Dennis Prager on the altruistic pursuit of happiness:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
This is so predictable it’s almost more sad than funny:
Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me? [sic] Well, maybe you can. I’ll give you that. But there’s no way that you can teach English as well as me [sic], and biology as well as a trained professional, and history… and Spanish… and art… and counsel for college as well as a school’s guidance counselor… and… and…
Several of the commenters highlighted the irony that despite all those supposed qualifications, this public school teacher is apparently unable to avoid even rudimentary grammatical errors.
via Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times:
Last week, a 75-year-old Saudi woman was sentenced to 40 lashes and four months in prison for receiving two unrelated men in her home. It didn’t matter that they were only delivering bread, or that she is elderly and practically raised one of the men as her her son. In Saudi Arabia, the law strictly bans a woman from mixing with men unrelated to her by blood or marriage.
Meanwhile over at the National Organization for Women, there’s no mention of this story. Instead they’re too busy fretting about the “epidemic of gender-based violence” in the United States.
Unbelievable! Just imagine yourself in September 2001. Someone drops-in from the future to tell you that before the decade is over, the President of the United States (middle-named “Hussein” by the way) will talk about making nice with the Taliban.
As you may recall:
“We need earmark reform, and when I’m president, I will go line by line to make sure we’re not spending money unwisely,” Obama said at the first presidential debate last October.
Now listen to Craig Crawford on Imus in the Morning making excuses for Obama. Imus has none of it.
The idea that certain large, politically connected private firms are essential to commonweal and must be supported at all costs by the state is quite the essence of “Mussolini-style Corporatism“. …What’s good for Citibank is not what’s good for America.
via seekingalpha.com
And even Obama supporter Warren Buffett is complaining that “Government is determining the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots.’ That is why companies are rushing to convert to bank holding companies, not a course feasible for Berkshire.” He says Berkshire and its pristine credit can’t compete with the cheap money flowing to “financial cripple[s] with a government guarantee[.]”
The big headline from the Eric Holder nomination wasn’t, as it should have been, that he misled the Committee about his role in the Marc Rich pardon. Instead all anyone could talk about was the pronouncement he and Democrats scripted in order to signal a break with the Bush administration: “waterboarding is torture.”
I still say that the definition of torture cannot possibly include anything that people are willing to endure in order to protest it. I posted an example before and pointed out that the guy in the video actually paid $800 to have it done and then laughed about it a few minutes later.
A quick YouTube search reveals that there is apparently a long line of leftists, including Christopher Hitchens, who are perfectly happy to be “tortured” on video to demonstrate how unacceptable waterboarding is supposed to be.
Holder’s pronouncement is more than just wrong. It’s dangerous. From Andy McCarthy at The Corner:
Holder increased the pressure he will face to take action against Bush officials … by gratuitously opining that waterboarding is torture, something AG Mukasey refused to do—even though it turned what should have been an easy confirmation into a horse-race—precisely because he [Mukasey] refused to imperil with reckless remarks American officials who had taken action in defense of this country. As I noted earlier, a UN official is now demanding prosecution of President Bush and Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on the theory that the U.S. solemnly pledged to prosecute all torturers in its jurisdiction when it ratified the UN Convention Against Torture (and a quick perusal of Articles 6 and 7 of that treaty indicates that this is not a flimsy theory). By declaring waterboarding to be torture, Holder has not only set himself (and us) up for this claim, he has increased the likelihood that foreign governments will try to prosecute Bush, Rumsfeld and others under the treaty. Nice job—good to see his judgment has really improved since those pardons.
Real torture causes excruciating pain and permanent, disfiguring injuries. Real torture isn’t something reasonable people can disagree about. It’s obvious. It’s bloody. It’s illegal, and it’s wrong. You don’t see people lining up to have it done to them on camera just to make a point.
I’m still flabbergasted that the Democrats’ anti-waterboarding fetish gets so much attention and support. In the free world, we wring our hands over imposing a few minutes of discomfort and fear on a few of the worst terrorists on the planet. In a way it’s good. That’s what makes our way of life better than the world that the terrorists want to impose through mass murder.
I just wish Democrats could make their arguments for coddling terrorists without torturing the language. When the soon-to-be Attorney General uses the wrong word, it could have some serious consequences.
Yeah, letting terrorists out of jail early when you don’t even know the facts of the case is perfectly “reasonable.” Don’t worry. Jimmy Carter and a bunch of left-wing Congressmen who Hillary wants to curry favor with say it’s okay. That’s not improper political influence over the Justice Department.
Thanks, Eric Holder.
UPDATE: Okay, this is too funny not to post. A transcript of Holder’s actual answers to the questions about this video are available at the New York Times. However, the parody below (emailed to me by a friend) is much more entertaining.
Sen. GRASSLEY: I’d like to show you an FBI surveillance video secretly recorded in a Chicago apartment and ask you some questions. This chilling video shows Edwin Cortes and Alejandria (sic) Torres. These were two of the terrorists who received clemency from President Clinton after you directed that the Justice Department change its recommendations. The video shows Cortes and Torres in the process of building a bomb. Were the two terrorists in this video in the group that you asked the pardon attorney to draft a positive recommendation for?HOLDER: Senator, I can’t answer that question. I can’t be expected to remember the names of all the terrorists for which I have recommended pardons. I know that they had Spanish names of some sort.
GRASSLEY: OK. Well, as I said, their names were Edwin Cortes and Alejandria (sic) Torres. At the time you directed the pardon attorney to draft a neutral options memo, had you ever seen this video before?
HOLDER: No, but the soundtrack is awesome.
GRASSLEY: Are you weren’t aware that the video existed?
HOLDER: Absolutely not. My strict policy is to only recommend pardons for terrorists who are smart enough not to be videotaped while preparing their explosives.
GRASSLEY: Were you aware that after this video was taken, a search to the apartment led to the seizure of 24 pounds of dynamite, 24 blasting caps, weapons, disguises, false identification, and thousands of rounds of ammunition?
HOLDER: Well, sure. They wouldn’t be real terrorists if they didn’t have explosives and firearms, would they? Come on, Senator, be reasonable.
GRASSLEY: Were you aware that FALN terrorists threatened to kill the judge at their sentencing hearing?
HOLDER: But they didn’t actually kill the judge, now did they? My strict policy is never to recommend pardons for terrorists who actually kill the judge at their sentencing hearing. Sends the wrong message, I think.
* * *
GRASSLEY: Well, earlier today, you said in response to a question from Senator Sessions that the people who received clemency didn’t actually hurt anyone and that you thought that the granting them clemency was reasonable, but isn’t it true that the only person that the people in the video didn’t hurt anyone is — or why they didn’t hurt anyone — is because the FBI caught them before they got a chance to do their damage.
HOLDER: Yes, that might be so, but that is, nevertheless — you know, it’s a difference between let’s hypothetically say murder and attempted murder. If some — there’s an intervening act that stops the person from committing the crime that they wanted to do, the person’s intent is certainly nefarious and worthy of punishment but the ultimate crimes are fundamentally different ones. [editor’s note- no improvement possible]
Joel Stein admits it. Well, they say that’s the first step to recovery, I guess:
But I’ve come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn’t love. True love is the blind belief that your child is the smartest, cutest, most charming person in the world, one you would gladly die for. I’m more in “like” with my country.
My thoughts and prayers go out to parents separated from their children this Christmas. I’ll never forget this story about Nadia wanting to eat hamburgers under the Christmas tree.
Also: Russian Orthodox Churches in Saudi Arabia?
Leave it to the impolitic Russians to demand a church in the forbidden city of Mecca