Greens are keen on other people making sacrifices, not so much for themselves. We all know about Al Gore, but here is another example. John Gormley is the leader of the Irish Green Party, and is also Minister for the Environment. He took a trip to Hay-on-Wye in Herefordshire, on the English - Welsh border. Rather than fly there, he made a big show of taking the ferry from Dublin to Holyhead in north Wales. He did not mention that he ordered a Mercedes limo all the way from London (about a five hour drive from London to Holyhead) to get to his destination, at a cost of 2200 euros, and then he flew back to Dublin from Cardiff. Details at http://www.tribune.ie/news/article/2009/oct/11/green-gormley-wheres-my-limo/

The Posner comments come from page xxix of his introduction to his book of Holmes's papers. I find them opaque, as in I can't tell whether Posner is approving or predicting. You never know with Posner what might come next.

For those of us without a local Trader Joe's, there is always http://www.shopinisrael.com, which links to swarms of online Israeli merchants. Once it directed me to www.israel-catalog.com, where I bought t-shirts from Hebrew and Tel-Aviv Universities. They work wonderfully. I wore the Hebrew University t-shirt to a faculty meeting the other day. One of the crazies from the Jew obsessed Palestine Solidarity Campaign was there, so I took a seat directly across from him. By the end of the meeting, he was red faced with rage. Absolutely made my day.

The correct link is to http://sandefur.typepad.com/freespace/2009/06/catos-foreign-policy-dont-speak-up-for-freedoms-defenders.html, not to the pizza place. There is an entertaining irony here. Sandefur's previous post mentions a piece of his in the Independent Review, put out by the Independent Institute, whose foreign policy guru, Ivan Eland, is more Cato than Cato, always managing to find excuses for oppressive regimes in Russia, China, and pretty much everywhere else, while denouncing Bush as Goebbels. Sigh.

You have no colleagues as dishonest and thuggish as Krugman? Consider yourself very lucky. Anyone who thinks thugs are rare in academic life has no experience with it. They are more like sand in the Sahara: nearly inescapable outside of a rare oasis.

She is an interesting writer, but her judgment is poor. Her enthusiasm for Obama was based on the supposed superior quality of his economic advisers. Obama had Larry Summers; McCain had John Taylor. I do not forget Robert Lucas's comment back when Summers was advising the Lithuanian government and Taylor was on the Council of Economic Advisors, to the effect that Summers advising Lithuania and Taylor advising America was the correct division of labor. It shows now.

Yes, Chicago has a football team, although it is not very good. Were I inclined to be snarky, I would have the same suspicions about the law school. Repeated offers of a tenure track position to Obama, who had published nothing and showed no intention of doing so, scream "we want faculty with dark skin", and hiring the thoroughly nasty Brian Leiter pretty much says it all.

A small note. The Irish Freedom Committee is an IRA group, what are called over here "dissident republicans". That means they oppose the official IRA and want to keep up the killings. The IRA were Nazi collaborators during WWII, a position they adhere to.