Read it.

Recall that the Bill of Rights originally didn’t apply to the states, and indeed several states (not including North Carolina) had official establishments of religion at the time the Bill of Rights was enacted, with the last being disestablished in the 1830s. It’s the Fourteenth Amendment that has been read as applying the Bill of Rights to the states, through its statement that “nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,” though many scholars and some judges have argued that the incorporation should have taken place through another clause of the Amendment, “[n]o State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”

And a few scholars and judges have indeed argued that this language should not be read as incorporating the Establishment Clause; the most prominent examples have been Justice Thomas and Prof. Akhil Amar. The chief argument for this view is that the Establishment Clause was originally understood as a federalism guarantee, with the ban on federal laws “respecting an establishment of religion” meaning that the federal government could neither establish a national religion nor disestablish (or otherwise modify) state establishments of religion. Another possible argument is that the Establishment Clause differs from most Bill of Rights guarantees in that much action that is seen as violating the Establishment Clause — such as government endorsement of religious messages and symbols — doesn’t deprive anyone of liberty, or abridge any citizen’s privileges or immunities. (Action that does directly implicate people’s liberty, such as coercion of religious practice, might be prohibited by other provisions, such as the Free Exercise Clause and Free Speech Clause, which have been relatively uncontroversially incorporated against the states; likewise, action that denies people tangible benefits based on their denomination or their irreligiosity might be seen as prohibited by the Free Exercise Clause or the Equal Protection Clause.) The North Carolina legislators seem to be siding with this position.

Digital Toilet Paper Stand

Four Foot High Roadside Emergency Beacon

Meet Your Maker Sandwich Press

Anti-Drone Depleted Uranium Buckshot Shells

Breakfast Sandwich Maker

Bryan Caplan lays out some inconvenient truth.

The key problem, though, is that on the market, unpopular true views naturally spread via selection and imitation.  If IQ tests are really better employment screens than education, then the few employers who hire based on IQ gain a big competitive advantage.  They survive and grow, their flexible competitors copy them, and their rigid competitors shrink and die.  That’s one of the reasons why markets are better than democracy.

If this sounds like mere econo-dogma, consider the rise of index funds.  In the 60s, a few academics noticed that dart-throwing chimps could match the performance of fancy investment managers.  Most people thought these academics were crazy.  Since the academics were largely correct, however, the few people who listened to them got rich and revolutionized their industry.  If index funds were illegal, the majority would never have gotten its richly deserved comeuppance.

Read it.

Speaking at a fundraiser in San Francisco on April 3, President Obama said that Adam Lanza, the mass murderer in a New England school shooting, used a “fully automatic weapon” to kill his victims at Sandy Hook Elementary.

This assertion runs counter to the official report of the Connecticut State Police, who list semi-automatic weapons–rather than automatic ones–as those used by Lanza.

Read it.

It’s like happy hour with added fire power: “Open Carry Wednesday” at the Cajun Experience in Leesburg, Va., means patrons who pack heat get a 10 percent discount on their bills.

Watch ‘progressive’ heads explode.

“Right now I feel like I’m in safest place in Leesburg, Virginia,” said Sterling resident Dana Quirk.

My, I wonder why.

“You’re not going to hunt for your dinner,” said Leesburg resident Anne Meyers. “So I don’t know why you’d need a gun in a restaurant.”

Ask the people who died at Luby’s in Killeen, Texas, on October 16th, 1991, if you can raise their ghosts.

Nick Gillespie lays out some inconvenient truth.

Over at Investor’s Business, the always-interesting John Merline sends word of a troubling development when it comes to Obamacare: The very people it was supposed to help the most – the uninsured – don’t seem to want the damned thing.

The ungrateful swine.

George Will blows the whistle on government schools.

The real vocation of some people entrusted with delivering primary and secondary education is to validate this proposition: The three R’s — formerly reading, ’riting and ’rithmetic — now are racism, reproduction and recycling. Especially racism. Consider Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. It evidently considers “instruction” synonymous with “propaganda,” which in the patois of progressivism is called “consciousness-raising.”

