Obama's New Attorney General
Jake Tapper tells us he helped Janet Reno cry over sending jack-booted stormtroopers to take Elian Gonzales from his family and ship him home to Uncle Fidel.
In April 2000, then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder appeared on “Good Morning America” where he discussed the controversial raid on the home of Elian Gonzalez’s Miami relatives to seize [...]
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:50:27 +0000
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Hot New Business Sector: Somali Piracy
UK’s Daily Mash reports that, even in this lagging economy, investors are able to identify one hot new sector.
Venture capitalists in New York and London are pumping millions of dollars into Somalia’s booming pirate sector.
The sharp-eyed investors say Indian Ocean piracy has replaced Bangladeshi t-shirt factories as the developing world’s strongest source of high-growth revenue [...]
Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:23:19 +0000
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"He May Not Be Anybody"
Shelby Steele, who shares with Barack Obama a multiracial ancestry, discusses the difficulties of dealing with that kind of bifurcated identity, comparing his own experiences and responses to those of the president elect.
7:50 video
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 18:25:17 +0000
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How Obama Got Elected
This 9:54 video looks at the impact of media coverage on average voters’ knowledge of the candidates.
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:24:28 +0000
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"The Uses of Adversity"
Malcolm Gladwell, in the New Yorker, contemplates the history of the famous firm laid out in Charles Ellis’s The Partnership: The Making of Goldman Sachs, and connects the current Wall Street debacle to the wrong kind of leadership.
The rags-to-riches story—that staple of American biography—has over the years been given two very different interpretations. The nineteenth-century [...]
Tue, 18 Nov 2008 12:49:46 +0000
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Police Escort Christians Out of Castro District
Pursued by screaming homosexuals, San Francisco Police last Friday had to escort a Christian group, which regularly prays and sings hymns at the corner of Castro and 18th for the conversion of homosexuals, out of the district.
KTVU disingenuously portrays the police as “keeping the peace” between two groups of demonstrators. One group numbering about ten [...]
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:22:09 +0000
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First, Vermont; Then, Siler City
Mark Stinson, in the Chatham (North Carolina) Journal Weekly, laments the invasion, and take-over, of Siler City by intolerant representatives of the contemporary community of fashion.
We have a certain number of people that are transplanted here because they wanted some space. We have others that have money that wanted space too; that like the city [...]
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 14:06:55 +0000
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One Good Reason Not to Run
In one respect, Obama would be lucky if the Keyes and other lawsuits proved him ineligible: presidents evidently are not allowed to use email.
The Times reports that they would be confiscating his Blackberry and shutting down his email account.
Before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In [...]
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:43:05 +0000
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Suppose America Just Elected an Ineligible Candidate
Philip J. Berg’s federal lawsuit challenging Barack Obama to document his US citizenship was dismissed last month in Philadelphia on the grounds that the plaintiff lacked standing.
Now, Alan Keyes, who does possess standing, having himself appeared on the California ballot this year as candidate for president of the American Independent Party, is suing the [...]
Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:36:25 +0000
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Snowstorms Mar "Hottest October Ever"
The Telegraph describes how Global Warming manages to keep setting new temperature records, even in the face of colder weather.
A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by [...]
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:13:42 +0000
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Obama & Guns
Remember the Obama Campaign denouncing NRA criticisms as falsehoods and claiming Obama had no animus toward private gun ownership?
The Chicago Tribune reports an Obama transition team detail that provides a glimpse of the future administration’s real perspective on private firearms ownership.
A 63-item questionnaire for prospective members of Barack Obama’s White House team has upset the [...]
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 12:05:34 +0000
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The Transition Narrative
Philip Terzian, in the Weekly Standard, waxes ironical on the dawning of the Chosen One’s Brave New America.
You may have noticed that some presidential Transitions are more equal than others.
Here is my theory: When a Democrat is succeeded by a Republican in the White House, it is seen as a civic regression, the triumph of [...]
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 13:37:01 +0000
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The Realities of Supposedly Human-Caused Climate Change
Robert Carter, in Quadrant Magazine, provides an excellent tour d’horizon of the scientific realities and politics of alleged Anthropogenic Climate Change.
Climate change knows three realities: science reality, which is what working scientists deal with every day; virtual reality, which is the wholly imaginary world inside computer climate models; and public reality, which is the socio-political [...]
Sat, 15 Nov 2008 12:39:38 +0000
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Celtic Coin Horde Found Near Maastricht
Physorg.com:
A hobbyist with a metal detector has found a cache of ancient Celtic and Germanic coins in a cornfield in the southern city of Maastricht. The city says the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins are dated to the middle of the first century B.C. The hobbyist, Paul Curfs, 47, found several coins [...]
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 14:19:22 +0000
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Europe Has Cause to Worry About O-merica
James Lewis, at American Thinker, suggests that our European critics won’t be so terribly happy when the newly melted Obama-style socialist and pacifist America stops defending them.
Suppose you’ve been living under the protective wings of a benevolent superpower for sixty years. And suppose you’ve used that big half century to take off on an endless [...]
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:51:58 +0000
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Assembler
Abigail M.’s Level
John Derbyshire made level 18, and his posting about it provoked 200 replies.
link
Personally, I think all the “put things away in the right place” games have their real target in the female audience. My wife plays this sort of thing obsessively. Myself, I prefer games where you shoot things and cause things [...]
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:36:37 +0000
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Jefferson Davis' Revolver
Jefferson Davis’ .44 (.54 bore) Kerr’s Patent Revolver
A Kerr’s Patent Revolver with provenance indicating that it was one of two presented by Confederate President Jefferson Davis to the commander of his personal escort, Captain Given Campbell, Duke’s Cavalry Brigade, May 4, 1865, shortly before Davis’ capture by Union forces is being offered for sale by [...]
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:17:51 +0000
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"Should the Government Stop Dumping Money into a Giant Hole?"
The Onion’s bipartisan panel of political pundits discuss government’s response to the current financial crisis.
1:56 video
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Hat tip to Scott Drum.
Fri, 14 Nov 2008 12:20:03 +0000
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Oak Park Fails T-shirt Test
Catherine Vogt
John Kass, at the Chicago Tribune, has a little story of a middle school student’s experiment which tells us a lot about life in America today. Catherine Vogt’s Oak Park, Illinois could just as easily have been any other fashionable upper middle class community from coast to coast.
Just before the election, Catherine consulted with [...]
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:20:51 +0000
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Monumental Insanity
Duck!
If I were to follow the examples of Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, or Barack Obama, and invent my own religion, could I demand that the nearest municipality boasting a Ten Commandments monument allow me to erect another monument listing my own teachings on the courthouse lawn? Should the city fathers fail to oblige [...]
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 20:02:39 +0000
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Joe Hyams, June 6, 1923- November 8, 2008
Joe Hyams, novelist, screenwriter, biographer, and Hollywood columist (IMDB entry) and author of the much admired Zen in the Martial Arts passed away in Denver last Saturday at the age of 85.
Hyams was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts and attended Harvard. He served in the US Army during WWII, and was awarded the Purple Heart and [...]
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 14:10:34 +0000
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New Russian Submachine Gun: PP-2000
Patented by in 2001 by the KBP Instrument Design Bureau, the PP-2000 was first seen at the Interpolytech-2004 exhibition in Moscow.
Modern Firearms description
Jim Dunnigan’s Strategy Page reports the PP-2000’s recent appearance as an actual issue weapon:
Over the last few years, the Russian police and special operations personnel have been getting a new 9mm submachine gun, [...]
Thu, 13 Nov 2008 13:15:47 +0000
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Paglia on the Media's Stonewalling and on Sarah Palin
Camille Paglia feels a reflexive, not exactly objective, need to bash Republicans every time she criticizes democrats. One must be even-handed, after all. Her observations on the failure of the MSM to investigate the democrat candidate and her defense of Sarah Palin, though, are well worth reading.
In the closing weeks of the election, however, I [...]
Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:40:25 +0000
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Obama's Team
When Barack Obama named the Machiavelli of the democratic left, Rahm Emanuel, as White House Chief of Staff, the move, amounting to the selection of “a wartime consigliere,” was widely interpreted as evidence of the new administration’s intention of pursuing a highly polarized agenda, rather than, as Obama promised throughout his campaign, moving beyond [...]
Wed, 12 Nov 2008 13:05:47 +0000
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Campaign Finance Reform in Action
The Politico blog describes government in action enforcing honesty and fairness in campaign finance. John McCain should be proud of his own contributions to the present system.
The Federal Election Commission is unlikely to conduct a potentially embarrassing audit of how Barack Obama raised and spent his presidential campaign’s record-shattering windfall, despite allegations of questionable donations [...]
Wed, 12 Nov 2008 12:12:20 +0000
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Obama Defied Founder's Intent
M.C. Escher, Drawing Hands, 1948.
In a now famous 2002 radio interview, Barack Obama regretted the Warren Court’s failure to break free from “the essential constraints placed in the Constitution by the founding fathers.”
