Rock, paper, scissors: Christie's beats Sotheby's

Christie's scissors cut Sotheby's paper, winning Christie's the right to auction off a $20+ million art collection. Seriously.

You can practice here in case you have any major business negotiations coming up.

Alan Dershowitz on the British boycott of Jewish Israeli academics

From Britain, with bigotry:

It's a good thing Israel has only to make peace with its Palestinian neighbors and not European university professors.

Plagiarism

Thanks to Michelle Malkin for the link in a piece yesterday on plagiarism. She links to articles on a number of celebrity plagiarists.

Sen. Tom Coburn plans lesson for Senate on fiscal restraint

This from an e-mail message from the Club for Growth's Pat Toomey:

Since income taxes are due today, we thought you could use some cheerful news on an otherwise awful day.

First, the House voted earlier this week to permanently repeal the dreaded Death Tax. With the gains made in the Senate last year, we've now got our best chance ever to pass this bill through the upper chamber so President Bush can finally sign it into law. Stay tuned...

Second, it appears the Senate may soon get a lesson from freshman Senator Tom Coburn on fiscal restraint (Coburn was elected last year with outstanding Club for Growth member support of over $1 million in donations).

In the days ahead, a large emergency military spending bill will be debated on in the Senate. Since this is a must-pass bill, many spendthrift senators are licking their chops at the opportunity to stuff it with egregious pork. Dr. Coburn is going to rightfully make a stink about this reckless behavior. As reported in Congress Daily, "Coburn said Monday to expect 'lots of fun' on the [Senate] floor..."

We can hardly wait...

I don't know much about Sen. Coburn, but I sure like his thinking on this issue.

Good news for readers of the Sunday NY Times

Per E & P via the Corner, Dowd is out and Brooks is in the expanded Sunday NY Times opinion pages.

Mo

Yankee closer Mariano Rivera has just blown his second save in two chances this season.

Arg.

A-Rod (who had earlier homered) made a big 9th-inning error; had he fielded the ball cleanly, Mariano likely would have successfully saved the game. And Mariano showed wildness that I never remember him showing in all his years in pinstripes.

If Mo is vincible, then so are the Yanks.

Sandy Berger's crime and (questionable) punishment

The Washington Times on Sandy Berger:

Martha Stewart went to jail for lying to federal investigators. But for lying after stealing highly classified documents from the National Archives -- in an apparent attempt to alter the historical record on terrorism, no less -- former Clinton national security adviser and Kerry campaign adviser Sandy Berger will get a small fine and slap on the wrist. He will pay $10,000 and get no jail time. His security clearance will be suspended until around the end of the Bush administration -- meaningless for a career Democrat like Mr. Berger. It makes us wonder who at the Department of Justice is responsible for letting such a serious offense go virtually unpunished.

(Via Instapundit.)

Why I will not be banking at HSBC

Details to follow. But they involve waiting to set up an account at the local branch for half an hour without being so much as acknowledged by a bank rep.

Econ Journal Watch and Dan Klein

You've got to like an academic publication which not only runs a regular feature called "Intellectual Tyranny of the Status Quo" but also links to this blog. (Check out the note on the bottom of page 25 of this article in the current issue.)

The journal is entitled Econ Journal Watch, and the entire current issue is available online here.

The editor is Dan Klein of Santa Clara University. Here are three reasons I am predisposed to like Klein:

• Klein is the author of a recent paper documenting the leftward tilt of the faculties at Stanford and Berkeley. From the abstract:

  The findings support the “one-party campus” conjecture. For UC-Berkeley, we found an overall Democrat:Republican ratio of 9.9:1. For Stanford, we found an overall D:R ratio of 7.6:1. Moreover, the breakdown by faculty rank shows that Republicans are an “endangered species” on the two campuses.

• Klein has exposed bias in the Social Science Citation Index® (SSCI), a database of scholarly literature used by social scientists. Thompson ISI, which maintains the index, purports that the SSCI

  [a]llows researchers to conduct comprehensive searches that uncover all the relevant information they need.

  However, in 2004 paper, Klein

  present[s] a variety of evidence of bias [in ths SSCI] in favor of journals of a social democratic orientation and against journals of a classical liberal orientation.

  In other words, the "comprehensive" database of scholarly literature may be biased to the left. And I suspect most of its users are oblivious.
  
  
• A list of Klein's writings contains a section entitled "Papers with a decidedly libertarian voice."

'Nough said.

Iraq. And Democrats.

Donald Lambro is optimistic about Iraq:

As for the terrorists in Iraq, they are clearly losing the war. The number of attacks seems to have shrunk. More terrorists have been killed during the past month or so as U.S. and Iraqi forces increasingly receive information from ordinary citizens about the insurgents' whereabouts. Islamist clerics are now more openly condemning the terrorists who have been killing Iraqis in a brutal attempt to regain power through terror and death.

The tide is clearly turning in Iraq. Freedom is working.

His conclusion:

The Democrats have been proven spectacularly wrong once again -- on one of the most pivotal national security issues of our time.