Saturday, May 14, 2005

The Legend of Taxalot.

Wizbang follows a great story about America's Royal Family - the Kennedys - and their artistry with the tax codes.

Thursday, May 12, 2005

How would he know?

Ohio Senator George Voinovich (R!) blasted UN Representative-nominee John Bolton, stating that if Bolton worked in the private sector he would have been fired.

George apparently has quite an extensive and distinguished career in the private sector:

  • probably in private law practice from 1961-1962
  • Ohio Assistant Attorney General 1963-1964
  • probably in private law practice from 1965-1966
  • Ohio state/county/city office holder 1967-1988
  • probably practiced law in 1989, while eating lotsa rubber-chicken suppers
  • Governor of Ohio 1990-1998
  • United States Senator 1999-present

I assume you were speaking theoretically about Bolton, eh George?

And your actions in committee was a true act of courage, George.

A Lucid Moment in Alabama.

Alabama School Drops Klan Founders Name (AP-Yahoo)

The idolatry that Alabamians have for Nathan Bedford Forrest, AKA "The Butcher of Fort Pillow", has always baffled me. Imagine Heinrich Himmler Hochschule in Bremen...
And now, a cheap shot.

During yesterday's emergency in DC, members of the House and Senate Democratic Leadership were taken to a daycare center at an undisclosed location...

OK, enough of that.
Tales from the Ivory Tower.

First, this outrageous story from Columbia University:

The Tale of Two Columbias (WSJ Opinion Journal)

And then a review of the problems on campus and some cautious hope for change:

Retaking the Universities, by Roger Kimball (WSJ Extra)

The story of the "courageous" vote at Columbia butresses Trilling's claim of the "adversary culture of the intellectuals" - and scholarship's form of "diplomatic immunity" from consequences of actions. Kimball also reminds the reader of another component of the problem:

Academic life, like the rest of social life, unfolds within a frame of rules and permissions. At one end, there are things that one must (or must not) do; at the other end, there is rule of whim. The middle range, in which behavior is neither explicitly governed by rules but is not entirely free, is that realm governed by what the British jurist John Fletcher Moulton, writing in the early 1920s, called "Obedience to the Unenforceable." It is a realm in which not law, not caprice, but virtues such as duty, fairness, judgment and taste hold sway. In a word, it is the "domain of Manners," which "covers all cases of right doing where there is no one to make you do it but yourself."


In other words, a chaired professorship is no excuse for intellectual slovenliness.

Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Over what-you-call-your Dey.

The Ghoul, beloved Rust Belt TV Schlockmeister, opines on FM radio. Well, perhaps they listen to Clear Channel Dreck in...Parma!