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A Los Angeles clinic is offering the ultimate in designer babies. Want a son with brown eyes, black hair and a dark complexion? Or a pale-skinned, blonde, green-eyed daughter?

Want a smart kid? Have a hundred and kill all but the smartest. Not a problem.

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How was it that a German priest writing in Latin and living in a French city far from the coast became the first person to tell the world that a vast ocean lay to the west of the American continents?

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Boy, those Zimbabweans are sure lucky they’re no longer under the boot of that oppressive white regime.

Thank God for the U.N. and the international community, or who knows what sort of hell they’d be living in now.

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Stronardron Douglas fir in Argyll, which has been revealed as Britain’s tallest tree.

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If law enforcement officials break the law, fine, punish them. But don’t “punish” them by letting criminals off the hook; that “cure” is worse than the disease.

When people see criminals escape without punishment on technicalities, they lose respect for the law, and either give up and cease to resist crime, or take their own steps to prevent and punish it. Neither is characteristic of a civilized society.

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That would be entertaining; I’d pay to watch it.

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Looks like a motorcycle designed by somebody who drives a Prius.

No, that’s not a compliment.

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That’s an … unusual reaction.

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Not really news, but a useful reminder.

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I know that’s certainly one of my highest priorities….

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it’s a moral imperative.

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No shit.

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Not good news.

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Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can’t possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama’s new spending ambitions.

“Soak the rich” is fine until the rich dissolve — and then where will you get your money?

A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable “dime” of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

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The omnibus spending bill now moving through the House includes language designed to kill the Opportunity Scholarship Program offering vouchers for poor students to opt out of rotten public schools. The legislation says no federal funds can be used on the program beyond 2010 unless Congress and the D.C. City Council reauthorize it. Given that Democrats control both bodies — and that their union backers hate school choice — this amounts to a death sentence.

Not every black kid can go to Sidwell Friends.

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We have the technology.

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I never understand how kooks like this get commissioned.

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Well, that would be interesting.

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But that trick never works….

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We have the techology.

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“He can’t spend all that money — only we can spend all that money.”

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We have the technology.

Paul Weston discusses the current state of freedom in Britain.

Hint: It’s on its way out.

“We don’t have absolute freedom of speech in the United Kingdom, because I myself have voted on laws preventing people inciting racial hatred and violence.”

Mr Vaz, an immigrant of Yemeni/Portuguese extraction, is clearly proud of the part he has played in restricting the ancient and bloodstained freedoms of Britain. No doubt Vaz is pleased the dark days of 1990 are now behind him, when he wrote to the Guardian to claim “there is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech“ as he attempted to ban the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses.

This is precisely the problem with unassimilated immigrants: They tend to bring their bad habits with them. We’re all familiar with the tendency of Mexican and other Latino immigrants bringing their “take it to the streets” political practices to places like Los Angeles. Britain, being a smaller country and surrounded by Cheese-Eating Surrender-Monkeys, has it a lot worse. Without eternal vigilance, it really could happen here.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

Quite frankly, looking at the photograph, I don’t see “British researcher”; I see “hippy drifter”. No doubt somebody else saw the same thing.

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Not really news, but a useful reminder.

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We have the technology.

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They hate you, but they’re paying you big bucks. They mock you as inarticulate, but they want you to come speak to them.

What a world.

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Barn door locked? Check.

Syria has denied secret nuclear activities but has blocked IAEA inspectors from visits beyond an initial inspection to the Al Kibar site.

Hiding something? Check.

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Since all white people consider themselves to be “creative,” they are constantly in need of products and accessories that will allow them to capture their thoughts.  One of the more popular  products in recent years has been the Moleskine notebook.

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Megan McArdle squints at American Express.

It used to be that credit-card companies lured customers with cash rewards. Now American Express Co. is paying to get rid of them. The card issuer is offering selected customers a $300 AmEx prepaid gift card if they pay off their balances and close their accounts.

And why, you might ask, do they do this seemingly unbusinesslike thing?

I am also willing to bet that we see a whole lot more of this if Congress gives bankruptcy judges the ability to cram down mortgages in Chapter 13, as they almost certainly will.  The provision is going to attract a lot more people into bankruptcy, and those people are going to shed a lot of their unsecured (read:  credit card) debt.  I’d expect that credit card lenders are already desperately trying to weed out those most likely to enter Chapter 13.

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Well, I’ve always had my suspicions about Minnesota….

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And about fargin time, too.

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If you go into a restaurant and order a cheese pizza that arrived there frozen, the FDA is in charge of inspecting it, the AP says. But if it was frozen and has pepperoni on it, that would be the Agriculture Department’s problem. Meantime, both the FDA and the Agriculture Department would be responsible if the pizza were made fresh at the restaurant and the pizza had meat on it.

There’s more. Some fish is inspected by the Commerce Department, the AP explains. And while the FDA handles most food-safety work, at least 15 government agencies play some sort of role.

Government agencies, like labor unions, are hell on wheels when it comes to guarding their turf — unless it’s a disaster, and then their fingers are out and pointing.

Megan McArdle ponders an interesting wrinkle in the housing mess.

Playing with mortgage terms cannot prop up prices, because it cannot create more homebuyers, nor convince them to pay more than they want for a house.

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This is why Christian theology is so difficult to grasp: Its basic premise is, uniquely, that God isn’t just like us, but amazingly different.

Most self-styled Christians try to understand that but get it wrong — some a little, some a lot … and some even found entire spinoff religions (like, say, Protestants) based on that sort of misunderstanding.

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So once the ice sheet melts due to AlGore’s hot air, and New York City is under 30 feet of water, these will be available for skiing. A win-win.

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Note that, although a native African, she passes the “paper bag and ruler” test.

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Well, then, I’m doing my part for health. (I’ve heard that bacon intensifies the effect. I’m on board with that, too.)

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Holding a “fiscal responsibility summit” at the White House in the middle of a government spending spree is a bit like having an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting at a frat house on homecoming weekend.

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The Los Angeles-class attack submarine USS Scranton (SSN 756) departed Naval Station Norfolk’s Pier 3, Feb. 20, as part of the Eisenhower Strike Group, with the entire crew wearing the newly released Navy working uniform.

Because, you know, it’s very important to have a CAMOUFLAGE UNIFORM when you’re ON A FARGIN SUBMARINE and you’re OUT AT SEA. You never know when some sonar operator will attempt to ambush you on the mess deck.

I know Barack Obama isn’t responsible for this travesty but I’m going to blame him anyway, because that’s the Spirit of the Times.