Academic

Re: There Is Little Charity In Wealthy Charitable Hospitals.

Posted on April 09, 2008
April 9, 2008Re: There Is Little Charity In Wealthy Charitable Hospitals. Last Sunday Ben Stein wrote on how and why executive pay has skyrocketed in the last 15 years. Among other things he pointed out that last year Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs made $54 million, though the firm?s stock is now down from $250 per share to $175 per share (or 37 percent)...

Of Mamet And Chicago. Of Obamas And Elections

Posted on March 25, 2008
March 25, 2008Re: Of Mamet And Chicago. Of Obamas And Elections. For someone who strongly disliked the place, and who wanted to and did leave it, I spend a lot of time writing about Chicago. (Even a little may be a lot, considering my dislike of it...

Re: Hypocrisy Holds High Carnival, And Other Recent Travesties Of The Political/Media Complex.

Posted on March 14, 2008
March 14, 2008Re: Hypocrisy Holds High Carnival, And Other Recent Travesties Of The Political/Media Complex. I gather it is common to become less tolerant of nonsense, stupidity and their like as one gets older. Never having had a high threshold for these things to begin with, I find myself getting even shorter with political bullroar (a 1950s Chicago word), and with political stupidity, in my late 60s...

Re: Alexander Pekelis, Arthur S. Miller, And Today?s Supreme Court

Posted on March 12, 2008
March 12, 2008Re: Alexander Pekelis, Arthur S. Miller, And Today?s Supreme Court. In recent months I read a book which mentioned the name ?Alexander Pekalis.? It was a name I had not seen referred to in print in over 40 years. The author, whether because of a mistaken impression or a typographical error, spelled the name wrong...

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Sun 3/2/2008 10:47 PMAnonymous

Posted on March 04, 2008
Sun 3/2/2008 10:47 PMAnonymous has left a new comment on your post "RE: The Needed Mental Attributes Of A President; T...":I've never thought that either Clinton was anywhere near as smart as many writers have proclaimed them to be.I've never understood why so many people think that Bill Clinton is a brilliant speaker...

RE: The Needed Mental Attributes Of A President; The Presidential Campaign And Forthcoming Appointments To The Supreme Court; A Bail Out For Homeowner

Posted on February 29, 2008
February 29, 2008RE: The Needed Mental Attributes Of A President; The Presidential Campaign And Forthcoming Appointments To The Supreme Court; A Bail Out For Homeowners; And Bloomberg?s Game. Yesterday, at our faculty lunch table, I was marveling at the fact that a person as stupid and incompetent as George Bush has regularly shown himself to be, could appear so personable, charming and even intelligent as he was when speaking about (and to) the Boston Red Sox before the White House news media...

Re: The Names Of The Washington Professional Sports Teams.

Posted on February 26, 2008
February 26, 2008Re: The Names Of The Washington Professional Sports Teams. I am reading an advance copy of a book that will be published in May called The Cult of the Presidency. It is a Cato Institute book authored by Cato?s senior editor, Gene Healy...

The New York Times, Cable TV, And McCain

Posted on February 21, 2008
February 21, 2008Re: The New York Times, Cable TV, And McCain. This is probably my shortest posting ever. It relates to The New York Times? story about John McCain and the lobbyist. The disgrace called cable news is trying to pretend that this story is really about a possible illicit romantic relationship...

Re: Clarence Thomas, His Autobiography, And Related Matters Pertaining To America And The Supreme Court.

Posted on February 20, 2008
February 20, 2008Re: Clarence Thomas, His Autobiography, And Related Matters Pertaining To America And The Supreme Court. Recently, I read Clarence Thomas? autobiography, My Grandfather?s Son, which covers his life up to the time he joined the Supreme Court...

The Great Louis Terkel. (You know him as Studs.)

Posted on January 30, 2008
January 30, 2008Re: The Great Louis Terkel. (You know him as Studs.)Dear Colleagues: I recently read a memoir by Studs Terkel, who is now 94 years old, I believe. Though I grew up in his city, Chicago, in the 1940s and 1950s, when he already was pretty well known there, I can?t remember having known much about him then...

