Month: January 2006

I guess I’m not paying as much attention to these things as I should. But when I heard G. Gordon Liddy say something about an angry manicurist being at the heart of the Abramoff scandal, I was intrigued. And Wonkette did not disappoint: We only have Abramoff on the hook today because his partner, Michael…

Dave Kopel recently asked his readers about the ominous Islamist slogan, “First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people.” In a January 1976 article in Commentary, titled “The Return of Islam,” Bernard Lewis wrote, “In the period immediately preceding the outbreak of the Six-Day War in 1967, an ominous phrase was sometimes heard, ‘First the…

From the Grand Stand has an excellent, thoughtful post on groupthink versus true individuality: once you remove all the external cosmetics, the adornments and affectations, what you’re left with is what’s inside?what they think, what the know, how they express themselves, and how they persuade. Most of these folks are empty vessels, soulless individuals finding…

If I relied on this front page headline on today’s Philadelphia Inquirer — “Joy at mine: 12 are alive” — I might think it was true. But the story — written by Tina Moore and Jeff Shields — is nowhere to be found at the Inquirer’s web site. Instead, it has been replaced with a…

What does the head-geek-in-charge think he?s doing? Censoring Chinese bloggers just like communist China does? What goes on here? So asks La Shawn Barber. Both La Shawn and Glenn Reynolds link to Rebecca MacKinnon, who’s got the damning goods on Gates. While I’d like to echo the sentiments condemning Microsoft, I’d also like to pose…

As I think I made clear in the last post, not everyone supports moderate Muslims. Radical Islamists (and assorted left-wing ideologues) consider them Uncle Toms and sellouts. Perhaps it’s because they dislike moderation in anything, but not everyone on the right likes the idea of moderate Muslims either. In a column calling moderate Muslims “a…

I was delighted to see The Philadelphia Inquirer feature a front page article (titled “A call for moderation sparks tension“) on moderate Muslims in the United States. However, despite the fact that I am quite accustomed to the CAIR/Islamist false claim that they are moderates, I am especially bothered by their vicious view that moderate…

There’s a new computer virus threat described as “huge“: ….the potential for damaging attacks increased dramatically at the weekend after a group of computer hackers published the source code they used to exploit it. Unlike most attacks, which require victims to download or execute a suspect file, the new vulnerability makes it possible for users…

There’s no better way to start the New Year than to check out the New Year’s Edition of the RINO Sightings Carnival at Kevin Boyd’s Louisiana Libertarian. He does a fine job with all the posts, and here are a few of my favorites: If you want the lowdown on the Munich massacre (and “Munich”…

La Shawn Barber is an excellent blogger as well as a friend. While I don’t agree with her all the time, that is completely irrelevant to considerations of friendship. (For starters, I don’t know anyone with whom I agree all the time.) But I’m starting to see a regular pattern of attacks on La Shawn…

Do ideas have consequences? For many years, I have wanted to know, but I’ve been unable to find a simple answer to this stubborn question. It has always seemed to me that ideas, like mathematical formulas, are neither good nor bad in themselves because they are intellectual products. Whether they are right or wrong does…

While it took them awhile to perform the requisite statistical analyses, it now turns out that there were no racial disaparities among the Katrina flood victims: Study finds death toll in proportion Contrary to perceptions, poor and black residents didn’t suffer inordinately compared with others. By John Simerman, Dwight Ott and Ted Mellnik Inquirer National…

Late last night, Coco and I were caught watching “The Godfather Part II” on television (not something either of us do a whole lot of, but it’s a favorite I can watch till kingdom come): While I love the film, until I saw the photo I had no idea that Coco enjoyed it so much.…