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Stuart Taylor lets fly at the left in the Academy.

… the cancerous spread of ideologically eccentric, intellectually shoddy, phony-diversity-obsessed fanaticism among university faculties and administrators is far, far worse and more inexorable than most alumni, parents, and trustees suspect.

Another hyperbolic, conservative rant about liberals in academia? Perhaps I should confess my biases. I do dislike extremism of the Left and of the Right. But I have never been conservative enough to vote for a Republican presidential nominee. And the academics whose growing power and abuses of power concern me are far to the left of almost all congressional Democrats.

They are also ruthless in blocking appointment of professors whose views they don’t like; are eager to censor such views; and in many cases are determined to push their own political views on students, who have few reality checks in their course material and are often too innocent of the world to understand when they are being fed fatuous tripe. …

… Academia’s “diversity” obsession is founded on hostility to diversity of opinion. To most academics, “diversity” is a code word for systematic preference of minorities and women over white males in all walks of life. The preferred groups include many faculty members who are manifestly unqualified for their positions and whose websites read like a “Saturday Night Live” parody of wacky professors. …

WaPo op-ed commends the changes in crack cocaine sentencing guidelines and suggests retroactivity.

Today the United States Sentencing Commission holds a hearing on its recent decision to reduce the disparity in federal sentencing guidelines for crack and powder cocaine offenses. As a former federal judge and chairman of the federal judiciary’s Criminal Law Committee, I believe the change in guidelines was long overdue, and, to maximize its impact as an important first step toward restoring the credibility of federal drug sentences, it should be applied retroactively. …

Mark Steyn with a Corner post that stirs up a lot of stuff here at Pickings.

Mark linked to this column by Dennis Prager about the language of the left.

The current issue of Rolling Stone magazine, its special 40th anniversary issue, reveals almost all one needs to know about the current state of the cultural left. The issue features interviews with people Rolling Stone considers to be America’s leading cultural and political figures — such as Al Gore, Jon Stewart, Bruce Springsteen, Cornel West, Paul Krugman, Kanye West, Bill Maher and George Clooney, among many others.

It brings me no pleasure to say that, with few exceptions, the interviews reveal a superficiality and contempt for cultural norms (as evidenced by the ubiquity of curse words) that should scare anyone who believes that these people have influence on American life.

First, the constant use of expletives. …

Which led to another Steyn Corner post, and then a post from Gateway Pundit which reported on a blog that actually surveyed the profanity of left and right blogs. Using as a standard of measure, George Carlin’s “seven words.” “They must be reeeeallllly baaaaad!!!!!!!”

This is what happened when the students at News Buckit compared nutroots profanity with profanity on the right:

And this is what I found, using what I deemed — through a mix of TTLB and 2006′s Weblog Award lists — to be the 18 biggest Lefty blogs, and 22 biggest Righty blogs. (Not counting this one. :)) I couldn’t account for the 6-month time period, and I even gave the Lefty blogs a 4 blog advantage. But it didn’t make much of a difference.

So how much more does the Left use Carlin’s “seven words” versus the Right?

According to my calculations, try somewhere in the range of 18-to-1.

Here are the data tables. …

We get all done with that, and WSJ has a Peter Berkowitz column on Bush hatred.

Hating the president is almost as old as the republic itself. The people, or various factions among them, have indulged in Clinton hatred, Reagan hatred, Nixon hatred, LBJ hatred, FDR hatred, Lincoln hatred, and John Adams hatred, to mention only the more extravagant hatreds that we Americans have conceived for our presidents.

But Bush hatred is different. It’s not that this time members of the intellectual class have been swept away by passion and become votaries of anger and loathing. Alas, intellectuals have always been prone to employ their learning and fine words to whip up resentment and demonize the competition. Bush hatred, however, is distinguished by the pride intellectuals have taken in their hatred, openly endorsing it as a virtue and enthusiastically proclaiming that their hatred is not only a rational response to the president and his administration but a mark of good moral hygiene. …

… Many [Bush haters] seem not to have considered that in 2000 it was Al Gore who shifted the election controversy to the courts by filing a lawsuit challenging decisions made by local Florida county election supervisors. Nor [have many of them taken] into account that between the Florida Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, 10 of 16 higher court judges–five of whom were Democratic appointees–found equal protection flaws with the recount scheme ordered by the intermediate Florida court. And they did not appear to have pondered Judge Richard Posner’s sensible observation, much less themselves sensibly observe, that while indeed it was strange to have the U.S. Supreme Court decide a presidential election, it would have been even stranger for the election to have been decided by the Florida Supreme Court.

Walter Williams writes about the tax burden and turns up scary numbers.

… What about any argument suggesting that the burden of taxes have been shifted to the poor? The bottom 50 percent, earning $30,000 or less, paid 3 percent of total federal income taxes. In 1999, they paid 4 percent. Congressmen know all of this, but they attempt to hoodwink the average American who doesn’t.

The fact that there are so many American earners who have little or no financial stake in our country poses a serious political problem. The Tax Foundation estimates that 41 percent of whites, 56 percent of blacks, 59 percent of American Indian and Aleut Eskimo and 40 percent Asian and Pacific Islanders had no 2004 federal income tax liability. The study concluded, “When all of the dependents of these income-producing households are counted, there are roughly 122 million Americans — 44 percent of the U.S. population — who are outside of the federal income tax system.” These people represent a natural constituency for big-spending politicians. In other words, if you have little or no financial stake in America, what do you care about the cost of massive federal spending programs? …

Scott Adams of Dilbert fame, was the subject of a profile in last Sunday’s business section of Times, YUK.

THIS is yet another story about a clueless but obtrusive boss — the kind of meddlesome manager you might laugh at in the panels of “Dilbert,” the daily comic strip. …

… “THE most ineffective workers are systematically moved to the place where they can do the least damage: management.” …

… “THE purpose of a plan is to disguise the fact that you have no idea what you should be doing.” …

… He adds that running a restaurant complements his life nicely. “It’s a source of stress, but it adds such richness and happiness to my life,” he says. “The problem with being a cartoonist is that if you don’t have someplace else to go, your life just gets so small.”

At the very least, Scott Adams is getting fresh insight into Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss