I read Jim Souhan’s piece on the T-Wooves’ travails…:

The Timberwolves could defend their decision to fire coach Dwane Casey if he were allowed to execute one final act as a Wolves employee: help Kevin McHale and Glen Taylor pack.

McHale will need help gathering the tools of his trade as an NBA executive — the calculator that exponentially inflated the value of the likes of Michael Olowokandi, Troy Hudson and Eddie Griffin; the magnifying glass that helped him discern the talents of Mike James and Marcus Banks; the appointment calendar with the summer months missing.

…and find myself handicapped by the fact that pro basketball is the only professional sport more boring than the NHL.

That is all.

Gary Miller at TvM quotes Bob Novak in noting some potential good news:

The provision, one of the more absurd consequences of the campaign finance reform craze of 2002, bars any mention of a candidate’s name or the broadcast of his image except by an FEC-regulated political committee. Groups such as Wisconsin Right to Life are barred from buying ads mentioning them.

In this case, the group wanted to air ads in 2004 urging Wisconsinites to contact their senators — Democrats Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl — to tell them to support judicial confirmations. But Feingold was up for re-election, therefore campaign law shielded him from being mentioned on television by any group that does not follow FEC regulations for gathering contributions and filing disclosure forms.

The new court – which previously ratified parts of the speech rationing law – shows promise of reversing the previous court’s decisions.

Which would be the just about the first positive fallout from the ’04 elections we’d have seen.

“I Hate Bush more than you do!”

“No, I hate Bush more than you do”.

“Well, I think he’s dumber than you think he is”

“No way, duuuuude”

I listened to local rent-a-blogger Jeff Fecke on “Minnesota Matters”, the local Frankennet affiliate’s (for now) attempt at a local show. 

Let me step out of “conservative host” mode for a bit here, and switch into “guy who loves good talk radio” mode.

My earlier observations about the show still hold true – “Minnesota Matters” is no worse than any Twin Cities leftyblog (heh heh) and makes for better radio than anything Janet Robert has tried before…Which is, of course, damnation by faint praise. But faint praise is more than Janet Robert’s FrankenNet affiliate has earned in three years of existence. Limited, qualified, muffled, mildly-chuckled kudos to all involved.”   I’ll stand by that.  Fecke was the audio version of his blog (see paragraphs 1-4, above – it’s not a bad synopsis of Fecke’s oeuvre); he passed on his Straight-from-George-Soros-but-since-I-don’t-have-the-smoking-gun-showing-that-even-though-the-group-that-paid-Fecke-shares-office-space-with-Soros’-Media-Matters-For-America-there’s-no-financial-connection-whatsoever-and-you’re-an-idiot-to-wonder-because-I-ASSURE-you-there’s-no-connection-nosireebob talking points with the fluency you’d expect from someone who’s spent the last several months being paid to do the job; the interviewer was passable.

But what killed the show was the callers. 

Good talk radio doesn’t need callers anymore than good food needs coriander.  Both serve as accents, spices, variations on the theme. 

Don Vogel – for whom I started in talk radio as a call screener – explained the art of call selection once upon a time.  There are four kinds of callers:

1. Great Callers.  These are the people who have a point that is like a jet-pack strapped to your show’s back; they rocket the show ahead of itself, add something to the proceedings that make the whole thing more entertaining, gripping and valuable.  A good screener flags the great callers and gets them on the air pronto.
2. Boring Callers.  Instead of a jet pack, a boring callers straps a bag of spoiled meat to a show’s back; they agree, maybe, but not only do they add nothing to the conversation, they sap the energy from the conversation.  They weigh things down, destroy any momentum, and stink the place up.  Their calls should be politely declined.
3. Crazy Callers.  Crazies are…well, crazy.  Their calls can be a dead weight or a godsend.  Picking which is which is what separates a good screener from a bad one.
4. Ordinary Callers.  They have good questions and input.  You air them, if you need them, after the Great Callers and the good Crazy Callers, just so that the Ordinary Listeners don’t feel intimidated.

The show – like most Air America shows – sounded like the same person called over and over again, with the same point (or “point”).  The were desperately dull.  One might have sufficed; the show, such as it was, would have benefitted from their absence, believe it or not; you can be in the fever swamp without sounding like you’re marinading in the fever swamp.

At any rate – the show would have done well to ignore the boring callers – most to all of them – and just talked.

Note to Janet Robert:  I’ll check back in a few weeks to see if you’ve implemented any of this.  Enjoy.

See if you can see what’s missing from this Op-Ed by Barbara C. Crosby this Monday in the Strib:

A friend of mine, whose son was just notified that his National Guard unit will have its tour in Iraq extended, asks, Why aren’t there massive protests against this misguided war? She remembers the Vietnam era and the sustained protest movement of the time.

