Read it.

Italian authorities faced severe criticism on Thursday after it emerged that they gagged two North African immigrants with duct tape while deporting them.

Police defended their actions, saying the Algerians had been chewing the inside of their cheeks and trying to spit blood in order to avoid being forced back on the aircraft.

Sometimes the old ways are best.

‘You have the right to remain silent, so shut the fuck up.’ — Chris Rock

Read it.

I’d venture to say that they smoke more, too. NTTAWWT.

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With the towering prohibition against expressing politically incorrect views about race, why would anyone be naïve enough to believe that the demand for total consent will ever stop? The same bullying tactics that have been applied here have been extended to everything else that the left and its obliging conservative-movement collaborators have tried to keep from being mentioned. The left trots out the same victim narratives to shut us up about gender differences, our preference for heterosexual over homosexual family organization, or whatever else they deem unmentionable at a given moment. My friend, distinguished classicist Chris Kopff, says that at the university where he works it’s Christianity—notracism—that gets singled out as the villain. Anyone linked to Christian belief has to answer for the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, and many other iniquities that are traced back to Christianity’s inherent intolerance.

John Derbyshire, Patron Saint of Dyspepsia, waxes philosophical.

Charles de Gaulle resigned France’s presidency, he and his famously prim wife were entertaining some American guests at their country house. Not all the guests knew French, so conversation was somewhat of a struggle. De Gaulle knew English well, though he rarely spoke it; his wife’s English was rudimentary.

Trying to keep the ball in play, at one point a guest asked Mme. de Gaulle in English what she hoped for most from life now that her husband had no official duties. After a pause for thought, the lady replied: “A penis!”

There was an awkward silence during which the guests all stared hard at their dessert plates. Then de Gaulle leaned forward to his wife and said:

“Non, non, my dear. In English it eez pronounced ‘’appiness.’”

Read it.

An international research team has observed an electron being split into two “quasi particles”, one carrying the original particle’s spin, the other carrying its orbital movement.

Read it.

A recent report released by the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) found that if EPA regulations are implemented, we can expect to see 7 million car buyers drop out of the new vehicle market by 2025.  According to the EPA, the new rules concerning the fuel economies of these vehicles will increase the average cost of these passenger cars and small trucks by $3,000.

Your tax dollars at work.

Although some say that these more fuel efficient vehicles will help prices at the pump, the point is moot  since many Americans will be unable to obtain these cars.

Hey, if you can’t buy a car, you aren’t burning gas. If you’re not burning gas, you’re not causing unclean air AND you’re walking, which improves your health. Win-win, right? Thank you, Unka Barry.

Read it.

Boiling Springs Family Medicine wrote to their patients that, presumably because of the regulations they would have to comply with under Obamacare, they would “no longer be able to provide you with medical care,” and “it is with a heavy heart that we have to inform you” of the closing.

The private practice wrote that “the challenges of practicing primary care medicine independently in today’s world and economy are too great” and “new guidelines and regulations have made the practice of medicine as we know it impossible as independent practitioners.”

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

Of course, liberals who espoused Obamacare had to know that private practices such as Boiling Springs Family Medicine would close, forcing more citizens to be dependent on government for their health care.

Your tax dollars at work.

Read it.

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

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Read it.

Here’s the problem: The donor information on a 990, which tax-exempt groups are required to file, is meant only for Internal Revenue Service eyes, and revealing it constitutes a felony. In a twist that seems not at all to be coincidental, the HRC is headed by Joe Solomonese, a recently appointed national co-chair of the Obama reelection campaign.

Following a public call by NOM last week for federal investigation into the matter, the documents are no longer available for general viewing on the HRC website. NOM has determined from document analysis that the scanned papers had to have come from within the IRS – meaning there was a high-level security breach, apparently for political purposes, at a government agency to which every citizen of this country routinely entrusts classified information.

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

Read it.

Read it.

Will the oppression never cease?

The Other McCain is on the case.

Jennifer Andrushko will testify today at an 11:15 a.m. hearing of the Subcommittee on Immigration Policy and Enforcement. Also testifying will be Dr. Ronald Mortensen, who tells the story of how an illegal alien stole the identity of Mrs. Andrushko’s 5-year-old son Carter….

