The Right Coast

Janet Daley on cut or spend Tom Smith

I really like this woman.  Maybe you have to be extra tough to say this sort of thing in the UK.

Florida USDJ finds individual mandate unconstitutional Tom Smith

Which it is, of course, as hell, but it is still encouraging when judges see it the same way.  Alas, in some months, it may well come down to Justice Kennedy, reaching deep as it were within, so as to answer the question of whether just sitting around doing nothing is in fact, who woulda thunk it, commerce.  If the good Justice says it is, that will be bad enough, but custom demands He also tell us why he thinks it is, which, if it happens, and it may not I suppose, it will surely add especially piquant insult to utterly gratuitous injury.  At then end of 1984, Winston was given to understand it was just power that justified (such as it did) Big Brother's rule.  You might think we could at least be afforded the same dignity.  Why not just ignore the poor old document, rather than pretend it says something it says close to the opposite of?

Here is Judge Vinson's opinion.  It starts out well.

Yale in Hollywood conference Tom Smith

2010 Yale in Hollywood Conference from Brett Konner on Vimeo.

I'd go but I'm afraid people would think the string of garlic cloves around my neck was weird.

Fake but true in China Tom Smith

Chinese news repurposes US entertainment. (h/t LGS)

Changing the educational paradigm Tom Smith

I don't know that I buy the message entirely, but it's a wonderfully lucid exposition and the animation really powerfully supports the talk. I wish I could do something like this for my classes.

The last thing I have to say about Tiger Mothers I hope Tom Smith

I was going to make this point in another context, but as it is bugging me, I will just make it now.  It connects with my political views, why I am a libertarioid-whig-little R republican (as in Republican Form of Government) classical liberal, whatever you want to call it.  And it is this:

On the one hand, if some parents want to push their children, even to an extent that seems crazy to me, so that they will end up wonderful musicians or inventive scientists, this is much to my advantage.  Who knows, little tiger girl may end up playing Mahler in a new way, and add some new meaning to my life.  I may download that mp3, listen to it on my iPod or whatever we have 25 years from now, and the world will be a little better place. Or some Tiger dad will make his kitten memorize the periodical table at age three and when he grows up he will invent donuts that make one lose weight.  You never know.  It could happen.  These would be good things for the world, maybe not so much for the kid, or maybe it would.  I am happy leaving that one for the psychologists.

But here's the thing.  And here the point has been made easier to make by the curious fact that Tiger Mom is a Yale Law School professor and as Professor Bainbridge has pointed out, it seems almost an epidemic among faculty parents in New Haven.  My fear is that little tiger kittens are not being groomed to make things that you and I can buy if we feel like it.  I'm afraid, call me paranoid if you like, that those little achievers will want to grow up to, well, rule.  Not in the imperial Chinese way, though I take it that is the ultimate inspiration for this model of child rearing.  If my high school understanding of Chinese history is correct, that Empire used to be ruled by a giant bureaucracy into which one got by passing extraordinarily difficult exams, competing against other fanatically hopeful parents who saw it as one of the few ways to get the young persons out of a life of horrible drudgery.  But rather in something more like the imperial Chinese way than my ideal, which is more like Thomas Jefferson's, without the antique and misguided dislike of commerce.  So, if I'm sitting in the middle of my Jeffersonian space, able to order whatever I want, within my budget of course, from Amazon, working at something I like, not taxed to death or harassed by officious officials;  if I can provide for my family and hope to provide a similarly independent life for my offspring, then what's it to me if some mom somewhere wants to drive her children so that someday they will produce a recording or a pill I might want to buy?  Only good.  But if we are sliding toward a world like the one that is, to exaggerate only a little, like that I was taught we should be sliding toward when I restlessly roamed the hallowed halls the The Yale Law School many years ago, then I am not so sanguine.  Then I worry that all this fierce intelligence, all this ambition, all this work are going toward the building of world in which my children will be mere, well, what do you call the people who support those who so intelligently manage things from on top.  Not to mention the unbelievably well educated 35 year old who will tell me someday I didn't score well enough in some algorithm I can't even understand to get my arteries bypassed or my prostate cancer treated.  I want to live in a world, and I want my children to as well, where we are free individuals, and geniuses can sell us stuff if we want to buy it.  When I suspect the little elites of tomorrow are just being made more formidable still, it excites not my admiration as much as my anxiety.

George Bush and the Egyptian UprisingMike Rappaport

Glenn Reynolds has been making the point that the Egyptian uprising might be more likely to result in good consequences if the Bush Administration had actually pursued its freedom agenda consistently and competently.  I agree.  In fact, I wrote an essay along those line for Pajamas Media about two years ago. 

Balanced Budget AmendmentMike Rappaport

The balanced budget amendment (BBA) is really just a supermajority rule, something I have written a lot about over the years.  While I believe the right type of BBA would be an improvement, I prefer a supermajority rule for spending.  See here.

Unfortunately, the BBA being promoted by Orrin Hatch is not the right type of BBA.  The biggest problem is the following provision:

Provisions can be waived if there is a formal declaration of war or if the US is engaged in a military conflict constituting a threat to national security or if two thirds of both the House and the Senate approve.

This is a problem.  As I read it, a majority of both houses could now choose to waive the supermajority requirements because we are now engaged in Afghanistan in a military conflict constituting a threat to national security. 

Live BBC coverage of Egypt Tom Smith

I figure with the Brits' deep historical ties with Egypt, their sources and expertise are probably pretty good.  This page should help the news and history in the making junkie get his jones.

Galston says deficit and debt numbers are really, really bad Tom Smith

I fear he is correct.  Neither GOP don't tax and still spend nor Dem tax and spend more, will work.