Of course, only a tiny portion of the American people ever protested against the Vietnam war. 

But I digress.  While “a genuine memory of what happened in this nation during Vietnam” is indeed missing, that’s not what I’m shooting for.

Easy answer: No draft. Indeed, the antiwar movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s was dramatically subdued by President Richard Nixon’s replacement of the existing draft with an annual lottery that, in effect, cut in half the number of young men who were vulnerable to conscription. Later, the nation adopted an all-volunteer policy for the armed services.

It’s an “easy answer” – and wrong, as far as it goes.  It’s true, we don’t have a draft – but then, a minority of those who served in Vietnam were draftees, and the majority of the protesters were on deferments. 

Now our nation is at war with terrorism, and the volunteer army is stretched to the limit, even with a questionable reliance on National Guard units. So should our policymakers reinstitute the military draft administered by the euphemistically named Selective Service?

A few members of Congress say yes, and perhaps they are right. A truly universal draft would diminish the current system’s disproportionate burden on low-income and minority communities. And, no doubt, a return to the draft would heighten opposition to the current military strategy in Iraq.

And for the first time, Ms. Crosby skirts perilously close to…not the truth, but a truth.

Conscription – the draft – forces a nation to be very conservative about the wars they fight.  If a war doesn’t have very broad, popular support (like World War II, which was largely fought with draftees) or involve the nation’s survival (all Israeli males serve), draftee armies are very blunt instruments that tend to fight poorly (see the Russians in Chechnya) and/or with draconian enforcement from above (the Russians in Afghanistan). 

My own proposal is that our nation consider instituting a universal draft of nearly everyone between ages 18 and 65, male and female, except for parents of minor children.

Admittedly, the oldsters in this group (and I’m one) can’t do a lot of heavy lifting (unless we’re talking ideas and such), but we could work on nation-building endeavors, such as microfinance projects or educational programs.

Can we see what’s missing yet?

Of course, the designers of a new draft would have to be creative in order to minimize central bureaucracy. One idea is to rely, as in the past, on local draft boards that would randomly call up eligible individuals until a board’s quota was filled.

Something else is missing here.  No, not the big kahuna thing I’m really looking for – but I have to wonder if Ms. Crosby really knows what she’s talking about.  She seems to be mixing up “the draft” – a lottery that picks and chooses what it needs – with “universal service”, like in Israel or Switzerland, where everyone between ages 20 and 50 (and sometimes older) serves in the reserves, civil defense or some other area. 

They are very different ideas; the “draft”, as it was practiced in the US from the forties to 1973, was inherently vastly more unfair than the “disproportionate burden on low-income and minority communities” Ms. Crosby kvetches about; upper-middle-class kids, from families with money or influence or savvy, routinely got deferred or found less-dangerous ways to while away their eligible years.

Universal service – where everyone who’s medically able serves 1-3 years in the regular military and then a number of years in the reserves, like in Israel and Switzerland (and in some ways Norway), whether your parents are plumbers or Senators.  The CEO’s son drives the tank commanded by the farmer’s kid; the mayor’s son loads bombs onto a plane flown by a bus driver’s son. 

They couldn’t be more different, with one exception; they both impel a nation to be much more conservative about using the military.  Most heavily-draftee or universal service militaries are only notionally able to serve outside their own nation’s borders (nations like Israel and Germany can only send their special forces and all-volunteer elites like paratroops and fighter pilots overseas, usually only for very brief periods or with immense support from the US).

Talking seriously about a universal draft might cause us to question our current reliance on the youngest adults to bear so much of the war burden… Maybe we should send tough grandmas to war at an equal rate.

And this is just stupid.  Fighting – and having a reasonable chance of surviving against an enemy that really does want to kill you (something few Democrats recognize in the current world situation) takes springy knees and sharp eyes and keen ears, not to mention the ability to be taught to do something utterly unnatural to you.  Ask any drill sergeant who is easier to turn into a soldier, an 18 year old or a 25 year old…

I hope the nation also would consider an ongoing requirement that every 18-year-old put in two years of public service either in the military or in a community development program. Such a move could vastly expand VISTA and the Peace Corps, which in turn might do much to improve conditions that spawn hopelessness (and prime the terrorist recruitment pipeline) in the poorest parts of the world today.

Would volunteers “improve” jihadist hatred of everything the West stands for – indeed, be proof of it? – or would they be merely hostages on the hoof? 

In such a scenario, special incentives may be necessary to ensure that enough young people sign up for military duty.

Here’s one:  make serving the nation an honorable profession, or at least a time in one’s life where one is part of an elite brotherhood set apart from the rest of society by a code that outsiders just don’t understand.

Sort of like what we have today, in a military that actually does the job. 

