FORTUNATELY, they’ve ruled out terrorism.
Archive for 2008
April 18, 2008
A SUSPICIOUS DEATH in Texas?
A PINCH OF SALT IN THE WOUNDS: The decline in first-quarter revenue was 10.6 percent, ‘the sharpest drop in memory.’ That’s saying something: Pinch has already reduced the value of his media company by more than two-thirds since becoming prime minister of Times Square. Berlusconi’s media company actually makes money. In Italy, no less.”
“RESTAURANT QUALITY:” Because it’s from a restaurant! Just in case you thought the kind of ads that James Lileks makes fun of died out in the 1970s.
MICKEY KAUS: “How guilty does the pro-O HuffPo feel about breaking the news that made Obama’s week miserable? Very, to judge by the compensatory pile-on of ABC-bashing on her home page after Gibson and Stephanopoulos’ persistent questioning of Obama.”
NORAD RELEASES 9/11 tapes.
ALL SORTS OF PEOPLE are rallying to Mark Steyn’s support.
A NEW TYPE OF COMPUTER MEMORY, using nanotechnology.
WELL, THIS IS NEWS: “Today, Rep. Sue Myrick (NC-9) called on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to revoke former President Jimmy Carter’s passport. This is in response to the former President traveling to Syria to meet with Hamas, an organization officially designated by the United States as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.”
HOW OBAMA fell to earth. “When Obama began this ride, he seemed like a transcendent figure who could understand a wide variety of life experiences. But over the past months, things have happened that make him seem more like my old neighbors in Hyde Park in Chicago.”
UPDATE: Debategate! “Obama seems to think he’s running against Stephanopoulos now.”
5.4 EARTHQUAKE hits Illinois / Indiana. Bob McCarty felt it and blogged it. Here’s the USGS page.
UPDATE: A reader emails to ask if I felt it — apparently it was felt further away than Knoxville. I don’t know. I remember hearing what I thought was thunder last night, but I didn’t note the time. It was probably just thunder.
ANOTHER UPDATE: USGS link above is no good now. Try this one instead. And Gateway Pundit reports a partial bridge closure due to earthquake damage in St. Louis.
MORE: Ann Althouse felt it.
GROWING PLANTS in lunar soil: “An Esa-linked team has shown that marigolds can grow in crushed rock very like the lunar surface, with no need for plant food.” Good. Plus this: “The last decade has seen a revival of interest in Moon exploration after years of neglect.” Also good.
April 17, 2008
DANIEL HENNINGER: “Remember the culture wars? This week the Democrats sued for peace.”
BARACK AND the bomber.
If we’re judged by those with whom we associate, here’s a question:
Would you rather be associated with a ’60s radical who plotted to bomb the Pentagon and to this day believes, as he said a few years ago, “I don’t regret setting bombs; I feel we didn’t do enough,†or would you rather be associated with — slight pause, please — Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)?
That was the rather bizarre scenario raised by Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) at Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia. . . . But wouldn’t Coburn be more comparable to Ayers if he, Coburn, had bombed abortion clinics in the past — and then said that he not only did not regret bombing the clinics but wished that he had done more? And then, after bombing abortion clinics and refusing to express regret, he held a political event in his home for Barack Obama, which Obama attended?
And if all that had happened, would Obama say it wasn’t a problem because Coburn had bombed those clinics a long time ago, when Obama was just 8 years old?
Read the whole thing. Interestingly, I don’t think Coburn has weighed in. But Tom Maguire has!
UPDATE: Obama, Bill Ayers, and Bernadine Dohrn.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Meanwhile, some background on Bill Clinton’s Weather Underground pardons.
TWO WARS IN IRAQ?
PRESS SECRETARY TO THE RESCUE: “At 4:15 p.m. on Wednesday afternoon, Lee Pitts, the spokesman for Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), saw an unusual e-mail message pop up on the corner of his computer screen: ‘Please call 911 for me,’ the subject line said.” (Via Michael Silence).
ED CONE IS TALKING ABOUT PROSTATE CANCER, and he’s discovered that a lot of other people want to talk about it, too.
IF YOU MISSED IT ON XM SATELLITE RADIO EARLIER TONIGHT, you can hear PJM Political online for free at the link.
PAUL CAMPOS BECLOWNS HIMSELF YET AGAIN, and Brian Leiter pinches the red rubber nose. And it squeaks! “Paul Campos is obviously upset that every member of the legal academy knows him as the poster boy for contempt for the First Amendment rights of state university professors, and so he does what any reputable academic would do under the circumstances: lies through his teeth.” That’s been my experience with Campos as well. Plus, the last time he savaged me he managed to misspell my name, which seems consistent with his usual floppy-shoed degree of thoroughness. . . .
Small-town people of modest means and limited education are not fixated on cultural issues. Rather, it is affluent, college-educated people living in cities and suburbs who are most exercised by guns and religion. In contemporary American politics, social issues are the opiate of the elites.
Heh.
I’VE MENTIONED DAVID BARON’S EXCELLENT BOOK, The Beast in the Garden, on several occasions. Over at ChicagoBoyz, there are lengthy posts on it here and here, along with some thoughts on the recent cougar shooting in Chicago and the rather silly, if predictable, public reaction thereto.
CINDY MCCAIN’S SECRET SHAME: Megan McArdle on recipegate.
CAR LUST: The deep pleasures of the AMC Gremlin.