Category Archives: Media Criticism

Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Law School Malpractice

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More thoughts on why many lawyers don’t understand the Constitution, from Jen Rubin:

…law schools have given way to the notion that the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is. In a sense this is true insofar as the principle of judicial review has been concretized and the other branches assent to the courts’ decisions. But the idea that the Constitution has objective meaning that can be ascertained, in part by studying works like “The Federalist,” is still resisted by the vast majority of elite law school faculty. Even weirder from faculty members’ vantage point is the idea that you can thereby assess whether the Supreme Court got a case “right” or “wrong.” That sort of assessment, using the Constitution, its text and its meaning as the touchstone for judicial interpretation is not in fashion, and hasn’t been for decades now, at elite law schools. Students study precedent and view newer decisions as either departures from or natural consequences of earlier cases. But assess that a decision, and maybe a great number before that, are just plain wrong because they misunderstood an aspect of the Framers’ intent or the structure of the Constitution? Perish the thought.

This is why so many “progressive” lawyers (including Barack Obama) have made such fools of themselves in front of a Supreme Court that actually does understand, and care about it, and why so many legal analysts in the media have been so shocked that the court actually takes constitutional arguments seriously.

Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Orbital Mechanics, Selenology, Economics And Logistics

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Jim Hillhouse doesn’t understand any of them:

The plan germinating from deep within NASA, and that sees some tentative support within Congress, is to fly one, or both, of the Morpheus and Mighty Eagle landers on the first flight of the Space Launch System in 2017. The reason for this is to begin to answer the question of whether, and in what form, there is water on the Moon.

Ummmm…no. We are long past the point of having to “begin” to answer that question.
Continue reading Orbital Mechanics, Selenology, Economics And Logistics →

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society

Why Is Bill Ayers Speaking At GreenFestival?

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Birds of a feather:

So why does the speaker lineup at today’s event, heavily marketed as family-friendly and all about the food, include Weather Underground terrorist Bill Ayers, his FBI-most-wanted-list wife Bernardine Dohrn, Van Jones, Jesse Jackson Sr., Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, and active Occupier Kyla Bourne whose academic interests revolve around “radical democracy and urban social movements?”

The green movement isn’t just a subset of the progressive philosophy. Rather, it’s the religion that’s taken over the left and whose underlying principles are such that Weather Underground terrorists and Occupy activists fit right in at their family-friend[ly] festivals.

While I’m sure that many attendees think they’re wonderful people, they haven’t all thought through the ultimate consequences of their proposals, in terms of humanity and liberty, or what kind of people it allies them with.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Principle Over Bipartisanship

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More thoughts on the unprincipled RINOs from Mike Walsh:

For decades, conservatives have been gnashing their teeth as one Glorious Revolution after another is co-opted by the “Washington establishment,” and a crop of scrubbed virgin freshmen is quickly seduced and corrupted by whorehouse pork-barrelism and, worse, programism.

What the Tea Party and other conservatives are saying is simple: Enough. Stop. No mas. Don’t we already have enough laws, enough regulations, enough encroachments on liberty and — more important — isn’t it about time we rolled them back, striking useless laws from the books, eliminating some or most regulatory agencies and severely (and permanently) constitutionally hamstringing the others? Conservatism can be “progressive” too — back to the future. But we’ve let the “progressive” Left push us around for so long that now they openly mock and question the Constitution itself, and regard conservative fidelity to it as a kind of cultism.

…even when the socialists get what they want, they can’t hang on to it. Their beloved Forward-leaning Soviet Union, collapsed in less than a century, taking most of international communism with it. Seismically speaking, the same thing is happening here. As my colleague, Victor Davis Hanson, notes over at PJ Media, “The temple of postmodern liberalism was rocked these last few weeks, as a number of supporting columns and buttresses simply crashed, leaving the entire edifice wobbling.” That temple, too, will come down; the only question is whether our nation will go with it.

And that’s why the RINOs like Lugar and Hatch have to go. The GOP cannot offer a credible alternative to the destructive hate and social division of the Democrats — the party, let us remember, of slavery, segregation, secularism and sedition — unless it cleans out its own Augean stables first, removes the collaborationists and rejects “bipartisanship” as an absolute good in itself, instead of an occasional, pragmatic means to an end.

Yes.

Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Social Commentary, Space

Our Insignificance

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Ruminations from Lileks:

Is there a word for people who hate misanthropists? I was driving back from the grocery store, caught some of the stand-up channels (they rarely make me laugh, but it’s interesting sociology at the least) and some BBC, which had a science show. Great! I love science shows. The female presenter – whom I’m sure was named Fiona; sounded like a Fiona – was talking to one of those guys who can explain Science in a cheerful hip upbeat tone, and he was talking about dark matter and dark energy. He made a crack about how you should tell your friends they’re even more insignificant than they may have thought they were – haw! ‘Cause humans occupy this tiny speck and therefore are insignificant. That doesn’t follow. But it’s standard; I see it all the time in infographics about galactic immensity, how we should all realize we’re insignificant in the greater scheme. Unless, of course, we’re the only planet with life, which would make us quite significant, but I don’t believe that. Anyway it’s like saying a dog is insignificant because Mt. Everest exists.

Then he talked about how 99% of the universe is dark energy and dark matter, and those of us on the shiny bits are just “light pollution.”

“Oh, light pollution,” cooed the host. “I love that.”

Of course you do: it’s the mark of a fine mind to regard us as some sort of blight, a zit on the face of the cosmos. In the aggregate, of course; I’m sure her and her friends are quite brilliant and smashing and loads of fun to be with, but in general, we really are nothing, worse than nothing, pollution, because we’re bad. It’s the modern form of smug: self-hatred of one’s own species, a reveling in its insignificance when compared to Betelgeuse.

As I said: if we’re alone, then we have invested the universe with something utterly unique simply by observing it. Add to that the fact that we grew from grunting trogs in caves to creatures who sent out machines to interrogate the world, AND invented music – indeed, invented beauty. If we’re not alone, then we are hardly insignificant, either, unless you want to say that Rome was insignificant because no one in Peru had heard of it.

They’re also the sort of people who probably think we shouldn’t go out and spread the cancer to the rest of the universe.