Read it.

Oddly enough, 100 years ago is just at the dawn of the ‘Progressive Era’. Probably just a coincidence. Yeah, that’s the ticket….

One of the authors of the study, Dr. Jan te Nijenhuis, professor of work and organizational psychology at the University of Amsterdam, says the cause of the movement toward stupidity is that smarter women have fewer children while those of lower intelligence have more children.

Funny how that works. (A Leftist conundrum: How to keep supporting evolution while denying that it applies to human beings? Is puzzle, as Boris Badenov would say.)

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Researchers have identified a cell that aids limb regrowth in Salamanders. Macrophages are a type of repairing cell that devour dead cells and pathogens, and trigger other immune cells to respond to pathogens. In humans, they’re also important to muscle repair, which led Dr. James Godwin, of the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University, to research whether the macrophages found inside Salamanders are related to the animal’s ability to regenerate limbs.

But of course it will take any treatments based on this knowledge twenty years and millions of dollars to filter through the FDA, so you might as well just forget about it.

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The bad news is that she’s Obama’s nominee as Secretary of Commerce.

Of course, considering how he and his socialist friends think of commerce, it’s probably appropriate.

Read it.

Makia Smith has sued the Baltimore Police Department and four police officers she says beat her and broke her camera when she tried to photograph police beating someone else. “You want to film something, bitch? Film this,” one of the officers said, according to the lawsuit.

Baltimore is, of course, run by Democrats, and is the capital, of course, of a Blue State.

Judging by her name, I suspect that she is a Woman of Color as well — can we expect the LameStream Media and the Feminists to react with outrage? Let’s wait and see.

Read it.

No, it’s not about Obama.

Don Boudreaux looks behind the curtain at the Left’s favorite word.

While driving yesterday I listened for a while to ESPN radio.  Among the topics that the show’s hosts explored was greed – in particular, the “greed” of professional sports franchises such as the Washington Redskins and the New York Yankees to produce and sell to fans ever-more logo-ladened paraphernalia.  Some of the radio hosts were more sensible than others, but every one of them assumed without question that “greed” is the appropriate term to use to describe the motivation of owners of pro sports teams to earn more money by supplying more of the likes of baseball caps, jerseys, and jackets emblazoned with team colors and images of team mascots.

All of the hosts agreed that there’s something a bit sleazy and disreputable about the aggressive production and supply of such paraphernalia.  In short, it was an all-too-typical shallow discussion of commerce.

For my purposes here I assume (I believe realistically) that professional sports-team owners’ actions to sell more of their teams’ paraphernalia are indeed motivated solely by their desire to earn more money for themselves.  But I ask: why are such actions described as “greedy”?

Read it.

There’s an old saying in journalism—a story just “too good to check out.”  You can tell the media’s bias not only from what they won’t check out, but what they won’t even consider checking out, let alone reporting.

News item: a deranged young man, James Holmes, shoots up a Denver theater last summer killing 12, and ABC News’s Brian Ross goes on the air to note that there’s a “James Holmes” affiliated with a Tea Party group in the area.  Didn’t bother to check it out; it was too good not to rush to broadcast.  Turns out there was no connection.

News item: following the bombing of the Boston marathon, a host of left-leaning media types hoped it would turn out to be a “white American” and not a Muslim extremist.  NPR’s Diana Temple-Raston speculated on air that it was likely right-wing extremists behind the bombing because it was Hitler’s birthday that week, and Hitler’s birthday is “big” for the right.

News item: Terrorists behead a British soldier in broad daylight, and then proclaim to bystanders that “They won’t stop fighting until you leave us alone.”  And on the network news broadcasts I took in tonight I did not hear the word “Islamic” mentioned once in connection to the story, which even Janet Napolitano can’t spin into something other than terrorism.  Wouldn’t want to “speculate,” as Brian Ross might put it.

Read it.

Need a job? Come to Texas. Just sayin’.

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Slate can’t deny that they do, but they make the best the enemy of the good to the extent that words can do so.

Whether charter schools have actually lived up to their initial promise is a hotly contested topic in the education reform debate.

It’s only hotly contested by people whose ox is being gored — unionized civil servants masquerading as teachers and their lickspittles in the legislature.

Read it.

It will be entertaining to watch major cities dissolve while various unions battle it out for control like Roman Legions trying to install the next Emperor in order to get a cut of the swag.

There is nothing new under the sun.

Read it.

