Author: Eric Scheie

A conservative I am not. (The reasons are complex, but for starters, I am utterly missing the third leg said to be vital to supporting the conservative “stool.”) So I typically call myself a small-l libertarian, or libertarian conservative, but even those terms have their limitations, as I just don’t fit any mold entirely.  I…

People always say that ideas have consequences, but I disagree. Ideas themselves do not have consequences. It is the implementation of an idea that has consequences, which means that those responsible for implementing bad ideas are to blame, and not the ideas themselves. So the hell with ideas. In and of themselves, they are harmless.…

This weather makes me understand why people like California despite all the problems. Here’s the national picture Drudge linked earlier: Notice that the California coast is absent from the measurements on the Drudge picture. So is the Pacific Northwest…. Here are today’s highs. Quite predictable to anyone who has lived there. Other people have to…

“If you’re involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it’s bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement.” Michele Bachmann allegedly said the above in 2004. That remark, along with the many others that are being repeated all over the Internet, will not endear her to gay voters, 25% of whom generally vote…

The stealing of things like plumbing or wiring out of buildings is what I would call “bottom feeder” crime, because it is the lowest form of crime. So-called “scrappers” do incalculable damage by making houses completely uninhabitable and shutting down power for entire communities. It cheered me to see that occasionally cops will devote genuine…

While government safety Nazis have a love affair with warning labels, what they are mandating with cigarettes makes the usual warning labels look lame. In California I found a discarded Kent cigarette pack on which the warning label occupies more space than the brand name. I was so amused I picked it up and put…

While this might only seem to be of interest to welders, I just learned about a huge nationwide acetylene shortage only because I recently acquired some welding equipment, and looked into getting tanks refilled. It is nearly impossible (and much more expensive) to get acetylene. This has not been in the news because ordinary people…

It isn’t every day I find a “three-fer,” but in today’s Detroit Free Press I found a story which touches on why so many people are willing to surrender freedom. Drugs, dogs, guns. Clearly, some people cannot handle any of them. So they must all be taken away from everyone. Just think! If we could…

Yes, I am still on the road, and exceeding the government-imposed driving quotas mentioned by an earlier commenter. But hey, that’s probably because I’m a “slave” to my driving. Or to the evil automobile/oil industry which enslaves and oppresses us all! I am a victim, doncha know? Liberals think they can free us from this…

Today I drove 905 miles from Los Angeles to Santa Rosa, New Mexico. The drive took over 14 hours and I’m beat. A couple of pictures from the road. Rolling through Albuquerque at dusk: And a full moon bouncing with the night traffic. Once things look like that, it’s time to sleep. I’m sure I…

I’m barely able to keep track of the news while on the road, but as usual it isn’t good. Major jockeying over the budget, not much inspiration coming from any of the GOP candidates (although this report seems like good news), a looming “Carmageddon” this weekend (which I will try to avoid), and at home…

Since the readers here have been so helpful with advice, I wondered whether anyone has any experience with keeping raccoons away from fish ponds. Coco seems to have been sleeping on the job, and a raccoon ran amok recently. I know you can cover the whole pond with half inch hardware cloth, but that kind…

One of the most difficult aspects of blogging on the road (typically from cafes with WiFi) is GLARE! Right now I am having trouble seeing my screen at all, much less reading what’s on it. Unless you score an indoor seat, the sunlight makes seeing a laptop screen nearly impossible. Even in the shade, because…

I have about ten minutes to be online at an Internet cafe this morning, which does not allow for much analysis.  However, I did see this lttle critter yesterday, and I was overcome by its pathos and angst. Almost seems it wants to be alive in spite of the obvious (often monstrous) realities which that…

As it happens, right now I am over 2400 miles away from home. Not much to say, but here’s a picture I took alongside the road: And here I am with “California Dog”:   And that’s all the time I have for laptop bloging.

“ETEC” is one of those wonderful sounding acronyms they use to describe a well-funded Atlanta Public School reform program. Atlanta Public Schools and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation announced a $10 million investment in the next phase of the district’s 10-year-old school reform program – the Effective Teacher in Every Classroom (ETEC) Initiative. The…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I saw Michael Barone’s analysis of a Sixth Circuit decision overturning Michigan’s Civil Rights Initiative: It’s racially discriminatory to prohibit racial discrimination. That’s the bottom line of a decision issued Friday, just before the Fourth of July weekend, by the United States Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit. The case was…

As I often wonder why I hate politics so much, I was intrigued by Thomas Sowell’s recent observations: It is hard to understand politics if you are hung up on reality. Politicians leave reality to others. What matters in politics is what you can get the voters to believe, whether it bears any resemblance to…

Here’s a thought from Glenn Reynolds, writing in the Washington Examiner:  If there’s one issue you care about a lot, get involved there. Gun rights activism crosses party lines, but has had a major influence in expanding liberty — over the past decade, the growth of Second Amendment rights has been one of the major…

Has discussing crime or crime statistics become a new taboo? For some time, real estate agents have been forbidden to disclose crime statistics in a neighborhood of interest to a potential buyer: According to the guidelines of the Fair Housing Act and preventing blockbusting, real estate agents are not supposed to discuss the crime statistics…