In which I use a lot of words to say hello.

I was eyewitness to tragedy yesterday afternoon.

Not your average DC-area snowstorm.

(Jameson Hsieh/Associated Press) The current cause célèbre in many Right Wing circles is that of a rodeo clown who has been banned-for-life from performing at the Missouri State Fair after he oversaw the production of a skit in which another clown donned a Obama mask (and broom) and was chased by a bull. Here’s a […]

Absent DOMA, the Full Faith and Credit Clause would seem to make gay marriage legal across the land.

With the last days of Google Reader upon us, I’ve started to do housecleaning on my RSS feeds in preparation for migration. So I thought I’d go to some of the smarter (not to mention, better lookin’) folks I know and ask for recommendations for alternatives. So, what do ya’ll use to follow your online […]

In a suburb north of Seattle, a serial bank robber (I won’t say robbery suspect, though the newspaper does) had the misfortune of having an amateur competitive bodybuilder in the chosen bank who decided to be a good member of society and stop the robbery, whereas most would just be sheep and look for cover. […]

In the comments to this post on health care, commenter TJIT left this little gem of a link that has the, supposedly true, conversation between an ER doc and his patient. Me (after reading triage sheet and rolling my eyes): Hi, I’m Dr.____. I’m the doctor in charge of the EMERGENCY Department tonight. I see […]

As a follow-up to James’ Candidates From Nowhere post yesterday, the Charlotte [NC] Observer has an interesting (time-wasting?) interactive graphic of US county-to-county moves (moves in and out of counties, though you have to toggle between the two) based on 2000-2005 IRS tax returns, confirming we are a mobile society. The data shows most moves […]

Now it seems that the next item in the crosshairs of the Nanny Staters are Ipods. Yep, walking and fiddling with your Ipod could get you a $100 ticket in New York if State Senator Carl Kruger gets his way. “We’re talking about people walking sort of tuned in and in the process of being […]

Gene Healy has an excellent article about historians’ fascination with activist Presidents. Whether they’re liberal or conservative, presidential scholars seem to prefer militant presidents who stretch against constitutional bounds — or break them. […] But is that the right lesson to draw? Is there something wrong with limited-power republican presidents? Or does the fault lie […]

The father of Chelsea Clinton’s boyfriend and former Congressman is in prison. Apparently he fell victim to a 600 year old scam…several times. Initially, Mezvinsky became the victim of “just about every different kind of African-based scam we’ve ever seen,” federal prosecutor Bob Zauzmer told 20/20 for a report to be broadcast this evening. But […]

Seventy three years ago today the War on Alcohol was finally called off. What did the War on Booze give us? How about an increase in organize crime, and hence crime itself. Not that I expect this to make any difference in the War on Drugs. In any event, like Ronald Bailey I shall be […]

Here is an interesting article on the effect of the Internet and Internet porn on the number of reported rapes. The article is by Steven Landsburg, and economist at the University of Rochester. The argument runs as follows: If you look at the number of reported rapes in each of the 50 states you see […]

Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize for his creation of Grameen Bank, a bank that specializes in micro-credit loans to the very poor to help them establish their own businesses and get them started on a path out of poverty. According to the news story the first loan Grameen Bank made was only $27. […]

Four percent of the nation’s hop harvest went up in smoke, rather than into beer yesterday as the S.S. Steiner warehouse in Yakima burned. If this were oil, we could expect a massive price increase of hop-using products (um, mostly beer, rejected stuff goes into soaps and such). Even worse, hops aren’t exactly fungible as […]

Facing the consequences of 30 years hard work by the left to break down societal taboos and redefine “family”; LONDON – British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday the state should intervene early – possibly even before birth – to stop the children of problem families growing up into troublemakers. One think-tank said the idea, […]

And plans on killing every “pit bull” they can get their hands on. I find these kinds of laws despicable and based completely on ignorance. More often than not these “pit bulls” are not American Pit Bull Terriers, but are often mistaken for other types of dogs (go here to see how hard it is […]

