James Madison’s Lesson on Free Speech. Over at National Review, our own Jay Cost has a look back at James Madison, free speech, and the times in which we find ourselves with antifa and the alt-right running around. Here’s Cost: “None of this means that we should excuse the boorish and ignorant among us, those who seek to incite popular unrest for the sake of their small-minded prejudices. Instead, Madison’s commitment to free speech should serve as a reminder that, while people say things that we might find personally offensive, we should never wish the state to squash their right to do so. Our First Amendment freedoms combined — freedom of religion, of assembly and petition, of press and speech — give us the right to think what we like and say what we please. And if we the people are to govern ourselves, we must have these rights, even if they are misused by a minority.” As they say, read the whole thing.
Philip Morris wants you to quit smoking. Even you, Bill McMorris. At least smoking in the traditional sense. Bill McMorris at the Free Beacon has a great long read into the future of cigarettes. If there is one thing McMorris is an expert on, it is cigarettes. The man dutifully gives up alcohol for Lent and meat on Fridays, but he’ll never give up his smokes. The sense of disappointment McMorris experiences at the hands of his nicotine purveyor of choice is palpable: “You are greeted by four charming men from four different countries. They are polite, as all PR men are, until you make for the entrance. ‘You can’t bring that in here,’ the American says. He’s talking about the Marlboro. He registers your bafflement and concedes they are happy to wait with you. You are a guest, one who received an all-expenses-paid European vacation with first-class airfare and a week of free meals, drinks, and cabs—the type of pampering that could influence even the most stalwart journalist were it not for your back-of-the-napkin calculation that you have handed the company in question enough cash to pay tuition at a private college. You oblige, not out of gratitude, but good manners.”
Running a grocery chain during a disaster. As somebody who loves grocery stores and periodically writing about the business of how they work (or don’t), I was fascinated by this look into how Texas’s H-E-B grocery stores functioned during Harvey. H-E-B is a fantastic midsize chain (and they ship Texas favorites to those outside of Texas, as Philip Chalk, our art director knows. He orders a special brand of salsa a couple times a year by the crate). H-E-B used helicopters to fly truck drivers from San Antonio to Houston to make sure their supply chain kept working as best it could. A couple other gems: “If you think about toilet paper, we’ve called Procter & Gamble and Kimberly-Clark, and we said: Send entire trailer loads directly to our stores. One store will take half a trailer, and the other store will take the other half. You can just bypass our warehouse, so you can just get it to us. In doing that, I create more capacity in my distribution chain.” Another interesting factoid is that H-E-B worked with suppliers to pare down variety in their supply chain, especially Frito-Lay chips. Their bakeries cut down on bread varities from 50 to three: “We’re making white. We’re making wheat. We’re making hotdog buns. Having access to product is more important than variety. Every time we have to changeover to a different product [in the bakery], we have to stop the machines. If we can just keep running the machines, then we can make more product and get more product out to the stores.” God bless Texas, and God bless H-E-B.
Meanwhile, in Smallville, Ohio… A police officer mistakenly shot a newspaper photographer, who is expected to live. The paper posted a plea on Facebook, saying: “I talked with Andy a little while ago. He said he is very sore but otherwise is doing fine. He said they expect to be releasing him sometime tomorrow. On behalf of our entire family, we thank you for all of the kind messages. One other thing. Please don’t mean mouth the deputy. Andy said he doesn’t want Jake to lose his job over this.” Midwestern nice to the extreme, especially considering the fact that the journalist who was shot is the newspaper publisher’s son.
“Ever gone a week without a rationalization?“ Warren Henry has a great column today about why folks on the right should be less cynical about some things, and more cynical about others. A couple of key takeaways? “Whataboutism is driven by partisanship” and “partisans are really good at rationalization.” Two obvious truths, but do click through for his worthwhile analysis.
Louise Linton has not learned anything. Louise Linton, D-list actress and wife of Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, is out to do some damage control after her disastrous blow up on Instagram where she called a middle class mom “adorably out of touch.” Her chosen venue to “speak out”?
Washington Life magazine, which bills itself as “the D.C. Metro area’s premier guide to luxury, power, philanthropy & style.” Also, it’s the “Annual Balls & Galas issue.” Click here to read her mea culpa, complete with a photo shoot.
Last time, our free advice to Ms. Linton was to step away from the iPhone. This time, it’s: fire your publicist.
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