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What, no Jane Fonda? How disappointing.

Decades after the US gave Laos a horrific distinction as the world’s most heavily bombed nation, Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, has pledged to help get rid of millions of unexploded bombs that still pockmark the impoverished country.

It would seem more fair to make the Vietnamese pay for cleaning up the bombs — after all, they were the ones who attracted them in the first place by sneaking through the country.

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Britain no longer has the death penalty and is cutting their state pension benefits, so the way to a secure old age appears to be to kill somebody. Have an ailing spouse? Have we got a deal for you….

The Other McCain points out some inconvenient truth.

You will notice that when a conservative proposes a general rule of human behavior, liberals are quick to cite some exception to that rule. However, when liberals propose general rules, no conservative is permitted to cite exceptions, and thus any attempt to discuss human behavior with liberals is doomed to end in the accusation that conservatives are arguing unfairly.

Indeed, I have noticed that.

The case of Angel Adams is also probably helpful as a basic political litmus test of sorts. You may have noticed that liberals delight in making crude jests about pro-life Christian families like the Duggars. Yet if anyone calls attention to the case of a hyper-procreative welfare mother with multiple babydaddies including an imprisoned cocaine dealer — a dreadful situation that imposes heavy costs on innocent taxpayers — the very same liberals will predictably scream, “RAAAAACIST!”

Yet it is not the race, but rather the behavior, of Angel Adams which is the problem, and her behavior is rooted in an attitude, one that is commonly labled “the entitlement mentality.” I’ve seen the entitlement mentality manifested in various ways by all types of people. No race has a monopoly on such selfish attitudes, but liberals go out of their way to justify the entitlement mentality when it comes to certain groups of people whom liberals apparently view as Official Victims of Society.

Whose turn is it to be the victim…?

Liberalism, as a philosophy, requires such victims as proof that America is fundamentally unjust, thus in need of the kind of “reforms” that liberals advocate. Examining the arguments of liberals — to the extent that liberals actually engage in arguments, rather than mere name-calling — the conservative points out that much of the “social injustice” bemoaned by today’s liberalism is actually a direct byproduct of previous liberal “reforms.”

In the case of Ms. Adams, for example, one sees not only the result of LBJ’s “Great Society” expansion of welfare programs, but also a fairly predictable consequence of the Sexual Revolution that liberals insisted was necessary for Americans to escape the oppressive shackles of our nation’s puritanical Judeo-Christian heritage.

Flap flap flap ye chickens, coming home to roost….

President Obama and his liberal friends like to lecture us about the alleged evils of “the 1%” — the ultra-rich who supposedly refuse to pay “their fair share” of taxes to support Angel Adams and her children (or to keep Garry Brown Sr. in prison). But where is the justice or morality in compelling the ultra-rich (or anyone else) to pay more to foot the bill for these predictable consequences of liberalism? How can anyone be faulted for an unwillingness to pay for new liberal “reforms” when they can see with their own eyes the endless misery produced by old liberal “reforms”?

No matter — it’s their job to pay, and to pay, and to pay, so long as there are useless mouths to be fed, and parasites are available to   suck the blood of the productive.

“A lot of people have gone way extra miles for you,” Sheehan said. “Do you understand that?”
Adams replied quietly, “No comment, your honor.”

Gratitude? What’s that? Sorry, no room for that in the Entitlement Mentality.

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Modernity is amazing. We are surrounded by innovations, gadgets, and ideas that make life better. And just as a fish doesn’t notice the water he swims through, we are often oblivious to the incredible things that surround us. For example, we used to only be able to eat certain foods when they were in season. If your grandparents had a hankering for asparagus when they were young, they could only satisfy it if it was April or May. If they wanted a tomato, they’d have to wait until summertime.

Today, we can eat whatever we want, when we want. People don’t really appreciate it, but for most of human history, that just wasn’t possible. It takes all kinds of technologies to make that happen. Faster transportation is one of them. Trains, planes, automobiles, and boats with engines rather than oars make it possible to ship fresh food from all over the world to supermarkets.

