August 2005
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More Thoughts on James Taranto and “Brutal Polemics”
Charles Schuyler, an attorney in Chicago, writes: Professor, you’ve brought your ammunition to bear on a completely deserving target, and it’s a joy to watch. There’s nothing left but rubble. It’s beginning to appear that the closest thing to a substantive case against Cindy Sheehan consists of the following: 1) inconsistencies between her reports (a…
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Thus Spoke Heinrich Heine
As memorably quoted by Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents: Mine is a most peaceable disposition. My wishes are: a humble cottage with a thatched roof, but a good bed, good food, the freshest milk and butter, flowers before my window, and a few fine trees before my door; and if God wants to make…
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Sheehan Slams the War-Mongers and Crypto-Fascists Again
All we need now is for Eugene Volokh (well-known fan of slime artist James Taranto) to reprimand her for not being polite; she writes: The media are wrong. The people who have come out to Camp Casey to help coordinate the press and events with me are not putting words in my mouth, they are…
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On Getting Your News from Brian Leiter
This is easily the most charming item I’ve read about my blog since someone (now a law professor) coined the "no bullshit approach" label: You should pay attention to Brian Leiter, he’s a one-man two-fisted justice parade on a worldwide hostility tour, cracking Republican heads together like coconuts while kicking a creationist in the face.…
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“Your atheist, secular, socialist petticoat is showing”
Details here. One really couldn’t make this stuff up.
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Friday Poem: “Belated Poem for My Birthday”
Belated Poem for My Birthday 1 Though life is shortI continue to have birthdays(Pardon please this vain defiance) My children are now the age of my dreamsMy grandchildren defy gravity The lives I have assisted into beingDo not belong to me The irretrievable is unforgivingBut memory remains fragrant neverthelessKeeping…
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The Right’s Response to Sheehan’s Anti-War Campaign: The Case of James Taranto
The reactions on the right to Cindy Sheehan are shining a quite revealing light on the sheer depravity, shamelessness, and vulgarity of the diehard Bush loyalists. James Taranto, a particularly visible right-wing slime artist at the Wall Street Journal, had a telling column, which deserves some scrutiny. He writes: Cindy Sheehan suffered a grievous loss…
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“How to Rank Law Schools”
I discuss the topic (and include a downloadable paper) at the new law school site. Some of the issues are specific to the legal academy, but the topic may nonetheless interest those in other fields. UPDATE: There are two special challenges that one faces in the evaluation of law schools, in contrast to philosophy departments. …
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Are You Being Stalked by Martha Stewart?
Find out here. (If you have even a vague notion who Martha Stewart is, you’ll be amused.)
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Pro-Sheehan Piece in the Right-Wing NY Daily News!
It’s a hopeful sign of a shift in the culture when pieces like this appear in generally conservative rags: George Bush has met his match. He has twice vanquished Democratic opponents, brought down Saddam Hussein and is the straw that stirs the world’s drink. All that was before Cindy Sheehan showed up on his doorstep.…
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Will Cindy Sheehan Inspire Journalists to Have Some Courage Too?
Interesting thoughts here: George W. Bush decrees again and again that every American killed in Iraq was killed for a noble cause. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Melanie Morgan fill the airwaves with bellicose testimonials to the righteousness of the war. Tom Delay, Donald Rumsfeld, Rick Santorum, Elizabeth Dole and Kay…
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A Nice Round-Up of Recent Fascist Exhortations…
…by nice "freedom-loving" (and, of course, "patriotic") Americans, courtesy of the indefatigable Paul Myers. Those who get a bit uneasy with the word "fascist," what alternative word would you suggest to describe these outbursts?
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Dembski in Denmark
Clever "Intelligent Design" peddler William Dembski is here caught engaging in the typical misleading puffery of credentials and accomplishments that are de rigeur for this whole crowd. This one is really priceless!
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First “Intelligent Design,” now “Intelligent Falling”
So much for the theory of gravity. (Thanks to Chris Anstett for the pointer.)
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Financial Return on University Degree Declining in the U.K.
Do any readers from the U.K. or elsewhere have any idea what explains this: According to the [British] Government’s Department of Education and Skills, today’s graduates can expect to earn a modest £120,000 more across their entire lifetime, than those with two A-levels who go straight into employment. A similar piece of research, conducted just…
And the second paragraph?