Category Archives: politics

Dire prediction

Hugh Hewitt:
Hillary will probably become the new Teddy K. –a lioness of the Senate, serving there until the end of days for most of us. She will even enjoy and perhaps earn a unique sort of authority, an uber “been-there-done-that” wisdom. If she ever writes a candid book, it will be riveting.
(my emphasis)
Bad [...]

Good news and bad news

Assuming they’re both guilty of what the rumors say they’ve done, the upside is that they aren’t as stupid as they sound. The downside is that they’re even bigger scumbags than I’ve been assuming they are, if that’s even possible. And if the Clinton campaign’s denials are true, well, that means in addition to being [...]

Expanding the reach of the regulatorium

This is almost as ridiculous as it is evil:
In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by [...]

A fraud, a political stunt, a criminal imposture

David Warren writes:
The more I think about “global warming”, in light of the most recent United Nations report, the more confident I become in averring that it is a fraud, a political stunt, a criminal imposture, that every intelligent journalist should be helping to expose.
I’m sure all five of them are doing everything they can.

Senator Incitatus (D, MA)

Roman emperor Caligula wanted to make his favorite horse a consul, I suspect for two reasons: first, to indicate his lack of respect for Roman officialdom, and second, to indicate that he was totally bug-fuck crazy. From VDH’s Works and Days:
Does running for President allow a candidate to freelance at a time of war by [...]

It’s the foreign policy, stupid

Hilarious! The GOP commissioned this from David Zucker, however they (unfortunately but understandably) passed on running it.
Podcast here.
(via)

Google no-knock hack

Radley Balko on the rise of the militarization of our police:
Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, [...]

Maybe the pendulum is swinging the other way

People seem pretty unhappy with the police state in Iran.

The familiar hue and cry

…goes up anytime the US sends its armed forces somewhere, especially univited. But once US troops get where they’re going and get settled in, no one ever wants them to leave:
The U.S. is pulling almost all of its military forces out of Iceland. This is not exactly big news, except perhaps in Iceland itself, which [...]

Demographics and weak stomachs

Having read Steyn’s latest, NZC opines
And for example, the whole assumption that societies with low birth rates will continue to decline is persuasive but not at all obvious. People can change their behaviors. I’m not saying they will, I’m far from certain it’s in any sense likely, but the Europeans and the Japanese could start [...]

Centralized decision-making, ignorance, and media hype

Michael Crichton posts another of his speeches, detailing the history of our priesthood’s^H^H^H^H^H^Hmedia’s ability to grok complexity, and the fine job it does educating the the public about it.
I’m reminded of Kelly’s blogpost about the park service. Apparently the arrogance she revealed is matched only by the ignorance that fuels it.

Last call

Somehow, I just can’t get that worked up about this:
Masked gunmen stormed into a club for United Nations workers in Gaza City on Sunday and blew up the drinking hall in a new sign of spiralling unrest ahead of a Palestinian election.
It was the first such attack in Gaza on a U.N. target and came [...]

America sucks

Lee Harris hits one out of the park with his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
…let us consider some of the people who have won it in the past, and see if their names are more familiar to you than mine is: Karl Adolph Gjellerup, Henrik Pontopiddan, Carl Spitteler, Wladyslaw Reymont, Grazia Deledda, Johannes Vilhelm Jensen, Frans [...]

They were against the constitution before they were for it

Prof. Tabarrok notices some political hypocrisy. Hilarious!

You can pick your nose

…but you can’t pick your family:
“You know Wafah bin Ladin?” Valvo asks the men loudly.
“Wafah Dufour,” she snaps, shooting him a look that’s more pleading than hostile.
[...]
Ms. Dufour, who’s vague about her age but almost certainly younger than 30, sits down at a good corner table and thanks me for helping her tell her story. [...]

Whoever double-crosses me and leaves me alive, he understands nothing about Tuco!

This is probably horrible, but while reading Fran’s post about torture, when I came to the Church’s position
“The varieties of crime are numerous: all offenses against life itself, such as murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia and willful suicide; all violations of the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture, undue psychological [...]

This just in

The news media leans left. In other breaking news, water is found to be wet.

Two interesting charts

UPDATE: Fixed chart resolutions, should be more legible.

Lieberman != Rumsfeld

Instapundit notices Democratic talking heads calling for Rumsfeld to be replaced by Lieberman.
Democrats, this is not the phase where, now that it won’t cost us anything, we wash our hands of having done what needed to be done by sticking the knife in the guy who had the stones to do it, and congratulate ourselves [...]

When in Rome

The assimilation of Mark Steyn:
HH: That’s why I’ve just posted, and I will be devoting most of today’s show to, a guide to Thanksgiving Day festivities with cranks. That is, how to engage, or not to engage, the crank at the dinner table who wants to debate Bush lied/people died. Are you inviting any cranks [...]