Even the poorest of ‘the poor’ can eat fresh veggies, if only as garnish on a Big Mac, rather than subsisting on gruel and porridge as they did in times not so long ago. And yet there is no end of whining by limousine liberals about the lack of access to organically-grown arugula by the Underclass — as if they would eat it if they had it.

Police Tape App From NJ ACLU Offers Yet Another Way to Document Inappropriate Police Conduct

10 Life Skills You Can Learn From YouTube

A Scientific Explanation of Your Hangover (And How to Cure It)

Spread Fingers Like A Fork To Swim Faster, Scientists Find

Sticky Note Wristwatch – a Note to Self

SponsoredBy

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Back in 2006, California’s legislature passed and then-Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the California Global Warming Solutions Act which aims to reduce the Golden State’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. As I reported earlier this goal would be achieved by a mix of policies including a cap-and-trade carbon market along with a set of complementary measures. Those measures include setting fuel efficiency standards for appliances and buildings, requiring that 33 percent of the state’s energy be produced from renewable sources, setting a low carbon fuel standard for vehicles, and zoning changes to discourage automobile travel, among other new regulations and mandates.

A 2010 study by the California Air Resources Board, the agency in charge of implementing carbon rationing under the Global Warming Solutions Act, reported that its best case analysis estimated that implementing the law would boost California’s employment by 10,000 extra jobs by 2020; its worst case projected 330,000 fewer jobs than there would otherwise have been by 2020.

A new study commissioned by the California Manufacturers and Technology Association finds that that worst case is the likely case.

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Proponents of government-run health care view Health Savings Accounts as the bane of their existence.  They provide a health care based on individual responsibility with market-based accountability that drives down the price of health care services.

HHS has proposed new regulations that would force over five million Americans who have individual HSA policies to lose them.  It’s not hard to make the case that Kathleen Sibelius and her army of bureaucrats are specifically targeting HSAs because they demonstrate that government is not the solution to our health care insurance ills.

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Col. Crews recounted an interchange in 2010 between Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a military chaplain.  While Adm. Mullen was briefing the troops on what the repeal might look like, the chaplain asked if those with “biblical views that homosexuality is a sin [would] still be protected to express those views?”

Adm. Mullen reportedly responded, “Chaplain, if you can’t get in line with this policy, resign your commission.”

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It may be, as some maintain, that the U.S. is the most litigious country on earth. But at least it’s not this bad.

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California will devote $48.3 billion to education in its next fiscal year, and yet Gov. Jerry Brown still wants citizens to increase their tax payments to the state. This, despite the fact that the state ranks 47th in the nation in education. Meanwhile, the City of Los Angeles spends $6 billion. How on earth can this much money be spent and yet result in such terrible schools?

The problem is obviously systemic, yet nobody ever has the courage to dive deep into the system, tear out all the problems, and reform it. Instead, we get another year in which LAUSD bellows that it cannot handle the budget cuts coming its way, so it cuts school days and fires good teachers and – of course – implores voters to approve more taxes.

Look for … the Union label …. (Not that the kids can read it.)

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When one thinks of the Hamptons, what jumps to mind are masters of the universe and their mansions by the sea. But a strong, steady stream of immigrants has been flowing to the area for years, drawn by a service economy that demands hedges be trimmed and houses be cleaned. In the Springs, a hamlet in the town of East Hampton, where most of the houses are small and the year-round population is relatively large, the Hispanic population has tripled in the past 10 years — and tension has emerged.

The problem with the Upper Crust is that they need the Lower Crust to support their SWPL lifestyles. The native Underclass is increasingly ignorant, feckless, and dishonest, so they’re forced to rely on immigrants, legal and il.

