So you're saying they should surrender, right?

If even remotely accurate, that's pretty horrific stuff.  I have a hard time imagining how (or why!) anybody would willingly put up with any of that.

When I was in grad school at Texas 20 years ago, I was a "house mother" for a small fraternity.  I got the job partly because the fraternity's national office wanted to clean the place up, and I'd just graduated from what was at that time one of the model chapters (at Auburn).  The month before I moved in at UT, the fraternity in the house across the street was kicked off campus (and several members indicted) for stuff not terribly dissimilar from what's described in the op-ed. 

The house I was working in never had problems anywhere near that grotesque, but they did have a culture of treating pledges like indentured servants.  As a result, any given pledge class hated everybody older than them, and were hated in return by the next incoming class(es).  We finally got the point across that this was a lousy way to build a lasting organization, and they were pretty successful (and stayed out of trouble) for some time after that.

Giffords has been the topic of several conversations I've had over the past week or so (coincidentally in the first case, I don't think she'd been in the news much prior to yesterday).  The unanimous reaction, across partisan and/or ideological lines, was (before the announcement), "It'd be for the best if she didn't run/stepped down," and afterwards, "Good for her."

Not counting neighborhood lawn-mowing or car-washing, my first job was sales clerk at Starship Records (long since RIP) in Enterprise, Alabama, making $3.35/hour.

To prevent theft, Starship had all the store's cassette tapes (kids, go look it up) stored in racks under plexiglass sheets.  The customer would point to a tape, and I would raise up the plexiglass from the other side of the rack and retrieve it.  Because the tapes were oriented for ease of reading on the part of the customer, I had to learn how to read the titles upside-down...

Funny you should say that... after Jack Ryan (no, not that Jack Ryan) dropped out of the Illinois senate race in 2004, the local GOP tried, unsuccessfully, to recruit Mike Ditka to run again this obscure state senator named Obama.  Da Coach eventually declined, after a couple of weeks of what the blogosphere (yours truly included) dubbed "Ditkamania," leaving only the hapless Alan Keyes, who was easy pickings for The Messiah.  Prior to his bowing out, more than a few pundits in Chicago figured Ditka as the only guy who could derail Obama's election to the Senate.

So really, this whole situation is ALL DITKA'S FAULT...

I have no intention whatsoever of watching (or, pace Claire, reviewing) this particular movie, but one point relative to Mollie's post does spring to mind:  the British driver's test in the 1960's was notoriously difficult.  My parents both had to pass it (Dad was in the Air Force, and they were stationed in the UK in the early 60's) and the resulting horror stories echoed through most of my childhood.  I want to say my mom--a Phi Beta Kappa who was not, as far as I can recall, a poor driver--took two or three attempts before passing.  Personally, I'd be glad for any help I could get if I'd had to take that test...

The real question is, "Will anybody notice?"  Outside of New Hampshire (where he spent most of his time campaigning for the votes of people who aren't, you know, Republicans), Huntsman barely registers with the electorate.  Now that I think about it, it's a wonder the guy didn't have Occupy yahoos camped out in his campaign offices.  One glance at Huntsman's poll numbers will tell you that he epitomizes "the 1%."

Meh.  The more of these movies Jackson makes, they more I'm convinced that they're far less adaptations of Tolkien than they are monuments to the director's ego.

Thorin Oakenshield, Durin's Heir of the Longbeards has a goatee and a Fu Manchu?  Really?!?

I second this emotion.  You really can't have too many SCTV shout-outs, in my humble opinion.

Wish I could join in the praise here, but the pilot was derivative, badly-written schlock.  Life's too short to waste on bad TV.

Murphy is fine--riveting, really--when he's discussing the nuts and bolts of campaigning.  His instant-consultancy for Mickey Kaus on a long-ago podcast was both informative and hugely entertaining (as was Mickey's gobsmacked reaction).  But as a chooser of candidates, I'll have to pass on his recommendations.  The generic Republican candidate Murphy constantly pushes--a "moderate" who allegedly "appeals" to independents and thus can win general elections--has had several names in real life.  Among them were "John McCain," "Bob Dole" and "Gerald Ford."  The nasty, scary, unelectable conservative that Murphy seems congenitally inclined to reject was for decades known as "Ronald Reagan."

As we say down South, "Dang."

That's pretty hard to imagine.  The elected Dems and their media pals are all-in with the morons so far. 

The "occupy" nonsense is straight out of the "community organizer" (aka, 'somebody who, in lieu of getting a real job, pesters the government for other people's money') handbook, which makes it hard for Obama to credibly portray himself in serious opposition to it.  Which isn't to say the supine media wouldn't cover for him anyway, of course.

Self-awareness isn't something that the Left does very well.  For instance, the yahoos running this current nonsense obviously have no memory of the last couple of times the extreme rioting Left actually managed to affect a national election--1968 and 1972.  Their problem, of course, what their real accomplishment was revolting most of the electorate and driving large majorities to vote for the GOP (and, ironically, the most liberal president between Johnson and Obama, but that's beside the point).  Whether the modern sandalistas are too dumb, too ignorant or just too conceited to realize it, they're doing exactly the same thing today.

James, you haven't said the half of it.  I spent a little time answering support calls at Apple in '93, when the stock price was $15 and even plankton-in-the-food-chain like me could smell the stench of not just bankruptcy, but far worse (if you were a Machead), irrelevancy.  I don't think anybody on the campus really thought Apple would make it to the 21st Century.

Thank you, Claire, that was lovely.

Now I'll probably spend the rest of the day recalling people and places from Oxford of twenty years ago (when, while taking a Soviet politics course, I was consigned to read Gorby's PR-book-for-the-West Perestroika, which unsurprisingly was an utter bore).