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David Kopel • June 29, 2012 7:30 pm
McCulloch v. Maryland had a very good day at the Supreme Court yesterday, with NFIB relying on and applying McCulloch's rules for when an enactment violates the Necessary and Proper Clause. What happened after the McCulloch decision also shows the next steps in battle over the individual mandate, as I suggest in an essay this morning for National Review Online.
In refusing to hold the Second Bank of the United States unconstitutional, the McCulloch Court gave Congress broad latitude in Congress's own evaluation of whether the Bank was "necessary" in a constitutional sense. Relying on and quoting McCulloch, President Andrew Jackson made his own judgment of constitutional necessity when he vetoed the recharter of the Bank in 1832. After a titanic political struggle, the Bank was gone, and a new term created by Jackson, "equal protection," had become part of what the American People were coming to believe the Constitution was supposed to mean.
President Jackson dealt the Bank a fatal blow by withdrawing federal deposits from the Bank, and moving them to state banks. President Romney can follow Jackson's lead on his first day in office, instructing the Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services to use the waiver powers in the ACA statute to issue waivers to everyone for the individual mandate. Because the individual mandate is (supposedly) a tax, it can then be repealed through the budget reconciliation process, which cannot be filibustered.
I predict that the individual mandate will never mandate anyone. Yet the mandate will be long remembered as one of the most consequential laws enacted by a Congress. The result of the "bank battle" was that even though a central bank was judicially permissible, central banking was politically toxic for the rest of the century. The "mandate battle" may have the same effect in deterring any future thoughts of congressionally-imposed mandates. (Putting aside the obvious exception for mandates that have a solid basis in the constitutional text, such as jury service.)
The enactment of the mandate has also significantly increased the probability that the next Supreme Court appointments will be made by a President and confirmed by a Senate which denounces the mandate as unconstitutional, and that the new Justices will be the kind who are inclined to vigorously enforce the many strong constitutional limits on congressional over-reaching which are articulated in NFIB v. Sebelius.
I would have preferred that the mandate had met its end yesterday morning, but the fact that the mandate will have to be finished off by the People in November and their elected officials in January may lead to even better long-term results for advocates of a constitutionally limited federal government.Categories: Congress, Constitutional History, Equal Protection, Health Care, Individual Mandate, Necessary and Proper, Politics, Popular Constitutionalism, Presidency, Separation of Powers, Supreme Court, Taxes, Taxing and Spending Clause, Uncategorized 77 Comments
David Kopel • June 29, 2012 6:30 pm
Absolutely not. Rob Natelson explains why in this 27 minute podcast from iVoices.org.Categories: Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Individual Mandate, Originalism, Supreme Court, Taxing and Spending Clause 33 Comments
David Kopel • June 29, 2012 6:25 pm
My article yesterday for Scotusblog discussed the tremendous importance of the Court's 7-2 use of the non-coercion rule to limit Spending Clause violations of State sovereignty and independence. The rule has been around ever since Steward Machine Company v. Davis (1937), but NFIB v. Sebelius is the first decision by any federal court to find that a conditional congressional grant violates the rule.
The folks who think that the "evolving Constitution" completed its evolution in 1937-42, and that everything the Court did during those years must be applied today with the broadest possible reading, should be especially pleased with the NFIB Court's vigorous enforcement of a very important New Deal precedent.
My essay argues that the application of the non-coercion rule, as well as the application of the doctrine of incidental powers for the Necessary and Proper Clause, are among the many elements of the Roberts opinion whose significance approaches that of some of the most important opinions by Chief Justice Marshall.
Although we do not know Chief Justice Roberts' motives, I suggestion a comparison of NFIB to Marbury v. Madison: adroitly escaping from a partisan assault on the Court itself, the opinion moves constitutional law very far in the opposite of the direction favored by partisan assaulters–and does so in a way that leaves the partisan assaulters unable to use the case in their attacks on the Court.Categories: Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Federalism, Individual Mandate, Politics, Spending Clause, Supreme Court, Taxing and Spending Clause, Unconstitutional Conditions 2 Comments
David Kopel • June 29, 2012 5:46 pm
Yesterday I interviewed Ilya Somin about the NFIB decision, particularly the portion involving the Necessary and Proper Clause. Here's the link for the 28 minute episode on iVoices.org. As Ilya details, the decision strongly restates and applies a principle from McCulloch v. Maryland: that whether a law is "proper" is an entirely different question from whether it is "necessary." And CJ Roberts' opinion is the first in Supreme Court history to find that a law which is "necessary" is not proper. Ilya's amicus brief was the key brief on the necessity of making separate inquiries into "necessary" and "proper."
That's not the only way in which the Roberts opinion brings interpretation of the Necessary and Proper Clause back to the proper, originalist understanding which was explicated in McCulloch. The Roberts opinion explains that the NP Clause grants Congress no additional powers; the clause merely expresses the default legal rule that when an enumerated power is granted, the grant also includes lesser powers which are "incidental" to the enumerated power. In McCulloch, Chief Justice Marshall found it necessary to spend many pages applying the doctrine of incidental powers before he could reach the other issues about the constitutionality of the Second Bank of the United States.
The Roberts opinion is one of many, many post-McCulloch opinions to utilize the doctrine of incidental powers, but it is the first opinion to hold that a particular law is not valid because it is not an incident of an enumerated power. The originalist, Marshallian understanding of the doctrine of incidental powers was the subject of the amicus brief which Rob Natelson, Gary Lawson, and I wrote. The brief is based on the book The Origins of the Necessary and Proper Clause, published by Cambridge University in 2010, and co-authored by Natelson, Lawson, Geoffrey P. Miller and Guy I. Seidman.
The brief devotes much attention to the newspaper essays which John Marshall wrote defending the McCulloch decision. These essays were collected in the book John Marshall's Defense of McCulloch v. Maryland, published in 1969 and edited by Gerald Gunther. The Roberts opinion is the first in Supreme Court history to cite this book, and the first to cite Marshall's essays.
The Roberts opinion joins McCulloch v. Maryland as an essential case in any law school textbook that covers the Necessary and Proper Clause. While the Roberts opinion on the Commerce Clause and the Spending Clause brings current interpretation of those clauses closer to the original understanding, current interpretation remains a long way from original meaning. For the Necessary and Proper Clause, however, the Roberts opinion goes all the way. As of yesterday, Supreme Court doctrine about the Necessary and Proper Clause has fully returned to 1791/1819. The originalist victory is complete.
For some background on the doctrine of incidental powers, one starting point is the Lawson/Kopel article Bad News for Professor Koppelman: The Incidental Unconstitutionality of the Individual Mandate, 121 Yale Law Journal Online 267 (2011). A follow-up article, Bad News for John Marshall, 121 Yale Law Journal Online 529 (2012), replies to Andrew Koppelman's warning that following McCulloch's originalist doctrine will cause national catastrophe. It looks like we'll find out if he's right. If you're assuming that he is, and thus time is short before The End, a condensed version of our Yale article is available on Legal Workshop.Categories: Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Necessary and Proper, Originalism 2 Comments
David Kopel • June 23, 2012 3:40 am
The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued a citation, along with a proposed fine of $111,000 fine (OSHA press release here), against Illinois Gun Works–a gun store and gunsmith business which has a shooting range and teaches safety classes. HT Instapundit and David Codrea. In a November 2009 article for the NRA magazine America's 1st Freedom, I warned about the dangers of President Obama's nomination of David Michaels as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health (head of OSHA), based on Michaels' well-established record as an anti-gun advocate.
Many of alleged OSHA violations at the safety training range involved noise exposure for the instructors. Among OSHA's suggestions were to eliminate training in "larger caliber" handguns such as "9 mm Luger and/or .45 Colt" and substitute "handguns of smaller caliber," such as .22LR. And "Prohibition of any shotguns and/or rifles firing in the firing range." (p. 6). In other words, eliminate training for all firearms except those which are least likely to have the stopping power to be effective for self-defense. And ensure that the range can never provide students with personal instruction in the use of the firearms which constitute the vast majority of firearms which people actually own.
Among the "violations" noted in the citation: An instructor on the range wore Howard Leight Impact Sport Electronic Earmuffs, which allegedly provided insufficient noise protection. (p. 11). I've never used the Howard Leight brand, but I have used electronic muffs from Peltor and from Dillon. Electronic muffs are the perfect choice for hearing protection and range safety, especially for an instructor. When the muffs detect a sound spike, they instantly shut down, reducing the noise to a comfortable level. Unlike passive muffs, electronic muffs do not block sound at other times, so it is much easier for the instructor to communicate with students, and to hear everything going on in the area. Indeed, normal sounds (but not gunshots) can be amplified by the muff's electronics, if the user so chooses.
My Peltor muffs have a Noise Reduction Rating of 19 decibels, while the Howard Leight muffs used by the Illinois Gun Works instructor had a NRR of 22db. I have previously used passive muffs (consisting of foam padding around the ears, with no electronics); passive muffs with a NRR in the low 20s allow more sound than I want, and I find that for passive muffs, a NRR of 29 or higher is much better. However, whatever the rated NRR of the electronic muffs, I can tell you that electronic muffs are far superior at sound reduction compared to passive muffs with much higher ratings. My Peltors with a NRR of 19db make gunshots much quieter than do my passive muffs with a NRR of 30db. Yet Illinois Gun Works is being fined because an instructor used superior hearing protection.
Here's another violation: "A gun range instructor conducting shooter instruction was observed reaching down on the range floor to collect a loaded handgun cartridge. The employee was not wearing any hand protection such as gloves. The gun range floor was contaminated with lead. The gun had misfired and it required manual cycling of the barrel slide to remove the defective round which then fell on the gun range floor." (p. 22). This is absurd. Range floors are necessarily going to have lead dust on them. In the course of live fire instruction, there are inevitably going to be some misfeeds, which result in a round falling to the floor. You don't leave live ammunition lying on the floor. And if you're going to be helping students clear misfeeds (step 1: press the small button which releases the magazine so that it drops out of the gun), you can often do so better with bare hands with gloves. After any time on the shooting range, it is essential to wash hands thoroughly with cold water. The notion that picking up a round from the floor is some kind of special danger is ridiculous.