A reminder, should one be necessary, that people who are in this country unlawfully are CRIMINALS by that very fact, and criminals can be depended upon to act criminally in other ways, ‘progressive’ handwringing notwithstanding.

Read it.

South Africans woke up on Wednesday morning to the claim that a group of Soweto youths had filmed themselves raping a 17-year-old girl believed to be mentally ill.

The cellphone video is said to have gone viral among school kids in the township south of Johannesburg, and the term #rapevideo was trending on Twitter in South Africa on Wednesday.

Think of how much worse things were under the old regime run by Racist White People. Oh, wait….

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Read it.

Poor neighborhoods, Dr. Lee found, had nearly twice as many fast food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier ones, and they had more than three times as many corner stores per square mile. But they also had nearly twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocers per square mile.

So stuff it, Michelle.

Dr. Sturm found no relationship between what type of food students said they ate, what they weighed, and the type of food within a mile and a half of their homes.

More New Age leftist claptrap debunked.

Jacob Sullum has some thoughts on the subject.

Read it.

The writer Toby Young tells a story about how the modern 100m race is run in primary schools. At the starting pistol, everyone runs like mad. At the 50m point, the fastest children stop and wait for the heavier kids to catch up. Then all the youngsters walk across the finishing line together, holding hands.

Read it.

We have the technology.

Read it.

A small cadre of lawyers, some from out of state, are using New York City’s age and architectural quirkiness as the foundation for a flood of lawsuits citing violations of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The ADA is a prime reason George H. W. Bush will burn in Hell for all eternity.

The lawyers are generally not acting on existing complaints from people with disabilities. Instead, they identify local businesses, like bagel shops and delis, that are not in compliance with the law, and then aggressively recruit plaintiffs from advocacy groups for people with disabilities.

The plaintiffs typically collect $500 for each suit, and each plaintiff can be used several times over. The lawyers, meanwhile, make several thousands of dollars, because the civil rights law entitles them to legal fees from the noncompliant businesses.

In other words, they’re gaming the system.

Steve Sailer champions the underdogs.

Baseball season reminds us of the identity-politics group that doesn’t bark—left-handers. Why are certain aggregations of once-persecuted people such as blacks or gays so politically potent today, while others such as left-handers can be safely ignored?

Read it. And watch the video.

And by “welcomed,” I mean busted in his punk face with a rifle butt.

Read it.

Certainly the IRS ought to be doing your taxes. All this crap is reported to them anyway, and they’re going to run their own calculations; why should we have to waste all of our time doing what they’re being paid to do?

Read it.

Read it.

Does being an early childhood educator turn you into a meddlesome nitwit, or are meddlesome nitwits instinctively drawn to careers in early childhood education?

It’s a tough call. One recent example of the WE KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR YOUR CHILDREN brigade overexerting itself involves a report on UK schools that are attempting to enforce a ban on best friends. In UK newspaper The Sun, educational psychologist Gaynor Sbuttoni noted an increasingly common policy used in several UK regions whereby “teachers tell children they shouldn’t have a best friend and that everyone should play together.” Apparently schools in Surrey, Kingston, London, and other regions of the damp ’n’ dreary isle are attempting to make it official school policy that children only play in large groups and thereby avoid the distastefully intimate and counterrevolutionary scourge known as “exclusive friendship.”

Read it.

No wonder the state is going broke.

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The first cargo resupply mission to the space station to be carried out by a commercial operator is likely to be on 30 April, the US space agency says.

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A police community support officer hired because she was a lesbian has been jailed after telling a friend to flee town when detectives were looking for her.

Be careful not to step in the diversity.

Read it.

Is the President’s resume accurate when it comes to his career and qualifications? I can corroborate that Obama’s “teaching career” at Chicago was, to put it kindly, a sham.

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

The other professors hated him because he was lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings, and it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool. According to my professor friend, he had the lowest intellectual capacity in the building. He also doubted whether he was legitimately an editor on the Harvard Law Review, because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement).

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked.

Read it.

Hindus, the religious majority in India, regard cows as sacred and the animals are often used in temple ceremonies as well as allowed to wander at will through the country’s busy towns and markets.

