Incredibly, her supporters are also pointing out that pledged delegates are not, strictly speaking (of course), bound to vote as the voters they represent suggested. In essence, they are arguing that she does not need popular consent within her party to be its candidate is entitled to be her party's candidate, regardless of the voice of the voters in her party. No doubt a similar argument is in development for November.

On a completely unrelated note (I assure you) I was flipping away from the conclusion of an episode of HBO's superb John Adams that featured the spectacle of the delegates to the Continental Congress standing by as the Declaration of Independence was read for the first time.

A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Of course, its missing about 10 slides about the Federal Reserve failing to regulate any of this and, worse still, tossing gasoline on the fire with overly-loose monetary policy.

Update: By the way, while I'm on a bender anyway, think twice about buying Iams. I know, I know: it's PETA. But even a broken watch is right twice a day.

A few notable features:

1. Memphis falls hard and fast. I think that their Achilles Heel (terrible free-throw shooting) will catch up with them sooner rather than later.

2. Duke is in the Elite Eight. That may be generous. But then again, maybe it's not generous enough. But that is exactly the kind of sick trip Coach K, that acknowledged grandmaster of edge-work (careful Dean: soon he'll want to spoon with you), had programmed in from the start. This Duke team is better than what has been fielded in the past 2-3 years, but not as good as those fin-de-siecle squads K was fronting, or even those that took the court in the early years of this decade. So, while Duke sucks (that's a given) it is harder to tell just how badly this year.

3. No revenge for the righteous/UNC does not get to kick the Hoyas squah in the nuts-I just don't think they'll get past the Jayhawks.

4. Bruce Pearl gets a reprieve-I think it possible that Louisville will actually beat Tennessee, but the point is that I had to choose one of them to be the next victim.

5. Prepare yourself for LA Riots Part II: when UCLA goes down hard with fleeting glory in sight, those savages on the left coast will not take it well. The Crips, the Bloods and, worst of all, Lindsay "Marilyn for Trailer Trash" Lohan will be out that night trying to vent the most savage kind of vibes.

6. Prepare yourself for Chapel Hill Riots Part II: I have spent thousands on illegal fireworks from the Great State of South Carolina, and will expect to see some payoff from it.

A couple of out-of-town friends who've spent time here in the Southern Part of Heaven have been asking about precisely where last week's tragedy happened. Above is a photo of the very spot (below is a map pinpointing it: look for the little yellow figure). I drove by it the other day and based on the location of a pile of flowers, I suspect Eve Carson died near the mailboxes in the left-center of the photo.

If you visit the spot it is very hard to believe that what happened there did indeed occur. It is such a pretty and peaceful little corner of the world.

I have a feeling that this one is going to leave a lingering scar on Chapel Hill.

Has anyone thought about somehow collecting the sweet tears of the Cameron Crazies envy and diverting it into the local reservoirs?

I like that sign "Coach K has 800 more wins than Tyler"...

Yeah, well, last night Tyler got just a little bit closer.

I'll give Duke this though: they are fundmentally a lot better than some of the teams ranked ahead of them (eg Memphis).

By the logic that kept her in the race thus far, I now find it highly unlikely that Hillary will pull out ahead of the convention. Even if Obama continues to slowly build his delegate lead, Hillary will put everything on winning super delegates and getting the Michigan and Florida delegates seated. After all, there is always that mathematical possibility.

Well, maybe its about time: its been a good 40 years since we had a 1968 in the Democratic Party. After all, what's worth doing is worth doing disastrously.

Needless to say, a shocking image like this has provoked a range of often emotional responses. I was personally disgusted by the video and hope that, if it is authentic, the Marine pictured in it is punished as severely as possible. I have a hard time accepting the oft-advanced argument that this is simply an inevitable product of the violent conditioning that is war: I think that even those truly inured to violence and brutality still do not engage in gratuitous malice. No, I suspect something else is going on here: this guy probably lives at the intersection between an anti-social personality type and a sadist.

Equally outrageous, however, has been the the public dissemination by various blogs of the private identifying information for an individual suspected of being the Marine in the video (the video ends with a soldier off-camera possibly identifying the offending Marine as "Motari", which has led to this individual with the same surname being advanced as a suspect), typically accompanied by calls essentially for a vigilante response.

For excellent examples, see "Crime and Federalism", the video link above or, even better still, Mir1, which actually posts his home address and number.

As upsetting as the video images are to me, am I the only one who finds this electronic lynch mob rush to judgment a bit sickening as well? WE DON'T EVEN KNOW FOR CERTAIN WHO IS IN THAT VIDEO, WHERE IT WAS ACTUALLY SHOT, ETC. Although my personal sense is that it probably is real, the fact is that anyone with access to am Army-Navy store, some airsoft weapons and a desert environment could have shot it. And all we have is some brief mention of one name (is it actually the Motari referred to on the video? Is Motari the one throwing the dog, or a third Marine off camera (you can't be certain from the video)? Did he say Motari? Moteri? Motarrey?) to go on ( and have the good people at Mir1 not noticed that the surname in the address they provide does not even match that of the individual accused of being the Marine in the video?)

