You’re going to jail. Maybe.
All these laws, in which it is almost impossible to get through a day without breaking one, and all this legal uncertainty is (as Ayn Rand and others have pointed out) a huge threat to liberty.
Lessons From The “Occupy” Movement
Glenn Reynolds offers a useful course syllabus, which is unlikely to be used, given the nature of academia.
Who Killed The Jobs?
Here’s a telling comment:
The drop in employment is unsurprising to those of us in the small business sector where 90% of jobs are created. In 2004 I helped start a company with two partners. We invested $500K of risk capital, put a traditional company infrastructure in place and eventually hired over a dozen people. Why? Because sentiment was positive, HSA plans were inexpensive, and growth a reality. After four years of solid growth, we sold our company to a public company, where we continued to work. In all that time, my proudest moments came from giving young people a career start in life. Many have gone on to work for places such as Symantec, Facebook and Wells Fargo. Today, my partners and I are independent, making good livings — solo. It makes ZERO economic sense for us to start a company again and employ people. The health plan we had is no longer available and coverage is twice as costly. The regulatory burdens are overwhelming and getting worse. We can see only risk on the horizon and little reward to justify that risk. So a dozen bright, talented 20somethings will likely never get the same chance to enter the private workforce.
Here are the two charts that say it all.
[Update a while later]
Some people aren’t seeing the comments at the Powerline post. I see them, but perhaps one has to be logged into Facebook to do so. A good reason not to use FB for comments. Anyway, at least that first comment is available for viewing here.
Smearing The Heartland Institute
…with a fake memo? Looks like it to me.
Funny, the climate skeptics have never had to resort to things like this — they had plenty of real proof of unscientific behavior. These people sound desperate.
The Unconstitutionality Of Rent Control
George Wills says it’s time for the Supreme Court to reestablish personal property rights.
Keith Olbermann Logic
Lee Stranahan shreds his defense of the Occurapers.
As far as I can tell, Olbermann seems to be arguing that anyone committing a rape, regardless of location or other Occupy-like activity, is by definition not part of Occupy, because the noble Occupyers would never do such a thing. Or something.
The Toxic Totalitarian Nanny State
My thoughts on the pre-school lunch confiscation, over at PJMedia.
Chimichangapalooza
What’s amusing about this kerfuffle is that the chimichanga is the Mexican-food equivalent of chop suey, which is a dish invented in San Francisco, and no one in China had ever heard of. It’s not from south of the border, but originated in Tucson, at the best restaurant in town when it comes to Tucsonian cuisine. And most places in other locales don’t really know how to do it, often adding beans or rice, making it a mere fried burrito. It’s best filled with carne seca, an El Charro specialty that is also not widely available. The other things that are local to southern Arizona, but hasn’t made it much farther is a cheese crisp (flour tortilla topped with monterey jack and broiled open face to melt it, with or without jalapenos, then sliced and served like a pizza) and green-corn tamales. I was eating them in the seventies when I lived in Tucson, working for the L-5 Society, before most people had ever heard of them.
[Update a few minutes later]
I see that Prudence Paine is amused at the ignorance as well. Though I take issue with her denigration of them. They are excellent, and better than most Mexican dishes, in my opinion. I suspect her antipathy toward them is based on a misplaced fear of fat. When I used to eat them in Tucson, they were fried in lard, and that’s actually much healthier than low-fat, or vegetable oils. The bad thing about them is the flour tortilla itself, not the fact that it’s fried.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Deroy Murdock follows up on my piece on rights for me but not for thee, pointing out that ObamaCare is a double-edged sword:
Imagine, as Jonah does, that Rick Santorum is elected president and becomes the reincarnation of Cotton Mather, just as Nancy Pelosi probably fears as she lays her coiffed head on her high-threadcount pillows every night. Imagine further that instead of repealing Obamacare, the former GOP senator from Pennsylvania decided to keep this law in place and modify it along much more traditionalist, even puritanical, lines.
Santorumcare could involve — say — a federally mandated, five-day waiting period before women could have abortions. This parallels the original five-day interlude that potential firearms buyers faced under the Brady Law. How could the Left object to that?
How about a requirement that every American who receives free condoms from any federally subsidized health center first must receive 30 minutes of mandatory abstinence counseling?
And why not a rule that those who visit Gay Men’s Health Crisis cannot accept any services until after completing a two-day course on gay conversion, so that they can be “cured” of their homosexuality?
I seriously doubt that President Santorum (or President Brownback or President Palin) would do such things, but then I never envisioned President Obama ordering free birth control for any and every adult female who wanted it — regardless of income — and paid for under federal orders by health insurers, over the objections of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Actually, I think that was pretty predictable.
Oliver Stone’s Son
…is an idiot:
“The conversion to Islam is not abandoning Christianity or Judaism, which I was born with. It means I have accepted Mohammad and other prophets,” he said in a brief telephone call from the central Iranian city of Isfahan, where he underwent the ceremony.
Sean Stone’s famous father is Jewish, while his mother is Christian.
The 27-year-old filmmaker did not say why he converted.
According to Iran’s Fars news agency, Sean Stone had become a Shiite and had chosen to be known by the Muslim first name Ali.
Like father, like son.
This raises so many questions. What is he “converting” from? You can be Christian, or Jewish, but not both, and it’s not clear that he’s ever been either (his mother wasn’t Jewish, so he isn’t Jewish by birth). Does he really believe that the Mullahs will be just fine with his “not abandoning” those other religions (to the degree that he was ever an adherent to them)? Does he know the penalty for apostasy in his new religion?
What is clear from his brief message is that he is as ignorant of Islam as he is of the other two religions.