A 3-year-old Lincoln boy wandered away from his home in the middle of the night and was rescued by a level 3 sex offender, capital city police said on Tuesday.
What do you think? Can a sex offender change?
But I wasn’t prepared for what happened today.
As my flight from Cincinnati to Atlanta was beginning its descent, the flight attendant began her normal spiel about landing and gates, and assistance finding your connecting flights and so on. Then she announced that I was on board and on my way back to Afghanistan after spending two weeks with my family.
The plane erupted into applause. I was stunned.
Post here.
What I don’t understand is how are American in this country not aware of the moral corruption of our soldiers. I mean it’s not like the liberals at the NYTimes haven’t been trying. They only had the Abu Ghraib story on their front page for 44 days in a row.
You can’t put a price on good Satire.
And it’s no wonder fire hates us. We’ve been demonizing it ever since the first cinematic Frankenstein monster said “Fire bad!”. We tell our children not to play with matches or they’ll wet the bed. We won’t even allow lighters on airline flights! Even before the fire is made, it’s assumed to be evil by its very nature. Plus we only allow fire the most menial of jobs in this country - barbecues, fireplaces, scented candles - is it any wonder that fire resents us so deeply?
I, for one, don’t blame it. And I am ashamed to be an American.
Glen Reynolds over at Instapundit understands how history will view MSM coverage of the war:
Yes, it’s almost as if undermining morale on the domestic front were a key goal. When the history of media reportage on this war is written, it will not be kind.
It will be interesting to see if journalism’s left leaning attitude towards news coverage will change once the full scope of how poorly covered this war has been is fully realized. More likely is a further balkanization of news coverage in which smaller and smaller groups of people find niche news organizations that matches there attitudes. Either way, people will benefit from the dismantling of the monolithic MSM.
More on the media atrocious coverage of the recent good news in Iraq.
Diatribe over at his blog Personal Responsibility posts an article about the city of San Francisco setting up facilities to enable drug usage. An anonymous poster writes:
Interesting to observe the newly ignited uproar about the safe drug injection center: interesting, puzzling, and in case of diatribe’s heightened upsetness even amusing. I didn’t expect you to reflect on this issue in a way other than you reflected, thereby ignoring that those places have PROVEN to significantly reduce the death counts among drug addicts, to improve the reachability of the drug addicts for treatment programs, to reduce addiction-related infections, ETC. The list of benefits of this program is definitely longer than its disadvantages (and, as it seems, the only disadvantage you think of is the potential danger that those centers have on YOU and your safety - so purely personal objections). I’m not pulling these facts out of my head - the sucessful practice of drug injection centers is widelely known in Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland.
If you ask me the problem here is that the state is condoning drug usage. A Rather contradictory position given it has explicitly forbidden drug usage through laws forbidding trafficking and possession. Oddly, this serves as a good example of the problem of localizing power to the city level. Here we have a city blatantly violating the spirit of the federal laws primarily because the local population has naïve views about drug users and quixotic view about intrinsic human dignity. Personally I find no problem with a local city using power this way, but someone like Darwin could use this example to show how federal entities are necessary to insure federal laws are not violated by local governments.
One of the disincentives of drug usage is the profound ostracization one receives when doing hard core drugs. These facilitates begin the process of removing the extreme stigma associated with drug usage. It sends the message that the state is willing to tolerate heavy drug usage. I prefer no institute be it private or public to reduce this cost simply for the sake of ‘saving lives’. Particularly, the lives of those happily willing to throw them away on drugs. Besides reduction in cost will likely lead to increased drug users.
There is another problem with this kind of attitude. By creating facilitates to enable drug usage the state is taking the position that drug usage is something that must be managed and not something to be eliminated. While I would agree that drug usage can never be eliminated, I’m not so sure I want the state to behave in this fashion. If the state is going to address the drug problem, which I would prefer it refrain from, then I would want it to work towards eliminating it instead of managing it. I would much rather have tax money spent on reducing drug usage than maintaining an acceptable amount of drug users that partly on my dime, indulge in drug usage in perpetuity.
Furthermore, by having the state manage drug usage the rhetoric about drug usage changes from being about a choice to being about determination. One manages things they have no control over while they attempt to overcome those things they think they can control. By treating the drug usage as something that should be managed you take away one’s choice in doing drugs. However, I want the responsibility of doing drugs to be placed squarely on the user. In private conversation I would happily accept the notion that some drugs are so addictive that choice is unrealistic, but when dealing with actual drug users the issue should always be framed as a matter of choice. State managing chronic drug usage implies that the responsibility of drug usage is no longer in the hands of the user.
At the end of the day, I don’t find attenuating the extreme ostracization society brings down on users is justified by ‘saving the lives’ of some drug users. One of the costs to doing drugs is an increased chance of death. Its one of the reasons I don’t do drugs. I’m not really into reducing this cost simply for the sake of saving lives of those that choose to throw their life away on drugs. If you want to reduce death by drug usage use state resources to reduce drug usage rather than manage it.
According to this article:
An all-out battle for control of Pakistan’s restive North and South Waziristan is about to commence between the Pakistani military and the Taliban and al-Qaeda adherents who have made these tribal areas their own.
This post details several incidents in which armed civilians were able to stop a mass shooting. Of particular interest was this:
At Appalachian Law School, in Grundy, Va., a disgruntled student on the verge of his second suspension entered a school building and shot and killed the dean and a professor. He then shot four students, killing one. Hearing the shots, two students, Michael Gross and Tracy Bridges, ran to their cars to retrieve their guns. With guns aimed at the shooter, Mr. Bridges ordered him to drop his weapon. When the shooter turned and saw Mr. Bridges’ gun, he laid down his weapon and put his hands in the air. (My pro-Second Amendment documentary, “Michael and Me,” goes into detail about this incident, as well as others.)
Professor and economist John Lott checked 280 separate news stories in the week after the Appalachian Law School shooting, and only found four that mentioned the students who stopped the shooter had guns. The Washington Post, for example, said the students “helped subdue” the killer. Newsday wrote the shooter was “restrained by students.” The Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, however, wrote that the shooter “was wrestled to the ground by fellow students, one of whom aimed his own revolver at [the killer].” Four months later, the Times-Dispatch detailed the students’ actions, including the second student’s use of a gun.
An honest analysis of using tax for the purpose of redistribution.
A self made man unaccustomed to asking for infrastructure to get himself out of poverty has been made governor of the state of Louisiana. This is bad news for liberal’s favorite victim - the poor - because apparently Bobby Jindal actually believes in the American Dream.
One reason Mr. Jindal was able to win votes across ethnic and demographic lines is that while he treats his Indian background as an overall plus, he won’t trade on it. He has in the past left the space for “race” on government documents blank. “I’m against all quotas, all set-asides,” he says. “America is the greatest. We got ahead by hard work. We shouldn’t respond to every problem with a government program. Here, anyone can succeed.
Sorry about the vulgarity in that quote. You know the part where he says “America is the greatest”. I know reading that kind of thing can really piss off some my more left leaning readers.
At any rate, now that someone that understands the power and strength of America is governor of Louisiana keep any eye on the state cause I’m willing to bet it will pull itself out of the liberal shit hole its be wallowing in for some time.
