Statesmanship, Claremont Alums, and Billboards

You know how Claremont McKenna prepares its alums for statesmanship?

Well, CMC alum Assemblyman Mike Feuer CMC '80 (D-Los Angeles) has found the modern scourge of our era: electronic billboards. Dear god!

From Los Angeles Business Journal:

The issue is also on the agenda in Sacramento, where Assemblyman Mike Feuer, D-Los Angeles, has introduced a bill to place a moratorium on digital billboards until safety studies are completed. Critics say those illuminated signs, powered by light-emitting diodes, can distract drivers because of their brightness and changing images.

Next they'll come for our cellphones and eating behind the wheel. Oh wait, they've already come for that? Fortunately, I have Chuck DeVore CMC '85 and Dr. Phil to help me detox. Chuck knows that we should have a policy for liberty, not busybodies.

Weidenmier Signs Cato Letter Criticizing the President

Professor Weidenmier has joined Professor Burdekin in signing the letter that calls President Obama to task for gross simplications of macroeconomics. (Coincidentally, I might add that these two are the only two economics professors that I've had--though I hope to have many more.)

Another Sham Debate from PSU?

Strossen Defends Porn, But Is She A Real Free Speech Defender?

We heard last week that Pomona would be bringing Nadine Strossen and Mari Matsuda to debate free speech. As per usual, the debate will be one-sided. (Remember when Pomona brought two people who agreed on government-mandated health care and had one pretend to favor the other side?)

In David E. Bernstein's You Can't Say That!, he documents Ms. Strossen's wishy washy position vis a vis free speech, which in palmier days, the ACLU was committed to defend. The failure of the ACLU to be anything more than a reliable left-leaning ally for groups has led to the rise of such non-ideological groups as F.I.R.E and the Center for Individual Rights, among others, that have taken up the mantle of free speech.

He writes on p. 152-153, [citations, available upon rest]

Strossen concedes that when anti-discrimination laws and civil liberties conflict, the ACLU uses an ad hoc balancing test, choosing "between them in the context of particular facts, weighing the potency and applicability in each instance of the general values of liberty and equality." As the left has generally turned its back on civil liberties in favor of antidiscrimination concerns, the ACLU has become increasingly reluctant to defend civil liberties at the expense of antidiscrimination laws. The ACLU has even given an honorary position to Georgetown University law professor Mari Matsuda, who is perhaps the nation's leading academic advocate of government censorship of "hate speech."