Ken Jennings, the record-holder for consecutive Jeopardy wins, on Twitter:

"Make sure you sign up for Obamacare today! lol I was so dumb in mortal life, what was I thinking you guys?!?" –Andrew Breitbart's ghost

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) March 31, 2014

Ken Jennings 'quotes' Andrew Breitbart's ghost in tasteless Obamacare tweet http://t.co/G2iMvIiD7G

— TwitchyTeam (@TwitchyTeam) April 1, 2014

@TwitchyTeam hey, Andrew Breitbart's ghost said it, I didn't. don't blame the messenger.

— Ken Jennings (@KenJennings) April 1, 2014

Oddly enough, at dinner my children asked me the difference between intelligence and wisdom.

My answer began like this: “Funny you should ask . . .”

[guest post by Dana]

Iconic feminist and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is losing the support of young feminists everywhere. These young women just don’t seem to be sold on the Hillary Bill of goods. Instead, in a most amusing twist of irony, out of the two candidates on the left, young female voters see the angry old white guy as their feminist champion.

Poor Hillary. Instead of being seen as a fighter and champion for women’s rights and justice, she is now viewed as little more than an “overcautious mother”. Is there any greater kiss of death?

“I am excited for a future in which we will have a female president, but I don’t think Hillary is that person for this generation,” said Rachael Jennings, 28, a high school teacher in Dublin, N.H. The same sentiment was echoed over and over in interviews with younger female voters here and in Iowa.

These progressive voters instead see as their champion a man – a 74-year-old democratic socialist, at that. Sanders is all the rage for now.

“Young women cannot remember a time that Hillary was not a household name, and it confuses them what she stands for,” said Nichola Gutgold, a professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State, who wrote a book, “Almost Madam President,” about Clinton’s 2008 quest for the nomination. “Rejecting her is a way of rejecting the establishment.”

Claiming that Hillary Clinton represents the establishment is something that Clinton rejects. Because she is a woman. Huh? Because she is a woman, she obviously cannot be the establishment…but apparently she can be sexist:

SANDERS: So, Rachel, yes, Secretary Clinton does represent the establishment. I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans, and by the way — who are not all that enamored with the establishment. But I am very proud to have people like Keith Ellison and Raul Grijalva in the House, the co-chairmen of the House Progressive Caucus.

MADDOW: Secretary.

CLINTON: Well, look, I’ve got to just jump in here because, honestly, Sen. Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment. And I’ve got to tell you that it is …

It is really quite amusing to me.

You know what’s amusing to me? It’s that you can always count on feminists to shamelessly play gender politics, especially with something as important as selecting the next president of the United States:

“Albright on women who might not vote for Clinton: “there’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other”

So much for the independent thinking woman who believes she has a responsibility to actually sort through the policies and positions of anyone hoping to become the next leader of our nation. Oh don’t worry your pretty little head about something as icky as *thinking*.

In spite of the given explanations for young feminists rejecting Clinton, I am going to suggest that the real reason is something far less complex, and instead one that simply speaks to the complete and utter fear of young vibrant women who happened to catch a fleeting glimpse of their collective post-menopausal futures:

Open Thread: GOP Debate

–Dana

So there was a kid suspended for chewing his Pop Tart into the shape of a gun.

At Park Elementary school, Josh was enjoying his breakfast pastry when he decided to try and shape it into a mountain.

Josh said, “It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it wasn’t.”

Josh takes full responsib[ilit]y for trying to shape his breakfast pastry, but admits it was in innocent fun. He told FOX45, “All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but, it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun kinda.”

Now a lawmaker is introducing the Reasonable School Discipline Act of 2013 to prevent similar suspensions. How are you going to legislate something like this?

Sen. J. B. Jennings, a Republican representing Baltimore and Hartford counties, introduced this legislation on Thursday. The bill would, absent a direct act of violence on school grounds, prohibit students from being suspended for “mak[ing] a hand shape or gesture resembling a gun” — the bill would also stop principals from expelling students who bring to school “any other object that resembles a gun but serves another purpose.”

My first impulse is to say you can’t legislate common sense. But I’ll have to think about this. The fact is, school officials have absolutely no incentive (other than media exposure) to apply “zero tolerance” policies in anything but an unthinking and absurd fashion.

Somehow, counter-incentives have to be created. Something has to happen to cause principals to say: “I’d like to suspend this child for a clearly innocuous activity, but unfortunately the law requires me to apply a measure of common sense. So we’ll just have to let this one go.” I’m not sure if this law is the best way, but maybe it is. Your thoughts?

