Is Paul Ryan a "scumbag" for lying about his marathon time?

That's the sort of thing lawprof Tung Yin is seeing on Facebook. 

He's assuming it's a lie, because how can you misremember something like that? On the other hand, why would you lie about something that's not going to be believed and therefore is only going to make you look bad?

But these people who are excoriating Ryan for lying about sports... what did they say about Bill Clinton back in the old lying-about-sex days? Yin has 3 reasons why Clinton's lie was worse, and I think it obviously was.

So does that mean people who excused Bill Clinton need to shut up about Paul Ryan's marathon time? I have 3 answers:

1. You're never going to get people to stop characterizing the evidence to help or hurt whomever they are inclined to help or hurt. Like a semen stain on a blue dress, it has permeated the fabric of our politics.

2. Bill Clinton was cornered and compelled to speak. His lie was self-defense under attack, and he was trying to keep his presidency from collapsing because of something only tangentially related to the presidential enterprise. Paul Ryan volunteered information, boasting about something that wasn't true in an effort to win our favor. Very different motivations, and we should judge them with particularity and with a subtlety beyond crude epithets like "scumbag."

3. Paul Ryan is currently running for Vice President, and we need to examine him from all angles. He'd better be great, regardless of whether somebody else is less great. Bill Clinton's Lewinsky debacle occurred long ago (though it retains currency to the extent that his party, especially at a convention where it will preen about its service to females, employs him as a mouthpiece*).
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* Yes, I did intend to put that image in your head.

"As part of the health care reform, we have to ask you for your race."

Tung Yin finds something else that's obnoxious about Obamacare. "Obnoxious" is his word.

"You're free to decline to answer," [the hospital receptionist] said, and added that it used to be really hard for her to ask this question.

I said that I was, quite obviously Asian, but apparently that was not precise enough for the requirements of the new health reform act. It was necessary for some reason to classify me as not just "Asian" but "Chinese."

Is this meaningless bureaucratic collection of information, possibly useful for medical reasons, or something more nefarious?

"You cannot be serious."

Things not to say in/on court.

About that Christmas tree.

I said it's okay — and green enough — to get an artificial Christmas tree. Then Professor Yin came in with some scary stuff about lead, and Professor Bainbridge says don't get a tree at all, and don't even get presents — give it all to charity.

What's the best solution to the Christmas tree problem?
	A real tree, a cut tree. Follow tradition!
	A nice new artificial tree. The lead problem is solved, right?
	Some sort of potted tree, that you reuse or replant or something.
	No tree at all!
pollcode.com free polls

Glomming.

Reacting to a NYT story about the problem women outnumbering men at various universities these day, Tung Yin writes:

... I went to Caltech for college in the mid- to late 1980s, where the male-female ratio was 8-1. From a social standpoint, it wasn't clear that 8-1 was better than infinity. I learned the term "glomming," which described the phenomenon of 6-8 guys standing around a single woman, usually with only one of the guys actually talking to her, and the rest just nodding their heads.

Glomming... it checks out in Urban Dictionary.

Glom is a funny word. I've always mixed it up with grok. Only grok is a Martian word.

It's Let's Talk Like Rahm Emanuel Day!

Come on, everybody! It's exciting. It's liberating.

Somebody not talking straight to you?

"Take your f***ing tampon out and tell me what you have to say."

Dog getting under foot?

"I’m going to kill that f***ing dog."

(Those 2 quotes are from this Ed Driscoll piece, where I arrived via Instapundit.)

What's worse, the tampon remark or threatening the dog?
	Threatening the dog, because I love pets.
	Threatening the dog, because death is horrible.
	The tampon remark, because it implies that women are inferior to men.
	The tampon remark, because it's so odd and icky.
pollcode.com free polls

ADDED: Tung Yin notes a semi-scientific test that might explain the connection between Rahm's way of talking and his success. It's all about pain.