Quickies

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A round-up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.







Our blog buddy, Harrison is taking a little winter vacation and has just wrapped up his visit to Yellowstone. Check out his site here for some great pictures and where he makes this observation regarding the self-serve and self-regulated warming huts in and around the Park:

I wonder what would happen were one of the Yellowstone warming huts to be set up in San Francisco, New York City, Detroit, Boston, or Seattle? The axe would certainly be stolen and used to commit a crime. The logs would disappear as well while the iron fireplace would be extinguished and be covered in graffiti before being stolen for scrap, and the building itself would be occupied by a bunch of smelly losers with no job until the police were called in to evict everybody before the structure was torn down.

He's right and which helps explain why collectivism on any large scale doesn't work. Counting on moral and cooperative behavior on anything of a larger scale than a warming hut and a "population" more prone to self-sufficient and altruistic motives is simply a fool's errand.




Asian discrimination in academics?

Most people are familiar with so-called affirmative action policies that favor blacks (purportedly to redress past discrimination) and Hispanics and penalize whites. Racial preferences are discriminatory toward individuals of Asian descent as well.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating complaints that Harvard and Princeton discriminate against Asian students in admissions.

Naturally, the schools deny the claims. Harvard “does not discriminate against Asian-American applicants,” spokesman Jeff Neal told Bloomberg. “Our review of every applicant’s file is highly individualized and holistic, as we give serious consideration to all of the information we receive and all of the ways in which the candidate might contribute to our vibrant educational environment and community.”

Apparently, it may also extend to athletics...

"I'm sorry, sir, there is no volleyball at the gym tonight"

Jeremy Lin, currently the toast of Manhattan as he has been tearing it up of late for a Carmelo Anthony-less New York Knicks (addition by subtraction - Anthony is one of the most talented yet clueless players in the NBA right now). Lin, a Taiwanese-American, born in L.A. and raised in Palo Alto, CA, was asked to walk on at several Pac-10 schools after a highly-decorated high school career, instead enrolled at, um, Harvard. He signed as an un-drafted free agent with the Golden State Warriors and did some D-league duty before signing with the Knicks prior to this season. According to Pops, the Lakers had a shot at signing him, ultimately passing on that opportunity. Man, they could use that shot in the arm he is now providing the Knicks.






Sarah B. on t-shirt sales as polling indicators.






Honesty.

Barack Obama's politics meant nothing to Samuel L. Jackson because the "Pulp Fiction" star only voted for the president for one reason and one reason only ... because he's black.

In an interview with Ebony magazine, Jackson explained, "I voted for Barack because he was black. 'Cuz that's why other folks vote for other people — because they look like them ... That's American politics, pure and simple. [Obama's] message didn't mean [bleep] to me."

We know for a fact that's why a lot of white people voted for him.







More freedom issues. This time in Baltimore:

The officers on Saturday got Cover to stop filming, not by telling him to cease recording or seizing his camera. They told him he was loitering, and that he had to move along or risk arrest.

It's a caveat - some might say loophole - in the new general order publicly trotted out by police on Friday, three days before they're due in court to argue in a lawsuti brought by the ACLU that they are properly addressing citizen's right to record.

The new rule says that citizens have an "absolute right" to photograph or video record the enforcement actions taking place in public view. The chief legal counsel for the agency called it "an extension of the citizen's right to see. [An officer] wouldn't go up to a citizen at a crime scene and tell them to close their eyes, so the officer can't tell them they can't film."

But the rules also says that the person recording may not "violate any section of any law, ordinance, code or criminal article" - such as loitering - while doing so. The officers on Cross Street seemed aware of that fine print.

Funny, we didn't see the ol' "loitering" charge brought out against Occupy. Good thing the ACLU is all over this. Did we mention that the ACLU can go straight to hell?








Awwww... Liberal Catholics who supported Obamacare now upset over contraceptives.

Without former Michigan Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak, President Barack Obama wouldn’t have gotten his health care overhaul in 2010 passed through Congress.

But Stupak, a pro-life Catholic who voted for the health care reform after being promised that federal dollars wouldn’t fund abortions, now isn’t happy with Obama.

Appearing Wednesday night on Fox News, Stupak made clear he opposes the Obama administration’s insistence that religious-affiliated organizations are not exempted from the law’s requirement that health insurance plans cover contraceptives.

“I’m disappointed that the administration would put forth such a rule,” Stupak told host Greta Van Susteren.

Stupak? Really? No one gives a rat's ass what this guy has to say. His name will go down in political history as being synonymous for getting rolled and being played for a total chump. See also: "patsy" and "tool".

Oh, and Dionne is all whiny also:

Another liberal Catholic who isn’t happy with the new rule is columnist E.J. Dionne of The Washington Post.

In his column, Dionne recently wrote that Obama “utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of how contraceptive services should be treated under the new health-care law.”

“His administration mishandled this decision not once but twice,” he wrote. “In the process, Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus and strengthened the hand of those inside the Church who had originally sought to derail the health-care law.”

Oh, please. Dionne is bent because Team O has made such political hash of this mandate business rather than being upset over any religious conscience violation.

You give this much unilateral authority to one department and specifically one person in Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, who serves at the pleasure of the most radical pro-abortion administration ever, what the hell were these people expecting?

That the respective priests of Sebelius, Kerry, and Pelosi have the balls to deny them communion. What absolute disgraces.




Related:

Students at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania can get the "morning-after" pill by sliding $25 into a vending machine, an idea that has drawn the attention of federal regulators and raised questions about how accessible emergency contraception should be.

The student health center at Shippensburg, a secluded public institution of 8,300 students tucked between mountain ridges in the Cumberland Valley, provides the Plan B One Step emergency contraceptive in the vending machine along with condoms, decongestants and pregnancy tests.

"I think it's great that the school is giving us this option," junior Chelsea Wehking said Tuesday. "I've heard some kids say they'd be too embarrassed" to go into town -- Shippensburg, permanent population about 6,000 -- and buy Plan B.

So, let's get this straight: accessability is such an urgent and pressing issue for contraceptives that they are now vending machine-ready yet the thugs in the Obama administration are forcing Catholic employers to provide the same, free of charge, to their emplyees. Got it. Not an option, there, Chelsea.



OK, gang. That's probably it for today. We'll see you all tomorrow.


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