Bookworm Room

I’ve always appreciated the sentiments behind this song:

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Victor Davis Hanson sums everything up in one paragraph: The president is pushing legislation that a clear majority of the people dislike, and whose details neither he nor his supporters can explain in simple language. Its ends-justify-the-means passage will require legislative gymnastics that border on the unconstitutional, and in Orwellian fashion are designed to reassure [...]

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Ed Whelan, writing at The Corner, has a list of Congresspeople whom you may want to contact before Sunday’s vote: The “(S)” means that the member voted for the Stupak amendment last fall. The full House phone directory is here. “Yes” on Obamacare Last Time but Might Want to Switch: Gabrielle Giffords, (D., Ariz.)—202-225-2542 Ann [...]

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[I'll be updating over the course of the day, so check back in.  Last updated at 2:55 p.m. Pacific Time, daylight savings version.] John Hawkins assembles a damning collection of quotations about the health care bill . . . from Democrats! Amazing, really amazing, cakes. Thomas Lifson finally says it:  Obama is Captain Ahab.  Hard [...]

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“Back in World War II, we viewed the Japanese as ‘yellow, slant-eyed dogs’ that believed in different gods,” he told the magazine. “They were out to kill us because our way of living was different. We, in turn, wanted to annihilate them because they were different. Does that sound familiar, by any chance, to what’s [...]

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An anarchist who believes in militant action was deeply offended when that action landed on her own doorstep (emphasis mine): An ex-vegan who was hit with chili pepper-laced pies at an anarchist event in San Francisco said Tuesday that her assailants were cowards who should direct their herbivorous rage at the powerful – not at [...]

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Louis XIV, a despotic monarch, famously said L’etat c’est moi — I am the state. Obama is inching in that direction.  He clearly does not see himself as part of a constitutional republic.  Instead, he views America’s “winner takes all” approach to elections, not as a two party process that’s designed to create a stability [...]

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A friend sent me the following email, one that he in turn received from someone else.  What do you think of this proposal?  My problem is that I think there are some incumbents we should hang on to at all costs (Cantor and Ryan spring most readily to mind), but I certainly appreciate the sense [...]

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I needed to take care of family business this morning, and am only now indulging myself with news and blogging. As a wonderful place-holder, please read Soccer Dad’s take on a subject I’d actually asked him about:  the belief amongst Democratic, but pro-Israel people (such as Jeffrey Goldberg, at the Atlantic) that Obama isn’t just [...]

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It seems that, just as Pat Paulson was the perennial presidential candidate, I am the inevitable second place winner.  I’m not complaining.  I like it there.   But it is a little funny that second place is the spot I keep falling in.  Oh, and about those winners?  They’re really, really good. Winning Council Submissions First [...]

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You’ve all heard by now about the 2300 “reconciliation” bill that the House won’t vote on but will simply deem passed, thereby, in a completely unconstitutional way, making the bill a law.  (Ahem.) But did you know that Pelosi has been busy sticking in more than just student loan relief so that we can have [...]

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From Code Red: 1) Congressman Chris Carney (PA-10): PHONE – (570) 585-9988 | EMAIL – http://www.carney.house.gov/contact.shtml#email | WEBSITE – http://www.carney.house.gov/ Vote on the House Bill: YES Current Status: UNDECIDED 2) Congressman Steve Driehaus (OH-01): PHONE – (513) 684-2723 | EMAIL – https://forms.house.gov/driehaus/webforms/issue_subscribe.htm | WEBSITE – http://driehaus.house.gov/ Vote on the House Bill: YES Current Status: UNDECIDED [...]

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Some things are timeless, and I think Sir Francis Bacon, writing almost 500 years ago, pretty much nailed what constitutes an intellectual and a wit:  “Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.” In modern English, an intellectual can be described as someone who is extremely well read.  He [...]

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Last week, I did a post about the news stories that followed in the wake of the conservative Groupa-Palooza gathering the heart of liberal Marin County.  I focused especially on one San Francisco Chronicle reporter who was shocked by a shirt one of the attendees was wearing: Regarding that last, let me add a few [...]

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I went to church yesterday, as I periodically do when one of my children performs at a church service.  Since I don’t take communion, I can sit in the pew and watch people as they file back from the experience.  Some look businesslike, some contemplative, some uplifted and some, interestingly, look self-righteous.  It’s the latter [...]

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Family commitments meant that I spent, perhaps, 5 minutes at my computer this weekend.  That wasn’t what I’d planned, but that was what I ended up with.  In today’s news cycle, of course, two days can be the equivalent of two decades.  Certainly, when I turned the computer on this morning and checked out the [...]

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Hours spent shopping with the kids — it’s times like this that I’m sorry I’m not a drinker, ’cause I could use some liquid help right now. I HATE shopping!!!

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Kim Priestap explains.  This one is definitely worth reading.  We are witnessing mob rule, with the bizarre twist that the mob is the government itself. And Michael Ramirez, with one picture, has the last, best word.

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Jeffrey Goldberg catches Andrew Sullivan making egregiously erroneous statements about Israel’s history, this time by publishing at his site a series of maps that purport to show that Israel has no claim to most land she now holds: The first map in the series of four is most egregious. It suggests that, in 1946, nearly [...]

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I don’t know what paper this came from, but it looks real: UPDATE:  A friend sent me the original link.  It’s real.

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Pride can make us do very stupid things.  Once we’ve committed to something (a job, a marriage, a principle, whatever), and once we’ve touted that commitment to the world as the most wonderful thing evah, it is extremely difficult to stand up to that same world and admit “I made a mistake.” I’ve been thinking [...]

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Here’s a list of the biggest spenders in California politics for the past decade: These 15 groups spent more than a combined $1 billion over the past 10 years to influence public policy: – California Teachers Association: $211.8 million – California State Council of Service Employees: $107.4 million – Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America: [...]

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Just wanted to direct your attention to Deroy Murdock’s article about the crooked accounting in Obama Care.  It’s one of the clearest explanations I’ve seen yet of the chicanery that the Democrats are using to try to fool the American people, even as they create plans that will inevitably make the American economy collapse.

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As everyone should know by now, House Democrats are contemplating doing away entirely with a vote on the Senate bill, and simply announcing that they’ve passed it.  After all, why shouldn’t the Constitution bow down before their overweening statism?  Steve Schippert, a veteran, has unloaded both cannons against this attack on core American values and [...]

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