One of OSHA's suggestions for reducing instructor exposure to lead (p. 26): require the use of ammunition without lead primers and/or without lead bullets. But if you're teaching people how to use the guns which they actually own, those people need to use the kind of ammunition that they will actually shoot. Firearms can perform quite differently with different types of ammunition. Semi-autos in particular may have a much higher rate of misfeeds with one type of ammunition than with another; one of the important variables in this is how strongly the user holds the grip (a lighter grip can increase misfeeds, but a grip that is too tight can reduce accuracy). The best way for a user to find out which ammunition works most reliably with her particular gun, accounting for the way she actually holds it, is to try different types of ammunition. And it's all the better if those tryouts have the assistance of an instructor. The OSHA "safety" suggestion to use only unusual and expensive types of ammunition would harm gun user safety.
Another violation: employees used Hoppes #9 solvent for cleaning guns (Hoppes makes lots of gun cleaning material and accessories), but Illinois Gun Works had not relabeled each Hoppes bottle to list all the hazardous chemicals therein. (pp. 54-55). Gun cleaners have solvents, and so the cleaning should be done in a place with good ventilation. But it's hard to see much practical benefit in requiring a store to put new labels on every one of the scores of Hoppes bottles which employees will use during the course of a year.
Not everything in the OSHA citation is as senseless as the items described above. And gun ranges are certainly not the first business in the United States to find themselves being punished by OSHA for things that have little or nothing to do with employee safety. However, if the heavy fine and the citation against Illinois Gun Works are followed by similar enforcement against other gun ranges, there may be many fewer ranges soon.Categories: Guns 311 Comments
David Kopel • June 22, 2012 2:59 am
In a 47-minute podcast from iVoices.org, I provide the history from Operation Wide Receiver in 2006-07, up through the contempt of Congress vote this week.Categories: Executive Privilege, Fast and Furious, Guns, Obama 51 Comments
David Kopel • June 20, 2012 3:08 pm
As noted by Jonathan Adler, below, President Obama today asserted Executive Privilege for Attorney General Eric Holder's refusal to comply with a document subpoena from the U.S. House Oversight Committee. The letter is here. The Committee will vote later today on a resolution to hold Holder in contempt of Congress. The Committee Report in support of the contempt resolution is here. A fact sheet on the contempt resolution is here.
Fast & Furious was a program implemented by the Arizona office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, in Sept. 2009 through January 2011. In F&F, BATFE lied to and coerced Arizona gun stores into selling firearms to obvious "straw purchasers"–persons who were illegally buying firearms on behalf of someone who cannot legally buy firearms in the U.S. The "someone else" was Mexican gun traffickers, with most of the guns going to the Sinaloa cartel. Over 2,000 firearms were thus put into criminal hands. In this article for the NRA magazine America's 1st Freedom, I provide a timeline of events through October 2011. F&F was a larger and even more destructive reprise of Operation Wide Receiver, which in 2007 put about 500 guns into criminal hands, before BATFE's management in DC began asking questions that immediately led to Wide Receiver being shut down.
On Feb. 4, 2011, the Department of Justice sent a letter to the House Oversight Committee which falsely claimed that no "gunwalking" (allowing guns to pass into criminal hands, without the guns being kept under constant surveillance) ever took place in Fast & Furious. In December 2011, the Department of Justice admitted that the letter was false, and formally withdrew it. The author of the letter, Ronald Weich, has left DOJ to become Dean of the University of Baltimore Law School.
Whistleblowers from BATFE started coming forward in December 2010, after F&F guns were used in the murder of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. There has been extensive retaliation against the whistleblowers.
The particular issues in the contempt vote, and therefore in President Obama's assertion of Executive Privilege involve:
1. Retaliation against the whistleblowers.
2. Post-Feb. 4 DOJ documents about the false Feb. 4 letter, communications with the White House about F&F after Feb. 4, and other DOJ documents involving the (alleged) continuing cover-up after Feb. 4.
While Fast & Furious was going on, personnel at the National Security Council in the White House received information about it, although the full extent of what they were told is not yet clear. The contempt resolution is based on a document subpoena which was issued in October 2011.
According to Attorney General Holder, the DOJ has 140,000 documents related to Fast & Furious. Fewer than 8,000 have been provided to Congress pursuant to subpoenas. The contempt vote has been narrowed to 1,300 documents. In refusing to comply with the House subpoenas, the DOJ has refused to create a privilege log–which would identify withheld documents, and the legal reason for their being withheld.
So here are my questions for the commenters: Is President's assertion of executive privilege legally persuasive? Do the citations provided in the executive privilege letter provide an accurate description of current law on executive privilege? Todd Gaziano, of the Heritage Foundation, argues that Executive Privilege is not properly invoked here.
UPDATE: I will be discussing today's developments on WDTK radio, Detroit, at 4 p.m. Mountain Time. You can listen live here.Categories: Congress, Executive Privilege, Guns, Obama, Presidency 186 Comments
David Kopel • June 20, 2012 12:35 pm
Court-watchers are wondering if Thursday, June 21, will see the release of Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare or Arizona's laws against illegal aliens. There's another important decision that the Court almost certainly make on Thursday: whether to grant certiorari in Georgia-Pacific West v. Northwest Environment Defense Center. (All the relevant documents are here, on Scotusblog.) Jonathan Adler blogged about it earlier today.
The Georgia-Pacific case involves a complex question of environmental law and regulatory deference, but its economic impact is enormous. In short: the federal Clean Water Act requires that most types of "point source" discharges of pollutants into waters can be allowed if the point source has discharge permit. A classic point source is a sewage discharge pipe from a factory or a municipality, that discharges into a river.
Federal law has separate controls for "non-point source" discharges of pollutants into waters. For example, if pesticides that are sprayed on a golf course run off into a river, that would be a non-point source of water pollution. In practice, most non-point sources involve farming, ranching, forestry and so on. The EPA has particular regulations for run off from such sites.
Now suppose that someone builds a logging road. There road itself is not a "pollution." in any normal sense of the word. It's just made of natural dirt and travel. Rainwater falls on the road, and runs off the road. For many roads, some of the rainwater run-off might eventually end up in a ditch or culvert, and the ditch or culvert might lead to a stream or lake. (The ditch or culvert helps reduce erosion.) Is the the ditch or culvert therefore a "point source" that requires a Clean Water Act discharge permit?
The EPA's answer has always been "no." EPA regulations in 1976 said so explicitly. In 1987, the Clean Water Act was amended to require point source permits for stormwater runoff "associated with industrial activity". CWA section 402(p). In writing regulations to implement the 1987 amendments, the CWA correctly decided the runoff of natural, unpolluted water from logging roads is not covered by section 402(p). One of the reasons that this is correct is that CWA definition of "point source" expressly excludes "agricultural stormwater discharges."
However, the 9th Circuit's decision in Georgia-Pacific held the EPA regulations invalid. 640 F.3d 1063. This creates a direct circuit split with the 8th Circuit's Newton County Wildlife Association v. Rogers, 141 F.3d 803. If the 9th Circuit decision stands, it will essentially shut down logging within the enormous territory of the Circuit. If the 9th Circuit is right, then discharge permits are necessary not only for new roads, but for existing roads–and on private land as well as public land. Obtaining a permit can take years, and the permitting process offers many opportunities for anti-logging activists to monkey wrench and delay. If you wanted to destroy the American timber business, the 9th Circuit's Georgia-Pacific decision is the perfect tool.
Last December, the Supreme Court asked the Solicitor General for a brief regarding Georgia-Pacific's cert. petition. The brief agrees with petitioners (and their amici, including the majority of states Attorneys General) that the Ninth Circuit was wrong. However, the SG urged the Court not to take the case, because the EPA says it is writing new regulations which will supposedly fix the problem.
In my view, the Court should grant the petition. First, the Court should determine whether or not the Clean Water Act itself can even plausibly be read to give EPA power over rainwater runoff from logging roads. This a very important issue for which the nation needs a definite answer.
Second, in order to give the Court time to act, Congress enacted an appropriations rider forbidding enforcement of the new permitting requirement under the Georgia-Pacific theory. (And since EPA can't issue permits, private plaintiffs cannot sue to compel road owners to either obtain permits or shut down the road.) But the ban expires on September 30. (That the Solicitor General took have a year to file a cert. amicus brief prevented the case from possibly being heard on the merits this spring.) Because of the time necessary for Notice and Comment for EPA rulemaking, the new EPA regulation cannot possibly be operative before the litigation freeze expires.
Besides that, if the 9th Circuit is correct, then EPA "cannot" make the regulatory choice not to require discharge permits for logging roads. Thus, EPA's new rule will itself the subject of further litigation. As long as the 9th Circuit's panel decision in Georgia-Pacific remains valid, EPA will have to write a regulation complying with it, and so it seems inevitable that a huge number of logging roads will be requires to get point source discharge permits.
If cert. were granted, then the 9th Circuit (or failing that, the Supreme Court) should issue a stay for enforcement of Georgia-Pacific.
Even without a stay, if the Court granted cert., the grant itself would deter many private lawsuits brought under the Georgia-Pacific theory. If suits were brought, most lower courts would probably decide not to issue preliminary injunctions, and not to let the suits move forward, until the Supreme Court decided the case.
