Politics and Media in Harry Potter

by Ari Armstrong | 11:30 am, July 7, 2011

How time slips by! Back in May my book Values of Harry Potter got a little media attention — and now the final film of the series opens next week!Over at Big Media, Jason Salzman, a left-leaning bulldog of an investigator, discusses my chapter, “News …

Economic freedom & quality of life

by Rossputin | 7:28 am, July 7, 2011

H/T Erick Erickson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1U1Jzdghjk

In which PPC’s in-house privacy nut muses on the folly of airport security.

by Eileen McGuire-Mahony | 2:41 pm, July 6, 2011

The TSA has a record of failure so blatant that only a seasoned Washington insider could ignore it. No doubt, there’s plenty of theft and a surfeit of unimaginative sexual assault. Yet, aside from what may be explained by perversion and greed, a lot of what happens at airport security recalls a bad Keystone Kops [...]

Serious Atlanta Test Cheating Scandal Generates Predictable Overreaction

by Eddie | 11:47 am, July 6, 2011

Update, 7/7: Guest-writing over at Eduwonk, the insightful Paul Hill gives valuable perspective to the scandal, noting that Atlanta had taken a very inside-the-box approach to achieve its touted phony scores and suggesting the use of online adaptive tests as a policy solution that curbs cheating while preserving test-based accountability.
The big, hard-to-ignore education news of [...]

Economic Freedom & Quality of Life

by Mr. Bob | 10:17 am, July 6, 2011

July 18th Meetup — “Party” Talk (with some comic relief)

by redrocks | 10:00 am, July 6, 2011

Call, Orrok, Palacio(?) & Caleb Bonham– Up On The Roof!
DUE TO THE EXPECTED INTEREST IN THIS EVENT, PLEASE READ THROUGH ALL THE DETAILS BELOW CAREFULLY.  THANK YOU!
Red Rocks continues to put the razzle dazzle back into Tavern Style Politics!  Special guest emcee, up and coming comic Caleb Bonham, will host a discussion with some state [...]

CA Assaults Amazon Affiliates

by Ari Armstrong | 9:11 am, July 6, 2011

Investors Business Daily published a good editorial July 1 supportive of Amazon in the wake of California’s passage of its so-called “Amazon Tax.” See also my backgrounder focusing on Colorado’s version of the tax. (And of course see my Disclosures Unj…

Investigation into Atlanta Public School’s cheating finds unethical behavior across every level

by Mr. Bob | 8:28 am, July 6, 2011

Investigation into Atlanta Public School’s cheating finds unethical behavior across every level | ajc.comEntire organizations dedicated to cheating on test scores to maintain status quo. Imagine if your child went to one of these schools…..of course…

Brandon Shaffer: Political kamikaze

by Rossputin | 6:11 am, July 6, 2011

Colorado legislature’s Democrats’ bad faith during redistricting “negotiations” was, many of us thought, due to their primary interest being on furthering the political aspirations of State Senate President Brandon Shaffer.

Shaffer, who on Monday announced that he will run for Congress, seeking the 4th Congressional District seat currently held by Cory Gardner (R-Yuma), faces a few major hurdles to victory:

First, his own record as a big-spending, tax-hiking Democrat isn’t exactly the flavor of the month during these days when the public is coming to realize that government spending is the problem, not the solution. Republican organizations are already bringing out the long knives for Shaffer, such as with this statement from the NRCC: “Brandon Shaffer has led Colorado down a path to economic ruin by championing steep tax hikes, reckless spending, and punitive regulations on small businesses. After being heavily recruited by Nancy Pelosi’s top lieutenant, there is no question Brandon Shaffer will be a puppet for her big-spending and job-killing agenda.”

Second, the 4th CD has a substantial Republican leaning, with that seat having been in Republican hands for all but two years since 1973. Data for the end of June show about 43,000 registered Republicans versus about 41,000 registered Democrats, and an enormous 74,000 unaffiliated voters. In the Democratic tsunami of 2008, Republicans received only about 39% support among independent voters, leading to the mercifully brief congressional career of Betsy “Against Obamacare before she was for it” Markey. By 2010, that had jumped to 55%, leading to the equally dramatic (though not including the presidency) reversal of fortune in that year’s election and Markey’s 52%-41% thrashing at the hands of Cory Gardner. There is little reason to think that the tide will switch back again, even if the eventual Republican nominee for president has weak coattails.

Third, there is no reason to think that Gardner is particularly vulnerable or less than popular in the district.

