Prof. Massey, You've said: "a union is not bargaining for a greater share of the revenue produced by economic activity; it is bargaining for a greater share of revenue that is obtained by force of law – taxation" How is this different from a private corporation, such as a defense contractor, that receives billions of dollars in government contracts before/after contributing heavily to election campaigns?

I would respectfully submit that a good rule of thumb for any sitting president would be to do the opposite of whatever Maureen Dowd advises.

"puts the visual center of gravity squarely on her crotch." Perhaps that just where _your_ gaze was drawn to. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Considering every Super Lawyer magazine I've ever looked at is written almost exclusively in English, is the ranking of law schools based on which schools offer instruction in English?

Why would you say that these homes are "lost"? They're still there, just in the process of being sold to people who (presumably) aren't as financially reckless as the last people who owned them.

"But Hasan, in addition to being in contact with Al Qaeda affiliated radicals and shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he mowed down his victims, he had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, "repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers," was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and publicly called for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, talking "about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire."" Well, it appears that you have combed through the past few days of press coverage to find "facts" consistent with your opinion. Given your apparent willingness to believe unsourced and unverified newspaper reports, I guess you were probably quite shocked when it was revealed that Hasan was not dead and that he was not accompanied by two other shooters. Both of those things had been reported as fact after the shooting. And, if shouting "Allah Akbar" while shooting folks makes one an "ideological extremist" then I guess you would agree that most actors in porn movies are devout Christians, since they seem to say "Oh God" an awful lot. Okay, just having some fun with you there. You choose to view this shooting as the result of "ideological extremism". People who favor gun control state that it would not have happened but for easy access to semi-automatic weapons. Their arguments are as valid as yours. But the danger of being driven by a desire to shoehorn reality into whatever box defines your ideology is that you run the risk of distorting reality. Look there are tens, if not hundreds of millions of people around the world who think that the US is the Great Satan, that people should be stoned for various offenses, etc. Just like the are lots of Americans who think that "abortion is murder." The real question is why do some people choose to act on these views the way Hasan did and the way that people who shoot doctors do? Sure, you can just say that they are ideological extremists - but that is just the beginning of the inquiry.

"Denying the obvious--that Hasan had adopted an ideology of Islamic extremism that motivated him to kill 13 people..." That statement says much about your reflexive worldview but really doesn't supply any reliable information about Hasan. He wasn't a sudden convert to Islam - he'd been attending Mosques for years. On the other hand, he recently did learn that he was to be sent overseas and protested going. Why, exactly, do you believe that his "ideology of Islamic extremism" motivated him any more than ordinary, run-of-the-mill nutjob anger? Also, Timothy McVeigh identified himself as a Patriot and a Christian. Do you believe that the "ideology of Christian extremism" or the "ideology of extreme Patriotism" motivated him? Unfortunately, whenever there is a tragedly like this, intellectual hacks start lining up to pick out whatever they disliked about the shooter as "the cause." Following the VA Tech slaughter, anti-immigration nuts stepped up to whinge about the shooter being of Asian ancestry. Then, as now, the anti-gun folks want to talk about how the shooting is the fault of easy access to guns. And, finally, even if Hasan someday does give a statement averring "I did this because of my Muslim faith" that really wouldn't mean anything because I would submit to you that he did it because he is unbalanced and evil. If a shooter says, "I shot up the preschool because the my Martian overlords told me to" one wouldn't lay the blame at the foot of the Martian overlords - you would just say the shooter is nuts. (That is, unless you have a track record of nursing grievances against Martian overlords.)

Another anecdote, I fell into a river with a Canon 870 IS buttoned in my shirt pocket. I swam back over to the shore - about 30 or 45 seconds, I'd guess. Camera worked fine the next day and has continued to work for 18 months.

You wrote: "The typical Bedouin soldier carried no more than a rifle, a hundred rounds of ammunition, forty-five pounds of flour, and a pint of drinking water, which meant that he could travel as much as a hundred and ten miles a day across the desert, even in summer." The idea that some could travel 110 miles a day through the desert with only a pint of water seems a bit far fetched, don't your think. Did you check this (and other factual assertions) in your article?