Author: Eric Scheie

There’s an election in New Jersey which as far as I’m concerned just plain sucks. The polls are closed. Much as I hate to say it, my opposition to socialist policies would have probably made me vote for Lonegan. (Not much of an endorsement, I know.) Anyway, as I tried to point out to a…

Anyone can fly any flag anywhere, right? Especially an unknown person in a crowd. I mean, when a Communist hammer and sickle flag was flown in front of the White House back when Obama was inaugurated, it didn’t cause all that much consternation. That’s because as all of us reasonable people know, anyone can fly…

While I’ve been writing about this problem for some time, I was a bit taken aback to see it on the front page of today’s Sunday Detroit Free Press: 146,000 Michiganders – at least – face loss of cheap policies under new health care reform rules At least 146,000 Michiganders — and possibly thousands more —…

A recent Reason magazine piece (which pointed out among other things that 60% of likely voters support marijuana legalization) reminded me about a problem with Michigan’s Medical Marijuana Act. A major lawsuit pits the ACLU and the CATO Institute against a state prosecutors lobby, the Michigan State Bar and various municipalities. The latter want the law (passed overwhelmingly…

The beating to death of a football player Adrian Peterson’s 2 year old son has received national — and international — attention because of the father’s fame, but similar cases are in the news all the time, and receive little attention. A lot of infants are killed by mother’s boyfriends. For whatever horrible reason, what happened…

Did you know that swinging nuts can deter thugs? No, I am not talking about an unneutered dogs. Or humans. I’m talking about the anti-sparrow device I made for my chickadee feeder. Sparrows have lately been mobbing my bird feeder, which is not a regular bird feeder, but a specialized chickadee feeder, plainly marked as…

A left-wing writer for the Washington Post tries to make the case that the Tea Party is Neo Confederate: The New Confederacy, as churlish toward President Obama as the Old Confederacy was to Lincoln, has accomplished what its predecessor could not: It has shut down the federal government, and without even firing a weapon or…

These days, nearly everyone is talking about the increasing loss of privacy, including longtime Facebook users. As I just said in a Facebook post, to the extent that I care about privacy, I don’t put my private stuff on Facebook. But words are tricky in this context. When we think of privacy, we tend to think…

Not sure if I should let Coco see this: Dogs Are People, Too And that’s just the headline. The author is serious: Although we are just beginning to answer basic questions about the canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the structure and function of a key brain…

What is going on to advance the Obama administration’s “government closure” narrative is so crass that it would be comical if it weren’t so downright malicious. It’s one thing to “close” popular national parks, restaurants, bodies of water, and even views, but the way they are singling out war memorials — even to the point of arresting…

While I have long been of the opinion that arguments are largely a waste of time, I am always fascinated by the pathology which might help explain why. A post by Steve Sailer discusses the pros and cons of the well-known “No True Scotsman” fallacy. Sticking to the case of the Scotsman makes it a…

I can remember that not so long ago, Google was criticized for cooperating with China and other countries which combat Internet freedom. We Americans tend to take it for granted that we live in the land of the free — an open country opposed to such totalitarianism. Right? Wrong! As Bruce Schneier points out, this…

A dental hygienist named Miriam Carey was shot dead after attempting to ram the barricades outside the White House. Here’s what we know about Miriam Carey, the woman identified in news reports as the suspect in a shooting incident that left Capitol Hill on lockdown for a brief period Thursday afternoon, and has now reportedly…

It’s not every day I read a statement like that in the “news,” but I did. A Belgian’s female-to-male sex change went awfully wrong, and the botched surgery led to euthanasia. Over the years, I have seen that people who are unhappy with the way they are are seldom made happy by external human agency,…

I realize that Obamacare starts tomorrow, but I often wonder whether we still live in the United States, once the land of opportunity. I read in the Destroit Free Press the other day that the federal government literally stole $35,000 from a small businessman under “asset forfeiture” laws, claiming his regular bank deposits were “suspicious.”…

Commenting on the sickening reports that the Kenyan mall hostages were cruelly tortured, Glenn Reynolds made a simple observation: if this kind of thing keeps happening, people are going to start thinking less of Islam. I can easily imagine that Glenn will be attacked for saying that by Media Matters and the various leftists who…

As we know, Aaron Alexis had a gun and was crazy. This crazy man didn’t have a gun. Instead, he pushed a woman in front of a train. As CBS 2’s John Slattery reported, it was the last thing the young woman must have expected – being pushed by a man routinely hanging around the…

I’ve had it with Drudge and his shameless habit of linking Alex Jones’s Infowars site. His latest link is to a “story” which argues that the Navy SEALS did not kill Osama bin Laden. Obviously, Drudge and his ilk are hoping that many conservatives will be willing to go along with this conspiracy theory simply…

This takes the food war insanity to an all new level. Health department raids community picnic and destroys all food with bleach The evening was everything I had dreamed and hoped it would be. The weather was perfect, the farm was filled with friends and guests roaming around talking about organic, sustainable farming practices. Our…

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve complained about artificially high prices subsidizing crime in the context of the war on drugs. Well, now the same thing seems to be happening with the war on cigarettes. This morning I read about how ridiculously high cigarette taxes are turning cigarettes into  ‘Gold Bars’ For…