[Posted by Karl]

…with a major caveat, of course.  But first, a disclaimer and a sideshow.  The disclaimer is that I am currently not supporting Perry or any of the other candidates.  Perhaps I am overly cynical, but I have not been excited about a presidential candidate since Reagan — and that was as likely the result of youthful exuberance as it was Reagan’s merits.  The sideshow:

After Monday’s debate in Florida, most people expected Rick Perry’s rapid rise to the top of the polls for Republican presidential candidates to slow or halt, having taken a beating over the Gardasil mandate and immigration.  His attack on Social Security was supposed to scare off seniors.  However, as RealClearPolitics reported last night,  a new poll by Insider Advantage shows Perry grabbing a nine-point lead in the Sunshine State in a survey taken the next day…

The effect of debates — and any debate in particular — is greatly exaggerated.  Monday’s debate was seen by fewer people than watched Monday Night Football, The Closer, Rizzoli & Isles, Pawn Stars, American Pickers or WWE Entertainment (The NBC/Politico debate had higher ratings, barely edging out an episode of Storage Wars).  That’s why Allahpundit was smart to view the current Rick Perry-Mitt Romney slugfest from the outset as more of a metaphor for the  “electability vs. principle” conundrum, which will play out over the entire course of the campaign.  But even that narrative frame may overstate the campaign dynamic. (more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: I have to apologize for forgetting to thank Mandy Nagy, a.k.a. Liberty Chick, for helping with much of the research on this.

——————————–

Background: a few weeks back Time magazine published, as its cover story, an article by Richard Stengel.  Reading it, I was stunned to discover fourteen clear factual errors in his piece, and I have been on a bit of a crusade since then to force Time to either correct or retract the article.  And I have been examining how other media outlets and organizations have treated Stengel.

Particularly I was troubled by his relationship with the National Constitution Center, despite his evident cluelessness about the Constitution he was the President and CEO at one time and still worked with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”

So yesterday you saw how I finally got them to make a response, of sorts, where they tried to pretend to be neutral about the accuracy of statements such as “[i]f the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn’t say so”  But sharp readers surely noticed that they didn’t answer a crucial question: “what is Mr. Stengel’s exact role in the National Constitution Center?  Specifically, does he teach others about the Constitution?”

Well, I emailed them two days ago asking for clarification on this question, and this morning I got this response from Ashley Burke, Director of Public Relations:

Mr. Stengel was President and CEO of the Center from 2004-2006. He currently serves as a member of the Advisory Board of the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. In this role, he does not interact directly with our Jennings Fellows, but rather provides recommendations to National Constitution Center staff regarding our annual Jennings Project conference. As a nonpartisan institution, the Center welcomes speakers and advisors with diverse viewpoints; therefore, we are happy to have Mr. Stengel remain in this role.

That is encouraging.  At least he doesn’t actively teach, although I don’t know how someone so clueless about the Constitution could serve as an advisor in figuring out how to educate others.  So I took my objections about his qualifications directly to her in response:

(more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Background: a few weeks back Time magazine published, as its cover story, an article by Richard Stengel.  Reading it, I was stunned to discover fourteen clear factual errors in his piece, and I have been on a bit of a crusade since then to force Time to either correct or retract the article.  And I have been examining how other media outlets and organizations have treated Stengel.

One of the things that bothered me in particular about Richard Stengel was his association with the National Constitution Center.  As I wrote at the time:

The author is not only the Managing Editor for Time, but he spent two years as President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  And even today, he works with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”  That is right.  He is there to help journalists understand the Constitution better.

So I decided to write to David Eisner, head of the National Constitution Center and see if they had any opinion on the rank incompetence on display.  As you might recall I asked him two questions:

First, what is Mr. Stengel’s exact role in the National Constitution Center?  Specifically, does he teach others about the Constitution?

Second, does the National Constitution Center have any official statement regarding the serial inaccuracies that appeared in Time, a national magazine, regarding the Constitution?

He wrote back to me with a brief “we’re working on it” message (that’s my gloss, not a quote) and I waited patiently.

Well, their response has finally come, in the form of an official post at their blog.  In a post entitled “Weigh in on Time’s Controversial Constitution Issue” simply notes that there is a controversy, but for the most part they refuse to take sides.  So you get this one ridiculous passage:

(more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

So as regular readers know, after finding fourteen clear factual errors in Richard Stengel’s June 23rd Time magazine cover story* on the Constitution, I have been on a crusade to embarrass the magazine to correct or retract that story.  I have explained that I consider its publication to be a scandal, both because it appeared as the cover story and because who the author is:

The author is not only the Managing Editor for Time, but he spent two years as President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  And even today, he works with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”  That is right.  He is there to help journalists understand the Constitution better.

So I wrote an email to David Eisner, President and CEO of the National Constitution Center, asking (1) what Stengel’s role was in the Center, (2) whether they had an official statement about this whole mess, particularly correcting Mr. Stengel’s inaccuracies.

