The following was a letter submitted to the Inquirer in response to this letter.
A recent letter challenged anyone who has studied history to identify even one founder who would have agreed with Justice Scalia on guns. I’ve studied our history and here are just a few.
James Mason: “to disarm the people is the best and [...]
A story on FoxNews.com opened with this:
The White House called for a “simple up-or-down” vote on health care legislation Sunday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi appealed to House Democrats to get behind President Barack Obama’s chief domestic priority even it if threatens their political careers.
There’s only one thing to say to that:
Ave, Obama, morituri te salutamus!
Borepatch has a nice post on progressivism (hat tip to Newbie Shooter). Here’s my current summary of progressive agenda:
1. Guarantee an expansive and virtually unfettered right of individuals to pursue all the meaningless distractions that modern life has to offer.
2. Restrict and regulate the areas of life that actually have real significance (freedom of expression, [...]
I recently came across an interesting comment in an examination of the influence of Voodoo on Haiti’s culture.
Part of the allure of idol worship is if you just perform the right ceremonies you can behave as poorly as you want without consequence.
Do you notice the interesting parallel with Progressivism? If a Progressive makes the right [...]
Coming on the heels of multiple huge snow storms, with another whopper on the way (to say nothing of the ClimateGate scandal, a now steady stream of revelations of errors in the IPCC plus potential ethical and legal problems among climate priests), the geniuses in the Obama (mis)administration are proposing to create a Climate Change [...]
New Jersey is a shining example of this. And there is finally some recognition of the fact that NJ is losing many of its wealthiest residents for blindingly obvious reasons: the taxes are too high and the business climate too hostile.
The left, of course, continues to be in denial about a basic fact of the [...]
There have been two types of complaints (examples) about Justice Alito’s reaction to Obama’s criticism during the State of the Union address that the Citizens United decision overturned a century of law and couple open elections to involvement by foreign entities.
The first objection is on substance. Some people agree with Obama’s assertion and feel Alito has [...]
There is just nothing I can say to prepare you for this. Enjoy.
The Inquirer, like most lefty newspapers, usually makes at least a feeble attempt to make its partisanship seem non-partisan. Today, however, they didn’t cover their tracks very well. They ran a front page story about how former Philadelphia Eagle Jon Runyan receives a tax break (an agricultural exemption) on part of his 20 acre property.
Several [...]
Scott Brown has scored a stunning upset victory in the Massachusetts senate race. We’ve all seen the elements of the shock factor: Massachusetts until now had an all Democrat congressional delegation, the Senate seat had been held by Ted Kennedy, John Kennedy or a hired temp since the 1950s, Scott Brown was down in the [...]
I have seen repeatedly in the healthcare debate an argument from the left along the lines of “someone who is sick and uninsured isn’t really free”. I always thought that was a bizarre assertion. Well I recently read an article on the Progressive giant, John Dewey and that very formulation played a big role in [...]
I have grown increasingly impatient with the sloppiness, self-importance, condescension and intolerance that has come to characterize the left. Two recent letters in the Inquirer were so grating that I have decided to inaugurate an award for those who exemplify the most obnoxious affectations of the left. It will be given out whenever I choose [...]
It seems to me that one of the big mistakes that supporters of gay marriage make is that they begin with the assumption that gay marriage and traditional marriage are equivalent and interchangeable. In other words, they simply begin with a civil rights argument without ever establishing its applicability. And I actually agree, if gay [...]
Mrs. Manifesto and I had the opportunity to see Invictus over the weekend. I was not entirely sure what to expect but I have to say this is a great movie. I’m not interested in doing a movie review but I wanted to briefly note that there is a very conservative theme to it.
The movie’s [...]
Not really, of course. This is a case of correlation not causation but there is a very clear pattern to state-by-state happiness data published recently in Science. The Wall Street Journal published a summary (here is their chart). The happiest states overwhelmingly voted for McCain in the 2008 election and the least happy states unanimously [...]
Here is a letter I recently sent to the Philadelphia Inquirer. It was unpublished, of course.
To the editor,
A recent letter claimed “anyone who is scientifically literate knows that climate-gate is a nonscandal”. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, many active scientists (climate and otherwise) have recognized this is a serious problem that undermines trust [...]
The CRU hacking case just keeps getting better. Here is a detailed discussion of how the IPCC’s chart for 20th century temperatures in Australia completely contradicts the raw data. I’ll stop short of calling it fraud because that requires knowledge of motivations.
But I think the time has come for us to demand that all climate [...]
As I was writing the previous post on the craptastic legacy media, I realized there’s a remarkable parallel with the unfolding CRU hacked email scandal. When true believers (leftwing journalists in one case vs climate researchers in the other) control the input (reporting vs climate data) and the “unbiased” check on quality (editors vs peer [...]
The legacy media continues to not quite grasp the fact that they no longer have a monopoly on information. Nicholas Kristof and the NY Times provide us with another shining example. It’s an over the top story about a guy who lost his job and his insurance and has a potentially fatal health problem that [...]
A letter to the editor in today’s Inquirer complained about a previous article that referred to hunting as a sport. The author wrote that “a sport involves two equally matched teams on a level playing field”. Oh yeah? Clearly she’s never watched a 76ers game. They’re 5 and 14 as of today. I’ll bet the [...]