Author: Eric Scheie

Reading the various reports on yesterday’s (or does yesterday’s date mean anything anymore?) savage murder of Americans including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, it is not at all clear to me that this was a spontaneous attack motivated by an obscure anti-Muslim video.  Some analysts think the attack was a well-planned terrorist strike, with the video…

Today is a beautiful day. Beautiful enough to double the poignancy of the memory of what happened 11 years ago on what had begun as a beautiful day. I will never forget my New York brother in law (who witnessed the 9/11 attack) said when I finally talked to him. “It was a really nice…

This country is in dreadful economic trouble and there is an election coming. One might think that the most important issue would be the economy and what to do about it, and voters would be thinking along these lines in order to decide which man is more likely to help boost the economy. But no.…

Sorry to sound sarcastic, but who would have ever imagined that this might happen? Amid a medical and law enforcement crackdown on opiate prescription pill abuse, rising street prices and manufacturer reformulations that make pain pills harder to abuse, addicts are increasingly turning to heroin —cheaper, easier to obtain and extremely potent, police and drug…

Anyone who has ever kept any of the various parrots knows how emotional they can be, and how adept they are at infuriating people they don’t like. (I had one that used to bite me — hard — if he didn’t like my visitors.) If this story is correct (and I have no reason to…

I’m fascinated by R.E.M.’s claim that it somehow has a right to ideologically police the players of its music. The American rock band R.E.M. on Thursday demanded that Fox News “cease and desist” using their song “Losing My Religion” during its coverage of the Democratic National Convention. “R.E.M.’s ‘Losing My Religion’ was used in the…

I loved this headline: Denialist Democrats The party of government refuses to even entertain the possibility that we can no longer afford it Such huffing and puffing by the Dems would be very entertaining comedy if it weren’t for the fact that if they are elected, they will hold the country’s “future” in their hands.…

Damn, I’m falling behind. More behind than I would like. A good friend asked me what I thought of Michelle Obama’s speech last night from a rhetorical point of view. Hey what the hell; I did major in Rhetoric, so I felt a tad guilty for not having watched the speech. I don’t like speeches…

There’s been a lot of uproar over Michelle Obama’s recent remarks about mandatory contraception coverage. Here’s what she said: “Because we passed health reform–health insurance–people need to understand that insurance companies will have to cover preventative care, things like contraception and cancer screenings, things like prenatal care, and they have to do it at no…

Here’s the drunk conservative hippie hater Jack Kerouac, interviewed on William F. Buckley’s show: His colleague William S. Burroughs attempts to explain what Kerouac had done, even though he had no idea he was doing it. “Absolutely unprecedented. There’s never been anything like it before. Penetrating the Arab countries, which was really a hermetic society.”…

Glenn Reynolds links a post about how hating whiteness and white self hatred are becoming standard lefty fare: By now, the increasingly creepy tendency of using the word “white” as a glib insult has become well established in left-wing commentary. […] Among progressives, low-rent snark like “frighteningly white” is required to prove you are part…

This post started out as an email to Sarah, but the more I thought about the implications, the more I thought I should share it on the blog instead. A friend informed me about a fascinating conspiracy theory I had never heard of before, and what I read reminded me that if I want to stay…

This is not live blogging, but Marco Rubio’s speech at the GOP convention is just blowing me away. He is saying what needs to be said and in a way that few say it, and I liked hearing him speak in Spanish. He is passionately, personally articulate in a way that inspires, especially about American…

An ominous development I heard about today is a perfect example of the dynamics of power addiction that M. Simon mentioned in his latest post. In case you hadn’t heard, the federal government is trying to ban the sale of certain tiny magnets — not to children (they’ve already done that), but to adults. The…

I was tortured with this earlier: Honestly, until tonight I hadn’t known such fiendishness existed.

Yes, I just checked and today is Glenn Reynolds‘ birthday. It’s going on ten years now that I’ve been a daily blogger. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it. (Which is to be expected, because the blog is a chronicle of my life.) But the important thing is that I get to say whatever…

From a friend, here’s some food for thought. Of course, by calling someone’s thoughts and ideas “food,” right there I used one of those sneaky expressions intended to both simplify and persuade. Instead of saying “I read and liked this article, and I think you should read it too, because you would benefit from it,”…

No seriously. Watch this instead: It may give you a better idea of what’s at stake in the upcoming election. The speaker — Bruce Herschensohn — has more foreign policy experience than anyone I know of alive today. Unlike most people who shoot off their mouths, he knows what he is talking about.

It saw sweltering today, but in spite of the heat, I decided to go see Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan at a rally in Commerce, Michigan. It’s about 40 minutes away, but I’m not a “RAH RAH” type, and I normally wouldn’t have gone, but when I learned that the Democrats were having an “email…

A friend sent me a link to yet another conspiracy-mongering InfoWars article linked by Drudge, claiming that the purchase of 174,000 hollow point bullets by the Social Security Administration constitutes an ominous preparation for “unrest.” Social Security Administration To Purchase 174 Thousand Rounds Of Hollow Point Bullets Preparing for civil unrest? Ammunition to be delivered…