At the Cooper's Hawk Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like. I like that hawk , seen through the window as I sat here at my desk just now.

I don't know about you, but we had orange juice and pancakes for breakfast.

It's pretty much like that around Meadhouse on a typical morning. (Via Metafilter .)

"When many different remedies are proposed for a disease, that means the disease is incurable."

A quote from the translation of "The Cherry Orchard" that is playing in NYC right now. Another quote: "You haven't had ti...

"When my mother-in-law was in the final, harrowing throes of pancreatic cancer, she had only one good day..."

"... and that was the day she smoked pot."

Full moon at 7 a.m.

This morning. Madison, Wisconsin. 25°.

"Fatwa banning Muslim women from touching bananas and other penis-shaped foods makes Internet rounds."

"Unconfirmed religious order says the phallic foods may spark sexy thoughts." Hmmm. Emphasis on "unconfirmed." I don...

"A $10,000 bet between Romney and Perry tops chatter at GOP debate."

Typical post-debate headline. It was the spin among the ABC commentators right after the debate too. Everyone had the same take on it: The ...

"Don’t come down here and tell me there is no God."

"This nation is a Christian nation regardless of what those fruit loops and fruitcakes in Washington D.C. say. Hell will freeze over be...

Another GOP debate is about to begin.

There will be 6 candidates participating. It's on ABC. I'll update with comments if they inspire me. 8:05 CT: Diane Sawyer talks to...

"I meant coke! And fizz! Screw this auto cucumber!"

The Top 50 Fan Favorite entries in Damn You Autocorrect's first year. I just made a nuisance of myself laughing way too much. Meade thin...

"Lawsuit for ADA violations and wrongful seizure. The plaintiff's four service monkeys..."

"... were taken from her as she attempted to change their diapers and feed them on Bourbon Street." From "Today in Pro Se Lit...

"Despite not yet having bestowed a single law degree, UC Irvine says it has placed nearly a fifth of its 2012 graduates with district and circuit court judges."

Wow! Impressive! How could that happen? One thing is that there are only 58 students in the class of 2012. And the school offered them all f...

"Our children aren't there to be subjects of teachers and teachers unions."

"But the decisions that have been made in the Madison Metropolitan School District for a mighty long time have been determined by adult...

Renting a summer house for a month or 2 or 3.

Any advice on websites?

"Be for Romney: He's the Republican Clinton!"

A slogan, invented by me, in the course of a conversation with Meade, in which we were both speaking well of Romney and Bill Clinton.

Be careful about planking...

... in Wisconsin.

Ceramic watches.

Some lovely deals on impressive-looking items at Amazon. Or how about something in the camera category. And here's the general portal to...

The South Korean buildings that look like the World Trade Center on 9/11.

"It was not our intention to create an image resembling the attacks... nor did we see the resemblance during the design process," ...

Are you happy because you are generous to your spouse?

Or are you generous to your spouse because you are happily married to him/her? I should just say "her," because this article , in ...

The Supreme Court will hear the Texas redistricting case — quickly, in time for the 2012 primary.

Adam Liptak reports: The court stayed orders from a special three-judge court in San Antonio, which issued electoral maps late last month th...

"Santorum: 'Science Should Get Out Of Politics.'"

That's the headline at Talking Points Memo — a twist on the conventional statement Religion Should Get Out of Politics . But what did S...

Full moon in Warsaw.

The cab driver "does not like it when foreigners think of Poland as the 'former communist country.' It’s not that to him and I ...

Harassment of Wisconsin teacher who appeared in a Scott Walker ad opposed to the recall.

Here's the kind of email Kristi LaCroix is receiving: “On Facebook there are lots of people willing to join the Fire Kristi movement. Yo...

"New York University will offer a class next semester on Occupy Wall Street (possibly two)."

The Department of Social and Cultural Analysis lists a course called "Cultures and Economies: Occupy Wall Street." Reminds me of ...

What are the chances that someone not currently running will win the GOP nomination?

Nate Silver analyzes it and finds "a small but nontrivial chance that the Republican nominee could be someone like Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan,...

"Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer" — a pro- or anti-bullying story?