In Newsweek, George Will discusses how Obama’s very candidacy represented a fundamental break with constraints intended by the founding fathers. Barack Obama is [...]
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:49:12 +0000
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Obama's Vanishing Agenda
Even CNN has noticed that the Obama Transition web-site has changed its mind about disclosing the specifics of the new administration’s intentions and agenda.
Somebody might start opposing them. Better make them a surprise.
Last week, President-elect Barack Obama launched a Web site with detailed information about his plans for technology, Iraq, and health care policies.
Now they’re [...]
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 12:12:18 +0000
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Armistice Day, Later Known as Veterans Day, aka Martinmas
—this post is repeated annually—
WWI came to an end by an armistice arranged to occur at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. The date and time, selected at a point in history when mens’ memories ran much longer, represented a compliment to St. Martin, patron saint of soldiers, [...]
Tue, 11 Nov 2008 11:26:13 +0000
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Greenspan Loses His Annual Summer Invitation to Colorado
Linn and Ari Armstrong, at the Grand Junction Free Press, issue a rejoinder to Alan Greenspan, John McCain, and Barack Obama on behalf of Ayn Rand and the Free Market.
Ayn Rand recognized a common pattern in the growth of political power: The enemies of liberty blame the free market for economic problems caused by government [...]
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 14:21:49 +0000
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NY Times Facing Big Financial Problem
Henry Blogett draws a grim pictures of the Times’ unhappy situation.
Specifically, the company must deliver $400 million to lenders in May of 2009, six months from now. The company has only $46 million of cash on hand, and its operations will likely begin consuming this meager balance this quarter or next. The company [...]
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:58:45 +0000
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United States Marine Corps Birthday
Members of the Fleet Marine Force, c. 1940
Founded November 10, 1775.
———————————————
Maj. Gen. John A. Lejeune’s Birthday Message
RPS ORDERS
No. 47 (Series 1921)
HEADQUARTERS U.S. MARINE CORPS
Washington, November 1, 1921
759. The following will be read to the command on the 10th of November, 1921, and hereafter on the 10th of November of every year. Should the order not [...]
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 13:29:41 +0000
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Special Forces Rescue US Hostage in Afghanistan
Navy Times:
The American businessman lay shackled in a mud hut 8,000 feet up a remote mountain in Afghanistan, armed captors posted inside and outside to prevent any escape attempt.
Earlier in his captivity, he had made a run for it, but — barefoot and much older than the insurgents who held him — he was snatched [...]
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:50:01 +0000
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Post-Morteming the Disaster
P.J. O’Rourke is bitter about GOP’s recent defeat, and contends that we conservatives have only ourselves to blame.
In the manner of sophisticated libertarians, he blames, firstly, conservatism’s reliance on non-elite Southerners and people of faith. I’m afraid I don’t agree with the we’d-be-winning-if we-just-kept-the-conservative-movement-for-the-Yuppies-like-us theory. We really do need a few more votes to win [...]
Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:15:56 +0000
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Quarrel Over Depression-Era Money Cache Loses Loot
New York Times:
In the end, a contractor who found $182,000 in Depression-era currency hidden in bathroom walls received just a few thousand dollars and, he feels, some vindication.
The discovery amounted to little more than grief for the contractor, Bob Kitts, who could not agree on how to divide the money with the home’s owner, Amanda [...]
Sun, 09 Nov 2008 16:12:31 +0000
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Pin-Fire Ring Pistol
Pictures of a curious pin-fire six-shot revolver made to be worn as a ring.
There is no written description, but the cartridge looks to be the size of a .22 short, or smaller. The hammer and trigger are easy to recognize. My guess is that the side lever is used to rotate the cylinder, and [...]
Sun, 09 Nov 2008 14:10:09 +0000
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Eat Obama Cake on Obama Day
With all of President Obama’s accomplishments, is it any wonder that some are now promoting a national holiday in his honor?
Topeka Capital-Journal:
Plans are being made to promote a national holiday for Barack Obama, who will become the nation’s 44th president when he takes the oath of office Jan. 20.
“Yes We Can” planning rallies will be [...]
Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:40:03 +0000
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Appalled Briton Observes Obama Cult
Peter Hitchens vents his spleen on America’s decline in the Daily Mail.
Anyone would think we had just elected a hip, skinny and youthful replacement for God, with a plan to modernise Heaven and Hell – or that at the very least John Lennon had come back from the dead.
The swooning frenzy over the choice of [...]
