Year: 2015

My Daughter is Over the F%$#ing Moon!

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Yesterday, I was kvetching about being in New York City because I was in the culinary center of the Hemisphere, but because it was Passover, and day 7, one of the 4 Yom Tovim of Pesach, so by the time we got to the City, even those few Kosher restaurants that were serving over Passover, were shutting down.

We were there for an audition for Natalie with the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, a prestigious acting school (in fact the oldest acting school in the English speaking world).

It has a 2 year conservatory program.

Well, she got a call from them today, and she’s in!

Much happiness all around.

Here is a video of her reaction.

Note, however, that this is about 10 minutes after the call, so she had already calmed down by at least a factor of 10:

In the immediate aftermath of the call, she was way more euphoric.

It was actually a bit scary.

No, Just No. No Accomodations.

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Here is an interesting article in the New York Times about how Heredim (literally “fearful ones”) are disrupting air travel when they freak out about having to sit next to women on airline flights.

Sorry, but this is bullsh%$. Jews are supposed to engage the world as it is, not as if it were some long gone era.

If you want to do that, go Amish:

Francesca Hogi, 40, had settled into her aisle seat for the flight from New York to London when the man assigned to the adjoining window seat arrived and refused to sit down. He said his religion prevented him from sitting beside a woman who was not his wife. Irritated but eager to get underway, she eventually agreed to move.

Laura Heywood, 42, had a similar experience while traveling from San Diego to London via New York. She was in a middle seat — her husband had the aisle — when the man with the window seat in the same row asked if the couple would switch positions. Ms. Heywood, offended by the notion that her sex made her an unacceptable seatmate, refused.

“I wasn’t rude, but I found the reason to be sexist, so I was direct,” she said.

A growing number of airline passengers, particularly on trips between the United States and Israel, are now sharing stories of conflicts between ultra-Orthodox Jewish men trying to follow their faith and women just hoping to sit down. Several flights from New York to Israel over the last year have been delayed or disrupted over the issue, and with social media spreading outrage and debate, the disputes have spawned a protest initiative, an online petition and a spoof safety video from a Jewish magazine suggesting a full-body safety vest (“Yes, it’s kosher!”) to protect ultra-Orthodox men from women seated next to them on airplanes.

 And if you go Amish, then you do not fly.

You could also charter single sex flights, but I’d rather you just do the no modern travel bit.

If you want to be medieval, you should not do so by half measures.

Megan McArdle Gets Everything Wrong

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I have, on numerous occasions, noted how the musing of Megan “Math is Hard” McArdle have at best a passing relationship to the facts.

In yet another example, let me point you to a detailed and thoroughly amusing Fisking of her latest drivel on Social Security:

With even mainstream Democrats coming to embrace the idea of expanding Social Security to help address our looming retirement crisis, it couldn’t be long before the pushback emerged from conservatives and Republicans.

Bloomberg’s libertarian economics columnist Megan McArdle was quick out of the box, with a column published Tuesday titled, “The Left Gets it Wrong About Social Security.” You should read it, because it’s rare to find so much sophistry, misunderstanding and misinformation about Social Security packed into one article. You can count McArdle’s disdain for retired people, seldom expressed so openly, as a dividend.

Read the rest.

It methodically takes apart her assumptions, and shows how they have nothing to do with reality.

Go read the rest of Michael Hiltzik’s article in the LA Times.

Can We Please Give Texas Back to Mexico?

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In response to the spate of cops caught on video abusing and murdering people, Texas lawmakers are looking to ban recording police officers:

Oh, come on. We all know why they want to pass this bill — they want cops to get away with abusing and killing people! (As long as they’re the right people.) The right to record, in addition to being upheld by the appellate courts, is one of the best tools we have to deter police violence, and to see that those who break the law are held accountable — as we just saw last night:

A bill introduced in the Texas House of Representatives would make it illegal for private citizens to record police within 25 feet.

House Bill 2918, introduced by state Rep. Jason Villalba (R-Dallas) on Tuesday, would make the offense a misdemeanor. Citizens who are armed would not be permitted to record police activity within 100 feet of an officer, according to the Houston Chronicle.

Only representatives of radio or TV organizations that hold an FCC license, newspapers and magazines would have the right to record police. The legislator disagreed with people on Twitter who said he’s seeking to make all filming of cops illegal.

“My bill … just asks filmers to stand back a little so as not to interfere with law enforcement,” Villalba tweeted.

The bill would go against precedent set in 2011 by an appeals court, which found that citizens are allowed to record police, according to the ACLU.

Seriously.

I cannot see any justification for proposing such a law is because they want to ensure that minorities are in fear for their life.

We are Completely F%$#ed

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Anthropogenic climate change is a problem, and the progress of this problem has been exceeding predictions for years.

Now, we are running into secondary effects that are making this a lot worse.

In this case, it appears that increasing temperatures in the tundra are driving bacterial activity which is in turn increasing temperatures in the tundra:

Scientists might have to change their projected timelines for when Greenland’s permafrost will completely melt due to man-made climate change, now that new research from Denmark has shown it could be thawing faster than expected.

Published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, the research shows that tiny microbes trapped in Greenland’s permafrost are becoming active as the climate warms and the permafrost begins to thaw. As those microbes become active, they are feeding on previously-frozen organic matter, producing heat, and threatening to thaw the permafrost even further.

In other words, according to the research, permafrost thaw could be accelerating permafrost thaw to a “potentially critical” level.

“The accompanying heat production from microbial metabolism of organic material has been recognized as a potential positive-feedback mechanism that would enhance permafrost thawing and the release of carbon,” the study, conducted by researchers at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Permafrost, said. “This internal heat production is poorly understood, however, and the strength of this effect remains unclear.”

The big worry climate scientists have about thawing permafrost is that the frozen soil is chock-full of carbon. That carbon is supposed to be strongly trapped inside the soil, precisely because it’s supposed to be permanently frozen — hence, “permafrost.”

However, as temperatures in the Arctic have risen due to human-caused climate change, permafrost is thawing, and therefore releasing some of that trapped carbon into the atmosphere. It’s yet another feedback loop manifesting itself in Arctic permafrost regions — as climate change causes it to thaw, the thawing causes more climate change, which causes more thawing, et cetera, et cetera.

Rinse, lather, repeat, die.

The Clown Show Abides

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The scary kind of clown, of course.


opHthalmologist


Edutation


These people are German stock images


It appears that only one Jew supports Rand Paul

Yesterday, Ron Paul announced that he was running for president.

The roll-out did not go smoothly:

It is hard to words good on the internet! You have to measure twice and cut once, which in internet-land, is better described as reading the thing three times to make sure you didn’t accidentally paste a thing telling people to “shop Aldi for 39 cent Fine Feline Entrée cat food” right in the middle of writing about how you are Mad About A Thing. Rand Paul’s peeps did not do that, oops. In the product description for the eye chart in Paul’s sexy funtimes lingerie shop and online falafel cart, it originally explained that “Rand Paul is an opthalmologist.” Yes, that is a hard word, and Paul may not know how to spell it (“opHthalmologist”) since he might not even be one, but c’mon, guys.

 ………

 We could forgive that spelling error, if it weren’t for this other one, where his website informed us that Paul “opposes a one-size-fits-all approach to eductation.” Apparently he likes a more creative solution, one that encourages Teaching The Controversy over whether correct spelling is even a thing. (In actuality, the HuffPost points out that Paul wants to get rid of the Department Of Education entirely, which would probably level the playing field for his staffers and website writers.)

 ………

 Both of the problems have been fixed, presumably because tacky mean liberals on the internet pointed them out.

 ………

 When running for president, it’s a good idea to give folks the impression that there is already a horde of people just clamoring to pick you as their Dear Leader. Rand Paul doesn’t really have that, so he picked the next best thing — nameless German stock photo characters!

 ………

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul launched his presidential campaign Tuesday complete with a page to endorse the new presidential candidate.

 The endorsements are then presented on a map of the United States.