Another approach would be to require all young citizens to go through both military training and nonviolent conflict resolution and serve two years as members of the military or peace brigades.

I’m not sure what the best approach is.

Obviously.

Ms. Crosby seems to think that military is like high school – a captive audience that needs to be exposed to a bunch of abstruse concepts for their own good, as judged by society.

It’s not.  It’s an arm of the government that tries to kill, maim or drag to the bargaining table by force those who would do us harm.  It’s a specialized trade, with skills and standards that occupy mens’ lives for decades in the learning.  The professionals that make up the backbone of our military, the greatest on earth, devote their lives to learning the craft and art of war every bit as much as any other professional – and their lives depend on it more than most. 

And that is what’s missing from Ms. Crosby’s piece; any sense of what a military is for, and why it exists.  Is it a social program?  A vehicle to engineer society? 

Because Ms. Crosby certainly shows no understanding on any other level: 

This policy shift makes sense if we are truly serious about fighting a War on Terror and improving global and domestic conditions.

Actually, as noted by people who differ from Ms. Crosby in knowing what they’re talking about, draftee armies are the worst instrument for fighting that kind of war.

…and while the City of Saint Paul can’t get around to repairing all sorts of things for years and years…

…they can have a turborooter truck – it looks like a truck with a couple tanks of rocket fuel on the back, and sounds like a company of tanks advancing over gravel and broken glass – outside, cranking merrily away.

Thanks, City!

David Kopel at Volokh rates the Presidential contenders on their Second Amendment records, and thereby depresses the bejeebers out of me:

Top tier. Nearly perfect pro-Second Amendment records: Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas). Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.). Former Gov. Jim Gilmore (R-Vir.). Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (R-Ark.).

Great.  A bunch I couldn’t possibly get behind for President  (except Hunter, and I don’t think he’s national material yet).

Very good. Not a perfect record, but still a very positive one overall. Gov. Bill Richardson (D-N.M.). Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.). Former Gov. Tommy Thompson (R-Wisc.). Former Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.).

Richardson remains the only Democrat that wouldn’t render me nearly suicidal (but for the material that any other Dem would provide the blog and the show).

Mixed: Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)(mostly positive record, except for lead sponsorship of two terrible bills: McCain-Lieberman, a terribly-written bill which would have given the BATFE the authority to administratively eliminate any or all gun shows, and McCain-Feingold, the campaign speech restriction law which significantly affects right-to-arms groups).

Good catch (which is why Kopel is the best in this business):  McCain isn’t an unmitigated disaster on the Second Amendment (although he is in so many other areas).

Poor: Former Gov. George Pataki (R-N.Y.). Former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-Mass.). As noted by, inter alia, the Boston Globe, Romney’s flip-flops on guns are part of a larger record of inconsistency.

Yes.  Romney has some atoning to do – and I’m going to dig more into this on Saturday, when Ed and I interview Romney.

Almost perfect anti-Second Amendment record: Former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.). Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.). Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Former Vice-President Al Gore (in Congress, a nearly perfect pro-gun record until 1989, when he switched sides). Al Sharpton (D-N.Y.).

No surprises there.

Record of anti-Second Amendment leadership: Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.). Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.). Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.)(very effective in pushing gun control during his tenure as Judiciary Committee chairman). Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio). Gov. Tom Vilsack (D-Iowa). Former Mayor Rudy Guliani (R-N.Y.)(even worse than his predecessor, Democrat David Dinkins; indeed, based on his record, arguably worse than Sen. Clinton).

Unfortunately, he’s right about Giuliani.  Which stinks, since I think Rudy (with suitable conservative tempering  for a Veep) would be the GOP’s best shot at winning otherwise.

More on that later.

I loved Hounddog the first time I heard it…

Back when rumors first began to circulate, the film now known as “Hounddog” existed only in script form and was officially referred to as the “Untitled Dakota Fanning Project.” As principal photography got underway, however, talk of possible child abuse both in the film and in the filming began to surface online. At the center of the controversy a rape scene involving Fanning’s character.

…when it was called Bastard Out Of Carolina.

Blah.

Internet romance goes horribly awry:

 He was an 18-year-old Marine headed to war. She was an attractive young woman sending him off with pictures and lingerie.

Or so each one thought.

As we parents all know – it’s all fun, until someone gets hurt: 

In reality, they were two middle-aged people carrying on an Internet fantasy based on seemingly harmless lies.

When a truthful 22-year-old was drawn in, authorities say, their cyber escape turned deadly.

[Murder victim Brian] Barrett, 22, was an aspiring industrial arts teacher, an accomplished high school athlete who had coached Little League all summer and helped his father coach soccer. Those who knew the Buffalo State College student described him as quiet and unassuming.

