Bookworm Room

I’ve got a new post up at the PJ Tatler: For the past few days, the internet has been buzzing about two amazing self-defense stories, each involving young people.  The first to hit the wires was the story of 19-year old Sarah McKinley. On Christmas Day, McKinley’s 58-year old husband died of cancer, leaving her [...]

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Not only is this a beautiful example of self-defense (watch Derek Mothershead move in smoothly, disable the robber’s gun hand, and throw a powerful left hook haymaker at the robber, landing him on the floor), I just love Mothershead’s money quotation about this serial criminal: If he wants money.  Get a job.  Work, like everybody [...]

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I never thought there’d come a day when I’d agree with Andrew Sullivan, but I just saw a pig fly by outside my window, so this must be the day.  He and Megan McArdle have differing views about the appropriate response when you see your boss raping a child.  Here’s Sullivan’s response to someone’s suggestion [...]

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In the wake of the horrific child abuse scandal roiling Penn State, many have been trying to understand how Sandusky’s predatory behavior could have continued unchecked for so long.  The focal point of this “how could this happen” question is the fact that Mike McQueary actually witnessed an assault.  Rather than rearranging Sandusky’s face, McQueary [...]

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The headline was “FBI lists Juggalos on gang watch list.”  I was very confused.  The FBI put a song on a gang watch list?! A little investigation, revealed my error.  “Juggalos” is not the same as “Juegalo.” The latter is a great song: (Or see here.) The former is a group of young people who [...]

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The Obama administration is headed for a big showdown with judicial accountability next year. Let’s look at the dance list thus far: 1. The “Fast and Furious” gunwalker scandal, involving potential collusion from the top of our government to funnel automatic weapons and explosives to drug cartels operating within and actively undermining a friendly government. [...]

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As I suspected, things were not as they seemed — or, more importantly, as the women claimed.  Here’s the follow-up for you, if you’re interested.

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Pedophilia is an up and coming subject, as pedophiles strive to become mainstream.  In an article about Dr. Earl Bradley, a convicted pedophile, Fay Voshell makes an incredibly important point: Dr. Bradley’s behavior is illustrative of the sort of things a pedophile does to his victims, including sometimes killing the child he rapes, sodomizes, or [...]

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I was thinking about prison yesterday.  Someone was telling me that his son, a student at San Francisco State University, had a teacher who announced, “I’m not going to make any pretense of being unbiased,” and then handed out a book about the evils of prison. My response was that, while prison isn’t a great [...]

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My daughter started high school at our local public high.  It’s a great high school.  It’s got a beautiful facility, high quality staff, all the bells and whistles you can think of, an involved parent body, and a whole lot of very nice kids.  I always knew all that, but I had that information reinforced [...]

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This is quite the Saturday.  Not one BUT TWO of my friends have been published today at American Thinker. Navy One, who blogs at The Mellow Jihadi, and has for years been a Bookworm Room visitor, has a great piece there, a rumination (and book review) about Navy life, non-Navy life, and dogs.  In keeping [...]

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It turns out that one of San Francisco’s premier sexual harassment attorneys enjoys a little S&M fun on the side.  So much so that he likes to run Craig’s List ads seeking women who like it rough: His lawyer, Stuart Hanlon, said the women had all come to Hoffman’s Van Ness Avenue apartment to engage [...]

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There is a story that Josef Stalin, hearing mention of the Pope, asked dismissively ““How many divisions does the Pope have?”  The quotation, if true, is compelling, because it perfectly illustrates the Leftist viewpoint that the only power is that which comes at the point of a gun.  The notion of moral behavior and moral [...]

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A man died while in the act of raping an elderly woman: The Refugio (reh-FYOO’-ree-yoh) County Sheriff’s Office identifies the man as 53-year-old Isabel Chavelo Gutierrez. Sheriff’s Sgt. Gary Wright says the incident happened June 2 after he rode two miles by bicycle from his home to that of his 77-year-old victim in the tiny [...]

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You guys are all connected to the news, so I know that you already know about the Supreme Court decision forcing California to release up to 46,000 prisoners because of the appalling conditions in California prisons.  As a California resident, I’m less than thrilled about the fact that people who ought to be behind bars [...]

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Britain, apparently, has solved the puzzle of criminal recidivism (H/T Melanie Phillips of the Spectator). I know that this story provides us with a most important clue as to the greater disease that afflicts Western Civilization. I really just don’t know what to do with this story, so I am passing it on to all [...]

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Bradley Manning got into some unknown type of dispute with his prison guards and ended up having to sleep in the buff for seven hours!!!  Are you outraged?  Or, like me, are you giggling at the fact that this story actually made the news? The lawyer for an Army private suspected of giving classified material [...]

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If you’re a Mikado fan, you know the source of my post title: The song came to mind because of two stories today, both of which left me wondering whether the punishment fit the crime. One story you may already have read:  an Iraqi living in Arizona was convicted of 2nd degree murder for intentionally [...]

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As the younger citizens limit their involvement to videotaping a crime in progress (“Oooh, won’t this look cool when I show it to my friends”), a 71 year old grandmother, Ann Timson, acts with extraordinary — and effective — courage: You can read more about Timson here.

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The Archbishopric of Canterbury used to be a pretty important job.  The guy who held that position, going back to the earliest Middle Ages, was the premier leader of the English church, whether that church gave allegiance to Rome or the British Monarch.  The current Archbishop, Rowan Williams is, as best as I can tell, [...]

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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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The media does hysteria well.  It’s about the only thing it does well. It hysterically accused Palin and Beck and Limbaugh and the Tea Partiers of being complicit in mass murder despite a few readily known and very salient facts:  (1) the absence of a single quotation that can be attributed to any of those [...]

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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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Life can be tough when you break the law.  The people who murdered Annie Mae Aquash discovered this fact when they were arrested and tried for murder 35 years after killing Aquash.  Sara Jane Olson, an SLA terrorist during the 1970s, discovered that when her quiet, suburban life in Minnesota was revealed and she spent [...]

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I don’t see Harry Reid having the political umph to pass the DREAM Act, but I also never imagined back in 2007 that Barack Obama would be President, so what do I know? I do know that I have a problem with the DREAM Act, and that’s despite the fact that there are some very [...]

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