Some clear thinking on what we need to think about in the war on terrorism:
The premise of his book is that in this age of terror, there is a potential need for such devices as profiling, preventive detention, anticipatory mass inoculation, prior restraint of dangerous speech, targeted extrajudicial executions of terrorists and preemptive military action including full-scale preventive war.
Well, this doesn't bode well for our efforts to marginalize tyrants and encourage democratic movements, does it?
Nearly half of South Korean youths who will be old enough to vote in the country's next elections say Seoul should side with North Korea if the United States attacks the communist nation, according to a poll released Wednesday
I'd like to see a variation of that "first baby of the new year" feature newspapers are always running to honor the 6,500,000,000th person born on Earth Saturday. How many people can the Earth support? Short answer: As many as there are. Every since Malthus, various "experts," such as Paul Ehrlich, have been predicting that overpopulation would eventually exhaust the world's resources.
How many stories did you read or see on TV about the 13 miners traped in West Virginia? How many have there been about the 65 in Mexico? Just asking.
There have been two categories of anti-smoking zealotry I think went too far:
1. Jails: Put a bunch of antisocial, mostly violent people together in close confinement, then tell them they can't smoke.
2. Mental institutions: Try to help people hanging onto reality by their fingernails by taking away their cigarettes.
I might now add this third category:
Some may think this is a pretty lame reason for killing your roommate:
A man has been arrested for fatally beating his roommate with a sledgehammer and a claw hammer because there was no toilet tissue in the home, authorities said.
But looking back on all the times I have lived with other people, toilet paper has always been in the top 10 of contentious issues. In addition to the (always unexpected and unwelcomed) sudden lack of TP at the most inconventient time, there are:
Why is "partial birth abortion" such a big controversy?
1. It is such a morally repugnant practice that even the strongest pro-choice advocates have to flinch at supporting it. The objects of such a procedure are not just a clump of undifferentiated cells.
The "I did not have sex with that woman" president has the unmitigated gall to fault the Bush administration for its "penchant for secrecy"?
If any of you think you're unatrractive, at least be comforted in knowing you're not that ugly.
Not only are physically unattractive teenagers likely to be stay-at-homes on prom night, they're also more likely to grow up to be criminals, say two economists who tracked the life course of young people from high school through early adulthood.
Another generation of confused Florida voters is on the way.
