Everything Karl Lagerfeld hates. Sound example:

“I hate rich people when they try to be communists or socialists. I think it’s obscene.”

1919 Soviet Poster: “Protect Petrograd!”

James Taranto explains the ironies implicit in Jonathan Chait’s recent assumption of the mantle of defender of freedom of thought against the leftist forces of Political Correctness in his article in New York magazine. Chait has himself played the PC card against conservatives far too many times. And then Taranto comes up with the best line of the week:

The obvious thing to say about Jonathan Chait’s battle against the left is that we’re rooting for casualties.

The kind of Chalie Hebdo image some people won’t publish.

The Washington Post gleefully pounces on the weasels.

Only two weeks after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg released a strongly worded #JeSuisCharlie statement on the importance of free speech, Facebook has agreed to censor images of the prophet Muhammad in Turkey — including the very type of image that precipitated the Charlie Hebdo attack.

It’s an illustration, perhaps, of how extremely complicated and nuanced issues of online speech really are. It’s also conclusive proof of what many tech critics said of Zuckerberg’s free-speech declaration at the time: Sweeping promises are all well and good, but Facebook’s record doesn’t entirely back it up.

Just this December, Facebook agreed to censor the page of Russia’s leading Putin critic, Alexei Navalny, at the request of Russian Internet regulators. (It is a sign, the Post’s Michael Birnbaum wrote from Moscow, of “new limits on Facebook’s ability to serve as a platform for political opposition movements.”) Critics have previously accused the site of taking down pages tied to dissidents in Syria and China; the International Campaign for Tibet is currently circulating a petition against alleged Facebook censorship, which has been signed more than 20,000 times.

While Facebook doesn’t technically operate in China, it has made several recent overtures to Chinese politicians and Internet regulators — overtures that signal, if tacitly, an interest in bringing a (highly censored) Facebook to China’s 648 million Internet-users.

Hat tip to Jose Guardia.

Liam Neeson uses guns a lot in the Taken films, but he doesn’t think you should be allowed to own one.

HuffPo:

Speaking at the ‘Taken 3’ press conference in Dubai on Monday, the Irish-born star of ‘Schindler’s List’, who once again plays Bryan Mills in the final film of the trilogy, responded to a question about the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris last week, which he linked to gun violence in the US.

“There are too many fucking guns out there, especially in America,” said the 62-year-old. “I think the population is, like, 320 million? There are over 300 million guns. Privately owned, in America. I think it’s a fucking disgrace. Every week now we’re picking up a newspaper and seeing, ‘Yet another few kids have been killed in schools.’”

Reported by the Washington Post, Neeson added that there is a distinction between the violence of the movies and reality.

He said: “A character like Bryan Mills going out with guns and taking revenge: it’s fantasy. It’s in the movies, you know? I think it can give people a great release from stresses in life and all the rest of it, you know what I mean? It doesn’t mean they’re all going to go out and go, ‘Yeah, let’s get a gun!’”

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Holier-than-thou Hollywood celebrities have been making millions from portraying armed heroes in movies, then taking public stands in real life in support of gun control, and they’ve gotten away with it. Except this time.

PARA USA, the company that rented the guns used by Neeson in “Taken 3” (2014), his latest action film, has responded to the movie star’s recent anti-gun, anti-Second Amendment remarks by stating publicly that they will no longer be providing the weapons for his cinematic fantasy roles.

Combined living-dining room of Chelsea Clinton’s block-long, Gramercy Park apartment.

Chelsea Clinton, who got paid $26,000 a minute by NBC, recently informed America that she doesn’t really care about money.

“It is frustrating, because who wants to grow up and follow their parents?” admits Chelsea. “I’ve tried really hard to care about things that were very different from my parents. I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t. That wasn’t the metric of success I wanted in my life. I’ve talked about this to my friends who are doctors and whose parents are doctors, or who are lawyers and their parents are lawyers. It’s a funny thing to realise I feel called to this work both as a daughter and also as someone who believes I have contributions to make.”

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Which posturing not surprisingly provoked Elizabeth Scalia (“The Anchoress”) to put the spoiled young woman firmly in her place.

Dear Chelsea;

Stop. Just…stop it.

Do not follow in your parent’s footsteps and try to convince the world that money means nothing to you. Money never means “nothing” to the people who cannot stop talking about it, and between your poor “not truly well off” mother, and your dad who is forever telling us that he’s happy to be a rich guy paying rich guy taxes, and now this…just stop it.

You tried really hard to care about money? And naturally you couldn’t because no good or noble person actually does that? Naturally, only greedy, vulgar people would care about money. I wonder who they might be? And do they know how offensive they are?

Come to think of it, I might know some of them, and I can hear them grumbling a bit at the moment, can you? Listen…cock your ear over here, away from Nobu, and listen to that single mom:

“She’d bloody well care about money if every time the gas and food prices go up it’s another supper of macaroni and cheese for us!”