Fourth, Shaffer has said that he will remain President of the State Senate while campaigning against Gardner, always a difficult sell with voters.

Fifth, Shaffer says that his motivation to run is, among other things, to create a “more congenial” tone in Washington, D.C. It’s hard to imagine that that’s really what voters what right now, given that politicians scratching each others’ backs at the expense of taxpayers is what has gotten us where we are now.

In the current situation, Shaffer’s hopes of winning election, short of unexpected bad news for Rep. Gardner, has about the same chances of success as Japanese kamikaze pilots during WWII. Pictures are worth a thousand words, so think of Shaffer thus:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5slCTLrFHI

Shaffer’s political raison d’être is, I repeat, a very hard sell in today’s environment and in a Republican district. There’s nothing he can do about his record or about the current political environment, so the one thing he and his friends in state government can try to manipulate is the composition of the 4th CD.

In short, the only chance Shaffer has of winning election is if left-leaning Colorado courts split the 4th in a way which many residents, especially those on the Eastern Plains find highly objectionable, and which an objective observer would find irrational. Given what happened when redistricting went to the courts in 2000 (and which wasn’t settled until four years later), Shaffer’s hopes are not totally irrational, though one would have to hope that this most-political of state Supreme Court has seen the change in direction of political winds and would behave in a way that’s less transparently partisan. That may be a naive hope, of course, but nevertheless this path explains why Democrats were never honest during the redistricting faux-negotiations earlier this year and refused Republicans’ request to negotiate new congressional district maps in public.

It’s not all roses for Shaffer in redistricting because certain proposed redistricting maps would draw his Longmont home out of the district; Shaffer says he’ll still run for that seat even if he doesn’t live in the 4th. That would be a very difficult hurdle to cross, as you can imagine.

To be candid, a realize that just as an insect has a life cycle from egg to caterpillar to pupa to butterfly, so politicians have life cycles from state reps to state senators to members of Congress. At the same time, however, knowing that Shaffer’s only shred of a chance to win election would require splitting the Eastern Plains into two different congressional districts strikes me as beneath what even a politician – even a Democrat politician – should be willing to scheme to further his own career.

Indeed, his interesting in support just such a redistricting in order to give him a lift up to the next rung on his political ladder may be the best argument against Brandon Shaffer’s ever holding higher office. In the meantime, unless the courts draw a hyper-partisan map when they take up the redistricting process, Brandon Shaffer is little more than a political kamikaze about to incinerate himself on the solidity of the excellent job that Cory Gardner is doing for his constituents and for the nation.

Is the Colorado Health Benefits exchange built to fail?

by Brian T. Schwartz | 5:30 am, July 6, 2011

Last week Governor Hickenlooper’s office announced the members of the Colorado Health Benefits Exchange Board. Paul Howard and Stephen T. Parente write why such exchanges are built to fail. Because of a “litany of new minimum-insurance requirements and regulations … health insurance purchased through an exchange will likely end up more expensive than it is now.”

Denver Post, Durango Herald Reporters on Devils Advocate

by Jon Caldara | 11:07 am, July 5, 2011

Journal Confirms “Year of School Choice”; NEA Takes Both Sides on Value-Added

by Eddie | 10:29 am, July 5, 2011

Still trying to recover from the big fireworks last night, I couldn’t decide between two blogging ideas this morning. So instead I’m giving you a little bit of both. First, you just have to read today’s Wall Street Journal editorial proclaiming what I told you last week — that 2011 is indeed The Year of [...]

Red-light cameras can blame drivers for poor traffic engineering

by Brian T. Schwartz | 5:30 am, July 5, 2011

Say an intersection has an abnormally high rate of red light violations. Using red-light cameras puts blame on the drivers. But this seems unfair, as the same drivers also use safer intersections nearby. It’s more reasonable to first look for deficiencies in signal timing, visibility of signals, signs, and lane markings. Continue reading →

The Casey Anthony Trial

by Rossputin | 5:17 am, July 5, 2011

UPDATE: Wow, Casey Anthony has been acquitted of all the serious charges, finding her guilty only of lying to the police.  The second-guessing of the prosecution’s over-charging Anthony will now begin, and with good reason. One can only wonder if the verdict were different had she been charged with manslaughter. Meanwhile, we now have a white female O.J. Simpson, although to be fair I think there was more doubt (even if barely more) about Casey Anthony’s guilt than about O.J.’s. My take on who Casey Anthony is and what she did remains unchanged following the verdict.

