Author: Eric Scheie

Who was most responsible for what we call the “War on Drugs”? This is a separate question than the wisdom of the war, but I have noticed that a lot of people like to point at Reagan, while others point at Nixon. M. Simon aside, few contemporary political discussions mention the role of Harry J.…

The infernal slowness of all things online has been taking its toll on my sanity. I am old enough to remember the dialup days, when I would type a URL into one of the early browsers (I started with Chameleon and then moved up to the new Netscape 1), and then you would just wait.…

You know the drug has hit home when dying cancer patients are being robbed and beaten savagely for their pain-killing narcotics.  As if that weren’t bad enough, the media put out deliberately redacted stories to prevent us “little people” from knowing what  happened. A Fredericksburg cancer patient is recovering after being brutally beaten during a…

Glenn Reynolds recently linked an April post he wrote about some poor schlub who found himself raided by a SWAT Team because person(s) unknown had downloaded kiddie porn using his unsecured WiFi signal. That had prompted this advice from a reader: Never, EVER set a password on your Wi-Fi router. Background : 30 years in…

I don’t especially like Rick Perry. (So far, at least.) My main objection to him politically is grounded in his longstanding support for sodomy laws, something I find annoying in this day and age. It is one thing to oppose gay marriage, but to support imprisoning adults for consenting sexual activity with other adults strikes…

What’s the world coming to? The youth of today are not only boasting about turds, they’re putting Best-Of videos on Youtube! Yes, they’re actually into uploading their pet frogs’ “greatest shits” videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRNaJhCtHwk&feature=related For a late-night tie-in with the world’s contemporary economic problems (hey, this blog is old, but I do try!), there’s a 17-page…

I am getting a little tired of the way so many people throw up their hands and blame “social media” when incidents like this “flash mob” theft spree occur. The caption reads, according to the video, the officer refused to investigate the crime, and only viewed this incident as shoplifting. IMO, attitudes like those of…

That’s a real mouthful, and I don’t know whether it is the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department’s way of  expressing frustration, or whether it is a sign of changing attitudes towards free speech. Here’s the background: LOS ANGELES (AP) — A rapper could face criminal charges after a tweet from his account incited a telephone flash…

Reason’s Jesse Walker looks at the Iowa caucus numbers: The results are in from the Ames Straw Poll in Iowa, and Michele Bachmann has emerged victorious with 4,823 votes. Ron Paul, the only bearable candidate in the running (*), finished a very close second with 4,671. That asterisk stands for Gary Johnson, who ran technically…

An animal rights activist I am not. I eat animals and I have no problem with humane farming. But whether you want to call it an animal “right” or a human duty, I think deliberately torturing animals is wrong, and I am appalled by the unnecessary torture of animals that goes on in China. I…

Ann Althouse was physically attacked recently by a leftist thug in Madison. She got it all on video. From a screenshot of the video, here’s the man, whom the crowd did absolutely nothing to stop.   Many of the demonstrators are wearing the same red, Communist clenched-fist T-shirt. I couldn’t help notice that the man…

Not that the tyranny involved will surprise anyone, but this report qualifies (for me, at least) as the outrage of the day. A new rule being proposed by the federal Department of Transportation would require farmers to get commercial drivers licenses. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, which is a part of DOT, wants to adopt…

I’ve been watching the debate for over an hour, and I am worried that the country is fractured in so many ways and in so many different directions that it’s tough to analyze. Even though I don’t like him, I would absolutely not count Gingrich out. I think he is sitting in the background positioning…

Considering my previous post (“in theory, America wants to vote for a Republican over Barack Obama, but in practice, theory loses out to reality”) it was a bit of a shock for me to see that there actually is one Republican who actually beats Barack Obama in the polls: Rudolph Giuliani. Amazing. The guy is…

One of the most annoying aspects of the political process today is the extreme leverage an unelected few are able to exert when they do so in the name of “science.” Especially environmental “science.” The drowned polar bears are a perfect example. Polar bears drowning in an Alaskan sea because the ice packs are melting—it’s…

That’s the latest insult being hurled at the Tea Party. Dr. Helen points out something that anyone familiar with the Tea Party phenomenon knows quite well. the face of the Tea Party is female: Many of the tea party’s most influential grass-roots and national leaders are women, and a new poll released this week by…

Earlier I read a startling statistic about antidepressant drugs. Apparently, four out of five times they are prescribed, there is no psychiatric diagnosis: Antidepressants became the third most commonly prescribed class of medications in the United States thanks in part to non-psychiatrist providers prescribing the drugs to individuals without any psychiatric diagnosis, according to a…

According to a number of reports, people are unhappy. Nothing new about people being unhappy, except that they seem to think this gives them the right to take to the streets and attack other people. That makes me unhappy. Except I’m not going to take to the streets and attack other people over it. In…

Some fascinating statistics are in the news. Earlier I read that 29% of the public consider the Tea Party members to be terrorists. That seemed pretty high to me, and I wondered how many of them literally believe that believe that political advocacy against raising the debt ceiling is terrorism. I suspect that a substantial…

A fan of the American Family Association I have never been. But even I was quite startled earlier to read a report in the San Francisco that the AFA believes the First Amendment applies only to Christians: Perry’s audience Saturday was filled with people who sang with arms outstretched in prayer — and wept —…