Read it.

Ah, more of that right-wing vigilante-ism … oh, wait a minute….

Nat Hentoff shivers.

I was not intimidated during J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI hunt for reporters like me who criticized him. I railed against the Bush-Cheney war on the Bill of Rights without blinking. But now I am finally scared of a White House administration. President Obama’s desired health care reform intends that a federal board (similar to the British model) — as in the Center for Health Outcomes Research and Evaluation in a current Democratic bill — decides whether your quality of life, regardless of your political party, merits government-controlled funds to keep you alive. Watch for that life-decider in the final bill. It’s already in the stimulus bill signed into law.

The Obama Nation is starting to scare even left-wing media bloviators.

Read it.

The late Robert Crunden got to the heart of Progressive faith when he discovered that almost all American Progressives were raised in Calvinist homes and, under the influence of some combination of the men and women of Croly’s moment, lost their Christianity and replaced it with some form of what they thought of as “science.” Democracy, activated through science, became what religion once was. Seeing a world that had changed so much since about 1850 — Henry Adams said that a boy born in 1850 was born closer to the year zero than to 1900 — and a generation that had conquered the night (electricity), geography (trains and automobiles and airplanes) and even nature itself, which was for the first time vulnerable to the whims and ambitions of human reason, Progressives had some grounds for their optimism about their belief in “mastery” as opposed to “drift,” as Walter Lippmann put it.

The swine.

Everything hums along like clockwork as long as consumers consume. A wrench is thrown into the entire affair if consumers choose not to spend. And so, we find economists worrying that the genius of the stimulus is threatened by a reticence among Americans to open their wallets. This, of course, raises a whole set of further questions: what would happen to the economy if Americans began to barter for, rather than purchase, at least some of the things they need? What if neighbors began, say, sharing mowers, roto-tillers, ladders, and other tools rather than filling every garage in the neighborhood with same items? What if more Americans began growing some of their own food, making do with one car rather than two, eating at home, and generally attempting to live lives characterized by simplicity and frugality? If Americans are already beginning to make changes in this direction, are they recklessly threatening the economic recovery?

Andrew Breitbart looks at the SWPL clientele of Whole Foods.

Everywhere one looks these days, the intolerance of self-avowed liberals is on display. Especially since Mr. Obama came to power.

The purportedly open-minded and empathic among us who now run everything – save for NASCAR and Nashville – openly wage war against those who dare disagree.

Read it.

Gambetta argues that criminals often cover themselves with tattoos precisely because they ruin the criminals’ prospects to go straight; they allow the criminals to signal “that defection would be not so much unprofitable as impossible.”

Read it.

And yet the “Democrats” want more of the same. That’s “democracy” in these United States.

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As Mencken put it, Holmes was no “advocate of the rights of man,” but rather “an advocate of the rights of lawmakers.” With rare exceptions, he ruled that legislators could do almost anything they wanted, even if it contrasted the plain text of the Constitution, or the original meaning. Mencken accurately points out that under Holmes’ judicial philosophy, “there would be scarcely any brake at all upon lawmaking, and the Bill of Rights would have no more significance than the Code of Manu.”

Hear, hear.

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

Read it.

Unless there’s a Society for Creative Anachronism blog out there, can you really top an online video in which Glenn Reynolds interviews a sci-fi author and discusses, inter alia, “the suckiness of the Starship Troopers movie”?

Well, it’s a good interview, but McCain obviously doesn’t know that his “SCA buddies” almost certainly got laid a lot more than he did. Just sayin’.

Arnold Kling points out that there is really nothing new under the sun.

Read it.

This sort of thing is why I checked out of the culture around 1980. Our country is being taken over by aliens, and I don’t mean the guys from Mexico.

Read it.

Now, what kind of a moron doesn’t know to put the car in neutral and coast back to the level portion of the highway? This one ought to have been a Darwin Award nominee.

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Under the Bush Administration, the U.S. already granted terrorists more rights than any other country had granted enemy combatants in the history of the world. Now, many of those same terrorists are being transferred to the U.S. where they will be given even more constitutional rights and full access to U.S. courts. According to one Guantanamo Bay official, “That’ll free up space down here for U.S. health care patients who’ll be denied all access to judicial review.”

Read it.

Along with a new Tsar, Russia has new Boyars. And they’re not stupid; they’re investing abroad.

Read it.

You, too, can be Bush-whacked.

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Yeah, well, but what about the rest of the country?

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Keeping Dad company in the hospital for five weeks had left me befuddled. How can a facility featuring state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment use less-sophisticated information technology than my local sushi bar? How can the ICU stress the importance of sterility when its trash is picked up once daily, and only after flowing onto the floor of a patient’s room? Considering the importance of a patient’s frame of mind to recovery, why are the rooms so cheerless and uncomfortable? In whose interest is the bizarre scheduling of hospital shifts, so that a five-week stay brings an endless string of new personnel assigned to a patient’s care? Why, in other words, has this technologically advanced hospital missed out on the revolution in quality control and customer service that has swept all other consumer-facing industries in the past two generations?

All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results.

But fundamentally, the “comprehensive” reform being contemplated merely cements in place the current system—insurance-based, employment-centered, administratively complex. It addresses the underlying causes of our health-care crisis only obliquely, if at all; indeed, by extending the current system to more people, it will likely increase the ultimate cost of true reform.

Read it.

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

It’s a funny thing: socialism always results in journalists being beaten with sticks, or worse. One might have expected this fact to dampen journalists’ enthusiasm for socialism.

