We're not going to Durban, or Geneva, either

CNN:

U.S. boycotts racism conference, says it 'singles out' Israel

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The United States is boycotting a U.N. conference on racism next week over a document that "singles out" Israel in its criticism and conflicts with the nation's "commitment to unfettered free speech," the U.S. State Department said Saturday.

Good news from Washington? Let us give thanks. Hey, aren't President Obama and Hillary! both in Trinidad today? Let's see how long this decision stands.

We could have sent a delegation that would try to bang some sense into the assorted anti-Semites and moonbats, but the likelihood of any success in that would have been minimal. Better to hang back with the Australians, who will also be skipping the conference. Hey, hang with the Aussies? Bound to be beer! All right now. Make mine a Cooper's.

Update April 20: Not just the Aussies and the US; the list of the non-attending includes so far Israel, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Good beer will be had at the rump conference.

Another update: Roger L. Simon is in Durban Geneva, and writing about it, naturally. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. And what you might consider Part 6, "How Ahmadinejad Made Me a Believer." Video. Text, with lots of comments.

Update and correction: Silly me, how did I miss that a conference called "Durban II" was actually being held in Geneva?

"Night of the Living Government"

Sissy Willis picked this line for her post title: "Let me devour your flesh because I know how to use it better than you do."

There. Can you not go read that, now? Don't neglect to watch the video while you're over there. No, not the embedded one, the linked one, this one. If you'd rather YouTube, then this one at Andrew Klavan's blog at PJ Media. At one point, Klavan refers to "insatiable hunger for power," which reminded me of a post by Shannon Love a couple of days ago, Don’t Be Preedy.

Via Glenn Reynolds.

Katrina Pierson at the Dallas Tea Party

Could be inspirational.



Linked by Delia in a comment at PJ Media.

Look at this hipster

As a companion to Rock 'n' roll mockery, here is Look at this f-ing hipster. A collection of photos with humorous captions. The photos are funny; the captions give them the boost to LOL. Thanks to Althouse commenter mcg, who says "NSFW for language in large type." And I agree.

Windjammer round Cape Horn

Irving Johnson took a movie camera with him on this voyage from Hamburg to Talcahuano. Bird Dog, at Maggie's Farm, calls it "The Best Video of 1929." I'm inclined to agree. 36 minutes and some seconds, all of it riveting.

This is how cargo shipping with zero carbon footprint was done. When I see Greenpeace or Sea Shepherd setting sail in square-riggers, I might take them a little more seriously.

Update: That bit about cargo shipping with zero carbon footprint reminds me of a song. (Funny, as I get older, everything seems to remind me of a song.) This time, it's Larry Kaplan's "Old Zeb," about Captain Zebulon Tilton of Martha's Vineyard. (Listen to it here.) The verse that's apropos goes like this:

Any fool can work an engine, it takes brains to work a sail,
And I never seen no steamer get much good out of a gale.
You can go and pay your taxes on the rationed gas you get
But at least for me, the wind is free, and they haven't run out yet.

The tradeoff, of course there is a tradeoff, is that a modern vessel needs far fewer crewmen, and the crewmen are much more likely to come home. Note that two men were lost on the voyage around Cape Horn in the video linked above.

Missed the Tea Party ...

… because I was still wrangling the taxes! Got the e-file in at about 3:30 pm, too late to go up to Providence as I had something at home at 6.

It was a good turnout, considering how blue a state Rhode Island is.

There's some pretty fair coverage of the local event at the Providence Journal: Stimulated to protest. The video in that story is better here. There's even a slideshow. This is better coverage than the NY or Boston papers gave to events in their cities.

Glenn Reynolds has plenty of pictures and links. Blake has a post with more links, including some to Twitter, which, well, I'll understand it better by and by.

Doing a little channel-hopping around the networks, between CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, to see what the coverage would be like, I found the bias so blatant it was shocking. (Oh, yes, "I'm shocked, shocked, to find bias going on here.")

