Author: Eric Scheie

The Detroit Free Press has learned that confidential information, evidence, and dangerous debris was left behind at the site of the Detroit Police Department’s notorious crime lab (closed in 2008): Thousands of rounds of live ammunition, sealed evidence kits and case files — some containing Social Security numbers of rape and assault victims — lay…

Quick question. How is it that you can be put in a Facebook group without ever consenting? This has happened to me twice now, and what I don’t like about it is that it appears to the world that I joined groups I never joined. Curious, I googled the question and saw that there is…

Via a Facebook friend, I learned about a shockingly totalitarian idea: adding the psychiatric drug Lithium to the water supply ostensibly to prevent suicide: For decades, it’s been the gold-standard treatment for the most distressing of mental health disorders: mania, schizophrenia, and major depression. But now, lithium – the third element of of the periodic…

Steve Chapman looks at the well-organized campaign against McDonald’s by food moralists demanding government crackdowns on foods and restaurants they don’t like. In an all-too-familiar pattern, the food moralists see tastes in food the way the sex moralists see tastes in sex. There are no free choices. Instead, there are mindless victims brainwashed by purveyors…

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your POV, I am not advising Barack Obama. But if I was, I would tell him that right now is an excellent time to make good on his campaign threat to invade Pakistan, and simply go in there and take out that dysfunctional country’s nuclear capabilities. If he does nothing,…

While it certainly does not rank with the fatal SWAT Team shooting of a Marine veteran at home with his family, I recently learned about another fatal SWAT Team shooting — not of a human being but of a dog. The video shows a Labrador retriever (named Sheba) doing nothing more than sitting peaceably on…

It was hard to ignore the hubbub over yesterday’s Rapture, but the date came and went and I’m still here. Whether that means I was left behind I don’t know, but as I speculated about the possibilities on Facebook, I now feel that I owe the world an explanation. Normally I avoid boring people with…

A tidbit I saw at Cafe Hayek helps answer a couple of vexing questions: Why does the left hammer away so relentlessly at large corporations? And why are the latter so quick to “cave” in response to demands? A major reason is that capitalists don’t like capitalism: Capitalists tend not to like capitalism. Milton Friedman…

The brutal SWAT Team killing of a Marine veteran in Arizona has made me think along some very paranoid (for me, at least) lines. A growing number of ordinary Americans see SWAT Team excesses and the militarization of police as a bad thing, and, if they don’t see it as an argument against the war…

Reuters describes Guineans as divided over what is being called a “sex scandal” in a sub-headline: Residents of the West African state of Guinea were bemused to find their small country thrust into the spotlight by a sex scandal at the top of the International Monetary Fund — and divided over how to react. Excuse…

Even though I have read similar stories until I am numb, this is the sort of thing I still have trouble believing is happening routinely in the United States. A 26-year-old former Marine, who served two tours in Iraq, with no criminal record, was at home with his wife and four year old son when…

While I am not an advocate of open borders myself, as a libertarian I can certainly understand the argument. What I cannot understand is under what theory people who have crossed whatever border into the United States would become entitled to anything at all, whether money, food, clothing, shelter, education, or medical care — to…

Princeton University’s Cornel West is complaining bitterly about Barack Obama (whom he once supported): Cornel West, a Princeton University professor and leading black intellectual, is harshly criticizing President Obama, a candidate he once supported but now calls “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” West apparently believes that…

What is it that makes Americans see movie actors as social and even political role models? I have long wondered, and Roger L. Simon’s post (“Sex Slaves for He But Not for Thee, The Perverted Politics of the Redgrave Family“) caused commenters to ask similar questions. The feudal Japanese placed actors in the same class…

Speaking of rudeness, Texas Governor Rick Perry apparently still supports sodomy laws. I think it’s rude to put people in prison when they haven’t hurt anyone. But I guess if I would vote for Gingrich over Obama even though he would execute people for drug crimes, I suppose I would also vote for Perry over…

Most regular readers know by now how I feel about Newt Gingrich. Earlier I expressed the hope that he would quit the race, and this morning I was cheered to see Glenn ask this: Ouch. Is the Gingrich campaign over already? The man is deservedly catching flak for his attack on Paul Ryan, and I…

I just checked and Classical Values is now officially eight years old. While that’s not old enough to vote, it’s starting to get old for a dog. But you can’t teach old dogs new tricks.

What is it about stories involving obnoxious behavior by complete assholes that makes them so popular? The fifth most popular item at the San Francisco Chronicle involves an obnoxious passenger who had to be put off a train: A passenger train made an unscheduled stop in Oregon over a woman’s cell phone use and verbal…

Ann Althouse has had — and is having — problems with Google. But reading this ominous post by Patterico convinces me that the time has come to look for an alternative to Google.  Moreover, Professor William Jacobson calls it “the Big Blogger Blackout of 2011,” and says that several of his posts are missing. Fortunately,…

Let’s see. The head honcho of the IMF, one Dominique Strauss-Kahn, has been arrested for “allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid,” shortly before he tried to get on a plane to France: The French political bigshot who heads the International Monetary Fund was arrested for allegedly sodomizing a Manhattan hotel maid today — hauled off…