Here’s an idea. Let’s stop pretending that we understand it.
Category Archives: Social Commentary
The Washington Post
Looks like Bezos really is shaking things up. I’ll be curious to see what it does for their circulation.
The Pennsylvania Bomber
Well, what to make of this?
Altoon Mayor Matthew Pacifico said Miftakjov is a student at Penn Stat University Altoona.
He is charged with possessing a weapon of mass destruction, risking a catastrophe, possessing instruments of crime, prohibited offensive weapons, incendiary devices, recklessly endangering another person, and several drug-related charges.
Officers had been investigating an alleged marijuana growing operation when they discovered the alleged bomb, according to a statement posted on the police department’s Facebook page.
They said the bomb was found inside a suitcase along with “assorted bomb making materials.”
“The bomb was safely deconstructed by experts from the Pennsylvania State Police Bomb Squad,” the statement read.
Unless it’s a nuke or chemical weapons, it is not a “weapon of mass destruction.”
It’s too early to tell, but there’s no mention of his religion, just his Russian nationality. He’s a college student in Altoona now, but it looks like a couple years ago, he was a HS sophomore in Belmont, California:
Sophomores are required to take the ELA (English language arts) portion that is a multiple-choice test along with an essay prompt. The following day sophomores took the mathematics portion with a total of 92 questions.
”I thought the English [section] was easier, but overall the CAHSEE was really boring,” Vladislav Miftakhov said.
He doesn’t seem to update his Facebook page much, which might explain why it says San Carlos (might be where he lived while attending the school in Belmont), rather than western Pennsylvania. But he did have an interesting answer to a question about that time, two and a half years ago:
“Do you believe Bind Laden is dead?”
“No”
It’ll be interesting to see how they caught him. I’m guessing it wasn’t NSA data mining, though.
The Hockey Stick
A useful history, for those who want to get up to speed. It will be a handy refresher if I somehow actually end up going to trial.
Mark Steyn
He thinks it should be un-American to grovel before judges.
David Appel has a blog post about this, in which he is called to task by a commenter:
It’s a far bigger insult to the judge for you to imply they are not impartial – letting some perceived insult influence the case – than anything Steyn has said.
Yes.
[Via VA Viper]
The Mann Legal Front
I’ll let Mark Steyn explain, without comment.
[Thursday-morning update]
Jonathan Adler (from his new digs at the Washington Post) provides his take.
Up With The Poor
Down with the LA Times.
It really is embarrassing that we have such an awful newspaper in the second-largest city in the country. Of course, the one in the largest city is pretty bad, too.
The IRS Intimidation
The proposed rule, ‘Guidance for Tax-Exempt Social Welfare Organizations on Candidate-Related Political Activities’ does not impact labor unions or the Chamber of Commerce, but does impact the Tea Party and other conservative groups.
Can’t have people who actually favor limited government have any political influence.
NSA Data Gathering
How it’s like national gun registration.
Mexican Citizens Topple Drug Cartels
…and are rewarded with government retaliation:
If the liberty movement were not effective in its activism, if we did not present a legitimate threat to the criminal establishment, they would simply ignore us rather than seek to vilify us.
The militias of Michoacan have taken a stand. They have drawn their line in the sand, and I wish I could fight alongside them. Of course, we have our own fight and our own enemies to contend with here in the United States. As this fight develops, we have much to learn from the events in Western Mexico. Government retaliation has been met with widespread anger from coast to coast. And despite the general mainstream media mitigation of coverage, the American public is beginning to rally around the people of Michoacan as well. The non-participation principle prevails yet again.
The liberty movement in the U.S. must begin providing mutual aid and self-defense measures in a localized fashion if we have any hope of supplanting the effects of globalization and centralized Federal totalitarianism. We must begin constructing our own neighborhood watches, our own emergency response teams, our own food and medical supply stores, and our own alternative economies and trade markets that do not rely on controlled networks. We must break from the system and, in the process, break the system entirely.
It may be necessary if we continue to see illegal gangs allied with the legal ones. Let’s hope not. At least we’re seeing a new revolution against the corruption in Mexico.