One of the (many) things that bugs me about today's lefties is their faux naiveté, or you might say disingenuousness. They pretend that they don't know what you're talking about, seize on some little turn of phrase, and proceed to argue against that, as if it were really the main point. That they continue to use this tactic shows that they are arguing in bad faith. And the obscenities, and the flood-the-zone. These so-called reporters are acting like comment trolls.

This CNN newsbabe, Susan Roesgen, in particular is exemplary, but really, the teabagging jokes are enough to demonstrate that the media elites are, uh, in the bag for the administration. Malkin writes on this effort by the no-longer-remotely-respectable media to turn this dissent into a dirty joke. This is rank stuff. Anderson Cooper and the rest who used this term, teabagging, in the sex-play sense have disgraced their networks. This is not sophisticated wit, it's Beavis and Butthead, snickering. No thought was taken for the many, a majority, I'd guess, who had never heard of this practice. I feel a little dirtier now, and I was a fairly dirty old man already. To Cooper, Shuster, the rest of the tv talkers who commented in this vein, I say, don't be doing blue comedy on the news, or, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Ed Driscoll has a roundup post on early coverage, with more than I really wanted to read on the obscenities, and a link to a Nazi comparison.

Update: Speaking of disgusting lefties, here's an example: Teabag Fox News dot com. (I don't want to link this thing.) I was looking for the Janeane Garofolo clip as an example of fluorescent idiocy: here it is, posted proudly, along with much else that should be marked as not for the young or easily squicked.

More: Ed Driscoll has Jon Stewart taking a Cody Willard quote out of context. (It's dangerous to use terms, in this case "fascism," that have a real meaning known to some, and are used by others as invective.) Driscoll links to Stephen Green, who shows how the "teabag" shtick comes straight out of the Alinsky rulebook. In a comment on Green's piece, CraigZ clarifies the point that Jon Stewart used to make trouble for Cody Willard:

Calling Obama a Fascist is NOT to compare him to Hitler. It is an honest question whether the economic, repeat economic policies of this Administration are similar to those pursued by Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the ’30s. The “firing” of the CEO of GM seemed too similar for my tastes to the relationship between Krupp and the German government of 1938.

Though CraigZ is talking about something else, the general point applies. Did I take this quote out of context? Unlike viewers of The Daily Show, the reader here can click the link and decide for him- or herself.

Another update: To end, for now, on a more pleasant note, C-Span has a collection of Tea Party "videos submitted by C-SPAN viewers from across the nation," 14 in all, each from a different place.

Added: Why the tea parties? Why so suddenly? That "Taxed Enough Already" retronym is unfortunate, as it's allowing critics to say things about current taxes and tax breaks. I think the reason that hundreds of tea parties took place last week is that the significance of this

is being noticed by more people. The taxes that the tea partiers are complaining about are not necessarily the current taxes, but the taxes that will be required to meet the budgets that Pelosi, Obama, and Reid have promised. Especially since tax revenue is dropping like a stone. Democrats appear to believe the Laffer Curve is a figment of the imagination, so their prescription will be to raise the rates on the "rich," which will lead to revenue falling further, and so on. You've seen it over and over with municipal transit: when there are too few fare-paying riders to pay the cost of drivers, fuel, maintenance on the equipment, the authority will raise the fare. Except on the ever-increasing number of those who have bus passes. Compare Ari Fleischer: Everyone Should Pay Income Taxes.

As you might say on a sign, "It's the spending, stupid!"

What's wrong with American Idol

is that it does not have singers like these. From the British TV show that "Idol" is a Bizarro copy of, Paul Potts:



and Susan Boyle:



"Ted Mack's Amateur Hour" and "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts" had more diversity than American Idol.

(Those related videos from the Susan Boyle clip will open as pop-ups and may be blocked by a pop-up blocker.)

Rock 'n' roll mockery

Oh dear, I couldn't stop looking, couldn't stop laughing either. With each click, wondering if one of my old bands with me in it would show up in the next pic. (Did not happen. Whew!)

