Month: April 2006

Almost anyone who has ever believed in Santa Claus (or the Easter Bunny, who’s visiting millions of homes next week) can understand that part of what we call “growing up” is a process in which the lies of childhood (whether we call them fairy tales, fantasies, mythology) are either destroyed or put into their proper…

Here’s Coco last Sunday — smiling for a picture. (Posted on Saturday night after a cold and rainy day in the hope of a sunny Sunday.)

Silence can be a very valuable commodity: The New York Post is cooperating with a federal investigation into whether a longtime contributor for the Page Six gossip column ? the avidly read daily log of wrongdoing, double-dealing and sexual indiscretions by celebrities both minor and major ? tried to extort money from a California billionaire,…

One of the looniest political conspiracy theories I have read to date involves a long tale about Abraham Lincoln being a secret Jew, a Rothschild, that his wife was addicted to narcotics provided by her Confederate drug dealer John Wilkes Booth, that she, not he, was the assassin, and lots more. The “evidence” was all…

I really like Andrew Sullivan, and I’ve been reading him for years — long before I started blogging. But he can be so unfair! Especially when he complains not about what Glenn Reynolds says, but what Andrew Sullivan says Glenn DOESN’T say. (Not the first time, either.) I think it’s like, totally unfair that Glenn…

The government solution to a problem is usually as bad as the problem. — Milton Friedman To which I’d add, sometimes it’s worse. While I’m looking at welfare statism, I want to address the Republican idea of “fixing” state-created problems by ever-more-draconian regulations which take away more freedom. I cannot think of a better example…

That last post about health care forces me to ask a couple of philosophical questions about Republicans. It seems to be a given that Republicans devote inordinate amounts of time to policies which amount to tinkering with socialism in order to make it work. Let’s face it; that’s what this Hillary health care triangulation strategy…

I’m feeling really old fashioned and out of it today. Picking up the Philadelphia Inquirer, I saw this story about a Republican governor whose latest triumph is a bill requiring everyone in his state to have mandatory, private health insurance — something it seems only the kooky Cato Institute opposes: BOSTON – The most radical…

In a disturbing post titled “Sodomy of Boys is A-OK,” Dr. Helen expresses dismay over a prosecutorial decision that sodomizing young boys with broomsticks is not a sexual offense — unless there is “evidence the defendants are homosexuals.” In other words, whether sexual assaults are sex crimes depends on whether the perp belongs to a…

While I’m still a bit bothered by the fact that many Americans seem to be switching enemies in the middle of a war (or perhaps declaring wars on too many fronts), I want to attempt to detach from my emotions and look ahead. To the Fall. Will it be the Fall of the Republican Party?…

I’m shocked. Just two days after I wrote a post about the difficulties of booting the Windows OS on a Mac, Apple Computer has released software to do just that. (I’d read that Apple was recalcitrant, but obviously that’s not the case) The software is a free download called “Boot Camp“: SAN JOSE, Calif. –…

Here’s an example of the sort of thing I tire of. . . In the course of a recent immigration debate, I heard a retired soldier recite part an oath he claimed required him to protect the country “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The foreign enemies, he claimed, were the illegal immigrants, while the…

Here’s a little something from the pages of “The Great Seduction“… Rushing back to the Bay Area, now known as Silicon Valley, I founded a website called Audiocafe and, securing investment from Intel and SAP, built it into an early paragon of the online revolution. Um, about that word? Paragon? It strikes me as being…

Last night I attended a performance of Franz Schubert’s Death and the Maiden Quartet. (Partial audio here.) Said to have been composed shortly after Schubert learned he had syphilis, this poignantly, beautifully morbid quartet is based on a morbidly beautiful dialogue: It is in the form of a dialogue between a young woman and Death,…

I hate the immigration issue. I am sick to death of hearing about it, and I think a lot of people are. I hate it because it challenges my sense of libertarianism, and because it makes people emotional. And worst of all, it is incapable of solution. To add insult to injury, what I hate…

“The language, and who wins the framing of the language, likely will win the debate” on immigration legislation. — Frank Sharry, National Immigration Forum Be that as it may, illegal aliens don’t seem especially popular in Philadelphia. Not only does the Inquirer use the word “illegal” to refer to them (“undocumented” is simply not an…

(Nothing personal to me, at least….) The recent election mess in Thailand has attracted American press attention: BANGKOK, Thailand – Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra claimed victory yesterday but acknowledged a strong protest vote in an election held after weeks of demonstrations demanding his resignation for alleged corruption and abuse of power. Thaksin offered to set…

I am testing the ubuntu linux operating system. Rah rah rah! Yeah, so it worked. Big deal. Actually, the ubuntu CD booted up my computer just fine and configured everything automatically. It’s a good, fast operating system. But I’m back with Windows now, because life without Windows sucks. I say this notwithstanding the prohibition in…

Jim at Right Thoughts (who had a lot of fun with Cynthia McKinney btw) does a great job of hosting this week’s RINO Sightings Carnival. Jim begins by articulating his RINO manifesto: Some time ago, upon these great shores, a group of Republicans grew weary of the status quo. No longer content to blindly accept…

A relatively new film — Sidney Lumet’s “Find Me Guilty” (“based on the true story of Jack DiNorscio, a mobster who defended himself in court for what would be the longest mafia trial in U.S. history”) — opened at theaters nationwide on March 17. Not only does it look interesting, it’s gotten good reviews. The…