In the traditional Hindu caste system, Dalits (formerly known as ‘untouchables’) are considered the lowest of low castes, and some Dalit groups reject Hindu religious practices such as the ban on eating beef.

Beef biryani and other beef dishes were served to 200 people at the festival before about 50 students belonging to a right-wing Hindu group tried to enter the venue, police said.

Rather like putting a crucifix in a jar of urine in a majority-Christian country. But of course nobody would do that.

Police fired tear gas on Sunday evening to break up the fighting, in which at least five people were injured and two vehicles were set ablaze at the Osmania University in the city of Hyderabad.

Jeez, you’d think these guys were Muslims.

Read it.

Gotta love that Global Warming.

Read it. And watch the video.

Because of a mounted dashboard camera, you can watch the footage of a Quincy, Ill. municipal transit bus on its seemingly uneventful ride until an oncoming car suddenly loses control and swerves directly into its path.

If you do watch the footage, released by the plaintiff’s lawyer, see whether you would have predicted that the legal outcome of the crash would turn out to be “city pays $4 million to passenger in car that lost control.”

One of the reason why modern America sucks — all the children have been below average for the last few decades.

This article from CNN:  For President, Two Pragmatic Problem-Solvers.

At first I thought he was talking about Romney and Gingrich, but no — he’s talking about Obama.

What problem, of any kind, has Obama ever solved? No, I can’t think of one, either.

Let’s move to stage two: What problem, of any kind, that Obama has ever attempted to solve, has he not made worse? Another empty set.

I even checked the date to make sure it wasn’t a stale April Fool’s Day post. But no.

When they call this guy a ‘CNN Contributor’, they must mean he donated money to them.

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Considering how quickly the Anglican Church is coming apart, cardboard ought to last long enough.

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With arranged marriages back up to 40 per cent, business has been brisk for photo studios, who prepare the portfolios which are shown to potential suitors.

Women pose in a kimono and also in informal attire; men wear a suit and tie as well as dressing down for the other picture.

Anxious parents then circulate the portfolio, which also sets out the youngsters’ interests and prospects, to work colleagues, friends and neighbours.

Once a meeting is arranged the couple are normally accompanied by their mothers who act as chaperones.

Polite small talk is the order of the day. Afterwards it is a case of comparing notes to see if there are grounds for pursuing matters further.

We call it Facebook.

Read it.

A top Obama campaign adviser said yesterday that the president has no plans to chip in extra money from his own income to help the federal deficit — after Obama’s tax returns showed that he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary.

We don’t need a ‘Buffett Rule’, we need an ‘Obama Rule’.

Steve Sailer turns over a rock.

Last summer, I wrote about Bruce Norris’s play about real estate and race in Chicago, Clybourne Park. (Here’s an interview with Norris.) The NYT has an article about rehearsals for its opening on Broadway that unintentionally makes an important point about how Nice White People want middle class African-Americans to be driven to the edge of violence just by the thought of things that happened to blacks before they were born.

Basically, this racial anger among the black cast members didn’t really happen, but NYT subscribers want to believe it did.

Reminds me of the old Cheech & Chong routine about Blind Melon Chitlin.

There are two kinds of black people in America: a minority who have assimilated to mainstream American culture, and a majority who have developed, cultivated, and in many cases enthusiastically embraced a separate subculture that is degenerate, corrupt, and semi-criminal, the home of the ‘gangsta’ and the ‘nigga’. Progressive White People (‘PWPs’, pronounced ‘poops’) hate the former because it illuminates the lie of the PWP mythology that all black people are oppressed and Just Can’t Get a Break Because of White Racism. So they keep up an unending pressure on non-nigga black Americans to Get Down and Dirty and join their ‘bruthas’ on the barricades. That’s what John Derbyshire was trying to communicate, and why he was hung out to dry by the self-righteous cowards at National Review and elsewhere, as well as the rabid dingoes of the Left.

As Orwell, liked to say, who controls the past controls the future. My in-laws were nice white liberals who tried to make integration work, not fleeing the West Side of Chicago until their children had been mugged three times. By trying, they wound up losing half their net worth and my late father-in-law ended up with a 126 mile commute to his job in the orchestra at the Chicago Opera House. But that kind of history is unappreciated, to say the least. Nobody wants to hear about it, and especially nobody wants to hear any hard feelings about it.

