Medary.com

Coming soon, to a theater near you the Taranto Consensus!

Well, no, not exactly.  But the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal "Best of the Web" editor James Taranto gets it right:

No doubt you are dying to know where this column stands on the flag-desecration amendment. The answer is, we are against it. Our view is that the Supreme Court got it right in 1989: Insofar as desecrating the flag is an act of political expression, it is protected by the First Amendment. (The objection that it isn't "speech" is overly literal. What we're doing now--causing pixels to form meaningful patterns on thousands of computer screens--isn't exactly speech either, but we like to think the First Amendment protects it from government interference.)

Burning the flag is a stupid and ugly act, but there is something lovely and enlightened about a regime that tolerates it in the name of freedom. And of course it has the added benefit of making it easier to spot the idiots.

Can't add much to that.  Instapundit ("To heck with blogging!  I wanna DANCE!") awoke from his usual "heh . . . indeed . . . read the whole thing" utterances to opine:

"I notice it and just think ugh, they're doing that again." Indeed. On the other hand, people who are more upset about a ban on flagburning than about McCain-Feingold are on shaky free-speech ground.

OK, Papa Glenn did slip an "indeed" in there . . .

Article in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

In 1956 the first portion of Interstate 29 was completed, but it wasn't until 1983 that the state opened the last 22 miles to make South Dakota only the sixth state to boast a border-to-border system.

For cities such as Sioux Falls, Watertown and Rapid City, it bolstered the economy and tourism.

"There is no better economic development tool than the interstate," Judith Payne, secretary of the South Dakota Department of Transportation, said Monday during a celebration of the system's 50th anniversary in Sioux Falls.

Almost all of the economic and population growth in South Dakota is within 20 or 30 miles of an Interstate highway.  Towns which were bypassed, like Huron and (to a lesser extent) Aberdeen, are struggling to survive.

This story alone takes George H.W. Bush out of the running.

If you ever thought that President Clinton gave a damn about U.S. national security, then try to explain this Wall Street Journal op-ed by former FBI Director Louis Freeh (without impugning Mr. Freeh's character, that is):

Finally, frustrated in my attempts to execute Mr. Clinton's "leave no stone unturned" order, I called former president George H.W. Bush. I had learned that he was about to meet Crown Prince Abdullah on another matter. After fully briefing Mr. Bush on the impasse and faxing him the talking points that I had now been working on for over two years, he personally asked the crown prince to allow FBI agents to interview the detained bombers.

After his Saturday meeting with now-King Abdullah, Mr. Bush called me to say that he made the request, and that the Saudis would be calling me. A few hours later, Prince Bandar, then the Saudi ambassador to Washington, asked me to come out to McLean, Va., on Monday to see Crown Prince Abdullah. When I met him with Wyche Fowler, our Saudi ambassador, and FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson, the crown prince was holding my talking points. He told me Mr. Bush had made the request for the FBI, which he granted, and told Prince Bandar to instruct Nayef to arrange for FBI agents to interview the prisoners.

Several weeks later, agents interviewed the co-conspirators. For the first time since the 1996 attack, we obtained direct evidence of Iran's complicity. What Mr. Clinton failed to do for three years was accomplished in minutes by his predecessor. This was the breakthrough we had been waiting for, and the attorney general and I immediately went to Mr. Berger with news of the Saudi prison interviews.

Upon being advised that our investigation now had proof that Iran blew up Khobar Towers, Mr. Berger's astounding response was: "Who knows about this?" His next, and wrong, comment was: "That's just hearsay." When I explained that under the Rules of Federal Evidence the detainees' comments were indeed more than "hearsay," for the first time ever he became interested--and alarmed--about the case. But this interest translated into nothing more than Washington "damage control" meetings held out of the fear that Congress, and ordinary Americans, would find out that Iran murdered our soldiers. After those meetings, neither the president, nor anyone else in the administration, was heard from again about Khobar.

Currently, only Jimmy "Malaise" Carter stands between the title of Worst President of the 20th Century and William Jefferson Clinton.  But there's still time for the "Comeback Kid" to overtake the current #1.

Oh, by the way, why isn't Sandy Berger in prison right now for stealing classified documents from the National Archive?

Small article in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader:

Statewide, a steady agriculture industry helped South Dakota post 2.4 percent growth, double the rate of the previous quarter and a full percentage point above the national average.

The 1.4 percent national growth marked a slowdown from the fourth quarter of 2005, when income grew at a 1.9 percent clip, but it was on par with the overall average of the past three years.

Say what you will about the Americans, but we're pretty good at turning former bitter enemies into some of our closest allies.

