Yaacov Ben Moshe is always worth reading.

Read it. More on the Iranian provocations.

So, why aren’t today’s newspapers plastered with stories about five sunken terrorist boats in international waters?

An excellent question to which there seems to be no satisfactory answer.

Christopher Hitchens is always worth reading.

Read it.

Read it. Just another attempt on the part of the government to avoid doing what’s in the public interest, i.e. buying the least expensive equipment that will do the job.

How soon after the government publishes its requirements will there be companies founded to game those requirements into profitability at the taxpayers’ expense? I estimate about 3.2 seconds.

Not including, of course, those “friends of the system” who get a head start through leaks from “friends in the system”.

Read it. Just because we have all of this technology available to us doesn’t necessarily mean that we ought to be using it 24/7.

Read it.

I have an idea: Why doesn’t America rebuke Mexico on migrant issues?

Read it. I gather that Bill Gates will be retiring from Microsoft soon. Time to sell the Microsoft stock, then. Unless they hire Steve Jobs.

Does Bill Gates look like an over-the-hill English professor, or is that just me?

Read it.

Read it. Even Communists get weird in Tibet.

Read it.

Read it.

Read it. Our government cannot be parodied. It’s just impossible to keep up.

Read it. Primarily because it doesn’t soak the rich, so the government can’t make as much money unless it turns the screws tighter than most people will accept.

Read it. But will Bush have the balls to do it? Stay tuned.

Read it. People are starting to get a clue.

Read it. Especially all you cynical folks out there who think it’s all about enhanced citation revenue.

The problem appears to be that red-light cameras cause more people to slam on the brakes at the last second, leading to more rear-ender collisions. Plenty of studies have shown that if you really want safer intersections, the solution is rather simple: increase the length of time for yellow lights and include a pause after a light turns red before the cross-traffic signal turns green.

But that doesn’t make any money … for anybody ….

A big part of the problem is that red-light cameras are big money makers for municipalities, who share the revenue with the makers of the cameras — who have every incentive in the world to set the traffic lights to encourage more violations, rather than fewer.

Oh, say it ain’t so.

Read it. Release your inner geek.

Read it.

Read it.

Perpetual war?

George Will has some thoughts on the subject. Huckabee as the Republican John Edwards? Well, he’d need to get more hair….

The way to achieve Edwards’ and Huckabee’s populist goal of reducing the role of “special interests,” meaning money, in government is to reduce the role of government in distributing money.

And that’s the bottom line, folks. Nobody fights to control a government that can’t pass out money and favors.

Read it. I find myself asking “What would it take to make it go away?” more and more as time goes on.

Especially when watching C-SPAN.

What we get from the commenters on the LSSU list (and the characters in Unshelved) is visceral cringe reactions, hostility towards inventiveness and playfulness, disdain for the Internet (as the enemy of thought), and cries to make it all go away.

Yeah, pretty much.

Mark Steyn ponders Charlie Bass’s affection for John McCain.

Read it. Remember, guys, you’re all paying for this.

Read it. I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked to find out that it’s all about money and power after all.

Picking a political party these days is coming to look more and more like picking a football team to root for — ideology doesn’t matter, what matter’s is who’s going to win.

Read it.

Read it. In case you were wondering why they’re all trying to move here.

Read it. Coming soon to a Blue State near you.

Read it.

David Friedman is always worth reading.

Read it. Sometimes one encounters a situation for which “genius” is an inadequate characterization.

Read it.

Ross Douthat draws a necessary distinction.

Read it.

Saw that coming.

Read it. A great counterweight to “progressive ideology”.

The beginning of political wisdom is the realization that despite everything you’ve always been taught, the government is not really on your side; indeed, it is out to get you.

There you have it in a nutshell. “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help ourselves, specifically to the contents of your pockets.”

Read it. Keep your fingers crossed.

Victor Davis Hanson always has something cheerful to say.

Ever seen somebody killed with a plowshare? The surprised look is the most entertaining part.

Read it. Just the sort of thing we’ve come to expect from a Democrat President.

Oh, wait….

Read it. The reason democracy doesn’t work in Africa is because the people in charge of making it work don’t want it to work. Until they fix that, democracy has nowhere to go, and that’s a cultural thing.

Come to think of it, one could say the same about America….

Peggy Noonan ponders the new political season.

Read it. Monopolies are like vampires … it takes a lot to kill them, and even then they tend to rise from the dead.

Read it. The new business model for authors? Doesn’t seem to have harmed Cory Doctorow or John Scalzi.

Read it. More about language and writing in the Tribal World.

Read it. I prefer the PowerSquid myself, but this is pretty cool.

David Pogue is distraught.

Actually, I’ve given up on watching movies. I just watch the trailers — for free — on the Internet, because typically the best parts of the movie will be in the trailer, almost by a law of nature; they want you to see it, so they show you their best stuff.

If it’s really any good, your friends will tell you about it, and you can buy the DVD later — which will have the director’s cut and half a metric ton of supplemental material, for about what you would pay to watch the lame theatrical release in a theater.

Read it.

Read it.

Read it.