Bookworm Room

If you are, as I am, one of the Anchoress’s fans, you’ll want to know that she has a new home page.  It’s great, because it’s got a clean, new look, while still having the same wonderful Anchoress.

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Mr. Bookworm happily told me that Sarah Palin’s career is now over.  The fact that she ran a “cross hair” ad that referenced Giffords means that she’ll never work politics in this country again. When I started to recite the facts (Obamas’s “enemies” and “gunfight” rhetoric; the common use of “target,” “bullseye,” and “cross hair” [...]

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One of those who died was nine year old Christina Greene.  I am not superstitious (far from it), but I find it somehow especially tragic that she was born on September 11, 2001.

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Everything the media said in the first go round was wrong. Giffords dead — wrong Shooter an Afghan vet — wrong Shooter a Tea Partier — wrong Shooter inspired by the right wing — wrong What is right is that the shooter was manifestly insane, His writings and videos are scary stuff, and it’s clear [...]

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“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” – President Barack Hussein Obama I posted this as a comment to Book’s previous post, but have now posted it independently as a challenge to all of us Bookworm salon aficionados. Here’s the premise: virtually all the political violence that has happened in America [...]

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My daughter came home from a school dance — a dance especially for the 13-15 year old crowd — saying that the boys were vying to “freak” dance with a friend of hers.  I went ballistic. “You’re not allowed to freak dance.” “I know, Mom.  And I didn’t.” I believe her.  But I also believe [...]

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My sincerest condolences to Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’ family and friends.  What a horrible tragedy.  My thoughts are also with the others who were shot during this massacre. UPDATE (11:49 a.m. PST):  Five seconds ago, Breakingnews.com tweeted that she might still be alive: Update: Conflicting reports about Giffords – Reuters now reporting she’s alive and in [...]

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When I blogged about Capt. Owen Honors, I made the point that we cannot have delicate flowers in the military.  Moral, decent people — yes.  Delicate people — no.  It turns out that at least some of the gays and lesbians serving on the USS Enterprise fully understood this point.  Kudos to those men and [...]

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Right Wing News has the 40 most obnoxious quotes liberals uttered in 2010.  It makes for amusing and infuriating reading. And while you’re checking RWN out, take a second and look at Ed Driscoll’s photo essay which shoots to pieces the whole “Obama is cool” meme.  You have to feel a bit sorry (NOT) for [...]

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A lot of people look at laws that are hard to enforce and say, “let’s get rid of those laws.”  The three major recipients of this line of reasoning are drugs, prostitution and illegal immigration.  People ask, “Why criminalize these inevitable behaviors, especially since criminalizing them draws into the law enforcement net people who seem [...]

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Thirty years ago, I went to England through my university’s junior year abroad program.  Although I had visions of walking across Cambridge’s or Oxford’s sun-dappled lawns, I actually ended up in the north of England.  My disappointment swiftly turned to pleasure when I discovered that the north of England was much more “English” than the [...]

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The Council has spoken and I have to admit to being very gratified by the outcome: Council Winners *First place with 2 2/3 votes! – Bookworm Room — What’s the matter with Mexico? Second place with 1 1/3 votes – VA Right-Filibuster Change May Put Sarah Palin on Supreme Court Third place *t* with 1 [...]

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Quick question.  In a comment on another thread jj already has decided that the Republicans are not going to do what they were elected to do.  I’m not ready to pass judgment, but I fear and suspect this will be the case.  So, my question, especially to the Tea Party members, is this –  if the [...]

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I did something today that I’ve never done before:  I talked back to my 88 year old mother.  Despite my post caption, I didn’t actually yell at her, but I did scold her soundly.  The problem was that she gave voice to the straw that broke this camel’s back.  That straw was the complaint that [...]

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A graphic explanation for why I don’t get anything done.

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Dafydd, at the inestimable Big Lizards, weighs in — intelligently, of course — on Mexico’s problems with narcoterrorism and its own military.  I think this is a perfect companion piece to my own post about Mexico.

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My daughter’s 8th grade history class is studying the Constitution.  With the Republican House’s plan to inaugurate its majority by reading the Constitution aloud, I had a little talk with her about the Constitution. Me:  Can you tell me what the Constitution is? Daughter:  It’s a document that tells the government what to do. Me:  [...]

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I’ve been going through some of my old blog posts since I’m still thinking about pulling them together into a book (yeah, that’ll be the day).  It’s been fun to peer back into time and see what was going on in the world and in my life.  One of the things I found was a [...]

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Even as Mark Twain gets bowdlerized, those of us who pay attention can find deep wisdom from the dead white men.

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I can never tell if I like this song on its own merits or because it reminds me of a very happy time in my life.  Either way, here it is:

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I’ve noticed lately, in talking to liberals, that their frontal lobes have been taken over by the Tea Party.  Sadly, when I say this I don’t mean that they’ve embraced the Tea Party’s commitment to smaller government and greater individual freedom.  I mean instead that the idea of the Tea Party sits in their brains, [...]

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Today, the GOP takes over the House.  The New York Times is not pleased and wrote what is quite possibly the most ungracious editorial ever.  How can you top this for snark: Those who had hoped to see a glimpse of the much-advertised Republican plan to revive the economy and put Americans back to work [...]

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Up until two weeks ago, my contacts with Mexico had been very limited.  When I was four, my parents spent a day in Tijuana, at which time I allegedly stood in the middle of the mercado and cried out “I want to go back to my own civilization.” Fast forward 20 years, and I went [...]

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Oooh!  Alliteration.  Did you catch all that alliteration in my post title?  Not as good as “Seven silver swans swimming softly,” or W.S. Gilbert’s “It’s the song of a merry man, moping mum, whose soul was sad and whose glance was glum, who sipped no sup and who craved no crum, as he sighed for [...]

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