As the amicus briefs for the cert. petition explicate, the damage caused by Georgia-Pacific would be enormous. Although Georgia-Pacific involves issue of Chevron/Auer deference (including the question of whether EPA's regulation is ambiguous), the more fundamental question is whether Congress, when enacting the Clean Water Act in 1972 (and then amending it in 1987), and setting up an intensive and strict system of permitting for waste pipes from factories, sewage pipes, and other point sources, meant for that very same system to apply to hundreds of thousands of miles of logging roads. It is implausible to believe that Congress intended to wipe out the timber business, and to destroy the network of hundreds of thousands of logging roads which are used every day by hunters, other outdoor recreationists, farmers, and ranchers. Certainly any proposal in Congress to impose such far-reaching, harmful legislation would have engendered extensive debate.
Congress did not enact such a foolish law, nor did it give EPA the discretion to do so (in whole or in part) by regulation. It is time for the Supreme Court to say so, with finality.Categories: Administrative Law, Environment, Supreme Court, Uncategorized 16 Comments
David Kopel • June 15, 2012 2:08 am
The list was compiled by Clare Kaufman, for WorldwideLearn.com. She explains: "The following top law professors dominate the Twitter-verse, either through the wit, volume or audience. Criteria for selection for this list include the quality of the tweets, the number of followers and the most active users." For whatever reason, I'm not on the list, although based on number of followers, I rank #40. Since SSRN downloads are already a very important item in law faculty rankings, perhaps the day will come when Twitter too will play a role in the ever-escalating status competition among law professors.
Regardless, the Top-50 list might a useful guide for folks who are looking for additional people to follow on Twitter. Not surprisingly, it is dominated by professors who specialize in technology issues. Impressively, Lawrence Lessig, @lessig, bestrides the law prof twitterverse like a colossus, with nearly 200,000 followers–which appears to be (I didn't count) about as many as the other 49 combined. @davekopel has only 0.7% as many followers.Categories: Academia, Internet 10 Comments
David Kopel • June 14, 2012 3:24 pm
Every year the political roundtable show Colorado Inside Out does a time machine episode. Last year's 1951 episode has just been nominated for a regional Emmy Award, in the news/interview program category. Our topics for the episode were the firing of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Korean War, duck and cover training, and the new federal government center in Denver. Characters were the famous singer and actress Ethel Merman, who had recently moved to Denver (played by Westword publisher Patty Calhoun), newspaperman Al Nakula (played by former Rocky Mountain News journalist Kevin Flynn), sociology professor Lois Waddell (played by Dani Newsum), and southern Colorado newspaper editor Cecil Koplowitz (played by me, evoking my father's first journalism job, in Walsenberg).
We are getting ready to tape a new episode, which will be set in 1912. Patty Calhoun will portray Denver socialite and social climber Molly Brown. I'm busy reading about the Balkan War which began in 1912. The episode will premiere on Friday, July 6.Categories: History, Politics, Television, Uncategorized 1 Comment
David Kopel • June 12, 2012 4:05 pm
For those of who have been waiting for an English translation of Russia's arms statutes, your wait is over. Independence Institute intern Margot van Loon is the author of the new Issue Paper, Weapons Laws of the Russian Federation. Here is a synopsis:
On the whole, the Russian Federation's arms laws show considerably greater respect for the fundamental human right of self-defense than do the laws of some other European nations, such as the United Kingdom or Luxembourg.
The Russian Federation paper is part of continuing series of research papers from the Independence Institute providing full English translations of the arms laws of other nations. Other papers in this series are:
Colombia's National Law of Firearms and Explosives. Full translation of the Colombian statutes, along with historical and narrative explanation. By Jonathan Edward Shaw.
Hungarian Weapons Law of May 2004. English translation and explanation, plus Hungarian text. By Crecy Azincourt.
Mexico's Federal Laws on Firearms and Explosives. By David Kopel.
If you would be interested in writing a paper for this series, please contact me using the information at the bottom of this page.Categories: Guns, International Human Rights Law, Non-firearms Arms, Registration, Right to carry, Russia, Uncategorized 28 Comments
David Kopel • June 8, 2012 5:55 pm
For my co-authored textbook Firearms Law and the Second Amendment, I've been doing a series of podcasts on each chapter. Now available is the podcast for Chapter 4, which covers the Philadelphia Convention, the ratification debates, the creation of Bill of Rights, and St. George Tucker's contemporaneous exposition of the original meaning of the Second Amendment. The podcast is 45 minutes. Here are the links for Aspen Publishers web page for the textbook, and the Amazon page. It's also available from BN.com (Barnes & Noble).Categories: Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Guns, Militia, Originalism No Comments
David Kopel • June 6, 2012 2:46 pm
In a column from 2000, I examined what military historians suggest might have happened if the D-Day landings had been repulsed. Or what if they had taken place in 1943 instead of 1944? The short answers are that if D-Day had failed, Stalin would have ended up occupying almost all of German, which would have significantly changed the balance of power in the Cold War. Had the Allies invaded France in 1943, rather than invading Sicily, they probably would have made faster progress than they did in 1944. VE Day would have come a year earlier, with the Allies capturing most of Germany.
In 1994, Dan Gifford and I wrote that "D-Day was almost a German holiday." That is, in the darkest days of the war, defending U.S. coastal areas was a crucial concern. Fortunately, the states were able to call forth their self-armed citizen militias for coastal defense, while the U.S. Army and National Guard were busy elsewhere.Categories: Guns, History, Militia, War and Armed Conflict 142 Comments
David Kopel • June 2, 2012 10:08 pm
In April, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that the National Rifle Association was viewed favorably by 68% of Americans, and unfavorably by 32%. Unlike most polls, the Reuters poll apparently did not allow "unsure" or "undecided" as a choice. In each of the demographics which the poll provided–Republicans, Democrats, independents, whites, and blacks–the NRA was viewed favorably by at least 55%.
A 2005 Gallup Poll had found a 60/34 favorable/unfavorable view of the NRA. Previous Gallup results were 52/39 (May 2000), 51/39 (April 2000), 51/40 (April 1999, right after the Columbine High School murders), 42/51 (June 1995), and 55/32 (March 1993).
It is interesting to compare the NRA's ratings with support for handgun control. Since 1959, Gallup has been asking "Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police and other authorized persons?" There have been some small changes in wording over the years, and the question is not a perfect test of support for handgun prohibition; some respondents might interpret "other authorized persons" simply as support for the licensing for handgun owners. However, the Gallup question is the closest thing there is to a 50-year gauge for sentiment for banning handguns.
In October 2011, Gallup found that 26% of Americans (a record low) thought that there should be such a law, and 73% did not. The 26/73 anti-/pro-handgun split is fairly close to the 32/68% anti-/pro-NRA split. After Columbine, 38% wanted the anti-handgun law, and 40% disapproved of NRA.
Likewise, Gallup in May 1993 found 54% in against the proposed law, and 55% approval for NRA.
Thus, generally speaking, over the last two decades, Americans who favor handgun prohibition appear to have accurately identified the NRA as a major obstacle to their wishes, and have viewed the NRA unfavorably. Americans who oppose handgun prohibition have viewed the NRA favorably for the same reason.
As American public opinion has evolved from a majority to a super-majority which supports the right to own a handgun, public opinion has likewise moved towards a super-majority with a favorable view of the NRA.
There are many causes for the evolution, but it seems plausible that at least part of the cause has been the increasing effectiveness of the NRA itself. To the extent that the NRA has convinced some Americans that handguns in the right hands are beneficial, then those Americans may have become more likely to view the NRA favorably. To the extent that popular NRA spokesmen (such as three-term NRA President Charlton Heston) or popular NRA programs (such as Eddie Eagle Gun Safety) have made some Americans view the NRA favorably, some of those Americans may have become less inclined to support handgun prohibition.
Because the NRA has (despite some fierce criticisms by Republicans, including in 2010) continued to support Democrats with good records on the Second Amendment, and to oppose Republicans with bad records, the NRA has avoided the problem of being identified with only a single political party. When an interest group supports only one party, that group will inevitably be viewed unfavorably by most members of the other political party.
And now that even long-time anti-gun advocates such as Hillary Clinton and Charles Schumer have been affirming their support for the Second Amendment individual right, the basic premise with which the NRA is identified has become so widely supported that only politicians in very safe districts dare to dispute it publicly.
Founded in 1871, the NRA views itself as "America's oldest civil rights organization," an embodiment of American freedom values. These days, it seems that most Americans tend to agree.Categories: Guns, Politics, Polls, Popular Constitutionalism 378 Comments
David Kopel • May 31, 2012 2:37 pm
This is the subject of my article in a forthcoming symposium issue of the Fordham Urban Law Journal. The article details the political, cultural, social, and legal battles over gun control from the 1920s to the early 21st century. Here's the abstract:
A movement to ban handguns began in the 1920s in the Northeast, led by the conservative business establishment. In response, the National Rifle Association began to get involved in politics, and was able to defeat handgun prohibition. Gun control and gun rights became the subjects of intense political, social, and cultural battles for much of the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st.
Often, the battles were a clash of absolutes: One side contended that there was absolutely no right to arms, that defensive gun ownership must be prohibited, and that gun ownership for sporting purposes could be, at most, allowed as a very limited privilege. Another side asserted that the right to arms was absolute, and that any gun control laws were infringements of that right.
By the time that Heller and McDonald came to the Supreme Court, the battles had mostly been resolved; the Supreme Court did not break new ground, but instead reinforced what had become the American consensus: the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms, especially for self-defense, is a fundamental individual right. That right, however, is not absolute. There are some gun control laws which do not violate the right, particularly laws which aim to keep guns out of the hands of people who have proven themselves to be dangerous.
In the post-Heller world, as in the post-Brown v. Board world, a key role of the courts will be to enforce federal constitutional rights against some local or state jurisdictions whose extreme laws make them outliers from the national consensus.
