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This presumes that postal employees can read a map. We know that they can’t read a clock.

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Dr Ulrich Habsburg-Lothringen is barred from running for Austria’s presidency by his country’s republican constitution, drawn up when the last Habsburg Emperor Charles I was forced to abdicate power in 1918.

Dr Habsburg, who has three children and six grandchildren, is angry that he and his descendants are discriminated against while candidates with a Nazi past, such as Kurt Waldheim, Austria’s president between 1986 and 1992, are not.

Not an unreasonable position.

A member of the environmentalist Green party since 1987, in a province governed for years by the far-right, Dr Habsburg has little in common with his imperial ancestors who once ruled much of Europe.

Oh, boy, just what we need – another blue-blood kook. To hell with him.

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Lately I’ve been having conversations with a friend about the importance of the menial, everyday tasks in our lives, and how they provide wonderful opportunities to let our minds loose to roam, explore, and process.

Doing the dishes.

Running a handpress.

Mowing the lawn.

Driving to work, without listening to the radio or CD player.

Sewing.

Ironing.

Sorting all of the pieces of shrimp out of a plate of shrimp fried rice because you love fried rice but detest shrimp. (U.S.S. John F. Kennedy CVA-67, 1970)

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I don’t think Sean Penn is kooky; I just think he likes Communists.

The stupidity of supposedly smart men can be simply stunning. And that stupidity is not random; it tends to almost always go in the same direction, that of failing to understand the workings of the totalitarian and tyrannical mindset.

Read it.

The Greenpeace noise machine managed to persuade the Guardian to publish a “shocking” article detailing the amazing fact that donors tend to support groups that advocate points of view with which they generally agree.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

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A perfect demonstration of the economic reality of our non-competitive labor rates can be seen in the decision of BP to shut down a solar-panel manufacturing plant in Frederick, Maryland. The plant was expanded with great fanfare three and a half years ago, and green jobs were the order of the day. BP was to pour $70 million into the expansion, but instead, they’ll be moving their production to—surprise!—China and India. BP will be laying off about 300 people here, and, as they can’t find any buyers for their building, they’ll be tearing it down. The Washington Post (a frequent “green energy” booster) now points out that BP, which once (fatuously) declared its new mission as moving “Beyond Petroleum,” is still “committed” to solar power, just not here. “‘We remain absolutely committed to solar,’ BP chief executive Tony Hayward said in an interview Friday. But he said BP was ‘moving to where we can manufacture cheaply.’”

And for those who doubted the United States would be balked in leading the green-power revolution because of obscure rare earth elements that nobody can pronounce (Dysprosium, anyone? Neodymium? Yttrium?), the evidence is becoming overwhelming that we will indeed be stymied by our lack of supply. As Daniel McGroarty, a principal of the Carmot Strategic Group observes, China is involved in an intentional strategy to ensure that the Chinese, not the United States, will be the ones building the green devices of tomorrow. And it’s not only the obvious devices, like windmills and solar panels. China will be making your compact fluorescent bulbs, your power-saving computer monitor, cell-phone display, fiber-optic cables, automotive components, and much more.

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A White House staffer told the American Spectator that “These are Republican CEOs who are trying to embarrass the President and Democrats in general. Where do you hear about this stuff? The Wall Street Journal editorial page and conservative Web sites. No one else picked up on this but you guys. It’s BS.” (We called the White House for elaboration but got no response.)

Oh, I think that the White House and Democrats are doing a fine job of embarrassing themselves all on their own.

In other words, CEOs who must abide by U.S. accounting laws under pain of SEC sanction, and who warned about such writedowns for months, are merely trying to ruin President Obama’s moment of glory. Sure.

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I am not making this up.

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A historic figure making history, this is emerging as an over-arching theme—if not obsession—in the Obama presidency. In Iowa, a day after signing health care into law, he put himself into competition with history. If history shapes men, “We still have the power to shape history.” But this adds up to one thing: He is likely to be the most liberal president in American history. And, oddly, he may be a more effective liberal precisely because his liberalism is something he uses more than he believes in. As the far left constantly reminds us, he is not really a true believer. Rather liberalism is his ticket to grandiosity and to historical significance.

In terms of the classic dichotomy, Barack is President in order to ‘be’ rather than in order to ‘do’. And YOU are paying for all this narcissism; rather handsomely, too. Aren’t you proud?

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The agency’s “tiger team” of security specialists was dispatched as part of an ongoing investigation conducted jointly with the Justice Department into a program backed by the American Civil Liberties Union. The program, called the John Adams Project, has photographed covert CIA interrogators and shown the pictures to some of the five senior al Qaeda terrorists held there in an effort to identify them further.

The team also expressed concerns about the inmates’ access to laptop computers in the past. Some of the inmates who are representing themselves in legal proceedings were granted laptop computers without Internet access. However, the officials fear that future unfavorable court rulings could provide the inmates with the capability of communicating outside the island prison.

Treason doth never prosper; what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

Read it.

Next: Apple criticizes Greenpeace for being stuck in the sixties, refusing to get with the new millenium.

(I wish.)

