as facts, even though not a single video documenting the allegation supports them. It took the word of the Democratic congressmen at face value without noting the efforts Democratic partisans to brand opposition to Obamacare and the rest of the program of national socialism as racist. Given the partisan animus of those making the allegations and the lack of evidence supporting them, I think Fox News made a serious mistake in reporting the allegations as facts.

As they say, we report, you decide. When Fox News reported the allegations as facts over the weekend, it decided rather than reported.

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Gee, yet another thing they can sell to Red China.

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The researchers said lung cancer in non-smokers was an increasing problem but the causes were not well understood.

Not according to the second-hand-smoke nanny-staters.

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Not your father’s Britain.

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And it doesn’t even require you to eat cheese and surrender.

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But that’s what they do best.

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Hint: Not a good thing.

In the 1980s, the popcorn button on the microwave seemed like the last word in convenience. Now, ovens ranging from countertop convection to wall models come equipped with a chicken-nugget button.

Even the manufacturers of conventional ovens realize there is no avoiding the frozen pizza. Frigidaire has a one-punch pizza button right next to the chicken-nugget button on both its wall-mount and traditional ranges.

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Not to mention being a total pain in the ass.

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Europeans are beginning to suspect that an America more like Europe isn’t necessarily a good thing.

Be careful what you wish for, mes enfants – you just might get it.

Megan McArdle quantifies things.

Place your bets.

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Hint: Probably not.

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Gee, my heart bleeds for him.

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Well. Better late than never, I suppose. Still, these days, it’s a victory.

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Of course, this won’t prevent The Usual Suspects from using it as a stick to beat Walmart with for ever and ever. But at least (as the saying goes) the truth is out there.

Ilya Somin at the Volokh Conspiracy traces how we lose our freedom through a defective political process.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Sure, these people are ready for self-government.

Mencius Moldbug is at it again.

Here are three words that will permanently cure you of democracy – if any three words can. Imperium is conserved.

That is: no form of government can be defined as un-government or self-government. There is always a government; there is always a process by which this government makes decisions; this process always consists of the decisions of one or more human beings, and no other party or force. Therefore, either you rule, or you are ruled by others. Typically the latter. As Maine writes in Popular Government: “democracy is a form of government.” In other words, it lacks any spiritual connotation; like any form of government, it can only be judged by its results.

The democrat, who is typically also an aristocrat, thinks or allows himself to think that, by dethroning the king and transferring the king’s powers to an assembly, he is destroying the sovereign imperium. But he is not; he is only dispersing it.

A Bourbon Gulag or a Tudor Holocaust are entirely inconceivable. Even St. Bartholomew’s was a peccadillo by the standards of a Marat, a Lenin or a Mao. Why? Because imperium  is conserved. A stable monarch has no reason to massacre the Jews or shoot the Old Bolsheviks. Being stable, holding a monopoly of power, he has nothing to fear. Stalin and Hitler did. Hence, tyranny results not from the concentration of imperium, but from its dispersal.

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‘Here, Abdul, is where we put the bombs.’

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We have the technology.

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And sues, of course.

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Roy, you might want to put this on a piece of clothing.

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Wouldn’t it be nice to have a grownup to vote for?

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California, of course.

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How does one relate the news of a particularly embarrassing demise, muses Nigel Farndale.

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Omar Hussain has been charged with murder after the decomposed body of Banaz Mahmod was found in a suitcase.

Well, I should think.

Miss Mahmod began a relationship with Mr Suleimani after leaving an unhappy arranged marriage.

Her father, Mahmod Mahmod, uncle Ari Mahmod and a third man, Mohamad Hama, were jailed for life in 2007 for the so-called ”honour” killing.

Mr Suleimani was deemed unsuitable because he did not come from the small group of villages in Iraqi Kurdistan from which the Mahmods originated.

Read it. And listen.

Hey, don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Market solutions to poverty are very much in vogue. These solutions, which include services and products targeting consumers at the “bottom of the pyramid,” portray poor people as creative entrepreneurs and discerning consumers. Yet this rosy view of poverty-stricken people is not only wrong, but also harmful. It allows corporations, governments, and nonprofits to deny this vulnerable population the protections it needs. Romanticizing the poor also hobbles realistic interventions for alleviating poverty.

Poor people aren’t diamonds in the rough who only need a fair shake to blossom and succeed; they’re mostly worthless people with character defects that preclude them from getting ahead no matter how many ‘helping hands’ they’re extended.

Beneath these beliefs in the market readiness of poor people lies a more basic assumption: people in dire straits are well-informed and rational economic actors. Yet this view denies the fact that poor people often act against their own self-interest. Of course, wealthier people sometimes do so, too. But poor people face far worse consequences for their bad choices than do more affluent people. And so romanticized views of BOP people as value-conscious consumers and resilient entrepreneurs are not only false, but also harmful. These views lead states to build too few legal, regulatory, and social mechanisms to protect the poor, as well as to rely too heavily on market solutions to poverty.

‘The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.’

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The suspension is the second roadblock the upgrade has faced. In 2006, Lockheed Martin was brought in as the project contractor after it stalled under Science Applications International Corporation. FBI officials said the earlier project had to be rebooted because problems had grown too big to be fixed.

Yeah, we totally want these people in charge of our health care.

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The Dutch government condemned the comments by Gen John Sheehan, a former NATO commander and senior Marine officer, as outrageous.

Undoubtedly. But were they accurate?

“The case in point that I’m referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs,” he said, referring to the UN peacekeeping force deployed to protect Bosnian Muslim civilians.

“The battalion was understrength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone polls, marched the Muslims off and executed them.”

Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, pressed him to clarify his comments.

“Did the Dutch leaders tell you it (the fall of Srebrenica) was because there were gay soldiers there?” asked an incredulous Levin.

“Yes,” Sheehan said and added: “They included that as part of the problem.”

Gen Sheehan, who retired from the military in 1997, said he had been told that by the former chief of staff of the Dutch army.

Rather an unimpeachable source, I should say.

Mr Levin vehemently rejected Sheehan’s allegation, saying that drawing a connection between the massacre at Srebrenica and gays in the Dutch military was “totally off-target.”

That’s Democrats for you: Facts that don’t fit the spin aren’t allowed.

“It is astonishing that a man of his stature can utter such complete nonsense,” the Dutch defence ministry spokesman Roger van de Wetering said. “I have never heard of a single statement by a Dutch political or military leader that drew a link between the fall of the enclave and the fact that there were Dutch homosexual soldiers.”

Uh, excuse me? Sounds like you just did.

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Slow news day.

Lileks is on the case.

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Abundant evidence demonstrates that money is not an Archimedean lever for moving the world of education. Inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending tripled over four decades; pupil-teacher ratios were substantially reduced as the number of teachers increased 61 percent while enrollments rose about 10 percent. Yet test scores stagnated or declined.