Open Thread

As time goes on, the hastily constructed second-degree murder case against George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin is continuing to collapse as more evidence formerly known only by the prosecution is released to the public.

The first is that Martin seems to have been less interested in running away from Zimmerman and more in bashing him, according to a witness interviewed by police within minutes of the shooting. But that's not all:

I'm sure there's nothing to talk about this weekend what with the Facebook IPO, the campaign, the economy, hockey playoffs, basketball playoffs, etc.

But try to discuss something, okay?

It probably wasn't his decision (one hopes not) but the latest update to the White House website is really quite embarrassing: It appears that people have gone into the site's biographies of the past 9 presidents and inserted electioneering material touting President Obama into them. As chronicled by IBD's Andrew Malcom:

Politics, the economy, sports, go to it - politely please.

(Note to commenters: This post is the first one on NB which uses Disqus for commenting purposes.) While liberals have been waxing rapsodic about Greece and France voting for wasteful socialism, conservatives last night have two victories to be crowing about in Wisconsin and Indiana.

In Wisconsin, government reformer Scott Walker received more votes in the GOP primary than his Democratic challengers did in their primary. In addition, the greedy government employee unions' hand-picked candidate, Kathleen Falk, went down in defeat.

Wisconsin Republican Scott Walker has been the target of government union bosses since he began talking about a series of small reforms designed to preserve state employee pensions without breaking the budget. Despite the crony millions being spent, however, Walker seems likely to be able to stave off the union attempt to depose him in a recall election.

That likelihood is perhaps what inspired AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka to lower expectations and already proclaim "victory," even if Walker is not defeated.

Over the weekend, French president Nicolas Sarkozy went down in defeat to Socialist Francois Hollande. Do you see the election as having any bearing on the American elections or is it just an anomaly?

Sports, politics, the economy - have at it.

Just keep it clean!

As you've probably heard by now, President Obama has admitted to fabricating a woman in one of his two autobiographies. Apparently, he's had a hand in fabricating another woman, a hypothetical one named "Julia," who supposedly is representative of just how helpful his policies are to women:

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has now been formally exposed for lying about her knowledge of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques such as waterboarding by a new book from a former CIA counterterrorism officer who actually gave her a briefing about them.

In other words, Pelosi and other congressional Democrats who later decried the use of "torture" when it became politically advantageous, knew about and did not object to them for years beforehand:

You know the drill. Just keep it clean! :-)

As part of the ludicrous "war on women" idea that liberals have been pushing designed to scare educated females into voting Democrat, the old notion of a "pay gap" between men and women performing similar jobs has been resurrected. Unfortunately, as Kay Hymowitz wrote in the Wall Street Journal yesterday, it's a bunch of nonsense. While it's true that some women get paid less than men, that's because generally women with children are less likely to work longer hours at work. Take kids out of the picture, however, and it is women who actually earn more. Could it be that people are simply adjusting their own lives to fit their wants and needs? Perish the thought!

College professors are always assigning grades to their students but what would happen if the subjects they teach were graded in terms of income-earning potential?

Thanks to the Chronicle of Higher Education, we can now see what the average lifetime earning potential is for different majors. It probably comes as no surprise that majors like "community organizing" or counseling psychology make very little. What might surprise is just how little that is. Chart and commentary are below the fold.

Today's starter topic: Liberal college students love monetary redistribution but they don't seem to love redistribution when it comes to their own grades:

Today's starter topic: The left has long believed that taxes and regulations don't have an impact on economies. Reality says otherwise as the current anemic economic recovery has proven but also as the mass exodus from the state of California has demonstrated:

Is it Saturday again? If it is, it's time to chat about whatever you want with all your NB friends.

Ready, set, go...

Even though it was their party who rammed Obamacare through Congress, a number of congressional Democrats are publicly airing their own misgivings about the medical regulation law.

Are such misgivings related somehow to the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court might overturn the law?

For the third consecutive year, the Democratic-controlled Senate will not even attempt to pass a budget. This wasn't the first choice of the Senate budget committee chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) who appears to have been pressured into his decision by Senate majority leader Harry Reid who has been insistent that he doesn't want a budget.

But Conrad also seems to have had his own difficulties getting other Democrats onboard as well:

You know the drill - so Drill, Baby, Drill!

For years, we've heard from liberals that women of America are being deliberately discrimated against in the form of lower salaries at their workplaces compared to men. Conservatives have responded that things aren't that simple since in many cases, women like more flexible hours and office arrangements. Undeterred, the left has harped on this point.

Perhaps it won't any more, though, now that it's been revealed that the Obama White House pays its female employees less than its male ones: