Maggie's Farm

More on Bolton's enemies: One Janice O'Connell, a Cuba apologist on Sen. Dodd's staff. Bolton was clearly targeted, like Delay, as part of the ongoing pissing contest in DC. Novak has the details. Thanks, Powerline.

Always thought the Americans with Disabilities Act was insane. Right Thinking provides more reason to think so: a day care center run by the blind. When was common sense outlawed?

Stix rips Ellison's neo-feminism, in a piece entitled This is Your Brain on The New York Times: A sample:

Feminism’s contradictions. Back in the 1970s, feminism routinely condemned motherhood. But in recent years, yuppy feminists have discovered that children can be status symbols, just like expensive cars and summer homes (or at least, time-shares) in the Hamptons. Having or adopting a child shows the world that you can “have it all,” even if you rarely see the tyke. After all, what are illegal aliens for? Ellison is writing on the joys of motherhood for women who either have no children, or who neglect their children, but wish to get credit for their illegal nannies’ labors. Read entire in Intellectual Conservative.

The nonsense behind those color code terror alerts revealed by Ridge.

Alien prisoners in the US: The numbers and the cost.

A Necessary War but maybe not a Good War? Wheatcroft reflects on the myths of WW11. Click here: Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Ideas / how_good_was_the_good_war

Kingdom of Heaven discussed by Chrenkoff.

PC can kill. The perils of political fashion, as outlined by Zinmeister. Click here: The American Enterprise: Political Fashion Can Hurt, Even Kill :

Just as we were assembling this special issue of The American Enterprise on political correctness, the Associated Press transmitted a story across the nation about the latest fashion in marking tests and homework at public schools. For generations, teachers have corrected answers and offered suggestions in red ink. "But that approach meant the kids often found their work covered in red," the story noted. And some parents objected. "Red writing, they said, was 'stressful.'" So schools have put red on the blacklist.

What are schools thinking? Red corrections worked for me. My self-esteem is my own problem, by the way. Plus self-respect is earned, not given. And self-esteem is a meaningless concept, psychobabble. Maybe I needed more red ink - I love incomplete sentences.

Does Al Libbi Matter? Some say not. Make up your own mind.

Zarquawi Letter: Sounds discouraged. Text here.

WaPo poll on "nuclear option" here. But who cares? Polls aren't elections. They aren't even news. They are filler, just like here.

Dean supports Sanders for Senate. Oh, man. Get real, Vermont.

Can Air America Fly on One Wing? The latest on this donor-supported broadcaster.

AARP is in in big trouble with me. A classic example of what Bird Dog wrote about last week - non-profits taking in dues and ignoring your wishes at HQ in DC. Their chief lobbyist here. These things deserve to be scandals.

Taking Putin for a Ride, #2 Welch in Reason: "For nearly 15 years, anxious Russologists like Thomas L. Friedman have urged Washington to ignore the security pleadings of the "buffer states," treat Moscow with the deference it craves, and above all else avoid waking up the sleeping bear. Bush has decisively thrown that advice into the dustbin of history. For the moment, at least, it looks like Bush was right."  Read entire. 

Behind the "Get Delay" movement: WSJ names the Leftist organizations here.

Dick Morris Predicts Condi vs Hillary. I predict that neither will be nominated.

Update on Aerospace in Jane's

Krauthammer on the Court: "Have that independence and supremacy been abused? Grossly. What other advanced democracy would radically legalize abortion by judicial decree rather than by democratic will expressed through legislatures or referendums? What sane democracy allows four unelected robed eminences in Massachusetts to revolutionize the very definition of marriage, the most ancient institution in society?

This is not just deeply undemocratic. It is politically crazy. Democracies work as stable social entities because when people are allowed to settle issues themselves by debate and ballot, they are infinitely more likely to accept the results when they lose. To deny them that participation is to risk instability and threaten social peace."  Read entire.

Adscam etc.: Good update on Canadian politics and the effect of adscam.

Who in Congress Takes the most Junkets? Not Delay.

Brawl at NYSE: The playground brawl among the boys from downtown continues at NYSE as lawsuits are filed over the proposed merger with Archipelago Holdings. It looks like John Thain and Goldman Sachs are in bed together again.

"Arianna's Blog Blows": According to LA Weekly.  Surprised?

Dems Slowly Understand Campaign Finance Reform: Yes, it is anti-free-speech. Unconstitutional, too. The solution to free speech is more free speech.