Vietnam may be taking the first steps down that path, as Fred Stakelbeck observes at TCS Daily:

What was unthinkable only a decade ago has now become reality. The U.S. and Vietnam realize that beyond the shadows of mistrust and suspicion, lie similar aspirations and values which can be used for their mutual benefit. Vietnam is determined to take its place among other Asian countries in the global economy, and views the U.S. as a key partner that can help it meet its long-term objectives. New geopolitical realities, most notably China's growing influence in Southeast Asia and the creation of regional alliances such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), will also continue to bring both countries closer together.

The continuing growth of China's power makes a more favorable strategic relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam desirable for both sides--possibly moreso for Vietnam than for America.

At the American Spectator, Paul Miller observes (emphasis added):

In Chicago Congressional lawmakers including Jan Schawkowsky (D-IL) and Danny Davis (D-IL) addressed the crowd calling for the murders in Darfur to stop. Neither of them offered any solutions to the crisis. Like every rally in America featuring leftists speakers, the crowd held signs and made statements criticizing the Bush administration for not doing anything. The fact that President Bush is the only world leader to characterize the tragedy in the Sudan as genocide is completely ignored by a crowd who view hating Bush a priority over saving lives.
. . .
I also must ask the following question to the leftists who claim they are concerned about Darfur. Why are the people of Darfur more important that the people of Iraq? You cry for an end to the tragedy and a few go as far as to call for NATO and UN intervention. But when Saddam Hussein was mass murdering Kurds your voices mostly were silent and adamantly opposed to any military action to save the those massacred men, woman and children.

Making the rounds on the Internet is this amusing little spectacle:

Steve Spengler's Pop & Mentos Fountains

 

We're planning to have some fun with this at my sister Betty's gala 4th of July Extravaganza. If I remember, we'll try to take some video.

(We're also going to a fireworks show at a local fireworks warehouse tonight--buy tonight and get 20% off. We're planning to buy $500 of fireworks this year, so the savings will be significant. Maybe we can apply that 20% to . . . MORE FIREWORKS!!! YAY!!!!)

P.S. Steve Spengler appears to spend an awful lot of time thinking about soda pop.

Hat tip:  my very own Snookums.

From GatewayPundit, a story in USA Today (additional hat tip: Right on the Right):

The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped "death vans" that shuttle from town to town.

Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China "promotes human rights now," says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van in which "Devil" Zhang took his final ride.

As GatewayPundit notes, the Chinese are strongly suspected of harvesting organs from their populace for sale in the lucrative organ transplant business. That they now have killer RV's is just way too creepy for words.

Oops, forgot the picture . . .

Chinese RV of Death

Cassandra at Tigerhawk mourns with Elton John and other like political science experts the loss of freedom in America:

It's a sad day when Hollywood artists cower in their gated mansions while George Bush's war machine crushes our precious freedoms flatter than Rachel Corrie; when the last feeble whispers of protest are drowned out by a hail of National Guard bullets:

"There was a moment about a year ago when you couldn't say a word about anything in this country for fear of your career being shot down by people saying you are un-American."

I don't know, I don't see very much cowering.

On the other hand, this reminds me to dig out my one Dixie Chicks CD, and run it over with my car a couple of times.  Possibly a Neil Young CD or two, as well, then mail the debris back to those patriotic Americans.  (Oh, Neil is Canadian?  Whatever.)  Just exercising my freedom of speech rights, don'tcha know.

Writing in Human Events Online, Cato Institute senior fellow Alan Reynolds explains (about as clearly as an economist can) why tax increases never raise as much as the politicians claim, while tax cuts actually increase the tax revenue collected:

More than a dozen highly regarded studies have shown that the amount of income reported by those facing the highest marginal tax rates is extremely sensitive to changes in those tax rates. This is measured by the "elasticity" (responsiveness) of taxable income.

Translated into English:  rich people are not stupid.  If you raise tax rates, they will figure out ways to avoid the tax.  Economists call this "elasticity."

. . .

What all this means is that cutting the top tax rate in half has resulted in much more income being reported and taxed in every country that tried it -- the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and India, for example. Some mistakenly imagined that proved the rich suddenly became richer when U.S. tax rates fell from 1986 to 1988. What it actually proved was that the rich reported more taxable income when tax rates on an extra dollar became more reasonable. These facts are not seriously in dispute regardless what portion of this widely observed "Laffer Curve" phenomenon was due to a change in actual income (a supply-side effect) or to a change in the proportion reported to tax collectors.

Translated into English:  no, really, rich people are not stupid.  If the government takes less in taxes, the rich people have less incentive to find ways to shield their income/assets from taxation.  It's more of a pain in the a$$ to shield their income than it is to just pay the tax.  Plus, taxable sources of income (stocks, real estate, etc.) tend to have higher rates of return than non-taxable sources (municipal bonds, etc.), so actual income increases. 

It's simply human nature.  Some people of course have difficulty with the concept of people acting like people.  Using Reynolds' words at the end of his essay:

Get over it.