It seems that the linking function in comments is not working properly. It looks like the url and href= part of the code is stripped out. As a temporary measures you can past the url in the comments directly, but try to use something like Tiny URL to keep the page from being distorted by […]

There is apparently a simple solution for the stain of being unpopular with the public, change your name. The Association of Trial Lawyers of America voted during its convention this week to change its name to the American Association for Justice. Spokeswoman Chris Mather said there was overwhelming support for the change, and that the […]

Interesting article, if you pay for it , they will come (if you click on the print option, you will get the full article, but cancel the print). Oregon is on the leading edge of a new fertility frontier. Decades after artificial insemination became commonplace, would-be parents are testing the ethical boundaries of surrogacy here, […]

BBC: A print of the only photograph of Mozart’s widow, Constanze Weber, has been found in Germany. The photograph was taken in 1840 in the Bavarian town of Altoetting when she was 78. She died two years later. The local authorities say detailed examination has proved the authenticity of the image, which is a copy […]

A Guardian reporter ponders “Bushlandia”. “It wasn’t so long ago,” a car-rental employee said, half-jokingly, “that if you voted Democrat round here, you’d get shot.” Half-jokingly?

That is what Radley Balko thinks, and frankly it sure looks that way to me. DURHAM, North Carolina (AP) — A cab driver who has supported an alibi offered by one of the two Duke lacrosse players charged with rape has been arrested on an old shoplifting warrant. The warrant accuses Moez Mostafa of stealing […]

Robert Duncan, Spero News; After changing the definition of marriage by passing same-sex “marriage” legislation last year, now the Spanish government is bent on changing the very definition of “human.” Once again, the Spanish Socialist government is showing where its true priorities are — and it’s not about Iraq, nor immigration, and it’s certainly not […]

Uh oh. Matthias Küntzel, in Ahmadinejad’s Demons Friday, April 14th ; The Basiji’s cult of self-destruction would be chilling in any country. In the context of the Iranian nuclear program, however, its obsession with martyrdom amounts to a lit fuse. Nowadays, Basiji are sent not into the desert, but rather into the laboratory. Basij students […]

…get arrested. Our nations finest at work. Apparently the University of Georgia student was coming from a party with the theme of “Pirates vs. Ninjas” and our brave men and women of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms are prepared for anything…including ninjas. So they drew their weapons, pointed them at the young party-goer […]

The tale exploded in the local spotlight Monday when The Examiner in Independence ran on its front page a photograph of the couple holding six one-piece baby outfits and announcing the births. Those who heard the Eversons’ sad story of tight finances set up a Web site to solicit contributions — including a van, washer […]

Breaking: developments in the worst mass murder in Ontario history – According to a spokesman for the Ontario Provincial Police (news conference is underway) the eight slain men found in an Ontario farm field were all members of the Bandidos motorcycle gang, as is at least one of the five arrested and charged with 8 […]

CTV; One man is dead following an explosion at a Tim Hortons restaurant in downtown Toronto. The blast occurred in the washroom of the coffee shop located near the intersection of Yonge and Bloor Streets, just after 1 p.m. Emergency crews responded to the scene and tried to help the victim. Fire department spokesman Daryl […]

South Florida style. h/t – The Hate-Filled Diatribess.