Sweden's Immigration Catastrophe: How soon will they become a Muslim theocracy? And now we have the wacko Islamist vote in the UK - thanks, Powerline.

Another Good Interview with Brian Anderson. Guess he's on the book tour.

Columbia Univ. Senate thinks it's Smarter than US Armed Forces: Damn disappointing, stupid, out-dated, and embarassing. How would they be with Al Quaida recruiting?

Anti-American Mosques in America: LGF is on the story.

Joe Klein on Hillary: He thinks she's a bad idea. But he likes her personally.

Global Cooling: Cooling could camouflage warming.

Bush Takes Putin for a Ride: Surprising photos.

Bush's Historic Speech: John at Powerline provides an excellent exegesis of Bush's Saturday speech in Latvia. Freedom is the key. One guote: "To a greater extent than any politician since Churchill, President Bush has set forth and defended his policies in a series of speeches that combine intellectual brilliance and philosophical gravity. Today's speech in Latvia was the latest in this series, and, like the others, it will be studied by historians for centuries to come."  Read entire

Facts: Two dismal facts I recently stumbled upon:

- There is one employee of the US Dept. of Agriculture for every farmer in the US.
- 1/3 of the inmates in federal penitentiaries are illegal immigrants.

The Blog Revolution: Gawker Media in the NYT. Despite all of the sarcasm in the NYT article, there is a blog revolution, and Maggie's is pleased to be one small part of it.

Sinatra's Arrogance Explained

He was in the mob. See Captain's Quarters.

Robert Sheer Exposed

By Horowitz, of course.

Freakonomics

You heard it here second. The new book by Steven Levitt.

From Dean Barnett's review:

"Levitt graduated Harvard in 1989 summa cum laude and received a Ph.D. in economics from MIT in 1994. After becoming a chaired professor at Chicago at the tender age of 35, Levitt recently won the John

THE ENTIRE PURPOSE OF FREAKONOMICS is to reveal counterintuitive and often unsettling truths. Levitt aims to show the world how it is, not how we wish it were or how the "conventional wisdom" deems it.

Levitt knew that exposing such truths would cause no small amount of offense in numerous quarters. In one chapter sure to make enemies, Levitt asks, "What do school teachers and sumo wrestlers have in common?" The answer: Both groups are willing to cheat. I don't want to ruin all the fun and describe how Levitt reaches his almost undebatable conclusion, but one must admire the audacity of a man so willing to stand up to both the teachers' unions and sumo wrestlers."

Read entire review.

Venezuela Follies

Chavez sends troops to protect his oil industry. I can hear the words to his mother: "Mom, when I grow up I want to be just like Fidel."

Religion and Politics

I believe there is no issue, except pure partisan warfare. New England Patriot has a good piece:

"The new liberal talking point is that Republicans, led by conservatives, seek to blur the lines between separation of church and state. Liberal Democrats like Howard Dean and Al Gore have given us a primer on what is ahead in the next election cycle - those who oppose abortion, gay marriage or euthanasia are religious zealots."  Read entire.

And More on the Subject from Taranto

Non-believer Taranto supports the religious right:

"One can disagree with religious conservatives on abortion, gay rights, school prayer, creationism and any number of other issues, and still recognize that they have good reason to feel disfranchised. This isn't the same as the oft-heard complaint of "anti-Christian bigotry," which is at best imprecise, since American Christians are all over the map politically. But those who hold traditionalist views have been shut out of the democratic process by a series of court decisions that, based on constitutional reasoning ranging from plausible to ludicrous, declared the preferred policies of the secular left the law of the land."

Read entire interesting piece. - and the companion anti-  piece by Hitchins.

Dartmouth Insurgents: The ongoing excitement.

What Next for Britain's Tories?: Wheatcroft in WSJ.

Piling on Jane Christensen: The holocaust-denying History Prof who teaches that 9-11 was done by Zionists. Hey - tenure doesn't protect you from criticism or mockery.

New Pope "too Catholic," says Media: Just found this.

A Sad Day for Texas: State bans sexy cheerleading. Lighten up, people.

Iraq: I don't post much on Iraq. War's over, good guys won. They have the first elected government in their history. But Instapundit is on Al Quaida's current woes. Seems like their only remaining boosters are in the American Left, all 14 of them.

Bob Herbert: Powerline is on the job, exploring Bob Herbert's hearsay-based smear of the US military in Iraq. Look out, Bob. If you rathered the story, ie screwed up your due diligence because of a desire to believe, John will call you on it, big time.

