Author: Dave

Qaddafi has fled to Venezuela. Libyan air force bombing civilians; two pilots refuse and fly to Malta. Clerics endorse rebellion. This follows on yesterday’s chaos. As usual, Wikipedia has one of the more thorough summaries of the situation.

The unions in Wisconsin are making one argument that I agree with — that their struggle is about human rights. Hell yes, this is about human rights.  This is about the property rights of taxpayers being violated.  There is absolutely no reason why unions should be allowed to organize against people whose income is being…

It sure looks that way. Reports are that much of the east may already be under the control of protesters, with the armed forces joining the revolution. Meanwhile, tribal leaders are now openly challenging Qaddafi: The leader of the Al-Zuwayya tribe in eastern Libya threatened on Sunday to cut oil exports to Western countries within…

A great point from M Simon here at Classical Values: the one country notably absent from the recent massive pro-democracy protests across the Mideast is… Iraq.  Hmmm, why might that be?  Oh right, they already have democracy.  The protests in Iraq, by contrast, are Tea Party-like demonstrations against corruption, bad economic policies, and lack of transparency. In fact,…

Doctors from numerous hospitals set up a station near the Capitol to provide notes covering public employees’ absences. Family physician Lou Sanner, 59, of Madison, said he had given out hundreds of notes. Ummm, what?  Let’s say the Milwaukee Brewers put together a promotion in which they encouraged attendees to call in sick and provided…

“I’ll wager $6,435,” Watson said in his pleasant electronic voice. “I won’t ask,” said host Alex Trebek, wondering with everybody else where that figure came from. Another step forward for AI, as IBM’s supercomputer tramples the organic competition.  Perhaps what’s most interesting about Watson is that it included a copy of Wikipedia — which came into…

It’s not a good sign when your project deadline is looming and your to-do list is still growing rather than shrinking. In lieu of time-consuming commentary grasping desperately at some sort of insight, here’s some hopefully-interesting links. Note to Krugman: this is what structural unemployment looks like.  I’m ready for my fakon shamburger.  Vouchers buy…

I should really be working, but I thought I’d share a few thoughts before returning to my 70-hour workweek. Nick Gillespie was very impressive in person, witty and well-read. A better ambassador for libertarianism we couldn’t hope for.  Contrary to rumor, he does take off the leather jacket when swimming and dining. Ron Bailey was…

With a $1.5T deficit in the news and the GOP sweeping into power promising spending cuts, I’m seeing a return of the left’s hallowed 1990s standby: how dare we think of “balancing the budget on the back of the poor.” It would be nice if we could give everyone all the things they want or deserve…

Classical Values gets results! No sooner does our own Sarah Hoyt tell the Instaworld “there’s no such thing as a benevolent dictatorship” than this happens: Tunisia’s popular uprising is all the more surprising because it wasn’t part of a narrative that had been given a name and assigned a colour months in advance. To most…

Ace catches the media doing… well, what the media does.  The shamelessness is breathtaking. James Taranto has, I think, the best take on all this. Burning an effigy, like burning an American flag, is constitutionally protected symbolic speech. It is also about as eliminationist as speech can get, short of a true threat or incitement. To…

OK, so we can all agree it’s pukingly hilarious that a bunch of lefties immediately blamed Sarah Palin for the shooting of a politician and several innocent bystanders… by a deranged lefty. And it’s no surprise that the same media who urged us to wait for all the facts when someone shouted “Allahu Akbar” before shooting the place up…

Via Glenn, an interesting Right Coast piece on academics with anger management issues. Schama and Sachs are not isolated cases, of course.  This sort of talk has become commonplace among people who used to be liberal but serious, sophisticated, and certainly not hysterical.  You hear it from public figures like Schama and Sachs, and you hear it…

Via Hotair, over at FrumForum John Veccione assaults libertarianism with a veritable army of strawmen. As someone who marched merrily from movement conservatism to more or less doctrinaire libertarianism, I feel obliged to call in some rhetorical artilley on the columns of calumny therein, while attempting assiduously to avoid employing the No True Scotsman defense.…

A great piece at Instapundit about education versus schooling, and how the disparity was addressed in centuries past. My sister was homeschooled, was accepted at Stanford, and after a year or so decided to become a firefighter/EMT.  She travels the world, is certified as a divemaster, and spent last winter in Antarctica at McMurdo.  She learned…

A nice summary from Steve Chapman, but a bit pessimistic. An optimist might have noted the world has never been more free, and posited the notion that further movement is perhaps slow because there’s no more low-hanging fruit — the remaining unfree societies of 2010 have significant pathologies. And while there wasn’t a whole lot…

Via HotAir, John Avlon of No Labels continues fussing over alleged extremists right and left, this time aiming at Rush Limbaugh and his criticism of the group. But Avlon’s attacks seem off-target.  While I’m not a fan, Rush can hardly be described as “far right” in country where self-described conservatives outnumber self-described liberals 2:1 and his program…

Tim Blair learns from an unlikely source that imprisoned Nobel Prize winning dissident Liu Xiaobo not only supports greater political and economic freedom for the Chinese, but also enthusiastically supports our campaigns to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan, and argues in favor of the U.S. interventions in Vietnam and Korea. Xiaobo even bucks international opinion and…

Via Glenn, Joshua Micah Mackie Packie Paisely Marshall writes perhaps the most ridiculous thing ever rendered in pixels: “Amazing. A year ago, no one took seriously the idea that a federal health care mandate was unconstitutional. And the idea that buying health care coverage does not amount to ‘economic activity’ seems preposterous on its face.…

Over at HotAir, Ed Morissey asks if Obama’s triangulation has flopped. We’ve been hearing a lot about 1994 lately, but people tend to forget that Ross Perot made a real showing in 1992 and was a major factor in 1996 — for Clinton, moving toward the middle meant squeezing the space his 1996 challenger could…