Bookworm Room

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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One of the things I hate about our culture is the way in which it cheapens the notion of heroism.  To me, a hero is one who puts his safety, or even his life, on the line, to protect others.  It’s that simple.  There are people who are altruists, which is also very virtuous, but [...]

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I was very surprised to see an AP wire story reporting that Islamic militants (as opposed to mere “militants” or “insurgents”) were holding “Christians” (as opposed to mere “people”) hostage.  Even more surprising, the AP reported that the Islamic militants were probably affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq, an entity one apparently couldn’t acknowledge during [...]

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When I’m in a strange down, I frequently rely on Yelp to help me find a decent eatery.  Turns out I shouldn’t.  Turns out I should delete Yelp from my iPhone entirely.  It’s not a peer review forum, it’s a shakedown operation.

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I arrived in England months after Peter Sutcliffe, the terribly brutal “Yorkshire Ripper,” had been arrested.  His last victim had been killed around the corner from the apartment in which I was to live for a year.  Although I was happy and felt safe where I lived, only once did I walk down the road [...]

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Last year, an Oakland transit police officer, Johannes Mehserle, killed Oscar Grant, in a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station.  Grant was being, to put it mildly, obstreperous.  Mehserle’s defense is that he meant to taser Grant but, instead, shot him.  Video footage made at the time indicates that Mehserle did indeed make a terrible [...]

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There are two storm warnings I want to give you, one of which requires action on your part, the other of which, depending on where you live, falls into the “sit, watch, and thank God you’re far away” category. First warning:  Drastic cuts to the military, courtesy of Bawney Fwank, that noted military expert.  (And [...]

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I have to boast just a little bit.  Despite driving for more than thirty years, I’ve never had a moving violation.  I have heard, however, that if the highway patrol pulls you over for speeding, it’s no defense to point to the traffic passing you and the officer by, while exclaiming, “But everybody is speeding.”  [...]

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When I was in law school, one of my classmates was a lovely man who had decided to go to law school after several years as a police officer in Oklahoma.  I forget the context of our conversation, but he once told me that, in law enforcement, you never shoot to wound.  Shooting is binary.  [...]

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A few things have crossed my radar this morning that I hope you’ll find as interesting as I did: Is Michelle Obama depressed?  One of my friends thinks she is.  That is, she thinks Michelle has moved beyond anger and arrogance and landed in sheer misery.  She sent this link along as an example of [...]

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I did my duty as a citizen today, when I left bright and early and headed up to the local courthouse.  Although it was a profoundly boring day, it was also an interesting experience.  You see, despite many years of lawyering, I’ve never sat on a jury, nor have I ever been part of selecting [...]

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One of my favorite parenting tools is “the law of natural consequences.”  For example, on a cold day, I can force my older child to wear a jacket, which engenders a big fight and a lot of lingering resentment.  Alternatively, I can advise my child that it’s cold and suggest that a jacket will be [...]

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The gal’s life is sad, but the news story, at least in the first three paragraphs, is still funny: A Mill Valley lawyer was charged Thursday with breaking into a hotel refrigerator to steal yogurt, authorities said.Patience Nooney Van Zandt, 43, was booked into the county jail early Thursday morning after an incident at the [...]

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One of the reasons I started souring on liberalism a long time ago, was its insistence that manifestly crazy people couldn’t have their civil rights infringed by institutionalizing them.  (And yes, I know de-institutionalization started out from both the political left and the political right, but by the 70s, the Left, especially the ACLU, owned [...]

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By now, all people, young and old, know better than to give their credit card information out over the phone.  The thieves, knowing that this well has gone dry, have a new approach, which has them conning you into giving out the card security number.  Although this approach has been around for at least seven [...]

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One of the most basic principles of Anglo-Saxon common law is a homeowner’s right to defend himself against intruders.  Oh, wait!  That’s not quite true anymore.  In England, which practically gave its name to the notion that “a man’s home is his castle,” homeowner self-defense is against the law (emphasis mine): Myleene Klass, the broadcaster [...]

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Every year, there’s that one December weekend when every event converges.  This past weekend, which really ended only yesterday, was that weekend.  Friday we went to the Cirque du Soliel.  I’ve seen every show since the Cirque burst onto the national scene in the mid-1980s.  This show was exquisitely beautiful, with some of the most [...]

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Perhaps because they often tend to live in tightly packed urban environments, when it comes to the gun debate, liberals always forget that the cops cannot be relied upon to be there at the moment a crime is happening.  In a city it’s entirely possible that there are lots of police patrolling a small geographic [...]

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If it wasn’t in a news story, I’d actually think that this was an O. Henry story, because the ending is such a twist.  You see, it all started when a young man, walking down a dark street at night was mugged and robbed at gunpoint: A Milwaukee Army reservist’s military identification earned him some [...]

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Not a big story, not an American story, but still a story perfectly illustrative of the cultural insanity that elevates perpetrator rights over the rights of ordinary citizens: A teenage sex attacker kidnapped and raped a five-year-old boy eight days after a judge spared him custody for another rape, it has emerged. The 16-year-old, who [...]

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Aside from being unconstitutional, I somehow doubt that the following is a winning formula as far as the American voter is concerned: PELOSI: Buy a $15,000 Policy or Go to Jail JCT Confirms Failure to Comply with Democrats’ Mandate Can Lead to 5 Years in Jail Friday, November 06, 2009 Today, Ranking Member of the [...]

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The other day, the Daily Mail ran an article about the exponential increase in stranger attacks in England, a byproduct of the public drunkenness that is increasing at an even faster rate than the violence.  I still remember when England was a remarkably safe, clean little country, except in the worst neighborhoods of the biggest [...]

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