Forgive me if I fail to join the national worship of the NHS. Mencap has been campaigning to prevent these deaths, logging at least 100 cases over the past six years. The charity blames poor communication with parents and carers as the main cause – but it has concluded that the only explanation for so many preventable deaths is prejudice. Doctors and nurses reflect views prevalent across society that people with profound disabilities are second-class citizens, their lives not worth saving. Imagine the furore if any other minority group was dying in such numbers.

How about that government-provided health care! Don’t you wish we had a system like that in the U.S.?

Obama does.

Read it.

Brussels-funded boffins say they have hit upon a brilliant method of creating “enriched” ice-cream, fortified with “disused” animal products which are normally thrown away by the meat industry as being unfit for human consumption.

Read it.

Some clearly wish the Dakotas had remained a single state – if only to siphon off some of the $2 billion oil boom surplus money in North Dakota’s state treasury in a southerly direction. Re-union would cost the Dakotans two Senators, but it would gain them an elevated status within the United States. With 1.5 million inhabitants and an area of 148,000 sq. mi, Greater Dakota would be the 40th most populous state, and the 4th largest in area.

But there is another way to crumble the cookie: re-divide the Dakotas, in an eastern and western state. Makes more sense, says Shebby Lee: both halves of the former territory are divided by a natural barrier: the Missouri River, which enters both Dakotas in the northwest, then snakes across the territory, leaving it in the southeast [9]. Here the Missouri sets the precedent, by forming the eastern part of the border between South Dakota and Nebraska [10].

Read it.

A third night of rioting has engulfed the suburbs of Stockholm, spreading from Husby to Tensta, Kista, Rinkeby, Jakobsberg, and other culturally enriched neighborhoods. The Swedish and Norwegian media are covering the events (assiduously avoiding saying anything about the ethnicity or immigrant status of the perpetrators), but I’m told that Danish outlets have so far made no mention of what is happening in the capital of their Nordic neighbor. Which is curious, considering the Denmark is generally more open than Norway or Sweden.

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.

While batting around the idea of a food-replacement smoothie we’ve had a range of responses, ranging from the bemused, to the angry, to the deeply skeptical, and even the hopeful: “This stuff would make it a lot easier for me to do school lunches,” wrote one of our hacks.

You, too, can live the way we’ll all have to if the Democrats get their way.

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Hey, even a blind pig finds an acorn now and then.

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In a letter sent yesterday to the University of Montana that explicitly states that it is intended as “a blueprint for colleges and universities throughout the country,” the Departments of Justice and Education have mandated a breathtakingly broad definition of sexual harassment that makes virtually every student in the United States a harasser while ignoring the First Amendment. The mandate applies to every college receiving federal funding—virtually every American institution of higher education nationwide, public or private.

The letter states that “sexual harassment should be more broadly defined as ‘any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature'” including “verbal conduct” (that is, speech). It then explicitly states that allegedly harassing expression need not even be offensive to an “objectively reasonable person of the same gender in the same situation”—if the listener takes offense to sexually related speech for any reason, no matter how irrationally or unreasonably, the speaker may be punished.

Of course.

On Monday, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) used the devastating Oklahoma tornado as an excuse to bash Republicans for denying global warming and implied Republicans were responsible for actually allowing the destructive natural disaster to occur.

“So, you may have a question for me,” Whitehouse said on the Senate floor. “Why do you care? Why do you, Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat of Rhode Island, care if we Republicans run off the climate cliff like a bunch of proverbial lemmings and disgrace ourselves? I’ll tell you why. We’re stuck in this together. We are stuck in this together.”

After blaming natural disasters in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Texas on global warming and Republicans, Whitehouse continued his rant by criticizing the Republicans he blamed for then asking the government for federal aid dollars.

Democrats, always living at the intersection of shameless and stupid.

Read it.

Complex legislation and regulatory schemes inevitably spawn a whole ‘industry’ of people who will be happy to help you navigate the law — for a fee. This, in turn, establishes a fervent (and well-funded, which they are willing to share with legislators of the right attitude) lobby to keep, and even to increase, the complexity upon which their business model is built. And don’t think legislators don’t know it — and exploit it.

Read it.

Good luck with that.

Read it.

Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, is an institution of good reputation and high quality, where I have some friends. It offers a liberal arts education typical of the best available in America today. It troubles me that Bowdoin, rather than, say, Harvard—a bigger and richer place where I work—should be made an example of. Nonetheless, Peter Wood and Michael Toscano have done just that in a comprehensive new study, “What Does Bowdoin Teach?” the first of its kind and probably destined to be the best, which shows in the practices and principles of one college what political correctness in our time has done to higher education in our country.

