A Safe Environment for Social Engineering

One of my favorite cartoons of all time is one in which Calvin and Hobbes are engaged in casual banter and midway through the conversation Calvin makes an unusually insightful observation. Hobbes looks at him and remarks in a somewhat condescending manner that Calvin’s philosophical musings would have sounded better if they had come from someone else; the implication being that the weight of Calvin’s profound repartee bore no connection to his lack of wisdom and eminence to utter it in the first place.

Another Rangel Trial Balloon

One has to wonder at the perfunctory informality with which Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y. announces to a country so fiercely divided over what a majority allegedly feels is an illegitimate war, that a draft will have to be instituted in order to fight this war to which they are so strongly opposed; so much for those who cast their votes for the party which promised a new direction.

The Gathering Storm

On November 9, 2006, England’s Director General of Security Services Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller offered a startling assessment of the terror threats and attendant security challenges presently facing her country. Although her estimates appeared to address mainly regional concerns, it behooves the rest of the world not to wager that this malady is bound only to afflict the citizens of the British Commonwealth, given the avowed global ambitions of those who peddle this loathsome trade.

Who'd Dunn it? The new Genre.

Usually, when we look back at mistakes we’ve made, we wonder how things would have turned out if we had done things differently. It’s hard to say if this is the ruling principle behind O.J. Simpson’s recent announcement of an interview in which he purportedly explains how he might have killed his wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman, assuming he were the one responsible for the double murder, which he claims he wasn’t.

Cheer up Mates; not all is lost... yet.

Don’t get me wrong. Republicans got beaten like a one legged stepchild in this election. It was a thumping, as the president said. There’s no two ways about it. But in terms of ideologies, I submit that it was liberals who got the thumping, or at least a cautionary reminder that their militant crusade to win the hearts and minds of the American people has failed miserably.

The only victories the left will ever be able to boast of will tenuously hinge on the capriciousness of a slim Senate majority’s ability to deny a seat to any Supreme Court nominee who does not subscribe to their ideology; in other words, the old liberal tradition of procuring victories through judicial coercion.

Deeper still

"There is a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it all my life.” Those are the words of Ted Haggard in a letter written to his church after he confessed to recent allegations of sexual misconduct.

The Education of John F. Kerry

Senator John F. Kerry has again paid the price for having the same slow response problem he had back in 2004 when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched an “attack” on his Vietnam record, which he had chosen to place at the center of his campaign. Back then he tried first to ignore it hoping that the controversy would simply vanish into political oblivion. It didn’t; since then John Kerry has viewed not responding quickly to allegations that could prove damaging to his campaign as a cardinal error, even if - as he would probably put it – they are merely a “pack of lies” from a few uneducated grunts who possess the same mental quotient as the kid behind the counter where he gets his daily latte.