 The people on the endorsement map, however, appear to be stock images from a Italian photographer Andrea Piacquadio who goes by the name Olly or Ollyy on stock image sites, and according to his Shutterstock page, is based in Germany.

DOY! BuzzFeed tracked down some of the models featured on the page, and all led directly back to the Germany-based stock photo guy. This might seem like a big BuzzFeed SCOOP!, except that they failed to actually ask the stock photos if they were indeed supporting Paul for USA President. They might have been, YOU DON’T KNOW.

 There’s also a section of Paul’s website where you can pick out a special social media avatar that says what kind of US American you are, and that you support Rand Paul. There are all the normal ones — Christian for Rand, Conservative for Rand, etc. — but the one that sticks out at us is the sure to be wildly popular Jew For Rand avatar! That one guy is gonna have a field day changing his Facebook and Twitter pictures, knowing that Rand Paul made it just for him:

 ………

 Those photos have disappeared, just like the spelling errors, but the Lonely Jew avatar remains. May we also suggest Furry For Rand? Something tells us he might get some traction there.

Additionally, the YouTube of his announcement was blocked for copyright infringement.

But that was yesterday, and today is today.

Specifically, he threw a hissy fit at a reporter who wanted specifics on his abortion position:

It’s Day Two of Rand Paul’s Excellent Presidential Adventure, and he is having a bad day. Again. He started his morning picking a fight with the “Today” show’s Savannah Guthrie because she didn’t ask him questions the way he thinks she should, and he followed that up with a quick explanation to the New York Times that when reporters ask him questions he doesn’t like, “That isn’t journalism.” (Side note: Waging war against reporters when you are running for president is a FANTASTIC strategy, and we encourage Paul to stick with that for sure.)

And then it just got worse. For Rand Paul, that is:

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Paul would not say where, in his view, a pregnant woman’s rights begin and those of the fetus end.

“The thing is about abortion — and about a lot of things — is that I think people get tied up in all these details of, sort of, you’re this or this or that, or you’re hard and fast (on) one thing or the other,” Paul said.


That Dr. Paul did not care for questions about abortion is no problem, because Republicans hate talking about that. Except for how it is one of their very most favoritest things to talk about, and you cannot run for office as a Republican unless you say every sperm is sacred at least 154 times in every speech, or else the ’bortion-haters will say you love killing babies, and you are not even a Republican at all, and they will not vote for you, no sir. But Paul did NOT want that mean AP reporter asking him about that: ………

And on a more substantive level, it appears that the bulk of Rand Paul’s senior campaign staff are implicated in the bribery scandal of his father’s last presidential campaign. (They bribed an Iowa pol for an endorsement.)

The late night hosts have to be licking their chops over this.

In the Annals of Foreign Policy Cock-Ups, This Ranks Up With Invading Iraq

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It looks like the Obama administration is considering formally placing Saudi Arabia under the US nuclear umbrella:

Obama administration officials are promising a major strengthening of U.S. defense commitments to Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies, possibly including a nuclear commitment to their security, in an intensifying effort to win their support for the proposed nuclear deal with Iran.

 Officials say they hope to reassure nervous gulf Arab states by providing more military aid and training to their defense forces, and by making more explicit commitments to help them repel external attacks.

 The administration is studying whether to make any nuclear assurances, though officials emphasize no decision has been made.

 ………

 The administration’s goal, officials said Tuesday, is to convince the Arab monarchies that U.S. security guarantees will make them safer than if they buy sensitive technology or a nuclear weapon from Pakistan, a Sunni Muslim ally, as the Saudis have privately threatened to do.

Here’s a thought: make it clear to the Pakistanis that if they sell nuclear technology, and to the House of Saud that if they attempt to buy nuclear technology, that they will never see another American spare part for anything.

The Saudis, specifically Prince Bandar bin Sultan, created ISIS, and we want to offer them nuclear guarantee to their regime?

And then there is this bit of insanity:

“We’re going to be there for our [Persian Gulf] friends,” Obama told columnist Thomas Friedman. “I want to see how we can formalize that a little bit more than we currently have, and also help build their capacity so that they feel more confident about their ability to protect themselves from external aggression.”

