Darwin Award.

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Actually, that could be a lot of fun. Unfortunately, it’s just another example of government bureaucrats being incompetent.

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The mechanism on the Clock, at Wells Cathedral in Somerset, will be set manually for the last time next week, following the retirement of the last member of a family who has maintained it for almost a century.

Wells Cathedral officials said the mechanical clock was being replaced because they were unable to find a suitable replacement for Mr Fisher.

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And, as we all know, U.S. intelligence sources are absolutely reliable.

Absolutely.

Sure, I believe that.

Don’t think the Israelis will buy it, though.

Check it out.

Around 500 actors for The National Youth Theatre of Great Britain perform S’Warm at Battersea Power Station in London to raise awareness of the alleged global environmental crisis caused by dwindling bee populations

Mostly, silly stunts like this raise awareness that a lot of people in the world (actors, especially) have too much time on their hands.

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They don’t make Naval officers like they used to, apparently.

Ensign Steve Crowston claimed that when he was called into a room with fellow officers to be given their call signs, his name had been written on a white board with a list of suggestions that included “Gay Boy” and “Cowgirl”.

He said the group eventually voted for him to be known as “Romo’s Bitch” because he was a fan of Tony Romo, the Dallas Cowboys quarterback.

Mr Crowston, an administrative officer with Strike Fighter Squadron 136 at Naval Air Station, Oceana, Virginia, has not disclosed his sexual orientation but complained to senior officers.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell apparently doesn’t include Don’t Whine.

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And, most important, how Blago’s people got to her.

Fellow jurors say one person refused to budge on multiple counts in a trial covering racketeering, conspiracy, wire fraud, bribery and extortion charges.

Read it.

The private lives of young people are now so well documented on the internet that many will have to change their names on reaching adulthood, Google’s CEO has claimed.

Perhaps after a Spirit Quest. Burning Man would probably do.

Thomas Sowell doesn’t like what he’s seeing.

While various political leaders have, over the centuries, done things that violated either the spirit or the letter of the Constitution, few dared to openly say that the Constitution was wrong and that what they wanted was right.

It was the Progressives of a hundred years ago who began saying that the Constitution needed to be subordinated to whatever they chose to call “the needs of the times.” Nor were they content to say that the Constitution needed more Amendments, for that would have meant that the much disdained masses would have something to say about whether, or what kind, of Amendments were needed.

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Soon to be a major motion picture, starring Angelina Jolie.

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So how are biotech sugar beets (already approved by the USDA, mind you) significantly affecting the human environment? Activists at the Center for Food Safety and the Sierra Club argued in federal court that sugar beets improved to resist the herbicide glyphosate might result in the development of superweeds or might interbreed with organic chard and regular beets.

When did ‘activist’ become a career field?

Unlike drugs which can sell for beaucoup bucks, crops are commodities that sell for dollars per bushel. So only big companies can marshal the financial and legal resources required to get approval for crops that sell by millions of bushels and bales, corn, soybean, canola, and cotton. Meanwhile the biotech improvement of smaller niche crops, say tomatoes and green beans, that might benefit even backyard gardeners remains stymied.

Read it.

Hundreds of hobbits at risk from hypertension.

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Well, they’re just Christians, we can forget about them.

The Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America accused New York officials on Tuesday of turning their backs on the reconstruction of the only church destroyed in the Sept. 11 attacks, while the controversial mosque near Ground Zero moves forward.

“We have people that are saying, why isn’t our church being rebuilt and why is there … such concern for people of the mosque?” Father Alex Karloutsos, assistant to the archbishop, told FoxNews.com. He said “religious freedom” would allow a place of worship for any denomination to be built, but accused officials with the Port Authority of making no effort to help move the congregation’s project along.

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In the greatest movement of people the world has ever seen, China is secretly working to turn the entire continent into a new colony.

Reminiscent of the West’s imperial push in the 18th and 19th centuries – but on a much more dramatic, determined scale – China’s rulers believe Africa can become a ‘satellite’ state, solving its own problems of over-population and shortage of natural resources at a stroke.

With little fanfare, a staggering 750,000 Chinese have settled in Africa over the past decade. More are on the way.

The Other McCain marvels at American culture.

Allow me to suggest that let’s not scream “raaaaacism” at these idiots. Rather, let’s point out the ironic absurdity of someone whose native language is Spanish telling other people to “go back to Europe.”

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Any shark that can chomp a surf board in two has my respect.

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After praising Islam as a source of wisdom and force for progress, the president added the following: “in the United States, Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been part of America and that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.”

This statement is not true in any meaningful sense.

Democrats never hesitate to lie if doing so would advance the narrative, serene in the knowledge that none of the Voices of the Crust will call them on it.

Read it.

Slate, a Voice of the Crust, unable to deny the truth any longer, still attempts to pooh-pooh it.

Callahan fully documents that the Democratic Party is much more dominated by huge donations and corporate influence than ever in its history. In the 2008 election cycle, for example, all five of the largest West Coast technology firms whose employees made political donations—Microsoft, Google, Cisco, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard—gave to Democrats over Republicans by a factor of 3-to-1 or even 4-to-1.

The thesis is that, well, yeah, rich people are all lefties now, but that’s because they’ve seen the light about putting everything in the hand of Big Gov.

The 21^st-century titan has made his fortune not in shabby trades like oil, timber, or wage-slave manufacturing, but rather in sparkling, knowledge-economy fields like law, finance, technology, and entertainment. (This part of Callahan’s book was excerpted in Sunday’s Washington Post.) Hence he (it’s still mostly he) has seen the value of what only government is likely to provide: a well-educated work force; meritocratic immigration policy; speedy infrastructure; and thriving capital markets. The odds are very high that he attended at least university in a liberal-left coastal city, where he learned the good graces of racial and sexual tolerance.

Never mind that this ‘well-educated work force’ had somebody else pay for their education, so naturally they’re looking for somebody else’s teat to suck on as they go through life. Never mind that the ‘meritocratic immigration policy’ is a cheap myth promoted by people who want to continue the century-old tradition that immigrants vote Democrat. Never mind that lefties want to choke of the ‘speedy infrastructure’ by slowing traffic from airplanes and cars down to trains and bicycles, putting specially-privileged groups in HOV lanes rather than widening streets for everybody. Nope, rich people are lefties because all correct-thinking (oops, almost said right-thinking) people are lefties, so that’s really not a problem, really, not a problem.

Ignored is the fact that knowledge workers check their brains at the door of the voting booth because they’ve been carefully broken in college to the left-wing agenda, like horses at a ranch or kids at a Young Pioneers summer camp.

Read it.

Read it.

“It’s an incredibly consistent effect,” [psychologist Dacher] Keltner says. “When you give people power, they basically start acting like fools. They flirt inappropriately, tease in a hostile fashion, and become totally impulsive.” Mr. Keltner compares the feeling of power to brain damage, noting that people with lots of authority tend to behave like neurological patients with a damaged orbito-frontal lobe, a brain area that’s crucial for empathy and decision-making. Even the most virtuous people can be undone by the corner office.

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Case in point: Senator Patty Murray (D-Washington) said on the Senate floor that 3,000 teachers in Washington were in peril of being laid off. The truth is that only 445 teachers were notified they would lose their jobs. And almost all of them were hired back. Now that President Obama has signed the bill, Washington State will get $206 million in taxpayer money to save jobs that aren’t being lost.

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And that tells you just about everything you need to know about what’s wrong with the world today.

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Obama, it is clear, masqueraded as a synthesizer in order to gain power. He took advantage of America’s yearning for a president who will bridge our divisions. He never intended to be such a president. Rather, he intended to be the agent for one side of the debate — a side I think is properly viewed as the antithesis to the traditional American narrative that we are good country with a good economic system.

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The Wall Street Journal’s Greater New York section has a dispatch  reporting on a $150 million interior renovation at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York: “Many of the latest changes were made to accommodate the addition of 600 Fed employees, hired after the financial crisis began to work in the markets group helping to stimulate the economy.”

