Current Affairs

I've made fun of Newsweek more than once here for being a bible of leftist orthodoxy. But I've also linked to articles from it -- once in a while, it publishes something both interesting and provocative.

Happy Bill of Rights Day!

On Dec. 15, 1791, the ten amendments to the Constitution known as the Bill of Rights were ratified.

The National Archives this year held a contest via Twitter, asking followers to distill the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights down to 140 characters each.

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Courts have already stretched the Commerce Clause beyond all reason. In a 1942 case, the Supreme Court ruled that growing wheat for personal consumption affected interstate commerce because, you see, withholding it from the market created a ripple effect. In a more recent case, it said growing maijuana on personal property for personal use could be regulated under the clause even if it was never sold or moved across state lines.

If you have lots of poor people in search of cheap food and lots of unemployed people who'd like to work, what's the solution? Ban fast-food restaurants, naturally:

EXPOSITION PARK, Calif. (KABC) -- New stand-alone fast food restaurants have been banned from setting up shop in South Los Angeles, due to rising health concerns by the city council.

President Obama challenged the "Mythbusters" people to examine the ancient legend of Archimedes' solar death ray -- the supposed use of giant mirrors to reflect sunlight toward attacking Roman ships around 212 BC, setting them aflame:

We already know who Julian Asaange considers enemies, so it's no big surprise who considers him a friend:

Those of us who don't want to see space exploration slow down have had to take President Obama's word on some things, such as a commitment to Mars without returning to the moon first and the proposal to privatize shuttle-like missions. But at least we know the private sector can handle the assignment:

Juxtaposition of the week. From Time magazine:

The rise of China as an economic and political juggernaut has become a familiar refrain, but now there's another area in which the Chinese are suddenly emerging as a world power: education.

That exciting discovery by NASA I posted about earlier, the one annoucing discovery of a microbe that could use arsenic instead of phosphorus to build the backbone of its DNA? Maybe it was just crappy research:

As soon Redfield started to read the paper, she was shocked. "I was outraged at how bad the science was," she told me.

Opinions are all over the map on the Obama-Republican compromise. I paid particular attention to conservative thought, which is anything but unanimous. The Club for Growth is against it. Jim DeMint expresed mixed feelings then came out against it. National Review is cautiously optimistic. I think Paul Ryan has it about right: