Pun Salad

The magic number for Pun Salad's free mattress is now 3. The Rockies, I'm sure, are a better team than last night's game would indicate, but at least we won't have to hear about them being "the hottest team in baseball" any more. It got a little old, somewhere around the 353d time I heard it.

• New Hampshire's own Concord Monitor (or, as the Grokateers say, Pravda on the Merrimack) publishes a despicable op-ed, and James Taranto calls them on it.

• Jay Nordlinger. Just go.

• Another day, another instance of a college administrator behaving like a petty tyrant, this time at lovely Valdosta State College in Georgia. The folks at FIRE say:
  Valdosta State University (VSU) has used its power to expel a dissenting student from campus without any due process simply for having engaged in constitutionally protected speech. As we detail in our press release today, T. Hayden Barnes was "administratively withdrawn" from VSU after vocally protesting the university's plans to spend $30 million of mandatory student fee money to construct two new parking decks—decks that Barnes believes are environmentally irresponsible.

  T. Hayden is probably an irritatingly outspoken tree-hugger, but that's no reason to throw him out of college.

• But looking for colleges disrespectful of the First Amendment is like looking for … well, it's pretty common, OK? George F. Will takes aim at the University of Montana at Missoula:
  Perhaps the university noticed the praise that speech rationers in Washington receive when, in the name of combating corruption or the appearance thereof, they regulate, as with the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, the timing, quantity and content of political speech. In any case, the university has a rule that limits candidates for student government offices to spending a maximum of $100 when campaigning among the university's 10,000 students.

  If you're like me, you're saying at this point: there are 10,000 students at the University of Montana? I didn't think there were that many people in the whole state. But anyway …

  Restrictions on freedoms, and especially freedoms as fundamental as those of the First Amendment, require serious justifications. So the question is: To what pressing problem did the university's $100 limit respond? Or is it merely another manifestation of the regnant liberalism common on most campuses -- the itch to boss people around?

  Gosh, I think I know the answer to that one, without even having a clear idea of what "regnant" means. The resulting legal case hopefully awaits uptake by the Supreme Court.

• Another good reaction to the New York Times' "jaw-droppingly stupid" editorial from Daniel J. Mitchell at Cato. With remarkable restraint, Mitchell only calls the editorial "remarkable." But he's got some more links to resources that simply and convincingly debunk the editorial assertion that European levels of taxation are a golden road to prosperity and competitiveness.
  The editorial conveniently forgets to explain, though, how America is less competitive because of supposedly inadequate taxation. Is it that our per capita GDP is lower than our higher-taxed neighbors in Europe? No, America's per capita GDP is considerably higher. Is it that our disposable income is lower? It turns out that Americans enjoy a huge advantage in this measure. Is our economy not keeping pace? Interesting thought, but America's been out-performing Europe for a long time. Could higher rates of unemployment be a sign of American weakness? Nice theory, but the data show better job numbers in the United States.

  Keep the Times editorial in mind in case you're ever tempted to think those guys are smarter than you. They. Just. Aren't.

• Didja like 300? Do ya like America, bunkie? Well …

  … me too.