If you said anti- because you think the bullied reindeer was ultimately incorporated into the group and valued, think again! Rudolph was on...

At the Brown Dog Café...

... you can howl all afternoon.

California bumper sticker: "California: It's All True."

A proposed bumper sticker, deemed brilliant by Peggy Noonan, who adapts it for her column "Gingrich Is Inspiring — and Disturbing"...

Gunfight.

At the Volokh corral.

"This is populism so crude that it channels not Teddy Roosevelt so much as Hugo Chavez."

Krauthammer interprets Obama's Osawatomie speech: But with high unemployment, economic stagnation and unprecedented deficits, what else ...

University of Texas Law School Dean resigns "under pressure."

I don't know what that's all about , but... In an interview, Sager characterizes the faculty compensation issues as "circumstan...

"President Obama, who took office pledging to put science ahead of politics, averted a skirmish with conservatives in the nation’s culture wars..."

"... by endorsing his health secretary’s decision to block over-the-counter sales of an after-sex contraceptive pill to girls under age...

At the Orange Café...

... you can talk all night. (And consider doing a little shopping at Amazon . I just bought a couple more 24-packs of 100-watt incandescent ...

"So far it appears that only Republicans and conservatives want Kagan to recuse herself from hearing the [Obamacare] case..."

"... while liberals and Democrats take the opposing view. I have been a liberal constitutional law professor for more than 20 years, an...

"Mitt happens."

Newsbusters takes Jake Tapper to task for that "toilet" humor, but what I think is worse can be seen in the whole quote: Absolutel...

Natalie Johnson says Macy's fired her for telling a male he could not use the women's dressing room.

The customer was shopping for women's clothes... “I had to just be straightforward and tell him, ‘You’re a man,’ and of course that … r...

"The Heisman View From Wisconsin: Montee Ball."

Analysis by Mike Fiammetta in the NYT: A significant portion of Ball’s Heisman hype lies in his 38 total touchdowns, one less than the 39 Ba...

Isthmus ousts its conservative blogger, David Blaska.

Pathetic! Blaska's a terrific blogger, but it was obvious that the lefty readers of our left-leaning newspaper's website couldn'...

Class warfare, Madison-style.

Last night, around 6 p.m., Meade — who's driven cars for 40 years without ever getting into an accident — was driving our Audi TT in th...

"'[S]arcastic' media-savvy comedies and morally murky antiheroes tend to draw Dems."

"[S]erious work-centered shows (both reality shows and stylized scripted procedurals), along with reality competitions, tend to draw co...

Recent Obama gestures in the gay rights and abortion categories.

1. This one's for all you gay people and the people who love them: [T]he president directed all U.S. agencies to “promote and protect” t...

"Four is the new three."

"Not only did Col. Potter join his predecessor Lt. Col. Henry Blake in the great M*A*S*H tent in the sky today, but in what has to be o...

Reince Priebus on the Trump debate.

"I think that having a successful businessman serving as a moderator has a lot of value. But the issue here is whether the moderator sh...

"If the Obama administration did arrange for the shipment of arms to Mexican drug gangs..."

"... not for any legitimate public purpose but in order to advance a left-wing political agenda, and those guns were used to murder hun...

Mitten-gate.

Michigan insists it's the state that looks like a mitten. Miffed at Wisconsin's horning in on the mitten iconography.

Goodbye to Harry Morgan.

He died today, at the age of 96. Maybe you think of him in "M*A*S*H" or "Dragnet," but I liked him in "Pete and Gl...

Mumia Abu-Jamal escapes the death penalty.

He'll remain in prison for life, but... ... a federal appeals court in April declared the death sentence unconstitutional, ruling that t...

Blagojevich gets 14 years.

Even though he's saying he's "unbelievably sorry." "There is a line between routine politics, horse trading and campa...

78 right-of-center bloggers respond to a poll about the 2012 Republican candidates.

At Right Wing News. I'm one of the respondents, by the way, and I don't usually answer RWN polls, mainly because I don't have a...

"Wound licking is an instinctive response in humans and many other animals to an injury."