He had clearly been targeted. Barrett was shot three times at close range in the neck and left arm after climbing into his truck about 10 p.m. at the end of a shift at Dynabrade Corp. in Clarence, 20 miles outside of Buffalo. His body was found two days later when a co-worker spotted his pickup in an isolated part of the company parking lot.

The problem is, except for the whole “one of the principals got murdered” bit, I can’t see a way to make it anything but a comedy.

Kids taken care of?  Check.

Snacks and pop laid in?  Check.

Warnings about making noise after 8PM?  Check.

That’s all I’m saying.

Don’t get me wrong – I probably verge on being one of Rod Dreher’s “crunchycons”.  I generally try to leave as small an environmental footprint as I can.  Not so much so I can be smug about my environmental consciousness as for basic ethics and, mainly, economics; it’s cheaper. 

When I practice it myself, anyway.  Spread over an entire society, it’s another matter.

Ask a global warming enthusiast (term used advisedly) about their pet topic.  They chortle with glee – and will not brook any disagreement about the theory’s supposed empirical underpinning.  The more ignorant the enthusiast about current events in general, the more blinkered they are about politics, the more certain they are that global warming is here to save them and their millenarian socialist worldview.

But now, some climatologists are starting to think that global warming has been “oversold”:

Climate scientists might be expected to bask in the spotlight after their decades of toil. The general public now cares about greenhouse gases, and with a new Democratic-led Congress, federal action on climate change may be at hand.

Problem is, global warming may not have caused Hurricane Katrina, and last summer’s heat waves were equaled and, in many cases, surpassed by heat in the 1930s.

In their efforts to capture the public’s attention, then, have climate scientists oversold global warming? It’s probably not a majority view, but a few climate scientists are beginning to question whether some dire predictions push the science too far.

Or indeed, whether they were science at all.  Given the revelations over the past few years – that catastrophe advocates believe it acceptable to fudge science to affect policy – it’s a legit question.

“Some of us are wondering if we have created a monster,” says Kevin Vranes, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado.

Vranes, who is not considered a global warming skeptic by his peers, came to this conclusion after attending an American Geophysical Union meeting last month. Vranes says he detected “tension” among scientists, notably because projections of the future climate carry uncertainties — a point that hasn’t been fully communicated to the public.

The science of climate change often is expressed publicly in unambiguous terms.

For example, last summer, Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, told the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce: “I think we understand the mechanisms of CO2 and climate better than we do of what causes lung cancer. … In fact, it is fair to say that global warming may be the most carefully and fully studied scientific topic in human history.”

Vranes says, “When I hear things like that, I go crazy.”

As he should.

Among enthusiasts, global warming (like so many other of the millenarian left’s pet causes) has taken on all of the worst aspects of organized fundamentalist religion; unassailable dogma (enforced by ostracism or worse), paranoia about dissenters, and downright anger about probing the “faith’s” origins.

While we’re a long way from answering the questions about global warming (is it man-made, or part of a natural climate oscillation), expect global warming fans to be about as graceful about the debate as snake-handlers are about those who question their approach to blind faith.

David Gregory in yet another softball interview with some pro-Clinton pundit:

“I want the drama of a Clinton Administration – prosperity, peace around the world…“

Whoah!  That’s how simple it’ll be!  Elect Hillary!, and radical Islam will be satisfied!

Who knew?

The Strib discovers that people of faith have a philanthropic streak:

In the 1990s, many Minnesotans discovered they didn’t have to be rich to give away money through a community foundation that focused on their hometown.

More recently, they’ve discovered they can do the same through a foundation that focuses on their faith.

The piece gives some good details on charitable giving.

But I think the most interesting part is right here:

Much of the growth in Minnesota and across the nation has been spurred by an intergenerational transfer of wealth, an increase in planned giving and more knowledge by donors, said Eli Skora, executive director of the United Jewish Fund and Council in St. Paul. Gains in the stock market also have been a factor.

Of course, one of the DFL’s big saws has been that repealing or reforming estate taxes – taxes on the money people leave behind when they die – are a sop to the “very wealthy” (which, translated from DFLspeak, means “successful middle-class”). As more Americans own homes and get into equity investments, more and more qualify as “wealthy” enough to get socked with severe estate taxes.

This, of course, is something the “Happy to Bend Over for the Budget Pay For a “Better” Minnesota” crowd sees as cash on the hoof, ripe for the taxing.

It’s interesting, sometimes, to look into foreign media to see what the rest of the world is thinking.  I read German pretty fluently (and get around in Dutch modestly well), so that’s where I gravitate.

And it can be kinda scary at times.

Via Davids Medienkritik, this piece from Handelsblatt, a sort of left-leaning German Wall Street Journal, is kind of enlightening:

The USA is putting firms under massive pressure worldwide to stop doing business with Iran. With that economic isolation they want to force the country to stop its controversial atomic program. Especially German firms are hard hit by that, indeed they traditionally do good business in the region. The latest case comes from the banking world.