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Today, the school systems in 20 states employ more non-teachers than teachers. The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice reports that between 1950 and 2009, while the number of K-12 students increased 96 percent, full-time-equivalent school employees increased 386 percent. The number of teachers increased 252 percent, but the number of bureaucrats — including consciousness-raising sensitivity enforcers and other non-teachers — increased 702 percent. The report says states could have saved more than $24?billion annually if non-teaching staff had grown only as fast as student enrollment. And Americans wonder why their generous K-12 financing (higher per pupil than all but three of the 34 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development nations) has done so little to improve reading, math and science scores.

‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Just kidding.’

Read it.

Three years ago, an Arkansas court found police officer Coleman Brackney guilty of negligent homicide in the shooting death of James Ahern. Brackney spent one month in jail and was fired from the Bella Vista police department. But he later got the conviction expunged, and a state board ruled that he could once again serve as a police officer. The Sulphur Springs City Council recently hired Brackney as their new police chief.

Read it.

A German study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, concludes that staring at women’s breasts for a few minutes daily is better for your health than going to the gym.

“Just 10 minutes of looking at the charms of well-endowed females is equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out,” said author Dr Karen Weatherby, an expert on ageing.

The research team, led by Dr Weatherby, spent five years monitoring the effects of this unique discovery.

And there you have it. The science is in!

Read it.

Many small businesses are not as good with bureaucracy and red tape as large businesses are – that’s one reason they did not offer health insurance in the first place. The employee subsidies coming online next year are pretty complicated, as evidenced by the 21-page application that must be completed by each employee, and the fact that any one year’s subsidy has to be estimated based on historical employee data, advanced from the Internal Revenue Service to the insurer, and then later reconciled when the employee’s family income for the year can be fully documented.

I suspect that large businesses will have human resource personnel dedicated to helping company employees complete the application and obtain and accurately reconcile the subsidy to which they are entitled. Employees at smaller business may have to fend for themselves.

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

The USDA stated, “In 2011, program costs totaled $75.7 billion. Using the most recent data on trafficking available, USDA estimated that trafficking would be 1 percent of $75 billion, or approximately $750 million.”

But in the years 2006-2008, the USDA stated, “Trafficking diverted an estimated $330 million annually from SNAP benefits – or about one cent of each SNAP dollar – between 2006 and 2008. About 8.2 percent of all stores trafficked.”

After the free Obama Phone, I guess the free Obama Food is not a big stretch.

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

What peaceful, friendly people! Wouldn’t you just love to have some for neighbors?
That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.
Of course, as we all know, the real problem is Islamophobia.

Read it.

A new Forbes article by Government Accountability Institute (GAI) President and Co-founder Peter Schweizer reveals that former Obama Administration officials and fundraisers are now leveraging their access and influence to bag big billings from Wall Street investment firms as part of the shadowy, emerging industry known as “political intelligence.”

Political intelligence firms are companies that hire former government officials and staffers to vacuum up tidbits of market-related information in and around Capitol Hill. This information is sold to Wall Street firms and financial companies to inform investments. The more connected the power player, the bigger the potential profits investment firms stand to make.

Don’t think of it as selling out — think of it as buying in….

Read it.

A bullet loses six feet of height while flying across 1,000 yards, and a hunter firing such a shot must compensate by altering the weapon’s aim. At that distance, fine adjustments would be difficult to estimate — but TrackingPoint has developed a Linux-powered hunting rifle that’s capable of doing all of the calculations for the hunter. Ars Technica has an in-depth report on what it’s like to look through the $17,500 rifle’s scope when the target locks and the viewfinder tracks upward to locate the precise point where the weapon should be aimed. Building distance compensation into the hunter’s view is only part of what the embedded ARM computer is capable of: it can also follow targets, determine the precise moment when to fire, and stream video from the viewfinder to a paired iPad app.

We have the technology.

Read it.

An odd thing was happening, or rather not happening, as dusk fell the other day across Belgravia, home to some of the world’s most valuable real estate: almost no one seemed to be coming home. Perhaps half the windows were dark.

