Author: Eric Scheie

Via a link from Glenn Reynolds, I see the feds have declared war on old toys, and are cracking down on people who sell recalled items on ebay and Craigslist. WASHINGTON — If you’re planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you’d best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As…

From actor Jon Voight, an interesting question: Is President Obama creating a civil war in our own country? I don’t know whether he is or not. But I do know that I am against civil war, and against anyone who wants to create one — whether Barack Obama or his enemies. Civil wars have a…

I don’t like the fact that Barack Obama has hiked the deficit to $9 trillion. And what the hell does it matter what the hell I like? Sometimes I don’t know what I find more annoying: the news or my annoyance with the news. Because it is the latter that triggers an annoying sense of…

Michael S. Malone looks at trust and betrayal, initially in the context of the failure of his Comcast service, but this causes him to reflect on why people distrust the government to manage life and and death issues: …nowhere is the burden of trust greater than when we enter into a relationship that requires us…

In what I assumed was a form of political escapism, I’ve been reading a great deal lately about Henry VIII — a cruel and tyrannical narcissistic Christianist theocrat if ever there was one. I’m into my fifth book dealing with the period, which sounds almost obsessive, and I’ve worried that I might be carrying my…

I know it’s not nice to insult people, and I try to be nice. Nor is it logical to engage in ad hominem rhetoric or stereotype people, and I try to be logical. I’m not always successful at living up to these standards, though. Sometimes I feel like letting loose, and usually I check myself.…

While I try to avoid writing posts when I have no new or original observations to add, some things are so outrageous that I don’t mind saying the same thing that others are saying, and the fact that MSNBC had the gall to show a cropped image of a black man carrying a gun so…

I realize it’s not a contest, but earlier I contemplated this image from Gunzip that Glenn Reynolds linked: Most likely, such subversive ideas are Bill Whittle’s fault. But I share his distaste for the Obama logo, so I thought I ought to do at least try to do something. The logo is about change, right?…

This is a disjointed post that I’ll probably regret publishing, but what the hell. (In blogging, it’s usually better to regret doing something than to regret doing nothing.) Quite innocently — and by that I mean I had no particular ideological axe to grind –last night I was reading about Elizabeth I of England and…

“Man Jailed Three Months for Breath Mint Possession.” I wish that I could say headlines like that were a joke, but no, it wasn’t. A man is suing the Kissimmee Police Department for an arrest over mints. When officers pulled Donald May over for an expired tag, they thought the mints he was chewing were…

In an earlier email, M. Simon mentioned Thomas Jefferson’s famous remark about a revolution every 20 years, and here is the exact quote: “God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion… We have had thirteen States independent for eleven years. There has been one rebellion. That comes to one rebellion in…

“For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all,” argues Byron York. Nor are a lot of things considered what they once were. It’s the post-Bush double standard, and while I’ve been complaining about it, I worry that the problem goes to the nature of power. In general, most ideologues think that power…

One of the things I hate about the Internet is what I love about the Internet. I find fascinating stuff, and then I often can’t determine whether the fascinating stuff I find is true. For example, there’s a deck of cards for sale in England, and each card features a picture of prominent politician accompanied…

A story I missed from last month ties in with what I said earlier about using the “Bush did it too!” argument to justify Orwellian tactics. According to this article, the Department of Homeland Security has placed a political enemy of Janet Napolitano on the DHS “No-Fly” list: On July 16th, Arizona State Treasurer Dean…

Commenter Veeshir alerted me to the possibility that I was overreacting (in this post) to an ABC report which in turn quoted a retired FBI agent who claimed that Rush Limbaugh’s comparison of the Obamcare logo to a Nazi logo “legitimizes people who are on the edge to go do something or say something.” While…

While it doesn’t have much to do with Obamacare, I’m nonetheless fascinated by the public reaction to a YouTube video that’s gone viral, showing a woman dragging her leashed toddler through a Verizon store. Many people are outraged, and they’re calling for harsh punishment. The woman is charged with felony child cruelty and she faces…

I’m probably behind the times but until today I never heard the word “girlcott” before. However, I support the idea, Whole heartedly. John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods (and a former socialist) has taken a huge amount of flak for daring not only to oppose Obamacare, but to say so in a WSJ Op-Ed. This…

More on death panels. The provisions in the healthcare bill which gave rise to the term are being scrapped. At the same time (as the LA Times condescendingly reports), the provisions are being said to have not ever existed: A Senate panel has decided to scrap the part of its healthcare bill that in recent…

One of my most frequent complaints involves the tendency ((of activists, usually) to blame people who did not do something for the actions — often criminal in nature — of people who did. The blame game usually takes the form of a communitarian political argument. A favorite target of left wing political activists is Rush…

Are the Republicans due for a resurgence? Byron York makes a very credible argument that they are: “I think what’s going to happen is Obama’s going to be fine, and the Democrats in Congress are going to get their asses kicked in 2010,” says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named. “This is…