Dale Franks over at QandO has an excellent piece on global warming and public policy. My problem with the idea of making policy decisions based on what we know now about global warming is that, before you can solve a problem, the dimensions of the problem have to be defined, then a clear-eyed look at […]
In the biggest waste of scarce journalistic resources in the history of mankind, the New York Times has hired a perfume critic. The New York Times announced today the appointment of Chandler Burr as its first columnist to review and rate fragrances. Mr. Burr, a longtime magazine writer and the author of "The Emperor of […]
Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth had an op-ed piece published in the Jerusalem Post earlier this week condemning Hezbollah for its "Indiscriminate Bombardment" of civilian areas within Israel using katyusha rockets. Why did so many Lebanese civilians lose their lives to Israeli bombing? The government line is that the IDF was doing the […]
Well, it turns out the judge that ruled the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program unconstitutional, immoral and high in saturated fats has a connection to one of the groups that brought the lawsuit -- the ACLU. Some legal ethicists interviewed said yesterday that while Taylor's role as a trustee at a nonprofit group supporting the ACLU […]
There's an old saying that goes something along the lines that you shouldn't wrestle with pigs because all that ends up happening is you get dirty -- and the pig likes it. Taking that into account, I'm going to keep my comments on the post below to a minimum and here's the minimum. First, it's […]
A couple weeks back I slammed the East County Democratic Club for sponsoring a showing of the 9/11 conspiracy movie "Loose Change." If you ever wanted evidence that the nutroots are not to be trusted with national security, then their embrace of a film which blames a massive conspiracy for the 9/11 attacks and not […]
I finished reading Prof. Stephen D. Cooper's book "Watching the Watchdog: Bloggers as the Fifth Estate." The book isn't written for popular appeal. At its core, the book is a college textbook on media criticism -- a very good college textbook. However, good textbooks don't necessarily make for something that's going to fly off the […]
Early on I noted that despite their feelings on the legality of the NSA's terrorist surveillance program, legal scholars almost unanimously panned the opinion as heavy on rhetoric and light on the law. I also thought it was worth noting how two of the nation's most respected newspapers thought about the opinion. Demonstrating once again […]
On this week's edition of "Fox News Watch," host Eric Burns closed the program with the bit of news that more Americans could identify the Three Stooges (leaving Curly Joe and Shemp out of the calculation) than could name the three branches of government. Fine. There's a good number of people in America who are […]
An op-ed in yesterday's Hartford Courant by David Medina proved once again that I'm far too sane to get a job as an editorial writer at a newspaper. Medina's article is a call to ban stun guns. Fair enough. That's certainly a position that is debateable and not outside the mainstream of public opinion. I […]