Not enough: I think they should have called down the “death penalty” on Penn State, but at least their football program is mostly dead now. Here’s a good take on why.
Crazy or not, the death penalty works for me: Someone who is insane doesn’t have the capacity to tell right from wrong. This guy created a booby-trapped apartment with more than 30 homemade grenades and ten gallons of gasoline waiting for the police investigators who he expected to enter and die there. The word they’re looking for isn’t crazy. It’s sociopath.
The DOJ has Masters of Juvenile Scorn: Get a load of this snark in the DOJ explanation as to why they’re continuing with their case against the publishers who colluded with Apple to set prices:
In a response published today (23rd July), the DoJ said: “In the course of its investigation, the United States examined complaints about Amazon’s alleged predatory practices and found persuasive evidence lacking . . . Even if there were evidence to substantiate claims of ‘monopolization’ or predatory pricing’ they would not be sufficient to justify self-help in the form of collusion.”
And that isn’t all the snark. It’s an awesome response to the people who whined that the DOJ should drop the case because Amazon created the ebook market and then pursued its mastery while the Big Six sat on their thumbs and said that nobody would ever want to read a book on a computer thingie.
Responding to Barnes & Noble’s comments, the DoJ asserted that Barnes & Noble was “worried that it will make less money after the conspiracy than it collected while the conspiracy was ongoing” and that that was not a matter for the court to consider. Many of the benefits B&N attributes to collusive pricing could be achieved in other ways, such as lowering costs, the DoJ said.
What annoys me most about the responses from authors and publishers is that they had no problem at all watching independent bookstores die as Borders and Barnes & Noble set up shop in town after town and killed the independents by undercutting their prices. Do you see a pattern here? What’s that? It’s called “the free market at work”?
Shyeah.
Meanwhile, back in Israel: More terrorists firing at Israelis from the Sinai, Syria’s fighting nears the Golan Heights, PIJ rats abandon the sinking Syria ship, and my personal favorite: An Obama spokesman says he’ll visit Israel in his second term. Another reason to vote him out of office.