Ramirez puts the media fixation on actor Heath Ledger's death into perspective:
Sometimes it seems that in order to work for a cable news network one has to pass a superficiality test. The more shallow the applicant the higher he or she scores on the test, and the higher one scores the brighter one's media future.
RLC
Senator McCain has yet again thumbed his nose at Republican voters. It is remarkable that he manages to get any votes at all in GOP primaries, at least from people concerned about illegal immigration.
This time he has appointed as his "Hispanic Outreach Director" a man by the name of Dr. Juan Hernandez who is an staunch open borders activist. Hernandez has gone on record as claiming that "We must not only have a free flow of goods and services, but also start working for a free flow of people."
It seems to me that conservative Republicans who are voting for McCain in the primaries know only about his steadfast support for the war in Iraq and perhaps his pro-life credentials but little about the rest of his record. His stand on the war and for unborn children make him, of course, a far better choice than any of the Democratic candidates, all of whom favor retreat from Iraq and partial-birth abortion. But all of the viable Republican candidates have the same views on the war and on life, so why are Republicans voting for the most liberal of the pack?
RLC
James Kushiner offers a brief and useful history of the Intelligent Design movement. His essay is the forward to a series of articles appearing in Salvo magazine and serves as an excellent primer for anyone interested in understanding where ID came from and who some of the key players are.
RLC
Peggy Noonan, in a Wall Street Journal Online essay, seems to lament the fratricide taking place among pundits in the Republican Party:
As for the Republicans, their slow civil war continues. The primary race itself is winnowing down and clarifying: It is John McCain versus Mitt Romney, period. At the same time the conservative journalistic world is convulsed by recrimination and attack. They're throwing each other out of the party. Republicans have become very good at that. David Brooks damns Rush Limbaugh who knocks Bill Kristol who anathematizes whoever is to be anathematized this week. This Web site opposes that magazine.
Into the midst of this circular firing squad Noonan lobs a hand grenade:
On the pundit civil wars, Rush Limbaugh declared on the radio this week, "I'm here to tell you, if either of these two guys [Mr. McCain or Mike Huckabee] get the nomination, it's going to destroy the Republican Party. It's going to change it forever, be the end of it!"
This is absurd. George W. Bush destroyed the Republican Party, by which I mean he sundered it, broke its constituent pieces apart and set them against each other. He did this on spending, the size of government, war, the ability to prosecute war, immigration and other issues.
It is certainly the case that the party has found itself being whip-sawed by a White House that appoints excellent judges to the Supreme Court and then buckles almost completely on illegal immigration. Even so, for Noonan to say that Bush has destroyed the GOP because of the Iraq war is quite a stretch unless she expects us to believe that because Bush doesn't have the support of The New York Times and Congressional Democrats that he has therefore destroyed the party.
What in fact has hurt the Republican party more than anything was their failure to do anything to reform Congress when they had the majority and the disgraceful moral conduct of some GOP Congressmen. If Republicans are going to act like Democrats then, voters figure, why vote for the substitute when you can have the real thing?
As for for what Limbaugh said it is indeed hard to credit. Neither McCain nor Huckabee is any more liberal than any other Republican presidential candidate since Goldwater, save Ronald Reagan. It may be that neither of them would win in November, but why either of them should be more of a disaster for the party than Richard Nixon, Bob Dole, or Bush '41 is not clear to me.
Both Noonan and Rush need to step back and get a little deeper perspective. They also need to remember that even if none of the remaining GOP candidates is ideologically pure they are still orders of magnitude better than the Clintons.
Thanks to Jason for the Noonan article.
