And it takes a female press secretary to finally slap down that demented moron, Helen Thomas. Men can’t get away with it, because they can’t be seen as beating up on an old lady. One silver lining of Tony Snow’s cancer recurrence.
Who Cares What’s Actually Happening?
The Dems have a problem–how to lose a war without being blamed for it. They pulled it off in Vietnam, but I hope that they can’t do it again.
What’s curious is that congressional Democrats don’t seem much interested in what’s actually happening in Iraq. The commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, returns to Washington this week, but last week Pelosi’s office said “scheduling conflicts” prevented him from briefing House members. Two days later, the members-only meeting was scheduled, but the episode brings to mind the fact that Pelosi and other top House Democrats skipped a Pentagon videoconference with Petraeus March 8.
Who Cares What’s Actually Happening?
The Dems have a problem–how to lose a war without being blamed for it. They pulled it off in Vietnam, but I hope that they can’t do it again.
What’s curious is that congressional Democrats don’t seem much interested in what’s actually happening in Iraq. The commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, returns to Washington this week, but last week Pelosi’s office said “scheduling conflicts” prevented him from briefing House members. Two days later, the members-only meeting was scheduled, but the episode brings to mind the fact that Pelosi and other top House Democrats skipped a Pentagon videoconference with Petraeus March 8.
Who Cares What’s Actually Happening?
The Dems have a problem–how to lose a war without being blamed for it. They pulled it off in Vietnam, but I hope that they can’t do it again.
What’s curious is that congressional Democrats don’t seem much interested in what’s actually happening in Iraq. The commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, returns to Washington this week, but last week Pelosi’s office said “scheduling conflicts” prevented him from briefing House members. Two days later, the members-only meeting was scheduled, but the episode brings to mind the fact that Pelosi and other top House Democrats skipped a Pentagon videoconference with Petraeus March 8.
Reality-Free Zone
Mark Steyn, on VPI:
I think we have a problem in our culture not with “realistic weapons” but with being realistic about reality. After all, we already “fear guns,” at least in the hands of NRA members. Otherwise, why would we ban them from so many areas of life? Virginia Tech, remember, was a “gun-free zone,” formally and proudly designated as such by the college administration. Yet the killer kept his guns and ammo on the campus. It was a “gun-free zone” except for those belonging to the guy who wanted to kill everybody. Had the Second Amendment not been in effect repealed by VT, someone might have been able to do as two students did five years ago at the Appalachian Law School: When a would-be mass murderer showed up, they rushed for their vehicles, grabbed their guns and pinned him down until the cops arrived.
But you can’t do that at Virginia Tech. Instead, the administration has created a “Gun-Free School Zone.” Or, to be more accurate, they’ve created a sign that says “Gun-Free School Zone.” And, like a loopy medieval sultan, they thought that simply declaring it to be so would make it so. The “gun-free zone” turned out to be a fraud — not just because there were at least two guns on the campus last Monday, but in the more important sense that the college was promoting to its students a profoundly deluded view of the world.
Can I Plug Mine In?
Now here’s a solar panel installation business I could really get into:
It’s a two-piece bikini with photovoltaic film strips attached strategically to various parts of the clothing, so that you can charge your gadgets while you’re catching some rays. Better yet, the charging takes place via those rays.
We’re Saved
Thank goodness we have smart and gracious celebrities generous enough to take time out from their busy lives to fly around the country in executive jets and provide the little people like us with proper instruction on wiping our @sses.
I wonder if she’ll use a whole roll herself, but buy teepee offsets?
We’re Saved
Thank goodness we have smart and gracious celebrities generous enough to take time out from their busy lives to fly around the country in executive jets and provide the little people like us with proper instruction on wiping our @sses.
I wonder if she’ll use a whole roll herself, but buy teepee offsets?
We’re Saved
Thank goodness we have smart and gracious celebrities generous enough to take time out from their busy lives to fly around the country in executive jets and provide the little people like us with proper instruction on wiping our @sses.
I wonder if she’ll use a whole roll herself, but buy teepee offsets?
Bedlam Revisited
Some thoughts on our unwillingness to force treatment or confinement on the dangerously mentally ill. Of course, it’s a fine balance of civil liberties:
No one who knew him seems surprised by what he did. On the contrary, dorm chatter characterized him explicitly as a future school-shooter. One of his professors, the poet Nikki Giovanni, saw him as a disruptive bully and kicked him out of her class. Other teachers viewed him as disturbed and referred him for the ubiquitous “counseling”–an outcome that is ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness and akin to “treatment” for a patient with metastasized cancer.
But even that minimal care wasn’t given. The shooter didn’t want it and no one tried to force him to get it. While it’s been reported that he was involuntarily committed to a “Behavioral Health Center” in December 2005, those reports also say he was released the very next morning. Even if the will to segregate an obvious menace had been in place, the legal mechanisms to provide even temporary “warehousing” were absent. The rest is terrible history.
That is not to say that anyone who pens violence-laden poetry or lets slip the occasional hostile remark should be protectively incarcerated. But when the level of threat rises to college freshmen and faculty prophesying accurately, perhaps we should err on the side of public safety rather than protect individual liberty at all costs.
If the Virginia Tech shooter had been locked up for careful observation in a humane mental hospital, the worst-case scenario would’ve been a minor league civil liberties goof: an unpleasant semester break for an odd and hostile young misanthrope who might’ve even have learned to be more polite. Yes, it’s possible confinement would’ve been futile or even stoked his rage. But a third outcome is also possible: Simply getting a patient through a crisis point can prevent disaster, as happens with suicidal people restrained from self-destruction who lose their enthusiasm for repeat performances.