Rock and Roll Confidential's collection of bad band photos.

Jeremy makes a number of appearances in these. So now we know what he's doing in his rare spare moments when not trolling Althouse.

Thanks to Tim Walters, commenting at Making Light on something entirely different.

As Bill Haley didn't exactly say, "We're gonna mock, mock, mock — mock around the clock tonight!"

How did I miss calling this post Mock 'n' roll? Chalk up another one for l'esprit de l'escalier.

Related: Look at this hipster.

The clock-work heart

See it here.

Jessica Palmer says, "What does it signify? Does it represent the gradual replacement of the natural world around us with technology, to the point where our own bodies become artificial? Is it critiquing the reductionist tendencies of neurobiologists who believe our deepest emotions are complex but purely chemical reactions? Is it a steampunk Valentine?"

An enigmatic image. Meaning? You, you human beings, you make the meaning. You create the meaning. So be careful, be mindful, of what you are creating.

***

Abrupt shift in tone:

19th-century pacemaker, that's my guess. Maybe the thing under the floor that so upset [the character written by] Edgar Allan Poe.

Weenie Campbell is back on the air

Or on the Net, oh, you know what I mean.

This is good news if you like old blues.

Welcoming our new ice overlords

Geoengineering. (via Reynolds.)

Now they're talking about geoengineering. What happens when an adherent of Ehrlich is appointed to a position of responsibility power? Turn the siren up to eleven! We got global warming, it's catastrophic, TURN THAT GLOBAL THERMOSTAT DOWN! Honestly, some of these people think a hangnail is a catastrophe. I wonder if John Holdren knows anything about the Dust Bowl of the 1930's. Maybe I'll send him a copy of The Grapes of Wrath.

Back in January, I said:

some of the alarmists are calling for geoengineering schemes to supplement ineffective CO2 reduction schemes. "Climate scientists: it's time for 'Plan B'." The survey on which the first piece is based: "What can we do to save our planet?" This approach could get seriously dangerous. None of these scientists exhibits any concern about the possibility of triggering another Ice Age.

Are these people mad?

Well, they might just be monumentally incompetent and stupid, perhaps venal. If that's any comfort. But they are in power now. Yes, I know that I don't have the degrees that they do, the credentials. But I don't have the vested interests, either.

Triggering another Ice Age. Think about it.

Update a few minutes later: Andrea Harris makes a Fritz Leiber reference.

And another: Even the Greenies don't like it.

(NaturalNews) Of all the hare-brained ideas about climate change I've heard in the last few years, this one takes the grand prize: John Holdren, the new science advisor to President Obama, is actively considering radical geoengineering ideas in order to halt global warming. One such idea now being discussed with the Obama administration involves -- get this -- launching enormous amounts of pollution particles into Earth's upper atmosphere to block the sun's rays and "chill" the planet.

Let me explain why this is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard. And keep in mind this is not about the debate of whether global warming is even real or not, since that's a different article altogether. This is about the short-sighted stupidity of even considering polluting the atmosphere in order to protect us from the CO2 pollution we've already dumped into the atmosphere.

First off, there's the whole idea that intentionally launching pollution into the atmosphere is, by any reckoning, a dangerous ecological experiment that potentially puts the entire Earth ecosystem at risk. Let's face it, folks: Human beings have proven themselves to be remarkably bad at anticipating the ecological effects of their own actions. The ramifications of such misguided efforts to fight global warming simply cannot be foreseen by any scientist (or group of scientists).

Well, then, there you are.

How much actual power does a science advisor have, anyway? Since his power is to advise and persuade, he'll likely do what the climate alarmists have been doing all along, fudge facts to make his case more emphatic. Like the fellow in the videos linked below.