Also recently published in SSRN is a very good draft article by David Hardy, analyzing the four opinions in McDonald v. Chicago. As he persuasively shows, the arguments by Justice Stevens and Breyer against enforcing the Right to Keep and Bear Arms against the states would, if taken seriously, cast serious doubt on the legitimacy of enforcing against the states almost everything else in the Bill of Rights.Categories: Constitutional History, Constitutional Law, Fourteenth Amendment, Guns, History, McDonald v. City of Chicago, Politics, Popular Constitutionalism, Registration, Right to carry, Supreme Court 294 Comments
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|Home ▸ Catalog ▸ |Themes & Provenance| ▸ |Types| ▸ |Camp Gate||View Options: | | |
Camp Gates
Although traditionally called camp gates, the type may not actually depict the gates to a Roman camp. Most probably depict watch towers, fortresses, or city gates. Camp gates are a very popular collecting theme. Popular varieties include those with visible open or closed doors, unusual turrets or towers, windows, decorated bricks, those with an unusually large or small number of brick rows, and of course those issued by rarer emperors.

subset: commoncrawl


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The Banned For Life list has been around since late 1996, when I issued a call for insufferable media cliches to the readers of Charley Stough's BONG Bull, the newsletter of the Burned Out Newspapercreatures Guild. Their replies formed the foundation of a project that has survived seven years of fits and starts.
On Feb. 14 of 2004, it occurred to me that I should rebuild the list under the umbrella of my Web site at tommangan.net. One of the problems with the old list is that I neglected to post dates when the entries were posted, so there's no way to know how old they are. Best I can tell you is that everything dated Feb. 14 arrived between December 1996 and February 2004.
Fortunately, these cliches have become such bulwarks of the langauge that the ones we loathed seven years ago remain in wide release today. Next time it rains on the Macy's parade, see if the newscasters don't say "Rain didn't dampen their spirits." Next time CNN parachutes a news crew into my hometown in downstate Illinois, see if they don't say how well the latest Beltway follies are "playing in Peoria."
As for me, I'm a newspaper editor working at the Mercury News in San Jose, California. I've accounted for some of my misadventures at my home page.
Cliches are like suckers: there's one born every minute. If you spot one, please send it along and I'll post here.


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Drew Magary's Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Find more of his stuff at his Twitter feed.
Let's play a game. Imagine you have a fantasy football team. Not exactly a stretch. Now, let's say you decide to make a trade in your league. A really fucking stupid trade, something along the lines of trading away Marmalard for Nate Washington. This is a stupid trade. Once you make it, every other owner in the league pillories you for it. They call you a shithead. They tell you that you don't know what the fuck you're doing. You thought it was a really solid trade when you made it. Yet now everyone's castigating you for it. Furthermore, as the season plays out, it becomes clear that Marmalard is putting up fantastic numbers and Nate Washington is doing jack shit. So the other owners happily rib you for your idiocy from now into eternity.
Now, if you're a normal person, or as close to normal as someone can be, how do you react to this scrutiny? Well, I think a normal person would, despite initially thinking the trade was a good idea, come to realize that perhaps the wisdom of crowds was correct, and that they made a mistake. Even the most stubborn of people would be helpless to argue against either the collective opinion or the ensuing result. They'd eventually feel dumb, regret their decision, and they'd do all they could to prevent it from ever happening again. This is what a normal person would do.
This is not how Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder works.
If Dan Snyder had made that trade, he would have done five things. First, he NEVER would have admitted it was a mistake. Not even to himself. Secondly, he would still feel he made the right move even as the season continued, even as statistical evidence built up PROVING that the trade was idiotic. Thirdly, he would have had his lawyer issue a gag order to the other owners in the league, demanding they cease their criticism and having all written taunts erased from the league message board. Fourth, he would then make an even DUMBER trade, and ask his lackey to execute it. Finally, he would sip brandy from a snifter and congratulate himself on a job well done.
There are many bad franchises out there in the sports world, but there is a distinct difference between a franchise being shitty and a franchise being utterly hopeless. Even historically bad teams like Arizona are able to shine on occasion. No, I'm talking about the Raiders, Clippers, and Orioles of the world. I'm talking about franchises that have no hope of turning things around because the man who owns the team refuses to relinquish his cold death grip upon it. Those are the truly hopeless teams out there. The teams that refuse to pull themselves out of their own dysfunction. Teams for whom there is no future, just an endless cycle of building up shaky scaffolding and then tearing it back down again.
And in the NFL, the very worst example of that hopelessness is located right here, in DC.
This decline has been a long time in the making. It's not as if Dan Snyder hasn't been criticized for his stubbornness and his lack of football acumen before. He has. Repeatedly. And that's the problem. Snyder has owned the team for a decade now. In that time, he has displayed a lack of self-awareness that borders on the sociopathic. And after ten years, it's fair to assume now that he will NEVER change. He will never listen to reason. He will never acknowledge failure. He will never accept that the hundreds of thousands of voices telling him he's fucking it all up may have a point. No, no. He's just going to continue on suing season ticket holders, banning Dan Steinberg from posting stadium photos of fans in dissent, hiring clearly unqualified head coaches, and destroying any credibility he might have with potentially talented coaches and GM's who might otherwise sign on to help the team win.
I have lived in Maryland for five years now. And while I delight in the Skins misfortunes from time to time (okay, every day), it's difficult not to feel a touch of sympathy for some of the fans here. This is a football town to the core. Enthusiasm for the Redskins here can't be overstated. These people are fucking CRAZY about this team, in good times and bad. They even willingly go to games at FedEx Field, which is like watching a game inside a prison. They're willing to eat a lot of shit for this team, no matter how many times Snyder has boned them over. And what do they get for their troubles? They get a team that is virtually unwatchable. Any time the Skins connect on a long pass play, it feels like a mistake. And they get people like Simmons calling them the worst fans on earth because some Steelers fans stormed the joint last year. Well, Billy Boy, YOU try heading over to that stadium and see if you think it's worth a shit. Because it isn't. It blows, and tales of all the cynical ways in which the Skins try and part fans from their money are legion in these parts.
At least Al Davis is fucking old. Yeah yeah, he's a vampire and can't be killed blah blah blah. The reality is, that old man is gonna croak WAY before Dan Snyder does. And when that happens, there's a chance the Raiders could end up in the hands of someone who isn't a complete fucking nutbar. And at least Davis had the courtesy of waiting until he was old and senile before turning incompetent. Even Mike Brown makes a good decision once in a blue moon. Even the LIONS managed to fire Matt Millen. They took eight fucking years longer than they should have, but it did happen. Redskins fans are offered no such comfort. Snyder will be in charge for decades, he will continue to repel any and all criticism with childish disdain. LALALA, FANS, DAN CAN'T HEAR YOU! HE'S WEARING HIS JACUZZI SUIT!
To know that this bizarrely irrational man will always be steering the team down a seemingly endless road into the desert, and that nothing can be done about it… even the douchiest of douchey Skins fans can't be too pleased. It's quite a skill, when you think about it. To think that, in ten years of ownership, Snyder has learned nothing from his experiences, and has even managed to regress. Look at this quote from Steinberg's post yesterday from team GM/sexual gimp Vinny "Pegboy" Cerrato regarding the team's hiring of Sherman Lewis (who was, before the hiring, working as a BINGO CALLER in an old folks home, I shit you not) this week as a team consultant:
To me, the most ominous quote (outside the "Kiss of Death" bit) came from Vinny Cerrato himself, when he said he didn't know what Lewis's role would be, but that "they'll get that figured out here in the next day."
Ten years. Ten years and this team is still bringing people in without knowing what the fuck to do with them. What normal person in this position goes this long without learning anything, and denies that anything is wrong? How is that possible? If that isn't hopeless, I don't know what is. Dan Snyder, you are fucking worthless. You are a tiny little sociopath who should be wearing giant old person sunglasses and running one of the Koreas. You fucking suck, and it seems you're more than happy to bask in it. The only thing you can do to help your team at this point is to walk in front of an oncoming cement mixer. Way to ruin everything, shithead. DIE.
The Games
All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.
Five Throwgasms
Patriots at Broncos: Ugh. The bye weeks. You know what they should do? Just have the byes during weeks 8 and 9. Give half the league one week off, the other half the next. Don't spread out the pain. Don't rape my fantasy team for six straight weeks. Just get it the fuck over with. This slow, agonizing drip of teams taking the week off only ends up producing lackluster weeks like this one.
By the way, a giant FUCK YOU to Tom Brady's weak little knee for destroying roughing the passer and unnecessary penalties across the entire league. Every game I've seen this year has featured at least one completely unjustified personal foul penalty. I've seen secondary players flagged for putting a shoulder in the wideout's chest. I've seen defensive ends flagged for tackling the QB at the waist. I've seen players flagged for roughing the QB despite merely grazing them half a millisecond after the ball is thrown. It's fucking ridiculous. I understand the need to protect offensive players as the game grows faster and more violent. That's fine. I have no problem with the rules. My problem is that the rules are being enforced poorly. This isn't shit that refs should be figuring out on the fly. They should fucking be consistent about this shit right now. Teams are getting hosed left and right. Defenders are letting QB's run free because they're afraid to wrap up. It's a joke.
Four Throwgasms
Bengals at Ravens: The Bengals nearly tied last week. I asked the gents at KSK if you would be knocked out of your suicide pool if the team you picked ties. They all agreed that you would. If I lost $10 in some fucking suicide pool because my team tied and didn't actually lose, I think I'd drive a van into a kindergarten class.
Falcons at 49ers: One more thing about the refs. Reader pemulis emailed in to say that refs always call the penalty "illegal block in the back". You don't need to word "illegal" there. All blocks in the back are illegal. It's not the NFL unless unnecessary verbiage is involved.