 Some longtime residents of the Springs and similar areas complain that homes are being illegally crowded, that houses with half a dozen cars parked outside are a blight on the street, and that the many children living inside are overwhelming the local schools and causing property taxes to rise.

In other words, the Lower East Side has translated to the Hamptons, and the middle class people who are the target of the perennial conspiracy between the upper class and the lower class don’t like it very much.

Hey, guys, welcome to my world. You voted for Obama, so suck on it.

Eric Raymond points out the fatal flaw.

But it all goes pear-shaped on one sentence: “Open systems and networks aren’t always better for consumers.” This is a dreadful failure of vision and reasoning, one that is less forgivable here because libertarians – who understand why asymmetries of power and information are in general bad things – have very particular reasons to know better than this.

In the long run, open systems and networks are always better for consumers. Because, whatever other flaws they may have, they have one overriding virtue – they don’t create an asymmetrical power relationship in which the consumer is ever more controlled by the network provider. Statists, who accept and even love asymmetrical power relationships as long as the right sort of people are doing the oppressing, have some excuse within their terms of reference for failing to grasp the nasty second, third, and nth-order consequences of closed-system lock-in. Libertarians have no such excuse.

Read it.

“The Locavore’s Dilemma” argues that the benefits of eating local have been vastly overstated by food activists and its serious detriments swept under the rug. The tone is distinctly upbeat, no doubt because being a gleeful debunker is fun but also because the two authors are resolutely cheerful about the world’s food situation.

Invincible ignorance of economics in service of a political/social agenda is all the rage these days; ‘locovores’ are merely the latest hippy-dippy nonsense.

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Nato trains and fights alongside the Afghan security forces against the Taliban.

The training mission’s motto is “shoulder to shoulder” and many staff wear Afghan flag badges as a symbol of their commitment.

For those Afghan troops to then turn around and shoot dead men who have travelled thousands of miles to enforce the peace is a terrible blow to trust and morale.

What was it that Bugs Bunny always used to say? Oh, yeah: Suckerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr….

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Michigan males intent on celebrating the Fourth of July holiday with a few liveners are advised that when the time comes to send the booze back to the brewers, it’ll be the urinal, rather than the beer, that’s doing the talking.

The Office of Highway Safety Planning (OHSP) is asking bar and restaurant owners in Bay, Delta, Ottawa and Wayne counties to deploy “interactive urinal communicators” as part of a state-wide clampdown on drink-driving.

As soon as sozzled punters get down to business, the motion-sensing device’s female voice advises: “Listen up. That’s right, I’m talking to you. Had a few drinks? Maybe a few too many?

“Then do yourself and everyone else a favour: Call a sober friend or a cab. Oh, and don’t forget to wash your hands.”

The Nanny State in action.

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A spokesman from Wiltshire Police confirmed: “A male walked into the offices of David Nolder and Co in St John’s Street, armed with a weapon, and shot a male.

“The offender drove off in a car but was arrested at approximately 3.35pm without a struggle by armed officers in Rowde.

Gee, I guess those strict British laws against firearms really saved the day, huh? If the victim had been armed, it could have turned into a real bloodbath. Too bad for him, but it’s the public we have to look out for.

Steve Sailer points out that black parents do their kids no favors with these bizarre names.

Out of the corner of my eye while reading Williams’s essay, I saw a link entitled “Charles M. Blow: Trayvon Martin.” My immediate thought was, “Oh, good, Trayvon sounds like a black name. This must be about another intelligent African-American writing or doing something interesting.”

But my brain answered back: “Nope, it’s about a Trayvon, not a Thomas Chatterton. It’s not on the sports page, so it’s going to be messed-up and miserable. And because it’s in the Times, not the Post, Trayvon’s going to be the victim, not the victimizer.”

Was that stereotyping? No doubt.

