[BLOG] Some Friday links

[rfmcdonald]

• The Burgh Diaspora notes that, in different American cities, efforts are being made to promote local educational and medical institutions. Some cities may do better than others.


• Centauri Dreams' Paul Gilster notes an astronomer who thinks that Earth-like planets--roughly Earth-size with broadly Earth-like environments--may be commoner around red dwarf stars than thought.


• Crooked Timber's Corey Robin notes the uncontested presence of racist and oligarchic John C. Calhoun's thinking on the American right.


• Geocurrents maps, after evangelical Christians, their different missionary efforts around the world.


• At Lawyers, Guns and Money, Scott Lemieux links approvingly to Mark Tushnet, who argues that of course the American government can't make ultimately definitive statements about when American military force can be used.


• The Power and the Money's Noel Maurer observes that senates aren't popular anywhere in the world, it seems, but that the United States actually has a constitutional bar against abolishing its upper house.


• The Population Reference Bureau's blog notes that the American metropolitan areas that experienced the strongest population growth are the ones with strong private job markets and federal funding.


• Torontoist's Patrick Metzger notes that there was never a Cold War-era nuclear shelter beneath Queen's Park. Rather, it was in Aurora.


• Towleroad reports that the National Organization on Marriage has just insulted two American supreme court judges by stating that the adoption that constituted their families is a second-best option next to natural procreation.


• The Volokh Conspiracy's Ilya Somin argues that good arguments exist for the American Supreme Court to repudiate the court decision legitimizing the deportation of Japanese-Americans in the Second World War.


• Chechen pressures on Ingushetia to merge with the Chechen republic, Window on Eurasia argues, have been enabled by the Putin regime's desire to consolidate Russia's federal units.