85,000 Readers Can't Be Wrong!

Dear readers,

This was a pretty uneventful weekend. We hit the 85,000 reader mark early Sunday morning. Just letting you know.

-Charles Johnson

People Get to Vote When I Say So

In Andrew Bluebond's Port Side editorial, "What We Forget in Election Years," he complains that the Electoral College means that we don't get to debate issues that occur in states that will most certainly go one way.

He mentions the case of a 2o-year old Texas woman who was sentenced to 10 years probation and is upset that "one of the terms of her probation was that she was not to bear or conceive children." (One wonders how she can do the first without doing the second, but I digress.)

Mr. Bluebond argues that this is somehow a constitutional question but doesn't give the reader any of the background. Still, he uses the case to score a point: he writes that "we choose not to discuss what government can and cannot tell women to do with their bodies."

That Mr. Bluebond ignores -- or at least does provide -- the background is telling. Had he looked into it, he would of noticed that Judge Charlie Baird banned Ms. Felicia Salazar from having children because she was taking such poor care of her own child, a 19-month-old daughter, "who suffered broken bones and other injuries when she was beaten by her father," according to The Wall Street Journal's law blog.

Mr. Bluebond would have it that a woman can birth another child if she wants as the state will just take care of this future child as it does the current one. Both Ms. Salazar and the baby's father have relinquished parental rights.

I applaud Mr. Bluebond for recognizing that a judge shouldn't be the one deciding issues of when or how people have children.

Perhaps, upon further reflection, he'll recognize the irony of his abortion on demand positions that have been decided by unelected judges rather than the people, sans Electoral College, that he so loves. Then again, perhaps not.

The Sweet Home of Harvey Mudd

Harvey Mudd, a mining and engineering tycoon, was the principal behind Harvey Mudd, one of America's finest science and engineering colleges. He's long since deceased, but his home stands proud in Beverly Hills.

Over at Luxist.com, they have dozens of pictures of his beautiful home, designed by architect Elmer Grey in 1922. The article is written up by none other than Pitzer Student, Deidre Wollard, a blogger at Luxist.com. For those of you who are curious, the price tag of the home is listed at $11.495 million. Take a look through the photo album.

Maybe the Mudders listening to the anti-mining Bill Nye at graduation want to reconsider their career options?

Future Ath Speaker Ta-Nehisi Coates Versus John McWhorter on Bloggingheads.tv

John McWhorter effectively takes apart the future Ath speaker, Ta-Nehisi Coates. McWhorter is right to go after the so-called academics who obsessively believe that Hip Hop will solve the black community's problems. He criticizes Coates for saying that hip hop taught him to think. Rap creates unfocused thinking that will not help black Americans. He says that there's a common element of rape that seeks a "confrontational cadence."

The general appeal of the music is pugnacious and progressive, "a middle finger" against society. But nowadays, you need to help the black poor, rather than teach concepts like "systematic racism." Teaching people to be angry at white people isn't constructive. Since 1970, he doesn't believe that aggressive cynicism works or helps anymore.

Coates argues that hip hop is about how you feel and expressing it through art. We don't go to art for our morals.

McWhorter asks Coates if he has a "bone deep" distrust of the white man and says that his view of racism as still very much out there. McWhorter says that he doesn't feel hunkered down and doesn't particularly fear white people or the New York police.

It's worth watching and really makes you wonder if we should have invited McWhorter instead of Coates.