Author: Eric Scheie

There’s nothing like a day off from blogging, which this almost was. However, it has come to my attention that today is Sean Kinsell‘s birthday — an event which this blog and Coco have celebrated before. Sean is not only a longtime favorite of this blog, but he is a longtime favorite of Coco, and…

While I hadn’t weighed in on the subject as I perhaps should have, Michelle Malkin’s post about Eric Holder’s now-infamous “my people” remark inspired me to get off my duff: My fellow Americans, who are “your people”? I ask because U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is black, used the phrase “my people” in congressional…

Last night my bullshit detector was set off by the completely unverifiable nature of a study M. Simon linked.  It was a blog post by an unnamed author at an anonymous blog, quoting from an unlinked “study” by an unnamed person — the sort of thing that strikes me as fiendishly calculated to frustrate people…

Because they can’t control it, and it can (at least sometimes) manage to transcend the bullshit that distracts us while they play their endless war and peace cycles games that keep them in power. As an example of what they hate, here’s a YouTube video titled “Brian Eno & Rachid Taha – Barra Barra.” It…

Not being a parent, I am hesitant to judge other people’s parenting skills. But an appalling news story I read earlier just gave me the creeps: A mother is accused of murdering her three-year-old son whose charred body was found in her oven. Terrie A. Robinson, 24, from Mississippi, was arrested yesterday after police found…

It’s an interesting theory, and while I haven’t studied it in detail, Ed Morrissey has, and he is a bit skeptical, especially because not only has the plan’s Phase 3 not happened, but not all of our competitors or even enemies would necessarily benefit from seeing the U.S. economy destroyed: While we have piled up…

In what I think is a superhuman effort in blogging, Ann Althouse has been braving hostile and violent conditions with her husband as they cover the Madison protest mob scene.  She doesn’t think the protesters are going to win: And now we’re into the third week of it. It’s become a quagmire. I believe myself…

A few people have asked me what I think about the current situation with DOMA, and because it’s a little complicated and it requires some issue separating, I thought it merited a post.  While I have reservations about same sex marriage because (as explained here) I don’t like the invasive statism of the family law/divorce…

While I don’t have the time to check out the details behind every article I see in the local newspapers, something I saw the other day aroused my suspicions, and sure enough, it turned out to be a classic illustration of the persistence of a very ugly, self-enforcing narrative mechanism.   The front page of…

While I probably should have been shocked by this news report from the front lines in the War on Foods and Drugs, nothing shocks me anymore.  Nor should it surprise anyone that pushers are recruiting young children to sell their unhealthy products on streetcorners, without permits: VILLA RICA, GA — It sounds like a bad…

Even though I know that free speech carries a price, I tend towards First Amendment fanaticism, and I do not believe in restricting anyone’s free speech rights, no matter how obnoxious it is or how much I disagree with the views expressed.  Still, I’m fascinated by the idea that a prolonged and raucous occupation of…

While the term “gay marriage” has become a euphemism for same sex marriage, it is a bit misleading. Because, just as as no proof of heterosexuality is required for opposite sex couples who seek to marry, none of the jurisdictions I know of which allow same sex couples to marry require any proof of homosexuality.…

I can’t remember where I found the link, but this article about an elephant raping a car got me to thinking about morality. Sorry if I misstated the facts a bit. Perhaps what happened should not have been called “rape.” This is not to say that the car consented, for cars are incapable of consent.…

The video of the black gay Tea Partyer getting harassed by angry leftists has been widely circulated and commented upon, and the reason I can’t stop thinking about it is not only because it demonstrates in a microcosm the nastiness of the left (I should probably say “the Jim Crow left” — more on that…

Anti-libertarian snark fascinates me, and it seems to get louder and louder, and ever more insulting. I’ve complained about it before, and my recent worries have tended to focus on the tension between libertarians and social conservatives in the Tea Party context. But I don’t mean to neglect anti-libertarian snark on the left! It’s just…

While it was shocking enough to read that a man described as a lawyer has requested a presidential pardon for Charles Manson, what is also shocking is that any attorney would be so incapable of understanding what several of Glenn’s readers do — that Charles Manson was convicted only of state offenses. Yes, Manson was…

Much as I hate being distracted from important issues of the day, it so happens that today is my bill-paying day, which means I have to devote a moderate amount of time to opening bills, tearing off the payment slips, writing checks for the amounts on the slips (with account numbers written on all the…

I could not possibly have less to say today. No, not even if I tried. So I won’t. Won’t try to say less, of course. Besides, Sarah’s “Marx is dead” post yesterday was so thoroughly brilliant that anything that follows it is bound to be a letdown. However, I did stumble onto a very interesting…

After the publication of an allegedly “secret formula” which listed alcohol as an ingredient in Coca Cola, a Muslim man in Israel has filed a huge class action lawsuit against the company: An Israeli Muslim filed a NIS 1.2 billion class action suit against The Central Bottling Company Group Ltd. (the Israel franchisee for Coca…

In a piece Glenn linked titled “Words you can’t say at the Pentagon,”Stewart Baker makes it clear that top Army bureaucrats (along with a large number of politically correct people in the ruling classes) only want Islam referred to with stultifyingly propagandistic terms such as “the religion of peace.” It’s easy to yell about free…