Add this to the extensive annals of stupid things he’s said.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Five Years After Augustine
James Dean has an interview with the man himself.
This is the essay I wrote the previous summer as an input to the committee.
Looking For Anarchy
…in all the wrong places.
As he says, with Occupy, or what’s happening in Ferguson, the so-called “anarchists” are just the muscle for the Left.
Bias In Academia
…is destroying scientific integrity:
OK, it’s not exactly a “Sopranos” plot. But it’s pretty shady for the world of higher education. Chen went to great lengths to make up fake email addresses and even assume the names of other scientists to write approvingly of his own research.
In a sense, though, he was just exploiting the deep flaws of the peer review system. The academy has become a kind of club where friends give friends flattering assessments of research, which essentially guarantees promotions and tenure.
Here’s how the former editor of the British Medical Journal explained peer review:
“The editor looks at the title of the paper and sends it to two friends whom the editor thinks know something about the subject. If both advise publication the editor sends it to the printers. If both advise against publication the editor rejects the paper. If the reviewers disagree the editor sends it to a third reviewer and does whatever he or she advises. This … is little better than tossing a coin.”
But it’s not just the clubbiness of academia that is to blame. There is such ideological uniformity in the ivory tower that no one ever questions the important assumptions behind anyone else’s research.
Gee, where have we seen that sort of thing before?
I’d note, though, that contra the headline, it’s not a “liberal” bias. It’s a leftist bias.
Obama’s Great Ebola Error
The last time a president tried to make a health crisis about national security, fifty million people died.
It’s not surprising, really. Wilson was our first truly fascist president (complete with racism). Obama is simply following in his (and Roosevelt’s) footsteps.
And meanwhile, we don’t really have anything resembling a national response. So I guess ebola is just another thing that the president has no strategy on.
[Update a while later]
Well, this was inevitable. Ebola is the GOP’s fault. Because they’ve been in charge of the CDC, with its emphasis on junk nutrition science and gun control, while its budget rose.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The problem with the argument that it’s Republicans’ fault.
As Glenn says, if Congress was smart, it would force the CDC to shift funding from all the junk science it’s been doing, and start focusing on actual infectious diseases. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world in which Congress is smart.
[Update a couple minutes later]
The CDC is losing its grip. The country’s in the very best of hands.
Greg Orman, “Mystery Businessman”
Really? Only if you’re an idiot, or a Democrat partisan hack (both of which descriptions, often simultaneously, describe many in the media).
As Glenn says, there’s no mystery. He’s a Democrat pretending to not be one until after the election, at which point he’ll happily caucus with Harry Reid. And the media will help carry him across the finish line.
There Oughtta Be Fewer Laws
Some thoughts on the potential (and often actual) tyranny of prosecutorial discretion:
“If the prosecutor is obliged to choose his cases, it follows he can choose his defendants. This method results in “the most dangerous power of the prosecutor: that he will pick people he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted.” Prosecutors could easily fall prey to the temptation of ‘picking the man, and then searching the law books …to pin some offense on him.’ In short, prosecutors’ discretion to charge — or not to charge — individuals with crimes is a tremendous power, amplified by the large number of laws on the books.
As Glenn often says, we need to take away sovereign immunity from these people.
[Update a few minutes later]
Speaking of the injustice of law enforcement, some thoughts on civil forfeiture, in which someone can be deprived of their property without a trial.
Happy Italian Discovery Day
For the record, I think it’s absurd to call it “Indigenous Americans Day.”
But since Jim Bennett’s original column from nine years ago seems to have died from link rot, I’m going to repost it here:
Continue reading Happy Italian Discovery Day
Of Tyrants And Dangerous Old Men
Bob Owens has some history, and thoughts on aspiring tyrants like Jerrold Nadler.
The Disintegrating Obama Presidency
Steve Hayes has a long piece (necessarily, because it’s such a target rich environment) on how it is chock full of fail.
[Update a couple minutes later]
This isn’t from the essay, but rather from Jonah Goldberg’s latest “newsletter” (so no link), but it seems apt:
Islamic State took Fallujah and Mosul months ago and he kept calling it the “jayvee team.” As recently as August, he was telling Tom Friedman that it was ridiculous to arm the Syrian rebels. In September, he was wistfully complaining that the Islamic State made a mistake in beheading those Americans because it aroused U.S. public opinion for war. In other words, doing nothing about the Islamic State was Obama’s foreign policy until the domestic political situation made his foreign policy untenable. Chess Masters think many moves ahead, novices respond to whatever their opponent’s latest move is. Total amateurs just move pieces based on shouts from the crowd watching the game. Obama’s like a kid looking for approval every time he touches a piece.
It’s sad because it’s true.