Maybe, from your $10 million dollar pad in Gramercy Park you can hear the young couple weighed down with college debt: “She’d freaking care about money if she was living in her mom’s basement while trying to find a real job and carrying $45,000 in college loans.”

Perhaps on your way to the Hamptons this summer you can lean out — but not if you’re taking a chopper, of course — and hear the family that will be stay-cationing it for the fourth year in a row, because the “recovery summer” hasn’t reached them yet. You should be able to hear them, because the grumbling is getting pretty loud in those neighborhoods.

When you mewl in blissful ignorance about trying “really hard to care about money” all you do is emphasize that money worries are a non-issue for you. You insult every man and woman who are forced to “care about money” as they struggle to pay their bills and sacrifice so their kids can join a baseball league or take a dance class (like you did); you diss everyone who is forced to “care about money” because they haven’t had a raise in a couple of years, though costs keep rising — or because they are retired and aren’t seeing the interest income they’d planned on, and so the house is falling into disrepair, and they can’t sell it because young couples weighed down with student loans aren’t buying those fixer-uppers the way they used to.

Just stop it.

No one minds your being rich, but have a little class about it. Don’t sit in your ivory tower — justifiably excited to be expecting the best-connected-baby in the world, with access to the finest doctors and no worries about what sort of school environment or teachers your child will have to endure — and suggest that none of it matters, as though you’d be just as happy living in a garage apartment next to 7-11 and with no immediate plans to board a private jet.

You think it makes you sound humble, but it really makes you sound ungrateful. You think it makes you seem down-to-earth, but it only emphasizes the rarity of your air. …

[W]ith all due respect, lady, gain some self-awareness; understand what has been handed to you through very little effort of your own. Before you talk about how much you can’t bring yourself to care about money, why don’t you…check your extraordinary .0000001% of the .0001% privilege.

Same Sex Marriage, in the typical way culture war victories are won, is on the way to becoming the law of the land by the well-worn route of advocacy by a left-wing avante-garde, followed by conversion into a class indicator by the community of fashion, with a final victory effected by legislation from the judicial bench.

When the powers-that-be at Mozilla proceeded to defenestrate newly-appointed CEO Brendan Eich for the thought crime of having previously donated $1000 in support of Proposition 8, it all began getting a bit too heavy-handed for Andrew Sullivan, the formerly conservative Limey poof who more or less invented the notion of Gay Marriage, who quickly editorialized against black listing dissenters.

Having, somewhat unexpectedly, found themselves effectively getting their way, bursting through ineffective opposition to obtain complete control of the levers and handles allowing revolutionary alteration of the basic foundation of civilization, being now able to pillage, loot, vandalize, and profane at will the sacred inner sanctum of human society, the more reflective fashionistas are disposed to be gracious in their victory.

The rural paganes, it was recently proposed in a manifesto from liberaltarians (and Mr. Sullivan) ought to be accorded the privilege of grumbling, without penalty!

Merina Smith, at Ricochet, finds the condescension of the victors a little hard to take. And she’s perfectly correct. A massive propaganda wave of slogans, followed by a series of judicial coup d’etats is really not the same thing as “winning a debate.”

It is admirable that the well-respected signatories are calling for tolerance, but I am less than impressed with their statement. First, they repeat that deceptive little slogan “marriage equality” in a celebratory way, as if it really explained or illuminated anything. Can these smart people be unaware that equality simply means treating like things alike? The question, which has never been answered satisfactorily by anyone on that side of the debate, is what is the significance of the differences, particularly for children? Might there be a good reason why sexual unions that produce children should be treated differently than those that can’t? That nasty little question-begging slogan ”marriage equality” has in fact been a means of preventing discussion about the real issues at stake.

I do like their next point, that diversity is the natural consequence of liberty. They also say that this entails paying serious attention to the arguments of those they oppose. That’s good. Would that they would do so.

But since they assert unequivocally throughout the piece that they all support redefining marriage and are certain that this course is correct — without ever acknowledging that there might be some good reasons that marriage has always been limited to connecting males and females — one has to doubt that they have taken their opposition seriously, especially when they claim that “free speech created the social space for us to criticize and demolish the arguments against gay marriage and LGBT equality.” Uh, might there be some hubris going on here? The term “marriage equality” demolished no arguments, just avoided them.

Similarly, their use of judges to force their will on people who had voted against their side is not “demolishing” any sort of argument. In fact, Justice Kennedy’s shameful claim that there can be no reason besides animus against gays (read: “hate,” the queen of all delegitimizing words) is similarly a way to avoid dealing with objections and arguments.