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Well, considering how sheep appear to have taken over America, can The Shire be that far behind?

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A Connecticut-based law firm, Scott + Scott, filed a shareholder derivative suit in Santa Clara County Superior Court in California on Tuesday against H-P’s board, alleging directors violated their fiduciary duties in connection with the events surrounding the resignation on Friday of Hurd.

Among other things, the 45-page suit alleges that H-P’s board violated its corporate-governance guidelines by failing to inform shareholders of the investigation. It also attacks details of Mr. Hurd’s exit package, which is estimated at above $35 million.

All this is rather odd. Considering how dramatically he turned the company around, I should think it more appropriate for shareholders to sue the Board for firing him, since the actual transgressions determined were pretty trivial. But that’s me.

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Coming soon to an XBox 360 near you.

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In 2008 a one-car accident killed a Mansfield, Mass. 19-year-old and her 20-year-old friend; their car hit a tree. Now a lawyer for the passenger’s family has sued the town of Foxboro and the Kraft Group, saying the operators of the New England Country Music Festival did not do enough to deter underage drinking in the parking lot outside Gillette Stadium.

‘Our kids won a Darwin Award because they were too stupid not to drink and drive, so it’s your fault that we were bad parents, and we’re going to sue.’ Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

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Nothing is more common than a combination of businesses using government to exclude competition through regulation and licensing laws; ask anybody who wants to drive a cab in New York city. This is just another tiresome example of the same.

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‘You’re not paid to think.’ seems to be the foundation stone for government employment.

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A 15 year-old in New Zealand was told to hand back her beauty pageant crown after posting a photo of herself with dyed brown hair on Facebook.

Hadn’t know that there was that much stupidity in New Zealand. Her dyed hair is the same color as mine and I’ve been called blond as long as I can remember.

Miss O’Neil told Ms Osborne it was not a wig and she had dyed her hair.

She added that if she wasn’t allowed to dye her hair then beauty pageants might not be for her.

Ms Osborne responded by telling the 15 year-old to choose between the hair dye and her title.

She said: “Well you better decide, miss. Hand over your crown with an attitude like that. I’m sure someone will step into your place with manners.”

Ms Osborne also told the teenager that she would not go far in the world.

Just looking at Olivia’s picture, I suggest that, however far she goes in the world, it will be farther than Ms Osborne. Miley Cyrus should look that good.

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The number of injunctions, in which a court orders a newspaper not to publish a story, has risen since the introduction of the Human Rights Act in 1998.

In addition to a straightforward injunction, there is the so-called “super injunction” which means a newspaper may not even say that an injunction was sought.

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I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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The body of one of France’s best-known chefs was discovered hidden in a freezer after his girlfriend revealed to her daughter that “something unfortunate” had happened to him, police said.

That’s pretty cold.

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In July Mayor Michael Bloomberg  announced the shut down of 32 bus routes around the city, to the inconvenience of thousands of New Yorkers. Those same cuts eliminated the jobs of about 500 drivers and mechanics who are members of the Transport Workers Union  (TWU). Its distress was compounded, because simultaneously with the cuts, the mayor announced that as of Aug. 15, 2010, the City’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), headed by David Yassky, would allow private van services to pick up passengers along the routes on which public bus service has been eliminated.

On July 28, 2010, TWU’s President John Samuelsen sued in Manhattan state court to force Yassky and the TLC to block these private carriers from entering into service, in order to pressure the City to restore the cuts. His motives are clear: “This is an effort to replace solid jobs that come with medical and pension benefits … with low-paid, non-unionized workforce without medical or pension benefits. Any politician that supports this is basically supporting an unprovoked attack against the TWU.”

Well, yeah. The problem is that the Union is too expensive but has a lot of political power (‘He who robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul.’) and so this is the only politically feasible way to cut costs. The basic Union position is that, either you use overpriced Union labor for this service, or the public can walk for all they care. And that tells you pretty much all you need to know about public-sector unions.

Darwin Award Nominee.

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Good luck getting another job, sweetheart.

Joel Kotkin is always worth reading.

