Month: May 2008

While I’m very tired of reading about it, I’m nonetheless having a lot of trouble trying to sort out the bitter and protracted alimony battle between former Governor Jim McGreevey and his wife Dina Matos. Matos has calculated the value of taxpayer-funded perks that are no longer there, and seeks a “cost of replicating her…

Yesterday I wrote a post titled “How do I tell Coco they want to kill her?” I am writing this one lest anyone think I was engaged in hyperbole. While I admitted that I was being emotional, the fact is that people who love their dogs do consider them members of their families, and when…

No, that is not a joke about heteronormativism. Or even homonormativism. I just didn’t know what else to call a post linking B. Daniel Blatt’s “McCain’s Straight Talk Express Stops in Beverly Hills.” And while the subject of gay marriage did come up, that’s not the point; I just got a kick out of the…

1. Senator Obama, when will you finally decide to go back to Iraq, to see the progress first hand? 2. And when will you finally decide to meet one-on-one, unconditionally, with General Petraeus? Sergeant Anderson was one of the 12 veterans denied a meeting with Senator Obama. And like his fellow veterans, Sergeant Anderson would…

Today’s WSJ Science Journal has a piece by Robert Lee Hotz called “Revenge of the Freeloaders — Study Finds Culture Influences Reaction To Reward, Rebuke.” Naturally, I was fascinated, and I was even more fascinated by some of the unexamined premises raised in both the study and the piece. We all bristle at people who…

A very interesting blog by some one who purports to be a Chicago police officer. Second City Cop The comments are especially good. Cross Posted at Power and Control

I don’t know what it is about me and emails I don’t agree with, but earlier today I received an impassioned plea from the “Lighted Candle Society” informing me that my tax dollars are “subsidizing pornography.” Naturally, that got my attention, for the word “subsidize” means “finance, support, promote, sponsor, underwrite, put up the money…

…when pit bulls are criminalized, only criminals will own pit bulls. — Radley Balko In an ominous Pennsylvania development, a group of legislators want to do away with Pennsylvania’s ban on breed specific legislation: State Rep. John Galloway (D., Bucks) will announce legislation today that would allow municipalities to pass ordinances restricting dangerous dogs. ADBA’s…

Thorley Winston at The Volokh Conspiracy has this to say about Obama vs McCain on economic policy: On Health Care – Obama favors creating a new federal entitlement and a new federal bureaucracy to force every private health plan to conform to the “genero[sity]” of the new entitlement. McCain opposes both mandates and entitlements and…

“The only news is that somebody within the administration has confirmed what a lot of us have thought for some time.” That’s Barack Obama’s take on a “tell all” book by former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan. Having not read the book and being without plans to do so, I’d be shooting in the…

Back in late March Clayton sent me an e-mail saying that he was running for the Idaho State Senate. He and I have had our agreements and disagreements. He has always been respectful of my arguments and discussed them with wit and intelligence. The people of Idaho would be well served by electing him to…

Watch and believe! (Link here.) (HT Justin, who told me that naturalists used to tell people that the above could never happen.)

Not long ago, Eric Wilson discussed something I’ve often wondered about: I do wonder, however, if normal sadness — typical melancholy — is increasingly being viewed as a sickness, a state to be treated with medication. Of course, there is a fine line between normal melancholy and clinical depression. What separates the two, as far…

“What I’d really like is something with the price of the Asus, the keyboard of the HP, and Windows XP for speed and broad software compatibility.” So says Glenn Reynolds, in his review of the Asus 900 mini notebook (which he generally likes). When I’m on the road or when the power’s out, I use…

I guess that doesn’t mean yours truly, because not only do I not make a living from blogging, but I never read, linked to, or knew who the complainant (“ex blogger” Emily Gould) was. At least, not until I saw the link from Ann Althouse, and read more: “They want me to be punished for…

I just got an interesting report on a technical conference that is to be held by moving electrons not people. CISSE 2008 provides a virtual forum for presentation and discussion of the state-of the-art research on computers, information and systems sciences and engineering. CISSE 2008 is the fourth conference of the CISSE series of e-conferences.…

How to get more taxes out of high earners: May I suggest lowering the rate on top earners to a rate below that of other civilized countries and attracting them to the USA? I call my plan: Steal The Rich. Cross Posted at Power and Control

A “little thing” pissed me off earlier. The City of Philadelphia is demolishing an architectural gem known as the Race Street Firehouse. Constructed in 1926, it’s one of those whimsically functional buildings no one would design today, and it was adorned with what are probably the world’s only “firemen gargoyles” — an architectural detail I’ve…

Conservatives are pining for a candidate they can vote for. What they really need is an electorate that will vote for their candidates. Cross Posted at Power and Control

Commenter Mike at my post Republicans Need A Hawaiian On The Ticket said: It seems everyone wants to essentially surrender and put a RINO (or in Jonah Goldberg’s case, an actual Democrat) on the ticket with McCain. Wouldn’t it be better to have a VP who actually brings people to the ticket, instead of pushing…