freeloadersTexas is moving to become the newest state to allow terminally ill patients the ability to try non-FDA approved medications.

This story, of a Jewish student who was arrested for posting an image of a swastika he’d gotten while in India, raises some interesting questions about iconography and context. Leaving aside freedom of speech (ie even if we assume the legal right is there), are there words and images so offensive that there is no context in which they can be acceptably reproduced?

The DC Cinematic Universe looks like a real trainwreck. Bizarrely so, in my view, given that all they had to do was hire Paul Dini.

Dear DC Comics, cut this $#!+ out, please.

It feels a bit like corporations are going out of their way to make H1-B visas look bad, but the reality is that they have little reason to care about public opinion. More from Dave Schuler.

At CATO, Jason Kuznicki argues that property rights matter more for the poor than the wealthy.

Jeb Bush supports Puerto Rican statehood, but I have to agree with the National Review that it’s not presently a good idea for anybody involved.

Our wild 1,500 to be a barber.”>very regulated west.

Lydia DePillis looks at Puerto Rico to see what a massive minimum wage hike to $12 will do, because they had a hefty rise from $2.03 to to $3.35. It tries to explain away a whopping 9% drop in employment (Might have happened anyway!) and emigration (It’s good for people to leave!) and despite admitting at the end that raising the minimum wage didn’t do its economy much good. Despite an optimistic tone, it does little to alleviate my concern about what a $12 minimum wage would do to Mississippi.

The territory is raising its taxes to settle a budgetary shortfall, but Ike Brannan of the Weekly Standard argues that it should be allowed to declare bankruptcy. Jeb Bush wants statehood, but while that would fix the “can’t declare bankruptcy problem, I have to agree with the National Review that it’s not presently a good idea for anybody involved.

When should men wear short pants?

There’s something wrong with David Brooks.

Joe Battenfield argues that if things don’t work out with Hillary Clinton, the Democrats can always go with Kerry. Before Mitt announced he wasn’t running, I was pondering the violently (if unlikely) dull prospect of a Kerry-Romney election.

Muslim shopkeepers in China are being required to sell alcohol and cigarettes.


Category: Newsroom

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12 Responses to Linkluster CCCLXXII

  1. Peter says:

    If Puerto Rico became a state, its residents would have to pay federal income tax. Paradoxically, that would be a major drain on federal revenues. So many of its residents would qualify for the earned income credit that there would be a significant net outflow of revenues.

  2. Dr X says:

    The Baha’i Temple in Chicago’s northern suburbs, a major religious site, event host and tourist attraction, is liberally adorned with swastikas. Visitors seem able to appreciate that the symbol in that context should not be deemed offensive. Notice, too, its placement adjacent to the six-point star.

    http://tinyurl.com/m382mg5

  3. Oscar Gordon says:

    I recall Marvel movies being a mess early on before they had some success & got their act together, so I’m willing to cut DC some slack. But only some, since Marvel hasn’t been operating in the dark & DC could follow their example pretty easily.

  4. trumwill says:

    Marvel movies used to be notoriously bad, even with DC’s previously superior example (Batman ’89, Superman) right in front of them. They just didn’t care. They sold the rights to some studio or another and that was that.

    I think the problem with DC is that they are actually trying to follow Marvel’s example. They’re just incorporating the wrong parts (and getting the important parts wrong).

  5. Mike Hunt Ray Rice says:

    I may have to do a guest post on this, but I think Josh Duggar is being unfairly raked over the coals.

  6. aaron david says:

    Well, I wear shorts all the time, and I am 44.

    And if any westerner can wear a swastika, it should be a person of Jewish color. Then again, I believe in free speech, no but.

  7. Jhanley says:

    Re: minimum wage. I argue fervently that increases in the minimum wage have negative employment affects. That said, looking at employment rates ten years apart is no way to pin down a single causal factor. Lots of shit happens in ten years.

    • trumwill says:

      I don’t think they looked at just that. I’m not sure how they did it precisely, but here’s the wording in the article:

      Employment had dropped by about nine percent, compared to what it would have been if Puerto Rico’s minimum wage-to-average wage ratio had stayed the same as it was on the mainland.

  8. Mike Hunt Ray Rice says:

    RIP John Nash

    I find it interesting the Nash died on the same stretch of the New Jersey Turnpike that Tracy Morgan almost died on.

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