Yet another update! More on this from Richard Fernandez at PJ Media. In comments, he voices a thought similar to something I have been thinking lately, "Sometimes I think the only function that a blogger can perform is to become a chronicler of the descent into insanity. The issues are no longer Right versus Left; Conservative versus Liberal. To some extent it is a battle between sanity and Looney Tunes."

***

And check this out: A little bit of a debate on climate and energy policy between Marc Morano and Joseph Romm. As near as I can tell, Morano is a political type with no particular scientific credentials, but is well-informed on the issues. Romm, on the other hand, has lots of credentials, worked in the Department of Energy for years, under Clinton, in important positions.

And yet, when they get to talking, Romm is spouting hysterical nonsense, while Morano calmly counters with facts.

So this is the best they can do? This is the "physicist and climate expert?" This person worked in government for years, determining the policies to guide the future of the nation? <sarcasm>I so want the government to take over my health care, build my cars, tell me how much I should be allowed to earn, how much I should be allowed to save.</sarcasm>

From Jerry Pournelle's mail.

Update: Mr. Romm is not happy about how that debate turned out.

Minor update to U-verse post

Just a little one, but it corrects an error: that problem with the audio on the coax connection is not restricted to the secondary STB's after all. I just had not been listening closely enough.

"Sprechen Sie douche?"

Andrea quotes Cuffy, and Wittgenstein, in the course of letting fly a fine diatribe.

Excuse me, my tiny little primate brain may be no match for President Obama’s gigantic Time Lord brain, but I was pretty sure that the language they spoke in Austria was German.

I can't keep up with this gaffe-a-minute Administration. Every time I get a half-dozen tabs with things to write about, another dozen come along.

Obama's plan for Afghanistan?

Gerard Vanderleun seems to have it figured out:

I think he realizes what his needs are in Afghanistan. What he needs to do is end a war in an American defeat while being seen as "trying for a victory." To do that he has to engineer an American defeat. Iraq is already, in the public mind at least, in the win column. So how do we engineer an American defeat? It is simplicity itself. You begin, not with a "surge" but a ripple.

Full details at American Digest.

The one thing that Vanderleun leaves out is this business of negotiating with the "moderate Taliban." Vice-President Biden has apparently been conducting interviews, or taking a poll:

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., speaking to NATO allies this week in Brussels, called 5 percent of the Taliban “incorrigible — not susceptible to anything other than being defeated.” A senior European diplomat involved in Afghanistan said officials believed that number to be 100 to 1,000 Qaeda and Taliban members. Mr. Biden said he believed that “another 25 percent or so” were uncertain about their commitment to the insurgency, while about 70 percent were involved because it meant “getting paid.”

But how exactly the Afghan government and the United States will pry away those insurgents remained unclear. Whatever is decided must be presented by the Afghan government, Mr. Biden said. “I do think it is worth engaging and determining whether or not there are those who are willing to participate in a secure and stable Afghan state,” he said.

I wonder why that question of "whether or not there are those who …" was not included in the survey.

It could be an amusing (for them) exercise in taqqiya for the Talib chiefs to pick a couple of their number to pretend to be moderates, and go waste the infidels' time in pointless talk. This would provide something for the Administration to point to: "See, we have found the moderate Taliban, and we are negotiating right now."

Update: "Barack Obama fails to win Nato troops he wants for Afghanistan."

Barack Obama made an impassioned plea to America’s allies to send more troops to Afghanistan, warning that failure to do so would leave Europe vulnerable to more terrorist atrocities.

But though he continued to dazzle Europeans on his debut international tour, the Continent’s leaders turned their backs on the US President.

I don't understand. I thought that relations with our allies were supposed to improve. Or as Glenn Reynolds says, "No, we can't." There is more to diplomacy than impassioned pleading.

Vindaloo

England used to be powered by roast beef, and fish and chips. These days, it's vindaloo.

The canonical Fat Les video:



But you want another helping, because the first is never quite enough. The slightly less canonical Fat Les video, as the presenter says, "football, curry, and raving loons are the very foundations on which our great nation are built:"



Les doesn't look as fat as all that. (Or is the name a joke? "Less fat" than, say, the average Manchester United fan? These subtleties sometimes go right past me.)

