I keep reading Christopher Hitchens’ distortions of reality in Slate. I don’t know why. It just pisses me off. Let’s start at the end and work our way forward: “It surely expresses a covert sympathy with the aims and objectives of jihad and an overt, if witless and sinister, hatred of the United States.” I [...]

After finishing off my last post about Anne Applebaum’s logical confusions about Amnesty International’s use of the word gulag in relation to the Untied States, I came across a couple of other tabs that I had kept open because I meant to post something about them. This article from the New York Times shows that [...]

This post grew from I comment I posted at Pandagon. Reading closely is a bad habit. It makes it hard to keep polite company. Anne Applebaum writes an opinion piece in the Washington Post that is completely void of any factual claims to back her opinions. The facts she does produce argue against the point [...]

The House Appropriations subcommittee on labor, health and human services and education has voted to reduce annual federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to $300 million from $400 million. The Washington Post has a typical story. It isn’t clear from the Post article, but reporting this afternoon on NPR makes it clear that [...]

If Bush’s theory of the Unitary Executive (link) is correct, what is to stop the next President from sending Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Woo and their co-conspirators to Gitmo for the duration of their term?

Another pet peeve of mine is adults riding their bikes on the sidewalk. It is one thing to do ride on the sidewalk with an acknowledgement that it is illegal and therefore the rider should be circumspect and cautious. This I can understand and appreciate. “There was some road construction that blocked the bike lanes, [...]

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed a bill to allow stem cell research involving embryos that are in frozen storage at fertility clinics. (link) President Bush has promised to veto this bill because it “would take us across a critical ethical line.” “Every embryo is unique and genetically complete, like every other human being. And [...]

Microsoft and Bill Gates are in the news lately. Microsoft has opted to withdraw support for bill in the Washington state legislature guaranteeing civil protections for gays, possibly after being pressured by the Reverend Ken Hutcherson of the Antioch Bible Church. Of course, Microsoft denies that the good Reverend had anything to do with the [...]

There is no moral argument against nuclear proliferation that can be made by the Unitied States. Arguments based on power, arguments based on potential terrorist threats, arguments based on the stability of the governments involved, all of these are plausible, but if the US, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, and Israel, can maintain stocks of nuclear [...]

From Slate about the House hearing on performance enhancing drugs is baseball: The strangest moment of the day comes when Rep. Paul E. Kanjorski, D-Penn., asks Canseco what he would do if scientists invented a “smart pill” that would make you a genius but take five or ten years off your life. “The Chemist” pauses [...]