The law trumps empathy - It was yet another 5-4 Supreme Court split in the Ricci case, but buried in the details is the fact that not a single Justice affirmed the reasoning that SC nominee Sonia Sotomayor used to rule against the New Haven firefighters claiming reverse discrimination.

Extra - Cato: "The Ricci ruling: a victory for merit over racial politics."

MJ knew the score - Fox News: "Jackson left his father out of most recent will." Heh.

Sucking out the last bit of marrow - If anybody doubts that Michael Jackson's father only saw his kids as human ATMs, check out this Fox News story "Joe Jackson: Michael's funeral will be large, open to public": "After plugging his record company, Michael Jackson's father Joe said in a press conference outside his home Monday that the familiy was planning a large public funeral for the deceased singer."

T-shirts, $20, official programs $10. Stay classy, Joe.

Spending money we don't have - Washington Post: "The debt tsumani - The CBO's latest warning on the long-term deficit is scarier than ever." Hmmm...this seems to have been a constant theme of a certain underappreciated blog.

Larry Summers = Dick Cheney - That's what Spiegel Online says in "Chancellor Merkel visits the debt president."

Extra - Gateway Pundit: "When a far left German mag starts bashing Obama you know the honeymoon is over."

More - George W. Obama.

Cap and trade chimera - According to Powerline, the energy bill that passed through the House of Representatives yesterday doesn't exist. That is, the 1000+ page bill was "replaced" with a 300-page version that nobody read and it wasn't formally incorporated into the original. What gives?

Almost heaven, West Virginia - Today I passed through West Virginia on my way to a relative's wedding in Virginia. There's not much to note here except I saw a coal hopper and a 30-foot cross made out of a crane truss.

Goin' south - I'm heading to a cousin's wedding in Virginia this weekend. Blogging is questionable. See you soon (although probably tomorrow).

The national train wreck

What could I possibly add that hasn't been said about Michael Jackson's untimely death? Fifty years old...damn.

Let's be honest: did anybody really see Jackson living to a ripe old age? Multiple surgeries, a questionable mental state, a dysfunctional support system; it all came together to suck the life, heart, and soul from the man. If he had the strength and willpower, Jackson would have been better off to exile himself and cut the cord from the life that was programmed for him from an early age.

Go fishing. Read some Hemingway. Watch game shows. Make spaghetti. Drive an RV to the Grand Canyon. Get drunk at a NASCAR race.

Too late. Even so, he was planning a comeback tour and the life he's only known. A shame that.

Who knew Gwyneth Paltrow could sing?

It's been a crazy day with a take-home final due and my son's swim meet. So let's just enjoy Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis from the underrated movie "Duets." Good night!

Beware the Massachusetts model for health care

Here's Mark Steyn:

The minute health care becomes a huge, unwieldy, expensive government bureaucracy it's a permanent feature of life and there's nothing anyone can do about it. That's why Republicans need to resist this in Congress, because if we cross this line we can never go back.

As usual, look to Massachusetts for the triumph of "good intentions" over sound government policy. The Bay State health care mandate that was supposed to expand coverage while keeping costs manageable has resulted in a system 1) twice as expensive as estimated, 2) where nobody can find a primary care doctor, resulting in 3) a spike in expensive ER visits.

But, like the Big Dig, there's no going back. We're stuck with it and the steadily climbing taxes required to support it.

The distaff rule of Sparta

Do you remember this scene in "300" when King Leonidas got the nod from his wife to start a war with Persia?



According to today's Boston Globe, there may be some truth to it:

Feminism is generally associated with modern, progressive society. Yet few people know that ancient Sparta - infamous for its militarism - granted women exceptional rights. Spartan women could inherit, own, and bequeath property; they were fed and schooled as much as men; they had complete freedom of movement; they married later and could even get away with adultery. So why would the tough Spartan men allow this to happen? Upon subjugating its neighbors - whose population vastly outnumbered Sparta’s - Sparta needed its males to focus entirely on training for war and its females to focus on managing the subjugated population and estates. To give the women sufficient capability and incentive, especially in the absence of men, the men had to grant the extra rights to women, the authors of a new study argue. However, as in modern times, more autonomy for women was associated with lower fertility, which ultimately led to Sparta being unable to field a large enough army, losing control of its subjugated neighbors, and rescinding the rights of its women.

Another classic case of overextension, I fear.

Hysterical hyperbole of the day - Firedoglake: "The gravity of America's health care crisis is the moral equivalent of the 19th Century's bloody conflict over slavery. This is not hyperbole..."

Stop right there. Yes it is.

Stealing an election - Interesting, but maybe obvious, point made over at FiveThirtyEight: by Western standards it may be difficult to rig an election because responsibility for the counting is split up, requiring many conspirators. Not so in Iran, where all the votes are "counted" by the Interior Ministry who are beholden to the current government in general and the mullahs in particular.

Happy Father's Day!

Iran - Review and continuous update at Hot Air.

I know that some are annoyed at Obama (ice cream, anyone?) for his measured response to the Iran crisis, but I really don't know what the United States could do about the unrest over there. On the one hand, we want to stand up for freedom and democracy but then we don't want to play into the mullahs' hands by intervening in Iran's internal affairs. Frankly, cellphone cameras and the Internet are the greatest weapons against the Islamic theocracy right now. Let the truth out.

More - Gateway Pundit is all Iran right now. Keep scrolling.

Update (6/21) - It looks like Peggy Noonan largely agrees with me.

All the news that's fit to spin - The New York Times needs to read their own paper; occasionally it contains "facts." The Minuteman reveals how "Emotion trumps research every time."

Extra - Shady poll reporting, also.

Linear programming and stuff - Blogging may be light this weekend as I'm working on my take-home exam for Decision Analysis. It involves a small amount of programming, the likes of which I haven't worked on since my Fortran days.

That's right: I said "Fortran." Laugh it up, kids.

Careful what you wish for, health reform edition - That darn Congressional Budget Office keeps making estimates on health care reform that gives everybody sticker shock. The Atlantic reports that part of the blame for this goes to Obama's budget director Peter Orszag who beefed up the CBO to handle the number-crunching.

The cost estimates may be a little too honest for the White House. Prepare the (more flexible) OMB numbers.

Extra - Maggie's Farm "Health care reform: it's not about you."

More - It has begun: Nancy Pelosi attacks the CBO.

Commentary of the day

Here's Michael Totten on Contentions:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has almost no support among Kurds whatsoever. Claiming he “won” 70 percent in Kermanshah is as outlandish as Dick Cheney winning San Francisco and Berkeley in a landslide.

It could happen...in bearded Spock universe!

"Perfectly logical," says mirror-universe Spock.