Bookworm Room

Melissa Clouthier put me on notice of a cool site which aggregates news from all fifty states.  It’s called NewsFifty.  In these devisive political times, with red and blue states drifting further apart (and some newly blue states coasting back to red), a site such as NewsFifty is a very useful tool.

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Omri Ceren, who blogs at Mere Rhetoric, is a member of the Watcher of Weasels Council.  He is as good a blogger as one can get, and someone with a real gift for ferreting out the truth behind the story.  So it was no surprise that Omri, using what he describes as simple due diligence, [...]

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In the 1980s, I was quite the Patrick Swayze fan, admiring his looks, his physique, and his adequate acting chops.  Although I outgrew that youthful infatuation, in the last few years I’ve become an even bigger fan, since I admired his valiant fight against cancer.  Sadly, the cancer finally won:  Patrick Swayze passed away today, [...]

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There are several distinct targets when Islam is in charge, two of which are women who offend honor concepts and apostates (that is, those who leave Islam for another religion).  For both, the punishment is death.  We’ve heard a lot about honor killings recently, so I won’t rehash that here, but it might be worth [...]

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Just a quick thought: Whenever I do a post about the fact that Brits complaint vigorously about the terrible care they frequently get in hospitals, I always get a comment to the effect that American patients also have bad experiences.  That’s true.  We do have bad experiences.  However, for the most part, we have recourse:  [...]

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Bruce Kesler sent around an email asking whether we thought victory was possible in Afghanistan.  My reply was that I don’t think the Democrats can conceive of victory as a possible outcome.  As I wrote to him, I’m the child of parents who fought in WWII and the Israeli War of Independence.  Although they were [...]

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Did you know that there is a place called the Naval Safety Center?  There is.  In Norfolk, VA.  Did you know that the Center has a website?  It does.  Here.   And did you know that, every week, the website runs the most amazing photos you’ve ever seen of people doing really unsafe things?  It does.  [...]

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I actually have paying work today (a good thing), but it makes for slow blogging (a bad thing).  Here are a few interesting links from a limited number of sources: Lies and the lying presidents who tell them about health care. Democrats play the race card (about which I’ll have more to say later). My [...]

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I’ve got two quick environmental links for you today.  The first has to do with pollution.  You know that I’ve said at this blog all along that cap-and-trade is stupid, not only because it will destroy America’s economy, but because the really big up-and-coming polluters are China and India.  Turns out I was wrong:  they’re [...]

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There is no bliss inherent in the ignorance displayed by one judge in England: A judge lambasted a rapist for claiming his victim was a liar – then commended him for becoming a muslim. Judge Anthony Goldstaub QC sentenced Stuart Wood for seven years for the attack, then told him: ‘You have turned to Islam [...]

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I watched this short video that I found at Michelle Malkin’s site: As I watched this video, I had this very weird feeling that something was deeply, deeply wrong with this protest.  It looks wrong. I’m a child of the Vietnam era, and I’ve managed to keep my eye on the news — and the [...]

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Mark Steyn is on to Obama’s game: But, for the sake of argument, let us concede the president’s current number of 30 million [represents the president's decision to delete 17 million illegals from his count]. In order to do something for the 10 percent of the population outside the current system, why is it necessary [...]

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The nature of conservatism is to be . . . well, conservative.  We don’t throw paint on people.  We don’t burn figures in effigy.  We don’t bite off fingers.  We put our heads down and do our jobs.  So when two million conservatives (and independents) take the time, the energy and the money to converge [...]

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In honor of our first rain this season (after a couple of years of drought) and of our first thunder and lightening storm in eight years, some videos.  (And NO, I haven’t forgotten about the March in Washington, I’ve just been out this morning and haven’t been tracking it.  I’ll try to blog later.) Let’s [...]

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“You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.” — Abraham Lincoln Obama lies, and lies, and lies again. Sometimes he lies directly, and sometimes he lies by having his administration [...]

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The current administration seems bound and determined to forget 9/11.  To this end, it grovels before those who wish to kill us, disarms those who wish to protect us (our military, our CIA), frees those who have raised their hands against us, and tries to turn 9/11 into a socialist worker’s holiday.  That may be [...]

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The Wall Street Journal unsheathed its editorial knives in a slashing attack against the President’s health care speech.  Some examples, although I really recommend that you read the whole thing: The thing about the bully pulpit is that Presidents can make the most fantastic claims and it takes days to sort the reality from the [...]

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Earlier this year, San Joaquin County was horribly shaken when 8-year old Sandra Cantu was kidnapped and murdered.  It was even more shaken when it turned out that the murdering rapist was a woman.  The San Joaquin County prosecutor’s office today announced that it would seek the death penalty against Melissa Huckaby, the woman charged [...]

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I enjoyed the way in which James Taranto summed up — and eviscerated — Obama’s innocuous suggestion that mandatory insurance is entirely akin to uninsured motorist insurance: In his speech to a joint session of Congress last night, the president offered what presumably was meant to sound like an innocuous, or at least reasonable, analogy: [...]

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I met Lauren when I was at law school. She was still an undergraduate, but roomed with a friend of mine who had been one of her sorority sisters. The very first time I met Lauren, she’d been experimenting with hair colors, and had hair that was this beautiful combination of all sorts of different [...]

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I first did this 2996 project post regarding Lt. Brian Ahearn in 2006.  I could have picked someone new this year, but I’ve conceived a very strong affection for this good and honorable man, and I’d like to continue recognizing him on my blog.  Without further ado, I present Lt. Brian Ahearn: Lt. Brian G. Ahearn [...]

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One of the most frightening things about a nanny state is the way in which it saps each citizen’s ability to care for him or herself.  While others may have been hurling imprecations at President Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, I reserved my bile for a nanny state that left thousands of people [...]

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From Andrew Breitbarth’s new site, Big Government, comes a staggering expose of corruption at a Baltimore ACORN office: Do you think anyone in Eric Holder’s office is listening?

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Here was the story in today’s paper: Religious fanatic held in Aeromexico hijacking An Islamic religious fanatic briefly hijacked a jetliner from the beach resort of Cancun as it landed in Mexico City Wednesday, police said. All passengers and the crew were released unharmed. The Koran-carrying hijacker used a juice can he said was a [...]

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I was listening to some Cole Porter the other day, and it occurred to me that some of his songs have a rather creepy quality to them. Stalking love: Obsessive love (yucky recording, but you’ll get the point): And masochistic love: And yet they’re all such lovely songs. Speaking of lovely, here’s the beautiful Cyd [...]

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