Sun, 09 Nov 2008 13:29:04 +0000
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What Would Rahm Emanuel Do?
James G. Wiles, in the Philadelphia Bulletin, asks “what would Rahm Emanuel do if he had Congressman John Boehner’s job as House Minority Leader?”
That’s easy. Put as many long-range torpedoes into the water aimed at Senator Obama’s ship of state before Republicans lose control of the Executive Branch as possible. Here are a few:
Appoint U.S. [...]
Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:13:55 +0000
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Happiness Everywhere Over Obama Victory
I wonder how much they contributed to the campaign.
New York Times:
The leader of a jihadi group in Iraq argued Friday that the election of Barack Obama as president represented a victory for radical Islamic groups that had battled American forces since the invasion of Iraq.
The statement, which experts said was part of the psychological duel [...]
Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:06:33 +0000
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American Exceptionalism
Just like Iowahawk, Eric Posner, at Volokh, reflects upon America’s newly restored standing in the eyes of hyper-domesticated and garlic-breathed Europeans generally.
Suddenly, the United States has prestige (again) that matches its power and wealth, and this prestige no other country can touch. People around the world beg the United States to “exercise leadership” and [...]
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:12:35 +0000
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Large Economy-Sized Cougars
In November or December 2007, this animal was hit by a truck on Highway 64 in northern Arizona. the cat wasn’t weighed at the scene but it took three people to lift it and its mass was estimated at 200-220 lbs (90-100 kg). It was over 2.1 m (6’ 10.7”) long.
Darren Naish, at Tetrapod Zoology, [...]
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:01:33 +0000
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The Pride Is Back
Iowahawk celebrates the restoration of America’s popularity with socialist European weenies and shares in the joy felt at the election of America’s first black president by the enemies of the United States everywhere.
Although I have not always been the most outspoken advocate of President-Elect Barack Obama, today I would like to congratulate him and add [...]
Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:35:22 +0000
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"Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are"
From the Onion:
2:39 video
Hat tip to Daniel Lowenstein.
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 19:25:40 +0000
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Pundits Debate Elvish Foreign Policy: Suicide at the Council of Elrond
Red State Pundits argue whether Elrond Half-Elven started an unnecessary war which precipitated the dwindling away and passage to the West of his own people.
Besides, no One Ring was ever found when the allied armies invaded and occupied Mordor at the cost of millions of gold pieces per month, the loss of thousands of elves, [...]
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 14:20:31 +0000
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An Opportunity, Not a Disaster
“David Smithee” is rejoicing over Obama’s election, taking the view that the democrats have overreached and we’ve got them where we want them. They’ve got their leftist president and a Congressional majority. Now they can try governing from the left, and just watch what happens to them.
As ancient Israel whined to have monarchs rule over [...]
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:56:05 +0000
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Muslims & Obama
Nibras Kazimi predicts Islamic jubilation over Obama’s victory will, in the not very distant future, change into hostility.
For now, Arabs and Muslims in the Middle East see two things in Obama: to them he’s a walking, talking apology, and an infiltrator. He’s an apology for the Bush years; America’s gift basket to the rest of [...]
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:41:27 +0000
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America Tired of Politics
Ben Shapiro thinks the undecideds went for Obama’s empty slogans and fake emotions simply because they were tired of all the partisan bickering.
The Great Election of 2008 is over. Barack Obama is the 44th President of the United States.
Now is the time to ask what this election was about.
Here’s what this election was (set ital) [...]
Thu, 06 Nov 2008 11:34:50 +0000
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Guy Fawkes Day
Procession of a Guy
From Robert Chambers, The Book of Days, 1869:
Till lately, a special service for the 5th of November formed part of the ritual of the English Book of Common Prayer; but by a recent ordinance of the Queen in Council, this service, along with those for the Martyrdom of Charles I, and the [...]
Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:39:55 +0000
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Could Have Been Worse
David Bernstein looks at the results and puts them in perspective.
The picture is of a solid Democratic win, but not the tsunami some had expected. Obama won the popular vote by a solid, but not crushing, margin of slightly less than six percent (52.4-46.5). Bill Clinton beat Bob Dole by a significantly greater margin and [...]
Wed, 05 Nov 2008 14:51:02 +0000
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"The 'I Want My Mommy' Election"
Neal Boortz identifies yesterday’s election’s predominant theme.
I brought this up several months ago … a slogan for this election. “I want my mommy.” The phrase really says it all. This is not an election where the American voters were looking for someone to protect their freedoms. Instead, it was an election where people were looking [...]
Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:32:37 +0000
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