He’s attempting to create coherence in foreign policy by talking to Thomas “The Mustache of Imbicility” Friedman?

To quote the Matt Taibbi in the Thomas Friedman Pr0n Title Contest, “This ain’t yogurt.”

This has failure written all over it.

I am Unreasonably Stoked About This

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I don’t know why, but the taxonomic resurrection of the species Brontosaurus has me pleased to a completely unreasonably degree:

The brontosaurus, loved by kids the world over but cruelly snubbed by paleontologists for more than a century, is back. British and Portuguese fossil boffins have concluded the dinosaur existed as a separate genus after all.

It was back in 1879 that paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh named a collection of bones a brontosaurus, or Thunder Lizard, and described a massive herbivore with a long neck and tail that wandered across the plains of what is now America.

But within a couple of decades the existence of the Thunder Lizard was called into question, and the scientific community decided that the stumbled-upon brontosaurus was just an adolescent apatosaurus. There then followed a 100-year campaign to expunge the word brontosaurus from textbooks, but the name proved just too popular.

Now a study looking at the largest range of fossils of the genus has shown that the brontosaurus was a distinct genus. While the dino does have strong similarities to the apatosaurus, there are enough differences to separate the two, the study’s authors concluded.

Our research would not have been possible at this level of detail 15 or more years ago”, explains Emanuel Tschopp, a Swiss national who led the research from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa in Portugal, “in fact, until very recently, the claim that Brontosaurus was the same as Apatosaurus was completely reasonable, based on the knowledge we had.”

The initial argument for the non-existence of the brontosaurus was down to its sacrum bones, which link the tail to the base of the spine. The first Thunder Lizard found had five of these, compared to the apatosaurus’ three, but it was assumed that the brontosaurus bones were young and would have merged together to form these three bones.

But as more and more specimens were found, this theory started to look a little off. That was reinforced by other fossil evidence, so the new study turned to statistics to find out what was going on.

“The differences we found between Brontosaurus and Apatosaurus were at least as numerous as the ones between other closely related genera, and much more than what you normally find between species,” explained Roger Benson, a co-author from the University of Oxford.

I have no clue why I am so giddy over this news, but I am incredibly happy about this.

The Worst Democrat North of the Manson Nixon Line Wins Reelection

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I am referring, of course, to Rahm Emanuel, who won a double digit victory over challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel soundly defeated challenger Jesus “Chuy” Garcia on Tuesday, capturing a second term in Chicago’s first-ever runoff election and striking a note of humility by thanking voters for “a second term and a second chance.”

The win followed six weeks of a hard-fought, nationally watched second round in which Garcia tried to cast the contest as the latest proxy battle between establishment Democrats and the party’s progressive wing. Emanuel’s overwhelming financial advantage ultimately helped save the mayor as he fought for his political life.

………

With 98 percent of the city’s precincts reporting, Emanuel had 55.7 percent of the unofficial vote to 44.3 percent for Garcia.

It was closer than I expected, but money, and the self defeating bigotry of a significant portion of the Chicago African American community was too big a hill to climb.

I may be a political Little Orphan Annie here, but I do think that Rahm’s mantle has been pierced, and so when the creative accounting that has been obscuring the true state of Chicago’s finances, much of which appear to be in the form of sweetheart deals for his Bankster buddies for complex (and high fee) derivatives of the sort that f%$#ed Greece, collapses, the knives should come out.

At least, I hope that this is what will happen.

I’m bummed.

Least Surprising Education News of the Year

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In the New York Times, Paul Campos notes that much of the increase in the cost of a college education comes from an explosion of spending in administrators:

By contrast, a major factor driving increasing costs is the constant expansion of university administration. According to the Department of Education data, administrative positions at colleges and universities grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009, which Bloomberg reported was 10 times the rate of growth of tenured faculty positions.

He also notes that university presidents are now getting 7 figure salaries.

I am not sure how to fix this, but with a 17 year old daughter, I’d love to find a fix.

