Monthly Archives: June 2013

Down with E15

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Don’t come crying to me when you need to drop your tank and replace your fuel pump. And your injectors. And lots of other things. Obama did enough damage to those of us who like older cars with Cash for Clunkers, and now this crap.

It’s a dilemma for drivers: Do they choose a gasoline that’s cheaper and cleaner even if, as opponents say, it could damage older cars and motorcycles?

That’s the peril and promise of a high-ethanol blend of gasoline known as E15. The fuel contains 15 percent ethanol, well above the current 10 percent norm sold at most U.S. gas stations.

The higher ethanol blend is currently sold in fewer than two dozen stations in the Midwest, but could spread to other regions as the Obama administration considers whether to require more ethanol in gasoline.

As a result, there’s a feverish lobbying campaign by both oil and ethanol interests that has spread from Congress to the White House and the Supreme Court.

On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a challenge by the American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry’s chief lobbying group, to block sales of E15. The justices left in place a federal appeals court ruling that dismissed challenges by the oil industry group and trade associations representing food producers, restaurants and others.

via Too much ethanol in gas? High-blend fuel prompts debate; are older cars, motorcycles at risk?.

HuffPo – What Cop T-Shirts Tell Us About Police Culture

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Within the more militarized units of police departments, the imagery can be even stronger. Former San Jose, California police chief Joseph McNamara told National Journal in 2000 that he was alarmed when he attended a SWAT team conference the previous year and saw “officers . . . wearing these very disturbing shirts. On the front, there were pictures of SWAT officers dressed in dark uniforms, wearing helmets, and holding submachine guns. Below was written: ‘We don’t do drive-by shootings.’ On the back, there was a picture of a demolished house. Below was written: ‘We stop.’” In his 1999 ethnography on police culture, criminologist Peter Kraska writes that one SWAT team member he spent time with “wore a T-shirt that carried a picture of a burning city with gunship helicopters flying overhead and the caption Operation Ghetto Storm.”

via What Cop T-Shirts Tell Us About Police Culture.

Chelsea Clinton Laments: My Great Grandmother Did Not Have Access to Planned Parenthood | LifeNews.com

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So is she suicidal or something? It’s hilariously terrible the lack of awareness in this death cult.

Chelsea’s grandmother was born of an unintended pregnancy. And new research shows that her family is not alone in treasuring a person who – if Planned Parenthood had been successful – would not have been born.

via Chelsea Clinton Laments: My Great Grandmother Did Not Have Access to Planned Parenthood | LifeNews.com.

On the assumption of progress – National Review Online

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We treat technological progress as though it were a natural process, and we speak of Moore’s law — computers’ processing power doubles every two years — as though it were one of the laws of thermodynamics. But it is not an inevitable, natural process. It is the outcome of a particular social order.

When I am speaking to students, I like to show them a still from the Oliver Stone movie Wall Street in which the masterful financier Gordon Gekko is talking on his cell phone, a Motorola DynaTac 8000X. The students always — always — laugh: The ridiculous thing is more than a foot long and weighs a couple of pounds. But the revelatory fact that takes a while to sink in is this: You had to be a millionaire to have one. The phone cost the equivalent of nearly $10,000, it cost about $1,000 a month to operate, and you couldn’t text or play Angry Birds on it. When the first DynaTac showed up in a movie — it was Sixteen Candles, a few years before Wall Street — it was located in the front seat of a Rolls-Royce, which is where such things were found 25 or 30 years ago. By comparison, an iPhone 5 is a wonder, a commonplace miracle. My question for the students is: How is it that the cell phones in your pockets get better and cheaper every year, but your schools get more expensive and less effective? (Or, if you live in one of the better school districts, get much more expensive and stagnate?) How is it that Gordon Gekko’s ultimate status symbol looks to our eyes as ridiculous as Molly Ringwald’s Reagan-era wardrobe and asymmetrical hairdos? That didn’t just happen.

via iPencil | National Review Online.

Rushing for gun control when guns have never been safer – News from The Associated Press

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A study released Tuesday by the government’s Bureau of Justice Statistics found that gun-related homicides dropped from 18,253 in 1993 to 11,101 in 2011. That’s a 39 percent reduction.

Another report by the private Pew Research Center found a similar decline by looking at the rate of gun homicides, which compares the number of killings to the size of the country’s growing population. It found that the number of gun homicides per 100,000 people fell from 7 in 1993 to 3.6 in 2010, a drop of 49 percent.

Both reports also found that non-fatal crimes involving guns were down by roughly 70 percent over that period. The Justice report said the number of such crimes diminished from 1.5 million in 1993 to 467,300 in 2011.

via News from The Associated Press.

Rob LaZebnik’s Message for the Class of 2013 | Saturday Essay – WSJ.com

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But let’s not understate the big achievements you’ve racked up during the 70 or so days you’ve actually spent on campus. The first, and perhaps finest accomplishment, is having persuaded your parents to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to extend your childhood for four years.

Let’s also not forget how hard you’ve worked to find something to protest against. In my day, it was apartheid in South Africa. In yours, it’s championing people who wanted the God-given right to use a gender-neutral bathroom. Thrillingly, you petitioned the President and Trustees and won: Now guys can make both bathrooms on every dorm floor equally disgusting.

via Rob LaZebnik's Message for the Class of 2013 | Saturday Essay – WSJ.com.

A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe – The Washington Post

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They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

via A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe – The Washington Post.