Jules Critteden's Good News/ Bad News is up.

Quick--Call the Cops: A Conservative is on the Loose on Campus

Captain Ed has a post about Troy Scheffler, a 31-year-old graduate student who has been placed on probation at Hamline University because he dared to suggest that concealed carry might be more of an answer to school massacres than Critical Incident Stress Debriefing --a fancy name for counseling after a trauma, but guess what, Critical Incident Stress Debriefing doesn't work and may cause harm, but that's not important to the PC folks at Hamline. Their only concern--A CONSERVATIVE ON CAMPUS! In an article Captain Ed pointed out, the "atrocities" that this grad student was accused of:

In the aftermath, officials at Hamline University sought to comfort their 4,000 students. David Stern, the vice president for academic and student affairs, sent a campus-wide email offering extra counseling sessions for those who needed help coping.

Scheffler had a different opinion of how the university should react. Using the email handle "Tough Guy Scheffler," Troy fired off his response: Counseling wouldn't make students feel safer, he argued. They needed protection. And the best way to provide it would be for the university to lift its recently implemented prohibition against concealed weapons.

"Ironically, according to a few VA Tech forums, there are plenty of students complaining that this wouldn't have happened if the school wouldn't have banned their permits a few months ago," Scheffler wrote. "I just don't understand why leftists don't understand that criminals don't care about laws; that is why they're criminals. Maybe this school will reconsider its repression of law-abiding citizens' rights"....

So Hamline officials took swift action. On April 23, Scheffler received a letter informing him he'd been placed on interim suspension. To be considered for readmittance, he'd have to pay for a psychological evaluation and undergo any treatment deemed necessary, then meet with the dean of students, who would ultimately decide whether Scheffler was fit to return to the university.

The consequences were severe. Scheffler wasn't allowed to participate in a final group project in his course on Human Resources Management, which will have a big impact on his final grade. Even if he's reinstated, the suspension will go on his permanent record, which could hurt the aspiring law student.

I have an idea of how to get potential psychotic school shooters off campus: Just goad them into saying something conservative. Next thing you know, they'll be whisked off the campus in handcuffs and psychological treatment will be a must--at their expense! Problem solved.

Update: In this original post, I had used the name Tony instead of Troy for Mr. Scheffler's first name, it is now corrected to Troy Scheffler.

Update II: Captain Ed interviewed Troy Scheffler and posted on it here.

Podcast on Blog Advertising and More

Today, we talk with David Verklin, author (along with Bernice Kanner) of a new book, Watch This, Listen Up, Click Here: Inside the 300 Billion Dollar Business Behind the Media You Constantly Consume. Verklin is CEO of Carat Americas, the world's largest independent media buying operation, and he talks about what's going on with the ad business and how it's likely to impact new media, especially the web, blogs and mobile hand-held devices.

You can listen directly -- no downloads needed -- by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can download the file by clicking right there, and you can get a lo-fi version, suitable for dialup, etc., by going here and selecting "lo fi." And of course, you can get a free subscription via iTunes -- and why wouldn't you, really?

This podcast is brought to you by Volvo Motors USA. Music is "Nobody's Full," by the Opposable Thumbs.

Please Help Me Out!

The nice folks at BlogAds are running their annual reader survey. Please take a few minutes (okay--about 12) to answer their questions so that I can find out more about my readers.

Please take my blog reader survey!

Update: I am moving this post to the top of the page in the hopes that a few more of you who don't mind taking surveys will participate. Thanks to those who have already filled it out.

Dancers for Democracy

Many of my readers have some interesting blogs that I like to visit; today I was looking at DADvocate's blog where I found this interesting post on the new restrictions being proposed to be placed on strip clubs in Ohio. It appears that a new bill (registration is required) prohibits sexually-oriented businesses from staying open between midnight and 6 a.m. and requires nude or semi-nude performers to be at least six feet away from customers on a stage at least two feet off the floor. These restrictions have brought out activist strippers who call themselves "Dancers for Democracy" to protest the bill:

TOLEDO -- They call themselves "Dancers for Democracy," and today they protested near Ohio's capitol to tell state lawmakers to "butt out" and let them do their thing. A bill being debated by the Ohio Senate would restrict nudity after midnight in exotic dance clubs and require the dancers and patrons to stay at least six feet apart. Those new rules, the dancers say, would put them out of business.

Two dozen dancers appeared Tuesday morning at a Columbus news conference wearing suits, tops and slacks, or pink T-shirts reading "Dancers for Democracy." A spokeswoman for the dancers said most of them are young women with children who use their wages to pay for college.....

The six-foot rule will cause wages to drop off dramatically and force many of the dancers into minimum wage jobs, said Charity Fickisen, a Columbus dancer and chairwoman of "Dancers for Democracy"....

