Author: Eric Scheie

Michele Catalano is a highly respected blogger and writer I have linked many times over the past decade. So I was just completely taken aback to I read that she was visited and questioned by a team of six armed government agents for doing absolutely nothing but Googling things that any normal writer or blogger…

Police these days have no problem breaking down doors, shooting dogs, killing difficult patients who don’t want to go to the hospital, and generally behaving like criminal gangs, but if this story is any indication of what happens when the chips are down, in life-threatening emergencies they couldn’t care less: A man who was brutally stabbed…

A 95 year old man who lived in a nursing home was fatally shot with a bean bag gun when he resisted efforts by the police to take him to the hospital: The Cook County medical examiner’s office said that the cause of death of John Warna was hemoperitoneum – bleeding in the stomach area…

I read about police abuses almost every day now. The latest SWAT Team outrage involved holding small children at gunpoint during a home invasion — all in retaliation over their father having quarreled with a drunken off-duty cop at a veterans lodge. The officers threw to the floor, kicked and handcuffed Georgeia, her stepfather and…

Against my better judgment, I was silly enough earlier to get involved in a Facebook discussion arose over a Western tourist’s unfurling of the now-banned Rainbow flag in Russia.  Some background: It’s illegal in Russia to have “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations” in public places. That basically means you can’t show any support for LGBTQIA…

The things I stumble across on the Internet! Sheesh. This morning while engaged in perfectly innocent news reading, I found myself irritated by an article in the San Francisco Chronicle which called a Bohemian Grove protester (they are all paranoid nutcases, IMHO) a “libertarian”: A clash between self-described hippies and libertarians has thrown the traditional…

Let us suppose that Trayvon Martin attacked George Zimmerman because he assumed (based on the prompting of his friend Rachel Jeantel) that Zimmerman was following him because he wanted to have sex with him. While I have no way of knowing whether Jeantel’s testimony is true, if it is, then isn’t the question of whether Zimmerman…

In what he calls bad news for libertarians (which it certainly is), Reason‘s Nick Gillespie points to a very depressing study which confirms a painfully awful truth. The less faith people have in government, the bigger government grows.  Which brings us to the 2010 paper “Regulation and Distrust,” written by Philippe Aghion, Yann Algan, Pierre Cahuc, and…

Here’s what happened to a perfectly innocent woman who came home from work to prepare what she thought was going to be a romantic dinner: After leaving her operating room scrub nurse duties at Sarasota’s Doctors Hospital on Wednesday, Louise Goldsberry went to her Hidden Lake Village apartment. Her boyfriend came over, and after dinner…

I don’t know why, but I like this useless machine and I would love to own one: Watching something like that would calm my nerves. (Watching the propeller second hand on my airplane clock actually helps me get to sleep.) And as I have a couple of old printers that I’ve been too lazy to…

As everyone knows, it is now official that Detroit is bankrupt. Reading this demagogic editorial in today’s Detroit Free Press convinces me that the city’s leading newspaper is also bankrupt. Intellectually bankrupt, and hopelessly so. There’s no comparison between retirees — many of whom live in the city and are familiar with its troubles —…

I’m beginning to think that those of us who thought Obamacare was a debate over socialized medicine were suckers. Including me. It’s becoming more and more clear that those who were worried — as I was and still am — about socialized medicine, the quality of health care, health insurance regulation, even the loss of…

An email from a friend asked “Is this the real Detroit?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9tXzQFQ0b8 To which I replied in the negative. But unfortunately, this is the real Detroit: And check out the Packard Plant.

This is a perfect illustration of a problem I have tried to point out for years: Pandemonium erupted inside Manhattan Criminal Court Tuesday after panicked spectators said they spotted bedbugs crawling up the neck of a man who was there to answer to a desk-appearance ticket. The sickening sight sent court observers scrambling out of…

I need more self discipline. I don’t keep track of news as I should. Perhaps I am too busy with other things, and perhaps the news just plain sucks too much. Perhaps I should grit my teeth and get up to speed on this Huma Weiner business. After all, a friend was kind enough to…

The fact that the plaintiff is a lawyer only makes this more ridiculous: A lawyer in Nashville, Tennessee filed a lawsuit against Apple, Inc. that blames the company for the dissolution of his marriage and the collapse of his mental health. According to CNet.com, Chris Sevier filed suit in Federal District Court earlier this summer…

These are the current Drudge headlines: ‘MODERN DAY LYNCHING’… SHARPTON PLANS PROTESTS IN 100 CITIES… Rally Shuts Down Major Intersection In Newark… Baltimore Witness: Group of Blacks Beat Hispanic Man, Yelling ‘This Is For Trayvon’… Zimmerman’s Parents in Hiding from ‘Enormous Amount of Death Threats’… Lawyer: Prosecutors ‘Disgrace to My Profession’… Oakland: Police Stood Down…

This local item irritated the hell out of me: As the recovery set in, I eagerly began growing my business once again. Unfortunately, just at this time, I was surprised and disappointed to learn that the 2010 health care bill specifically targets pizzerias with costly and nonsensical regulations. Section 4205 of the Patient Protection and Affordable…

In a famous scene from “It’s a Gift,” the great comedian W.C. Fields attempts what was clearly and laughably impossible in the mid ’30s — but which today would be considered mandatory accommodations under the ADA. Yesterday’s comedy is today’s reality. Clearly, W.C. Fields was a prophet.

I like salt, but as I try to be a realist about my health, a couple of years ago, I asked my doctor (a cardiologist) whether salt in my diet is dangerous. Noting that I don’t have high blood pressure, he said it would be a waste of time for me to worry about it.…