Washington Monthly has released a list of colleges ranked “based on their contribution to the public good in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and PhDs), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).” With such namby-pamby categories, it isn’t surprising that five of the top ten schools in the “National Universities” category are in Communist California, the University of Texas in that socialist enclave of Austin comes in at #5, or that hoity-toity Harvard comes in at #9. I was, however, rather pleasantly surprised to see Syracuse ranked at number eight.

That’s higher than any Ivy League school, MIT, Georgetown (which, as we all know, sucks), and, well, any school east of the Mississippi (except for #7 Michigan, which I’m not counting; actually, if I leave out Michigan, I can say east of the Rockies). So, good for my alma mater, but you’re still not getting any money out of me (that double late fee adding up to $130 on a $25 balance was the last “donation” you’ll ever get from me).

You’ve no doubt heard that an activist US District Court judge has halted the appropriation of funds for stem cell research. No matter how you feel about the issue, you have to admit it’s pretty cool that it’s based on something called the “Dickey Wicker” amendment. That’s a great name – sounds like the kind of material they’d use to make a really funky condom. Sadly, it’s actually the name of an appropriation bill rider passed in 1995, and signed into law by Bill Clinton. It prohibits the Department of Health and Human Services from using appropriated funds (including funding for National Institutes of Health) for the creation of human embryos for research or for research where human embryos are destroyed.

In a battle to see who’s more racist, teabagger Mark Williams has called injun-fighter Mike Bloomberg a ‘Judenrat’ for Bloomies support of the Mooslam community center in the old Burlington Coat Factory. At least Williams didn’t say teabaggers need to march over to Bloomberg’s office wearing brown shirts and carrying Mausers to “enforce” the will of the people.

It’s primary day in AK, AZ, FL, and VT today, so, if you live in any of those places, go out and vote for, um, well, I guess you’ll have to figure that one out for yourself. It’s getting harder to justify the effort to vote for anybody these days. Our electoral process just seems like masturbation to me these days (not that I have anything against masturbation, of course), and with such an easily manipulated electorate and corporate ownership of candidates, I don’t see us ever being able to turn things around via the political process.

Time to build a bunker, I think.