The Daily Mail says that I said that billionaires could buy up other planets and rip up the space treaties.
[Update a while later]
Here’s a much better piece from Rebecca Boyle at Popular Science.
Category Archives: Media Criticism
Socialism
…and Social Darwinism. It’s all about the new civility.
A Nice Passover Gift For American Jews
Interestingly, that sole Obama remark, as reported by Wallsten, contains an ellipsis in the middle. After the then-state senator says the Khalidis had given him “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases” comes a strategically placed dot-dot-dot. We don’t know what those blind spots and biases were and what he might have thought of them. Or how he might have changed. That, in Wallsten’s or some Times editors’ judgment, was best left on the tape.
So what are we to think? We have an administration that not only ascribes most of the Middle East blame to Israel, but also has banned “Islamism” and all related words, even “Islam” and “jihad,” from our national security documents. They’re completely gone. Indeed, even the Fort Hood massacre, so clearly inspired by Islamic extremism, has now been shifted into the comfortable category of the lone, angry killer.
It’s interesting to compare this to NBC’s recent journalistic malpractice, in which they elided some words in the middle of a quote to create the false narrative that George Zimmerman was motivated by race in his suspicion of Trayvon Martin. Except in this case, it’s the reverse — to remove potentially damaging comments to show that the president is an “unbiased” “moderate.”
What, indeed, is the LA Times hiding? If they are unwilling to show the tape, they could at least provide the complete quote. They haven’t claimed that a promise to a source prevents them from doing so, though now that I’ve made the request, perhaps that will be their next excuse. At which point, we can safely consign them to the same ill repute in which NBC should reside, even if it does not in the minds of its fellow “journalists.”
It’s Not The Constitution, Stupid
It’s about raw political power:
That’s what it’s about. The president and his followers want to be able to labor on our behalf, and to make all of our important decisions. Many of them, like their European counterparts, firmly believe this is the best way to achieve the common good. Others are driven by disgust with contemporary America and the American people, and see themselves acting to save the world from our own worst instincts and impulses. Still others are elitists who despise the common people, who are so plainly unworthy of respect. Whatever the motivation, the “solution” is to restrict the freedom of Americans in order that the superior beings who currently control the executive branch can dictate policy.
Well, if “labor on our behalf” means lots of golf and expensive vacations, mostly at taxpayer expense.
Republican Space Socialists
Gene Kaprowski from the Daily Caller interviewed me on Monday afternoon. This is the result.
[Update a few minutes later]
It’s both amusing and depressing to read through the post comments, and note that absolutely none of them have anything to do with space. It’s all about the election and the Tea Party. This doesn’t bode well for having a space-policy discussion this year.
The Constitutional Law Professor
…doubles down on his ignorance of history and the Constitution.
Gosh, I’m starting to think that this guy may not be the brilliant lightworker we were told he was four years ago. You’d think that at some point his defenders would get tired of trying to defend him. But I expect them to double down, too.
[Update a few minutes later]
A lot more related links from Instapundit.
[Wednesday morning update]
The man who knew too little.
What Did The Media Get Wrong In The Trayvon Martin Case?
That’s the wrong question. The question is, did they get anything right? And how long, if ever, will it take them to correct it?
The Constitutional Law Professor
OK, I give up, can someone tell me what would be “unprecedented” about SCOTUS striking down a law as unconstitutional? And I won’t hold my breath waiting for news organizations to point out in their reporting that it wouldn’t be.
Murdering People For The Greater Good
Is there something admirable about it?
There must be — all those clueless college students can’t be wrong.
Other “admirable” people: Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, and Adolf Hitler.
“Unilateral Intellectual Disarmament”
Why the Left is losing the argument:
In sum, the left systematically has dumbed its side down, to the point where supposedly well-educated elites are untrained and unaware of our country’s history and constitutional traditions. The left thinks words have no fixed meaning (health care and health insurance, are close enough, so they insist we can define the latter to be the former.) The liberal elites have a poor grounding in market economics so they swallow the idea that health-care insurance is “unique” because others’ purchases affect your cost of goods. (Surprise: all markets operate this way.) They advance illogical and counterfactual arguments (e.g., withdrawing a 100 percent subsidy for health care to seniors is a “mandate”) because they are unused to vigorous debate that upsets their preferences dressed up in a thin veil of factual distortion. (Sorry, taking away a freebie is not remotely the same in logic or in law as requiring you purchase something.)
Conservatives, well aware of the intellectual deterioration of liberal institutions, have spent decades pursing supplemental education in think tanks, the speeches and writings of public intellectuals (e.g., Irving Kristol, James Q. Wilson), professional organizations (e.g., the Federalist society) and classrooms of intellectually rigorous scholars (e.g., Robert P. George, Harvey Mansfield and Richard Epstein). In doing so, they sharpened their rhetorical kills, versed themselves in history and political philosophy, and prepared themselves for intellectual combat against those who had rejected the idea of objective meaning, be it in literature or the Constitution. In moments like the Supreme Court argument we see how vast is the gulf between conservative and liberal elites.
Just another example of Haidt’s thesis.