Read it. Syria forgets that it’s dealing with Israel, not America. Israel will kick their asses, as is traditional, if they step out of line.

Read it. I’m surprised that there weren’t subsidies for buggy-whip manufacturers.

James Taranto has a good overview, and some sharp insight.

In order for the Democrats to satisfy both constituencies, America has to lose in Iraq (making the base happy) but the Democrats must not be seen as having brought about defeat (making the normal Americans unhappy with the Republicans). This explains the passive-aggressive approach the Democrats have been taking o Iraq, complaining endlessly about how America is doomed to lose but never taking the kind of bold action the base wants to make defeat a reality.

And that explains everything you need to know about the odd whine-and-stumble dance the Congressional Democrats have been doing these last six years.

Read it.

Read it.

 But now a considerable amount of solid evidence about multiculturalism is in, and it suggests that far from something positive, it is a corroding and corrupting influence on just about everything that it comes in contact with, from social capital, trust, and community spirit to altruism, volunteering, friendship and even happiness.

Yeah, well, that doesn’t surprise some of us.

Read it. The problem is easy to see; the solution less so.

Read it. Norman Podhoretz points out that America’s most powerful enemies are all internal.

Read it.

Why do I pay attention to anecdotal evidence? Because academics are always the last to find out what’s happening. If you wait until a social trend turns up in some professor’s peer-reviewed charts, you are waiting too long. (Example: Anecdotal evidence always said people spent a long time on welfare. Academics said they didn’t. Until, after a decade or two, the academics looked at their printouts more carefully.)

And there you have it.

Read it. What economists bring to the table in discussions of public policy. What’s the correct spelling of “politician”? L-E-E-C-H.

Read it. The problem is that everybody is afraid that their kids are going to ge snatched or molested or something.

Read it. The price of being hip and trendy.

Read it. The politicization of academia proceeds apace. Soon prog orthodoxy will be the only permissible approach.

Read it. Something that the tree-huggers don’t seem to have cottoned to yet; but when they do, be prepared for apocalyptic whining.

Read it. Just when you think that Democrats have gotten about as shameless as they can get, they manage to surprise you.

Read it. Unfortunately, the people who need to read this book won’t, and the people who will read it don’t need to.

Read it. Well, presumably it will keep them off the streets.

Read it. Correction: Something other than a job.

Read it. After all, who are we to judge these quaint native customs?

Read it. This is why blue states are bleeding people and business to red states.

Read it. Note the fact that this is a thinly-disguised screed against Texas and the use of force to defend one’s dwelling place.

To begin with, the musician wasn’t “banging on a door”, he was trying to kick the door in. That’s attempted breaking & entering, right there.

The guy was warned off but wouldn’t go away. The homeowner deliberately shot high (as he thought), but the guy was six-foot-five (an unusual height, I would say) and was struck by the bullet.

Marsha McCartney, president of the North Texas chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, called Mr. Albrecht’s death “one more gun tragedy.”

Wel, it was certainly a tragedy, but it’s hard to see how it’s a gun tragedy. One of the uses of guns is to defend yourself when a 6’5″ guy hallucinating on drugs comes trying to kick your door down. This sort of tragedy can be avoided by, hey, staying off other people’s property and refraining from attempting to break into somebody’s house at 4 a.m.

Read it. Well, no, it doesn’t matter, but it is entertaining.

Read it. No surprises, but it’s still disappointing.

Read it. Some good news for a change.

Read it. Think anybody will count this as a win for the Bush administration? If so, I’ve got a used bridge in Minneapolis I’d like to sell you. Note the headlines it’s getting in the major media.

Read it. Dartmouth is a poster child for what is happening to our educational system.

One of the more momentous cases in Supreme Court history, Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), involved an attempt by the state of New Hampshire to wrest control of the privately chartered school from its board of trustees. But a corporate charter like Dartmouth’s, the Marshall Court ruled, is the same as a private contract; the state could not simply annex the school.

Nowadays, of course, it wouldn’t be a problem — they’d just say they wanted to use it for something more socially useful, like low-income housing.

Read it. Useless people, when exposed to useful people, feel bad, and share.

Read it. And rightly so — a clear case of prosecutorial misconduct. As we saw in the Nifong case, prosecutors have a lot of leeway in the cases they bring and far too often abuse it.

Read it. Note that almost all of the “black holes” are either Muslim or Communist.

Read it. A disturbing take on an underappreciated problem.

Read it. That’s what happens when politically-motivated prosecutions run up against a reasonable legal system. Eventually you have to have some proof.

Read it.

Well, no. The crime of “murder” is defined by the law. Texas law says that if you’re a perp involved in a crime and somebody dies, you’re a murderer. By participating in a crime that resulted in murder, this guy became a murderer.

This “felony murder rule” has been a part of the Anglosphere common law since the 12th century. Before the socialists took over in Britain, robbers out for a job would search each other first to make sure than none of them was armed, just to avoid this particular happenstance — so the system worked.

Read it. I guess enforcement works. Of course, we can expect the usual weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Read it. Hey, this is America — don’t like something? Sue somebody.

Read it. This is pretty funny, and alas all too true. The publishing business started out dysfunctional and has only gotten worse.

Read it. All of my illusions, shattered.

Read it. Funny how nobody asks whether National Socialism is relevant to the Democrat party, although I (for one) see a lot of resemblance.

Read it. Our culture keeps getting worse and worse.

Read it. Don’t these silly critics understand that the job of government workers is to hire and pay more government workers? What are they thinking?

Read it. I like Arnold Kling’s wife’s policy suggestion: “Just take the oil.” The only reason the plutocrat royalty of the Arab world have two euros to rub together is because of Western tender-heartedness.

Read it. Not a surprise either. Don’t forget: What happens in Britain today may happen in America tomorrow.

Read it.

Read it. Can’t say that I blame her, really.

Read it. And keep in mind that Communism is just as repressive as Islam, just not as irrational.

NYT. Hey, maybe enforcement works.

Engadget. Not good news. Another supposedly secure lock that can be defeated by common household stuff.

Techdirt raises an important issue: The tendency, primarily by politicians but also by ordinary citizens, to go after the most convenient target rather than the root of the problem. If you think that this doesn’t have wide application, think “campaign finance reform”.

Techdirt. Some people ought not to be allowed to reproduce.

NYT. Surprising to see sense appearing in the Times. Of course, it’s an op-ed contributor rather than one of the Times’ own editorials, so I guess it’s just a Token Grown-Up thing.

For this purpose, warrants are utterly beside the point. As Judge Richard Posner has put it, “once you grant the legitimacy of surveillance aimed at detection rather than at gathering evidence of guilt, requiring a warrant to conduct it would be like requiring a warrant to ask people questions or to install surveillance cameras on city streets.” Warrants, which originate in the criminal justice paradigm, provide a useful standard for surveillance designed to prove guilt, not to learn the identity of people who may be planning atrocities.

A lot of people forget that the Fourth Amendment applies only in the domestic criminal context, not to espionage or other matters related to intelligence-gathering.

It’s also fairly amusing when the people who are most up in arms about “government snooping” don’t seem to mind when it’s in pursuit of some program they like.

LanguageLog. I’ll go ahead and be snarky for all of us: It’s appalling that these people purport to be professionals when they can’t do a mathematical operation that’s taught in elementary school. No wonder the country is going to the dogs.

Read it. And worry.