Re: Two Matters: The Environmental Crisis As An Economic Opportunity, And John Edwards As An Angry Populist

Posted on January 18, 2008
January 18, 2008Re: Two Matters: The Environmental Crisis As An Economic Opportunity, And John Edwards As An Angry Populist.Dear Colleagues: I?m going to break a record and send out two postings in one day. This one is short. It consists of brief comments on two matters that have been on my mind for awhile...

Richard Levin: President of Yale And King Of Comedy

Posted on January 18, 2008
January 18, 2008Re: Richard Levin: President of Yale And King Of Comedy.Dear Colleagues:You might never know it, but comedy is one of my favorite kinds of reading. There?s nothing like a good laugh. So I thank Richard Levin, the President of Yale, for providing one...

Horse Race Rot, Cosmetic Crapola, And The Possible Need For Bloomberg.

Posted on January 11, 2008
January 11, 2008Re: Horse Race Rot, Cosmetic Crapola, And The Possible Need For Bloomberg.From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.comDear Colleagues:Is it just me, or is this the worst presidential campaign yet in terms of the pols and the MSM focusing on the cosmetic and horse race aspects and talking so little about important substance? One hears such a continuing din about this poll and that one, about who is ahead and by how much, who will or should drop out, which candidates will do well in what state, how candidates look, and so forth...

Re: Halberstam and History

Posted on January 07, 2008
January 4, 2008 Dean Velvel, a grand essay, with broad perspective. I will not laud its many good points but I have a few quibbles and a funny. First, you say the truth about Chiang's army was "kept from the American public by secrecy." Actually, the whole world knew it cracked like a crate of rotten eggs under Mao's attack...

Re: Halberstam And History.

Posted on January 07, 2008
Lawrence -- While I can't exactly disagree with your assessment of David Halberstam's opus on the Korean War, I can point out a few things regarding written histories of it that you might want to pass along to your recipient list. Some 17 years before Halberstam completed writing THE COLDEST WINTER, in 1990 Orion Books published THE COLDEST WAR by James Brady, a memoir of that journalist's experiences as a very young Marine lieutenant in Korea during 1951-52...

Re: Halberstam And History

Posted on January 04, 2008
January 4, 2008Re: Halberstam And History.Dear Colleagues: It is often remarked that Korea is a war about which most of us know little or nothing. It is called a black hole by the late David Halberstam in his recent book about it, The Coldest Winter...

Re: Michael Mukasey And Jewish Conservatism.

Posted on December 14, 2007
December 14, 2007Re: Michael Mukasey And Jewish Conservatism.Dear Colleagues: I shall write relatively briefly today on a matter which touches a subject I?ve long, but perhaps wrongly, considered sensitive. The sensitive subject is the turn of American Jews toward conservatism...

Re: Robert Novak?s ?Prince of Darkness.?

Posted on December 12, 2007
December 12, 2007Re: Robert Novak?s ?Prince of Darkness.?Dear Colleagues: About thirty-five years ago or so, I stopped reading Evans? and Novak?s? columns. They were just too reactionary for me. Reading their stuff was like forcing oneself to read the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal...

Re: Arthur Sulzberger And Bill Keller On Bended Knee, Serf-Like.

Posted on December 03, 2007
December 3, 2007Re: Arthur Sulzberger And Bill Keller On Bended Knee, Serf-Like.Dear Colleagues: From time to time The New York Times (how ?alliterative,? so to speak, is that?) has been strongly criticized here for failing to report very important stories that it knew about, often that it knew a lot about...

Read 'Em And Weep For Harvard

Posted on November 29, 2007
November 29, 2007Re: Read ?Em And Weep For Harvard. In 2004-2005, and on a few occasions again in 2006-2007, I wrote about ghostwriting done for leading academics, leading doctors and others who commit moral fraud by claiming the work as their own. Ghostwriting done for famous Harvard law professors was the original impetus for this work...

Gee, Gordon, That's Great

Posted on November 20, 2007
November 20, 2007Re: Gee, Gordon, That?s Great.Dear Colleagues: Ya gotta love it, baby. It shows once again that money talks and bovine defecation walks. It shows once again that Milton Friedman, he of the huge (if distorted) mind and pygmy moral sense, was right, and so was Ronald Reagan, the sainted gipper of minimal mind and tiny moral sense: in America, it?s money uber alles, in fact, its money ist alles...

