Bookworm Room

Before I say anything else, I have to say just one thing to Don Quixote for the incredible posts he did at this blog while I was away:  THANK YOU!!! I didn’t just leave the blog in good hands; I left it in the best hands.  Now I’m back, though, and all of my blog [...]

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First of all, thank you so much to all of you who have paid the Bookwormroom a visit while Bookworm has been gone.  A special thanks to all of you who have taken the time to add your comments.  Bookwormroom readers are the most intelligent, thoughtful and informed people I know, and I appreciate how [...]

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Environmentalists invariably start their arguments by asking what kind of world we are going to leave for our children.  But I’ve always thought the greatest sin we’ve committed against our children is living far beyond our means and leaving it for them to pick up the tab.  I believed this in the 60s, when I [...]

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Lazy Saturday and so I’ve got an easy series of questions for everyone.  Who do you think will be the Republican nominee for President in 2012?  Why?  Who do you want to be the nominee?  Why, and if the two answers differ, why don’t you think your candidate will make it?  Finally, is there any [...]

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In yesterday’s comments, Spartacus has a novel, and very interesting, idea on how to restrain government spending.  I commend it to your reading and I suspect you will be intrigued by it. I’ve been toying for years with a much simpler solution and I’d like your thoughts on it.   Our government (especially at the federal level, but this [...]

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Even the most libertarian portion of my brain recognizes that there must be some taxes for a modern society to function at all.  Given there have to be some sort of taxes, I’ve always thought the inheritance tax was one of the more reasonable ones.  The person from whom the money is taken no longer [...]

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Charles commented to yesterday’s post that Obamacare and Medicare were different, in that Medicare is for the elderly who, because they are bad risks, cannot get health insurance.  This is, of course, true, though there are plenty of people who are not elderly, but who are nevertheless high risk and cannot get health insurance.  I [...]

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Two topics that seem to go together: One, as a group, Americans 50 and over are more conservative than those under 50.  Yet our primary lobbying group is the AARP, which is run by leftists.  How do the Bookwormroom readers feel about this?  Are there any moves afoot to replace the AARP leadership?  Alternatively, has [...]

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A favorite liberal tacticis to take something they disapprove of and make it prohibitively expensive.  They did it with nuclear power and they are doing it with the death penalty.  They’ve used the rather odd logic that it might be okay to kill criminals, but it would be cruel to hurt them while we are [...]

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Friend of USA pointed out something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — the incompatability of the various groups that form the leftist alliance.  Gays and feminists have made common cause with a religion that stones gays and keeps their woman as burqa-clan slaves.  Hardcore, America hating socialists vote with pro-American, relatively conservative blue collar [...]

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Is anyone reading in the Bookwormroom persuaded by Obama’s religious freedom argument for the ground zero mosque?  Do you think Obama’s and his party’s prospects will be harmed by his and their support for the mosque?  Personally, I suspect this is a potentially very powerful issue.  My position is that I’ll respect Islamists right to religious [...]

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I mentioned yesterday that I’m in trial.  The trial is in San Jose and I’ve spent a lot of time in the last three weeks walking the six blocks or so between the state superior courthouse and the federal courthouse (my boss is staying at the hotel right across the street from the federal building).  This [...]

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I’m an attorney and I’m three weeks into an exhausting trial (is there any other kind?).   Watching witness after witness take the stand and being absolutely certain that at least some of them are lying got me to thinking.  I’ve known several attorneys in my day who would not hesitate to encourage their clients to lie.  [...]

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The question is simple.  In the long term, will the oil let loose in the Gulf be a temporary setback or the rationalization for permanent changes in our energy infrastructure?  Certainly, the left will use the spill/leak to argue that all off-shore drilling should be banned forever.  But they were basically saying that anyway.  The [...]

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I promise to move on to a completely different topic tomorrow, but I want to finish off this series topics that kind of go together.  On January 1, 2009, Johannes Mehserle, a San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man named Oscar Grant in front of dozens of [...]

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Several of the comments to yesterday’s entry noted, correctly, that people with guns can be roughly divided into law abiding citizens who own and use guns for law abiding purposes and criminals who use guns for criminal purposes.  Several pointed out, correctly, that the inner cities (of places like D.C. and Oakland) are areas of [...]

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Don Quixote here, since Bookie appear to be back to her iPhone.  As you may know I’m a libertarian on social issues and a conservative on economic and military issues.  I believe in a very broad definition of freedom and a vigorous defense of those freedoms.  But the one issue on which I have trouble sticking [...]

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Starting in an hour or two, my access to the computer will be hit-and-miss.  I don’t know if there will be computers where I’m heading on vacation, and iPhone blogging is surprisingly tiring.  Seeing only that little screen and typing only with my thumbs seems to suck up a lot of mental energy.  This, therefore, [...]

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I’m iPhone blogging and I can remember my HTML code, so you’ll have to forgive the ugly linking. All I can say is that Rick’s post about Time Magazine’s article on the Ground Zero mosur is a perfect snapshot of the drive-by in action: lies by commission and omission, carefully massaged truths and insults. I [...]

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I see Bookworm has found a computer, so I’ll save my contributions for another day, but I do have a quick question.  The other morning on the news scroll at the bottom of the screen of my favorite morning news show, this appeared: “Elena Kagan will be confirmed today as Supreme Court justice.”  The statement [...]

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Just random stuff that’s so good you shouldn’t miss it: Shirley Sherrod’s been on a roller coaster.  Thanks to a video snippet that Andrew Breitbart posted, she got pilloried as the face of Leftist/NAACP racial intolerance.  When it turned out the snippet was out of context, she got sanctified as the face of true racial [...]

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The votes are in at the Watcher’s Council and the winners have been chosen.  I didn’t get a chance to link to these posts when they were mere submissions, so now is my time to urge you to read them, since they are excellent (as always): Council Winners First place with 2 1/3 votes! – [...]

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Don Quixote here.  For those who don’t know, I’m Bookworm’s friend who blog-sits when she is off on vacation or otherwise unavailable.  I’m not nearly as well read as Bookworm and don’t blog at all except to help her out.  But what I do mostly here is throw out an opinion or a question and encourage [...]

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Watch.  Enjoy. Hat tip:  Danny Lemieux

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MaryAnn Phillips is a truly good person.  And she got what she deserved.  So often, good deeds go unrewarded that it’s really nice when the opposite is true.

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