Stereotypes arise because of observed patterns of behavior. No patterns of behavior, no stereotyping. Example: Both blacks and Jews have historically been widely hated and subject to derogatory stereotypes — but blacks aren’t stereotyped as bloodsucking monylenders, and Jews aren’t stereotyped as lazy, shiftless and stupid. Chinese aren’t stereotyped as religious terrorists, Arabs aren’t stereotyped as melancholy drunkards, and Russians aren’t stereotyped as parent-dominated workaholics. Think about why that is.

Trayvon had tried to fit the stereotype of young black males aspiring to the thug life, picking a Twitter handle based on a rap song featuring convicted killer C-Murder. Just as Zimmerman had worried, Trayvon likely had dabbled in burglary: Martin was nabbed at his high school last fall with a backpack containing women’s jewelry and a screwdriver.

The win-win solution against stereotyping is for blacks to stop living down to their profiles.

The way to dissolve stereotypes is for people to quit embracing the patterns of behavior that reinforce the stereotype. Unfortunately, the political fashion of Identity Politics is for stereotyped groups to embrace, rather than reject, their stereotypes. In an environment where academically ambitious black kids can be shunned for ‘acting white’, there really is no hope.

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Actresses should be cast in male roles on stage, says the union Equity as it complains about the lack of roles for women in theatre.

How long before playwrights are required by law to have an equal number of parts for men and women? Then the next step is to make sure the racial composition is Politically Correct.

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U.S. military leaders are promising a small-scale, but effective plan for dealing with terrorist threats throughout Africa.  The head of the military’s Africa Command says that U.S. forces are carrying out reconnaissance missions across the continent but Washington has no plans to expand its permanent presence in Africa.

Oh, they never do. But somehow it just seems to happen. Funny how that works.

My question is, Why are we still spending money in Europe, Soviet Communism now being extinct?

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To which the obvious rejoinder is, ‘With what?’ When last I looked, the Royal Navy has one (1) reasonably new destroyer-class ship and two or three reasonably modern nuclear submarines. And the British army is being reduced to the old ‘guards and garrisons’ level last seen under the Stewarts.

Good luck with that.

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Six of the 12 instructors under investigation for misconduct face charges ranging from rape to adultery. A senior Air Force commander said nine of those instructors were in the same squadron, briefing reporters at the Pentagon at the same time that one of the accused appeared in a Lackland courtroom.

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Not that they would have contributed anything to the proceeding had they stayed. Their position is entirely predicated on the fact that Holder, like them, is a black Democrat, without respect to the facts of the case. Were he white, or a Republican (or, horror of horrors, a white Republican), they wouldn’t have budged. But identity politics expresses its Third World roots in supporting members of The Tribe regardless of the actual situation (precisely the reason democracy takes no root in the Muslim World). In that, it is profoundly ‘conservative’ — or perhaps ‘regressive’ would be a more accurate term.

Indeed, being an explicitly racist organization devoted to promoting a particular ethnic group and screwing everybody else whenever possible, a good case could be made that Congress — and the people of the United States — would be well rid of them if they stayed away forever.

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Along with the rest of the Obamassiah’s base.

Obama to The Youth of America: ‘Yes we can! Bend over please.’

The Youth of America to Obama: ‘Thank you, sir! May we have another?’

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Privacy. Everybody talks about it. Grandstanding politicians make plenty of loud noises in the general direction of the internet, disparaging it for turning your perusal of Kim Kardashian-related articles into targeted ads for breast enhancement surgery and Kanye West tickets. Of course, while these politicians are making all this noise about your privacy, they’re quietly signing off on efforts allowing them to sneak in the backdoor and raid your browser history.

Putting the government in charge of your privacy has never been a great idea. When HIPAA was enacted, its privacy requirements greatly affected the medical community. Like many regulatory acts, HIPAA both raised costs (additional paperwork and other compliance factors) and lowered quality (negatively affecting retrospective research and curtailing proactive follow up care).

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German court has ruled that circumcising young boys on religious grounds amounts to bodily harm even if parents consent to the procedure.