Three Throwgasms
Jets at Dolphins: Simmons made the point a while back that the four categories on the injury report aren't anywhere specific enough, which is true. In fact, there's really only one category on the injury report that worth a shit, and that's "questionable." Players who are probable end up playing. Players who are doubtful rarely do. You barely need those two categories. In fact, they only serve to clutter up the report. Just tell me who's questionable. Just tell us who's 50/50 so I can get right to shitting my pants.
Texans at Cardinals: Here's Chris Berman on the Twitter phenomenon. "You are taught to think before you speak. Twitter flies in the face of that." Hmm. Guess you don't really follow your own pearls of wisdom, do you? FUCK YOUR FACE.
Two Throwgasms
Colts at Titans: I watched two minutes of Jay Leno the other night out of curiosity. When the hell did Jay start looking like Bea Arthur? That freaked out my shit. By the way, read any profile of Leno and you will discover he's the least passionate comedian in the history of everything ever. It borders on psychosis. He seems to care more about outworking other comics than actually being funnier than them. I think Leno is happy to merely stay employed. If he got 10 million viewers in a week but never got an audience member to laugh once, I think he'd be fine with that. And that's what makes him so irritating to so many. He works his ass off, yet in many ways he really doesn't seem to give a shit.
Steelers at Lions: I dare say this Detroit team is entertaining in its shittiness. And really, can you ask for more than that? I love bad teams that have the courtesy of making every game a 54-32 fantasy orgy.
One Throwgasm
Vikings at Rams: Ratings suggest you watched last Monday night's Favrekakke. If you did, you may have seen the ad for this, the commemorative Brett Favre "Vikings Art Football."
To commemorate Brett's return to the NFC North Division Spike Football is pleased to release this Officially Licensed Exclusive Brett Favre Art Football featuring the amazing and vivid talents of renown sports artist Al Sorenson. This beautiful full size football portrays Favre in his Vikings uniform, a listing of his career accomplishments and a display of Vikings' history. Each full size football includes its own display holder from which you and your friends can admire this handsome piece of sports art. This is a limited edition collectible and fans of Favre, the Vikings and perhaps even the Green Bay Packers are sure to generate swift demand for this unique piece of Brett Favre memorabilia. You must place your order now as a complete sell out is expected.
I'm sure it is. I'd put it right next to my cherished Thomas Kinkade paintings. I'll stick with my Havoc Heli, thank you very much. LOOGIT, IT ALMOST HIT THE CEILING FAN!
Raiders at Giants: The estimable DJ Gallo would like you to begin following the Bill Romanowski Twitter feed immediately. Gems abound:
@ScottFerrall thanks buddy! Talk to you on Wednesday!
Favre is playing the game of his life!
Brett Favre is a true man. Watching the game.
Raiders gave up too many plays.
I think I need to train McFadden how to be strong.
Romo will tweetrape you into being a better, stronger person.
In other Raider news, JaMarcus Russell might be the laziest player in history.
Boomer Esiason of CBS recently lifted the lid on the problems with Raiders quarterback JaMarcus Russell. Esiason said on Sunday's The NFL Today that Russell has been "fined heavily" for showing up late for multiple meetings, being overweight, and missing one meeting.
A league source tells us that it's even worse.
Per the source, Russell has missed multiple meetings, and that he has missed multiple other activities. His behavior has been described to us as a "pattern not an aberration."
I look forward to interviews with Russell when he's old and 500 pounds. "I wash mahself with a rag on a stick." It just proves my theory: never, EVER trust a man who wears a full length mink coat. No one trustworthy has ever donned this garment.
Browns at Bills: Want to never eat a hamburger again? I've got the article for you. So what's in a burger from Jack in the Box?
Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
Mmmm… Mr. Clean. I don't like anything described as an "x-like product". Just not a good sign. Best of all, when you get E. coli…
the toxin in E. coli O157:H7 penetrates the colon wall, damaging blood vessels and causing clots that can lead to seizures.
Hey now! Raped by bacteria? That's a hell of a burger. Secretly, I always assume that anything I eat has feces in it. Likely my own. I wash my hands plenty, but sometimes I wonder if that is enough to prevent me from smearing invisible shit particles all over the place. I know damn well it isn't. It's a poopy world we live in, gang.
Redskins at Panthers: My wife asked me to fold a fitted sheet the other day. I will find a cure for AIDS before I figure out a way to fold a fitted sheet properly.
Cowboys at Chiefs
Bucs at Eagles
Jaguars at Seahawks
Pregame Song That Makes Me Want To Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall
"House Of Mirrors," by Doves. Oh, Doves. You're just like Coldplay, if Coldplay wasn't awful. According to Wiki…
…back in 1981, Andy and Jez Williams formed a band with schoolmate and bass player Tim Whiteley…
Tim Whiteley? OF THE MONTCLAIR WHITELEYS?
Embarassing iTunes Track I Just Bought That Will Not Fire You Up
"Rhapsody in Blue," by George Gershwin. I enjoy listening to classical music because it makes me feel like a rich person.
Open Mailbag Tuesdays
Got something you want displayed for show and tell in the Deadspin Tuesday Mailbag? Fingerbang yourself in the shower and pass out, perhaps? Email me any question or observation you like.
Fantasy Player That Deserves To Die A Slow, Painful Death
Willis McGahee. Go fuck yourself, McGahee. Really. GO AND GRAB YOUR PENIS AND TUCK IT BETWEEN YOUR LEGS AND STUFF THE HEAD OF IT IN YOUR BUTT.
McGahee has seven touchdowns in just four games this year. He has not had more than eight TD's in any of the previous four entire seasons. NOW is when you finally decide to be useful, you goddamn piece of cock? NOW is the time you decide to finally stop impregnating every fucking thing you stick your dick in so you can be a productive running back? Just as Ray Rice is becoming a stud? YOU ARE THE BIGGEST ASSHOLE ALIVE AND I HOPE YOU CHOKE.
Suicide Pick Of The Week
Last week's suicide pick of Houston was correct, making me 4-0 on the year. That puts the Texans, Ravens, Saints and Skins off the board now. We once again pick a team for your suicide pool and something that makes you WANT to commit suicide. This week's pick? Minnesota, and feeding children. Ask any parent the most annoying thing about having kids, and they will tell you two things: 1) Trying to get the little fucker to sleep, and 2) Trying to get the little fucker to fucking eat. I feed my eight-month-old every day. At least once during the feeding, the kid will grab the end of the spoon with the food on it. And before I even have time to react, the kid will wipe his carrot-soaked hand across the hair, his face, his hair, his clothing, and anything within a 10-inch radius. Feeding kids is horrible.
Nazi Shark's Vegas Lock Of The Week
Lots of sports sites, to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of gambling, like to have animals like monkeys pick games to see if they can outwit their human counterparts. There's no reason we at Deadspin can't also get in on the fun. So we've asked National Socialist German Workers' Party member Rolf, who also happens to be a shark, to pick one game a week. Take it away, Nazi shark.
"This week, I like the Bengals getting 8.5 points on the road against the Ravens. I hear Limbaugh wants to buy the Rams. I approve. He's everything I want out of an NFL owner. He's rich, he's white, and he belongs to any number of country clubs that don't let Jews in, and have lots of old black people tending the bar who call you 'Boss'. I like being called 'Boss' when I get my drink. Feels appropriate."
2009 Nazi Shark Record: 3-1
This Week's Pants Party Winner
Last week's Pants Party winner Things Trebek Sucks. He did not email in a rant. WHAT IS A WASTED OPPORTUNITY TO HELP PAD MY COLUMN SPACE WITHOUT MONETARY COMPENSATION?
This week's Pants Party winner was I'd Pee In Her Butt! Good job, I'd Pee In Her Butt. By the way, if you peed in a girl's butt, wouldn't it all just splash back on you? That's like when you accidentally graze the rim when you're pissing. Ever do that? I do that at least once a week. Wet shins ahoy.
Great Moments In Poop History
Reader Mike B. sends in a poop story entitled, "The Phantom Shitter"
One night a week before college graduation four other guys and I decided to take a trip out to a friend's house to get away from the city. We picked up a couple of thirty packs and proceeded to play 711 doubles from the confines of my friend's basement. The next morning we woke up at the crack of dawn and after consuming lots and lots of Budweiser the basement stank like shit.
We opened up the small windows, turned on a fan, but with no success. It stank. We knew something was not right as we proceeded to scour the basement for its source. Nestled in the far most corner of the basement was a barstool with no arms. On top of it was a tightly coiled load the size of great dane's shit. It was a perfectly formed piece of shit. If that shit were a man it would have been labeled an Adonis.
But how could someone have gotten up in the middle of the night in a drunken stupor and manage to drop trough on a bar stool with no arms with no means of positioning there body over the seat, without a point of leverage in sight. We each promised to go into the bathroom remove their underwear, come back out and the group would inspect them for any residue left from improperly wiping or not wiping at all the night before. No evidence. Nothing. The next week graduation came and went and we all said our goodbyes until another day. That night however a legend was born. The Phantom Shitter. Will he ever strike again? I don't know. What I do know is that I miss him.
I do appreciate a good, coiled poop. Like chocolate soft serve. It really is a neat shape to pull off. As for dropping anchor on a barstool, that strikes me as a brutal task. The phantom shitter probably had to stand on the circular wood footrest in order to squat properly. All in all, an extremely impressive crime. Like a cat burglar. I'd nickname the offending poop The Brown Panther.
Fire This Asshole!
Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we'll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year's end or sooner. And now, your updated chopping block:
Tom Cable
Jim Zorn*
Eric Mangini
Jeff Fisher
Wade Phillips*
Dick Jauron
Gary Kubiak*
Jack Del Rio
Todd Haley
John Fox
Norv Turner
Mike McCarthy
Jim Mora
NORV! Great to have him back. Oh, and one more thing on the Zorn front. Here's a quote from Washington Post beat reporter Rick Maese's Twitter feed on the Sherm Lewis hiring: "Sherm Lewis doesn't seem sure what his exact responsibilities will be either. Said he didn't speak to Zorn before accepting job." So long, Jimmy.
