Last Call For Voting At The Kiddie Table

It's amazing how far we've come on the Republican idea of limiting voting only to those worthy (you know, Republican voters) and how it's considered perfectly reasonable.  Voter ID suppression tactics, calls to limit voting to property owners (an oldie but goodie) and now Glenn Reynolds has decided that college kids are no longer worthy of being considered adults and that we should raise the voting age to 25.

Consider Yale University, where a disagreement over what to do about — theoretically — offensive Halloween costumes devolved into a screaming fit by a Yale senior (old enough to vote, thanks to the 26th Amendment) who assaulted a professor with aprofane tirade because the professor's failure to agree with her made her feel ... unsafe. 

As The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf writes: “Erika Christakis reflected on the frustrations of the students, drew on her scholarship and career experience, and composed an email inviting the community to think about the controversy through an intellectual lens that few if any had considered. Her message was a model of relevant, thoughtful, civil engagement. For her trouble, a faction of students are now trying to get (her and her husband, also a professor there) removed from their residential positions, which is to say, censured and ousted from their home on campus. Hundreds of Yale students are attacking them, some with hateful insults, shouted epithets, and a campaign of public shaming. In doing so, they have shown an illiberal streak that flows from flaws in their well-intentioned ideology.”

This isn’t the behavior of people who are capable of weighing opposing ideas, or of changing their minds when they are confronted with evidence that suggests that they are wrong. It’s the behavior of spoiled children — a characterization that Friedersdorf, perhaps unconsciously, underscores by not reporting the students’ names because, he implies, they are too young to be responsible for their actions. And spoiled children shouldn’t vote. 

This isn't tongue-in-cheek humor here, this is Glenn's "serious" weekly USA Today column.  He really is calling for the disenfranchisement of everyone age 18-25 because he doesn't agree with some college students.

The only person here showing an appalling lack of judgment that should preclude them from voting is Glenn Reynolds, with this ridiculously proto-fascist nonsense.

But he's considered a serious conservative voice with a weekly column in USA Today.

Go figure.

Welcome To Bevinstan, Con't

Today's dispatch from the front lines in the war on sanity includes Matt Bevin realizing just how quickly he can move when he realizes his administration could be indicted at light speed.

Republican Gov.-elect Matt Bevin has updated his transition website to clarify that everyone is welcome to apply for jobs in his administration.

The website, http://bevintransition.com , originally said Bevin wants to hire people who "share his traditional values." Bevin opposes same-sex marriage and supports Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who is seeking a religious exemption from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The website now says Bevin wants to hire people who "share his conservative values." Bevin spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said Bevin's team made the change after a reporter asked about the language. She said Bevin wants to be "abundantly clear" that his administration will be "inclusive, transparent and dedicated to the betterment of our state."

Or maybe Bevin realized that only asking for people sharing his "traditional values" is a massive, massive hiring practices indictment waiting to happen.  Considering how quickly Ernie Fletcher, the state's last Republican governor, was indicted in his first (and only) term for giving out jobs to his Republican buddies, Bevin did an immediate about face.  I'll give him this much, he's smarter than Fletcher was. Having a hiring investigation for your transition team is just...amateurish.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/2015/11/11/4132690/gov-elect-bevin-starts-website.html#storylink=cpy

He's still just as crooked however.  Trust me on this.

Operation Hairpiece

I'm really, really beginning to think there's something to the whole perverse theory that Donald Trump is a Democratic plant working for the Clintons.

Trump appeared Wednesday morning on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” to defend his proposal, which he compared during the GOP presidential debate the previous evening to a policy similar to one employed by President Dwight Eisenhower.

That controversial program — Operation Wetback — resulted in the roundup and deportation in the 1950s of 1.5 million people, many of them legal American citizens, and dropping them off by the busload in remote areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump, who did not invoke the controversial program by name, said his plan would somehow avoid the tragic consequences of Eisenhower’s — which resulted in human rights abuses and deaths.

“You’re going to have a deportation force, and you’re going to do it humanely,” Trump said. “Look, we have to do what we have to do, and Ike did it and other people have done it.”

He didn’t describe how his program would preserve the illegal immigrants’ humanity — but he said it would somehow also be “cheap” to round up and deport millions of men, women and children living in the U.S.

It all starts with a wall that he has suggested he could force Mexico to build.

“It’s going to be a Trump wall,” Trump said. “It’s going to be a real wall, and it’s going to stop people and it’s going to be good.”

At this point Trump has so poisoned the well with Latino voters that I just have to laugh.  A lot of people say Eisenhower was the last decent Republican president we've had, but the guy rounded up hundreds of thousands of US citizens and dumped them in Mexico.

Thing is, that *does* make him arguably the least awful Republican president in the last century or so.

StupidiNews!

• Kurdish forces have launched an offensive to retake the town of Sinjar in western Iraq from ISIS, hoping to take control of a key road into ISIS territory in Syria.
• Russia says that DNA analysis confirms the discovery of Tsar Nicholas II's remains, in response to a dispute with the Orthodox Church over relics from his reign. 
• As many as 25 people are dead after an attack by Boko Haram militants in western Niger, including 20 militants killed by Niger soldiers.
• The suspected bombing of a Russian Metrojet flight in Egypt has some US lawmakers demanding answers to "insider threats" to airport security. 
• A new study finds that a single course of oral antibiotics can damage the balance of helpful microbes in the gut for up to a year.