Bookworm Room

In Germany, images of Hitler are (or, at least, were) very tightly controlled, lest that profoundly evil man give offense to some or inspire others.  It turns out that, in America, some think we have a political leader whose image needs to be hidden too.

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Paul Kengor writes a eulogy for The New Republic — or, at least, for Martin Peretz’s thoughtful, well-argued publication.  In fact, its glory years were few.  I subscribed to it for many years, and started having trouble taking it seriously when Andrew Sullivan started his tenure as editor.  He hadn’t yet gone off the deep [...]

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Ricky Gervais distinguished himself well yesterday by savaging the same people who usually savage us, the ordinary Americans.  The video makes for somewhat uncomfortable viewing, since the victims of Hollywood’s barbs are usually sitting anonymously in theaters and living rooms, not in the same room in which the insults are being issued.  Hollywood’s stars expected [...]

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Hat tip:  small dead animals

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Back before Obama’s health plan passed, I said to BW that if it ever passes we’ll never get rid of it.  People will start to see it as an entitlement, and you know how hard entitlements are to get rid of.  Sure enough, opposition is rapidly easing.  So now what do we do?

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Here they are (or there they were, since a few days have passed since these results came out): Council Winners *First place with 4 votes! – Bookworm Room –Progressives live in the past when it comes to shaping the message Second place with 3 votes – Joshuapunditt-The Constitution War Third place with 2 votes – [...]

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Here in the real world, everyone wants a piece of me.  I am running out of pieces. I’d like to blog, but those pieces of time and brain are already taken.  Perhaps you can do better than I.

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The University of Oregon has created a new job title:  sustainability coordinator.  What’s that you ask?  It’s this: The position exists to harmonize the efforts of various environmental groups on campus in much the same way the Multicultural Center director works with the university’s multicultural student unions. This is a volunteer job for a student [...]

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I’ve heard that when the Constitution was read in the House, very few Democrats stayed to hear it.  Does anyone know who the Democrats were who did stay?  And has anyone approached them about changing parties?

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All of us griped about the pep rally quality the “memorial” service had.  Many chided Obama for not being the grown-up, and requesting, in a short sentence, that people remain silence.  It turns out that Obama wasn’t just passive, he was complicit in the applause.  You won’t believe this.  You really won’t.  This kind of [...]

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   DQ here.  The current Reader’s Digest uses freedom of religion to argue for the Ground Zero mosque with the following sentence in the concluding paragraph of the six-page article:  “From the Islamic perspective, freedom to worship is part of the divine plan.”  In which Muslim-dominated countries is this divine plan implemented?    I added [...]

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From Sadie, about a Civic Literacy test: Elected officials who took the test scored an average 5 percentage points lower than the national average (49 percent vs. 54 percent), with ordinary citizens outscoring these elected officials on each constitutional question. Here’s a link to the quiz. I scored a 93.94%, ’cause I missed two of [...]

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Have you heard of Team Rubicon?  I hadn’t until yesterday, but I can tell you that it’s an organization you’ll want to know about.  Check it out.  As a certified wuss with a narrow physical comfort zone, I have no words to express my admiration for these volunteers.

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I really enjoyed the beginning of this opinion piece from the Guardian: When Barack Obama addressed a shocked nation in Tuscon, Arizona, yesterday, he deployed the only weapon left to a crippled presidency: the power of rhetorical cliche. He deployed it brilliantly. “Together we thrive,” he cried meaninglessly. “For all our imperfections, we are full [...]

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Small Dead Animals notices something interesting:  the crime stats in Sheriff Dipstick’s county, as compared to Sheriff Arpaio’s county, are appalling.  Appalling that is, assuming you’re a law abiding citizen and not a criminal.  If you’re a criminal, they’re pretty darn good. My only question is whether the lousy sheriff caused the bad stats, or [...]

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I don’t have problems with calling things by their true names.  So, I don’t think Palin erred in using the correct phrase — blood libel — to describe the heinous rhetorical attacks leveled against her. Barry Rubin does an excellent job explaining precisely why her word choice was so accurate. Jews have suffered inordinately from [...]

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Ed Morrissey writes about yet another homegrown jihadist, this one in Pennsylvania.  The only thing that distinguishes this story about a man who wants to use his Islamic faith as a reason to commit mass murder is the defense his family is mounting:  the 21-year old has Asperger’s, they say.  I know a lot of [...]

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The virtue of the media’s post-Tucson shooting attacks was that they were so blatant.  It was easy to challenge them because they bore no relationship to objective reality. What’s harder to deal with are the attacks that fly below the radar.  You know the attacks really exist but, sometimes, if you converse with a Progressive [...]

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Almost thirty years ago, just after college, I got a summer job in a hospital administrative office, filling in for a gal who was on maternity leave.  One of the guys in charge of that office looked, to my fevered young eyes, just like Tom Selleck.  He wasn’t very nice, he wasn’t very educated, and [...]

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I’ve been quiet so far about the President’s speech and the memorial service, but I’m sufficiently irked by the praise being heaped upon it (praise measured by the Left using the standard of insults to Palin) that I’m not going to be quiet any more. First, contrary to the hype from both sides of the [...]

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Okay, to be precise, this was a former Marine, but it was still a Marine to the rescue, in the wake of a street shooting in San Francisco’s Mission District.  As a witness wrote: Hey. I live right at 20th and Dolores. I ran out the door on Friday night when I heard the poor [...]

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J.E. Dyer writes about the way in which Obama, having joined with those who sought to destroy American norms and institutions, may finally realize that he’s crawled to the top of a possibly worthless heap — and one that he helped reduce to that level. Michelle Obama Malkin points out that college students don’t have [...]

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Some saw Iowahawk is a comedic genius.  Some (myself included) would agree: Hat tip:  Soccer Dad

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The other day I said I was trying to find a good analogy for the Left’s sudden demand for civility in speech (ignoring the fact that we know that they’d redefine “civility” for themselves so as to render it meaningless).  Jonah Goldberg’s got it (emphasis mine): The false equivalence between what the Left was doing [...]

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A couple of days ago, I posted a YouTube video made up entirely of tweets from Palin haters.  It was a classic “unclear on the concept” thing, as the tweeters, in response to their perception that Palin’s “hate speech” caused the Tucson shooting, tried to top each other with vivid and obscene fantasies about Palin’s [...]

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