Month: July 2008

Two bombshell stories

The news organization which shall not be named has moved two stories on this busy, busy news Saturday:

First[*1] , double-dutch rope skipping is now a sanctioned high school sport in New York City.

Second[*2] , we’re winning in Iraq.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

The Gospel

Gerard Baker, in the Times of London[*1] :

And it came to pass, in the eighth year of the reign of the evil Bush the Younger (The Ignorant), when the whole land from the Arabian desert to the shores of the Great Lakes had been laid barren, that a Child appeared in the wilderness.

Much more at the link.  Go.  Read.  Enjoy.  Laugh.

Simians! I meant Simians!

A sharp Medary.com reader (I have readers!  Who knew?) spotted my post Say it with me, say it together and quite correctly called me out with an e-mail on my erroneous use of the word “primate.”  I meant “simian” but that just makes the whole thing worse.

I’ll go sit in the corner of Teh Intertubes for my full five minutes of penance.  Mea culpa.  I’m so sorry.  So South Central Rain[*1] sorry.

My simian-blogging cred is now in the toilet.  Guess I’ll go eat worms[*2] .

The Mother of All Obama Gaffes

This one has to take the cake, via ABC News reporter Jake Tapper’s Political Punch blog[*1] :

Once again an Israeli journalist asked the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee how he’d help prevent a second Holocaust. “Senator can you assure Israel that there will be no second Holocaust despite Iran’s threat to wipe us off the map?” he asked.

Obama demurred, saying that it wasn’t appropriate to answer the question there.

“This is Yad Vashem!” the journalist responded.

Obama said he would answer the question at a later press availability.

Yad Vashem[*2] , by the way, is the memorial in Israel to the six million people slaughtered in The Holocaust.

Senator Obama thinks it isn’t appropriate to address the possibility of a second Holocaust at the site dedicated to remembrance of the first one?  Huh?  He couldn’t come up with something, despite having been asked the question TWICE?

Come on, Obama . . . couldn’t you come up with something like “Well, I think it’s important for everyone to, personally as well as politically, do everything they can to make sure another Holocaust doesn’t happen.”  Why couldn’t he say that?  He has to go back and triangulate with his handlers and advisors before saying that another Holocaust would be a bad thing?  Really?

Via Gateway Pundit[*3]

The End of the Republic

It’s here, something called Service Nation[*1] .  Under the flowery well-meaning rhetoric on this site is a truly Orwellian world where what is “voluntary” is mandatory.  Slavery is Freedom.

Jim Lindgren, posting at the Volokh Conspiracy[*2] , lays out the new road to serfdom:

Under the medieval system in much of Europe, serfs or peasants owed obligations of actual physical labor (beyond military service) to their political overseers. As English liberties grew, this obligation of physical labor was replaced by the right to pay taxes instead, with the chief exception being obligations of military service for males. Free men were increasingly free to choose their line of work and pay their political overseers with money, rather than owing an obligation of service to whatever physical tasks happened to be thought important or profitable to the upper and the political classes.

Service Nation is an organization devoted to stripping away this bulwark of Anglo-American liberty, hoping by the year 2020 to require every young American man and woman to be drafted into either military or community service[*3] . Their more immediate goals include passing a National Service Act in 2009 (which would probably not require universal service).

But they do not even discuss the Constitutional Amendment that ought to be required before they can mandate community service and take away the hard-won Anglo-American liberty from involuntary servitude. The Constitution gives the Federal Government the power to raise a military, which in the 18th century contemplated an obligation of male citizens to serve in the military. In my opinion, the Constitution does not give the Federal Government the power to compel community service.

Let’s hope that the Supreme Court would not permit Service Nation’s move backwards to a more feudal relationship between ordinary people and the people who govern them. One senses that de Toqueville understood American values of volunteerism and freedom of association much better than the people behind Service Nation, an understanding that was also concerned about the tyranny of the majority.

If they can ask for one year of “voluntary” service, why not two?  Three?  Five?  Ten?  A lifetime?  After all, what’s the difference, really?

Voluntary service is a good idea.  Compelling it, or providing government “incentives” to “voluntarily” serve, is headed towards a place from which it took a Civil War to free ourselves–quite literally.

Trying something

If you don’t run a web site, this won’t make much sense.  Actually, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either.  Oh, well.

If you do run a web site though . . . here’s something I saw on Winds of Change[*1] that seemed interesting.  It’s billed “an experiment on blog diffusion.”  So, I’m diffusing.  It’s some wacky Harvard experiment[*2] , or something.  The fun is “beneath the fold” (or, click “read more.”)