Author: Eric Scheie

I think M. Simon got it right in his post about the decline in morality (which was already in steep decline before the homos are alleged to have destroyed it). A commenter in an earlier post about a subject I tried to keep in the closet yesterday called “the legitimizing of homosexuality” a “lynchpin in…

An old friend recently told me in an email that she worries about the leftism of her grandchildren: I must say I do not understand my grandchildren’s liberal leanings. It amazes me that intelligent people can believe in this administration. It is making me ill when I permit myself to dwell on it. I replied,…

A recent editorial in The Economist addresses whether Dr. Donald Berwick (new head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) really intends to ration health care as many conservatives suspect. The editorial calls this claim “politically explosive” but then goes on to defend and rationalize health care rationing: That leaves the third charge levied…

As a longtime conservative, I believe in building coalitions. We can’t agree on everything, and it doesn’t help the cause to concentrate on areas of disagreement. So says Robert Knight in a Washington Times editorial which concentrates on an area of disagreement on which I’d love not to concentrate. In fact, I would so love…

The most personal of personal information about you — your health records — will soon be online, in the form of what the government calls an “EHR” (short for “Electronic Health Record”): New federal regulations issued this week stipulate that the electronic health records–that all Americans are supposed to have by 2014 under the terms…

I agree with Tom Smith that “the new DOJ website is kinda creepy.” And I’m also inclined to agree with the majority of those who took Glenn Reynolds’s poll that it’s only creepy if a website design by Darth Vader creeps you out. It’s not so much that it creeps me out (I’m actually kind…

Last night I stumbled onto a very strange account of one of the worst mass murders in United States history. I wasn’t really looking for it, but a friend emailed me a link to a site which lists the worst crimes committed within each state. Naturally, as I’m living in Michigan, my curiosity led me…

For some time, I’ve been predicting that the copyright laws would ultimately be used to defeat free speech. There are now countless examples. Remember when the New York Times tried to take down a parody site? When Michael Savage did the same thing by claiming that when his critics merely quoted his material to ridicule…

Speaking of local Ann Arbor politics, a woman named Patricia Lesko is running for Mayor, and among other things, she has criticized the fiscal irresponsibility of the incumbent administration. For daring to challenge the ruling establishment, she is being viciously attacked. Nothing unusual there, save the way they’re going about it. Ms. Lesko happens to…

That’s how government pension plans are described in this highly informative video I found via Michigan Capitol Confidential: What is happening is worse than most people imagine. Most people tend to think that the people on the public payroll are at least “working” in some capacity or another. But as the above documents, they often…

Few things better illustrate the perfidy and dishonesty of left wing activists than a stunning example I found at Bob Owens’ blog. A man wearing Nazi garb and spouting Nazi slogans showed up at a Tea Party rally, where he was promptly and angrily confronted, told he was not welcome, and all of this was…

When I read that Bill Clinton was helping out in the Obama White House — both as an adviser and as a fund raiser, I have to say I was startled, as there’s no love lost there. Because of the polls and the sour mood among the voters, the left is generally freaking out; there’s…

In an earlier post, M. Simon was comparing the left to cockroaches, whom he suggested should be defeated in November. While I don’t normally resort to insect analogies to describe people, I guess I have been known to compare people to bonobo chimps. And it’s not as if leftists have hesitated to liken their conservative…

Yesterday I said that the national conversation about race sucks and that I hate even writing about it. Famous last words. Here I am writing another post about a topic I hate. Yes, I hate race. As much as I hate the isms of sexuality. This is not to say that I hate races, or…

Who owns the Tea Party Movement? The answer (fortunately, IMO) is no one! This can be a blessing and a curse, as Ann Althouse points out in her discussion of the ridiculous demand issued by NAACP leader Benjamin Jealous that “the Tea Party” (whatever he might mean by that) expel the “bigots” and “racists” in…

The AJC’s Cynthia Tucker is getting a lot of flak for daring to suggest that it was inappropriate of the NAACP to call the Tea Party movement racist. She makes the observation that not all Tea Partiers are racist: Still, [the resolution] leaves the impression that the NAACP believes all tea partiers are racist —…

One of my pet peeves involves babies being tossed onto roadways. I’ve complained about this in blog posts, but unfortunately, that does not seem to have stopped the problem. A 21-year-old man was arrested Saturday after he threw his daughter into oncoming traffic and then attacked witnesses and police who were trying to subdue him,…

It isn’t easy to tell people that what they like is evil. That is why scoldings of that sort have traditionally been in the preserve of religion. M. Simon’s last post reminded me that left-wing economic scoldings have tended to fall on deaf ears, mainly since consumers of stuff tend to like the stuff they…

A lot of people have been citing this post by Doctor Zero (which I first saw linked at Instapundit), and I can see why. It is one of the best explanations of the central problem which I think is facing the country, and it bears repeating, and repeating: Bureaucracies grow through failure. They present failure…

To what extent are college professors entitled to voice opinions without being fired for them? I recently learned about an Illinois professor who stated his religious and personal opinion that homosexuality is immoral. Predictably, this caused a student to complain about “hate speech” — which led to the professor being fired: URBANA, Ill. — The…