Bookworm Room

Tweet I think Al Gore must have been behind this eco-friendly housing subdivision, because it’s making money for the rich and screwing every one else: Residents promised cheaper bills to live in a multi-million pound eco-friendly ‘homes of the future’ complex say they will have to move out after being hit with sky-high electricity charges. [...]

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Tweet I think most of us found extremely disturbing the story out of Belgium telling about twin brothers in their 40s who were born deaf and were starting to go blind, and who found a doctor willing to legally euthanize them.  They weren’t sick and they weren’t suffering physically.  They just feared a future that [...]

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Tweet Barry Rubin is not a man prone to insult or exaggeration.  That’s why it means something when he says this of Obama’s nominees to the State Department, Defense Department, and the CIA: They are all stupid people. Some friends said I shouldn’t write this because it is a subjective judgment and sounds mean-spirited. But [...]

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Tweet From the first day Sen. Elizabeth Warren showed up on the national political scene, I’ve reminisced about what a dreadful teacher she was.  In post after post, I’ve noted that, while she was very nice (she is a nice lady in a one-on-one), she was totally incoherent as a teacher.  She never could seem [...]

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Tweet The following is the entire text of Frédéric Bastiat’s magnificent Parable of the Broken Window, which is as relevant today as it was when he wrote it in 1850. As you read it, please note carefully the highlighted language: Have you ever witnessed the anger of the good shopkeeper, James Goodfellow, when his careless [...]

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Tweet I recognize that my mind makes strange, often counter-intuitive connections, but as I hear Progressives rail against guns, I can’t help but think of slut walks. What?!  You don’t know what slut walks are?  Slut walks are the latest manifestation of the feminist/Progressive rule holding that a women has no responsibility whatsoever if she [...]

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We won’t change what appears to be happening with increasing frequency to our society until we decide that we will stand up and dare to speak out against the increased depravity of our culture. Definitely “uncool”, but we must do it…for all families, for the kids and for our future. Otherwise, it can only continue to get much, much worse. It is the age of the wolf.

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Tweet Approximately every ten years, Marin County floods.  Thinking back, the last big flood year in our neighborhood was around 2002 or 2003.  I remember taking the kids down from the hill on which we live to the marshy flat-lands nearby.  We waded through water that came up past our knees.  This high water was [...]

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Tweet I promise that this post will be about what Sheldon Adelson had to say in an interview with Alana Goodman of Commentary Magazine.  Before I get there, though, I need to begin with a little story of my own. Readers of my newsletter know that I had lunch last week with seven other conservative [...]

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Tweet My father, alev ha-shalom,  had forgotten more about English — his third language — than most people will ever know.  In addition to reading novels and non-fiction for pleasure, he would amuse himself reading dictionaries, grammar books, and stories about the English language.  (In that last genre, my favorite was one called Word Origins and [...]

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Tweet People in Marin have been extremely upset about the decision Ken Salazar (Secy of the Interior) made to shut down Drakes Bay Oyster Co.  The oyster company is a fixture in Point Reyes, and has been sustainably harvesting oysters for decades.  It is insufficiently pure for ObamaWorld, though, so it’s got to go: On [...]

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Tweet I adore traditional Christmas music, whether it’s the Old English Christmas Carols or the non-denominational Christmas songs that began to the music market with Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.  I’m as happy singing O Holy Night as I am singing Here Comes Santa Claus.  Christmas songs give me a huge endorphin rush. There’s one class [...]

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Tweet “Who’s Thomas Sowell?” my daughter asked. “He’s a genius,” I replied. “Why?” “Because he has the rare gift of simplifying very complex ideas without dumbing them down.” See for yourself: After listening to Sowell, my blog’s motto seems appropriate:  “Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.” [...]

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Tweet I’ve had the same ten tabs open in Firefox this entire day.  I feel like a madman, trying to create order out of the chaos in my mind.  I’m convinced that there’s a thread tying together these articles, but I can’t figure out precisely what that thread is.  Maybe it’s just that each is [...]

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Tweet In today’s news, we learned that Muslims in Libya kidnapped twelve men that they claimed were homosexuals in order to execute them: Extremists say they will execute a dozen men they allege are homosexuals, whom they abducted last Thursday at a private party in Tripoli’s Ain Zara district. A body calling itself the ‘Private [...]

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Tweet I’m not boasting when I say that I move in very rarefied circles.  It’s a fact that became glaringly obvious to me today when I started reaching out to legal colleagues via LinkedIn.  I’m launching a new business enterprise, and those connections will be useful. For those unfamiliar with it, LinkedIn is the professional [...]

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Tweet I have some very exciting news: I have found my long-lost identical twin. It’s amazing, really. Like me, my twin grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 60s and 70s. Like me, my twin went to UC Berkeley and found Leftist antics revolting. Like me, my twin now does conservative commentary, [...]

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Tweet Paul Scott challenged us to look at what Eric Garland, a Progressive blogger, has to say and to take it seriously as a way to win the White House.  Paul is right — we cannot make a convincing argument unless we know what our opponent in the argument believes.  Insulting Paul doesn’t make us [...]

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Tweet I managed to miss Sheldon G. Adelson’s pre-election op-ed piece in the WSJ about the sea change in Democrat party values, but it’s never too late to read a good editorial.  This opinion piece couldn’t change the election’s outcome, but I think it’s still worth reading, especially if all of us are committed to [...]

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Tweet My Facebook friends are besides themselves with delight about Obama’s victory.  I get that.  What I don’t appreciate is the “kick ‘em while they’re down” attitude that these enlightened people show.  Herewith, the latest offerings from the sore winners on Facebook. Progressives conflate truly stupid statements about human biology (that would be Todd Akin) [...]

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Tweet As long as our ideas live on, in some way so do we. Here’s is one of John F. Kennedy’s most famous statements:  “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Obama won the 2012 election by turning that idea upside down.  Rather than appealing [...]

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Tweet If you’re on the political Left, have we created a world without consequences?  I first started thinking this when someone I know called Bristol Palin a slut because she had a baby.  Not because she had premarital sex or got pregnant, but because she had a baby.  Girls in Marin, who are also have [...]

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Tweet In the endless parade of images that my liberal friends feel compelled to put on Facebook, this was my favorite for the day: I honestly cannot understand a mindset that says the world popularity is the metric Americans should use for electing their president.  Certainly a president who is conversant with world affairs and [...]

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Tweet I’ve got a new post up at PJ Media: In the last few days before the election, many moderate Democrats are contemplating breaking up with Barack Obama. Parting with a political party or candidate can be every bit as wrenching as severing a personal relationship with a girlfriend or boyfriend. The problem whenever one [...]

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