This Guy is Going to Destroy Israel

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I am, of course, referring to Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, who penchant for considering nothing but his own prospects for political power are a clear and present danger for the State of Israel.

The latest case of this is Netanyahu’s willingness to use the most polarizing issue in Israeli politics to help build a coalition, at least if reports that he will kill conversion reform in order to placate right wing parties: (This is Arutz Sheva, so a grain of salt is recommended)

Sources in Shas and United Torah Jewry said Sunday that they had reached an agreement with the Likud on rolling back recently approved rules on conversion. The changes had been designed to remove some of the power over the conversion process from the Chief Rabbinate and install it in the local authorities, where some jurisdictions would presumably be more liberal in their acceptance of converts.

With Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu counting on them to join his new government, MKs from Shas and UTJ are insisting on rolling back the laws on conversion to what they were before Netanyahu’s last government – with the Chief Rabbinate solely responsible for the conversion process, overseeing the entire process without government interference.

In the November change, the government voted to allow municipal rabbis to establish conversion courts, which were to receive administrative and budgetary backing from the state. A rabbinical committee whose makeup is specified in the decision was to oversee the courts, which would exercise their own judgment regarding each conversion.

With several cities already appointing very liberal rabbis as the heads of their committees, the government”s intent was to provide venues for converts to receive approval from authorities more easily than they would have from the Supreme Rabbinical Court in Jerusalem, which until then had sole jurisdiction over conversion. The newest deal restores that situation.

This is arguably the most contentious issue in Jewish Israeli society, and, after years of tumult, they made these baby steps toward sanity.

And now Netanyahu is going to douse this issue with gasoline, and light a match because he is worried about forming a coalition government.

As a secular Zionist, I find this extremely self destructive, but I am not surprised:  Netanyahu ran an explicitly racist campaign.

From the perspective of normative Jewish theology, it was this kind of short sighted bullsh%$ like this that got both temples destroyed.

H/T Failed Messiah.

Election for Chicago Mayor are Tomorrow

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All indications are that he will win handily, though the abnormally high early voter turnout might give Jesus Garcia a slim chance, but polling indicates that it is a very slim chance, even with the endorsement of Garcia by many liberal organizations, including Howard Dean and Democracy for America.

One of the big problems is that the black community appears to be unwilling to vote for a Hispanic candidate, even if this candidate was a strong supporter of the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington:

Jesus G. Garcia, candidate for mayor, strode down the sidewalk on Monday evening, trailed by a giddy pack of supporters, volunteers and passers-by. They snapped pictures and chanted his nickname: “Chu-y! Chu-y!”

 One man did not join in. An African-American who wore a knit Blackhawks hat, he glared at Mr. Garcia from the curb.

 “I’m voting,” he said, when asked if he would take part in Tuesday’s election. “But I ain’t voting for no Chuy. I ain’t voting for a Mexican.”

 Pressed to explain, he said he was tired of competing with Latinos for jobs. Then he walked away.

 The scene exposed a fault line in Mr. Garcia’s campaign to unseat Mayor Rahm Emanuel in Tuesday’s runoff election. Mr. Garcia’s strategy was to build a coalition of white liberals, blacks and Latinos — angered by Mr. Emanuel’s closing of dozens of schools and supportive of a plan to shift development from its wealthy downtown to poorer neighborhoods.

 But a Chicago Tribune poll released Tuesday showed Mr. Emanuel with a commanding lead. He not only has large margins among white voters, but a nearly two-to-one margin among black voters, 53 percent to 28 percent. Mr. Garcia has not been able to increase his share of the black vote.

 ………

 Mr. Garcia, 58, who has won election to the City Council, the state Senate and the county board of commissioners, has been one of the most prominent Latinos in elected office here, beginning in the 1980s. If elected, he would be the city’s first Latino mayor.

 From the start of his campaign, he spoke of building a multicultural coalition in the spirit of Harold Washington, the city’s first black mayor, on whose campaign Mr. Garcia worked.

 He has reached out to black leaders, collecting endorsements, campaign donations and promises of votes. And he has focused his campaign on concerns Chicagoans share, including improving public education, a higher minimum wage, reducing gun violence and modernizing mass transit.

