Over at Winds of Change:

Stipulate that there is a small machine that I could put into your home or workplace that with absolute accuracy – I mean 100% accuracy – would send an alarm in the specific case that a person who had the true intent to commit murder was close to it. Yes, it’s Minority Report territory. But accept it as true.

Would you – as an American – be comfortable having something like that in your house?

I would need a little clarification: what is “close to it” and what does “murder” mean? Does it merely mean killing someone? Would self defense count?

Here’s a brief piece on Christopher Hitchens’ ignorance about Sarah Palin. Now, I’ve long admired Hitchens as a writer, and for his integrity in standing up against the Clinton gang in the nineties, but he does seem to have gone off the rails lately, with his jihad against religion (not that it’s new, but it seems to have expanded beyond his Mother Theresa bashing). But I found this comment over there interesting:

Everyone has a crazy section in their brain. Andrew Sullivan was all for Bush until Bush came out against Gay Marriage. Andrew will never be happy until he and his partner can be married by the Pope himself. In his case, the craziness has spread throughout his thinking, so he doesn’t make sense anymore, although he still retains an ability to write well.

As to Hitchens, another word-centred person, his craziness is centred on religiosity, and specifically, Christian religiosity. He has written a book on atheism and on Mother Theresa. In fact, I would say he is lunatic when it comes to this topic. Sarah Palin is a declared Christian, therefore Hitchens sees her only as a cardboard cutout of ‘snake-handling primitive in the woods’. He could read Byron York’s column on what Sarah Palin has actually done as Alaska’s governor, and why she enjoys 80% approval, but Hitchens, cowering in his corner of craziness will not pay any attention.

I notice that that Maher fella, the TV comedian also hates (really: HATES) Palin and all conservatives, even the Methodist George Bush. His craziness centres around the necessity of sexual liberation is his life and that of all the elite’s life.

I wonder if it’s true that everyone has a “crazy section in their brain”? And if so, where mine is?

I’m confident that my commenters will inform me shortly.

Of course, there was a time when the two words meant pretty much the same thing. But that was before the “progressives” came along and hijacked the word “liberal.”