It seems that practically the only people who can afford to live there don’t actually want to. Last year, the real estate firm Savills found that at least 37 percent of people buying property in the most expensive neighborhoods of central London did not intend them to be primary residences.

…

The buyers, increasingly, are superwealthy foreigners from places like Russia, Kazakhstan, Southeast Asia and India. For them, London is just a stop in a peripatetic international existence that might also include New York, Moscow and Monaco.

Kathy Shaidle vents.

We started mocking this personal style as “metrosexual” almost twenty years ago, but that word was always problematic. The “metro” prefix is utterly apt; it’s the “sexual” part that’s off. These nominal heteros are consciously or subconsciously mimicking gay twinks, and those fellows usually want to get laid. Their fragile straight counterparts, in contrast, don’t look like they could manage it, or even want to.

…

In that much maligned “manosphere,” the term “beta male” is the most popular pejorative. Since it’s fresher and more accurate than “metrosexual,” I’ll be using that phrase henceforth, along with that unfairly neglected anachronism “faggotry.” It’s ideal for my purposes because it doesn’t necessarily mean “gay” so much as “gay-ish.” So I’m trying to bring that word back. Call it artisanal invective.

Read  it.

WHETHER the obscure statute that governs America’s raisin trade is constitutional, Elena Kagan is not sure. She and her fellow Supreme Court justices are pondering that question at the moment, and will rule shortly. But she sounds reasonably confident that the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act of 1937 is “the world’s most outdated law”.

Since the 1940s raisin farmers have been obliged to make over a portion of their crop to a government agency called the Raisin Administrative Committee. The committee, run by 47 raisin farmers and packers, along with a sole member of the raisin-eating public, decides each year how many raisins the domestic market can bear, and thus how many it should siphon off to preserve an “orderly” market. It does not pay for the raisins it appropriates, and gives many of them away, while selling others for export. Once it has covered its own costs, it returns whatever profits remain to farmers. In some years there are none. Worse, farmers sometimes forfeit a substantial share of their crop: 47% in 2003 and 30% in 2004, for example.

Participation in this Brezhnevite scheme is mandatory. Although a large majority of raisin farmers approved of it by referendum when it started 65 years ago, they have not been formally consulted since. And raisins are just one of 30 products subject to such “marketing orders” overseen by the Department of Agriculture. The department portrays these arrangements as anodyne efforts to set quality standards and improve marketing. But Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, a think-tank, argues that the federal government is nurturing a crop of agricultural cartels.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

Read it.

The American Petroleum Institute has said that this new sulfur regulation will increase the cost of producing gasoline by 9 cents, costs which consumers will bear. A Baker and O’Brien analysis calculates that the regulation will force refiners to spend around $10 billion to comply with the rule and an additional $2.5 annually to maintain compliance. All of this means higher gasoline prices for drivers.

‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help. Just kidding.’

Read it.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

 The findings underscore that elite public and private colleges, despite a stated desire to recruit an economically diverse group of students, have largely failed to do so.

That’s because they aren’t interested in white kids that might be, God help us, Republicans.

Read it.

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

Read it.

Hey, haters gotta hate. Gay people got no use for children anyway.

Greg Mankiw, a Real Economist, isn’t afraid to ask the hard questions.

A friend points me to this passage:

    At a White House briefing Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said some of what passes for health insurance today is so skimpy it can’t be compared to the comprehensive coverage available under the law. “Some of these folks have very high catastrophic plans that don’t pay for anything unless you get hit by a bus,” she said. “They’re really mortgage protection, not health insurance.”

I have the same problem with my other insurance policies.  My homeowner insurance doesn’t cover the cost when my gutters need cleaning, and my car insurance doesn’t cover the cost when I need to fill the tank with gas. Instead, the policies cover only catastrophic events, like my house burning down or a major accident. Now that the Obama administration has fixed the health insurance system, I trust they will soon move on to solve these other problems.

Steve Sailer does the necessary.

Union boss Cesar Chavez was one of the leading class warriors of my youth, but today he is remembered only as the patron saint of La Raza.

