Author: Don Quixote

Even the most libertarian portion of my brain recognizes that there must be some taxes for a modern society to function at all.  Given there have to be some sort of taxes, I’ve always thought the inheritance tax was one of the more reasonable ones.  The person from whom the

Charles commented to yesterday’s post that Obamacare and Medicare were different, in that Medicare is for the elderly who, because they are bad risks, cannot get health insurance.  This is, of course, true, though there are plenty of people who are not elderly, but who are nevertheless high risk and

Two topics that seem to go together: One, as a group, Americans 50 and over are more conservative than those under 50.  Yet our primary lobbying group is the AARP, which is run by leftists.  How do the Bookwormroom readers feel about this?  Are there any moves afoot to replace

A favorite liberal tacticis to take something they disapprove of and make it prohibitively expensive.  They did it with nuclear power and they are doing it with the death penalty.  They’ve used the rather odd logic that it might be okay to kill criminals, but it would be cruel to

Friend of USA pointed out something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately — the incompatability of the various groups that form the leftist alliance.  Gays and feminists have made common cause with a religion that stones gays and keeps their woman as burqa-clan slaves.  Hardcore, America hating socialists vote with

Is anyone reading in the Bookwormroom persuaded by Obama’s religious freedom argument for the ground zero mosque?  Do you think Obama’s and his party’s prospects will be harmed by his and their support for the mosque?  Personally, I suspect this is a potentially very powerful issue.  My position is that I’ll

I mentioned yesterday that I’m in trial.  The trial is in San Jose and I’ve spent a lot of time in the last three weeks walking the six blocks or so between the state superior courthouse and the federal courthouse (my boss is staying at the hotel right across the street

I’m an attorney and I’m three weeks into an exhausting trial (is there any other kind?).   Watching witness after witness take the stand and being absolutely certain that at least some of them are lying got me to thinking.  I’ve known several attorneys in my day who would not hesitate to

The question is simple.  In the long term, will the oil let loose in the Gulf be a temporary setback or the rationalization for permanent changes in our energy infrastructure?  Certainly, the left will use the spill/leak to argue that all off-shore drilling should be banned forever.  But they were

I promise to move on to a completely different topic tomorrow, but I want to finish off this series topics that kind of go together.  On January 1, 2009, Johannes Mehserle, a San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer shot and killed an unarmed black man named Oscar Grant

Several of the comments to yesterday’s entry noted, correctly, that people with guns can be roughly divided into law abiding citizens who own and use guns for law abiding purposes and criminals who use guns for criminal purposes.  Several pointed out, correctly, that the inner cities (of places like D.C.

Don Quixote here, since Bookie appear to be back to her iPhone.  As you may know I’m a libertarian on social issues and a conservative on economic and military issues.  I believe in a very broad definition of freedom and a vigorous defense of those freedoms.  But the one issue on

I see Bookworm has found a computer, so I’ll save my contributions for another day, but I do have a quick question.  The other morning on the news scroll at the bottom of the screen of my favorite morning news show, this appeared: “Elena Kagan will be confirmed today as

Don Quixote here.  For those who don’t know, I’m Bookworm’s friend who blog-sits when she is off on vacation or otherwise unavailable.  I’m not nearly as well read as Bookworm and don’t blog at all except to help her out.  But what I do mostly here is throw out an

I think I’m going to take a break from thinking for a while.  Thanks, Bookworm, for letting me share this blog with you and thanks to all who commented and made me feel like the thoughts were worth expressing.