Cory Doctorow reports:

Lawrence and Wishart, a radical press founded in 1936 and formerly associated with the Communist Party of Great Britain, has asserted a copyright over “Marx-Engels Collected Works,” a series of $25-50-ish hardcovers, and demanded that they be removed from the Marxist Internet Archive. As Scott McLemee notes, the editions in question were “prepared largely if not entirely with the support of old-fashioned, Soviet-era Moscow gold” and consist, in large part, of arguments about the moral bankruptcy and corrupting influence of claims of private property.

Marx-Engels Collected Works will be removed from Marxists.org on May Day. Here’s a torrent of the full set.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Dragonmaster Chow carries a Smith & Wesson .45.

Glenn Reynolds was amused the other day when he found the gun-running scandal involving Democrat State Senator Leeland Yee (who represents San Francisco & San Mateo County and who was, when the scandal broke, running for Secretary of State) was getting coverage from Popular Mechanics, while being studiously ignored by CNN.

Esquire magazine picked up the Popular Mechanics “Leeland Yee-supplied guns” feature, but the MSM is generally ignoring all this, classifying the matter as merely “local news.”

Leeland Yee was honored in 2006 by the Brady Campaign for “gun violence prevention” for his co-athoring a bill requiring semiautomatic handguns (not sold covertly by State Senator Yee) to include ballistics identification microstamping.

Scandinaveus caeruleus

Dick Morris gloatingly notes that HHS has quietly essentially repealed the individual mandate, Obamacare’s single most controversial feature.

In a policy retreat that is little-known and virtually uncovered in media circles (except for the Wall Street Journal), the Obama administration has effectively postponed, for three years, any requirement that those whose health care policies were canceled or will be canceled from having to buy health insurance.

This regulatory decision, coupled with the delays granted to employers large and small in the mandate that they cover their workers, so truncates Obamacare as to amount to its a virtual repeal.

Specifically, by delaying the individual mandate for three years, Obama has given the GOP everything it sought in its abortive government shutdown in October 2013.

Now, those whose health care policies were canceled can opt out of the individual mandate — and not pay the fine for being uncovered — simply by checking a box on the form.

Under the new rules, according to the Wall Street Journal, “all you need to do is fill out a form attesting that your plan was canceled and that you ‘believe that the plan options available in the [Obamacare] Marketplace in your area are more expensive than your canceled health insurance policy’ or ‘you consider other available policies unaffordable.’

You can even opt out of the requirement to buy new insurance if “you experienced another hardship in obtaining health insurance.” Documentation? The regulation only requires that you provide it “if possible.”

Effectively, this means that anyone who wants an exemption from Obamacare who previously had a policy that was canceled can get one simply by asking for it. No proof. No documentation.

The policy retreat is the latest in a series of administration attempts to backpedal on the law and its requirements as their reality dawns on voters in swing states and on Democratic senators trying to entice them to back their re-election.

The previous step back was an announcement last week that the one-year moratorium on cancellations would be extended to three years, effectively pushing it out past the 2016 elections. …

Altogether, the retreat of this president from the enforcement of his signature program is breathtaking and can only be summed up as a repeal, or postponement of the bulk of the Obamacare law’s provisions.

Can Obama repeal and postpone his way to keeping a Senate majority in the fall? We’ll see.

Hat tip to Madame Scherzo.

Randy Barnett posted, at Volokh:

Restoring the Lost Constitution just got much easier.

This is an historic moment on our constitutional history. With the change of Senate rules today by a simple majority to [allow a simple majority to] close debate on judicial nominations, a Rubicon has been crossed. Restoring the Lost Constitution has now been made far more feasible, and will make the 2014 & 2016 of enormous importance to our constitutional future.

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Krauthammer gleefully observed:

I’m always amused by the nuclear option debate because it is without a doubt the most spectacular display of Congressional hypocrisy, which is saying a lot. Because whenever the minority party is arguing, it says that this is a very important, indeed a majestic part of our constitution. And as soon as the minority become the majority, like Harry Reid and the Democrats and Obama, all of a sudden it’s terrible instrument of obstruction.

Look, as a matter of the means in which this was done, it was a rather lowdown way. This is a fundamental change of the structure of the rules of the Senate and done on strict party lines, which it should not be. The same way, incidentally, Obamacare, a major reform, on party lines. That should not be. But on the substance of the change, I think the Democrats have stumbled upon the truth as they do every decade or so. If you are not to know who is in power, I think it’s a better idea for the president to have the ability to nominate his nominees, judicial and executive, without having to get a supermajority.

And the other part of it, as a conservative, I am extremely happy that the Democrats are doing this. The prospects are very strong that the Democrats are going to lose the Senate next year and there is an excellent chance of losing the White House. And the Democrats will absolutely rue the day because they not only are going to allow a Republican majority — which will come one day anyway — to get its nominees through, but Chuck Grassley has said that when Republicans come into you power, they’re going to include Supreme Court nominees, and that will be a devastating blow to the liberals on the Court and to the liberals in the country. So I don’t think Democrats will remember this day with any joy in the near future.