Because, after all, Only Blacks Can Be Victims.

Read it.

TakiMag seems to be the mother lode for inconvenient truth these days.

Yahoo! News seems so deep in Obama’s pockets that they’re basically up his ass. Their recent reprint of a Reuters story, “Obama likely paid higher tax rate than Romney in 2011,” bore the sour stench of partisan unfairness. The first red flag is the word “likely”; the second is the fact that although Romney’s tax rate was lower, he’ll pay about TWENTY TIMES the amount of taxes to the federal government that Obama did last year. Did he use twenty times the government services? Not bloody likely, especially considering all of Obama’s international hunting safaris, local rodeo and karaoke-bar appearances in the American heartland, and hip-hop barbecues at the White House. It’s probable that Obama received a laughably larger amount in free government perks than he paid in taxes. If anything, the tax rate seems unfair to Romney, as much as it pains me to defend him in any way.

Read it.

It appears Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano perjured herself in front of Congress numerous times. In her new book “Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-Up” Townhall’s News Editor Katie Pavlich provides evidence from inside sources that Ms. Napolitano did in fact lie to Congress under oath. She also provides evidence Ms. Napolitano did know about Fast and Furious.

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

Read it.

We’ve told you in previous reports to expect the increasingly broke, desperate and nomadic Occupy movement to continue to make police the enemy and to make more flailing ‘direct actions’ in an attempt to stir up headlines. In New York City this weekend, they did not disappoint.

Read it.

The division in the dreaded Islamist sect Boko Haram deepened at the weekend with the murder of Abu Qaqa II, the spokesman of the militant group suspected to have taken over from Abu Qaqa I who was captured last January and has been in the custody of the State Security Service.

Abu Qaqa II was believed to have been killed on the instruction of the leader of the sect, Abu Shekau, for attempting to back out of their reign of terror.

He was said to have tried to denounce the sect after being trailed intensively by security agents, which forced him to change locations on several occasions.

Remind me how Islam is different from the Mafia.

Oh, right, Muslims don’t speak Italian.

Matthew Yglesias fears not to express ideas that would get a right-winger run out of town; after all, he’s a card-carrying Voice of the Crust, writing in a certified Crustian Rag.

But the same consideration applies to married women! Today’s married mother, after all, may be tomorrow’s divorced mom. If you stay out of the labor force while married, this will severely hurt your earnings prospects if you become single. And the fact that you’ll be hard-pressed to cope with the economic consequences of divorce weakens your bargaining position within the marriage. Indeed, Torben Iverson and Frances Rosenbluth argue in a fascinating paper on “The Political Economy of Gender” (PDF) that this has what’s driven women to left-of-center political parties in a wide range of advanced economies.

In other words, the welfare state makes it easier for you to dump hubby if you get tired of him. So vote socialist Democrat! You want that EBT to be there for you!

Read it.

We have the technology.

Impossible to tell whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing….

Read it.

That’s some fine Religion o’ Peace™ you got there, Mohammed.

Read it.

“Despite some progress, the board continues to have low minority representation in the economist job family,” the report stated. “The board hires a large number of Ph.D. economists and the availability of minority candidates for these positions is low.”

Gee, I wonder why?

Be careful you don’t step in the diversity.

David Director Friedman is always worth reading.

Our lead authors’ repeated references to “the poor,” in an essay written by and for moderns, badly misrepresents the 18th century world and Smith’s view of it. When Smith was writing, the working class, the people Smith is referring to in that quote, represented not the lower end of the income distribution but the bulk of the population.

Modern day liberals have the same problem. From making the poor work for their benefits to what to do with illegitimate babies, they seem to think this is Britain of 150 years ago; Hillary Clinton, for example, apparently read Dickens at Wellesley and her brain got stuck there.

One can get a clearer idea of Smith’s view of issues of equality from his long discussion of alternative forms of taxation. He begins with a set of maxims, of which the first is:

I. The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state.

While he rejected taxes directly on income (except, possibly, the income of government employees), he thought that the overall incidence of taxation ought to be in proportion to income.

I guess Dennis would say that Adam Smith isn’t a ‘reasonable person’, either.