RLC
I commented to several friends last Fall that I thought autumn came late this year. It seemed that in my part of the country (south-central Pennsylvania) the peak Fall foliage display was about three weeks later than it was a decade ago. I wasn't sure why this should be since I had always thought that the onset of the pigment change was related to conditions like temperature and day length which surely weren't significantly different than they were ten years ago. Nor did I see anything written about autumn's tardiness anywhere, but I was pretty certain I wasn't imagining it. So, when I came upon this story at Science Daily it naturally piqued my interest:
Do those fall colors seem to show up later and later-if at all? Scientists say we can blame increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for prolonging the growing season of the trees. And that may actually be good news for forestry industries.
Writing in the current issue of the journal Global Change Biology, Michigan Technological University Professor David F. Karnosky and colleagues from two continents present evidence that rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere act directly to delay the usual autumn spectacle of changing colors and falling leaves in northern hardwood forests.
"Basically, this is a good-news story for our region's forests," said Karnosky. "It suggests that they will become a bit more productive due to the extra carbon being taken up in the autumn, along with the increased photosynthesis throughout the growing season."
They found that the forests on both continents stayed greener longer as CO2 levels rose, independent of temperature changes....There has been plenty of evidence gathered previously to show that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is causing tree growth to begin earlier in the spring, but until now, most scientists believed that other factors, such as temperature and length of day, were the primary elements influencing autumnal senescence.
This raises some fascinating questions. How sensitive are these plants to CO2 changes? How much of a change in CO2 concentration is necessary to trigger such a profound difference in the timing of senescence? If CO2 increases just a little bit more will deciduous trees hold their leaves all year round? What are the ecological and economic implications of all this?
If anyone knows the answers to any of these questions, let me know.
RLC
If you're thinking of making your next car a hybrid there are some things you need to ask yourself. One is whether your primary motive is to do your part to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse emissions or whether it is to save money. This article explains why a hybrid is probably not going to save you much money.
Update: The link in this post has been corrected.
RLC
The Democrats in their debate the other night were all talking about which of them could beat John McCain in November. Evidently, they believe McCain is going to be the GOP nominee. If they're right, it's looking more and more like any of the Democrats would beat him. The reason is that no candidate in the Republican party is likely to generate less enthusiasm among the activist members of the party than is McCain. The grassroots Republicans are largely conservative and, with the exception of two or three of his positions, McCain is not. He's a RINO (Republican in Name Only) and he's going to have a hard time inspiring the foot soldiers to get out and encourage their friends and neighbors to vote for him.
Indeed, a lot of conservatives are talking about not even showing up at the polls if McCain is the candidate. Whether they will or they won't sit it out, a successful campaign requires a high level of excitement and enthusiasm. Bush '41 didn't have it in 1992, nor did Bob Dole have it in 1996, and John McCain won't have it in 2008. It looks a lot like, if McCain is the GOP standard bearer, all a Democrat will have to do to become president is win the nomination of his or her party.
RLC
It is depressing to have to go through this again at this late date, especially since we've been over this ground so often in the past, but the President's critics leave us no alternative. The AP has reported that an allegedly independent study has found that the administration made a total of 935 separate statements in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq which were subsequently found to be either untrue or unconfirmable. The left has taken this as proof that George Bush lied us into war and have worked themselves into a swivet over what they see as the Bush administration's impeachable mendacity.
Here's Keith Olbermann and Air America's Rachel Maddow, for instance, talking tonight about the story. Their presentation of this report is breathtakingly fatuous.
First of all, the report is not done by non-partisan, independent actors. One of the organizations involved is funded by George Soros who is a rabidly anti-Bush partisan and a major left-wing moneybags. The AP's failure to mention this in their story is itself a breach of professional responsibility. That neither Olbermann nor Maddow mention it is either an indication that they didn't do their homework or that they were deliberately trying to hide this from their viewers.
Secondly, and most important, Olbermann and Maddow keep referring to the claims made by the administration, including the President, as lies, yet the AP report doesn't use this word and nothing in the story warrants such a judgment.