According to "Dancers for Democracy," those who violate the rule could be found guilty of a first-degree misdemeanor, which the group points out is the same level of offense for negligent homicide or menacing by stalking.

Dadvocate asks a good question in his post, "Where are all the feminists?" Afterall, these women will be forced to take lower pay or make minimum wage. They have a right to make a living the way they see fit without interference from the government. I doubt Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton will taking on their cause anytime soon.

As many of you may have read, The Tennessean has published a list of names of those with a concealed carry permit in the state. SayUncle has updates on the situation and now says the list has been taken down. Ahh, the power of the blogosphere.

A million dudes who call themselves "amateur gynecologists" don't deserve $100K+ a year for that, either.

Comedian Jennifer Dziura has a hilarious take on the whole notion that mothers are supposed to be paid a small fortune for each of the "jobs" she performs as a mother (Hat Tip: Economist.com):

Since we've done "CEO," let's talk about "psychologist." JUST BECAUSE YOU PERFORM DUTIES "LIKE" A PSYCHOLOGIST DOES NOT MAKE YOU A PSYCHOLOGIST. A million dudes who call themselves "amateur gynecologists" don't deserve $100K+ a year for that, either. Psychologists, I'm sure, are pleased that apparently their medical degrees and licenses are irrelevant. I've sometimes offered advice to a friend in need, but I don't charge, and if I did, my counsel would be worth less than that of someone who, you know, passed the MCAT.

Actually, that would be the GRE for a psychologist, the MCAT is for psychiatrists, and I assume that most moms don't prescribe drugs for their kids, unless you count doling out Benadryl to make the kid sleepy on a long car trip as psychiatric services. But anyway, I will tell mothers what people tell me when I complain that psychologists don't make enough money (and Ms. Dziura confirms this in her point number 6): Jobs are worth however much other people will actually pay you for them. No more and no less.

Grand Rounds is up

Grand Rounds is up at The Blog That Ate Manhattan. Be sure and take a look at the post by Dr. Wes about the radiation risk of CT scanning.

Cho Never Received Outpatient Treatment

Shockingly, Cho never received the mandatory treatment he was court-ordered to have in December of 2005 (Hat Tip: Bugs):

Seung Hui Cho never received the treatment ordered by a judge who declared him dangerously mentally ill less than two years before his rampage at Virginia Tech, law enforcement officials said, exposing flaws in Virginia's labyrinthine mental health system, including confusion about the law, spotty enforcement and inadequate funding....

When a court gives a mandatory order that someone get outpatient treatment, that order is to the individual, not an agency," said Christopher Flynn, director of the Cook Counseling Center. The one responsible for ensuring that the mentally ill person receives help in these sorts of cases, he said, is the mentally ill person. "I've never seen someone delivered to me with an order that says, 'This person has been discharged; he's now your responsibility.' That doesn't happen."

Yes, it's always best to let a mentally ill person decide whether or not they need to attend court-ordered treatment. Maybe the next step should be to let criminals decide whether or not they want to go to jail or not.

"These are the sort of wackos who gun down their fellow students at university."

Who are these wackos who might gun down their fellow students? Felons who have escaped from prison? Angry students who have been bullied within an inch of their life and are hell-bent on revenge? Terrorists who want to destroy all those who oppose them? No, they are .....bloggers, at least according to jealous journalist David Bullard at The Sunday Times who sees bloggers as such a threat that he wrote an entire column devoted to his fascist views of what should constitute freedom of the press.

His take? Bloggers are nerds who can't succeed and are out for his job. Funny, then, how many bloggers are high level professionals who often have much more expertise than journalists and much better and more lucrative jobs to boot. For example, the lawyers at Powerline, the Volokh Conspiracy, Talk Left and other blogs are hardly nerds with nothing to say who are pining away for a two bit journalist job. Bullard's biggest complaint about the blogosphere is that (gasp!) there are no rules! People might say anything, even something racist for which Bullard points out that they should spend time in prison--if only someone could catch these horrible anonymous bloggers. In his fascist world, all speech should go through some sort of censorship process where editors and publishers can determine what is appropriate speech for everyone's ears. It's no wonder so many bloggers remain annonymous, with fascists like Bullard out there who believe that they should be sent to prison for what they say--why come forward?

At the end of his diatribe, he suggests that print journalists call out "offensive" annonymous bloggers to "name and shame" them as well as publish their physical addresses. I would like to see him try, I can only imagine the backlash of the blogosphere to this little stunt. My guess is that Bullard is actually afraid at heart that his work will soon become obsolete because some little "nerd with nothing to say" will bypass him while happily playing air guitar to thousands of admirers.