BERLIN. After massive pressure from the USA, Commerzbank has now announced that it will end its processing of dollar-business for Iran at the end of January. Commerzbank boss Klaus-Peter Mueller has already publicly complained about the pressure from the Americans in his position as President of the Federal Union of German Banks.”

David – as solid a critic of the German media as there is – notes:

The article almost makes it sound as if the United States is to blame for Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. There is absolutely no hint that it might be wrong or unethical to trade with (and financially prop-up) Iran or other violent dictatorships/state-sponsors of terrorism. This despite the fact that Iranian President Ahmadinejad has repeatedly stated that Israel should be wiped off the map and that the Holocaust is a myth. There is also no mention of Iran’s support of Hezbollah nor does Handelsblatt mention the country’s bleak human rights record. Instead, America is made out to be the bad guy while Ahmadinejad gets a free pass. One honestly has to ask, where are the German concepts of fair trade and economic and social justice in all of this? Where are the traditional objections to profiteering and capitalist excess?

Read the whole thing.

I loved Freedom Writers – the story of a plucky teacher who breaks all the rules and refuses to knuckle under to an uncaring racist system – the first time I saw it.

When it was called Dangerous Minds, Stand and Deliver, Mr. Holland’s Opus, Save The Last Dance, Math Club ‘n Tha Hood, To Sir With Love and Save The Dangerous Chess For Ms. LoveSir.

Please see to changing this.

Thank you.

It was about this time 21 years ago.

I was working at KSTP-AM. We were getting our Super Bowl predictions – Bears versus the Patriots -together.

Everyone knew the Pats were going to tip the Bears. Even the station’s Chicago boys, Mike Edwards and Don Vogel, just knew Jim McMahon couldn’t cut it in the big game.

Of all the people at the station, I was alone in predicting a Bears blowout. Everyone laughed. The Bears? Pffft.
Of course I, alone, was right.

So it’s 2007. Conventional wisdom spoke again. Everyone knew it was true.

“Grossman will choke in the playoffs”. Fans of lesser teams repeated it like a comforting mantra. “The Saints will pull it out”.

And again – for the second time in my life – I say “Hah!”

Saints? What Saints?

The Chicago Bears know how to make a Super Bowl memorable. They’re making this one historic long before it’s played.Dissed all season long, Rex Grossman and Co. are heading to the big game for the first time since 1985 after rolling over the New Orleans Saints 39-14 Sunday, and Da Coach leading them there makes it all the more special.

“Grossman will choke in the playoffs”.

Hahahahahahahahaha!

Lovie Smith became the first black head coach to reach the NFL’s marquee game in its 41-year history and roughly four hours later, his good pal and mentor Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts joined him.

“I’ll feel even better to be the first black coach to hold up the world championship trophy,” Smith said after the Bears won the NFC championship.

Booyah.

While on the one hand it’s kind of a can’t-lose – I’ve met Tony Dungy, and he’s a great guy – I’m all with Da Bears. The team everyone said couldn’t do it.

And America needs the Bears to win. Great things happen when the Bears go downtown. The Bears won their first NFL Championships in the thirties, at the bottom of the Depression – some might say that they started the recovery. The 1940 NFL Championship – where Sid Luckman led the Bears to a 73-0 victory (that everyone said they were going to lose!) to the Washington Redskins corresponded with the realization that Britain would, indeed, stand firm against the Nazis. The Bears last pre-Super-Bowl NFC Championship – 1963 – marked the last year of genuine bipartisan foreign policy in this country. The Bears last Super Bowl happened at the peak of the Cold War, in the dark days of 1986 – and, in its own way, was a harbinger of the end of that struggle and the fall of Communism. The Bears’ victory was a validation of Reagan’s philosophy, one this nation needed in that dismal season; with the turning back of the Patriots, socialism was defeated at the darkest houir of the American way, steeling our courage for the struggle ahead.  In an indirect way, hundreds of millions owe their liberty to the Bears.
This has been a crappy week for America; a Bears victory will be the turning point this country needs.

The world’s hopes and dreams focus on the Bears this week. And I have faith they won’t let us – and the world, and history itself – down.

(more…)

Former KSTP host Mark O’Connell dead of cancer at 52:

O’Connell worked for eight years at the talk radio station, most recently on the “Ron and Mark Show” with Ron Rosenbaum. The show ended in September when the station cancelled the pair’s contract, Rosenbaum said.

Previously, O’Connell and Rosenbaum had teamed up for “The 9-11 Show,” and the two worked with Barbara Carlson on the morning “Babs and the Boys.” He also hosted a show on KOOL 108 prior to his years at KSTP.