Look, I wasn’t very interested in the Casey Anthony trial. But it’s so hard to avoid the story that I’ve gotten slightly sucked in to it, especially because the whole Anthony family seem like characters that you wouldn’t believe if you read them in a novel; add in the meter-reader, Mr. Kronk, and it seems like a bad made-for-tv movie.

Except that a three-year old child is dead.

When I first heard the details of the case, I thought that Casey Anthony was a sociopathic “hot body” party-girl slut who found having a child inconvenient to her partying and slutting so she either intentionally killed little Caylee or accidentally killed her while doing something to try to keep her quiet.

Now I thought that those two things were very different things legally and that for a death penalty to be imposed for murder the murder had to have been premeditated. I was wrong. As one of the prosecutors explaining in his closing argument, Felony murder is also first degree murder and therefore eligible for the death penalty. Felony murder means, as I understand it, killing someone while you are committing another felony, in this case aggravated child abuse, which is to say doing something that a person knew or should have known likely to cause harm to a child. In other words, the jury can find that Casey Anthony was only trying to shut her daughter up and that the death was accidental but related to that action, such as if Casey tried to use chloroform to knock Caylee out for a few hours but accidentally overdosed her, and still convict of first degree murder.

I’m not a lawyer and don’t want to get into discussing the many crazy details of testimony in the case. Suffice it to say that from Google searches to duct tape to the police not searching for the body the first time Mr. Kronk reported finding a body, the evidence in the case is as bizarre as are its participants.

Did the prosecution prove its case? Hard to say. Could there be a doubt about Casey’s guilt? Sure. But a reasonable doubt? Not so sure.

So now, after hearing more of the trial, especially in the past few days, than I ever wanted to, here’s what I think: Casey Anthony is a sociopathic “hot body” party-girl slut who found having a child inconvenient to her partying and slutting so she either intentionally killed little Caylee or accidentally killed her while doing something to try to keep her quiet.

My guess is that there will not be unanimity on the jury for first degree murder; some will be for it and others perhaps wanting to convict on a much lesser charge such as third degree murder or manslaughter. There may even be someone in the room thinking of acquittal. But they’ve been through such a long ordeal that they won’t want to come out empty-handed, with a hung jury, so I predict they “compromise” and convict on something like second degree murder, or whatever the most serious charge is which is not eligible for the death penalty.

I know most of the readers of these pages will be reticent to admit that they’ve paid even a little attention to the case. But seriously, how could you ignore it in the past few days?

 

Not Surprising: Brandon Shaffer To Challenge Gardner In 4th CD

by elpresidente | 11:58 pm, July 4, 2011

Senate President Brandon Shaffer (D) has declared his intention to run against Rep. Cory Gardner (R) in Colorado’s yet-to-be-redrawn 4th Congressional District. Shaffer made the announcements to family and friends on July 4 (h/t @EliStokols): Stokols has House Speaker Frank McNulty’s response to Shaffer’s candidacy. **Update Reactions from the state’s Republican leadership and the national [...]

Thaddeus McCotter Declares

by Joshua Sharf | 9:08 pm, July 4, 2011

Thaddeus who?  Thaddeus McCotter, a Republican congressman from Wayne County, Michigan, has declared his candidacy for the Presidency. He’s sharp, quick, and intelligent, and with a razor sharp and very dry wit. He has a keen sense of the threats facing the country today, and is unafraid to articulate them: So I explain to my [...]

The Declaration – A Constitutional Document

by Joshua Sharf | 4:39 pm, July 4, 2011

Or couple of views. I’m writing this even as I’m grilling kabobs out on the barbie, so I probably haven’t adequately synthesized the couple of views presented here.  And like any long an complex story, I’m skipping a lot in a few hundred words.  But they’re worth thinking about, on this Independence Day, in a [...]

A Nation of Citizens, not Subjects (reprise)

by CTBC Director | 11:11 am, July 4, 2011

As we celebrate the anniversary of our nation’s founding on this 4th of July – our Independence Day - Clear The Bench Colorado salutes the ideals and principles that make the Unites States of America the greatest nation on earth.
Since Clear The Bench Colorado Director Matt Arnold is currently serving a tour of duty out of [...]

TIF Just Another Way Of Saying Corporate Welfare

by Mike Krause | 9:46 am, July 4, 2011

In Sunday’s Denver Post perspective page, Independence Institute senior fellow Randal O’Toole explains that using Tax Increment Financing (TIF) subsidies to finance private-sector development is really just a form of corporate welfare, and uses the proposed TIF financed Gaylord Entertainment hotel and conference center deal in Aurora as an example of “…the mania that has [...]

