Month: April 2007

I want to focus here on the war in Iraq and the application of standard American military strategy to the fighting in Iraq. I want to do this based on the lessons learned from the Vietnam War. It seems to me the mistakes we are making in Iraq are similar to the mistakes we made…

I just received a very disturbing email (forwarded to me from a man who says it was forwarded to him by a friend in New York who said it came from “a Jew living in France”) and I’ll quote it in part: In Lyon , a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on…

In a post titled “What constitutes homophobia?,” Clayton Cramer links to a post by Second Amendment blogger Progun Progessive, who is indignant over Cramer’s link to an explicit “safe sex” flyer which has been faithfully reproduced and criticized at the anti-gay “Americans for Truth” website. Oh, yes, the flyer has lots of shock value —…

Here’s a fairly good drug film which doesn’t get hung up on discouraging or promoting opiates. As Glenn Reynolds’s post reminded me, in the future drugs will become electronic. And how could they make that illegal?

While I don’t think it smacks of censorship because there’s no government action, I don’t like the communitarian trend of promoting the idea that bloggers are responsible for what commenters say: The preliminary recommendations posted by Mr. Wales and Mr. O’Reilly are based in part on a code developed by BlogHer, a network for women…

While I don’t want to write yet another long screed attempting to debate the undebatable issue of gun control, I find myself unable to ignore a couple of quotes from today’s Philadelphia Inquirer, because they touch on something so often left out of the debate that I think it’s become a journalistic taboo. Criminals cause…

According to this poll, most Europeans think Iran must be stopped from acquiring nuclear weapons — by military means! In response to the statement, “We must stop countries like Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, even if that means taking military action”, 52 percent of Europeans agreed, 40 percent disagreed and 8 percent stated they were…

Glenn Reynolds links a TCS column by Derek Hunter — “Liberals and Conservatives Catch the Regulatory Bug” After discussing the advocacy of so-called “Net Neutrality” by the left (a misleading concept I oppose), Hunter turns to the right: The regulation bug isn’t limited to liberals, as some conservative groups would like to control what children,…

Because of a technical error compounded by the blog’s software design, a few incomplete unpublished posts were accidentally published earlier. My apologies to anyone who might have been confused. One of the posts — a long one about the topological abduction of Europe — was especially incoherent, as I was engaged in creative writing, and…

Asia News has a story about Muslim threats against the Dali Lama. Lumbini (AsiaNews) – Nepal’s three million Buddhists are alarmed over death threats made against the Dalai Lama, allegedly by Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Toiba. In Lumbini, Buddha’s birth place in southern Nepal, monks and lay people are praying for him. A local monk, Bhante…

While I was away (moving) the last week and a half, I have not been idle. I have been reading On Strategyby Colonel of Infantry Harry G. Summers, Jr. and Strategyby B. H. L. Hart. Two classics in the field of military strategy. Col. Summers’ book deals with the Vietnam War and Basil Hart’s book…

How Easter is calculated has always puzzled me, because there doesn’t seem to be any one rule which is always followed. Anyone who thinks it’s a simple matter should read this: The usual statement, that Easter Day is the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs next after the vernal equinox, is not a…

Jessica Valenti is painting herself as a victim of a harassment campaign ostensibly run by Ann Athouse — all because a photograph of her wearing a tight-fitting casual sweater in front of Bill Clinton generated controversy: One website, run by law professor and occasional New York Times columnist Ann Althouse, devoted an entire article to…

Amazing as it may seem, the “single most influential religious leader in the Muslim world” today is a genuine moderate Muslim — former Indonesian president Abdurrahman Wahid: A former president of Indonesia, he is the spiritual leader of the Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), an Islamic organization of some 40 million members. Indonesians know him universally as…

You might have noticed that M. Simon has not been blogging the past few days. He is having some serious financial problems, and at his blog Power and Control, he says this: Due to a problem with my #1 son our lease is not being renewed and at this time we have not found a…

Via Pajamas Media, The Anchoress has one of the most refreshing posts I’ve seen in a long time: I’m getting some emails from folks wondering why I am not writing about Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Duncan Hunter, etc. Note I’m also not writing about Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. The answer is simple. I’m protesting.…

“Don’t fear the terrorists. They’re mothers and fathers.” — Rosie O’Donnell When the Inquirer is good, it is very, very good! And I was absolutely delighted to see that yesterday’s Philadelphia Inquirer featured guest editorials from Claudia Rosett and James Lileks. The latter wrote about a chocolate Jesus (and a modern artist who seems willing…

When the Inquirer is bad, it is horrid…. While I was quite pleased with yesterday’s editorials, today’s Philadelphia Inquirer features a morally indignant editorial which the website lists (incorrectly IMO) under the category of “top stories.” Headlined “Silence is the enemy of justice — ‘No Snitchin’ ‘ is part of a wide moral breakdown,” the…

You learn something every day. And today, via Pajamas Media, I learned that death can mean a lifetime of pencils: Pencils made from the carbon of human cremains. 240 pencils can be made from an average body of ash – a lifetime supply of pencils for those left behind. There’s no denying that pencils have…

Before taking apart Amanda Marcotte’s convoluted assertions that breasts are like heads, and the Althouse-Instapundit axis wants feminists dead, Ann Althouse noticed a slight peculiarity in the appearance of the male British hostages. The latter were released wearing suits, but minus neckties. Sigh. It seems that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad wants all men to look like him.…