But don't lose hope. The author of "Crime and Federalism" offers the following sage advice:

Others have noted, and I agree, that we must await confirmation of the puppy killer's identity before taking further action. The matter is still under investigation, and we need to confirm identities. Once we have confirmation, we should do everything legally within our power to make the killer's life a living Hell. But we must await confirmation before taking further action.

Although he has been somewhat more careful than many of those commenting in blog postings about this incident by adding the qualifier "legally", I am still left with the following question: who the the hell empowered this guy, or any of the other individuals making calls for legal (or, in many cases, blatantly illegal) action against this individual? Who do you think you are, and can you explain to me why it is that you seem to think that the blogosphere is a more acceptable staging ground for vigilantism than the streets? When did this become acceptable? We are a society with rules and individuals and institutions lawfully empowered to enforce those rules. Why is it acceptable in the blogosphere for some people essentially to deputize themselves?

In the meantime, enjoy:

In other news, that cheeky little chap Gary B. Trudeau and I are in agreement for the first time:

postscript: Don't bother asking me how I could spend three decades reading and enjoying Trudeau's stuff yet disagreeing with him about most of the large and small points .... even I can't answer that question.

Update:

The NY Times provided the following image of the Great One at work:

Now that's what I call an office.

I must admit that in this regard Buckley and I can even call Al Gore a Fellow Traveler:

In other news, I am asking some faithful reader to kill me. This week I made the colossal error of watching Hotel Chevalier on iTunes. This short by Wes Anderson starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman is supposed to serve as a kind of prequel to his new film, The Darjeeling Limited. The short is garnering rave reviews. I'm not really sure why. Yes, it is interesting. But Oscar worthy (as some critics have suggested)?? I am convinced that the main reason it has proven so popular with the peasants is that is contains Natalie Portman's first nude scene (for those drawn to such things, I can report that it is a big snooze not worth the effort it takes to download the thing). I'll probably go see The Darjeeling Limited as well, but based on what I've seen and read of it, I am, in the wake of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, beginning to wonder if Anderson's whole game plan is to keep making Rushmore and The Royal Tenanbaums over and over (just spliced and diced a little differently each time).

Anyway, back to killing me: there is a song in Hotel Chevalier which I just cannot get out of my head: Peter Sarstedt's Where Do You Go To (My Lovely). Please kill me and make the insipid voice stop. This has happened once before (with Abba's Dancing Queen) and the nightmare only ended then when the Good Rabbi staged an intervention to force me back onto drugs.

This morning on CNN they really covered the story, offering all kinds of outraged views (once again preserving their reputation as a logic-free salon), from that of an attorney general looking into possible ticket-scalping charges ("When you allow the hijacking of the market, it's literally the worst of both worlds. You get charged too much, and there's no access for the locals," said Jay Nixon, Missouri's borderline-retarded attorney general.), to one of the instant intellectual ambulance chasers the 24-hour networks keep on retainer by the battalion (who says we award too many PhDs??) who explained that the real crime here is that "the bulk of the revenues won't be going to the real artist here" (I guess she's concerned that Miley and Billy Ray will only be able to afford a personal Boeing 787 without the burled walnut interior trim) to the parent of a little girl in the target demographic but priced out of the Hannah Montana concert market who explained how all of this sends the wrong message to kids (that you can get "whatever you want").

Zeroing on the last point, I'd say the sentiments of that mother betray everything wrong with today's parents. The lesson of this experience is the exact opposite of what she suggests: it is that the daughter can't get everything she wants. And that isn't wrong. It's healthy. You are not entitled to everything you want at an accessible price. This is a world of scarcity and, in the face of that, everyone has to make choices. Her words serve as a commentary on how badly this woman, like millions of parents in her cohort, has indulged every whim of her daughter to the point where even she as a parent can no longer correctly tell the difference between a circumstance that teaches her daughter she can have anything she wants and one which teaches her that she can't have everything she wants.

Another parent explained "I feel like they are ripping off children. I'm sure there are parents out there would pay that much. But the rest of us shouldn't be penalized for that." Penalized for what? Reality? Maybe Ferrari should be penalized for not making their cars more accessible. Who do I write to about the soaring price of Bordeauxs and Burgundies?

But I digress. What is really interesting about the Hannah Montana story is the degree to which it reveals an old and (sometimes tragically) misguided American view of fairness and equity in a nation otherwise completely resigned to the market system. This situation (ticket scalping in this case, price gouging in the aftermath of a disaster) is one that always sparks outrage. But here is the problem: scalpers and gougers aren't causing a bad situation. The prices they set merely reflect reality: that the scalped/gouged item is SCARCE. When you act as a society to control their price setting behavior, you are basically legally declaring your outrage with reality. For instance, these scalpers are able to do what they are doing because Hannah Montana tickets are highly sought after and the initial sellers probably set the price of them far below equilibrium. The high prices reflect the fact that millions of parents want their daughters to attend a concert on a tour with perhaps tens of thousands of seats.