Read it.

For the past two nights major riots have erupted in Husby, a culturally enriched suburb of Stockholm. The legacy media accounts — whether written in Swedish, Norwegian, or English — have fastidiously avoided mentioning the ethnicity of the rioters. According to The Local, they are “youths”, “young people”, and “teenagers”. The only hint the media give us is when they say that police used horrifying racial epithets (“monkeys” and “niggers”) to refer to the boisterous lads doing the rock-throwing and fire-setting.

The fact that videos show the rioters shouting “Allahu akhbar!” while attacking the police provides another hint, but that little inconvenient piece of evidence is probably available only on YouTube.

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.

‘How DARE you take entirely legal steps to minimize your tax burden! You crooks!’

Next step: Accusing Apple employees of crossing streets at crosswalks in order to avoid jaywalking tickets, and of driving under the speed limit.

I swear, these people…. And McCain, that crypto-Democrat, is the worst of the lot.

Read it.

But there was a consensus!

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Occupy Roanoke is on record opposing “fat cats” and lobbyists. Terry McAuliffe made his fortune on his connections to the Clinton administration as one of the most prominent lobbyists and crony capitalists in the country.

The Occupy movement was always about supporting the Democrat party. Their partnership with McAuliffe, who pioneered bundling political donations and famously auctioned off stays in the Lincoln bedroom, is a welcome admission of that fact.

Let’s call them the “Obama Youth”. Or OY for short.

Read it

Hint: Yes.

It wouldn’t be surprising if there were more cases like this we’ve never heard about. Here’s why: The Justice Department’s rules only say the media must be informed about “subpoenas” for “telephone toll records.” The FBI’s operations guidelines interprets those rules quite literally, making clear the requirement “concerns only grand jury subpoenas.” That is, these rules don’t apply to National Security Letters, which are secret demands for information used by the FBI that don’t require judicial approval. The narrow FBI interpretation also doesn’t cover administrative subpoenas, which are issued by federal agencies without prior judicial review. Last year, the FBI issued NSLs for the communications and financial records of more than 6,000 Americans—and the number has been far higher in previous years. The procedures that do apply to those tools have been redacted from publicly available versions of the FBI guidelines. Thus, it’s no shocker the AP seizure would seem like an “unprecedented intrusion” if the government doesn’t think it has to tell us about the precedents. And there’s no telling if the Justice Department rules (and the FBI’s interpretation) allow the feds to seize without warning other types of electronic communications records that could reveal a journalist’s e-mail, chat, or Web browsing activity.

Hey, Mother Jones: These are the guys you guys have voted for ever since the sixties. Enjoy.

Read it.

President Barack Obama has an important new ally as emboldened Republicans work to derail his agenda: John McCain.

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

Read it. And watch the video.

A young Somali journalist in Sweden named Amun Abdullahi got herself in trouble with the politically correct elite by reporting the truth about the radicalization of young Somalis in Rinkeby (a culturally enriched suburb of Stockholm), where they were recruited for jihad by the Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabab.

The treatment meted out to Ms. Abdullahi made her decide to move back to Somalia. She acknowledges that Mogadishu is a dangerous place, but she considers Sweden more dangerous, because “here you cannot tell the truth.”

Read it.

A major study of nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed papers in the climate-science literature has – again – proven that among climate scientists, an overwhelming percentage agree with the consensus view that human activity causes global warming.

Not mentioned is the fact that if you don’t agree with the consensus view that human activity causes global warming, you won’t get a peer-reviewed paper published in the climate-science literature. Rather changes the perspective.

Read it.

After the unprecedented damage to New York City’s transit system brought on by Hurricane Sandy, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) has been looking into near-term solutions that could shield subway tunnels from flood waters come next storm season. It tested one of those safeguards yesterday for the first time by inflating a 30-foot plug (designed by the US Department of Homeland Security) that could effectively seal off New York’s subways in the event of a natural disaster. The test run took place at the South Ferry station in Manhattan — one of eight stations consumed by flooding in Sandy’s aftermath.

Soon to be a major motion picture.

Foseti is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

In reaction to Richwine Affair, all right-thinking people are quick to proclaim that they don’t believe in a genetic basis for IQ. They’re much less quick to explain – with any sort of precision – what they actually do believe in. At best, we’re treated to some hand-waving paired with the phrase “social construct.”

