I recently claimed that,
The Republican national convention and the protests it inpires seem like a decent field test of the hypothesis that it’s still a free country. I am mildly confident that thanks to the the work of the NYCLU and other groups like it, we will again fail to invalidate this hypothesis.
Well, here's our first two data points.
I have no idea if the women I had lunch with today are representative of anything, but they were not part of the University and they thought that this ad was very effective and described it to me in some detail. Having now found it on the Internet, I'm surprised — it seems a little heavy-handed to me. But based on this unscientific sample, one target audience seems to love it…
The NSA is hinting hard that it has cracked the fiber optic barrier and finds encryption 'no more than speed bump'. As usual, might be true (esp. the parts about tracking phones and tapping undersea fiber), but bring truckload of salt to the party.
It's pretty sad that this should even be necessary, but eRiposte Media: Liars and Haters Inc. offers a very thorough debunking of various implausible accusations about Kerry's second tour of duty in Vietnam.
Light blogging forecast while I work like a dog for a few days.
Some political blogs that I read are especially good right now, including, in no special order, Hullabaloo, Brad DeLong, FafBlog, Is That Legal?, Whiskey Bar, The Daily Howler and The Cosmic Iguana.
And, I especially want to mention The Carpetbagger Report and TalkLeft, both which are going gangbusters this week, plus those other great blogs I should have mentioned above. Especially yours, of course.
Congrats to our neighbors at FIU Law who (unsurpringly) have secured provisional accreditation. I'm sure it's deserved, and I'm sure FIU will be fully accredited as soon as it can be.
I do object, however, to the claim routinely repeated by the Miami Herald that because a majority of FIU's small class is Hispanic, this adds a great diversity element otherwise absent from the Florida bar. UM already has an substantial number of Hispanic students every year. Hispanics may not be a majority of our class, but they form a large fraction of a larger class than FIU fields. And we also have a substantial number of Black students. (I'd quote the actual numbers if I could remember what they are—they're good numbers and we are proud of them. And they are well-credentialed students who do well here too.)
The more the merrier and all that, but I sort of resent the implication that we have not been doing well in this area for at least the dozen years I've been watching, and indeed no doubt much longer.
Jotwell Blenderlaw