"Dogs, cats, rodents and primates all lick wounds. The enzyme, lysozyme which is found in many tissues is what is the aid for the wound...

"A skeleton, dressed as Santa Claus, nailed to a cross" — on display at a Leesburg, Virginia courthouse.

It's controversial, and a lady ripped it down, but "Skele-Claus" was accepted by the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors . The...

"Losing It: In which an Aging Professor laments his shrinking Brain..."

That's the name of new book — buy it here — by Michigan lawprof William Ian Miller, who has ripened to the age of 65 years. He gives a ...

"[Scott] Walker implies recall workers are paid."

"I’ve assumed all along that between activists and paid circulators, if they paid enough people they’d ultimately be able to get that n...

December 7, 1941 — 70 years ago, today...

... 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time: About 120 survivors will join Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, military leaders and civilians to observe a moment of sil...

At the Side-View Café...

... don't look back.

"The Mitt Romney campaign is making an immediate shift in tactics..."

"... a move that is necessary because, as one Republican close the campaign put it, 'What they are doing now isn’t working.'...

"'Baby It's Cold Outside' is known as the Christmas Date Rape Song."

"Bitch Magazine wonders: does She & Him's gender-reversed version make it less creepy and less rape-y? Meanwhile, Persephone Ma...

The most popular gifts...

... from Amazon.

Bob Woodward said "sitting next to Gore is taxing... In fact, it's unpleasant."

He was stuck sitting next to him at the Organization for International Investment’s annual dinner at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in D.C. The arti...

School lockers are becoming extinct.

Students aren't using them anymore.

Obama in Kansas: "It's great to be back in the state of Texas."

He was there to give his big speech, doubling down on class politics. (Growing — "gaping" — disparity in income "gives lie t...

Want to talk about comments?

Here 's the permanent location for complaints and suggestions and discussions about the comments here on the Althouse blog. Meade and I ...

Left-handedness.

From the Wall Street Journal: •Six of the last 12 U.S. presidents, including Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush, have been lefties. • Left-h...

"Die, Penny, Die!"

(Via Instapundit .)

The NYT presents liberal fear-mongers as if they were intelligent, sober critics of Republican policy.

Monica Davey, reporting for the NYT from Madison, Wisconsin, looks at why "Many Workers in [the] Public Sector [Are] Retiring Sooner...

"Perhaps the essence of the Liberal outlook could be summed up in a new decalogue..."

From a 1951 essay by Bertrand Russell: 1. Do not feel absolutely certain of anything. 2. Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealin...

"There goes the balls again!"

Rejected post title: "Hard to keep your pucker up if it's not lubricated." (Via Metafilter .)

System One and System Two — the brain's " two independent sytems for organizing knowledge."

Writes Freeman Dyson , explaining Daniel Kahneman's new book "Thinking, Fast and Slow ": System One is amazingly fast, allowin...

"Donald Trump Mulls Third-Party Bid as He Enjoys GOP Kingmaker Role."

According to the Wall Street Journal. If that's his attitude, he should not be moderating a debate!

Cain to endorse Newt.

Today. They're saying.

The Supreme Court is a group project.

I'm just repeating something I said 2 days ago , on the occasion of creating a new tag — in the previous post — for "group project...

"You could ask, ‘Why should it be free?’ But why shouldn’t it be free?"

"The core of our mission is to give material to people who need it," says Salman Khan of the Khan Academy , described in this NYT ...

"In the United States, emissions dropped by a remarkable 7 percent in the recession year of 2009, but rose by just over 4 percent last year..."

"This country is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, pumping 1.5 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere last ye...

Newt + Obama = the largest possible "how smart they think they are" minus "how smart they really are"...

... according to Dan Drezner. "I think they're both actually reasonably intelligent guys, but I think both of them have a much high...

Senator Coburn finds it "difficult" to support Gingrich.

On Fox News Sunday: "I'm not inclined to be a supporter of Newt Gingrich's having served under him for four years and experienc...

Did you realize there was another GOP debate last night?

I didn't! But here , you can watch the whole thing — which took place on the Fox News "Huckabee" show.  Romney, Bachmann, Ging...

Shopping?

