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From Time.

After a lifetime of activism, including work on the Japanese American redress movement and “friend of the court” briefs on behalf of Muslim detainees in U.S. military prisons, Korematsu died in 2005 at the age of 86. Since then, three schools in California have been named after him, and in September 2010, California passed the “Fred Korematsu Day of Civil Liberties and the Constitution” bill, the first day in U.S. history to be named after an Asian American. Starting this year, on January 30 of each year, schools are encouraged to teach Korematsu’s story and why it remains so relevant today

I’m trying to think of other holidays named after litigants in Supreme Court cases, and can’t think of any.

CNN reports here.

Until recently, Seif Awad worked a day job as an account manager for Cisco.

But since Saturday he has begun volunteering at nights, protecting his neighborhood with a volunteer defense squad of young male neighbors armed with makeshift weapons. Last night he armed himself with a big stick. On Sunday, Awad bought gasoline canisters and started making Molotov cocktails.

“If anyone comes on the street we’re going to throw those at them,” Awad said. “And I have a friend here who has a gun.”

…

Real estate broker Karim Amer armed himself with a kitchen knife Saturday night and joined his own hastily formed neighborhood militia.

…

“People are much more organized today,” Amer said. “We’ve got people with whistles now. Different neighborhood corners have agreed to different whistles to signal for help.”

I wonder what Egyptian gun control laws look like?

Update: Thanks for the link Instapundit!

One of the more interesting aspects of living in Western, Pennsylvania is experiencing the full force of Steelers country. I am always amazed at how hard core these Yinzers are about their Stilers (a little Pittsburghese there). And it seems that this fandom is instilled from birth.

They start ’em young up in Pittsburgh.

A hospital in Mt. Lebanon, Pa. is wrapping each newborn in a Terrible Towel as part of a celebration of the Steelers playing in Super Bowl XLV.

St. Clair Hospital started the tradition when the Steelers last made it to the Super Bowl in 2008 and decided to continue this year. “They’re born Steelers fans here in Pittsburgh,” said Sharon Johnson, a clinical supervisor at the hospital.

It’s a cute idea and I’m sure all those Terrible Towels will be hanging proudly in those family’s houses for years to come

I suppose Section One of the Pittsburgh Constitution would go something like this: “All persons born or naturalized in the western half of Pennsylvania , and subject to the  terrible towels thereof,  are fans of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and of the stadium wherein they reside.”

Read the entire post on the Posner-Becker blog, but here is the most important part:

If I am correct that inequality is not influencing public policy in the United States—is just not a political issue—then I don’t think there is an inequality “problem.” There is just the facts that in the United States a small fraction of the population has an enormous share of the nation’s income and wealth and, at the other end of the income distribution, there are many very poor people. Are the rich a “problem”? I don’t think so. All their money is either spent on consumption or invested, and either way it is economically productive; it’s not as if the rich hoarded their wealth in the form of gold bars. The rich influence elections by their campaign contributions, but they would have the same influence with much less money, because it is not the absolute level of a rich person’s campaign contributions that sways elections but the level relative to contributions by other rich persons supporting competing candidates.

Warren Buffett warns that without stiff inheritance taxes (which the United States does not have), we will find ourselves in the grip of an “entrenched plutocracy” (according to the Economist article that Becker cites). I don’t understand that concern. The heirs of the rich spend their money on consumption or investment, just like their parents; dissipate it rapidly, if they’re dumb; but in any event do not by virtue of having inherited a lot of money block the upward striving of others.

Poverty is a problem, but if the rich are not a problem, then the problem of poverty is not a problem of inequality. It looks like a problem of inequality only because the wealth of the wealthy seems an obvious source of money to alleviate poverty. But it is not that taxing the rich would alleviate poverty, but that taxing the rich and using the tax revenues to raise the incomes of the poor would alleviate poverty. Inequality should be a non-issue in the United States—and to a considerable degree it is.

More from Tyler Cowen on the inequality that matters.

A few weeks ago I was meeting friends at a local Pittsburgh bar to watch the Steelers play the Ravens. I was circling around the block and could not find a spot. Finally, I saw an empty spot and started to pull in. As I started to park, I realized someone left a plastic chair in the spot. So I got out of the car, moved the chair and parked. When I told my friends I found a spot right near the bar, they asked me if I moved a chair. Confused, I said yes. I was advised to move my car post-haste, lest my car get slashed. Apparently, in Pittsburgh, following a snow storm, people reserve cleared-out spots with a chair. The Boston Globe had an article about this, and Wikipedia calls them parking chairs. I had no idea. Now I noticed that chairs are littered throughout parking spots on my block in Johnstown.

From an economics perspective though, I wonder about this private ordering of public resources. Parking spots are a free commons offered by the state (unless there is a permit or meter system present, which is not the case here). A spot filled with snow is of no use to anyone, so private actors take it upon themselves to shovel it out. By placing a chair after a homeowner shovels out a spot, the chair-placer is effectively claiming a possessory title to the spot as long as the chair is there. Certainly this is not a property right the state would enforce. And if an individual moves the chair, the chair-placer would have no recourse at law–short of self help (e.g., slashing tires). Yet spontaneous social order, and customs and rituals emerge to allow people to allocate these scarce commons in the absence of the state’s intervention. Now, as an outsider, I was not familiar with these customs (I do not recall ever seeing parking chairs in New York, and I’d imagine people would not adhere to the furniture-based-admonition), but once I found out, I moved my car immediately. And in case you were wondering, my tires were not slashed. I moved it before the end of the game, so the owner of the chair-spot was almost certainly glued to the screen, watching the black and gold en route to the Superbowl.