It isn’t gun control. It’s a much tougher problem, from the standpoint of liberty.
Category Archives: Political Commentary
The Rebels Strike Back Against The Climate-Change Empire
We’ve filed two motions to dismiss with prejudice Michael Mann’s lawsuit, both under the DC Anti-SLAPP Act, and for failure to state a claim.
The former is a relatively new law whose purpose is precisely to prevent such harassing lawsuits, and strangle them in the cradle before a defendant has to expend considerable resources on a frivolous case. The latter is a blast at his repeated allegations of malice and intention to harm on our part as though those are facts, with no actual facts to support them, and his own filing containing much to contradict. Obviously, I was quite involved with the preparation of both these briefs. As I’ve said all along, he never had much of a case. National Review and Mark Steyn will probably have something up about theirs tomorrow (they were separate filings, because the situations were different, over different postings, though there is also much in common).
Unfortunately, if these dismissals are granted, there will be no “scientific trial of the twenty-first century” over the hockey stick, but it will get the legal issues out of our hair, and we’ll get to go after him for attorney fees, possibly discouraging any future attempts to muzzle the “deniers.”
[Update a while later]
Just to expand on the issues in the second motion, in order to show malice and reckless disregard for the truth on my/our part, he has to show (among other things) that we didn’t really believe what I wrote about his “exoneration.” His logic seems to be:
a) Various investigations have exonerated me (in my not-so-humble opinion).
b) Simberg claims to have read them, and in fact even linked to them, and yet he still claimed that I was not exonerated.
c) Simberg is obviously lying. Who needs more evidence than that?
He doesn’t seem to consider the possibility that, having read the reports on the investigations, our opinions simply differ on whether or not they really exonerated him. Presumably, a judge will be smarter.
The Terrible Coverage Of The Massacre
It’s time for some common-sense media control.
Foreign Policy Screwups
Note that these are just the top five of the year, not only five. Given the election results, expect it to continue.
The State And Local Income Tax Deduction
Time to eliminate this subsidy to the rich.
Help, I’ve Fallen Down!
…and I can’t testify about Benghazi.
I’m sure the timing of this is purely coincidental.
A False Sense Of Security
It’s past time to put an end to “gun-free” zones.
Also, what can we do to stop massacres? Disarming the law abiding is exactly the opposite of what we need to do.
[Update a few minutes later]
The key difference between the Clackamas mall shooting and Sandy Hook Elementary.
Autism
The vast number (like 99.999….)% of autistics, and particularly Asperger’s sufferers have not, and will not slaughter kindergarteners. So let’s stop talking about the autistic sociopath?
My Fearless Prediction From The Latest Massacre
Someone will propose that kindergarten teachers with autistic children not be allowed to own guns.
The Doctor Won’t See You Now
Thoughts on the current state of the American health-care system, from Mark Steyn:
They gave her the usual form to fill in, full of perceptive inquiries on her medical condition: Do you wear a seat belt? Do you own a gun? How many bisexual men are you now having sex with? These would be interesting questions if one were signing up for eHarmony.com and looking to date gun-owning bisexuals who don’t wear seat belts, but they were not immediately relevant to her medical needs. Nevertheless, she complied with the diktats of the Bureau of Compliance, and had her medical records transferred, and waited . . . and waited. That was August. She has now been informed that she has an appointment with a nurse-practitioner at the end of January. My friend pays $15,000 a year for health insurance. In northern New Hampshire, that and meeting the minimum-entry requirement of bisexual sex partners will get you an appointment with a nurse-practitioner in six months’ time.
Why is it taking so long? Well, because everything in America now takes long, and longer still. But beyond that malign trend are more specific innovations, such as the “Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology,” which slipped through all but unnoticed in Subtitle A Part One Section 3001 of the 2009 Obama stimulus bill. Under the Supreme National Coordinator, the United States government is setting up a national database for everybody’s medical records, so that if a Texan hiker falls off Mount Katahdin after walking the Appalachian Trail, Maine’s first responders will be able to know exactly how many bisexual gun-owners she’s slept with, and afford her the necessary care.
If she’s really paying over a thousand a month for insurance, she’s overpaying. She should cut back to a high-deductible catastrophic plan, and just pay the doctor (or nurse practitioner) herself.
And ObamaCare is just going to make all this much worse.