Get some shopping done today at Amazon (and, by using that link, show some love for the Althouse blog).

"If any judge wants to pack, I think the next thing I'd put on the agenda is to have security cameras in every chamber and in the corridors."

Said Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson as the Wisconsin Supreme Court addresses the question of guns in the courts.

What's so terrible about internet comments?

Rebecca Rosen complains about the structure of the commenting systems , which, she says, tend to make even well-written comments feel "...

The Althouse that won $100,000 at the Big Ten championship game last night.

Yes, the University of Wisconsin football team eked out a win against Michigan State last night, and we were thrilled and amazed. But I was...

The Wisconsin protesters "are exactly the people that the O.W.S. crowd should not learn from..."

"... if they aspire to appeal to a wider audience than left-wing activists usually reach," writes Ross Douthat in the NYT. They r...

Badgers...

... win the Big 10 Conference Championship!

Alan Sues "tended to perform with over-the-top flamboyance on the show, displaying stereotypically gay mannerisms."

"It wasn’t because he was ashamed of being gay; it was because he was surviving as a performer... Many gay men came up to him and said ...

At the Corona Café...

... you can get lost here for a while.

The "microhome"...

"... 7 by 12 feet stem-to-stern, including a wood-burning stove, an antique parlor chair that also serves as a seat for the compost toi...

Herman Cain is about to speak.

I guess that means I'm live-blogging it. 12:18 Central Time: I'm watching Fox News, and they're talking about what it will mean ...

Christine Todd Whitman encourages Jon Huntsman to run as a 3rd party candidate — but wouldn't it hurt Obama?

Although Huntsman and Whitman are nominally Republicans, I can't read this without assuming their agenda is to help President Obama win...

Mic check... old style... with Vicki McKenna...

...and New Media Meade:

"Aaron, Aaron, we all sing your glory."

"Aaron, Aaron, I could be your Jordy." ADDED: I resist tag proliferation, but this is the post where I finally broke down and made...

"The next time Dylan played nearby, he invited Jobs to drop by his tricked-up tour bus just before the concert."

"When Dylan asked what his favorite song was, Jobs said 'One Too Many Mornings.' So Dylan sang it that night. After the concer...

What has happened to Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser?

He's taking a month off "to recover from a serious [but not life-threatening] health issue," we're told. That will leave ...

Sandusky gives the NYT a 4-hour interview.

Here. Excerpt: "They’ve taken everything that I ever did for any young person and twisted it to say that my motives were sexual or wha...

Great horned owls, hooting outside our house, just now.

Meade shot what is more audio than video, but you can catch a glimpse of me in the light of my iMac.

Donald Trump will moderate the Dec. 27th Republican debate.

How very strange... but interesting!

De-stressing law students by getting them to cuddle with the homeless...

... puppies.

"You have embarrassing material in your supposedly professional journal that is out there festering right now."

"And I really don't care about amends you 'may' make next year."

A little shopping today, perhaps?

If you must shop, start here , and you'll be demonstrating your appreciation for what I do here on this blog. (A nice percentage of your...

WaPo's Jonathan Capehart says Gingrich made an "unbelievably disgusting" "blanket condemnation of 'really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods.'"

But what did Newt say? "Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who wo...

"That sound you hear is an uptick in pens scratching signatures on recall petitions."

Says Triangle Man , commenting on the last post.

When 4 or 5 are gathered against my name, I'm going to require a permit, applied for 72 hours in advance.

Sayeth Scott Walker. (Compare Jesus : "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.") Th...

"And... my video is now leaking like an old tampon."

Tweets Lady Gaga ... feigning displeasure or actually displeased that her new video is available on line .

ABA Journal, listing 100 law blogs, identifies 2 as "conservative" and none as "liberal."

The 2 identified as conservative are mine and Volokh Conspiracy. Do you find that odd? ADDED: Here's email I sent in response to email ...

"RJ Reynolds v. FDA and the Hidden Danger of Denying Free Speech Protection to Corporations."

Aaron Worthing has an excellent post about the litigation over the FDA rules requiring new warning labels on cigarettes. IN THE COMMENTS: ca...