This is the sort of song that you can sing along on even if you have no idea at all. But I'll give you a little bit of help:

Me and me mum and me dad and me gran went off to Waterloo.
Me and me mum and me dad and me gran and a bucket of vindaloo.

There, that's better, now, isn't it?

The very model

Compare, contrast:

Pat Sky plays it straight, listen so you'll know what the tune sounds like:



Commenter Stephen at Accuracy in Media contributes this bit of genius:

I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Media-Journalist

(with thanks in perpetuity to William Schwenck Gilbert)


I am the very model of a modern Media-Journalist,
I‘ve information biased, bogus, banal and paternalist,
I know the talking heads and every bureau puke and oracle
from A-B-C to C-N-N in order categorical;
I’m very well acquainted, too, with schedules for sabbatical,
I live to write a sentence that’s both simple and grammatical,
I’m good at leading questions, and my team puts out a lot o’ news,
With many damning facts for which, at times, fact-checking’s not in use!
ALL:
With many damning facts for which, at times, fact-checking’s not in use!
With many damning facts for which, at times, fact-checking’s not in use!
With many damning facts for which, at times, fact-checking’s not, oh not in use!

I’m very good at racial stereotyping and diversity,
I know the ‘scientific names’ endorsing this perversity,
In short, in matters biased, bogus, banal and paternalist,
I am the very model of a modern Media-Journalist.
ALL:
In short, in matters biased, bogus, banal and paternalist,
He is the very model of a modern Media-Journalist.

I’m full of mythic history, rewritten so it’s ‘relevant’;
I like my coffee caustic, I’ve a pretty taste for Volauvent,
I quote in daily articles the views of quasi socialists,
In columns I accede to notions from post-modern notionalists;
I can tell un-Dowded talking points from those in New York Magazine,
I help the croaking chorus bitch at ‘nonsequences’ unforeseen!
Then I am in a business you’d mistake for Gilbert’s Pinafore,
If not for validation, it’s a mystery what I’m in it for!
ALL:
If not for validation, it’s a mystery what he’s in it for!
If not for validation, it’s a mystery what he’s in it for!
If not for validation, it’s a mystery what he’s in it, in it for!

Then I can write a memo with Orwellian verisimilitude,
And tell you ev’ry detail of how Donaldson’s toupee is glued:
In short, in matters biased, bogus, banal and paternalist,
I am the very model of a modern Media-Journalist.
ALL:
In short, in matters biased, bogus, banal and paternalist,
He is the very model of a modern Media-Journalist.

In fact, when I know what is meant by “permalink” and “Blogosphere,”
When I can tell at sight a hunting rifle from a frogging spear,
When I know Stars’ affaires ain’t news and how our coverage went awry,
And when I know precisely what is meant by who, what, where ‘n why.
When I have learnt what progress has been made in free economy,
When I know more of ethics, real science, and isonomy,
In short, when I’ve a smattering of what is news, not punditry,
You’ll say a better Media-Journalist has never done dead-tree!
ALL:
You’ll say a better Media-Journalist has never done dead-tree!
You’ll say a better Media-Journalist has never done dead-tree!.
You’ll say a better Media-Journalist has never done dead, done dead-tree!

For my journalistic knowledge, though not firm or evidentiary,
Is what I learned in Journal’ School and really so last century,
But still, in matters biased, bogus, banal and paternalist,
I am the very model of a modern Media-Journalist.
ALL:
But still, in matters biased, bogus, banal and paternalist,
He is the very model of a modern Media-Journalist.

Harry Reid -- he'll stick it to ya

This could go viral.

Image created by Chip Ahoy, and posted to Althouse on March 27, 2009.

Already picked up by Power Line. How many more, how soon?

The image is so powerful, all by itself, that the context — Reid accusing Chief Justice Roberts of lying about, uh, what, exactly was that? is irrelevant.

