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Disgusting. I rather doubt that the Marines make the same choices.

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I can hear Nelson spinning in his grave from Texas.

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That is the paradox of Fallujah, the city that saw the bitterest fighting of America’s seven years in Iraq. Its inhabitants regard the Americans with hatred, but say they represent their only insurance against the enemies by whom they are surrounded: al-Qaeda, the Iraqi government, and Iranian agents.

Remind me why we’re wasting our time (and money) on these people?

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Of course, they breed every sort of criminal; why should terrorists be left out of the mix?

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In his January State of the Union speech, President Obama woefully declared that “each time lobbyists game the system or politicians tear each other down instead of lifting this country up, we lose faith.” But by the following month, The Hill was reporting that “despite his push to rein in special interests, President Barack Obama sparked a boom on K Street.” Lobbyists for the health care industry in particular were given an enormous boost in Washington as the health care bill rolled slowly through Congress and then moved on to the regulatory phase.

How’s that Hope & Change thing working out for ya?

The Crust takes care of its own.

Read it.

So.  We have a legislator named Eddie Bernice Johnson (D, TX-30), member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and thus one of the people whose responsibility it is to hand out partial college scholarships to worthy recipients.  A worthy project, to be sure: good policy, good politics, good publicity.  There is – sensibly – a non-nepotism rule; and there is – also sensibly – a rule that this money is to be given to students in your district.  But there is apparently no oversight at all over who gets the money, which is why Rep. Johnson was able to use this money gave 15 scholarships to six ineligible kids – four grandchildren and two kids of an aide – and none of them live in the district.  Important point, there: even if grandchildren and children of aides don’t count under the anti-nepotism rule (an argument which the CBC itself rejects), the point of the whole thing is to foster local education.  Rep. Johnson’s defense?  She’s a nine-term Congresswoman who somehow missed the fact that she wasn’t supposed to give CBC scholarships to out-of-district family members.

She’s a female black Democrat politician, a gold-standard victim and member of the Crust, and therefore above criticism.

Please remember this when Rep. Johnson is defended – and she will be.  They’ll talk about her relative lack of personal wealth; they’ll talk about how she at least didn’t actually steal the money; they’ll talk about the relatively small amounts involved; they’ll talk about the need of those kids for those scholarships; and they’ll undoubtedly call people racists for even broaching the subject of yet another member of the CBC who’s involved in shenanigans.  What they won’t do is admit that Rep. Johnson has no right to be defended.  She was given money dedicated to bettering the lives of her constituents.  She instead used it to better the lives of her family and subordinates.

Muslims would understand, because that’s what they’d do. Normal Americans? Not so much.

Read it.

Humanity is in general genetically predisposed not to take surveys, according to new research. However there exists a proportion of mutant freaks whose genes make them want to respond to surveys.

That explains a lot.

The amazing news comes as part of a new study by profs in America and Singapore. This involved the cunning sending out of a survey to over 1,000 sets of twins.

Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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Read it.

‘Progressives’? No, bedbugs. (There is a distinction. Trust me.)

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For all the talk of their support for women, there is no one on a national level doing for liberals what Sarah Palin is doing for conservatives in this election. Who is helping the Democratic women win seats? The highest ranking woman in the Democratic Party? No, Nancy is focused on investigating the Ground Zero Mosque detractors and still trying to sell a health care plan that has already been passed. … Instead of finding better candidates to run against the fresh crop of small government advocates, Nancy Pelosi is cherrypicking the candidates she can throw under the bus this fall.

And don’t get me started with Hillary Clinton.

The problem with women of the Left is that they’re too tightly focused on forcing their way into what they view as the Old Boy’s Club; they don’t realize that, once they’ve forced their way in, it merely makes them Old Boys with boobs.

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There have been a lot of unsurprising news stories lately. Rod Blagojevich going on TV. Tiger Woods and his wife divorcing. The economy racing along like an elderly tortoise. And the Food and Drug Administration saying the salmonella outbreak proves the agency needs more power.

We should have seen that coming. In the private sector, entities that fall short of doing their jobs find themselves forced to shrink. In the public sector, the opposite is typically true. Failure is an option, and often a beneficial one.

The Federal Reserve Board and Treasury facilitated the 2008 financial crisis? Then obviously we have no choice but to give them even more responsibility. The Securities and Exchange Commission let Bernie Madoff rob investors? A bigger SEC will be a smarter SEC.

It’s true that the FDA is charged with assuring food safety. But really, the government can’t do that. The task is too big and too complex. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to do it, because the pressures of competition force producers to make sure their goods are clean and wholesome.

What goes curiously unnoticed is that egg suppliers and grocery stores have nothing to gain from sickening their customers—and a lot to lose. It doesn’t take many obvious hygiene lapses for a company to get a bad reputation, and a bad reputation can be catastrophic.

In 1971, a New York man died of botulism after eating a can of Bon Vivant soup. If you’ve never heard of Bon Vivant soup, there’s a simple explanation: In no time at all, the company was bankrupt and the brand was as defunct as William McKinley.

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Let that be a lesson to us all.

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Britain is on the verge of being a Scandinavian country with respect to its military.

When you spend (and borrow against) all your tax revenue on free butter, there isn’t anything left for guns.

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You, too, can risk having to learn to breathe water.

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Ground Zero workers are on the hook to pay steep interest on money their lawyers borrowed from a group of investors that include Silver and his law partners, The Post has learned.

Silver’s partners at the Weitz & Luxenberg law firm are top board members of a business that quietly loaned money at 18 percent a year to the law firm representing some 9,800 Ground Zero workers with toxic-illness suits against the city.

New York politicians are corrupt? Whoda thunkit?

Check it out.

Yale, of course, has too much taste to indulge in this sort of vulgar enterprise.

I suspect that this is a startup run out of a dorm room in Eliot House.

Read it.

Read it.

‘Forward into the future, Comrades!’ I can see the ghost of Lenin smiling.

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Consider this example. Suppose I say to you in English that “I spent yesterday evening with a neighbor.” You may well wonder whether my companion was male or female, but I have the right to tell you politely that it’s none of your business. But if we were speaking French or German, I wouldn’t have the privilege to equivocate in this way, because I would be obliged by the grammar of language to choose between voisin or voisine; Nachbar or Nachbarin. These languages compel me to inform you about the sex of my companion whether or not I feel it is remotely your concern. This does not mean, of course, that English speakers are unable to understand the differences between evenings spent with male or female neighbors, but it does mean that they do not have to consider the sexes of neighbors, friends, teachers and a host of other persons each time they come up in a conversation, whereas speakers of some languages are obliged to do so.

On the other hand, English does oblige you to specify certain types of information that can be left to the context in other languages. If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my neighbor, I may not have to mention the neighbor’s sex, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event: I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Chinese, on the other hand, does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action in this way, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions. Again, this does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time. But it does mean they are not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action.

When your language routinely obliges you to specify certain types of information, it forces you to be attentive to certain details in the world and to certain aspects of experience that speakers of other languages may not be required to think about all the time. And since such habits of speech are cultivated from the earliest age, it is only natural that they can settle into habits of mind that go beyond language itself, affecting your experiences, perceptions, associations, feelings, memories and orientation in the world.

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An examination of the semi-Luddite proclivities of the premier Voice of the Crust.

Is checking your email while you’re waiting in line at the grocery store really hurting your ability to learn?

That’s the basic premise of Matt Richtel’s very popular New York Times story this week, “Digital Devices Deprive Brain of Valuable Downtime.” The article couches its arguments in the language of science, but its actual scientific content is pretty sparse.

And these are the ‘progressives’. Like ‘Democratic Party’, a more entertaining oxymoron has not been seen on this planet for time out of mind.

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One theme in the recent MSM hand-wringing about America’s alleged “Islamophobia” is the notion that Americans are giving Muslims a more difficult time now than they did in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. The  Washington Post  conceded that public opinion surveys don’t show a meaningful change, but it quoted unnamed “religious scholars and other experts” who find the change in tone “striking.” And it quoted a Muslim in Tennessee who recalled nothing but good will from the “locals” back in 2001, but who now sees palpable hostility following the decision to build a sprawling new mosque complex in the area.

Since then, we have learned that the radical ideology behind 9/11 is not quite as alien as we thought. Some portion of the American Muslim community – presumably small, but we don’t know how small – is drawn to it.

Moreover, what looks like a considerable portion of those who hold themselves out (and are held out by the MSM) as leaders of American Muslims refuse to disassociate themselves from terrorist groups. They don’t countenance al Qaeda, though they do blame America for that outfit’s terrorist acts. But they won’t repudiate other bloody terrorists, notably Hamas.

Thus, while only the most highly informed Americans probably could have imagined terrorist plotting or even pro-terrorist rhetoric in an American place of worship back in 2001, many can imagine it now, and with reason.

Tim Cavanaugh ‘fesses up to his guilty secret.

Yes, he’s trying, as Moynihan memorably put it, to learn history and teach it at the same time. But so what? Like the dumpy woman with low self-esteem we all dream of, Beck makes up in enthusiasm what he lacks in natural gifts. I like the sense that he’s bringing you his findings as fast as they come in. You get the impression that two weeks ago Beck had never heard of Woodrow Wilson, yet now he has figured out that Woodrow Wilson was one of the most evil people of the 20th century, and he wants to tell everybody. There’s something fun about that, a performance that invites you to help fill in details and fix errors. It’s certainly something you don’t see anywhere else on TV, a medium populated almost entirely by people who are more cocksure about everything than I am about anything.

And he’s right about Woodrow Wilson.

Read it.

The environmental law community is buzzing over a brief filed by the Solicitor General’s Office this week on behalf of the Tennessee Valley Authority in American Electric Power v. Connecticut.  As reported by the Washington Post, the WSJ’s Washington Wire, and Greenwire, environmentalist groups are shocked and dismayed by the SG’s decision to enter the case.  “Obama Sides with Polluters” reads the title of a blog post by UCLA’s Jonathan Zasloff at Legal Planet.

How’s that Hope and Change working out for ya?

In AEP, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (that initially included then-Judge Sonia Sotomayor) allowed several states and private groups to pursue public nuisance claims under federal common law against a handful of the nation’s largest utilities, including the TVA, for their contribution to global warming.  Among other things, the court held the states had standing and that their nuisance claims were not displaced by federal regulatory authority over greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.  This suit, like others filed elsewhere, has increased pressure on utilities and others to accept federal climate change legislation.

Poor babies. Apparently there actually are some grownups working for the government after all, and Mother Gaia will have to look elsewhere in hopes of reversing the Industrial Revolution. (Why are ‘environmentalists’ considered ‘progressives’? If you look at the policies they push they’re the most reactionary people around; they won’t be happy until the world is returned to the way it was during Teddy Roosevelt’s administration.)

Freeberg piles on.

But did you notice the other thing all these issues in Krauthammer’s list have in common? Someone needs to be told to go stick it where the sun don’t shine. Someone’s just-plain-bad. The Islamophobes need to learn to live with the Victory Mosque, which they really hate, but that’s a good thing because once it’s there they won’t be able to do anything about it, and they deserve it. They need to suffer because they’re bad people. Ditto for those xenophobes in Arizona, dang it, they deserve to have all those brown people who “aren’t like them” streaming through their fences. I hope they choke on their chewing tobacco over it!

Today’s liberalism is retrograde but natural machismo, repressed through artificial disciplinary techniques and then exploding elsewhere in an uncontrolled and unhealthy way. Go through the list of things liberals do that embarrass them once the wrong people find out about them, but that they can be counted on to do once they’re among friends in a “JournoList” type of setting. It is the same list of things boys do when their hormonal rushes are driving them into that Venturi manifold toward manhood — and when they’re under-supervised.

It’s as if they missed out on the coming-of-age when they were thirteen or so, and are trying to make up for it.

Read it.

I certainly learned more about management in the Navy than I did in my MBA program. And they paid me rather than me paying them.

Watch it.

This. Is. So. Cool. I want one of these so badly, I’m speechless.

Read it.

Nick Gillespie doesn’t take himself or his movement very seriously … which is why he’s one of the best writers at tReason Magazine.

I think part of the problem with these sorts of discussions, including Brink Lindsey’s liberaltarianism, is that participants are constantly mixing levels of discussions (I know I do). Liberals and conservatives are used interchangeably for Democrats and Republicans, right wing and left wing, etc. While the Dems are reliably more liberal (in a contemporary sense) than Republicans, the overlap isn’t perfect and many liberals have libertarian or even conservative sympathies. And while their numbers are small, there are in fact libertarian Democrats along with liberal Republicans. Most importantly, how someone governs is probably less a reflection of ideology than other material concerns (there’s the Marxist libertarian in me!).

Reason.tv examines the Commerce Clause, that universal Leatherman that Congress uses to stick its nose into our daily lives. It’s only ten minutes, and will teach you a lot about how our government had degenerated.

Read it.

Detractors have pointed out that Dr. Galembeck’s team may be generating the droplets’ electrical charge by the act of pumping the air over the metals — which might imply you couldn’t practice this technique with still, humid air — while there’s also the rather large caveat that the little electricity they were able to collect from vapor was a hundred million times less than what you could obtain from a solar cell of equivalent size. Still, it’s another new door unto a potential alternative energy source and we don’t ever like having to close those.

Read it.

Great. Let’s have him blow up Fidel Castro.

(I can see Fidel and Raoul watching the MSNBC reporter come in and muttering to each other “Let’s have some fun with this guy.”)

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Hey, tenure doesn’t grow on trees, you know.

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Not a headline that you read every day.

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Hope he doesn’t think that will make him bulletproof.

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Mohammed Coefficient (abbreviated MC): The statistical measure, given as a decimal or a percentage, of the incidence of the name “Mohammed” among a group of perpetrators of evil deeds. Variant names that contribute to the MC include Mahmoud, Mahmud, Mahomet, Mamadou, Mehmed, Mehmet, Mehmood, Mehmud, Mihammad, Mohamed, Mohammad, Muhamed, Muhammad, Muhammed, and Muhammet, and all other cognates of the original Arabic name of Islam’s prophet.

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One of the major threats in Britain, according to Prof Clarke, is from released prisoners who may have been convicted of terrorist offences or may have been radicalised while in jail. “British prisons still house more terrorists than in any other European country, though not for very long periods,” he warns.

He points out that just 23 people, around 19 per cent of those convicted of terrorism offences, have been given life or indeterminate sentences. Twenty per cent have been sentenced to more than 10 years, and the largest single proportion, 32 per cent, received between eight months and four years. “It raises immediate questions about the motivations of those now released, or soon to be released: are they more or less inclined to reoffend?” he says.

“From previous experience in Northern Ireland, it is more likely that the majority of those released will remain as committed to their cause as before, and may serve as a source of motivation to others, albeit in clandestine ways.”\

And does the government plan to do anything about that? Evidently not.

Read it.

Charles Krauthammer is fed up.

And promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.

— Resistance to the vast expansion of government power, intrusiveness and debt, as represented by the Tea Party movement? Why, racist resentment toward a black president.

— Disgust and alarm with the federal government’s unwillingness to curb illegal immigration, as crystallized in the Arizona law? Nativism.