(emphasis mine)

Once again, we see that when bigotry to drives the vote, hate voters vote against their own interests. (It kind of explains about 95% of the Republican electoral success in the past few decades)

We already have indications that Rahm Emanuel will double down on those policies which led to this runoff in the first place. It’s why one of Rahm’s big donors is squawking that Emanuel should shut down even more public schools:

The Chicago Teachers Union predicts more school closings if Tahm is re-elected. A major campaign contributor said he should have closed 125 schools, not just 50. This donor, Ken Griffin, is a Republican who also has given to Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

………

Rahm Emanuel’s refusal to seriously pursue any meaningful, progressive revenue solutions for Chicago Public Schools (CPS) funding needs will without question lead to further mass school closings in the city’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods if he wins re-election on April 7. As Emanuel’s economic policies prioritize the financial interests of billionaire campaign donors like Ken Griffin and other big business supporters, at the expense of public education in Chicago, the mayor is making a clear choice to drive the district into even further dire financial straits that he will use to justify additional school closings.

Griffin, one of the top contributors to Emanuel’s re-election campaign and the richest man in Illinois, has accused Chicago’s mayor of being “lackluster” for not closing 125 schools instead of 50, and recently reiterated to the New York Times that the number of closings, which disproportionately affected African American and Latino students and their families, “should’ve been 125.” Griffin also has claimed that the top 1 percent of income earners have too little influence in politics, which is seemingly why he has backed Emanuel with more than $1 million in campaign contributions. As Griffin’s influence on City Hall grows, future school closings are inevitable if Emanuel is re-elected.

This is a pretty big tell that Rahm wants to continue to privatize public schools, much like his predecessor privatized parking for pennies on the dollar.

Meanwhile Rahm is aggressively fighting the release of emails between him and his big ticket donors.  (see also here)

Of course, given the history of elections in Illinois, it may all be moot, as the chairman of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners appears to have gotten lucrative lobbying contracts for his lawfirm, and it appears that he has already pulled strings for Rahm Emanuel allies down the ticket:

If Chicago’s first mayoral runoff in history ends up razor close on April 7, the city will be relying on a purportedly independent arbiter to oversee any recount. But that arbiter, the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners, is chaired by a politically-connected lawyer whose firm has received secret city lobbying contracts from incumbent Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration. After receiving those contracts, the chairman has already used his power to boost the mayor’s allies against anti-Emanuel challengers in other municipal elections.

Board chairman Langdon Neal was appointed to his position by the Cook County Circuit Court, not by any city official — a structure that is supposed to preserve the board’s independence from candidates for municipal office. However, the laws establishing the election commission do not prohibit Neal from getting contracts from the mayor, whose election he will oversee. How much he has made from those contracts remains a closely guarded secret: the Emanuel administration has denied an open records request for the terms of the deals, refusing to respond to International Business Times within the timeframe mandated by Illinois law.

What’s that Josef Stalin quote again?

I remember, it’s, “Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the vote decide everything.”

That Sound You Hear is the Revolving Door Spinning Fast Enough to Generate a Sonic Boom

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US District Judge Leonard Davis, presiding judge of the Eastern District of Texas, the favorite venue for patent trolls, has retired from the bench and joined the largest IP law firm in the nation:

US District Judge Leonard Davis said this week he’s going to leave the bench to join Fish & Richardson, a large law firm focused on intellectual property.

Davis, who has presided in the Eastern District of Texas since 2002, has one of the most active patent dockets in the nation and has presided over some of the biggest technology lawsuits of the past decade. Corporate Counsel magazine reported this week that he has handled more than 1,700 individual IP cases as a judge. Before becoming a judge, he worked for 23 years in private practice.

Statistics for 2013 showed 263 new patent cases being assigned to Davis, about one-sixth of the 1,700 patent cases that were filed in the district, the busiest in the nation. Only four other judges, three in Delaware and one in East Texas, had more patent cases assigned to them.

