Tuesday morning link round-up

Oh, my gosh!  Did I find interesting stuff this morning.  I haven’t swirled it around in my brain enough to be able to offer intelligent commentary, but I did want to share with you what I read.  As always, in no particular order:

The NRA has hired some brilliant news spokespeople.  I’m a huge fan of Colion Noir and could learn to love Dom Raso and Natalie Foster.  We know that the Left will demonize them, but good luck demonizing them successfully.  These people are, if you will pardon the expression, bullet proof.

Two links to one of my favorite milbloggers, America’s First Sergeant at Castra Praetoria.  First, congratulations to him for being ranked as one of the Top-Notch Sites for Military Servicemembers.  Do I, a non-Marine, get to say “hoo-rah!”  And second, I always love his reminiscences about his father, who sounds like an upstanding guy and a great character.

Yes, we’ve all heard that line from The Princess Bride:  “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  It’s a funny line, except when Kathleen Sebelius, America’s Health and Human Services Secretary — meaning she’s in charge of implementing ObamaCare — manifestly has no idea what the word “insurance” means.  Megan McArdle schools her, but I fear it’s a case of too little, too late.

I’m someone who, when wrong, apologizes.  It makes me feel better, as if I’m square with myself and my world.  Apparently for others, not apologizing makes them feel exactly the same way.  The fact that we even have choice between apologizing and not apologizing is what happens when we do away with JudeoChristian morality, both of which ask for a little repentance, even if it doesn’t make your navel feel good.  If only more people would read Dennis Prager on the Bible’s help in providing an objective standard of right and wrong, moral and immoral, just and unjust.

Ironically, despite how terrible America’s economy is, it’s still better than the economy in other places.  Kevin Williamson therefore believes that, if we can just make ourselves look even marginally attractive, capital will come here.  I don’t see our dysfunctional Democrat-run political system achieving that goal.  The one thing I find fascinating is that conventional wisdom was wrong again:  the media and Ivory Tower types assured us that the EU’s and the Chinese’s “socialist capitalism” wasn’t a dysfunctional oxymoron but was, in fact, the path for the future.  Now, when it’s too late, The Atlantic offers an explanation for the Euro’s pathetic failure.  Why do people still listen to these morons?

Breitbart reports that more and more newspapers are going behind paywalls.  My own SF Chronicle (by which I mean that paper that used to come to my house every morning for years) just did that.  I, like many, chose not to subscribe.  I realized instantly that I don’t miss it.

There’s something about holier-than-thou Leftists and other people’s money that’s just too tempting.  The uber-Leftist College of Marin has discovered careless fingers waltzing through its foundation.

Syria just keeps sinking further and faster.  The Telegraph looks at an 8-year-old boy who has defaulted into being a rebel, since his only surviving family member is an active duty rebel.  This isn’t the same as those African nations that intentionally conscript children into the military (as Iran did during the 1980s), but it’s so terribly sad.

The IDF tells the story of a young woman who was raised in an ultra-Orthodox, anti-Zionist home, but came to love and believe in Zionism, and to put her life on the line for it.

Thomas Sowell points out what all of us keep saying:  the government keeps track of gun crimes, but not guns used to prevent crimes.  It’s high time that changed.

And that’s all for now.  I’m going off to cogitate.  Please feel free to use the comments to add to this list of interesting stuff.