Reps. Barney Frank and John Conyers, Jr. spend taxpayer dollars to file a late amicus brief on behalf of plaintiffs' lawyers and against investors in Stoneridge v. Scientific-Atlanta, taking issue with my Wall Street Journal op-ed on the case. (H/t L.R.) To wit, "A number of commentators have called for the Court to decide this case by reference to policy considerations nowhere found in the statute." This is wrong: the op-ed explicitly noted that Congress had twice rejected precisely the sort of liability that petitioners are seeking in this case. It is also ironic: civil securities fraud liability was created by judicial fiat out of a statute that had no private right of action.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong? Scott Thomas Beauchamp is essentially a 21st-century Stephen Glass, if Stephen Glass was dumb enough to blog about how he was going to join the army so he could write an anti-war book, and then "confess" to violations of the UCMJ while he was still in the army. And the latest crew of TNR editors, who apparently didn't see the movie about their own magazine, went ahead and published plainly false stuff because it fit their preconceived biases about American troops.

Slim and I had a 6:30 am Saturday morning flight to the West Coast. I didn't pre-reserve Book 5 or Book 6, and each time finding them on opening day took a bit of a trek to multiple stores. Rather than risk being without the new Harry Potter book before all the spoilers leaked, we were one of the 800+ or so waiting in line at the Clarendon Barnes & Noble, who did a spectacular job given the constraints the publisher put on them: we were out of the store with copies in hand at 12:18 am, a half hour before our most optimistic estimate.

Still, it was annoying to see dozens of copies piled up in the airport bookstore ready for sale at five in the morning. I really could've used the extra few hours of sleep.

Slim, who reads faster than me, and had the advantage of being able to read the book while I was driving through a California traffic jam, finished before 5 PM Eastern; I got through the last couple of hundred pages at the wedding reception.

Spoiler: I don't mind ambiguous endings, but it seemed anachronistic to have Harry and his friends sit in a diner eating onion rings. More accurate discussion here: I think Rowling cheated with her disposition of the Elder Wand.

That Apple stock I could have bought for $790,000 (if I only had $790,000) is now worth $840,000.

On the other hand, the bozos who gave several hundred dollars to line-sitters for iPhones sure look stupid right now.

I've decided that I'm going to stop dating 26-year-olds.

Wine and cheese parties just aren't the same (via Wonkette). At least the police took fingerprints, rather than saying that attempted robbery wasn't a crime.

Update: see also Mark Steyn on the same incident.

The original story on which the movie is based.

I try not to wince when I consider that the Apple stock I sold for about $60,000 in 2001 (and could have repurchased for about $40,000 in 2003) is now worth more than $790,000.

The unsuccessful American invasion of Canada. No, really.

Those who use "blog" as a synonym for "blog post" or "post." Especially when it's bloggers who do it. How does one distinguish between posts and blogs if one calls them both blogs? Does one talk about a blog on a particular blog? Can you see why this makes no sense? (Of course you can, gentle reader, you are probably literate.)