Why the Left wants to repeal the First Amendment.
Free speech for me, not for thee.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Free Speech At Berkeley
Eugene Volokh rewrites Chancellor Dirks’s email for him.
[Via Ken White, who notes that Dirks has clarified his position, no doubt in response to the justifiable criticism]
The Headchopper Next Door
Some uncomfortable truths about Islam:
Mohammed was quite clear about what he wanted. For all the abrogations, the Koran is reasonably clear on what it expects its followers to do. Mohammed’s history was that of a man who tried to convince the Arabs that he had seen an angel by telling them and failed, and who succeeded only when he killed enough of them, not to mention the Jews and any other infidels hanging around the place.
That is the history of Islam.
Germany was not a nation of monsters. It was a nation that behaved monstrously. The average German would not stick his neighbor in an oven in his basement or chain him up as a slave. He would however do these things in Poland because he was contextually contaminated by a monstrous ideology.
As an individual he was a nice man who loved his children, petted his dog and enjoyed street fairs. As a loyal member of a system run by the Nazi Party, he would do monstrous things. And then when the Nazi machine was switched off, he would go home to his wife and children without ever killing anyone else.
He was not a good man. Good men don’t do the things he did. But he wasn’t a budding serial killer. He was just doing what a death cult told him to do.
As I noted over the weekend…
@Vote4Wallace The parallels between the Nazis and the Islamists are more numerous and much closer than many want to concede. @instapundit
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 15, 2014
Also, Barack Obama and John Kerry lecturing Muslims on what is and is not the nature of Islam is a theater of the absurd.
Dragon Abort Tests
One is planned for November, and the other for January. I don’t know why NASA keeps talking about 2017, except to try to get more money out of Congress. Of course, that only gives them one provider, and they’d still have to accelerate Boeing and/or Sierra Nevada.
It’s Not Just An IRS Cover Up
It’s all of a web with the Department of Justice, and the Democrats.
[Update a while later]
From the declaration by the FBI months ago that no one would be charged, to the president’s statement that there wasn’t a “smidgeon of corruption,” to this, it’s pretty clear now that rather than investigating this for the past year and a half, the Justice Department has been colluding with congressional Democrats to obstruct the congressional investigation.
Atlas Shrugged III
The story has become a torrid romance.
The Post-Constitutional Presidency
Ebola
What we’re afraid to say about it.
Very sobering. If it does become airborne, it’s a nightmare.
“This Is A Religious War”
Thoughts from Andrew Sullivan. Almost thirteen years ago.
My views have changed very little since. Have his?
The SLS Frenzy
So apparently, the SLF fanbois (and fangirls) going crazy over a giant welder on Twitter.
Malone: @NASA_SLS is going to be the most powerful rocket humans have ever built–which is pretty cool. #NASASocial #weldingwonder
— Rebecca Freeman (@freemre) September 11, 2014
As long as you only want to do it every year or two. MT @freemre rocket that could do anything you ever wanted and then some @davidhitt
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 11, 2014
Can't believe all the tweets in my TL marveling at the "six largest welding tools" building SLS core. These people are obsessed with size.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 11, 2014
You people obsessed with how "powerful" rockets are, are like Tim the ToolMan Taylor. #Binford5000SLS @davidhitt @freemre
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 11, 2014
Never believed that loon Helen Caldicott's phallic-compensation theory of rocketry until I ran into the SLS crowd. Even the women have it.
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) September 11, 2014
Anyway, I was rereading this essay I wrote half a decade ago. It was depressing. Here’s how little of some of it I’d have to change to keep it relevant to today.