Lots of ink has been spilled criticizing the genetic explanation. However, I’m unaware of any examination of the physical properties of the mainstream explanation. Let’s see what it actually looks like.

Read it.

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

As Otter said to Flounder: ‘You fucked up! You trusted us!’ The resemblance between our government and Delta House is becoming stronger and stronger every day; Joe Biden already has the Bluto part nailed.

Read it.

And if you believe that one, they’ll tell you another one.

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The Obama administration has gotten itself into a fix between its contradictory stories about the Benghazi incident, reports of the IRS targeting conservative groups, and the Justice Department’s grabbing of phone records from AP reporters. There are few things more fun to watch than arrogant political leaders — folks who spend their lives bossing everyone around — getting a comeuppance.

Not that the dimwitted among the electorate will pay any attention. They’re too busy signing up for their free Obama Money.

My favorite take wasn’t from any serious commentator but from comedian Jon Stewart, who noticed that the president routinely claims ignorance about embarrassing events by saying that he learned of them while watching the news: “I wouldn’t be surprised if President Obama learned Osama bin Laden had been killed when he saw himself announcing it on television.”

Wouldn’t surprise me.

I visited DC last week and was astounded at the booming economy, the endless new construction, the astronomical prices, and garish displays of wealth everywhere — not to mention the haughty attitudes of every pissant assistant to the whatever. That’s what Other People’s Money buys you. When Ronald Reagan talked about the Shining City on the Hill he was speaking metaphorically about America, but the new shining city is DC — funded on the backs of all those Americans who blithely vote for people who promise to solve their problems.

Your tax dollars at work.

Read it.

A criminal serving a five-year sentence “for supplying gadgets to an organized crime gang used to conceal ATM skimmers” has invented a device that prevents ATMs from being susceptible to such thefts, Reuters reported today.

Valentin Boanta, who is six months into his sentence in a Romanian prison, developed what he calls the SRS (Secure Revolving System) which changes the way ATM machines read bank cards to prevent the operation of skimming devices that criminals hide inside ATMs.

Book deal under negotiation, I assume.

    The main characteristic of the SRS device is highlighted by the insertion of the credit card on its width (not on its length like in present cases), with the magnetic tape facing down. Considering this innovation, the magnetic tape cannot be copied under any circumstance by skimming devices, devices which need to read the magnetic tape on its length in a sequential manner. SRS assumes the credit card and its mechanical and electronic devices rotate it, inserting it into the ATM (or any other device that uses plastic credit cards). After the transaction is completed the released credit card is again assumed by the SRS and with the same rotary motion, but in an opposite direction, it is returned back to the user in the same position as it was initially inserted (on its width and with the magnetic tape facing down). Using this manner of inserting the credit card, on its side, the translation motion of reading the tape is no longer possible, making it useless to install skimming devices on ATMs.

Let’s see how long it lasts….

Read it.

Things are heating up fast in the far north. The lands and sea of the Arctic — which have been ice-filled, inhospitable and treacherous for most of human history — are experiencing the effects of climate change more rapidly than anywhere else on Earth. All of the Arctic’s sea ice is expected to melt completely, every summer, beginning around 2050 or sooner, according to one recent study, clearing the way for unprecedented oil and gas drilling. But oil companies and world governments aren’t waiting until then to spur an oil boom in the Arctic — they’re starting now.

I’m guessing that ‘peak oil’ means ‘have a peak at all the oil we’re gaining access to’.

Human nature aside, I’m still waiting for someone to explain precisely why global warming (if it really exists) is such a bad thing.

And I’m still looking forward to seeing Manhattan, D.C., and L.A. under three feet of water.

Read it.

Classmates complain that it has no lunch money to pillage. And stuffing it in a locker is totally no fun.

Read it.

And the Terms of Service are a bitch.

Read it.

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

 The week after Republicans’ historic 2010 midterm election landslide, President Barack Obama appointed the union president that represents “tens of thousands in the IRS,” Colleen Kelley, to a key Administration post. Two years later, that union, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), contributed $580,412 to federal candidates—94% of which were Democrats.

The position Obama appointed Kelley to: the Federal Salary Council, an advisory group charged with recommending federal employee raises.