…

It’s fascinating how today race trumps class so unquestionably that almost nobody can even imagine that a Mexican-American union boss would oppose illegal immigration.

Read it.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. In large part, that’s because less than half of the population that should be getting screened isn’t getting screened.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Medical science has found a way to use CT scanners to do screenings non-invasively, negating the need to insert a colonoscope into the rectum and large intestine. But for regulatory hurdles, people could just go to a clinic, pay for a quick photo & analysis session and be on their way.

However, as of 2010, 13 states require medical institutions to get permission, in the form of a “certificate of need,” before purchasing new CT scanners. Other states require doctors to obtain a certificate of need before offering new medical procedures like virtual colonoscopies, which are still relatively cutting edge.

‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … just kidding.’

Read it.

Located on the corner of Figueroa and 101st Street in South Central Los Angeles, Tam’s Burgers has been a part of the neighborhood for almost 30 years, serving burgers and fries through multiple recessions and even the 1992 L.A. riots. “When the markets were burned down, liquor stores were burned down, everything was burned down, people had nowhere to go, they came to us,” says Nick Benetatos, who took over the restaurant in 1989 after his father retired.

But in 2012 the city declared Tam’s a “public nuisance,” claiming the late-night joint was a haven for criminals. Benetatos says he is simply located in a high-crime area and has tried to work with the Los Angeles Police Department, honoring its requests that he remove pay phones on the property and tables for outdoor seating, which he says resulted in a 15 percent decline in revenues.

The city’s zoning board then ordered Benetatos to comply with 22 separate conditions, such as hiring a full-time security guard, fencing in the entire property, and installing a security camera that links directly to the LAPD’s electronic surveillance system. After losing a December zoning appeal, Benetatos says he is close to throwing in the napkin and closing up shop.

The Other McCain is on the case.

The New York Times tells the story of the Atlanta teacher cheating scandal. Teachers systematically changed students’ answers on standardized tests, erasing wrong answers and changing them to the right ones, and the deception went all the way to the top: Dr. Beverly Hall, the Atlanta superintendent, was hosted at the White House and named superintendent of the year by the American Association of School Administrators. She collected more than $500,000 in performance bonuses.

And now Dr. Hall has been indicted by a grand jury on charges that could send her to prison for the rest of her life.

Pay attention, kids. This might be on your final exam.

Read it.

A trend started by Ted Kennedy, by the way.

Read it.

We (almost) have the technology.

Read it.

In order for her Just Cupcakes LLC to remain profitable in the face of higher expected labor costs, Ms. Hesseltine believes the customer-ordering process “would have to be more automated” at the Virginia Beach, Va., chain, which has two strip-mall locations as well as a food van. Thus, she could eliminate the 10 workers who currently ask customers what they would like to eat.

Come to think of it, I have yet to see an iPad with a tattoo or a pierced eyebrow.

Read it.

The new issue of The Economist has a long feature on the declining confidence in the high estimates of climate sensitivity.  That this appears in The Economist is significant, because this august British news organ has been fully on board with climate alarmism for years now.  A Washington-based Economist correspondent admitted to me privately several years ago that the senior editors in London had mandated consistent and regular alarmist climate coverage in its pages.

Read it.

With his BIGHEART Ministries, he fulfilled his calling, helping clothe and counsel the crowds who came to him for a meal.

“It grew, grew, grew… until we were feeding thousands of people,” he said…..

In 2005, the city of Dallas passed an ordinance, requiring organizations feeding the homeless to get the city’s approval, provide bathrooms, and meet a list of public safety requirements.

Hart said he spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to comply.

“It kept getting worse, until finally police were coming out,” said Hart.

Even Texas has its quota of fascist tools, mostly in the big cities, which are chock full of fashionable minorities and hence run by Democrats. Every now and then, though, common sense breaks out.

One of the reasons that private charity cannot handle taking care of the needy in the modern world is that it is loaded down with oppressive and nonsensical government regulations, government not being fond of competition and wanting to reduce the citizenry to dependence.