Michael Moore edited someone's particpation in "Farenheit 9/11" in an unfair way to make it come out the way he wanted??!? I'm shocked -- shocked and outraged, I tell you. Never would have believed it.
Michael Moore edited someone's particpation in "Farenheit 9/11" in an unfair way to make it come out the way he wanted??!? I'm shocked -- shocked and outraged, I tell you. Never would have believed it.
It's no big surprise that as soon as American war deaths in Iraq reached 2,000, a whole lot of people would be using that magic number to advance their own causes. It would be too depressing to list all of them. Here's one that's representative of the rest: Stastically speaking, at least 25 of the dead probably were gay.
I don't especially like "the trolley is going off the tracks and the people who should care don't" pieces, but Peggy Noonan says it so eloquently. Noonan's lament isn't quite the same as Jimmy Carter's famous malaise speech (in which he didn't use that actual word); he blamed the American people in general. Noonan zeroes in on a more specific group:
Are you sitting down? Sure you're ready? Here goes: President Bush has actually proposed a budget cut to offset hurricane-relief spending. Why don't we just cut federal spending, say, 5 percent a year across the board until it approaches something reasonable.
You know the Rosa Parks story. Now, here's the rest of the story:
Those who see government as the solution to social problems may be surprised to learn that it was government which created this problem. Many, if not most, municipal transit systems were privately owned in the 19th century and the private owners of these systems had no incentive to segregate the races.
Condoleezza Rice has moved beyond race, sex, circumstances of birth, all the baggage that weighs most people down, to become a remarkable, unique individual. Some people can never forgive her for that, like this idiot, who thinks she just isn't black enough and certainly not liberal enough:
The Onion, is, you know, a humor publication. If stuff like this keeps happening, some might suspect that people in the White House have no sense of humor:
There is so much room on the Web for people with such specific interests, like this site that is about nothing but pencils. And these folks demand to be taken seriously:
First, no, this site was not created as a joke, and many hours a week and money do not go into it as a joke. If some folks do not like pencils and prefer pens or computers, they are perfectly free not to be a part of our community.
I like my brightly lit places; the house is blazing all hours of the day and night. So I hate light bulbs. Friends give me sacks and sacks of them at Christmas, and I still run out before spring ends. I try to stock up at Sam's Club, but it usually carries only one kind at a time; I need 100-watters and 40-watters, and I can't tell you how many times it has had nothing but 60-watters.
So I regarded with interest this story about the possibility of the end of light bulbs:
Paul Musgrave on why Indiana needs to get rid of township assessors:
Virginia Postrel, someone whose opinions are always worth considering, pinpoints exactly what's wrong with the nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court:
The Chicago Tribune has a nice profile of Indiana U.S. Rep. Mike Pence, who is getting quite a reputation as THE voice of small-government conservatism. This excerpt gives the flavor of the piece:
If a city pays a newspaper $100,000 to print only good news about it, that's both bad journalism and an outrageous use of tax money.
UPS, in an agreement with the New York state's attorney, will no longer ship cigarettes to individuals in the United States. The agreement, it is said, is part of the ongoing efforts of federal and state governments to cut down on underage smoking and tax avoidance. Which do you suppose is the most important to all those regulators? Here's a clue:
This is a very ugly, very public dispute among professors at the School of Law at Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis:
Mr. Bradford went public in a June 26 column in The Indianapolis Star, alleging he was under fire from Ms. Roisman and Ms. Mitchell because of his political views. The following day Ms. Roisman sent Mr. Bradford an e-mail message demanding "an immediate, unconditional, and public retraction."
BREAKING NEWS: Masson's Blog, which has led the pack in the time-zone issue, is reporting the federal Department of Transportation's Notice of Proposed Rule Making on the requests of the Indiana counties wanting to change zones. (He also links to the pdf of the entire 18-page DOT document.) Five counties -- St. Joseph, Starke, Knox, Pike and Perry -- will have their requests to move from East to Central approved. All the rest were refused, although the proposal is tentative, and the other counties have until Nov.
One thing I found interesting in reading all the reports about the death of Rosa Parks is that she wasn't the first one to refuse to give up her seat on the bus.
At least three other people were arrested for refusing to give up their bus seats prior to the Parks incident; they live in near anonymity today. Parks went on to become an icon who received a host of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal. Why her? What made her so special?
Hoosier Brian Lamb, president and CEO of C-SPAN, gets well-deserved recognition by U.S. News & World Report as one of America's best leaders. Of all the people on the cutting edge of the information revolution, he has done more than anybody to make government more accessible to more people. The headline says it well: Playing it straight. Here's the camera, there's the government, it's showtime.
Let's hear it for Tom Coburn, the freshman senator from Oklahoma, who had the guts to tell "the world's greatest deliberative body" how indecent its spending has become:
