Monday Reading Assignments

There may be a quiz.

• Dave Diamond gives us a statistics lesson, complete with pretty pictures.
  
  
• The Brawler has a lesson on common sense; it seems that the last person you want to call a "bloodthirsty" lawyer is . . . a lawyer.
  
  
• The Brawler also has a lesson in irony. It's hard to say what my favorite part is: That the person in question champions as meritorious blogs that are so patently offensive I can't stand to read them anymore, or that one blog she names as meritorious that is not on her blogroll is mine. Oh, or that she links to Little Green Footballs. That's good irony, too.
  
  
• I'm hoping to do a longer piece on "All Children Matter" (working title: "I Can Thing of At Least Three Things Wrong With That Name"), but Xoff uses them in today's journalism lesson.
  
  
• Josh Marshall is teaching history today, in advance of claims that Bill Clinton detonated the nuke in North Korea, or something.
  
  
• There's also good history lessons available from Media Matters, who are tracking what the president calls "revisionist history" about the Mark Foley scandal. Glenn Greenwald and Georgia10 have more.
  
  
• Kevin Drum has a basic lesson in economics for us: Buy Low, Sell High At A Rate Inflated By Your Meddling As Speaker Of The House.
  
  
• And speaking of money, Billmon teaches us, in the wake of the Foley scandal, of the number one rule in politics and the mafia: Always the dollars.
  
  
• A couple of lessons about F. Jim Sensenbrenner: One, he doesn't invest the way he preaches; Two, his beloved "fence" (the "Torilla Curtain," as it's being called) is probably nothing more than a cheap stunt.
  
  
• Gretchen at Milwaukee Rising has story time about Tom Reynolds (the nutty Wisconsin one, not the one in New York who helped protect Mark Foley). She tells us about Reynolds's big money from the Wal*Mart heirs. But she leaves us hanging on the ending--all the support Reynolds gives back in return by voting for more private school vouchers (.pdf). It's what Sam would have wanted, I'm sure.