Cologne state court said the child’s right to physical integrity trumps freedom of religion and parents’ rights, German news agency DAPD reported Tuesday.

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Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s first reading material each morning, at 5:30, is not a budget update, a legislative proposal or a packet of headlines. It is an e-mail from the Chicago Police Department listing the crimes that were committed during the night that just ended. By 7 a.m., he is calling Garry F. McCarthy, the police superintendent. That is unlikely to be their final conversation of the day, or even of the morning.

Hey, if you want to cut crime, elect a Republican — I don’t think Rudy Giuliani is doing anything right now.

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No good deed goes unpunished.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, continues to rush in where angels fear to tread.

Here in the U.S.A., things have definitely gotten worse. The censoring of Don Rickles is surely a bad sign. I don’t believe that would have happened in 1994.

Worst of all is the rise of the Pod People: twenty-something metrosexual media commentators who have somehow persuaded themselves that the real world, at least as manifested in the realities of a multiracial society, does not exist.

Yeah, there’s a lot of that going around.

Drantch and his type — they are all over the media and the internet — scare me. Behind their smooth girlish features and open, orthodontized smiles there lurks an icy intolerance, a coarse thuggishness, a blinkered determination to believe that the world is something other than what it is, and a closed, invincible conviction of their own moral perfection in so believing. (Are there females of the species? Possibly … it’s hard to be sure.) [MSNBC host Rachel Maddow – ‘No one’s gonna confuse me with a Fox News anchor’, Daily News, October 21, 2009]

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China has repatriated 44 fugitives from its communist neighbour in recent months, said Kim Heung-Kwang, who heads NK Intellectuals Solidarity, a Seoul-based defectors’ group.

Four of them were executed and 40 sent to camps for political prisoners, he told a seminar. South Korean rights groups say there are six political prison camps in the North holding around 200,000 detainees.

A reminder that (a) there are still Communists in the world and (b) they are still evil.

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With summer now upon us, gardening season is in full swing. And that can only mean it’s time for local government officials around the country to try to outdo one another when it comes to preventing everyday people from growing fruit and vegetables in their own yards.

Except for Michelle, of course. Marie Antoinette Michelle playing at being a shepherdess farmer is perfectly okay.

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Anyone who is active in the political world knows that the most obnoxious, profane, hateful partisans, the ones most likely to engage in harassment, are the left-wing gay activists. So I was not at all surprised to see the latest misbehavior from that source: gay activists invited to the White House for a “gay pride” event by President Obama photographed each other making obscene gestures toward Ronald Reagan’s portrait. Proud of themselves, they posted their trophy photos on Facebook. “Yeah, f– Reagan,” one of the gay activists added, helpfully.

Funny how anti-hate, pro-tolerance activists are the most hateful and intolerant people around.

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The plaintiffs point out that Dodd-Frank grants the CFPB sweeping authority over consumer financial product and services firms. For example, the CFPB has the open-ended power to determine which lending practices are “unfair,” “deceitful,” or “abusive” under the Act. It can also unilaterally exempt any class of covered persons from rules it promulgates.

Dodd-Frank also grants the CFPB aggressive investigative and enforcement powers. It can issue subpoenas, conduct hearings and adjudicative proceedings, and file lawsuits.

In other words, it can freely ignore Friends of the Crust while oppressing those out of favor, backed by the full power of the modern state. But that’s the way they roll these days: Pass a law that criminalizes almost anything that anyone would want to do, then exempt your friends and the well-connected — and, eventually, those who are willing to let the bureaucrats and politicians ‘wet their beaks’.

Your tax dollars at work.

Ross Douthat looks at the closet master-racers of the Crust.

But these same eugenicists were often political and social liberals — advocates of social reform, partisans of science, critics of stasis and reaction. “They weren’t sinister characters out of some darkly lighted noir film about Nazi sympathizers,” Conniff writes of Fisher and his peers, “but environmentalists, peace activists, fitness buffs, healthy-living enthusiasts, inventors and family men.” From Teddy Roosevelt to the Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, fears about “race suicide” and “human weeds” were common among self-conscious progressives, who saw the quest for a better gene pool as of a piece with their broader dream of human advancement.

And, indeed, the ACORN hasn’t fallen very far from the tree.

Thanks to examples like Irving Fisher, we know what the elites of a bygone era would have done with that kind of information: they would have empowered the state (and the medical establishment) to determine which fetal lives should be carried to term, and which should be culled for the good of the population as a whole.

That scenario is all but unimaginable in today’s political climate. But given our society’s track record with prenatal testing for Down syndrome, we also have a pretty good idea of what individuals and couples will do with comprehensive information about their unborn child’s potential prospects. In 90 percent of cases, a positive test for Down syndrome leads to an abortion. It is hard to imagine that more expansive knowledge won’t lead to similar forms of prenatal selection on an ever-more-significant scale.

Of course, if the parents have been properly conditioned by the Crust-controlled academic and media establishment, government doesn’t even really need to get involved. Like cultural mimes, they are hemmed in by walls that only they and their compadres can see.

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My hypothesis is that it is precisely the dumbing down of U.S. education over the last decades that explains the increase in willingness to pay for education. The mechanism is diminishing marginal returns to education.

Typical graduate business school education has indeed become less rigorous over time, as has typical college education. But typical high school education has declined in quality just as much. As a result, the human capital difference between a college and high-school graduate has increased, because the first increments of education are more valuable on the job market than the later ones. It used to be that everybody could read and understand something like Orwell’s Animal Farm, but the typical college graduates could also understand Milton or Spencer. Now, nobody grasps Milton but only the college grads can process Animal Farm, and for employers the See Spot Run–>Animal Farm jump is more valuable than the Animal Farm–>Milton jump.

It is as I have long said — companies are requiring college degrees for positions that don’t really require a college education because that’s the only way they can guarantee that applicants will have what used to be considered a high school education.

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Russia has confirmed that the cargo ship forced to turn back from British waters this week was carrying attack helicopters for Syria, and that it will now sail under the Russian flag.

Looks like we’re stuck in the sixties again.

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NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday.

Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia of the elderly.

Gotta love that government-provided health care. Maybe the Obamassiah can get a system like that for us.

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In 2011, Congressional mandates for Cellulosic Biofuel cost refiners $6.8 million (New York Times story). In 2012, the mandated use of Cellulosic Biofuel is 8.6 million gallons.

The projected commercial availability of Cellulosic Biofuel for 2012 is 0.0 gallons.

Blenders must use their mandated quantity of Cellulosic Biofuel, or pay “offsets”, essentially a tax the EPA charges for failure to use the nonexistent product. Of course, refiners are not going to absorb this cost, they’ll merely pass it on to the consumer. (Two industry groups have joined in a lawsuit against the EPA and its absurd penalties.)

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We’ve argued for years that many professions that require certain forms of “licensing” are often more about restricting supply. That’s not say those who set up the licensing effort didn’t have the best of intentions, but the end effect often doesn’t actually do much to benefit the public. I’m reminded of this after reading economist Charles Wheelen explaining why Albert Einstein technically wouldn’t have been “qualified” to teach high school physics after retiring from a distinguished career at Princeton.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, spreads some inconvenient truth:

The downside of our cheerful open-handedness is that it makes the USA a great magnet for freeloaders and unscrupulous lowlifes. In the news, or flitting around the edge of it, at any given time are always half a dozen stories of such.

Many of whom are being offered amnesty by the Obama regime.

US immigration, asylum, and refugee-resettlement procedures are subjects of intensive study in Third World countries. I doubt if one US citizen in ten thousand could tell you the difference between a K-1 visa and an H-4 visa; in Jakarta, Bogotá, Islamabad, and Ouagadougou, they speak of little else.

