Is it always good?
We Need A Waiting Period
…not for guns. For laws.
Just Tell Men That Rape Is Wrong
A dispatch from a sane planet.
[Update a few minutes later]
Not directly related, but it’s pretty nutty as well:
The question, in a nutshell, is simple: Does it violate the Equal Protection Clause to prohibit race-conscious admissions? Ironic, isn’t it?
The frightening thing is that there are no doubt some “justices” who will think it does.
The Future That Never Was
Ed Driscoll has what looks like an interesting post on the space colonization movement, but unfortunately, I don’t seem to be able to link to it. The URL looks fine, but it redirects back to http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/. Is it just me? Can anyone else see it?
[Update a while later]
OK, just got a new URL from Ed, that works. I haven’t actually read the whole thing yet, because I couldn’t see the second page, but I may have more commentary after I do.
The Eighteenth Brumaire
…Obama is not a communist, even in the twentieth century meaning of the term. Communism is about state ownership of the means of production. The Obama administration does not seek ownership. In fact, where it acquired ownership through the bailout, the administration now works to divest itself. What Obama is building is a large government bureaucracy whose expanding limbs find their way into every facet of human existence, a government that does not own the means of production but controls them by increased and oppressive regulation and taxation. Obama’s political inspiration is more likely to be Mussolini or Peron, even Hugo Chavez, than Lenin or Stalin.
As I’ve long noted, the difference is pretty much transparent to the serfuser.
ObamaCare
Go ahead, Democrats — embrace it:
Actually, the GOP does have a plan about Obamacare and its replacement. We’re going to rip this Democratic party-spawned monstrosity out by the roots, burn it, urinate on the ashes, and then try a series of market-based reforms that will increase competition (health savings accounts, inter-state insurance markets) and foster innovation (meaningful tort reform). Just because the Democrats keep lying by saying that there’s no alternative to their political equivalent to a midlife crisis** doesn’t mean that there actually isn’t one.
…The problem with Obamacare is not that it is being badly presented; the problem is that there is a limit to how well you can present a law that is this bad. It’s like trying to put a positive spin on having your leg bitten off by a shark: sure, yes, in the long run you’re going to see a 50% saving on socks, but that’s not exactly comforting news while you’re watching the water around you go pink…
And Dr. K. explains that the train wreck cometh. I’d love to see everyone responsible for this on the unemployment line. Well, actually, garbed in hot black hydrocarbons and and bird adornments.
Mike Bloomberg
…yer honor, your job is to manage the city government, to make sure the snow gets shoveled and the trash gets picked up, not to lecture the rest of us and use the power of City Hall to impose your particular life-style choices on everybody else. But that’s what happens when conservatives let the Left seize the narrative and promote governmental mission creep. Once government “addresses” a problem by throwing taxpayer money at it, it’s only a short hop to government claiming — as Bloomberg does in the clip — that because government spends money on a “problem,” it now has the right to dictate personal behavior. Sheer genius, really.
By now, the notion that government from the feds on down has the “right” to interfere in every aspect of American life is well-established and nearly unquestioned. Two generations of red-diaper babies have grown up with visions of the Frankfurt School dancing in their heads; they’ve adapted Marxist tactics to the capitalist system in the furtherance of their world-view — George Soros, take a bow — but their goal remains the same: power, disguised as “compassion.”
The collapse of free societies doesn’t start with the Vandals’ assault on the gates of Rome. It starts with “reasonable” restrictions on freedom, “carve-outs” and “exemptions” to constitutional principles, “temporary” taxes and suspensions of civil liberties — all designed to inure the public to the destruction of bedrock guarantees ( i.e. “Congress shall make no law…”) in the name of what’s good for them.
If Jonah does another edition of his book
[Update late morning]
Opposition to Mike Bloomberg on guns has nothing to do with defending our civil rights. No, it’s because we’re anti-Semitic:
According to MSNBC contributors Mike Barnicle and Al Sharpton, opposition to New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control push is partly the result of anti-Semitism. “Let’s get down to it, Mike Bloomberg, mayor of New York City, there’s a level of anti-Semitism in this thing directed towards Bloomberg,” Barnicle argued on Morning Joe, “It’s out there.” “No doubt about that,” Sharpton responded.
“If he was not a big-city Jewish man and was from another ethnic group, in some parts, I think it would be different,” Sharpton continued.
Note that that this is the same Al Sharpton who incited riots against Orthodox Jews with anti-Semitic code words. I’ll never understand why any television outlet would give this race-baiting ass-clown a venue for his idiotic opinions.
“Earth Hour”
Be sure to turn on all your lights and appliances tonight, to protest the vapidity of this kind of thing.
Jagged Ice
Europa could be a challenging place to land.
It seems to me that you just have to budget some extra propellant for a hover to melt it, then drop in with a floating ship. Too bad there’s no ice in the rings, or you could mine some propellant from them. But you could fuel up in the Belt before heading on to Jupiter.
The Worst Law In Technology
The administration could fix it, or at least ameliorate it, but it would take some leadership from the president and attorney general, something that’s been in short supply.