Gametime Snack Of The Week
Applesauce. You know the only difference between applesauce and apple butter? The disapproving looks from society.
We have small cups of applesauce we feed to the kids. It takes my three-year-old at least seventy spoonfuls to get through the thing. Meanwhile, I can empty my entire cup with a single tablespoon and eat it in one bite. Kids, I'm a better eater than your sorry asses will ever be.
Gametime Beer Of The Week
Budweiser American Ale! We darkened regular Budweiser so that it LOOKS like a good beer. Let's see if you buy it!
Robert Evans' MVP Watch!
Time to start thinking about who the leaders are for the NFL's MVP award. So every week, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans will join us to give us his assessment. Take it away, Mr. Evans.
"Baby, my NEW favorite for the NFL's MVP this year is Peyton Manning of the Colts! Say, a lot of people in this town are throwing their support behind Roman Polanski, and I'm with them! What's happening to my old friend is an injustice! A great director? YOU BET! An even better bocce ball enthusiast? DAMN RIGHT! You can't seriously want to put this man in jail! He made The Pianist! That picture's worth at least a dozen champagne kiddie rapes! Trust me, I known hundreds of directors in this town who have done worse! Doug Liman keeps a human centipede in his wine cellar!"
Sunday Afternoon Movie Of The Week For Browns Fans
Monty Python And The Holy Grail. I'd rather… just… SING! I've seen this movie more than any other movie. I can write the screenplay out from memory, as I also could with Life of Brian and most any episode of "Flying Circus." And I'm pretty sure, actually I'm quite sure, that this makes me an old person. I don't apologize for loving Monty Python, but I think only old people love them anymore. This makes me feel sad.
Oh, and a hearty FUCK YOU to all the people in the world who, for the past three decades, have attempted to brand any American who likes Python as a nerd. ZOMG! YOU LIKE FUNNY MOVIES! YOU'RE SUCH A DORK! Honestly, go fuck yourself. Monty Python shot this movie using only a single location and 12 giant sheets of LSD. That's badass, and if you think liking it is nerdy, go jack off to American Pie. DEATH AWAITS YOU ALL, WITH NASTY POINTY TEETH!
Gratuitous Simpsons Quote
"You don't scare me. That could be anyone's ass!"
Halftime Masturbation Kit
-For the guys: Holy Taco's gallery of women in bathtubs. The only time you'll ever click on link labeled TUB GIRLS and not find yourself horrified. I curse the person who sent me that site. I hate you forever, Tubgirl sender.
-For the gals: Taye Diggs. He's shiny. Also, his nipples appear to be wall-eyed.
Enjoy the games, everyone.


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text: WORKSHOPS This Workshop is designed to help individuals expand their personal vision. If were shooting subjects, your people skills will be expanded. Lighting and/or seeing better light as per subject and location enhanced. I can help you become more assertive and yet open to allowing the essence of what is before your lens translate with your point of view. If your shooting people, and or telling as story, be it journalistic or formal portraiture, we can together reveal images in a natural way. Lighting and all the elements of capturing a subject need to be addressed; from just seeing a person in the world as a journalist, to styling, makeup, location, lighting and allowing one's character to come through without looking forced. However photo illustration and conceptual ideas are and can be part of the creative process while doing portraits. I will help you to gain access with the camera in a thoughtful and hopefully more evocative way. Each trip is planned around where you want to go and what you need to hone your skills. Be it a portrait, landscape and or nature we will look at everything in a unique special way. The workshop will be a one on one experience that provides you with a wealth of information that has you shooting, mingling, and producing photographs for as many days as you like. I have almost 39 years experience and can share all of it with you from the technical side to intuitive way of thinking. We can plug into what works for you and open some of the creative tools so you really enjoy the process of photography as a whole. I can give you tools to help you if our creatively stuck and I can help you become better at seeing and lighting if that is an area you need to expand. The time spent will be a mix of shooting, discussing the technical information, and being involved with a 24-hour photographic experience. I will show you how to make your life rewarding through your art. Where: You can come to New Mexico for a week or two, travel or I can come to you to explore projects that are relevant in your neck of the woods. We can do day trips or go on the road. We will design the trip for your needs. Students will be responsible for their personal accommodations and transportation to be determined. Admission: A portfolio and personal phone conversation with Karen is required for admission. This is the year round workshop. Karen teaches at the Santa Fe Workshops on occasion and can give you a list of references. Tuition: The tuition is 1000.00 a day, plus travel expenses. Travel expenses include motel rooms and meals while on the road. We don't go high end unless you request it. We go for what is interesting and make the trip an adventure be it day by day or by the week. A week is considered arrival on Sunday depart on Sunday. Shoot Monday through Friday wrap on Saturday. Interested: Call karen at 1 505 401 5987 email@example.com Group workshops available. I look forward to working with you to make an amazing experience with a wealth of knowledge. Your images will improve ten fold. HERE are a few terrific student testimonies: "You will experience the time of you life doing a one on one w/ Karen Kuehn. She is a master at teaching you what you need to know to get great shots! Portraits or landscapes, she will get you to shoot the real stuff & process it. She changed my life & brought my photography to a new level. One week is perfect & she will hook you up w/ the most interesting shoots. A must to do. Don't put it off. A truly amazing teacher & women w/ the biggest heart in the world." ELEANOR PREGER "I have been thinking a lot about what I want to say about working with Karen. I tried to come up with something so cleaver, Richard would dive in head first. No luck. Every time I came up with something, it was coming from the heart, not the head. So here it is. Richard, I met Karen at a Santa Fe Photo workshop when my instructor brought her in for a day of talk and images. Her work captured me. We started a conversation, which lead to me working with her for a full week. Best week I have ever spent and best investment I ever made in my instruction. My work is so much better having spent time with Karen. I take more chances, and I get much better results. It's not about pointing a camera and tripping the shutter. It's about connecting with your subject (person, object, whatever). The workshops are good, and I enjoy going. A dedicated week is so intense and you learn so much more than the workshop week. Make an investment in yourself and your work. You won't regret it. In fact, I loved our week together so much, I had Karen come up to Colorado last year. We did a weekend one studio light shoot. Again, glad I did it. You can do so much with one light. And Karen was spot on. So, take a chance, have fun, and learn lots. You will be much better after your tie with Karen. She is a great teacher, organized, focused, and challenges you to create. Great combo. Good luck." SCOTT MARKEY


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Mega Bubblefest Laser Show in California
Bubble artist Deni Yang performed his Mega Bubblefest Laser Show Thursday at the Discovery Cube Science Center in Santa Ana, California. Deni, the son of famed bubble master Fan Yang, has followed in his father's footsteps and travels the world performing his bubble shows. His family holds the world record for largest soap bubble, measuring 167 feet long, that was created in Beijing, China in 2009.


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|Home > News & Policies > Proclamation Archives
For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
November 30, 2001
National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month
By the President of the United States of America
A Proclamation
Each December we turn our attention to the problem of drunk driving by observing National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month. Though the holidays bring joy in celebrations with family and friends, they also bring a tragic increase in the incidence of impaired driving. This season, I ask each American to avoid driving while they are under the influence of alcohol or drugs, to help stop others from driving in an impaired condition, and to increase community awareness about these issues.
Despite many efforts by States, communities, and citizen groups to stop drunk and drugged driving, many Americans mistakenly continue to view impaired driving as acceptable conduct. After years of gradual improvement, fatalities in alcohol-related crashes rose by 4 percent from 1999 to 2000. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that last year alcohol was involved in 40 percent of fatal crashes and in 8 percent of all crashes.
Every person should reaffirm his or her personal responsibility to drive free of the influence of alcohol or drugs and to prevent others from driving under the influence of them. We must promote practices such as designating a sober driver, stopping impaired family members and friends from getting behind the wheel, reporting impaired drivers to law enforcement officials, and teaching our young people safe, alcohol- and drug-free driving behavior.
We should also promote coordinated public policies and citizen campaigns against drunk and drugged driving in our communities. One example is the Department of Transportation's You Drink & Drive, You Lose campaign. This national coalition of community and law enforcement organizations will increase public awareness of the hazards of impaired driving. Their message warns of the criminal penalties for impaired driving, including imprisonment and the loss of license, vehicle, time from work, and money in fines and court costs.
As we celebrate the joyous holiday season, we can help save lives by preventing impaired driving. In order to ensure the safety of our roads for all travelers, we must continue to fight drunk and drugged driving throughout the year.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim December 2001 as National Drunk and Drugged Driving Prevention Month. I call upon State and community leaders to join the National Holiday Lifesavers Mobilization, sponsored by the You Drink & Drive, You Lose campaign, on December 21-23, 2001. I also urge all Americans to remember the hazards of impaired driving and to become involved in fighting this dangerous problem.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand one, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and twenty-sixth.
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June 15, 2014
Better Ways Than a Wealth Tax to Shrink Inequality (Peter Orszag, 6/04/14, Moneynews)
In the hoopla over whether Thomas Piketty's data on growing global inequality are correct, an important question about how to address the problem has been obscured. Piketty describes his own global wealth tax idea as more of a "useful utopia" than a practical policy suggestion. Is there anything more plausible that can be done?Two suggestions come to mind, at least for U.S. policymakers. The first is a progressive consumption tax. This kind of tax is already embraced by many conservative thought leaders because it is, compared with other types of taxes, economically efficient. But it is efficient in no small part because it imposes a tax on wealth. People have no way to convert their money into anything they consume without paying the tax.As William Gale and Benjamin Harris of the Brookings Institution have pointed out, the efficiency benefits from a consumption tax occur from a combination of effects, including imposing a one-time tax on existing wealth. As they note, this tax on wealth that has already been accumulated "is a major component of the efficiency gains because of the creation of a consumption tax." The dirty little secret about consumption taxes is that their putative benefits come largely from Piketty's core idea: a tax on wealth.
