randpaulcreepI don’t know whether the SEC was more obnoxious when they were full of themselves for winning championships, or when they whine when they don’t.

It has been making the news lately, and here’s an article on what makes Nebraska’s legislature different.

In the UK, Nick Cohen says Labour doesn’t realize why it lost, and in Alberta, people – such as myself – may be underestimating the NDP victory.

UAB Football program, terminated last year sparking a lot of anger, is coming back. It has a tough road ahead of it, and ifthis is true the university itself as it exists may be doomed.

Former Green Bay Packers and Texas A&M football coach Mike Sherman has taken a new job… at a Massachusetts high school.

St. Thomas University has a pitcher who weighs in at three-hundred pounds.

HBCUs are having a lot of trouble meeting NCAA academic requirements.

The Connecticut Huskies went 2-10 last year, with its only FBS-level victory against UCF. So what they did they do? They made UCF a rival and gave themselves a trophy. UCF is scratching its head, but UConn says that UCF’s permission is not necessary in the declaration of a rivalry. The two schools have played each other three times.

Friend of Hit Coffee Abel Keogh is quoted in this story about sex and the grieving widower.

Vice argues that the next president of FIFA should be… Mitt Romney, but Mark Thompson tweets explanations as to why that can’t happen.

The Cameron government wants to ban pleasure. Well, not quite, but they’re drafting some laws so broad that it’s hard to tell.

Will Wilkinson defends Rick Perry’s glasses. I still say Jeb Bush did a better job picking glasses out than Perry’s wife did.

Rick Perry is kicking off his presidential campaign with a BBQ. Though I hope not to be in a position to vote for Perry or Jindal, I might want to fly down and attend the latter’s kickoff if it includes a crawfish boil.

Robert Mann explains why Bobby Jindal is so unpopular, and Tunku Varadarajan explains his uncomfortable relationship with his race.

As a general advocate of school choice Nevada’s bill makes me nervous in the same way that some of the aggressive minimum wage increases should make advocates nervous.


Category: Newsroom

About the Author


15 Responses to Linkluster San Marino

  1. Oscar Gordon says:

    Not sure if a unicameral could work at the national level, but it’s interesting to think about.

    I wonder if such a thing existed at the national level, if our voting habits would change?

    • trumwill says:

      Not sure what you mean by the question.

      I think unicameral could work, if we were willing to jettison the composition of either the House or (more likely) the Senate. Except that the senate provides more states with overrepresentation than underrepresentation, which makes it a non-starter. So I think nationally, a bicameral system makes more sense.

      At the state level, though, I think that states need to either (a) go unicameral or (b) reporpose the upper house into a proportional representation model.

      • Of course, there’s my favorite hobby horse of not changing the upper house, but just changing its powers.

        • trumwill says:

          It’s possible. Germany has a democratically lumpy upper house (though not as lumpy as ours) with a different and more limited set of powers. It’s a bit different than ours, though, in that they serve at the pleasure of the state (lander) government. As in, not just elected by the legislature like ours used to be, but also able to be recalled.

    • Michael Cain says:

      As lots and lots of pieces published since the veto override on the death penalty have pointed out, some of the other aspects of the Nebraska legislature are probably as important as the single-chamber part.

      Non-partisan. No one would argue that the parties are powerless, but some of their most powerful tools are at least blunted. There’s no party whip with a say in office assignments. There’s no majority/minority leader with a say in committee assignments. Never a “party caucus” meeting. Primaries for the unicameral are non-partisan, with the two candidates who receive the most votes put on the ballot in the general. Incumbents are put on the primary ballot automatically, unless they’re term-limited or indicate they do not with to run for re-election; threats to “primary” an incumbent are largely empty.

      Every bill gets an honest committee hearing. It’s actually broader than that. In most legislative bodies, the House Speaker or the Senate President (almost always selected in a partisan fashion) have sole authority for assigning bills to committee. In Nebraska, a nine-member Reference Committee assigns bills to standing committees. Each bill is guaranteed a full hearing in the standing committee. Bills passed by committee are largely guaranteed to reach the floor, unless the original sponsor agrees to let it die. It’s possible to kill off bills along de facto party lines, but it’s much harder to do.

      I think getting those changes made — even though they could presumably be statutory rather than requiring an amendment — would be almost as hard. An interesting thought exercise is to imagine how different John Boehner’s job would be if the US House did operate along those lines.

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    By habits, I mean if national legislators were less beholden to party leadership, would we be more inclined to look at the candidate instead of the party they align with?

    • trumwill says:

      Gotcha. It’s possible. My guess is though that it would look pretty similar to what we have now, though, with the most important vote of a legislator being who they choose for Leader.

  3. Peter says:

    I admit to being puzzled by the whole Alabama thing. If the main campus is ranked poorly among research universities, adding thousands of students from closed branch campuses isn’t going to improve matters. Funds that might be spent on academic improvements instead will have to go toward expanding facilities to handle the huge influx of transfer students.

    • trumwill says:

      The goal is to increase the number of out-of-state students. But if the percentage of students that are out-of-state or international is too high, it gets bad publicity. So bringing in more in-state student lets them bring in more out-of-state and international ones, who bring in more money.

      It’s not that the Birmingham and Huntsville students would themselves bring in much more money, but that they clear the way to bring in more students who do.

      Not sure how true that is, but that’s the idea.

  4. Mike Hunt Ray Rice says:

    NJIT is independent no more. They will be joining the Atlantic Sun next year.

    The Atlantic Sun has enjoyed great success in the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament of late. Mercer defeated Duke last year, while Florida Gulf Coast made it to the Sweet 16 two years ago with wins over Georgetown and San Diego State.

  5. Mike Hunt Ray Rice says:

    The next president of FIFA should be Prince Ali.

  6. Mike Hunt Ray Rice says:

    St. Thomas University … pitcher … three-hundred pounds.

    He doesn’t weigh anywhere near 300 pounds, unless his uniform is extremely unflattering.

  7. trumwill says:

    At 6’2, I would have guessed between 300-325.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

If you are interested in subscribing to new post notifications,
please enter your email address on this page.