Despite promises that the $8 billion invested in rail lines over the past two decades would lessen L.A.’s traffic congestion and reshape how Angelenos get to work, the sad reality is that there has been no increase in MTA transit ridership since before the rail expansion began in 1985.

Much of the problem, notes Tom Rubin, a former chief financial officers for the MTA’s predecessor agency, stems from the shift of funding priorities to trains from the city’s more affordable and flexible bus network. Meanwhile, traffic has gotten worse, with delay hours growing from 44 hours a year in 1982 to 70 hours in 2007.

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The notion that the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution bars the government from adhering to the traditional understanding of what is and is not marriage strikes me as ludicrous. That understanding was nearly universal in this country when the Amendment was enacted and remained so for at least one hundred years. It still prevails today. Should the time come when it no longer prevails, it can and will be overturned democratically.

If an argument that adherence to the traditional understanding of marriage is unconstitutional can be cobbled together from existing Supreme Court jurisprudence, that tells me this jurisprudence is hopelessly misguided, not that there is a constitutional right to gay marriage. In other words, Judge Walker’s decision represents the reductio ad absurdum of left-wing “living Constitution” jurisprudence. If the Supreme Court reaches the same result, its opinion will probably replace Roe v. Wade as the symbol of judicial activism intolerably run amok.

Read it.

Read it.

At last I understand why Brad dumped her.

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More than three-quarters of the states and a majority of the people in each of those states have prohibited gay marriage. But one judge in California has, through his own “fact finding” decided gender no longer, after 5000 years, plays any role in marriage.

There is a great and growing divide between those who govern and those who are governed. But those who govern are forgetting that they only govern by the consent of those who are governed. That consent is being revoked.

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It isn’t?

When I was a kid, I heard the term ‘butterscotch’ and thought that it would probably taste like butter. Then I tried some and found out that it tasted like crap. But I guess ‘crapscotch’ would be inappropriate.

The Other McCain examines a cultural phenomenon.

Including $346,000 a year for Morris Dees. Can’t help noticing that even though Heidi Beirich has a Ph.D., she isn’t on the list.

“Heck, the SPLC is whiter than a bunch of MSNBC hosts at a Broadview Security commercial burglars’ convention.”

Read it.

California has long been a destination for those seeking a better place to live. For most of its history, the state enacted sensible policies that created one of the wealthiest and most innovative economies in human history. California realized the American dream but better, fostering a huge middle class that, for the most part, owned their homes, sent their kids to public schools, and found meaningful work connected to the state’s amazingly diverse, innovative economy.

What went so wrong? The answer lies in a change in the nature of progressive politics in California. During the second half of the twentieth century, the state shifted from an older progressivism, which emphasized infrastructure investment and business growth, to a newer version, which views the private sector much the way the Huns viewed a city—as something to be sacked and plundered. The result is two separate California realities: a lucrative one for the wealthy and for government workers, who are largely insulated from economic decline; and a grim one for the private-sector middle and working classes, who are fleeing the state.

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Earlier tonight I noted with some derision the “two Americas” of John Edwards’ myth. However, as we have noted before, there are indeed two Americas: the fault line just doesn’t lie where Edwards and other liberals place it. Rather, the key dividing line in American politics is between a strapped private sector and a flush, overflowing-with-cash public sector. Intuitively, it is odd: one might have assumed that those who pay the bills would look out for their own needs over the interests of those whom they employ. But this hasn’t happened. A large majority of voters have been asleep at the switch, and public employees have been awarding themselves constantly-increasing salaries and pension benefits. Those benefits have now swelled to the point where there is no possibility that taxpayers can fund them.

Read it.

The Politico story  at issue is about how members of the Black Congressional Caucus are playing the race card against fellow Democrats over the ethics prosecutions of Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters (emphasis mine):

Democrats have been playing the race card for so long and so hard against Republicans and conservatives and Tea Party supporters that … well … go for it.

Read it.

Note that, except for India (which has a HUGE Muslim minority and worse exposure to Islamic terrorism than we do), they’re all Muslim countries.

Perhaps they know something that we don’t.