Posted by Orrin Judd at June 15, 2014 8:27 AM


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From Shell-Shock To PTSD: A Century Of Invisible War Trauma
Vietnam was another watershed moment for combat-related PTSD because veterans began to advocate for themselves in an unprecedented way. Beginning...
Vietnam was another watershed moment for combat-related PTSD because veterans began to advocate for themselves in an unprecedented way. Beginning with a small march in New York in the summer of 1967, veterans themselves began to become activists for their own mental health care. They worked to redefine "post-Vietnam syndrome" not as a sign of weakness, but rather a normal response to the experience of atrocity. Public understanding of war itself had begun to shift, too, as the widely televised accounts of the My Lai massacre brought the horror of war into American living rooms for the first time. The veterans' campaign helped get PTSD included in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-III), the major American diagnostic resource for psychiatrists and other mental health clinicians.
Editor's note: This article originally appeared on The Conversation.
In the wake of World War I, some veterans returned wounded, but not with obvious physical injuries. Instead, their symptoms were similar to those that had previously been associated with hysterical women – most commonly amnesia, or some kind of paralysis or inability to communicate with no clear physical cause.
English physician Charles Myers, who wrote the first paper on "shell-shock" in 1915, theorized that these symptoms actually did stem from a physical injury. He posited that repetitive exposure to concussive blasts caused brain trauma that resulted in this strange grouping of symptoms. But once put to the test, his hypothesis didn't hold up. There were plenty of veterans who had not been exposed to the concussive blasts of trench warfare, for example, who were still experiencing the symptoms of shell-shock. (And certainly not all veterans who had seen this kind of battle returned with symptoms.)
We now know that what these combat veterans were facing was likely what today we call post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. We are now better able to recognize it, and treatments have certainly advanced, but we still don't have a full understanding of just what PTSD is.
The medical community and society at large are accustomed to looking for the most simple cause and cure for any given ailment. This results in a system where symptoms are discovered and cataloged and then matched with therapies that will alleviate them. Though this method works in many cases, for the past 100 years, PTSD has been resisting.
We are three scholars in the humanities who have individually studied PTSD – the framework through which people conceptualize it, the ways researchers investigate it, the therapies the medical community devises for it. Through our research, each of us has seen how the medical model alone fails to adequately account for the ever-changing nature of PTSD.
What's been missing is a cohesive explanation of trauma that allows us to explain the various ways its symptoms have manifested over time and can differ in different people.
Nonphysical repercussions of the Great War
Once it became clear that not everyone who suffered from shell-shock in the wake of WWI had experienced brain injuries, the British Medical Journal provided alternate nonphysical explanations for its prevalence:
A poor morale and a defective training are one of the most important, if not the most important etiological factors: also that shell-shock was a "catching" complaint. – (The British Medical Journal, 1922)
Shell-shock went from being considered a legitimate physical injury to being a sign of weakness, of both the battalion and the soldiers within it. One historian estimatesat least 20 percent of men developed shell-shock, though the figures are murky due to physician reluctance at the time to brand veterans with a psychological diagnosis that could affect disability compensation.
Soldiers were archetypically heroic and strong. When they came home unable to speak, walk or remember, with no physical reason for those shortcomings, the only possible explanation was a personal weakness. Treatment methods were based on the idea that the soldier who had entered into war as a hero was now behaving as a coward and needed to be snapped out of it.
Electric treatments were prescribed in psychoneurotic cases post-WWI.Photo via Otis Historical Archives
Lewis Yealland, a British clinician, described in his 1918 "Hysterical Disorders of Warfare" the kind of brutal treatment that follows from thinking about shell-shock as a personal failure. After nine months of unsuccessfully treating patient A1, including electric shocks to the neck, cigarettes put out on his tongue and hot plates placed at the back of his throat, Yealland boasted of telling the patient, "You will not leave this room until you are talking as well as you ever did; no, not before… you must behave as the hero I expect you to be."
Yealland then applied an electric shock to the throat so strong that it sent the patient reeling backwards, unhooking the battery from the machine. Undeterred, Yealland strapped the patient down to avoid the battery problem and continued to apply shock for an hour, at which point patient A1 finally whispered "Ah." After another hour, the patient began to cry and whispered, "I want a drink of water."
Yealland reported this encounter triumphantly – the breakthrough meant his theory was correct and his method worked. Shell-shock was a disease of manhood rather than an illness that came from witnessing, being subjected to and partaking in incredible violence.
Evolution away from shell-shock
The next wave of the study of trauma came when the Second World War saw another influx of soldiers dealing with similar symptoms.
It was Abram Kardiner, a clinician working in the psychiatric clinic of the United States Veterans' Bureau, who rethought combat trauma in a much more empathetic light. In his influential book, "The Traumatic Neuroses of War," Kardiner speculated that these symptoms stemmed from psychological injury, rather than a soldier's flawed character.
Work from other clinicians after WWII and the Korean War suggested that post-war symptoms could be lasting. Longitudinal studies showed that symptoms could persist anywhere from six to 20 years, if they disappeared at all. These studies returned some legitimacy to the concept of combat trauma that had been stripped away after the First World War.
As veterans returned home from the war in Vietnam, combat trauma became less stigmatized.Photo via DoD/Creative Commons
The authors of the DSM-III deliberately avoided talking about the causes of mental disorders. Their aim was to develop a manual that could simultaneously be used by psychiatrists adhering to radically different theories, including Freudian approaches and what is now known as "biological psychiatry." These groups of psychiatrists would not agree on how to explain disorders, but they could – and did – come to agree on which patients had similar symptoms. So the DSM-III defined disorders, including PTSD, solely on the basis of clusters of symptoms, an approach that has been retained ever since.
This tendency to agnosticism about the physiology of PTSD is also reflected in contemporary evidence-based approaches to medicine. Modern medicine focuses on using clinical trials to demonstrate that a therapy works, but is skeptical about attempts to link treatment effectiveness to the biology underlying a disease.
Today's medicalized PTSD
People can develop PTSD for a number of different reasons, not just in combat. Sexual assault, a traumatic loss, a terrible accident – each might lead to PTSD. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates about 13.8 percent of the veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan currently have PTSD. For comparison, a male veteran of those wars is four times more likely to develop PTSD than a man in the civilian population is. PTSD is probably at least partially at the root of an even more alarming statistic: Upwards of 22 veterans commit suicide every day.
Therapies for PTSD today tend to be a mixed bag. Practically speaking, when veterans seek PTSD treatment in the VA system, policy requires they be offered either exposure or cognitive therapy. Exposure therapies are based on the idea that the fear response that gives rise to many of the traumatic symptoms can be dampened through repeated exposures to the traumatic event. Cognitive therapies work on developing personal coping methods and slowly changing unhelpful or destructive thought patterns that are contributing to symptoms (for example, the shame one might feel at not successfully completing a mission or saving a comrade). The most common treatment a veteran will likely receive will include psychopharmaceuticals – especially the class of drugs called SSRIs.
The military is working on incorporating virtual reality with exposure therapy for PTSD sufferers.Photo via DoD
Mindfulness therapies, based on becoming aware of mental states, thoughts, and feelings and accepting them rather than trying to fight them or push them away, are another option. There are also more alternative methods being studied such as eye movement desensitization and reprocessing or EMDR therapy, therapies using controlled doses of MDMA (Ecstasy), virtual reality-graded exposure therapy, hypnosis and creative therapies. The military funds a wealth of research on new technologies to address PTSD; these include neurotechnological innovations like transcranial stimulation and neural chips as well as novel drugs.
Several studies have shown that patients improve most when they've chosen their own therapy. But even if they narrow their choices to the ones backed by the weight of the National Center for PTSD by using the center's online Treatment Decision Aid, patients would still find themselves weighing five options, each of which is evidence-based but entails a different psychomedical model of trauma and healing.
This buffet of treatment options lets us set aside our lack of understanding of why people experience trauma and respond to interventions so differently. It also relieves the pressure for psychomedicine to develop a complete model of PTSD. We reframe the problem as a consumer issue instead of a scientific one. Thus, while WWI was about soldiers and punishing them for their weakness, in the contemporary era, the ideal veteran PTSD patient is a health care consumer who has an obligation to play an active role in figuring out and optimizing his own therapy.
As we stand here with the strange benefit of the hindsight that comes with 100 years of studying combat-related trauma, we must be careful in celebrating our progress. What is still missing is an explanation of why people have different responses to trauma, and why different responses occur in different historical periods. For instance, the paraylsis and amnesia that epitomized WWI shell-shock cases are now so rare that they don't even appear as symptoms in the DSM entry for PTSD. We still don't know enough about how soldiers' own experiences and understandings of PTSD are shaped by the broader social and cultural views of trauma, war and gender. Though we have made incredible strides in the century since World War I, PTSD remains a chameleon, and demands our continued study.
MaryCatherine McDonald, Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University; Marisa Brandt, Assistant Professor of Practice, Michigan State University, and Robyn Bluhm, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Michigan State University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.


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Submitted by Roger Whitson on
For my Spring class on "Blake 2.0," I've decided to engage in collaborative learning and model forms of collective intelligence. I like my assignments to have two separate characteristics. First, I like to show students that they can accomplish great things if they work together. Second, I like my students to produce something of value, something that they can be proud of after the end of the semester.
To this end, I've decided to take the three sections of my course and have a slightly different emphasis in each section. The first section will focus exclusively on William Blake himself and the historical context around which his poetry emerged. The second section will focus on the reception of Blake by authors and artists who lived after the Romantic period. The final section, a special section set up to be populated exclusively by computer science and computational media majors, will focus on Blake's relationship to textual studies and the digital humanities - moving from the print theories of figures like Essick, Viscomi, and Michael Phillips to the critical work surrounding digital initatives like The William Blake Archive, The Blake Digital Text Project, and (as suggested by Rachel Lee) Jon Saklofske's data visualization tool.