It is astonishing that this distinction still has to be made, but apparently it needs to be explained for those who, like Mr. Olbermann, have a limited ability to understand simple definitions: An error is not a lie. A lie involves a deliberate attempt to deceive. The liar knows that what he is saying is not true. Nothing in the AP story establishes that anyone knew that what they were asserting about Iraq's threat to the rest of the world, their possession of WMD, their support for al Qaeda, and so on, was in any way false.
On the contrary, the intelligence services of the whole world thought they were true, everyone in the Clinton administration and the Democratic leadership thought they were true, Saddam was behaving as if they were true, Iraqi defectors were telling us they were true. Yet when it turns out that some of the claims appear to have been wrong, Mr. Olbermann, whose own relationship with the truth is somewhat checkered, eagerly concludes that George Bush and his minions are liars and calls for impeachment.
Anyone who believes that George Bush was the only one who was telling us at the time that Saddam was a real threat and that he lied us into war in Iraq needs to watch this video. It'll be an eye-opener (HT: A Blog For All):Some people truly are shameless. If one is going to call someone else a liar he has the responsibility of demonstrating that the person in question knew that what he was saying was false. To accuse someone of lying without making that demonstration is a reprehensible slander and the person who does it has disgraced himself.
RLC
A lot of people have weighed in on last Saturday's post titled The Objectification of Women. Check the Feedback Page for an example from a student that is probably representative of the majority of replies.
RLC
Critics of Intelligent Design often allege that ID isn't science because it doesn't lend itself to testable predictions. Denyse O'Leary thinks otherwise and offers nine predictions for consideration at her blog The Post-Darwinist.
For example, she predicts that:
No good theory will be found for a random origin of life, though there will be plenty of huffing and puffing in favour of bad ideas. All theories that exclude purpose and design fail because they leave out the key driver - the purpose that life should come into existence.
Positive prediction: We will learn more about the real nature of our universe and our place in it, and how best we can explore it when we accept the fact that it didn't "just happen."
You can read the rest at the link.
RLC
The United States appears on track to soon become a nation owned largely by foreign investors. Peter Goodman and Louise Story explain why in the New York Times.
RLC
Do you have trouble getting to sleep and staying there? Do you use your cell phone before going to sleep? If so, then you'll be interested in a study that shows a direct correlation between the two and which provides strong evidence that cell phone radiation affects deep sleep. According to an article in The Independent (The link to The Independent article no longer works but the article can be found here).
The findings are especially alarming for children and teenagers, most of whom - surveys suggest - use their phones late at night and who especially need sleep. Their failure to get enough can lead to mood and personality changes, ADHD-like symptoms, depression, lack of concentration and poor academic performance.
Read the entire article at the link.
RLC
Thousands of people marched in Washington today on behalf of the right of unborn children to live their lives. I know this because I get my news from the internet. I saw almost nothing about it in the MSM, including FOX, but maybe I just missed it. Even so, look at this picture:
If those were people marching for abortion rights, or if they were marching for civil rights, or gay marriage, or for open borders, or against the war in Iraq their march would have been wall to wall headline news. Today, however, all the news shows evidently decided to give their attention to the really important development - the death of an actor from Brokeback Mountain.
Of course, they did this because not only is that the sort of thing which is of great moment to the people who write and report the news, but also because the last thing they want to do is show the nation and the world that there are thousands of people willing to come to Washington to protest Roe v. Wade. The media and their liberal allies in Congress want people to think that if they're pro-life, they're about the only people in the country who are.
So, I'm going to give the March For Life folks a little unsolicited advice for next year: Get Paris Hilton or Brittany Spears to march with you. It'll guarantee media coverage.
RLC
Chuck Asay takes note of the sudden and almost complete lack of interest among Democrats and the media in talking about the war in Iraq:
Just last summer it was all we were hearing about. Today, despite all the news there is to report on the progress that's being made there (see here, for example), there's virtually nothing being reported. Like one of the guys in the cartoon says, it makes you wonder who the media were rooting for.