Ross hosting for Mike Rosen today

by Rossputin | 5:59 am, July 4, 2011

On this Independence Day, I’ll have the privilege of sitting in for Mike Rosen on News Radio 850 KOA from 9 AM to Noon. You can listen over the airwaves throughout most of Colorado, and online at http://www.850koa.com

If you want to join the conversation, the studio number is 303 713 8585.

During the first hour, we’ll talk about America. What makes it great? Why is the Declaration of Independece so important? We’ll discuss this and more with Dr. Thomas Krannawitter, Professor of Politics at Colorado Christian University and senior staff member with the Leadership Program of the Rockies.

In the 10 AM hour, we’ll have a fascinating debate about drug legalization between Norm Stamper of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and Dave Evans of the Drug-Free America Foundation.  I hope you’ll call in with a question or a comment.

In the 11 AM hour, we’ll be joined (in studio) by Congressman Mike Coffman, who has served in both the US Army and the US Marine Corps, to talk about what July 4th means to him as well as the issue of defense budget cuts within the current debt ceiling negotiations.

Again, please listen in and don’t be shy about joining the conversation.

Migration to the New Voice of Liberty

by Al Maurer | 9:54 am, July 3, 2011

The Voice of Liberty is getting a new look and a larger scope. Look for changes beginning July 4th.

Letter About Speech-Chilling Campaign Laws

by Ari Armstrong | 11:16 am, July 2, 2011

The June 16 Denver Post published my letter about Colorado’s speech-chilling campaign laws. The same page includes the contrary view of Jenny Flanagan from Colorado Common Cause.Re: “Minor players, major burden,” June 15 editorial.Thank you for your ed…

Don Boudreaux: Don’t lament a trade deficit

by Rossputin | 6:04 am, July 2, 2011

One of the most widespread misunderstandings among even relatively economically-literate Americans is a belief that the trade “deficit” is similar to a budget deficit in its negative implications for our nation. It’s simply not true, as Don Boudreaux explains…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LmZsVF_alzs

Podcast On Drug Law Reform In The 2011 Colorado legislature

by Mike Krause | 5:39 pm, July 1, 2011

In this ivoices.org podcast, I interview Christie Donner about three drug law and drug offense sentencing related bills passed in the 2011 Colorado legislative session. Besides being the Executive Director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, Christie is also on the Drug Policy Task Force of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile [...]

Central planning lives!

by David K Williams Jr | 3:45 pm, July 1, 2011

David K. Williams, Jr.Right here in Colorado, the state Public Utilities Commission is its own little politburo.The PUC sits in judgment of how many taxis are needed in Denver. They study, they take testimony, they listen to arguments and they decide e…

Central planning lives!

by David K Williams Jr | 3:45 pm, July 1, 2011

David K. Williams, Jr.Right here in Colorado, the state Public Utilities Commission is its own little politburo.The PUC sits in judgment of how many taxis are needed in Denver. They study, they take testimony, they listen to arguments and they decide e…

Central planning lives!

by David K Williams Jr | 3:45 pm, July 1, 2011

David K. Williams, Jr.Right here in Colorado, the state Public Utilities Commission is its own little politburo.The PUC sits in judgment of how many taxis are needed in Denver. They study, they take testimony, they listen to arguments and they decide e…

Central planning lives!

by David K Williams Jr | 3:45 pm, July 1, 2011

David K. Williams, Jr.Right here in Colorado, the state Public Utilities Commission is its own little politburo.The PUC sits in judgment of how many taxis are needed in Denver. They study, they take testimony, they listen to arguments and they decide e…

MSNBC Loves “MAD Moms”

by Jon Caldara | 1:01 pm, July 1, 2011

Amy Oliver is the founder and director of Mothers Against Debt (MAD), a national organization helping Moms understand the massive debt their children are on the hook for thanks to big government. At the moment, the bill is around $45,000 per child. MAD has received some notoriety lately, making both FOX News’ “Fox and Friends” [...]

NO July 4th Meetup, But July 18th’s Will Rock!

by redrocks | 11:27 am, July 1, 2011

No Meetup on July 4th in Observance of the Holiday
BUT, for July 18, Liberty on the Rocks (Red Rocks) presents:
Up and coming young comic, Caleb Bonham, as our guest emcee for a meetup featuring party chairs (in alpha order) for the Democrats (well, they’ve been invited, but no response to date) the Libertarians and the [...]

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