Author: Eric Scheie

As criminalization of homosexuality strikes me as an inherent violation of human rights, I was glad to see that the United States is at least trying to stop it: President Obama issued a memorandum directing American agencies to look for ways to combat efforts by foreign governments to criminalize homosexuality. As I have said before,…

Yesterday I found a power washer which a neighbor was discarding. The power washer pump is broken, but it has a perfectly good 5.0 horsepower Honda OHC engine. The thing is on a nice cart with rubber wheels, which makes it very easy to move, so I thought about pulling the pump and transforming it…

Discussing the latest TSA horror (involving an elderly woman in bad health who was injured during a TSA stripdown search) Mark Steyn makes an important observation: America is now a land where 85-year old grannies are strip-searched without probable cause. You’re extremely naive if you think that, once government acquires a taste for that, it…

I have been getting on nostalgia kicks lately, and it has long fascinated me how this country survived for so many years when drugs (including highly addictive drugs like heroin and cocaine) were sold freely over the counter or in the mail without prescription. That sort of grotesque liberal excess ended in 1914 with the…

One of the reasons people got sick and tired of alcohol prohibition was the way it corrupted everyone. That’s the way it is when you make a crime out of things that humans consume. The consumers and suppliers are criminals, and because consumers can be anywhere, prohibition leads to corruption of the enforcement classes. Lots…

This morning I read something about Newt Gingrich that rang true: Newt’s got hubris like some people have halitosis. If your quest is to find the one Republican 2012 candidate who can match the insuperable arrogance of Barack Obama, go with Gingrich. When I watched the man at the last debate, his smug expressions and general…

In comments to my earlier post, Eli Cabelly and M. Simon both remarked on the following oath: As a veteran I pledged myself to defend the constitution of the USA against all enemies, foreign and domestic. What I would like to know is what that means. What is a domestic enemy? I did a little…

There is a new form of malware going around which has installed a very annoying popup at the bottom of web browsers. It is called the “Meebo Bar,” and it is very difficult to remove. Here’s what it looks like (shown sideways to display it thoroughly without messing up the formatting): And if you click…

Those who believe that states should have the right to set their own policies on things like medical marijuana might want to compare and contrast the leading Republican contender and the Democrat incumbent on the issue. Here’s Newt Gingrich: Three Republican presidential candidates have shown an openness to handing over control of drugs and medical marijuana…

Some developments are just too rich for me to ignore: The 2012 campaign just keeps getting weirder and weirder. When this year began, I never imagined that covering a presidential campaign would compel me, as a professional journalist, to publish a photo of this bizarrely muscular woman who probably inspires perverse lust in your depraved hearts. So go ahead and…

While I am as delighted as anyone to the right of left to see that Barney Frank is retiring, I find myself surprised by what he obviously thinks is a  rhetorical question: “Did you think I would serve till I was 106?” Come on! To answer that question, I need look no further than my own…

For quite some time, I have been vehemently opposed to the candidacy of Newt Gingrich, to the point where I sometimes thought I was being paranoid, even allowing that I suffered from Gingrichphobia. Well, I now feel vindicated, and if anything I don’t think I was being paranoid enough. In his latest interview, Gingrich has…

The Democrats have finally officially decided to dump the white working class. For decades, Democrats have suffered continuous and increasingly severe losses among white voters. But preparations by Democratic operatives for the 2012 election make it clear for the first time that the party will explicitly abandon the white working class. All pretense of trying to…

Forgive my frivolity, but the 10th Amendment has become so meaningless these days that there is little point in resorting to serious arguments that it should still mean something. There is a broad, bipartisan consensus that it does not. So all I can do is wax nostalgically, like some libertarian kook who lacks the sense…

Your tax dollars at work!  Driven By Drug War Incentives, Cops Target Pot Smokers, Brush Off Victims Of Violent Crime As Radley Balko explains, the reason for this is simple. Federal incentives. Arresting people for assaults, beatings and robberies doesn’t bring money back to police departments, but drug cases do in a couple of ways.…

I watched the GOP debate the other night, and it became quite clear that even among the supposedly warmongering Republicans, there is a strong undercurrent of war fatigue. While Ron Paul is the only member of the pack to reject the Iraq War out of hand, there is a feeling that the era of the…

Just got back from walking Coco and the streets are almost completely deserted. Bad day to be a turkey, I guess. Unless you’re lucky enough to be Cousin Reginald’s turkey, that is!   Enjoy!

The New York Times features a remarkable Op-Ed by an author named Sarah Schulman. Schulman, an outspokenly anti-Israel gay activist, is known for her claim that the famous Broadway production “Rent” plagiarized her material. She never sued, probably because ideas and stock characters — such as bohemians with AIDS struggling to pay their rent — cannot be successfully copyrighted.…

I recently stumbled onto what is considered the first jazz song ever published: “Jelly Roll Blues” — variously said to have been composed in 1902 (which is disputed) , 1905, and 1910 by Jelly Roll Morton. At any rate, the song was first published in 1915, at which time jazz could definitively be said to…

In my earlier post about the war on drugs, I mentioned Ronald Reagan’s unfortunate (although quite possibly inevitable) role thusly: Amazingly, the problem wasn’t solved by news laws, so we launched a “war.” Try as I might, I simply cannot figure out what is “conservative” about it. Unless conservatism is to be forever defined by…