Month: August 2007

I’ve noticed that the louder and more opinionated a person is, the more likely he is to see a political disagreement with his position as a personal attack. Perhaps it’s because he’s put so much of his persona into it by being so loud. I think these types are best dealt with in blogs, where…

Commenter Cormac-ballz asks: What I don’t get is: Congress is less popular than Bush because they didn’t stop the war/stand up to Bush etc. But Bush should be less popular because he’s the one persecuting the war in first place! Is there something about U.S. citizens that I fail to grasp? Is it because they…

Glenn’s link to Frank J.’s post blaming Kevin Bacon for bridge collapses has made me do some very serious homework, because it occurred to me that this might be about more than just bridges and infrastructures collapsing. Anywway, I’ll start with Frank J.’s simple yet elegant reasoning: 1. Boooosh had an illegal war in Iraq.…

Eric at Classical Values is wondering why there is so little coverage of a story about a reporter murdered in Oakland California. I think the answer is that the press does not wish to call attention to the connections of Barack Hussein Obama with the Nation of Islam’s leader or the Nation of Islam itself.…

Here are some interesting quotes from American Judges who don’t like mandatory minimums for drug offenses. Judge Morris S. Arnold Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals Appointed by George H.W. Bush, 1992 “You may say that I said that many of our drug laws are scandalously draconian and the sentences are often savage. You may also…

Glenn Reynolds links this Newsbusters report about how the broadcast networks are ignoring the murder of Oakland Post Editor Chauncey Bailey. I noticed that the Inquirer has buried the story with a tiny little notice in a column of collected news items on page A7. A very small headline reads “Handyman says he killed editor,”…

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that this would be unveiled on the same day that a college dean was charged with a felony for failure to police student drinking, but MADD is postively crowing about Nissan’s new car design, which they clearly link to their much-touted “Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving”: Nissan Motor Co.,…

Last night I was reminded that there are murderous Muslim hardliners in this country who are determined to wage a sort of culture war against alcohol. Fortunately (at least so I like to think), their efforts are laughable, and ultimately doomed to failure, as we already tried a “Noble Experiment” called Prohibition, and it failed.…

Via Pajamas Media, I just read Michelle Malkin’s post linking a report that murdered Oakland journalist Chauncey Bailey had been working on an investigative piece about “Your Black Muslim Bakery” just before he was killed, and that the OPD had surrounded the place this morning: Oakland and Fremont police have surrounded the Your Black Muslim…

I have spent several hours trying to get caught up with the Scott Thomas Beauchamp affair, and had concluded that he either lied or told the truth. Now it appears he was lying. Anyway, the whole thing is one of the reasons I don’t like to do war blogging. Too messy. Too speculative. Too many…

Now that John Edwards and Barack Obama have weighed in as warrior chieftains, the conventional wisdom seems to be that they have made Hillary Clinton look sane, sober, and reasonable. I beg to disagree. Regardless of the merits of Edwards’ and Obama’s respective wargame strategies, I think Hillary Clinton’s on-again, off-again support for the war…

From Trevor Bothwell’s commentary — “Oregon boys being Nifonged” — in the DC Examiner: According to ABC News, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face up to 10 years in jail and a lifetime as registered sex offenders if convicted, all over a stunt Mashburn claims was practiced by girls and boys alike every…

“If we are to live in fear of words, well, we might as well just throw the constitution away.” So says Frank Zappa in this YouTube video during a discussion of his Tipper Gore era fight against government censorship. Zappa (a classic himself) invokes a pre-constitutional classic: “Sticks and Stones will break my bones, but…

And why not? Anyone old enough to remember “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.“? Napoleon Solo and Illya Kullyakin are the two agents of the United Network Command for Law Enforcement, who fight evil (primarily an organization of Bad people called, THRUSH) and use charm, wit, and a never ending assortment of gadgets. Ran for 4 years.…

I don’t know which I consider more newsworthy — another bizarre outburst by Michael Savage or the fact that Ace has actually linked Media Matters’ account of it, but hey, both events happened. Hmm… Now that I think about it, Ace linking Media Matters is a far more unusual event than Michael Savage simply behaving…

I found that line on the resume of a metallurgical expert. I’ve long been fascinated with the idea that living organisms are not the only things that age. From time to time, I’ve collected ancient coins, and I learned that forged coins pose a serious problem for the collector, because some of the forgers (especially…

Janet Powell, described as “a Philadelphia funeral director for 22 years,” is calling for federal help in solving Philadelphia’s homicide rate: “There’s nobody taking care of the inner-city conditions in this country. It’s almost as if it doesn’t matter.” She called for studies to get to the root of the problem and for the federal…

Contemplating altruism is a hall of mirrors. I’ve tried before, with mixed results. I’ve looked at altruism in fish and among dying humans, altruism in the context of Dickensian bushmeat dilemmas, post-Katrina dog and gun-grabbing “altruism”, my own failed attempts at communitarian altruism, and my last one was a look at altruism at gunpoint, in…

The song at the left is meant to parody the right wing obsession with bombing every thing in sight where the right observes international political problems. Except that it seems like, in the words of the great Jimmy Durante, “Everyone is trying to get in on the act.” It appears that my esteemed Senator from…

So says Andrew Sullivan, in a damned good post contrasting Hillary Clinton with Barack Obama. Clinton is from the traumatized generation; Obama isn’t. Clinton has internalized to her bones the 1990s sense that conservatism is ascendant, that what she really believes is unpopular, that the Republicans have structural, latent power of having a majority of…