Yeah, you would think.

Megan McArdle kicks some ass.

Have I mentioned recently that I hate PIRG?  Well, I hate PIRG with the kind of blackhearted distilled rage that normally characterizes the breakup of a thirty year marriage.  They, and their whole canvassing operation, are a vile beast that subsists on dishonor, greed, and the rapidly disintegrating idealism of impressionable young people.

Read it.

In addition to the magazines, of course.

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I must admit, his approach to politics is far more African than American.

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A serious disappointment.

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Arlen Specter was on the receiving end of a townhall again today. This video shows some of the action; it’s becoming a familiar scene. As Specter ruefully notes, hardly anyone at the event appears to be on board with the Democrats’ health care plans:….

Now that he’s come out of the closet as a Democrat, and more importantly as a slimy scum-sucking unprincipled power-whore, it’s fun to see his “natural criticism base” unleashed. Would that Senators Snow, Collins, Graham, Voinovich — and, yes, John McCain — would be served similarly.

Read it.

Physics – it’s not just a good idea, it’s the law.

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Last week, we reported on Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s statement that copyright law has become equal to the life of Mickey Mouse.

It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic.

Read it.

Which of the many “Bush tactics” that Obama has embraced are we talking about here?

President Obama has issued signing statements claiming the authority to bypass dozens of provisions of bills enacted into law since he took office, provoking mounting criticism by lawmakers from both parties.

Why, how Bushitler of him. I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

Read it.

The image of Ian Fleming’s character has also been good for morale in the service, said Sir Colin McColl, who ran MI6 from 1989 to 1994.

They get James Bond, we get the Obama Apology Tour. *sigh*

Read it.

Israeli and Belgian lawyers acting for Eyal Katorza, who is also a French citizen, are preparing a legal case demanding that the EU does more to protect the 300,000 Europeans living in Israel.

Legal documents, seen by The Daily Telegraph, have accused the EU of indirectly funding Palestinian terrorism because of a failure to “prevent the misuse of European funds by non-profit organisations which use these funds to finance terrorism”.

Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

California could get nine House seats it doesn’t deserve because illegal aliens will be counted in 2010.

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A look at “salad bar” evolutionists.

A brief analysis of human social behavior would conclude that there is a strong selective pressure against pacifism, especially absolute and unconditional pacifism. Those social groups whose political institutions are based on pacifism will sooner or later be confronted and overcome by groups that observe no such restrictions on violence.

Neither great intelligence nor advanced technology is required to defeat a pacifist polity. Fists, cudgels, and knives are more than enough to put an end to a people that refuses to defend itself.

This isn’t rocket science. A few minutes’ application of basic logic leads inexorably to this conclusion. So why does pacifism as a political ideal continue to enjoy such a pervasive vogue amongst left-leaning literati in all Western societies?

The obvious explanation is that pacifism — like all the other destructive ideologies of the Left — is nurtured under the roof of Western military might. Pacifists are free to dispense their noxious fumes because they are hothouse flowers, and would be unable to survive as a political movement in the cold world outside.

Read it.

“You’re a fraud, you have not read the bill,” screamed Mike Sola, who got directly in the lawmaker’s face in furious confrontation, wheeling his 36-year-old son, Scott, who has cerebral palsy, directly to the podium before police stepped in and encouraged the Milan, Mich., man to leave. He asserted that the bill would not help his disabled child.

“Fascist America,” Mr. Sola screamed on his way out.

Pass the popcorn.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

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I am not making this up.

Darwin Award.

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The zebra crossing which featured on the cover of The Beatles’ Abbey Road album should be removed because fans are causing too many accidents, politicians have claimed.

Whoa, this is a valuable national resource–dimwitted fans ought to be encouraged to use it so as to remove their defective genes from the gene pool. Politicians never think things through.

Read it.

Although not, of course, the question of who actually wrote his plays.

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Indeed, it’s already happening. Remember: Except for Lake Woebegone, half of the population is below average, by definition.

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In the last few years, I have had the opportunity to compare the human and veterinary health services of Great Britain, and on the whole it is better to be a dog.

Just think: In the Obama Nation, we could have this same situation in the U.S.

Read it.

Of course, a hundred years ago this would not have been worthy of comment.

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But, of course, they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Peggy Noonan looks at the Obama Nation.

They must know at this point they should not have pushed a national health-care plan. A Democratic operative the other day called it “Hillary’s revenge.” When Mrs. Clinton started losing to Barack Obama in the primaries 18 months ago, she began to give new and sharper emphasis to her health-care plan. Mr. Obama responded by talking about his health-care vision. He won. Now he would push what he had been forced to highlight: Health care would be a priority initiative. The net result is falling support for his leadership on the issue, falling personal polls, and the angry town-hall meetings that have electrified YouTube.

Guess Democrats aren’t really into that whole democracy thing.

Read it.

Gee, I wonder why.

Read it.

Some people are bad to the bone. Or perhaps bad to the uncinate fasciculus. Brain scans of the uncinate fasciculus (UF) found distinct differences in psychopaths.

Read it.

Or ought to be, if the “progressives” can be persuaded to stop attempting to turn the clock back to the Middle Ages.

Read it.

How Britain is turning into Londonistan under its Labour government.

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A cartoon expressing disappointment that Lucy Obama has pulled the football away just as Charlie Brown the fringe Left was going to kick it.

x <- world’s smallest violin etc.

Richard Cohen in the Washington Post.

Hell has officially frozen over.