It was Davis and another former East Texas judge, T. John Ward III, who oversaw the Eastern District as it became a hotspot for patent lawsuits—especially Tyler, where Davis’ courtroom is, and Marshall, where Ward sat.

………

Davis will be the third federal judge in the Eastern District to leave the bench for private patent practice in recent years. Former Judge T. John Ward, the grandfather of the Eastern District patent practice, was a judge from 1999 until 2011 before leaving for private practice. A third federal judge, Chard Everingham, is now a partner in Akin & Gump’s Longview office. Everingham was a US magistrate judge in Marshall, where he often oversaw full patent trials due to the court’s heavy load and was Ward’s permanent law clerk for seven years before that.

Both Davis and Ward also have sons who are attorneys with patent-focused legal practices. T. John “Johnny” Ward Jr. founded the small firm of Ward & Smith, which his father joined. Bo Davis, Judge Davis’ son, is a solo practitioner in Longview.

I understand the justification for IP law.

Basically, it comes down to allow rent seeking behavior to, “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts.”

Unfortunately, rent seeking is an inherently corrupting activity, because it gives people the ability to get money for nothing.

Thus we see judges joining IP firms, and judges’ kids joining lucrative IP law firms.

It’s destroying our economy, and it needs to stop.

Republican Family Values………

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New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte’s state director (her 2nd most senior staffer) just got busted for prostitution and has resigned:

A senior aide to New Hampshire US Senator Kelly Ayotte resigned his position after he was arrested and charged with soliciting a prostitute, Ayotte’s office announced late Saturday night.

 David Wihby, 61, served for the past year as Ayotte’s state director, the number two staffer behind her chief of staff. Wihby is also an elected member of the Manchester (N.H.) school board. He is a former longtime Manchester city alderman and the former deputy commissioner and interim commissioner of the state Department of Labor.

 Wihby was arrested Friday evening in Nashua on a misdemeanor charge for solicitation of prostitution, Ayotte’s office confirmed.

This isn’t the auto-asphyxia death of a Jerry Falwell confidant in 2 wet suits with a dildo up his butt, but  I notice a pattern here.

This was a Foreseeable Consequence of the German Hegemony in the European Union

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The EU sanctions against Russia have to be renewed by a unanimous vote.

It’s a core feature of EU governance, and it’s also why the aggressive growth strategy of the organization is a bad idea. It allows any nation to hold major decisions hostage.

Now, after many years of being punished by, and being used as a political whipping boy by Germany, Greece is looking to discuss EU sanctions against Russia:

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras plan to discuss economic ties and the European Union’s sanctions against Moscow when they meet for talks next week, a Kremlin spokesman said on Friday.

 Russia wants the EU to lift the sanctions imposed over Moscow’s role in the turmoil in Ukraine and hopes to get support from some EU member states, notably Hungary and Greece.

 The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said it was too early to talk about any possibility of Moscow providing financial help to the cash-strapped Greece before the talks.

 “Relations between Moscow and the European Union will be discussed in the light of Brussels’s policy of sanctions and Athens’ quite cold attitude to this policy,” Peskov said.

 Greece’s new left-wing government has said it will not seek aid from Moscow but has so far failed to reach a deal with its EU/IMF creditors to unlock fresh funds.

 Putin and Tsipras will meet in Moscow on April 8. It will be Tsipras’ first visit to the Russian capital after his leftist Syriza party swept to victory in a snap election in January.

I don’t expect the meeting to generate any substantive policy changes in Greek foreign policy, but it is a warning that, absent some amelioration of the EU and IMF created humanitarian crisis in Greece, there could be substantive changes in EU foreign policy.

The EU and the Euro zone are both in trouble because the people behind it decided to move forward before the necessary economic and political structures were in place. (To say nothing of popular support, as shown by the repeated failures of plebiscites for the treaties and subsequent re-votes.)

I do not think that the Euro will survive in its current form, (I expect pretty much all the non-Germanic nations to drop out eventually) and I would give even money that the EU will either be scaled back to a simple customs union, or that a significant number of members will leave in the next 10-20 years.