In this instance, the idiocy of the vox populi (Cato would be disappointed to find that the bleating plebs have not been consigned to the dustbin of history) and efforts of politicians/lawyers/power whores to translate that outrage into legal action is comical. In the case of, for instance, efforts to stop price gouging after a storm, they are more often than not tragic. High prices signal scarcity. In the wake of a hurricane, $500 hammers tell arbitragers to get hammers to the scene as quickly as possible: they are fetching a dear price. But that is just the market's way of saying they are scarce at the scene of the disaster. Muting that signal simply means that our market will not direct sufficient resources to the scene quickly enough.

In the meantime, there is hope for all of the devastated 12 year olds out there: maybe the brokers set the prices too high. Arbitragers do make mistakes. But then again maybe not. In any case, they will adjust them correctly: they understand the laws of supply and demand. They understand reality.

You can't simply pretend reality away and you shouldn't expect your government to do so either. It's a terrible message to send your kids or a city reeling in the aftermath of tragedy.

But why is that important? Well, it turns out that according to Jewish law, 5768 is, as a seventh year, a shmita. Shmita years are supposed to be kind of like agricultural sabbaticals: the land is to lie fallow and the people are to be inactive upon it, all can access whatever fruits such land produces and, at the end of the year, all debts are canceled. As Exodus 23:10-11 explains:

Six years you shall sow your land and gather in its produce, but the seventh year you shall let it rest and lie fallow, that the poor of your people may eat; and what they leave, the beasts of the field may eat. In like manner you shall do with your vineyard and your olive grove.

I am convinced that Jews have the institution of shmita to remind themselves every so often of what we could all expect from a Dennis Kucinich Presidency.

Anyway, this has, unsurprisingly, yielded some creative loopholes, and the article dwells on one calledheter mechira by which Jews can keep the wheels of production spinning by temporarily selling their land to non-Jews. Mix in a religious disagreement on the idea of heter mechira (and if I, as a wandering wayward Gentile, may put my own two cents on the thing: if you are willing to countenance such legal gimmickry, you might as well just go ahead and ignore the Bible), a blockade on Gaza (the traditional supply safety valve for shmita in Israel), etc. and you have a really fascinating mess.

Of course, none of this will really faze the Good Rabbi: you learn to prioritize when you live on the lam.

So, I'm a wreck. I have just witnessed one of the most agonizing football games in history.

The Carolina Panthers ultimately prevailed in a see-saw affair, bringing down the Rams after two quarters (two quarters!!) of overtime. Each team was at one point or another saved only by a gross miscarriage of football by the other. Will any amount of Grey Goose return my blood gases to normal and restore my equilibrium? And I'm not the only one: from his sideline dispatches it was clear that Tony Siragusa was about to blow a head gasket. I think his blood pressure must have been roughly 457 over 321 by the end.

But now my mind drifts to other sad affairs. The Patriots are playing as well, and I'm reminded of my old friend and classmate Vijay Bhagavan. Vijay was a fat, wonderful cannonball of a guy. A son of the Ganges and the Charles, he was perhaps the most devoted of Pats fans. Seven years ago Vijay died. Such a young death was a poignant reminder of the ruthlessness of Nature.

Memory is strange, and betrays more than it serves. But I don't think I'll ever forget Vijay's infectious laugh. Or his generous spirit: he was one of those rare people who exude only the highest caliber Mana. This was a man who sported one of the most epic beards (and bellies) of the American Century, and yes, his head was always covered by a Pats cap. I remember once asking Vijay if he could ever reverse his ancestor's journey and return to India. "Oh yeah. Absolutely. No problem. As long as it's Boston" he said with a mysterious brilliance that was Vijay's, and Vijay's alone. As unpretentious and down to earth a guy as you'll find, it was only after his death that I learned he was from a really high caste.

After his death the Pats took it all (another unforgettable spectacle, but that is a game I should have addressed years ago). I remember sitting on my couch in the strange darkness that followed the Patriots Super Bowl win. I raised a glass or two (or ten) of...was it Knob Creek?... to Vijay, who I knew was up there somewhere in the Sweet Hereafter, watching his boys. And in that darkness, the weirdness set in: a flood of memories that had been set aside for years burst through. There I sat, getting ripped with a ghost, sharing in the glory of a victory that was his, after all.

Certainly his death resonated far and wide. To begin with, Boston Market saw its sales plunge. For me, Vijay's death represented a nasty turning point in grad school. After that, the whole thing became a rather unpleasant gig. Maybe because he was gone. Maybe he had helped to take the edge off of what had always been a rough ride. Then again, maybe not. But now that Long March is over, and Vijay looms large in my mind on this weird night.

And the Pats are in the mix again. It doesn't matter who emerges from the Colts-Chiefs game tommorrow (and for my money, it'll be the oh-so-smooth Peyton Manning Experience in the end). In either case, they won't take the Pats, not at home. Right now I'd rather take on a Waffen SS Panzer division than the Pats at home.

At the risk of expulsion from my own home (no, no: even then I'm far too valuable to my wife...I think), I'm gonna back them against the Panthers, if it ever comes to it. It's my salute to Veejay, who I will miss for the rest of my life. He still works through me, and in strange ways. Patriots vincit omnia, my brother, wherever you may be.