Month: August 2010

A relatively minor incident in the news serves as a reminder of the importance of the First Amendment — as well as its inherent fragility. If the reports are correct, a New Haven, Connecticut man was arrested merely for stating that he understood the mindset of the man who went on a shooting rampage at…

As you may or may not know I was able to get a Gateway DX4831-01e thanks to the generous help of my readers. I LOVE the machine. If you can’t get one locally Amazon has them. About a month after I got the machine (a very nice one it is – Two eSATA ports [high…

In a post appropriately titled “Housing Insanity,” Megan McArdle expresses astonishment over the fact that despite the horrendous consequences of the housing bubble and its fallout, the federal government is going full steam ahead to promote no equity home purchases: If you want to know why us libertarian types are skeptical of the government’s ability…

Eric says that “the assertion of our constitutional rights is now a revolutionary act.” I agree. So in that vein I think it is time to repeat: Click on the above image and learn how to spread it around.

Eric‘s post A revolution both revolutionary and constitutional deserves some music. And a comment I left at a previous post: I remember back in the day when the lefty-revolutionaries got ALL the chicks. And to be living in one of the “centers” Bezerkeley? You just can’t imagine. Well since you [Eric] lived there then you…

Glenn Reynolds linked a post by Gay Patriot the other day that touched on a very familiar issue: Are we facing another American Revolution? Gay Patriot links this widely circulated piece that appeared in Investors Business Daily, and adds, It is interesting to see a number of people now thinking the way I have been…

In a piece Sissy Willis linked titled “The Tea Party vs. the Intellectuals,” Lee Harris touches on what I think is the principal reason for the Tea Party movement’s resiliency. It is at essence a movement founded on the principle of non-conformity — of saying NO. (Even “EFF YOU”!) Quite fascinatingly, this arises out of…

From a comment at Dr. Helen‘s. Dr.D said… The only schools that offer some hope of being conservative, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, are engineering colleges. Those where the faculty are regularly in contact with industry, particularly if they come and go between industry and academia, tend to be quite conservative. This is…

As Dr. Helen’s post reminded me, the left wing considers right-leaning libertarians like her (and like me) to be conservatives. Which means I am considered a conservative by liberals. I could accept that if it ended there. I agree with conservatives about 80% of the time (as online tests confirm). Yet that “minor” twenty percent…

Many Michigan conservatives are undoubtedly disappointed by yesterday’s gubernatorial election. Here are the results: Governor – GOP Primary 5732 of 5732 Precincts Reporting – 100% Snyder, Rick 380,489 36% Hoekstra, Pete 280,326 27% Cox, Mike 239,752 23% Bouchard, Mike 126,991 12% George, Tom 16,965 2% It was quite fascinating to watch the dynamics of the…

In a soon to be unreleased paper the journal Nature will announce that Global Warming Caused by CO2 is statistically connected with increased erectile function in human males. One participant in the study was especially enthusiastic. “With another doubling of CO2 I could go all night.” His sorely taxed partner was unavailable for comment. Prompted…

It has come to my attention that PFC Bradley Manning — the leaker at the center of the Wiki Leaks scandal — is openly gay. According to Ace, Manning was upset because of a breakup with his lover or something like that, and decided to betray many American allies to the Taliban. Great. So the…

Historian Will Durant wrote in his book The Story of Civilization: “The Mohammadan conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history. It is a discouraging tale, for its evident moral is that civilization is a precarious thing, whose delicate complex of order and liberty, culture and peace may at any time be overthrown…

There’s an AP article floating around headlined “New ID theft targets kids’ SS numbers.” Apparently, there’s a huge market in stolen Social Security numbers, and according to the piece, the bad guys consist of those who sell the numbers as well as the credit companies that allow people to run checks on them. Online companies…

Perhaps I didn’t mean to be as facetious as I thought I meant to be when I used the Glenn Reynolds phrase “FASTER, PLEASE” in an earlier post, but I thought this merited a new post, because I think this is worth stressing. By merely clicking on that InstaPundit search phrase, it is possible to…

Weekly Standard Editor Andrew Ferguson takes a look at American voters’ confusing on-again, off-again love affair with statism: A paradoxical people, these Americans: eager to have an incompetent government that they don’t trust do more of the things that they don’t want it to do. That’s not meant to be a comprehensive analysis of Ferguson’s…

Today is Election Day. Michigan’s primary election, that is. So, because I live in a left wing city, I feel largely disenfranchised. That’s because I have a choice between having a voice in selecting the Republicans candidates who might win the higher offices (and having no say at the local level, because whichever Democrat wins…

In early 2004, I discussed the idea of “using genetic engineering to end the Drug War“: What fuels the Drug War, in my opinion, are the absurd prices people are willing to pay for otherwise worthless, commonly available substances — simply because they are illegal in this country, and have to be imported at great…

What do you call someone who advocates religion for the masses but not for himself? Most people would call such a person a hypocrite. At the very least, such a political position evinces a mindset normally thought of as condescending — the sort we would typically associate with the “ruling class.” Doubtless this factored into…

The EPA under rules developed during a Republican administration has a plan that will shut down up to 20% of the coal fired electrical plants in the nation. In March 2005 the federal EPA issued two new rulings that mandate significant reductions in air pollution and mercury pollution. These federal regulatory requirements will have significant…