There’s a lesson, here:

O’Connell had been ill for some time, but wanted to wait until after the holidays to get it checked out, said his wife, Gloria. He ended up going to the emergency room at Abbott Northwestern Hospital on Dec. 29.

“I think he knew he was sick for quite a while, but like a lot of men he didn’t want to go to the doctor,” his wife said.

She’s right, you know. And I’m worse than most.

Get checked up.

A Wisconsin fella survives a drunken 16-story fall after a night of drinking:

After a night out drinking, Joshua Hanson was horsing around with two friends on the 17th floor of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Minneapolis early Saturday morning when he apparently lost his balance and crashed through a floor-to-ceiling window.

He fell 16 stories.

Hanson, 29, landed feet first on a roof overhang near the hotels main entrance along the Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis police said, and he was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center.

Hospital officials werent reporting on his condition Saturday night, but police and fire officials said he had multiple broken bones and internal injuries.

He must have “an angel on his shoulder or something,” said Minneapolis police Lt. Dale Barsness. “Hes a lucky guy.”This is one of the most amazing reports Ive ever read,” said police Lt. Amelia Huffman.

I wish Mr. Hanson well. And if you’re in town for a convention for a game where drinking is a part of the culture, please don’t lurch drunkenly through windows.

From WhatTheCrap –  Elder, Lileks, and that other guy:

Man.  I never knew expressing utter ignorance of a cultural icon and branding yourself (TV-wise) as a nanny-whupped latte-drinking nancyboy could turn out so cool!

I never watched Friends – could someone put me in flagrante with Courtney Cox? [*]

(more…)

I hate “Free Speech in the Schools” debates. 

On the one hand, students being adolescents, and adolescents having huge tolerance for drama, the controversies are frequently giggly, overwrought and self-serving.

On the other hand, as I’ve noted (and will note further in the future), school administrations are frequently – how can I say this? – not the brightest lights on the Christmas Tree?  And while students under age 18 are not adults and aren’t expected to have fully-formed decision-making skills, school is (in theory) where they’re supposed to start learning how the adult world works.

So that’s why I’m going to side with the students in this rhubarb:

A high-school newspaper in Anoka County will be printed today with a big blue box on the front page because the principal banned a photo that simulated the ripping of an American flag.

“Originally a photo was to be placed here but was censored by the administration,” reads a message inside the box, which is to accompany a front-page story in the Crier student newspaper at St. Francis High School.

It’s not really a flag that was destroyed during a school play last fall, but rather bunting that looks like an American flag. The Cold War-era story had explored the repercussions of a fictional conquest of a U.S. school by an oppressive government such as that of the Soviet Union.

Under the circumstances, the photo in question seems very appropriate to the story. 

Not everyone thinks so, of course:

The brouhaha began with a photo that [the paper’s editor Eric] Sheforgen took during the play called “The Children’s Story.” Students handled an actual flag, then substituted shredded bunting to make it appear as though a flag were destroyed. …”A photo of the school’s fall play was not placed in the newspaper after Principal Paul Neubauer threatened the newspaper with possible legal action and froze funds to the Crier’s financial accounts. Because of these actions the Editorial Board felt it had no choice but to not print the picture.”

Under the compromise, the principal allowed the blue box to be published in place of the photo.

A caption reads: “During the fall play, lead actress Becca Bennett held up a prop, made from table cloth bunting, representing how a country could be torn apart by affecting the youth. The picture was removed off the wall in the PAC (Performing Arts Center) hallway.”

Aside:  they’re teaching their paper’s editor to write like freelance soft-skills consultant? 

[Superintendent] Saxton, who fully supported the principal’s decision, said that while many other photos of the play would have been suitable, the one depicting flag desecration could have offended many veterans and service organizations that support the schools.

Which is, I think, fascinating.  I’ve yet to meet a school that fudged one iota about offending, say, Christians, Republicans or pro-lifers.  Money talks, I guess.

But this seems like a bad decision on the part of the administration.

Senate Bill S.1 has garnered a fair amount of controversy.  Intended to reform rules for lobbyists, it is in some ways a fair idea (and apparently a retread of a bill sponsored in the last session by Trent Lott).  It would put limits on lobbyists’ transactions with Congress.

The controversy comes from its attempts to classify blogs and bloggers as lobbyists:

Section 220 of the bill “would require grassroots causes, even bloggers, who communicate to 500 or more members of the public on policy matters, to register and report quarterly to Congress the same as the big K. Street lobbyists,” said [direct-mail campaigner Richard] Viguerie in a statement, but the truth isn’t that simple.

