Month: July 2007

Former CIA Director James Woolsey has co-authored a piece in the Wall Street Journal that I think ought to be read by everyone. Basically, he says that the British finally get it, but the Americans don’t. On the eve of his departure from office, Mr. Blair gave a television interview taking on those he once…

“The most hostile in history to the Bill of Rights.” According to Clayton Cramer, that’s how the Bush administration is being characterized. An acquaintance now living in Europe went on one of his rants about how the Bush Administration is “the most hostile in history to the Bill of Rights.” This is very typical rhetoric…

I might be mistaken, but I don’t think Ace is terribly sympathetic to Andrew Sullivan’s plight. (Or, for that matter, that of Gren Gleenwald, whose hatred and vitriolic excesses I think make Sullivan look kind and reasonable.) I should probably warn readers that Ace is pissed, so if you’re easily upset, you might want to…

Extreme anti-gun bias by Philadelphia politicians and media is attracting national attention lately, with an ABC News special echoing and promoting culture war stereotypes of the sort I’ve been arguing against for years. I’ll start with the Philadelphia Inquirer. The logic is hard to follow, but the Inquirer recently editorialized that gun control would have…

I’m sorry to see that Lady Bird Johnson has died at age 94. The daughter of a Texas rancher, Lady Bird Johnson she spent 34 years in Washington, as the wife of a congressional secretary, U.S. representative, senator, vice president and president. The couple had two daughters, Lynda Bird, born in 1944, and Luci Baines,…

Great news! I just heard from a friend that AB 1634 (the subject of at least a dozen blog posts here) appears to be dead — at least for the time being: Legislation to require statewide spaying or neutering of dogs and cats was shelved Wednesday after receiving a chilly reception by a Senate committee.…

Ann Althouse links a story about a remarkable French cabinet member who all but admits she’s a 9/11 Truther. Asks Althouse, What’s stupider: the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory or that Traffic = Truth Theory? The latter theory is explained thusly: Asked in an interview last November, before she became minister, whether she thought Bush might be…

Gleen Grenwald? Not bad. I have found myself wondering how Ace could ever live up to his own challenge, but so far he has. (It seems to be a catchy name too.) I found an interesting picture of what I think is Gleen Grenwald, riding a bicycle before the greening took place: I know, it’s…

I’ve long thought that the anthropogenic global warming/overwhelming scientific alarmism campaign involves a nexus between politics and marketing, and that to this end, the average person (especially in the United States) is being kept in the dark as much as possible about how the practical, day-to-day applications of anthropogenic global warming theory might play out.…

I have had to get in rather deeper into geometry than is my usual for the past 30 or so years (since my dome building daze – I built 3 or 4 and even lived in Bucky’s Dome in Carbondale – he was no longer a resident alas) because of my design work on the…

Dr. Megalommatis is at it again, writing in his usual cryptic style, which is another way of saying that he has posted a confusing and ill-edited op-ed piece. The piece in question is an apparent repudiation of an old book that I’m not familiar with, Samuel P. Huntington’s The Clash of Civilizations. The book, published…

Forgive me, but I’m having a lot of trouble with the idea that there’s some sort of lover’s spat between Glenn Reynolds and Andrew Sullivan. Maybe I’m in denial. Then again, maybe I’m squeamish thinking about the details. But try putting yourself in my position. I write a post late at night that I thought…

By linking my “‘stab-in-the-back,’ analysis-free, Instapundit-approved grand-standing blog-post on the Iraq civil war,” Glenn Reynolds drew the ire of Andrew Sullivan. If Glenn can get in trouble just for linking me (and not even expressing “approval”), I must be really bad. And obviously, I don’t even have to analyze; all I need do is plug…

Anyone who has dealt with what we call “bureaucrats” knows that one of the most important things to a bureaucrat is having a form filled out correctly. Getting the forms right is the traditional sine qua non of bureaucracy. In a previous post, I speculated that a major push for the immigration bill is coming…

While I was in Alaska, I did the usual touristy things, saw a lot of wildlife, and took a lot of pictures. I didn’t have time for blogging, and because I tend to write about whatever I’m experiencing at the moment, the time to blog about stuff I see or do on vacation would be…

This from the Times Online: SAIMA KHAN wants to die a martyr. Life is transient, she told her father in a telephone call last week, and the real glory is to sacrifice it for Allah. Her statement would be alarming at any age, but Saima is only 10. As she spoke, rifle shots rang out,…

Syria looks to be creating new troubles for Lebanon. Syria has called on its citizens to leave Lebanon ahead of an expected “eruption” in that country, Arab and Iranian press reports have said. The media reports were translated and made available by MEMRI in a special dispatch on Sunday. “In the past few days, Arab…

In last week’s video announcement, Ayman al Zawahiri confirmed what many have long suspected — that a primary goal of al Qaeda is to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq: In the unusually long video — at just over an hour and a half — al-Zawahri depicted the Islamic State of Iraq as a vanguard…

While I hope the pornographic picture on the left will not get me in trouble with the net nannies or the blog rating system, I nonetheless felt obligated to upload it in the interest of science. It is an undeniable fact that my yard is being invaded by Japanese beetles (Popillia japonica), and the little…

Recently links to a dubious interview on an even more doubtful internet news site found their way into my inbox. Under the guise of informed scholarship the interviewee claimed that all languages descended ultimately from Aramaic, and I see now that the interviewer, a certain Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis, is advocating the imposition of Aramaic…