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You got a Hummer.  You think you're hot stuff.  Heh.  That's NUTHIN'.  Get yourself an MRAP--a Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle.  Hooah! (Or Oorah! Your mileage may vary. But whatever the mileage is, it won't be very good, heh heh heh.)

The MRAP--photo credit: Lance Cpl. Charles Howard, USMC

 

At the core of our intellectual culture, the university, a very peculiar form of myopic intolerance has taken firm root.  This intolerance is aggressively, reflexively, unthinkingly "tolerant" of a dizzying range of "progressive" issues, but becomes even more aggressively intolerant when it identifies a brave (or naive) person on the "wrong" side of those issues.

Ed Morrissey at Captain's Quarters talks to a Hamline University student who was suspended for merely suggesting, in the aftermath of the Virginia Tech incident, that the university take another look at the universitty's gun-free zone policy.

This is not tolerance.  This is tyranny.

I haven't yet seen the movie Indoctrinate U. but I intend to.  From initial reviews, all those who truly, REALLY believe in tolerance should probably do so as well.

Life imitating "24?"

Yahoo News:  Obama's sister debuts as campaigner.

Yahoo News:  Airlines risk ballooning frequent flyer payout.

Lawyers want an Austrian court to declare a chimpanzee a "person."

"If we can get Hiasl declared a person, he would have the right to own property. Then, if people wanted to donate something to him, he'd have the right to receive it," said Theuer, who has vowed to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.

Austria isn't the only country where primate rights are being debated. Spain's parliament is considering a bill that would endorse the Great Ape Project, a Seattle-based international initiative to extend "fundamental moral and legal protections" to apes.

Maybe I'm just being a Neanderthal, but I think this is just silly.

Last time the Democrats took us down this stop-funding-the-war road, it ended with Cambodian killing fields and 444 Americans in an occupied embassy in Tehran.

It also gave us disco.

God help us all.

Harry Reid thinks all is lost in Iraq.

The president of the Iraqi Red Crescent aid organization wants to see the American Congress back off on withdrawal timetables.

Who's right, and who's just trying to support their preconceptions and previous worldviews?

Japan is getting ready to launch a lunar orbiter.

AXA says the SELENE project is the largest lunar mission since the U.S. Apollo program. It involves placing a main satellite in orbit at an altitude of about 60 miles and deploying two smaller satellites in polar orbits. Researchers will use data gathered by the probes to study the moon's origin and evolution.

India has its sight set on Mars.

"A mission to Mars might seem a distant dream at this juncture but it is not impossible given our considerable expertise and experience," a retired ISRO scientist told Asia Times Online. "An India-made rocket like the GSLV [geo-synchronous launch vehicle] can carry over 500-kg payload and reach Mars without a hitch," Nair had pointed out last week.

China and Russia are teaming up on a Mars mission as well.

According to the agreement, a small satellite developed by China would be launched along with "Phobos Explorer," a Russian spacecraft, probably in October 2009, the administration reported.

After entering Mars' orbit -- 10 to 11 months later -- the Chinese satellite would be detached from the spacecraft and probe the Martian space environment, it said.

In the U.S. on the other hand, private space programs are where it's at.  Burt Rutan and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic space tourism effort and Robert Bigelow's space station program are only two of the rapidly growing private space exploration efforts.

Space is still hot.

Gunman at Virginia Tech kills 32 at a residence hall and at a classroom.

The university reported shootings at opposite sides of the 2,600-acre campus, beginning at about 7:15 a.m. at West Ambler Johnston, a co-ed residence hall that houses 895 people, and continuing about two hours later at Norris Hall, an engineering building.

Some but not all the dead were students. One student was killed in a dorm and the others were killed in the classroom, Virginia Tech Police Chief W.R. Flinchum.

Not good at all.

Image via Instapundit and Rocky Top Talk.

So, there are news stories floating around that the Bush Administration wants to appoint a "War Czar" to oversee operations in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

Um . . . isn't that what we elect a President to do?