 The version of libertarianism that seems most plausible to me is one where respecting rights is seen as a good thing, a value in itself as well as a means to other values, but not as a value that trumps all others. One reason to respect natural rights is that it is a good thing to do, another is that respecting them can be expected to produce a healthier, wealthier, and happier world than violating them.

That’s what I mean by ‘reasonable person’. And it ain’t Barack Obama.

Don Boudreaux is not afraid to ask the hard questions.

Whatever is the reason why so many grown people respect holders of political office is, as it has always been, beyond my comprehension.  I just don’t get it.  Practitioners of no other profession are accorded more honor, respect, and (most importantly) power while at the same time being held to such low standards of ethical behavior.  Actions that, when committed by the family dog, properly elicit scolding or muzzling or even eviction from the premises are, when committed by an elected official, greeted with oohs, aahhs, applause, and re-election to powerful office.

Read it.

Five or six years ago, my mother and I sat in a darkened theater talking about a couple we knew. The wife was an executive with Ivy League degrees. The husband had some nebulous part-time job, but mostly he stayed home with the kids. What, I wondered, does he have that’s attractive to her? There was a pause. Sperm, my mother replied.

Life in post-feminist America — the Sensitive New Age Guy is the new black (not that he’s actually Black, you understand — not that there’s anything wrong with that — that’s just a metaphor).

Male underemployment, the surge in women’s economic fortunes and the decline in marriage swirled into a meme in 2010, when an article in The Atlantic asked, “What if the modern, post­industrial economy is simply more congenial to women?” The next year, the magazine ran a long essay in which the writer observed that the pool of those considered “traditionally ‘marriageable’ men” — the highly educated, the financially secure — was “radically shrinking.”

After decades of being hammered by the Alan Alda demographic, that’s hardly surprising.

Finding women worrying that men feel emasculated by them more than men actually feel that way, she suggests that these women are more invested in preserving conventional gender roles. That’s one explanation. But it could just as easily mean that the men in question didn’t want to tell a reporter they felt emasculated.

I’m wondering how they’ll fix that pesky problem of the fact that women still, you know, have to have the babies. But I’m sure that some woman in a laboratory somewhere is working on it.

Steve Sailer has some fun with the Capital of the Crust.

If you are ever feeling in the need for a laugh, just look up the latest news from New York City on the Kindergarten Admissions Wars. Year after year, it’s pure comedy gold.

Because, you know, if your Child of the Crust doesn’t get into the Right Pre-School Program, s/he’s destined to be an Underclass Loser Wastrel forevermore. Or at least that’s what they’re afraid of. (Oh, the tragedy of being tagged an underachiever before your sixth birthday….) Oh, and Persons Of You Know What need not apply:

When school supremo Joel Klein made the switch to pure test-based admissions, using tests would obviously have a huge disparate impact effect. But, Klein didn’t know or didn’t care, because kindergarten admissions is serious stuff where testing is too crucial to be sacrificed on the altar of racial equality. This isn’t something trivial like saving people from burning skyscrapers, this is NYC kindergarten admissions, and don’t you forget it. Different rules apply.

Yet another illustration of Murray’s thesis that the right side of the bell curve are marrying each other and producing Talented Offspring who are forced to compete with other similarly Talented Offspring for a place in the Crustian Cursus Honorum — sort of a Hunger Games for the Ruling Class.

Pass the popcorn.

A classic cartoon.

The Other McCain waxes philosophical.

Keeping your britches on is the kind of “choice” that feminists don’t advocate, just as they never advocate (as an alternative to what theocratic reactionaries would call fornication) that men and women form permanent pair-bonds, sanctified by religious vows to forsake all others until death do them part.

Alas, the ceremony of innocence is drowned by the blood-dimmed tide and the falcon turning in its widening gyre cannot hear the falconer.

Without faith or tradition to guide them, young people must seek secular sanction for doing what they do, and the dismal science offers little to improve on the basic supply/demand equation of “free milk and a cow.” In a buyer’s market flooded with free milk, the sale of cows has declined. Young men have no incentive to marry and what woman would want to marry one of these slovenly slacker guys anyway?

Read it.

Does anybody care?

Didn’t think so.