First, a couple of facts: though groups like the Family Research Council claim that “the liberal leadership in the US Senate seeks to silence groups like the Family Research Council,” the bill was actually cosponsored by Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the top Republican leader in the Senate. What’s more, the bill appears to be an exact reintroduction of last year’s S.2349, which was introduced by Trent Lott (R-MS) and actually passed the Republican-controlled Senate, complete with section 220.

The fact that Lott introduced it is hardly prima facie evidence that it’s a great idea.  But let’s proceed:

So much for the liberal plot. In fact, some liberal groups oppose the measure, including the ACLU. The group argues that the reporting requirements are “onerous” and that “people must be able to disseminate information, contact their representatives, and encourage others to do so as well.”

And with this, I agree with the ACLU.

More below:

Section 220 introduces a series of modifications to the 1995 Lobbying Disclosure Act. The most important is that “paid efforts to stimulate grassroots lobbying” now counts as “lobbying” under certain circumstances…This is what has inspired claims that bloggers and activists of all stripes will suddenly be classed as lobbyists and will be monitored by the government.

Hm.  So is it a fact?

What the bill says, though, is that the rules only apply to people who are paid by clients to encourage the public to contact Congress about specific legislation. The rules do not apply to any communication directed at less than 500 people, they do not apply to any communication directed at a group’s current membership, and they do not impose any speech regulations (all that is required is a quarterly report describing where one’s money came from and what bills were worked on).

Would this apply to a political blogger? Not usually. Because section 220 is only a series of changes to the Lobbying Disclosure Act, that legislation’s other rules still apply. According to OMB Watch, a government accountability watchdog group, the LDA’s registration requirement is only triggered by groups that spend more than $24,500 on lobbying semiannually and employ a least one person who spends 20 percent or more of their work time on lobbying. The bill also concerns only the federal government; groups operating at the state level are exempt.

On the one hand, like most “Reform” legislation, it leaves more questions than answers; the big one for me is “do I fit in?”  I reach a lot more than 500 people, but I might make $50 a month in blogads, if I’m lucky.

This sort of thing is a two-edged sword.  On the one hand, more transparency in this sort of thing would be good – and it would be best to depend on the honesty of all involved.  I do, in fact, disclose every non-advertising nickel I get from this site.  Other sites’ financial underpinnings are a little fuzzier and closely held.

Still and all, there’s a chance it’ll come to naught:

Sen. Robert Bennett (R-UT), though, is concerned that section 220 is overly broad. He has introduced amendment 20, which would kill section 220 but leave the rest of the bill intact. (As a sign of just how much interest the bill has received on Capitol Hill, it currently has 96 proposed amendments).

Worth watching.

Kennedy V. The Machine – one of the best blogs of the last couple of years – has finally rebranded itself.

Very appropriately, I might add.

Stop by and wish ’em well!

UPDATE: Ooops – sorry, guys. I got your Technorati ping, and figured that meant you’d gone live.

Richard Schickel notes the fiftieth anniversary of Humphrey Bogart’s death:

[Director Raoul] Walsh observed the melancholy beneath his grousing bluster and cast him — in 1941, when Bogart was over 40 — in his first truly memorable role, Roy “Mad Dog” Earle in “High Sierra.” He played an escaped con “rushing toward his doom,” as another character describes him. Something almost soulful emerged in this performance.

In “The Maltese Falcon” (released the same year), everyone thinks Bogart is a shady private eye. But he cautions people not to understand him too quickly. The man has a code, which he refuses to articulate until the very end. And why bother? It is sufficient that he knows what it is and acts out of its principles.

As the years have gone on and I’ve learned more about Bogart, I’ve only gotten to like him more.

The whole thing is worth a read.

OK, lefties, this one’s for you.

Dennis “Starchild” Kucinich is floating the trial balloon; the left wants to resurrect the “Fairness Doctrine”, which would require that broadcasters “balance” their politically-focused programming. This would either force stations to air liberal hosts (who are a drag on the market) or, as most stations did before 1987, steer for the safe, boring middle.

The Democrats want…

…well, let’s let Democrats tell us what they want. As we noted yesterday, Democrat blogger Taylor Marsh says:

Democrats are still behind in radio…instead of using their donor base to help hosts who could hold their own. Creating Democratic business consortiums that help hosts get on the air, with the best of us staying on and eventually catapulting to syndication. The Fairness Doctrine could really make a difference.

In other words, “let’s use government to force the market to do what we can’t make it do via talent and savvy”.

Obsessive Regular commenter “Doug” puts it another way; when asked if Fairness Doctrine supporters believed that the people were too stupid to process information for themselves, he responded:

No Mitch but they are too lazy.

OK, lefties – keep ’em coming. Why do you want to reinstate the “Fairness Doctrine”?

What excuses do you have for parsing the First Amendment?

Comments must be on-topic; I will be uncharacteristically really ruthless about this today.

