These accusations aren’t even the most audacious aspect of the court’s 28-page order. In a decision that will be studied in legal-ethics classes for decades to come, Judge Hanen placed many of the lawyers at the Justice Department’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. — known as “Main Justice” — under his personal supervision. This relief is reminiscent of federal courts that placed recalcitrant school districts under supervision to ensure compliance with desegregation orders. Or more recently, this relief is akin to judges who placed deficient police departments under federal oversight to ensure they reduce police brutality or other offenses. What is remarkable here is that Main Justice will now be required to report to Judge Hanen’s authority for the next five years to improve its ethics.
Of course, when has this administration ever acted in good faith? It just usually gets away with it. “Improving their ethics” would seem to be an effort in futility.
I have to say, I learned absolutely nothing from this, and one of the things I “learned” is wrong. It used to be that the earlier you chose seats, the better your choices, but that is no longer true. American is now charging extra for “premium” (read window or aisle, or more leg room), and if you are early, and want one, you have to pay for it. One trick I have learned, though, is that they open up for free at check-in time if passengers have canceled. When we flew back from Miami last week, we managed to change our previously assigned center seats to windows the afternoon before flight, without having to pay the $34 they had asked previously.
Some interesting (and surprising) observations from Glenn Beck:
It was like affirmative action for conservatives. When did conservatives start demanding quotas AND diversity training AND less people from Ivy League Colleges.
I sat there, looking around the room at ‘our side’ wondering, ‘Who are we?’ Who am I? I want to be very clear — I am not referring to every person in the room. There were probably 25–30 people and a number of them, I believe, felt like I did. But the overall tenor, to me, felt like the Salem Witch Trial: ‘Facebook, you must admit that you are screwing us, because if not, it proves you are screwing us.’
What happened to us? When did we become them? When did we become the people who demand the Oscars add black actors based on race?
Good questions. I agree that Facebook should do whatever it wants to do, but that it should be transparent.
“A fellow asked me that once and I said, ‘I don’t know,” Nelson Bunker Hunt once told a congressional panel grilling him about his net worth. “But I do know people who know how much they are worth generally aren’t worth much.”
Similarly, people who are always bragging about how smart they are generally aren’t that bright.
Someone made a good point the other day. It’s nonsensical to call Mars a “horizon goal” as the NRC did, because a horizon is something you never reach.
Those are the latest numbers from Rasmussen. I’ve never been one to say that Trump can’t beat Hillary; I just think that would be almost as terrible an outcome as him not beating Hillary.
But what I find interesting is not who gets a higher plurality, but how many people share my desire for another candidate (at one in five, by that poll). And that doesn’t count the number who would switch from Trump or Hillary if someone else were in the race. There has never been a more promising year for a good independent candidate than this one.