Read it.

Maureen Dowd, the Times’s op-ed columnist for angry, single, middle-aged, Upper West Side women who talk to their cats, ends her rant against the pope today by stomping her feet and hurling the ultimate zinger at the Vatican’s legal experts:

“Maybe they worked for Enron.”

Paul was just doing his job. ‘Tis the season for reconciliation, Maureen.

Programs! Get your programs here! You can’t tell who’s getting paid off by who without a program!

Read it.

Jim Railton, 57, fell foul of the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act by offering the Edwardian cabinet for sale because of what was inside.

The RSPB saw the item – complete with 54 eggs from species including herring gull and guillemot inside – and informed Northumbria Police.

An inquiry was launched and the auctioneer was arrested, questioned and had to give a DNA sample.

His legal saga ended at Alnwick magistrates, where he was fined £1,000, ordered to pay £70 costs and a £15 victim’s surcharge.

1. Thank God you don’t live in Britain.
2. Without eternal vigilance, it could happen here. Probably in California.

Read it.

Let that be a lesson to us all.

Check it out. Why is this person still alive?

Check it out.

Check it out.

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The system works.

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Very curious. Apparently modern feminism has some odd quirks.

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Eet mor chikin.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Police said the customer crawled out of his car and into the drive thru window to get his fish sandwich, after slapping the McDonald’s employee in the face.

‘Course, this was in New York. (Ohhhhhohhhhhhohhhh….)

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The reality of American education is often quite different. Beige classrooms are filled with note-passers and texters, who casually ignore teachers struggling to make it to the end of the 50-minute period. Smart kids are bored, and slower kids are left behind. Anxiety about standardized tests is high, and scores are consistently low. National surveys find that parents despair over the quality of education in the United States — and they’re right to, as test results confirm again and again.

But just as most Americans disapprove of congressional shenanigans while harboring some affection for their own representative, parents tend to say that their child’s teacher is pretty good. Most people have mixed feelings about their own school days, but our national romance with teachers is deep and long-standing. Which is why the idea of kids staring at computers instead of teachers makes parents and politicians extremely nervous.

Read it.

Read it.

So there, food snobs.

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And explain to me why the World Irish Dancing Championships are being held in … Glasgow?

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The pineberry is white and covered in red pips and has the same genetic make-up as the common strawberry but with a flavour and ”extraordinary” smell closer to that of the pineapple, Waitrose said.

The pineberry originated in South America as a wild variety of strawberry but was threatened with extinction until seven years ago when Dutch farmers began growing it commercially, according to the retailer.

This would make a great heraldic charge.

I sense a new liqueur on the horizon.

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One of the most ironic aspects of our putative “Age of Obama” is how little impact it has had on the nation’s urban geography. Although the administration remains dominated by boosters from traditional blue state cities–particularly the president’s political base of Chicago–the nation’s metropolitan growth continues to shift mostly toward a handful of Sunbelt red state metropolitan areas.

Funny how that works.

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I hate it when that happens.

Virtual tour

WARNING: Lots of data. LOTS of data. For fast connections or Very Patient People only.

But it’s certainly gorgeous.

Check it out.

Just so you know.

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Validation! What would we do without scientists?

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I used to think that ‘pasteurized’ meant the cow was kept outdoors. Shows how much I know.

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The individual mandate is one of the most controversial features of Obamacare, so when it came out that the law makes no provision to enforce the mandate, many were nonplussed.

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Well, duh. The scandal is that it took this long to find a judge with some common sense.

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Sometimes the old ways are best.

Jonah Goldberg spanks the New Yorker.

Read it.

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

In 2008 it was “Vote for Barack Obama or we’re going to call you a bunch of dirty rotten creepy racists.” In 2010 it’s “Barack Obama is still in trouble so we’re going to call you a bunch of dirty rotten creepy racists.”

These guys aren’t showing racism, progressivism, intelligence or stupidity. They’re just demonstrating a working long-term memory.

Took their own sweet time about it.

Read it.

Much like the ethanol fad, the ‘local food’ fad is hampered by ignorance of elementary economics. (Although, in an age where ignorance of elementary physics and mathematics seems to be widespread, I suppose we really can’t complain.)

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Another reason to get rid of this stupid practice. You can tell it’s a government program because it WILL NOT DIE.

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‘It must be true! I read it on the internet!’

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The future of Obamacare. Don’t say that you weren’t warned.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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Professor Steve Smith, president of Universities UK, believes new research justifies offering places to candidates whose A-level results are up to three grades lower than those from independent or grammar schools.

I can hear guidance counselors all over Britain: ‘Do badly in your exams, Johnny, so you can get into a good university.’

Read it.

Don’t say we never have useful stuff here.

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Apparently C J Cherryh used to teach Latin, and has a course available.

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At the headquarters of Human Rights Watch, more than 30 storeys above the noise and bustle of Manhattan, there is so much high-mindedness hanging in the air you can almost taste it. This is the epicentre of a certain type of socially smart, progressive activism — the kind that persuades Hollywood grandees, power lawyers and liberal financiers to dig deeply into their pockets.