Mitch “The Other Mitch” Pearlstein spells out the case for vouchers in the Strib today.

He starts in with all that common sense:

A common myth is that schools across the country with lots of low-income students are less-well-funded than schools with fewer low-income students. The opposite, actually, is more routinely the case. Minnesota, in fact, recently ranked fifth best in the nation in terms of “extra poverty-based funding per student living below the poverty line.” This (benevolent) gap was $3,075.

But given that African-Americans in Minneapolis are doing unusually poorly academically, how do these conflicting findings compute?

To complicate matters even more, consider Ascension School, a K-8 Catholic school in north Minneapolis. Students are overwhelmingly minority; they’re overwhelmingly non-Catholic; and in 2005, 90 percent of eighth-graders there passed Minnesota’s Basic Skills test in math and 95 percent passed Minnesota’s Basic Skills test in reading.

In contrast, eighth-graders in Minneapolis public schools, in 2003, passed at these rates in math: 82 percent for whites; 57 percent for Asian/ Pacific Islanders; 41 percent for Hispanics; 40 percent for American Indians; and 28 percent for blacks. Please note, though you probably already have, that the 82 percent passing rate for whites in Minneapolis public schools was substantially below Ascension’s 90 percent for all its kids. MPS scores were significantly better in reading than they were in math; but again, they were significantly below Ascension’s reading scores.

What are tuition rates (for non-parishioners) in inner-city Catholic schools in the state? According to the Minnesota Catholic Conference, they average under $3,200 for elementary schools and under $8,000 for high schools. By contrast, as long ago as 2003 — in the wake of a recession — federal, state, and local revenues in Minneapolis Public Schools totaled $13,658 per “pupil unit.”

Pearlstein notes that, given the objective data (and data he didn’t state – such as the fact that private, Catholic and alternative schools do a vastly better job with most “special ed” students), the case for vouchers should be open and shut.

Of course, it’s not about rational evidence.  It’s been said that the greatest victory of the compulsory education system has been convincing people that there’s no other way to educate kids; similarly, the greatest victory of the current school system has  been getting people to think that what we have today:

• is, when everything is working, good for our kids
• can be made to work
• That the system “working”, even as intended, can be a good thing.  I’m reminded of the teacher I had, who declared “communism in its ideal form would be cool; it’s just not practiced properly anywhere”.  The current school system has turned into the same thing.

The fact is, the school system will not change as long as enough voters believe the three bullets above.  The teacher’s union and the academic-industrial complex is too firmly entrenched to allow any significant changes, and too many voters believe the three points above to make any meaningful change.
And the only change that will come is when parents seize the power and control back from the teachers, the unions, the administrations and the educational academics.  It’s happening, of course – minority parents are leading the efflux from the inner-city schools.

Which, of course, will only exacerbate the “problems” (I prefer to call them “terminal diseases”) in the public system, as the parents with what P.J. O’Rourke called the “infinite common sense to give a sh*t” leave the system, taking their interest, their commitment and their kids with them.

If vouchers – or any other kind of school choice – ever happen, it’ll be after everyone that could benefit from them has already left the system.

Peeps is slowly losing it. After years of Hewitt’s denigrating abuse – all the figure skating jokes, the hockey jokes, yadda yadda – Elder’s finally gone around the bend:

Am I the only one in America more concerned with what happens tonight on Top Chef than the latest adventures in a day in the life of Jack Bauer?

Speaking for the real Americans – yes. Yes, you are.

The implausible plot set-up behind “24” remind me nothing more than the insipid “Speed” movies with slightly better acting.

I’m trying to imagine life at the Elder house when he was – er, younger:

ELDER: “Oh yeah – like a resistance leader would really escape from a concentration camp and go to Casablanca!”

ELDER: “A talking moose? And a talking squirrel? Who are they trying to kid?”

As to comparing 24 to Speed – what? And did you skip United 93 because it was too much like Snakes on a Plane?

And let’s get something straight; Top Chef is a feeble knockoff of Project Runway.

Fortunately, Atomizer puts down his martini and intervenes:

Elder…perhaps you should watch 24 once or twice before you dismiss it out of hand. I’m quite curious as to how you’re so certain about the “implausible plot set-up” without ever having seen an episode.

As a 24 addict since Day One, I can tell you that the plot has a tendency to morph into unrecognizable shapes on a weekly basis…that’s what makes it so compelling.

Yep. It’s not a History Channel documentary. It’s an exercise in audience manipulation, in ginning up 96 cliffhangers every season. And it’s fun.

At the very least though, try to spend a minute or two each week watching shows that feature actual men. If you get scared, you can always turn the channel.

To be fair to Elder, he might need to wean himself up from Top Chef up to 24. Perhaps he should start with Real World/Road Rules Challenge; I don’t think that’s too aggressive.