RLC
When Christopher Hitchens is wrong (as he frequently is in his book God is Not Great) he's very wrong, but when he's right he's often a must-read. So it is with his essay at Slate titled The Case Against Hillary Clinton. Even so, as strong as is the case that Hitchens makes against voting for another Clinton presidency, it should be borne in mind that it is only a fraction of the total brief against her. Hitchens, constrained by space perhaps, makes no mention of the FBI files scandal, the Rose Law Firm files scandal, the shameful travel office firings, the cattle futures scandal, her volcanic temper and a host of other peccadillos, prevarications, and possible felonies for which anyone else but a Clinton would have long ago been cast by the media into political outer darkness.
Instead Mrs. Clinton has been elevated to the office of Senator by the most important state in the union and now finds herself with as good a shot as anybody to become the most powerful individual in the world.
Read Hitchens' essay and weep that such a person may be, by this time next year, the President of the United States.
RLC
Former President Clinton was all ears at Harlem's Covenant Avenue Baptist Church's Martin Luther King day observance:
Last Saturday we did a piece titled The Objectification of Women. A young student shared her thoughts on this post with us, and I thought I'd share her letter with our readers:
I deeply appreciated this article. I have often wished that I grew up in the 1950's or earlier because the respect and dignity of romance back then was so beautiful. It is absolutely true that the intimacy and excitement of sexual arousal is dwindling as we surround ourselves with images of photo-shopped models and barely-there bikinis.
For both men and women, there are very saddening results. Men are deceived by the images they see and build up inaccurate ideas of a female body. Hence, when all they want is to be aroused by the wife that they cherish, they find themselves disappointed. On the other hand, women feel ugly in comparison to the images their spouses see. They compare their healthy bodies to the anorexic ones displayed in movies and become depressed, anxious, and miserable.
Even worse, many women have come to accept their role as a sexual object and settle for that kind of attention instead of the respect they deserve from men. Men, try as they may to remain faithful to their beloved, cannot escape the sexually stimulating media all around them. The cycle of sexual deterioration is vicious. One can only hope that modesty and chastity will find their way back "into style."
Jonah Goldberg has a new book out which is creating quite a stir. It's titled Liberal Fascism and it apparently makes the case that what we today call progressivism has more in common with 20th century fascism than it does with classical liberalism.
Jonah appeared recently on Hannity and Colmes, and if you watch the interview (below) you can't help but note the irony of the progressive Alan Colmes denying Goldberg's thesis about the fascist tendencies of progressives while, like a good fascist, refusing to allow Goldberg to be heard. Pretty funny.
I'm sure I'll have more to say about Jonah's book after I've read it.
HT: Hot Air
RLC
Speaking of liberal fascism, an anti-war lawyer by the name of Jay Grodner was sentenced the other day for having keyed the car (!) of a Marine on the eve of the young man's deployment. You'd think it would be some malicious kid that would do something like this, and, in a way, you'd be right. Here's the guy's picture, though:
He's 55 years old, he owns a law firm and he's so twisted that he damages cars that have military license plates. He's an adult, to be sure, but only in terms of his age.
The account of the man's vandalism, which amounted to $2400 in damages, is here.
The judge in the sentencing hearing apparently blasted Grodner. He should be disbarred. See Michelle's site for details of the sentencing.
RLC
This website allows you to match your opinions on a series of issues with the candidate who most closely agrees with your views. The questions don't allow for nuance, but it's nevertheless an interesting guide.
One caveat: When you click on the button to see which candidate matches your responses it may show you the candidate who is least compatible with you. If so, just scroll to the top of the page. I was shocked when I clicked on the button and Chris Dodd's picture came up, but then I scrolled to the top and there was ..... Fred Thompson. Unfortunately, Mr. Thompson will probably no longer be a candidate after his disappointing showing on Saturday in South Carolina.
Thanks to Scott S. for the link.
RLC
