George Will is quite confident that we are going to rebel against it.
Speaking of which, good news from Nevada. The BLM seems to have backed down, at least temporarily. We’ll see where it goes.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
What Is A Scientist?
I have some thoughts over at PJMedia.
A Sagebrush Rebellion
OK, so as far as I can tell, the federal government has been violating the First Amendment by setting up “First Amendment zones” (like the idiotic “free speech zones on campuses) and is about to have a violent confrontation in eastern Clark County, Nevada, on non-federal land, over an “endangered” species that is so endangered that the same federal government has been euthanizing them by the hundreds as a result of their proliferation in that region. Do I have that right?
Nazi Gun Control
Clayton Cramer reviews what looks to be an interesting scholarly new work
There are many parallels between the laws passed in the Weimar Republic and by the Nazis, and current gun control laws and proposals. For example: the nature and duration of the records that gun manufacturers and dealers were required to keep (p. 135); issuance of gun carry licenses “only to persons considered reliable and only if a need is proven” (p. 107); the use of relatively rare incidents to justify widespread disarmament of “enemies of the state” (p. 155); and the prohibition of firearms with features not generally used “for hunting or sporting purposes” (p. 134).
This is not to say that gun control advocates in America today are planning a police state, concentration camps, and mass extermination. As Halbrook points out, when the Weimar Republic pursued its campaign of strict licensing and registration, they were genuinely trying to deal with a serious violence problem. They picked a solution that did not work, as some police officials of the time pointed out, causing some German states to refuse to go along with the Weimar Republic’s mandatory registration regulations in 1931 (pp. 34-38).
The problem was that, as some pointed out when mandatory registration was under discussion in 1931, “in chaotic times, the lists of firearms owners would fall into the wrong hands, allowing unauthorized persons to seize arms and use them to commit unlawful acts” (p. 29). The lists did fall into the wrong hands — the Nazi government, after the 1933 elections. And they did use them to seize arms, especially from Jews and other “enemies of the state.”
You don’t say.
The “Phony” IRS Scandal
The final merit of Mr. Camp’s letter is that he’s called out Justice and Democrats. Mr. Camp was careful in laying out the ways Ms. Lerner may have broken the law, with powerful details. Democrats can’t refute the facts, so instead they are howling about all manner of trivia—the release of names, the “secret” vote to release taxpayer information. But it remains that they are putting themselves on record in support of IRS officials who target groups, circumvent rules, and potentially break the law. That ought to go down well with voters.
We’ll see.
A Smidgen Of Corruption
So it wasn’t just being coordinated by the White House. The Democrats in Congress were involved in weaponizing the IRS as well.
Colbert
Kathy Shaidle says that as a late-night host, he may actually become funny.
I guess we’ll see.
Why Do We Eat?
It’s generally not because we’re hungry.
I can generally go all day without eating, and often do. There’s a lot of evidence that fasting has some of the benefits of caloric restriction, in terms of life extension.
I’d note, though, that the article seems to subscribe to the caloric theory of weight gain and loss. It doesn’t say what “high-density” foods are, energetically speaking, but not all are created equal. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat.
The Dems Equal-Pay Demagoguery
Apparently even Ruth Marcus has her limits:
…the level of hyperbole — actually, of demagoguery — that Democrats have engaged in here is revolting. It’s entirely understandable, of course: The Senate is up for grabs. Women account for a majority of voters. They tend to favor Democrats. To the extent that women — and in particular, single women — can be motivated to turn out in a midterm election, waving the bloody shirt of unequal pay is smart politics.
One of the Democrats’ favorite disgusting rhetorical tricks is to pretend that if you oppose some particular piece of propose legislation, it can only be because you hate blacks, or women, or poor people, or whatever, and you can’t possibly have some rational good-faith reason to think that it’s a bad idea.
The Washington Post
Some questions for its management, and its new owner:
Jeff Bezos, this is for you: I have no idea what your political views are, but I assume you are a Democrat, like most rich people. Maybe you knew, when you bought the Washington Post, that it is nothing but a corrupt mouthpiece for the Democratic Party. If so, nothing about the Post/Keystone scandal will surprise you; on the contrary, you will probably applaud the Post’s latest effort to fool its readers so as to promote the Democratic Party’s interests.
But on the off chance that you thought you were buying a real newspaper, you should be shocked to learn that the Post cannot respond to a simple question: does the Post coordinate its reporting with Congressional Democrats, or does it not? If the Post were an honest paper–a real newspaper, part of an actual free and independent press–that would be an easy question to answer. That the Post is unable to respond speaks volumes. If this isn’t what you thought you were buying, you should clean house.
Democrat operatives with bylines.