Representing 150,000 members from 31 federal agencies and departments including the Internal Revenue Service, the NTEU bills itself as the nation’s largest independent federal union. Kelley, herself a former IRS Agent, commands her union brigade with partisan ferocity.

I’d be more inclined to credit hand-wringing on the part of union employees if it weren’t for the fact that most of them look to be sub-clinically obese. Have you ever seen the women in charge of the NEA? Pigs in space, every one of them.

Read it.

Well, it’s by Michael Pollan, but read it anyway. He can’t be a food snob all the time.

Read it.

Manufacturing has increasingly reduced man hours in tandem with productivity-increasing technological improvements. It wasn’t the internet that killed these jobs, though technology reduced some of them. The inability to plan for the necessary shift of jobs to other fields revealed the lack of comprehensive, forward-thinking manufacturing and labor policies.

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The Romeikes fled Germany in 2008 when they were subjected to criminal prosecution for homeschooling, which is largely illegal in their country. In 2010, however, the family was granted asylum by Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman, whose decision was overturned by the Board of Immigration Appeals in 2012. A three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit heard the Romeikes’ appeal on April 23rd and issued a unanimous decision against the family.

In its decision, the court said that the Romeikes had not made a sufficient case and that the United States has not opened its doors to every victim of unfair treatment.

Too bad they weren’t Muslim jihadists. Not only would they have been granted asylum, but citizenship and welfare benefits, like the Boston bombers.

Read it.

‘Asian’ here being the standard British newspaper-speak for Muslim.

 Rochdale, Rotherham, Derby, Oxford. The towns change, but the pattern is always the same. Gangs of men, mainly of Pakistani Muslim heritage, lure white girls as young as 10 with gifts and displays of affection. Next, the girl is raped as a way of “breaking her in”. Once the child’s spirit is subdued, and her mind fogged with drugs, she is sold for sex to multiple men at £200 a time. If the girl tries to break away, a gang member might threaten to behead her or firebomb her home. Mohammed Karrar, who was found guilty in the Oxford sex-grooming case this week, took a scalding hairpin and branded an M on one girl’s bottom so she would know she was his property. Later, the gang gave the same girl a DIY abortion. She was 12 years old. And this, all this, is happening in Britain now.

In a particularly warped twist, the pimp will teach his victim that her parents are racist towards Asians, which is why they disapprove of their relationship – absolutely nothing, of course, to do with him being a violent, controlling thug. Gang members have grown wise to the wimpy ways of Western society. They exploit the fact that police, newly trained in “cultural sensitivity”, are terrified of being accused of racism. So the pimps operate with impunity until, years later, the slave girls find the courage to testify in court against their masters.

Read it.

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.

We have the technology.

Read it.

Once you accept the government’s coin, you must dance to the government’s tune.

Read it.

As a Chicago parent discovered, city officials can’t hand over records if they’ve already destroyed them.

Read it.

Cook is expected to appear in front of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to explain why Apple has failed to repatriate up to $100bn in cash stashed in foreign countries.

Uh, so that they don’t lose 35% of it to the IRS? That’s just a guess, you understand….

Had Cupertino returned its money to the US, it would have been hit with a punitive 35 per cent tax rate, meaning it was cheaper in the long run to issue bonds and pay interest at market rates.

The technical financial term for that is ‘DUH’.

The investigations committee has also grilled other companies that use slick methods to keep their tax bills down, including Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard.

‘Slick methods’ meaning ‘perfectly legal methods that the all-your-money-is-ours crowd don’t like and so have made up a derogatory term for’. (Unfortunately, they can’t be called ‘tax cheats’, legitimately, because they aren’t cheating; they’re following the law. Although that doesn’t prevent some of the all-for-the-state crowd doing it anyway. You know how they are.)

An Apple spokesman insisted the firm paid all its taxes. “We’ve been working with the subcommittee to answer their questions about Apple, and we welcome any further questions they might have,” Apple said in a statement. “Apple is one of the largest taxpayers in the United States, having paid $6 billion in federal corporate income tax in fiscal 2012.”

It’s not enough, of course; it’s never enough. As long as you have money left after the taxman gets done with you, you are somehow a ‘dodger’.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, is especially dyspeptic today.

The Jason Richwine business has illustrated all over again for those who needed the reminder that even a society as technically sophisticated as ours is a great dark slough of ignorance and passion in which the small voices of reason and calm empirical inquiry must struggle to be heard above the bellowing of the night beasts.

This is why it is important to SUPPORT JOHN DERBYSHIRE (see top right).