The AP story on the Scalia AEI Speech heckling incident was even more misleading than first thought. After the man left, Scalia answered questions for about 15 minutes but repeatedly declined to engage anyone who asked questions, even of an apparently friendly nature, that he felt were not related to his topic – the use […]

The White House now says President Bush was unaware of the controversial sale of the company that maintains several U.S. ports to a company owned by the government of Dubai. President Bush was unaware of the pending sale of shipping operations at six major U.S. seaports to a state-owned business in the United Arab Emirates […]

AP reporter Elizabeth White reports that Justice Antonin Scalia asked that a heckler be thrown out for no apparent reason during a speech at the American Enterprise Institute yesterday. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia grew tired of a persistent heckler Tuesday and asked organizers of a legal seminar to do something about the outbursts – […]

Larry Summers is stepping down as Harvard’s president at the end of the academic year. Lawrence H. Summers, the president of Harvard University, said today that he would step down at the end of the academic year. Dr. Summers will likely take a yearlong sabbatical and then return to Harvard as a distinguished professor of […]

BBC on a new avenue of dna research that may be of some use in crime investigations; The technique is based on work comparing the Y chromosomes of men with the same surname. The Y chromosome is a package of genetic material found only in males. It is passed down from father to son, just […]

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There has been quite a buzz over the weekend about Holocaust denier David Irving’s sentence of three years in prison by an Austrian court. Here’s the latest from the AP: The British historian on Monday pleaded guilty to denying the Holocaust and was sentenced to three years in prison. He conceded that he was wrong […]

Michael McAuliff of the New York Daily News authors a piece with the provocative headline, “Dubai company set to run U.S. ports has ties to administration.” The Dubai firm that won Bush administration backing to run six U.S. ports has at least two ties to the White House. One is Treasury Secretary John Snow, whose […]

Sabrina Tavernise and Robert F. Worth report that the United States has warned Iraqi leaders that, if they use government to force religious agendas, it will be without U.S. money. The American ambassador to Iraq issued an unusually strong warning on Monday about the need for Iraq’s political factions to come together, hinting for the […]

The American Prospect has a long cover story by Will Bunch examining Rick Santorum’s personal and public finances. It is here, some 43 miles by car and a world away from Capitol Hill, that Pennsylvania’s junior U.S. senator, Rick Santorum, and his wife, Karen, bought a home on November 14, 2001, for $643,361 (now assessed […]

Every so often in the blogosphere, the old label argument rears its ugly head. Someone asserts that the old Left vs. Right and Liberal vs. Conservative labels don’t apply and a round of blog posts gets written in reaction. This time, Glenn Reynolds asserted, for the umpteenth time, that he is not a conservative. Dan […]

Saturday, Kim and I picked up our new puppy from the breeder Saturday morning. Her name is Molly and she’s a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. We already had three animals, my two cats (Scamp, age 7, and Henry, age 5-1/2) and her dog (Miniver, a lab-cocker mix, age 8), but this is our first pet […]

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The legendary sportscaster Curt Gowdy has died at the age of 86, after a long struggle with leukemia. Curt Gowdy, one of the signature voices of sports for a generation and the longtime broadcaster for the Boston Red Sox, died Monday at 86. He died in Palm Beach after a long battle with leukemia, Red […]

Francis Fukuyama, most famous for his wildly incorrect prediction that no ideology would ever again threaten Western democratic capitalism after the Cold War, argues in lengthy piece for the New York Times Sunday Magazine that neo-conservatism is dead. As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely […]

A Nigerian terrorist group kidnapped nine foreigners, including three Americans, in an attack on the country’s oil industry. Nigerian militants began a string of attacks on the country’s oil industry on Saturday, abducting nine foreign workers, bombing a major tanker loading platform and sabotaging two pipelines. Royal Dutch Shell suspended exports from the 380,000-barrel-a-day Forcados […]

William Donald Schaefer, Maryland’s 84-year-old comptroller and former governor (1987-1995), has gotten into some trouble for ogling a pretty young aide in a tight sweater as she handed him some papers — and then calling her back over for more ogling. I have seen the video of this on the local news but could not […]

Italy’s supreme court ruled that a convicted rapist may appeal to lower his sentence on the grounds that his 14-year-old victim was sexually active. Italy’s highest court ruled Friday that a man who raped the 14-year-old daughter of his girlfriend can seek to have his sentenced reduced because the girl was sexually active, news reports […]

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