More on the Great Horowitz: David H. is doing a great service for all of us. He is a man on a mission, and his Academic Bill of Rights has been effective in smoking out the covert fascists and the latent fascism among the academic Left. Here.

Pelosi Hypocrisy: Captain's Quarters also on the job, as usual. Guess what, Delay isn't the only sleaze in DC - big surprise.

More Frank-Bashing: We enjoy making sport of Thomas Frank, and so does Mac Johnson - who does a better job of it than we do. But then again, he is such an easy target, it almost feels cruel.

Pat Robertson is a Skunk Stinking up the Tent

So says A Moderate Voice.  Pat does tend to be one of those folks who make Conservatives look silly, if not creepy. Fortunately, the Liberals have their own barnyard full of loonies.

The Barrister

"Do you think the Repubs still think they're in a debate, when what they are really in is a shooting war with real bullets?"  Damn good point. Read yesterday's post by him - scroll down.

Vietnamese Capitalism

Chrenkoff, with a Vietnam Mastercard ad:

Ejecting American imperialists out of the country: 2 million dead

Building communist utopia: 1 million refugees, hundreds of thousands of "reeducated" political prisoners, basic human rights suppressed, economy ruined while the rest of Asia is thriving

Admitting after three decades that your stupid communist policies have failed and the experiment is just about over: priceless.

David Limbaugh Saying What we Know

"Just as when John Kerry masqueraded as a hawk on national defense and the Michael Moore/Howard Dean wing of the party stayed right on board with him, Hillary has virtual immunity for any such apostasies. Why? Because they know she'll always be a card-carrying, hardcore liberal no matter how much she pretends otherwise." read entire.

Oh Man. Not another finger?

Here. Yuk. But let's see. On average, 10 fingers per person, and 296,000,000 Americans - so call it 3,000,000,000 fingers in the US. No wonder some of them go missing once in a while.

VDH, "On Being Disliked"

"Last year the hysteria about the hostility toward the United States reached a fevered pitch. Everyone from Jimmy Carter to our Hollywood elite lamented that America had lost its old popularity. It was a constant promise of the Kerry campaign to restore our good name and "to work with our allies." The more sensitive were going to undo the supposed damage of the last four years. Whole books have been devoted to this peculiar new anti-Americanism, but few have asked whether or not such suspicion of the United States is, in fact, a barometer of what we are doing right — and while not necessarily welcome, at least proof that we are on the correct track."

My comment: What "allies"? Germany - two wars against them. France - two rescues. Allies?

Read entire.

Brit Nanny State and Schools

How wonderful to live in a place where adults can be children, and the State can do all your thinking for you. Brit school bureaucrats complain about parents' involvement in schools.

And the US Public Schools vs. Charter Schools

Debra England:

"Despite wave upon wave of touted educational “reforms” over the past several decades, this failed government monopoly has succeeded in producing a sclerotic bureaucracy that has flatlined American K-12 academic achievement for the past 35 years.  Interestingly, this same timeframe has seen the birth and rapid growth of modern teachers’ unions and a nationwide explosion in average annual per pupil spending, which has more than doubled since 1970 - from $4,700 to roughly $10,100 today in constant dollars. Basic economics tells us that when expenditures increase by more than 100% while outputs remain unchanged, we are witnessing a huge productivity decline in the public education sector. Money is clearly not the problem"

Read entire.

"We're smart, you're dumb" Politics

Gelerntner, via RCP.

Steyn: Blair will win, but...

"At one level, Tony Blair is an absurd figure: In the jurisdiction he's supposed to be governing, the hospitals are decrepit and disease-ridden, crime is rampant in the leafiest loveliest villages, in the urban areas politics is fragmenting along racial and religious lines, and the IRA have been transformed with the blessing of Blair's ministers into the British Isles' homegrown Russian Mafia. But, in the jurisdictions for which he has no responsibility, Blair flies in and promises to cure all. He's particularly keen on Africa: Genocide? AIDS? Poverty? Don't worry, Tony's got the answer. He can't make the British trains run on time, but he can save the world." Read entire Steyn piece.

Nuclear Energy

Is anyone opposed to it anymore, except for skittish utilities and their insurance companies?

Scopes Trial Redux

Wake up, Kansas. You make believers look like dopes. And when God needs help getting appreciation for creating evolution, I'm sure He'll ask for it.