“Columbia University” on The Daily Caller

For only $1,900 a month, you can rent an apartment President Obama lived in during his years at Columbia University. (more)

If there is a recurring tale in this new century, it is that the Gulf Coast is where political fortunes go to die. The Gulf in the 21^st century has become the delicate-yet-furious eco-nightmare in which central planners and corporate heads get bogged down, before having their heads placed upon the electronic guillotine of cable news. (more)

Few things announce an open audition for the bizarre like a nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court. The subsequent debate makes our presidential races look mild in comparison. This is the byproduct of “the people” having no direct control over the confirmation process. Nothing turns up the volume on crazy like the recognition that the composition of the Supreme Court is entrusted to people you don’t trust. (more)

Partisanship, political fighting and public rancor have always fueled the ideas that matter—the revolutionary advances that elevate man’s station in life. Throughout history, hotly-contested ideas are a sign that people are thinking. We are in such times. Times which, as Thomas Paine noted, “Try men’s souls.” Yet partisanship is condemned each day as indecent. Many incumbents speak of bipartisanship, not as a vice to protect the status quo, but as if it’s a virtue. Last year our Secretary of State declared, “Ideology is so yesterday.” (more)

PORT-AU-PRINCE —”I’m Ben,” said Ben Stiller, looking like a lost tourist as he shook the hand of Haitian artist Philippe Dodard. (more)

If government insists upon regulating everything except itself, then those energies should be directed at a rather loud and rude killer: cell phones. (more)

One of the more endearing qualities of the American people is their appetite for excess. Bureaucrats have fashioned careers on wagging their plump fingers at excess, and documentary filmmakers built an industry on reprimanding free people for living their lives, but then again, these merchants of guilt could find fault with box seats at Wrigley. (more)

The irony of our present democracy is that the rules that govern it are written by people who never asked for your vote. (more)

The Boston Globe published this story a few weeks ago, but it’s worth revisiting. Especially since people have had their careers ruined for not complying with this kind of training: (more)

If there is a third certainty in this life, beyond the proverbial death and taxes, it is that exiting a self-created crisis is expensive. (more)

When archaeologists unearth the relics of the American Century, the space race will be our Holy Grail. Space was our New World. In 1962, when John F. Kennedy declared “we choose to go to the moon,” he encouraged every American to look up to the stars and summon the spirit of Columbus staring across the Atlantic. During the Apollo program every American taxpayer became a deckhand on the voyage to the moon. It was a journey that created the world we now live in, spawning GPS systems, plastics, alloy metals, cordless power tools and cancer detecting CAT scans (more)

While there may be a few valid illness claims buried among the 10,000 or so cases in the big “9/11 lawsuit” now approaching trial, the overwhelming majority clearly relies on junk science. Sadly, there’s a whole industry set up to supply that junk—funded by lawyers eager to fuel such lawsuits, staffed by researchers eager to push bizarre theories, and promoted by ignorant reporters and politicians. (more)

Last week’s bipartisan health care summit was fascinating. It was the second time in as many months that the President ran a veritable session of parliament—in America. (more)

A majority of the e-mails that hit my inbox this week expressed disheartened sentiments over Scott Brown’s decision to help advance the Senate’s jobs bill. While my readers were primarily focused on what so many of them referred to as Brown’s “betrayal” of their hard work to help him get elected, their disgust with politicians in general was a close second. (more)

Abstinence education is back in the headlines, prompted by a new study that shows such intervention can reduce teen sexual activity in the long term. (more)

The problem with stoking a populist bonfire is that after you’ve used bankers, capitalists and political adversaries as kindling wood, eventually the fire goes out. The embers cool. The revelers go to bed. Your closest collaborators, those wild-eyed conspirators who egged you on the night before, are absent at dawn. The sun rises and all of those things that seemed so monumentally important in the moment fade. (more)