— Opposition to the most radical redefinition of marriage in human history, as expressed in Proposition 8 in California? Homophobia.

— Opposition to a 15-story Islamic center and mosque near Ground Zero? Islamophobia.

Now we know why the country has become “ungovernable,” last year’s excuse for the Democrats’ failure of governance: Who can possibly govern a nation of racist, nativist, homophobic Islamophobes?

Note what connects these issues. In every one, liberals have lost the argument in the court of public opinion. Majorities — often lopsided majorities — oppose President Obama’s social-democratic agenda (e.g., the stimulus, Obamacare), support the Arizona law, oppose gay marriage and reject a mosque near Ground Zero.

Well, obviously, the only solution is for the government to get a new populace; this one just isn’t working out.

Read it.

‘Please, sir, we’d like you to show up for a necktie party.’

‘No, thanks, I think I’ll pass.’

Smart boy.

Read it.

At the Columbia Journalism Review, Trudy Lieberman provides further evidence for my conclusion that what really offended Alan Simpson’s critics about his comparison between Social Security and “a milk cow with 310 million tits” was his candor. Lieberman says “what’s really at stake here” is not Simpson’s colorful language but his “long-standing antipathy toward Social Security and Medicare,” which “raises the question about why the president appointed him [to the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform] in the first place.”

I mean, really. Cut entitlements? What was he smoking?

Read it.

Maybe it’s just me,  but every time I see the Governor of New York I think of Mel Brooks as Governor Lepetomaine in Blazing Saddles.

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Joshua Lee Campbell, 23, had apparently been enjoying a few liveners with a fellow worker at the Twilight Concert in Pioneer Park, and later nipped back to work to shoot the server with a .45-calibre automatic.

Hey, we’ve all had one of those days….

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When even the fish are against you, it’s time to quit.

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The Obama administration has riled up environmental groups by siding with big utilities in a lawsuit over whether states can sue power plant operators for contributing to climate change.

It isn’t that the Obama administration is in favor of unfettered emissions. The Department of Justice brief, filed with the Supreme Court this week, says the Environmental Protection Agency is already on the job, and doesn’t need help from private plaintiffs.

So it’s basically a turf war. What’s the point of centralizing government power if some buttinskys try to horn in on it?

Read it.

I’ve always thought that collecting adolescents together during the time of life when they are most like primitive tribesmen (genetics isn’t the only area in which ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) is responsible for much of what is wrong in the world today. Homeschooling kids is really the only sane solution.

Read it.

Maxine Waters, the gift that keeps on taking, is at it again.

Waters, who has been in Congress for more than three decades, routinely sends out mailers endorsing a list of other candidates and ballot initiatives she supports. In the 2010 cycle, she has raised more than $295,550 out of a total of $497,300 through these mailers. And getting on one of her slate mailers doesn’t come cheap—to be featured on the “Citizens for Maxine Waters” slate, candidates pay anywhere between $250 and $45,000.

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

Jonah Goldberg has a newsletter called the G-File which used to be posted on the National Review site but now requires subscription:

I’m not necessarily advocating that we take him out. First of all, even if it were a good idea, it’s too late now. But think about it. If you go by nearly every Hollywood treatment of the CIA or the NSA, Assange is precisely the sort of guy who should have been garroted in his French hotel room years ago. He’s setting up a website — a series of websites, really — that will allow whistleblowers, traitors, cranks, and misguided morons to publish the government’s most closely kept secrets. Some of these disclosures are guaranteed to damage American national security and put U.S. interests and lives at risk. What are super-cool CIA assassins for if not stopping this sort of thing in its tracks? Whether you think the CIA is an honorable  and unfairly maligned outfit that does democracy’s dirty work, or if you think it’s a hotbed of lawless evil setting back human progress at every turn, you would still expect the spooks to off this guy quietly before anyone had heard his name.

Indeed.

Read it.

Dramamine first, though.