And academics can’t get approval for shit like that anymore because of the damage it does to people. This is Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment on national TV - which again is one of the reasons we have IRB.

Aww yeah. That’s the kinda compact, contiguous and respectful of natural boundaries map that gets all the anti-gerrymandering people excited.

I wasn’t basing the character’s politics on Blago, just his bloviating personality, amorality and hair obsession. His hairbrush was known as “the football” by staff - as in the thing (like the nuclear football) he couldn’t be without. Blago was great for taking meaningless positions, just absolute shit at working…

That tag is what is so hilarious. Violent crime is the number one justification for owning guns for “self defense”, and it is way down despite no change in gun policy from the peak of the last crime cycle until now. What is left is almost never prevented by individuals with firearms (the anecdotes to the contrary…

Which is why, in a through the looking glass move, they are actually shielded in product liability lawsuits both generally and under a specific federal statute. Because after (the twisted logic goes) products liability is supposed to attach when the use of a product as expected results in an unforeseeable consequence,…

I actually wrote a pre-Trump satire in which the outlandish right-wing candidate who got the nomination no one was expecting was obsessed about his hair and that of this paramours (he didn’t actually have sex with them, he just caressed their hair). I was thinking Perry/Blogajaevich but Trump puts them to shame. May…

I know about Corey Lewandowski and Rob Porter (both of whom have boundary issues with women). Who’s the third - because I’m guessing they are also a real winner?

Thanks. A slightly less ranty version is what I teach every semester so I like to think I’ve gotten good at it.

And again, let’s just note that Obama is the only President since Carter not to have a special counsel investigation. Given how hard the GOP tried to come up with something, that is worth pointing out.

So much more is coming. This was “just” about the social media campaign to do shit like depress minority turnout, rally support for Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders, set it up like Hillary committed voter fraud in the Iowa primaries and a bunch of other rat-fucking - after the election they briefly went into organizing…

Federalism, as a term, refers to a sharing of power at multiple levels. Prior to the ratification debate over the Constitution, almost everyone understood a “federal” system to be where a number of truly independent sovereign states would have an agreement to a centralized government for very limited purposes, like…

She’s not bright - hence why she was impressed with what a dumb person thinks of as an accomplished person.

I’m not sure that Shiffrin feels the Olympic pressure as much as casual fans build up unrealistic ideas that an event that only comes once every 4 years is somehow a peak they can target with precision or matters to them more than the rest of their careers. She had a torrid start to her season and probably will win…

Even though Utah was a base of the Never Trump movement in the primary season (largely because Mormons could see their past and future in Trump’s dark MAGA worldview), the fact that they use a state party convention to basically pick Senators is a key reason Mitt will never pull a Bob Corker. Conventions, like…

MD, JD, Ph.D. are certifications, though - at least for doctors, lawyers and professors. I tag my name currently with JD so that people don’t accidentally call me Dr./assume I have a PhD because of my title. Once I have my PhD I’m damn well putting it on my professional signature line - that sucker cost me 6 years of…

I understand completely. It is a terrifyingly simplistic argument that mental illness = dangerous and it is something we’ve been doing for too long as it is (forced sterilization was based on a similar idea).

You want really sad you should see what you can get a city council member to do for a few hundred bucks (like overtly break the law level stuff). The NRA contributions are less about the money that they get directly than a) the signal of support and b) that the NRA doesn’t throw several hundred thousand in “issue ads”…

Bannon invoked executive privilege at the committee on a really maximal view of the doctrine - it has never been held clearly to apply to the transition or to anything except governing related discussions at the highest level. This White House is trying to use it as a blanket for everything after election day, and…

He re-purposed a joke about Minnesotans? Damn, that’s going to get some Norwegian bachelor farmer’s ire up.

In the overview of the “competition” a couple of days ago, they actually included the whiskey/whisky distinction as an example of something that might come up - so maybe the staff thought that would be cheating?