I posted this here just in case anyone hadn't seen it yet.

The best part of the video, and by best I mean worst, isn't Romney's snippy attitude or short temper, but Eric Fehrnstrom's post-interview words with Glen Johnson of the Associated Press.  Fehrnstrom, the Romney Campaign's Traveling Press Secretary, tells Johnson in no uncertain terms: "You're out of line....Save your opinions...and act professionally...and don't be argumentative with the candidate."

I don't know if Johnson is a reporter who has been embedded with the campaign or if he merely showed up to report on this speech.  Romney's familiarity with him seems to suggest that he has been on continuing assignment.  Either way, this is a terribly interesting look into how Romney's campaign deals with the press.  Isn't it a reporter's job to ask questions and to be argumentative when the need arises?  Johnson clearly thought he was catching Romney in a lie, and he was reprimanded for challenging him about it.  Not exactly a free exchange of ideas.

Can we assume that this is how the press is treated by presidential campaigns as a whole?  "You're welcome to tag along and report, just don't get uppity and contradict anything we say."

A New York Magazine feature this month (link via Kottke) discusses the growing problem of how the conscientious super-wealthy can raise successful, hard-working children. 

The article primarily concerns what used to be called "new money," the younger, richer generation that has become wealthy through its own hard work and now fears creating a wave of entitled, lackadaisical offspring with none of their parents' values.  Ironically, the article characterizes American blue bloods as having long ago discovered how to deal with (or at least ignore) this problem:

American blue bloods, perhaps, have a strategy for coping with their inherited wealth—wearing the ratty sweaters, pursuing the eccentric hobbies—namely, pretending it doesn’t exist. But this strategy is hardly applicable to any generation that makes its fortune.

So is the WASP tendency toward Yankee frugality and faux-poverty a successful coping mechanism, or a creepy delusion?  I can't honestly say that I have seen any indication of psychological or socio-economic enlightenment among the few fey, locked-jaw New England trust fund beneficiaries that I have personally met.  But the blue blood mentality does have a grain of truth to it: the fact that one has an enormous fortune does not necessarily mean that one must act is if one is from a different species.  You don't necessarily have to buy the jet, live in the gated community, or send the kids to the most obscurely elite prep school in the nation.  You can be rich and still be normal.

Sidney Blumenthal, a senior advisor to Hillary Clinton and longtime friend of the Clinton family, was arrested for driving under the influence in Nashua, NH this past Monday morning.

I'm curious to see what the continuing media coverage of this incident will be.  The Clinton campaign declined to comment and Blumenthal's New Hampshire attorney made a brief statement effectively refusing to talk details with press.

Blumenthal himself wisely refused a Breathalyzer test and acted like "a perfect gentleman", according to the arresting police officers.

I can't speak for New Hampshire, but in Massachusetts OUI cases where no Breathalyzer has been administered typically result in a Not Guilty for the defendant at trial, although very few even reach that stage.  Defense attorneys have a variety of weapons at their disposal to combat OUI charges.  It will be interesting to see if any of the details of Blumenthal's case go public.

In the nerdery category, Hayden Christenson, star of the Star Wars prequels, is rumored to be under consideration for the role of Case in the upcoming film adaptation of William Gibson's novel Neuromancer. 

I'm not so sure about this.  In fact, I plain don't like it.  Not only does Hayden Christenson, a six-foot blond with an athletic build, completely shatter Gibson's original physical description of the character, he has yet to show that he can actually act.  I'm not as derisive of him as others, however.  I give him a pass for the fact that very few actors can get anything worthwhile out of George Lucas's wooden dialogue and lackluster storytelling.   But is he Case?  I don't think so.

Neither Gibson himself nor the people over at his lively online discussion board are holding their breath over this movie actually being made.  Neuromancer has almost happened too many times now for anybody to get really excited and/or dismayed until they actually see it start production.  But the Gibson Board posters aren't pleased.  In the words of poster Tessier Ashpool: "This would be like Michael Bay directing Blade Runner with McCauley Culkin playing Deckard."

Update: More information, including an alleged director and a laughably thin plot description that makes the story sound like it's about some drugged out pop star (it's not), at "Mike's Buzz Bin."  Take all of this news with a generous helping of salt, of course.  Link via WGBoard.

I can't think of a more powerful example of the dangers of religion to impressionable minds than this.

The Massachusetts law student who sued the Board of Bar Examiners over a bar examination question dealing with gay marriage has now apologized to the gay community.  

You may remember the story.  Stephen Dunne argued last July that an essay question on the Massachusetts bar exam featuring gay marriage as an issue violated both his constitutional right to free exercise of religion and the equal protection clauses.  Dunne attributed his failure of the exam (he failed by a small margin: a single point) to his intentional refusal to answer this question

 In a December 22 letter to Bay Windows, a New England GLBT newsletter, he said that he was "deeply sorry" for causing hurt to the gay community.  In a follow-up interview, Dunne said he regretted having filed his lawsuit, which drew international attention, blaming his actions on the shock of failing the bar exam:

"It was a lashing out as a result of failing the bar exam. I mean I think I failed by a fraction of a point and I skipped a question that was 30 points. So I obviously failed myself. In retrospect I should have been a lot more secular in my thinking processes and should have separated religion from the outset, from the law."

How mature and introspective.

I took (and passed) the July 2007 Massachusetts bar exam.  So I understand the mania it can induce.  More than one licensed attorney advised me that the most important reason to pass the bar the first time around, professional advancement, academic achievement, personal pride, and financial reasons aside, was so that you never, ever had to go through the experience again.  I walked out at the end of the second and final day of the exam feeling numb and exhausted, literally as if I had just run a marathon.  I understand the desire to rail at the examiners and their seemingly sadistic tendencies.  I can understand a person, under pressure and in a panic, deciding to leave an essay question on an unknown topic blank.*  I can even understand, afterward, suing the BBE for a perceived infringement of one's constitutional rights.

What I don't understand is a man sitting in the convention center on the second day of his bar exam, reading an essay question on gay marriage, and deciding, in apparent partisan fury, that this was the time and place to assert his constitutionally protected right to discriminate against homosexuals.

I can only imagine that the pressure of the exam had so addled his mind as to cause him to forget every instinct of self-preservation and common sense he had ever had.  Putting aside every other political, legal, and philosophical argument against this man's beliefs and actions, why would he ever have so knowingly and purposefully screwed himself?

As he seems to have finally realized, he has no one to blame but himself.  You don't have to be a genius to pass the bar exam.  Mostly you just have to work hard.  Thousands of people take it every year in Massachusetts. If there's one thing the passers have in common, it's this: you have every other day to do anything you please, to be a great attorney, to file cutting edge lawsuits, to spout your opinion of the Board of Bar Examiners and their chosen examination topics at the top of your lungs.   You have the rest of your life to whine.  But on the day of your bar exam, you sit down, shut your mouth, and take the test as best you can.

There's no whining allowed at the bar exam.

Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched.  Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion.  Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear.

~ Thomas Jefferson

I found this quote by way of reading The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins's recent atheist manifesto.  This clinches it: I'm adding a biography of Thomas Jefferson to my reading list.