Author: Eric Scheie

Sorry about the facetious title, because “Why now?” is an excellent question. There is nothing new about guns, or schools, or even school shootings. Yet if this article is correct, since 2010 the numbers of school shootings have in fact skyrocketed. I am at a loss to explain the apparent acceleration of this phenomenon. It…

Sorry, but I’m getting a little sick of the news, and this is a perfect example: According to the link, yes, he singled out Christians for death: A woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded, described the scene in a tweet. “The shooter…

I watched last night’s much-ballyhooed eclipse and tried to photograph it with a couple of cameras, but it was a major pain in the ass. The biggest problem was the clouds. The moon seemed to keep going in and out of them — which of course the moon can’t. So, between the cloud cover and…

Earlier a friend emailed me a link to a lovely headline about so-called precognitive policing — “Police Program Aims to Pinpoint Those Most Likely to Commit Crimes“: Mr. Brown, whose criminal record includes drug and assault charges, is at the center of an experiment taking place in dozens of police departments across the country, one…

Some backward minds might find this simple question an interesting question: Why allow women in combat if we won’t allow them to compete alongside men in sport? […] While the U.S. Navy and Air Force are pledged to open all positions to women, and the Army is being coy, the Marines did a major study…

Anyone who has been reading this blog over the years knows there are few people I abhor more than Michael Moore. I see him (and his films) as little more than a bloviating pile of putrescent Communist garbage. So imagine my shock and horror when I found myself in agreement with what he said about…

Nick Gillespie highlighted one of the better moments in last night’s debate. Rand Paul did something few Republicans would dare do: he criticized the war on drugs. Paul couched his argument in 10th Amendment terms, saying that states should be allowed to experiment with different approaches to medical and recreational pot legalization, a radical idea…

I’ll never forget that awful day fourteen years ago. It’s had great staying power, as the occasion has furnished an endless supply of rationalizations to take away ever more freedom from Americans. (Ironic, because it was an attack on our freedom.) I’m glad to see that some students right here in Ann Arbor have not…

No matter how much they might claim to be offended, Americans have always loved the exotic and unusual. This video — innocuous as it is today — is a perfect example from my childhood: And this heavily copyrighted video is a perfect example from today. http://on.today.com/1Q0M7K6 Whether a given person actually has a penis matters not…

With all the talk lately about “religious freedom,” you might think that there would be some agreed-upon definition of what it is. But of course, you’d be wrong. American Civics is no longer taught, and few people have the slightest idea of what freedom of religion is. More and more, I am noticing that it…

Immigration anyone? I never write about it, but lots of people are talking about it these days. Since 9/11, “Homeland Security” is supposed to take care of immigration, in the form of an outfit known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”). I guess there must not be an immigration or customs or border problem. Because…

I’ve long had mixed feelings about abortion. I find it inherently gruesome, and the more developed the fetus, the more it becomes genuinely grotesque. Recent accounts (like the one of a technician sticking scissors under the chin of a developed fetal boy and then snipping through his entire face to extract the brain) give me…

Donald Trump reminds me of Gertrude Stein’s “there is no there there.” His position on the drug laws is a perfect example: In his incarnation as current Republican presidential front-runner, Trump is in no way a fan of illegal drugs. He’s claimed to have never tried controlled substances “of any kind.” Last June, he said…

Earlier I took this photograph with my camera: I had to photograph it outside because inside the camera just wasn’t giving me good images of the object. And even this one does not look as good as reality. It’s very difficult with this Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ-8, and it seems to me that macro photography…

I agree. And I am agreeing with President Obama’s mentor, Constitutional Law scholar Larry Tribe. More here: the EPA, like every administrative agency, is constitutionally forbidden to exercise powers Congress never delegated to it in the first place. The brute fact is that the Obama administration failed to get climate legislation through Congress. Yet the…

Is there tension between truth and math? I think there is. Not that there should be, but some people think truth is what they believe, regardless of the math.

Typical. Military technology developed for use against terrorists is now being deployed against Americans in the War on Drugs. (And the war against unapproved sex.) SAN DIEGO — Facial recognition software, which American military and intelligence agencies used for years in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify potential terrorists, is being eagerly adopted by dozens of…

This does not pass my smell test: Protesters who claimed affiliation with the Black Lives Matter movement stormed the stage during a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in Seattle on Saturday, taking over the microphone and forcing Sanders to leave without ever speaking. Moments after Sanders took the stage at Westlake Park, two women…

Until tonight I had not had particularly strong feelings about Donald Trump. I thought he was a joke. But I’ve been (stupidly, I guess) watching the Republican candidate debate tonight, and I just saw him threaten to run a Third Party campaign. So now I say FUCK DONALD TRUMP. I think he might as well…

I get emails. Lots and lots of emails, and at this point at least 75% of it is spam. The other day I got a political spam email urging me to buy Confederate flag products (something that I did not find particularly surprising in light of recent hysteria), but today I was sent a real…