In any Third World bazaar there is a street of vendors offering help with getting into the USA. Some of the help is of a legitimate kind: translation services, college applications, connection with employers. Some is more…creative. It is highly unlikely that the cassette in the New York Times story about DSK’s accuser was made for the benefit of that one woman. More probably the production of such teaching aids is a major industry in West Africa.

No doubt the same people who are accusing us of being outrageous imperialists. Case in point:

Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi. Both these gentlemen were arrested in May on terrorism charges. Both had entered the USA in 2009 as refugees, in spite of active careers fighting against US troops in Iraq.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

And there was no shortage of public funds to provide Mr. Alwan and Mr. Hammadi with the necessities of life—you know, stuff such as housing and health care—that you, Joe Citizen, have to work your ass off for.

You tax dollars at work.

Zeituni Onyango. Out of the news since her big break last year, Barack Obama’s Aunt Zeituni remains a poster gal for the propositions that: (a) If a US federal judge orders you to do something and you don’t do it, nothing whatever will happen to you. (b) If you make illegal contributions to the campaign of a presidential candidate to whom you are related, and that candidate becomes president, nothing whatever will happen to you. (c) No matter how deep a pit of debt the USA and its states and municipalities sink down into, there’s always $700 a month and free housing to spare for a foreign freeloader.

Is this a great country, or what?

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Of course they do.

An environmental group wants the ailing San Onofre nuclear power plant to remain offline because it says Southern California Edison sidestepped regulatory rules when it installed new equipment.

Not a safety issue, but one of pure pettifoggery — they have no rational reason to oppose it, they just want to cancel the 20th century, so bureaucratic nitpicking is all they have.

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 The Duchess lost a Victorian headpiece and a Cartier brooch along with three other pieces worth a total of £100,000 in 2006. The items went missing as she returned to Clan Campbell’s ancestral home, Inveraray Castle.

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Oh, look, the top two are in Michigan. And there’s nothing from Texas on the list.

Imagine that.

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Michelle Apperson, a teacher at the Sutterville Elementary School in Sacramento who was named “teacher of the year” by the school district, was fired because she was outranked in seniority.

The state’s budget deficit, which has ballooned to $16 million, has triggered a move by Governor Jerry Brown to make cuts across the board, and schools across the state are being forced by budget cuts to fire thousands of teachers.

For the Union makes us … unemployed?

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So much for the rule of law.  This guy wants reelection, so to hell with the Congress.

My, what a surprise! Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Rhode Island is being crushed by pension debt, our cities are suffocating, we’re driving businesses away with regulatory minutiae, and we’re hemorrhaging young people.  Oh, and we just threw away up to $75 million on a video game company run by a former baseball player.

So what are our Governor and legislature spending their time on?

A Homeless Bill of Rights….

Read it.

This is on top of a Federal levy of at least $3oo,ooo (remember, this is wage income).

Of course, you can avoid all this agita (and, you know, having to go to work every day) by going on welfare….

Notice that every damned one of them is a blue state. (Y’all come to Texas, where we don’t stick our hands in your pocket all the way down to your socks.)

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German and Italian officials warned the US on Wednesday that plans to cut off funding for a ground-based Nato missile defence programme built by Lockheed Martin Corp would endanger US ties with their countries.

Translation: ‘You better not even think about not spending money on defending us, or we’ll be offended.’

Italian Defense Minister Giampaolo Di Paola urged Leon Panetta, the US defence secretary, to ensure continued funding for the Medium Extended Air and Missile Defense System (MEADS) programme given its importance to Nato’s future plans and transatlantic co-operation and collaboration.

Look, guys, the purpose of NATO was to defend against the Soviet Union. Hate to break the news to you, but the Soviet Union is gone. Therefore there is no need for NATO any more. So if you want to spend money on sophisticated defense weapons systems, spend your own. (Oops, I forgot — you don’t have any, after having ‘spread the wealth around’ for forty years such that there isn’t any left.)