Polishing The Libertarian Brand

Is Ron Paul going to have anything to say about this latest incident by his brown shirts?

The assault picked up after lunch. Paul supporters phoning Call claimed to be from the media. Others just yelled, saying she had committed treason, fraud. One person said she should be shot. She received as many as 40 calls that day.

“One person said he was on a nationally syndicated radio station,” Call said, “and he has given out my phone number and they need to call the town of Sutton to find out why there’s voter fraud.”

The voices came from everywhere. California. Ohio. Florida. Michigan. Very few were from New Hampshire.

He can say that he has no control over his supporters all he wants, but as long as he continues fail to to do a Sister Souljah and denounce this kind of thing, we will continue to conclude that money and political support is more important to him than integrity.

He Only Just Noticed?

A leading proponent of action against global warming says that many of his “green” “allies” are hurting the cause:

He says: “There is a suspicion, and I have that suspicion myself, that a large number of people who label themselves ‘green’ are actually keen to take us back to the 18th or even the 17th century.”

He characterises their argument as “let’s get away from all the technological gizmos and developments of the 20th century”.

“People say ‘well, we’ll just use less energy.’ Come on,” he says. “And then there’s the real world, where everyone is aspiring to the sort of standard of living that we have, which is based on a large energy consumption.”

King calls global warming the biggest challenge our civilisation has ever faced, and famously, in a 2004 article in the journal Science, berated the US for its inaction, describing climate change as “more serious even than the threat of terrorism”. But his vocal support for nuclear power and genetically modified foods has led to tensions with environmental campaigners.

No kidding.

They’re called “watermelons”–green on the outside, red on the inside. Socialism lost its luster with the fall of the Soviet Union, so they’re simply latching on to this latest ideological fad to try to keep it going under a different name.

Pet Peeve

It’s not as bad as “lose”/”loose,” but I see quite a few people, including people who write for a living, mistakenly hyphenating “no one,” as in “No-one believes that.” It looks very strange to my eye, and irritates me. Where does that come from?

If It Misses Mars…

Glenn at Instapundit points to a UPI story that says JPL thinks the odds of a 4,000 km flyby for 2007 W(M)D5 or less is 99.7%. If it’s not going to hit Mars, that increases the chances that it will slingshot around Mars toward Earth. Odds are likely in the 1 in a million range or less, but what if it did? I wouldn’t say “probably“, but let’s have some transplanetary musings!

A Hero For Free Speech

One would have thought that Canada wouldn’t have needed such, but apparently it does, in the form of Ezra Levant.

I wouldn’t call it a kangaroo court. Given the locale, more like a moose court. Here’s his opening statement. Here is the transcript. Read it and weep (for different reasons, depending on whether you are a proponent, or opponent, of freedom of expression).

I am here at this government interrogation under protest. It is my position that the government has no legal or moral authority to interrogate me or anyone else for publishing these words and pictures. That is a violation of my ancient and inalienable freedoms: freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and in this case, religious freedom and the separation of mosque and state. It is especially perverted that a bureaucracy calling itself the Alberta human rights commission would be the government agency violating my human rights. So I will now call those bureaucrats

A White Playoff Season

Man, teams must hate playing the Packers in the playoffs at home. I just turned on the game, and it looks like half an inch of snow on the field just before the half, and still coming down.

[Going to check Wisconsin radar and weather]

Yup, thirty degrees, and it looks like it’s going to keep coming down all game.

I’ve always thought that it was kind of cool that football doesn’t call games for weather. It always made baseball look kind of wimpy when they quit playing in the rain, while the pigskinners will play in a blizzard. But still, you’d think that folks in Green Bay would get tired of it, with almost everyone else indoors now (though I think that Soldier Field is still open, right?). I know that I was happy when the Lions moved into the Superdome in Pontiac.

[Update in the second half]

Wow, the flakes really look more detailed in HD. You can almost tell them apart.

To Non-Americans Who Think They Understand America

I had never noticed this quote on the masthead of USS Neverdock before:

“America is often portrayed as an ignorant, unsophisticated sort of place, full of bible bashers and ruled to a dangerous extent by trashy television, superstition and religious bigotry, a place lacking in respect for evidence based knowledge. I know that is how it is portrayed because I have done my bit to paint that picture…” BBC’s Washington correspondent Justin Webb

From an interview with the Grauniad. This explains why some commenters here are both clueless and arrogantly certain in their (lack of) knowledge. I won’t name names, but if the shoe fits, they might consider a little more humility.

Good Lord

What kind of nancy boys does Brooks Brothers think we are? Looks like just the thing for that all-male boarding school, complete with spankings.

Is that price the amount that they’d pay us to wear these abominations? If so, it’s nowhere near enough.

[Afternoon update]

And check out this cashmere down vest with the short pants. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. In what kind of weather would one wear that ensemble?

You know, the Brits have a word for people who would wear this stuff. Though I guess we had one of our own, back in the day, the most prominent of whom was called Yankee Doodle.

Same Old Corn

…different flakes. I’m assuming that the exclusion of Fred Thompson (who just got an endorsement from Human Events this morning) was deliberate.

I wonder how much the endorsement will help? I’m sure that it won’t hurt, but (though I’m not a regular reader) I suspect that most people who read Human Events in South Carolina were probably going to vote for him anyway.

[Update late morning]

Here’s an interesting analysis of why Thompson focused on Huckabee last night, and didn’t go after McCain. Hint: it’s not because he’s trying to help McCain win the nomination.

Meanwhile, Matt Welch, incoming editor of Reason, is making up for lost time in dissecting Dr. No’s past.

[Update mid afternoon]

It just occurs to me that we’ll know whether or not Krumm’s Thompson/McCain theory is valid after the Michigan primary. If he starts to go after McCain in addition to Huckabee after the primary, and before South Carolina, then it will all make sense.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!