Re: The Longitudinal Lesson Of Paul Krugman?s ?The Conscience Of A Liberal.?

Posted on November 06, 2007
November 6, 2007Re: The Longitudinal Lesson Of Paul Krugman?s ?The Conscience Of A Liberal.?Dear Colleagues: I spent about ten days out of the country in mid and late October, after having read Paul Krugman?s The Conscience Of A Liberal. (There was no cause and effect relationship...

October 12, 2007Re: Although The

Posted on October 12, 2007
October 12, 2007Re: Although The Conventional Wisdom Of The Pols And The Mainstream Media Have Now Anointed Him A Hero, In Truth Jack Goldsmith Stands Convicted Out Of His Own Mouth As Well As By Recent Events.Dear Colleagues: By Thursday, October 4th, I had been doing preparatory work for roughly three weeks in order to write about Jack Goldsmith?s new book, The Terror Presidency (?TP?), which deals mainly with Goldsmith?s work as head of the Office of Legal Counsel of the Department of Justice...

Comment on Defeat by Applachian State

Posted on September 14, 2007
From: Joseph Burgess To: velvel@mslaw.edu Sent: Wednesday, September 05, 2007 6:55 PMSubject: Re: With Its Defeat By Appalachian State, Michigan Finally Realizes Its Many, Many Decades Old Desire To Be The Harvard Of The West.Congratulations are due to Michigan for its achieving the long-held dream that you so well pointed out with your comparison of its loss in football to Appalachian State to Harvard's 1921 loss to Centre College...

More Garbage About Iraq From The Pols And The Media, Plus Stupid Is As Stupid Does.

Posted on September 13, 2007
September 13, 2007Re: More Garbage About Iraq From The Pols And The Media, Plus Stupid Is As Stupid Does.From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.comDear Colleagues: Life unflaggingly beckons. So I shall turn now from something that is fun to write about, Michigan football, to something that is dreadful to write about, the war in Iraq...

For The Guys From The 1950s Who Were In Ann Arbor Last Saturday, It Was Deja Vu All Over Again.

Posted on September 11, 2007
September 11, 2007Re: For The Guys From The 1950s Who Were In Ann Arbor Last Saturday, It Was Déjà Vu All Over Again; Fraternity Reunion Dooms Michigan; University President Tells Septuagenarian Fraternity Alumni Never To Come Back To Ann Arbor Again...

From: Joseph BurgessSent:

Posted on September 11, 2007
From: Joseph BurgessSent: Fri 9/7/2007 11:15 AMSubject: With Its Defeat By Appalachian State, Michigan Finally Realizes Its Many, Many Decades Old Desire To Be The Harvard Of The West.don't know much -- just have good sources. The quarterback for UK in the 1951 Sugar Bowl was Blanda's successor, Vito "Babe" Parilli, who was a consensus all-American, along with UK tackle Bob Gain...

Re: With Its Defeat By Appalachian State, Michigan Finally Realizes Its Many, Many Decades Old Desire To Be The Harvard Of The West.

Posted on September 04, 2007
September 4, 2007From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.comDear Colleagues: Those (few) who have read Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam, or at least the first volume of the quartet, may remember that I described the University of Michigan of the 1950s as having an elitist mindset...

Tell Me About Michael Bloomberg

Posted on August 29, 2007
August 29, 2007Re: Tell Me About Michael Bloomberg.From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.comDear Colleagues: I would be grateful if knowledgeable readers would let me know their views of Michael Bloomberg and the facts supporting those views...

We Desperately Need A New Electoral System, New Methods Of Campaigning, And New Types Of People Running For Office

Posted on August 28, 2007
August 28, 2007Re: We Desperately Need A New Electoral System, New Methods Of Campaigning, And New Types Of People Running For Office.From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.comDear Colleagues: A couple of weeks ago, on Saturday, August 11th, The New York Times carried an article about a meeting of state Democratic Party officials ?from around the country...

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