Two for the morning — and an Open Thread

I’ve never understood what the big deal is with inert landfill.  Whether what lies under the ground is a pile of dirt and rocks, or some inert garbage seems to me to be perfectly irrelevant.  I understand that, if the garbage creates toxic byproducts, that should be addressed (and it is addressed with liners), but I also think that if it creates methane, which is useful, that should be encouraged, not discouraged.  Rich Trzupek adds flesh to my instinctive sense of all things garbage.

Also, you’ve probably heard by know about the ex-AP writer, Deborah Phelan, who is horrified that conservatives are meeting in Marin.  Phelan seems to be unclear on a couple of Constitutional points, since she attacks conservative’s right to assemble and complain about government policies, and she believes militias are inherently evil.  Let me refresh her recollection with a couple of useful quotations from the first to Amendments to the United States Constitution (emphasis mine):

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Amendment II

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.

By the way, at the time the Founders enacted the Second Amendment, a militia was understood to be a citizen troop that existed to protect the citizens, not just from localized crime and danger, but from the federal government itself.

As for me, I’m beginning to think that Phelan did Marin conservatives a huge favor, both by helping to advertise the Groupa-Palooza (which I’ll have to miss because of commitments to kid activities) and by exposing to more people how ludicrous opposition to conservative thinking is.

Uh . . . make that three for the morning, as Steve Schippert warns us not to become complacent about China.  Let’s just say that China (a) has values entirely antithetical to Western democratic notions and (b) it doesn’t believe in power sharing.