SURVEILLANCE UPDATE: Democrats Propose Compromise to Expand Government Surveillance.
Archive for 2007
August 1, 2007
AS EUROPE MOVES TO THE RIGHT, some American politicians are moving to the left. Is this a good idea? “We should not race to the place that Europe is trying to get away from.”
Now that the fact that peacekeeper troops have sex with local women has been publicized, there’s more pressure on the UN to end, or at least regulate, the practice. The latest complaints come from Ivory Coast, where Moroccan peacekeepers are accused of having sex with local teenage girls. . . .
The UN would like the entire matter to go away. There is already a shortage of peacekeepers, and broadcasting the fact that sexual activity will be monitored by civilian aid workers does little to encourage troops to volunteer.
Alas, the troops can’t emulate this solution: “The foreigner aid workers often have sex with local women, but more frequently they do so with each other. That’s safer, given all the AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases going around. But the peacekeeper units tend to be all-male, and generally from countries where homosexuality is not tolerated.”
OBAMA: Invade Pakistan! “Obama said that as commander in chief he would remove troops from Iraq and put them ‘on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.'”
UPDATE: Nick Schweitzer says “I told you so.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: Some related thoughts on Obama.
ROBERT BLUEY: Ethics bill puts Mitch McConnell on the spot.
ROLLING STONE says that ethanol is a scam. “The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn’t that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after “solutions” that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.”
Yes. There may be some value to ethanol made from cellulose and other waste biomass, but corn-based ethanol is just liquid pork. Nice to see there’s agreement on this across a wide ideological spectrum. (Via Kudlow).
Bob Zubrin tells me that we can make methanol, as opposed to ethanol, more easily from waste biomass. Even kudzu. That sounds promising.
WALL STREET JOURNAL PUBLISHER GORDON CROVITZ on the Murdoch takeover.
Our podcast interview with Crovitz from earlier this year can be heard here.
FLAT TAX COMPETITION in Eastern Europe.
FROM POPULAR MECHANICS: A look at the ten worst disasters of the 20th Century.
Plus, advice on disaster preparedness and survival.
IN THE MAIL: Zoltan Barany’s Democratic Breakdown and the Decline of the Russian Military.
LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELD: A look at the declining status of TV anchors.
IT’S NATIONAL RASPBERRY CREAM PIE DAY: “You can probably thank the National Raspberry Council for that one. It certainly goes over better than National Raspberry Colonic Month, last practiced in 1924.”
CONFERENCEBLOGGING: The panels here are good — most people think that this conference gets better discussions than AALS — but to me the highlight of any conference is the schmoozing. Had fun hanging out with a bunch of interesting folks last night including yet another blogger, Gail Heriot of The Right Coast, who spoke on affirmative action yesterday. And Brannon Denning, who counts as a blogger since he sometimes guestblogs here and at Concurring Opinions.
MCCAIN’S ONLY HOPE: Turning against the media?
CHILDREN’S AUDIOBOOKS for long car rides.
Austin Bay is a novelist and nonfiction author (author of The Wrong Side of Brightness and A Quick and Dirty Guide to War), blogger and host of Pajamas Media’s Blog Week in Review. He and his daughter spent part of this summer following the route of Austin’s great-great-grandfather in the Civil War, shooting video and working on a book project tentatively entitled Eli’s War.
They passed through Knoxville, and we managed to have dinner with them. Join us for a talk about war, history, and family. You can listen directly — no downloading needed — by going here and clicking on the gray Flash player. You can also download the file and listen at your leisure by clicking right here, and you can get a lo-fi version suitable for dialup by going here and selecting “lo-fi.” And, of course, you can get a free subscription via iTunes — never miss another episode!
This podcast was brought to you by Volvo USA. Music is by Doug Weinstein’s band, XTemp.
July 31, 2007
GUILTY PLEA: “A Somali immigrant the government says plotted to blow up an Ohio shopping mall pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to provide material support to terrorists.”
MOOSE LAWYERS: A moose represented my sister once. Mind you, moose lawsuits can be pretty nasty.
DAVID LAT LOOKS AT Big Law and Big Politics.
NERD-ON-NERD VIOLENCE: With lightsabers. There’s video.
FRED BROWN points out some heroes.
A TAX REVOLT in Indiana.
FREE SPEECH AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY.
Crop prices are high, driven in part by a huge demand for corn to make ethanol, which squeezes the land available for other crops and raises their prices as well. Democrats took over Congress last year, vowing to show they’re the financially responsible stewards their Republican predecessors were not. And President Bush asked Congress to direct the subsidies to the smaller, family farmers that politicians love to claim they support.
So, given this confluence of events, what did House Democrats do? Not much. Last week, under heavy pressure from farm organizations and fearing for the survival of Democratic freshmen from rural districts, they pushed through a business-as-usual farm bill that largely extends the current subsidy system for five more years. . . .
Most of the big money goes to just five crops: corn, wheat, cotton, soybeans and rice. The usual justification for the largesse is that farmers would go out of business without it. If that’s so, how do you explain that many other crops do quite well with little or none of the government help that goes to the favored five?
In addition to boosting just a few crops, the subsidies also favor a tiny sliver of the largest farms and agribusinesses: The top 10% of recipients get nearly three-fourths of subsidy payments, while the bottom 80% of recipients divide up a scant 12%.
Like the song says: “Welfare for white folks.” Make that rich white folks, mostly.