Well, on Friday afternoon, I got this email in response:

from    David Eisner [email omitted]

to         edmd5.20.10@gmail.com

date     Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 4:26 PM

subject Response to email

Dear Mr. Worthing,

Thank you for your email regarding Rick Stengel’s Time magazine cover article on the Constitution. As you’d imagine, the article has stirred up a lot of thoughts from people who care deeply about the Constitution, many critical and many supportive.  I’m sure you’re aware that the issues you raise go to the center of many of the most important current debates around how we view the Constitution.

We’re working to bring some of those thoughts and issues together and will share them on our blog http://blog.constitutioncenter.org in the coming days.

Best,

David E

David Eisner

President and CEO

National Constitution Center

“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

– Thomas Jefferson

Now that seems to be saying, “we’re working on a response.”  Also, reader Ken Weibe wrote to them as well and got this response:

(more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

In my last real Stengel-gate post, I asked why on Earth Richard Stengel was presented to the world as an expert on the Constitution given that he was clearly clueless on the subject and I promised that I would be writing to NPR’s Ombudsman about this.  Well, I have written that letter and I quote it to you below the fold.

(more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Exactly seven days ago I published here at Patterico’s Pontifications a piece outlining thirteen clear factual errors in Richard Stengel’s essay on the Constitution.  The next day, I published a substantially similar piece at Big Journalism, and by then the list of errors had grown to fourteen.

I said at the time that I considered it a journalistic scandal that such an error-ridden piece appeared in Time magazine, a once-respected publication.  I have dubbed this scandal “Stengel-gate.”  I also considered it scandalous because of who the author, Richard  Stengel, was:

The author is not only the Managing Editor for Time, but he spent two years as President and CEO of the National Constitution Center.  And even today, he works with the National Constitution Center’s Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution, whose stated mission is “to help both professional journalists and students interested in journalism understand constitutional issues more deeply.”  That is right.  He is there to help journalists understand the Constitution better.

It has been seven days, and reportedly Patterico’s got six thousand hits in an hour, a week ago, very likely because of my original piece.  The story has even appeared on Fox News.  And yet there is apparently no correction, no retraction of the story, or even a defense of it.

So frankly in an effort to keep the heat on, I decided to explore the other end of the scandal: what on earth was he doing working at something called the National Constitution Center?  I plan to spend several days discussing that issue and to kick it off, I decided to write a letter to its current President and CEO, the man holding the position that Richard Stengel once occupied: David Eisner.

So tonight I have written to him directly.  You can see the letter I wrote below the fold (the format is slightly altered by wordpress itself).

I do not know if he will respond or how he will respond.  But whatever his reaction is, even a non-response, will reflect on him and his organization.  And that in and of itself is noteworthy.

(more…)

[Guest post by Aaron Worthing; if you have tips, please send them here.  Or by Twitter @AaronWorthing.]

Update: See at the end for a big update that will make this whole thing even more scandalous.

Update (II): The fail becomes even worse.  I didn’t realize I  was fisking their cover story.

And you have to love the fact that this thing is in their “10th Annual History Issue.”  The mind boggles.

The original post follows…

—————————————————-

Seriously, this piece in Time Magazine is either utter bullsh-t, or he is literally incapable of reading and understanding the words of the Constitution and other related laws.  I was so stunned to read this drivel in Time Magazine that I then looked up who the hell Richard Stengel is, and apparently he is their Managing Editor!  And by the time you are done reading this post you will be stunned with the cluelessness on display.

So strap yourself in, we’re going to have an old fashioned fisking.  And it’s a long one, because this piece is one of the most clueless pieces I have ever read on the Constitution or the law generally.

It starts off with the usual liberal claptrap that if the founders were not perfect soothsayers about the future, that this meant that we should just ignore the Constitution:

Here are a few things the framers did not know about: World War II. DNA. Sexting. Airplanes. The atom. Television. Medicare. Collateralized debt obligations. The germ theory of disease. Miniskirts. The internal combustion engine. Computers. Antibiotics. Lady Gaga.

It is a facially ridiculous argument.  Yes, for instance, the founders didn’t know specifically that Adolf Hitler would rise to become the leader of Germany and plunge the world into war (a second time, no less) and murder millions of innocents (especially Jews).  But they knew there was such a thing as war.  And I find it odd that he asserts that the founders didn’t know about the concept of collateral debt, given that Thomas Jefferson endlessly whined about his and indeed the majority of the slave-holding founders were in the same situation (but generally less whiney than Jefferson about the whole thing).  And in fact the existence of the atom has been theorized since Greek times, and verified to a significant extent by chemists in the 17th and 18th centuries.  If you are going to assert that the founders didn’t know about certain things, maybe you should check to see whether they actually knew about them.

The aggressive stupidity continues:

What would the framers say about whether the drones over Libya constitute a violation of Article I, Section 8, which gives Congress the power to declare war? Well, since George Washington didn’t even dream that man could fly, much less use a global-positioning satellite to aim a missile, it’s hard to say what he would think.

(more…)