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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I finally figured out the Second Amendment when Hurricane Katrina struck.  I mean, I’d always known before that the police can’t be everywhere and that they often show up to mop up after a crime, because the criminal and done and gone so quickly.  The knowledge that they’re out there is certainly a deterrent to [...]

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Is it a coincidence that, the day before Hanukkah, my blog is suddenly hopping with references to the Second Amendment?  After all, Hanukkah commemorates a battle against government tyranny, something that happens only when a citizenry can protect itself. No, I don’t think it’s coincidence, especially because I just read that The Daily Caller is [...]

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Robert Avrech nails the stupidity that is gun control.  (And yes, I was once that stupid, but I’ve recovered.)  It’s pretty much a perfect post:  short, riveting, persuasive. Hat tip:  Sadie

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One of the blessings of blogging is that I’ve met so many wonderful people.  I haven’t met most of them in the conventional sense — that is, I haven’t been in the same physical space with them — but I’ve corresponded with them over the years and feel I know them as I well as [...]

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Many, many have written on this, but I like Keith Koffler’s summation the best, as I think he does a remarkably good getting to the core point about the latest twist in Fast and Furious.  He also manages to highlight why I like Rush:  Rush is not afraid to identify and accurately predict the evil [...]

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NavyOne did it — he found me someone who will hold my hand and shepherd me through the door of the local shooting range.  All that remains now is organization, and I can do that.  I’m so grateful to NavyOne; to Mike, who offered me moral courage and solid information; and to Dan, who is [...]

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The post title is a bit misleading.  I actually mean that I can’t blog now, as opposed to talk now, but it is true that I’m very, very busy with deep thoughts.  I’m working on a new project, having tons of fun, learning lots, and my mind is bubbling with ideas.  This afternoon, when the [...]

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I presented my daughter with the following scenario: Imagine that the president you elected has been in the White House for one term.  During that time, everything that indicates the health of the country is worse than when your man came into office.  Whether one looks at the economy, national security, relations with other countries, [...]

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“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s a committed gun control guy, I might have mistaken Nicholas Kristof’s NYTs column today for a perfectly realized, Iowahawk-esque gun [...]

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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 post caption is mangled version of an English expression popular in the years leading up to and during WWI:  “The Hun is either at your throat or at your feet.”  It was a reference to the fact that Germany was a deeply hierarchical, undemocratic nation, with only the haziest notions of equality. England wasn’t [...]

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In the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, the Left’s trump card has been the language in the First Amendment stating that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”  All of us correctly understand this to mean that government cannot create a state faith, nor can it dictate the religious tenets of [...]

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Although it’s been open for more than a year now, I went for the first time today to the newly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.  My visit there was an interesting contrast to my first visit, some years ago, to the newly rebuilt De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Although [...]

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This sounds rather fun: If you are skilled with a pistol, rifle or any other firearm, you could win $100,000 in prizes on season 2 of History Channel’s hit competition show TOP SHOT. Producers are looking for anyone with mind-blowing shooting skills and a big personality to take on exciting physical challenges with multiple guns [...]

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So many of my past political beliefs embarrass me.  One of the ones that I find most humiliating is the way in which I so totally bought into the whole notion of gun control.  My thinking was so simplistic:  Guns kill people, therefore guns are bad and should be outlawed.  I never could wrap my [...]

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“Logic! Why don’t they teach logic at these schools?” — C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Neither Data nor Mr. Spock, two relentlessly logical creations, could ever be liberals or Democrats or Progressives, or whatever the Hell else they’re calling themselves nowadays.  (For convenience, I’ll just lump them all together under the [...]

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This is a portmanteau post, filled with interesting things I read today, some of which come in neatly matched sets. Opening today’s San Francisco Moronicle, the first thing I saw was that an illegal teen’s arrest is causing a stir in San Francisco’s halls of power.  You see, San Francisco is a sanctuary city, and [...]

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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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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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Twenty years ago, if you had offered me the opportunity to fire a gun, I would have recoiled in absolute horror and read you the riot act.  I can still recite my standard factoids from memory, although I’m too lazy now to string them together into a coherent narrative: Guns are dangerous.  They kill people.  [...]

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One of the things that baffled me as a child was the way in which the Jews passively walked into the gas chambers.  My parents explained to me that Jews were not warriors.  Outside of Israel, Jews still aren’t warriors.  Jeffrey Goldberg thinks that’s stupid: You can’t fight a rifle or a shotgun with a [...]

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Here’s one for the embittered crowd:  While we’ve all heard about the Annenberg Challenge, I think few, if any, of us have heard about Obama’s eight years as director of the Joyce Foundation.  You’d think he would have been playing up a directorship, considering that it would prove executive experience.  Of course, perhaps it’s because [...]

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This is not a picture in America, but the top two pictures in this story illustrate perfectly why it matters that a nation’s citizens — the vast majority of whom are law abiding — can bear arms. It is also interesting to note that, while the Beeb instantly tried to paint the Israelis as killers, [...]

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Just in time for July 4th, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Second Amendment says what it means and means what it says. I personally am not now, nor have I ever been, a gun owner.  I keep meaning to go the local firing range and take lessons (operating on the principle that, since I’m [...]

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