In order to facilitate collaborative and decentered learning, I've decided to allow students to define course content. One of the major research projects of the course, therefore, will be the opportunity for students to teach a major topic of the course. These topics will be laid out by myself beforehand, but students will choose the reading assignment and will present their research to the rest of the class. They will also provide a document that sketches objectives and outcomes for their teaching session, and support why their readings will achieve the objectives. I determine their grade based upon how well they argue for their readings and outcomes, and how skillfully they conduct their teaching session.
Ideally, I would like for them to present to all three of my sections. This way, students can show their own individual skill and add to the collective intelligence of the course. In the book Convergence Culture (2008), Henry Jenkins defines collective intelligence through the work of Pierre Levy:
On the internet, Pierre Levy argues, people harness their individual expertise toward shared goals and objectives: 'No one knows everything, everyone knows something, all knowledge resides in humanity.' Collective intelligence refers to the ability of virtual communities to leverage the combined expertise of their members. What we cannot know or do on our own, we may now be able to do collectively. (26-7)
Following Jenkins and Levy, I propose that collaborative learning can model forms of collective intelligence - and that collective intelligence can enable students to achieve what individual students listening to lectures and writing individual essays, cannot.


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One of the larger components of StarMegaDo has always been a focus on charity. The even operates on a break-even budget and any surplus has always been donated to charities associated with the airlines and other programs we work with. In addition, we hold a charity raffle on-board the charter flights, selling tickets and giving away awesome airline-related prizes (and an iPad this year because every raffle should have one, apparently).
Today I was fortunate to participate in one of the more enjoyable aspects of my role as an organizer. High up in the Empire State Building in New York City we are meeting with Lufthansa to present them with a donation to support Help Alliance, the primary charity affiliated with the group. This year the various events associated with StarMegaDo raised over $12,000 through several different channels and events. Of that, we are quite honored to be able to present $5,000 to the Help Alliance group.
Attending the event are Tommy Danielsen, the head of StarMegaDo, Martin Riecken, Lufthansa's Director of Corporate Communications for the Americas and Seth Miller, Director of Communications for StarMegaDo.
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Obama' 'Stop Complaining' Order To Black Caucus Causes Stir
President Obama may have fired up some of the most loyal voters in his political base, African Americans, through a speech to the Congressional Black Caucus, though not in the way he intended.
After running down a list of his administration's accomplishments on behalf of middle and lower income Americans and calling for passage of his jobs bill, Obama concluded his speech by saying:
I expect all of you to march with me and press on. (Applause.) Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. (Applause.) Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on. We've got work to do, CBC. (Applause.)
For some, it was another example of a tone perceived as patronizing from Obama when he speaks to primarily African-American audiences.
Courtland Milloy, a Washington Post columnist, wrote:
"Funny, isn't it, how Obama always gets the nerve to say shut up when he's addressing a friendly audience?
"The unemployment rate among blacks stands at 16.7 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up from 11.5 percent when Obama took office. By some accounts, black people have lost more wealth since the recession began than at any time since slavery. And Obama gets to lecture us?"
Rep. Maxine Waters made the point that Obama doesn't ever speak the same way publicly to other organizations of representing other key voter blocs, for instance Hispanic or Jewish groups, only blacks. She said on the CBS' "Early Show":
"I'm not sure who the president was addressing. I found that language a bit curious because the president spoke to the Hispanic Caucus, and certainly they're pushing him on immigration. And despite the fact that he's appointed Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, he has an office for Excellence for Hispanic Education right in the White House. They're still pushing him. He certainly didn't tell them to stop complaining.
"So I don't who he was talking to because we're certainly not complaining."
To some, the whole bedroom slipper image seemed to play into historic stereotypes of black laziness.
On the Your Black Politics blog, Yvette Carnell wrote:
As writer Charing Ball noted, Obama may as well have said "take off your head scarf and wave caps, put away the jug of Kool-Aid and grape drink, stop frying that chicken."
Of course, black people aren't wearing "slippers". To the contrary, we're fighting, without any help from the executive branch mind you, to keep our heads above water in this recession.
But President Obama isn't speaking to us, but about us – to conservative leaning independents. He's speaking to the stereotype that they hold, that African-Americans are lazy critters who aren't capable of self-actualization. And it was remarkable to hear Obama bark patronizingly at an African American crowd, then watch the crowd answer in applause. In a word, heartbreaking.
For a president whose approval ratings even among African Americans have dropped strikingly, it can't be anything but bad news that his speech's climax has upset part of his base.
He clearly meant to get African Americans in Congress and many of the voters they represent to energized for the 2012 re-election campaign, "fired up" and "ready to go" in the slogans of his 2008 presidential campaign.
He's obviously fired many people up. Whether they'll be ready to go as long and as hard for him as they did in 2008 because of how they feel he has taken them for granted and worse remains an open question.


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Empire State University is committed to the protection and confidentiality of student educational records, adhering to the guidelines established by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act federal legislation that regulates access to, and maintenance of, student educational records.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) affords students certain rights with respect to their education records, including the right to inspect their education records, request an amendment of the records that the student believes are inaccurate, and the right to control disclosures of their records except to the extent that FERPA authorizes disclosure without consent. (It is important to note that all rights to access records move to the student whecolln that student is in a post-secondary education institution; parents, spouses and significant others have no inherent right to access student educational records.)
Educational records include, with certain exceptions, all records maintained in any medium, which can identify the student.


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What a coincidence, eh? The order does not specifically mention Ukraine, but the message won't be lost on the Ukrainians — or the Europeans:
President Vladimir Putin has reportedly ordered an immediate test of combat readiness of troops in central and western Russia.
Russia's state news agencies are quoting Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu as saying that Putin ordered the test at 2 p.m. Moscow time on Wednesday.
There's nothing like a mobilization to calm things down, you know. Perhaps this is just a coincidence, but Ukrainians can be forgiven for skepticism. This follows some more soothing messages coming from Moscow and the Putin government, specifically foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, who declared that Russia would not intervene in Ukraine. He called that a "principled position" while calling on the West to follow suit.
Of course, that may depend on how one defines "Ukraine." The Crimean peninsula has only been part of Ukraine for less than 60 years, after Nikita Khruschev transferred it administratively within the old Soviet Union. It's still home to a very large community of ethnic Russians and an important Black Sea naval base. And at the moment, it's home to a growing conflict between the ethnic Russians and Crimean Tatars, among others. The Associated Press has raw video of a large clash between the two populations outside of a provincial parliament building today:
The Crimean parliament denies that it's discussing "withdrawal" from Ukraine (in Russian). Russia Today has live coverage of the protests in Crimea, which are still ongoing. Clearly some in the crowd would like to be discussing "withdrawal" at this point.
In Sevastopol, home of the Russian naval base, ethnic Russians have kicked out the city administrator and installed their own mayor — and wonder when Putin will come to take the city back:
When one of the ousted incumbent's former deputies threatened on Monday to have Mr Chaliy arrested, hundreds of supporters massed outside the city's main administration shouting the new mayor's name and chanting: "Russia! Russia!"
Olga Timofeyeva, a local pro-Russia activist, was jubilant as she recalled their triumph. "Thanks to Chaliy, faith, hope and the strength of soul all have been returned to us," she said. …
The "most cherished dream" of Sevastopol's residents is for the city to return to Russian territory, says Ms Timofeyeva. "Being without Russia, for us, is like being homeless. It's like someone boiled off a piece of our heart and discarded it far away . . . like there's not enough air to breathe."
Now, following the events in Kiev, some locals are starting to hope that at least Sevastopol – if not the rest of Crimea – could be taken back under Moscow's wing.
The "snap-check" of ground-troop force readiness looks like something a little more than military curiosity on the part of Moscow. They may have given up on Viktor Yanukovich, but that doesn't mean they're going to give up on Crimea.


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|Nancy Davis [Reagan] and Barbara Stanwyck
"Just because a man has one perfect rose at home, doesn't mean he can't appreciate the flowers of the field."
"I waited so long for you to come back to me. I never dreamed that when you did, I wouldn't care."
Jesssie Bourne (Barbara Stanwyck) is convinced that her husband Brandon (James Mason) is over his infatuation with former lover Isabel Lorrison (Ava Gardner), now that she's out of town, but when Isabel comes back wanting more, Jessie worries that she might lose him. In the meantime Jessie finds herself drawn to a sympathetic admirer in former cop Mark Dwyer (Van Heflin) who is being courted by newspaper publishers. Lovely Cyd Charisse [The Unfinished Dance] is Rosa, who befriends the Bournes and had a childhood crush on Mark. Nancy Davis -- later the first lady when husband Ronald Reagan became president -- plays Jessie's friend Helen and isn't bad. Douglas Kennedy of Flaxy Martin is a wealthy suitor of Isabel's and Beverly Michaels of Wicked Woman and Blonde Bait is both saucy and sexy as the "big girl" [Michaels was five foot nine] who's carrying a torch for Kennedy. Presumably Gale Sondergaard [The Spider Woman Strikes Back] wasn't thrilled to be cast as Stanwyck's mother when she was only eight years older [and has to say she's fifty-five when she was actually only fifty] but she's as adept as usual. William Conrad of TV's Jake and the Fat Man and Cry Danger plays a cop. William Frawley has a bit part as a bartender, but in two years he would become as famous as the stars when he was cast as Fred Mertz on I Love Lucy. East Side, West Side had real possibilities as a serious drama -- and the script is full of good dialogue -- but ultimately it's too superficial and frankly dull. Stanwyck, Mason, Heflin, and even Gardner are better than the material.
Verdict: There's certainly more to Manhattan than this. **1/2.