For the benefit of the search engines: Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, American Gothic, Grant Wood, fork, pitchfork.

Alternate title: Reid and Pelosi to America: "Get Forked!"

Update: Obama has started talking about pitchforks, leading to another version of the image. More to come before it's done.

Nuclear?

Some have trouble pronouncing it; some can't even think it.

Jerry Taylor at The Corner links to a piece by David Owen (no relation) at The New Yorker, "Economy vs. Environment." Taylor: "[E]conomic growth is the enemy and a return to the pre-industrial age is answer." The recurring refrain of the Deep Greens. Owen goes on and on about how energy prices must be made higher, never mind the hardship that would result. He does have the sense to say

American dependence on fossil fuels isn’t going to end any time soon: solar panels and wind turbines provided only about a half per cent of total U.S. energy consumption in 2007, and they don’t work when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Replacing oil is going to require more than determination.

But the word "nuclear" is nowhere to be found in his effusion.

We have a safe source of power that does not emit carbon. Can we use it, please? The refusal of the Greens (including Obama's science advisors) to admit that nuclear power is a viable alternative to fossil fuels, even as they are trying to shut down fossil fuel production, shows that what they really want is widespread misery. Prosperity is the enemy. Or as David Owen says in conclusion,

The ultimate success or failure of Obama’s program, and of the measures that will be introduced in Copenhagen this year, will depend on our willingness, once the global economy is no longer teetering, to accept policies that will seem to be nudging us back toward the abyss.

Oh, yeah, those policies, what about them, that only "seem to be nudging us back toward the abyss"? I would say that's no seeming, it's an actual nudging, or even a shove.

Compare the discussion in comments about the Tata Nano.

Evan Sayet speaks again

It seems I neglected to link to that first speech of his, the one he called "How Modern Liberals Think." He recently delivered another, "Hating What's Right: How the Modern Liberal Winds Up on the Wrong Side of Every Issue." John Hawkins has both of them conveniently embedded in one post.

I have written and linked a bit here about how modern liberals got to be the way they are, the Gramscian "long march through the institutions," Willi Münzenberg, and so on; Sayet does not speak so much about history, but about the present-day state of affairs.

Via Suzanna Logan, via Reynolds.

Say it, Evan!

How politically incorrect is this?

Vote for who you think is the most beautiful woman in politics.

Which of these would you most like to find at the door, asking for a vote?

Via Surber, who has comments, via Reynolds.

Update: More comments, and some suggestions, at A Tangled Web.

Another update: Surber follows up with a one-off, Granholm vs. Palin. It's scarcely a contest.

Aaand another update: TrogloPundit has more. And even more yet.

Bill of Rights, ROV (Revised Obama Version)

Is the language of the Constitution, and particularly the Bill of Rights, so archaic as to need translation? I think not. Lawyers argue about points of language, but they do that about statutes written yesterday. Take a look at this White House dot gov page titled "The Constitution."

It's not the Constitution! It's something you might expect to find in a fifth-grade Social Studies textbook. (They haven't done "history" or "civics" in the schools since, like, forever, you fossil.) There is a difficult-to-see link to the full text. But the full text, at an external link that takes two clicks through a warning to get to, is presented with a side-by-side gloss that makes the whole thing less, not more, comprehensible.

But right there on the page is a section headed "The Bill of Rights" which, darn it, is not the Bill of Rights! Here:

The Bill of Rights

One of the principal points of contention between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists was the lack of an enumeration of basic civil rights in the Constitution. Many Federalists argued, as in Federalist No. 84, that the people surrendered no rights in adopting the Constitution. In several states, however, the ratification debate in some states hinged on the adoption of a bill of rights. The solution was known as the Massachusetts Compromise, in which four states ratified the Constitution but at the same time sent recommendations for amendments to the Congress.

James Madison introduced 12 amendments to the First Congress in 1789. Ten of these would go on to become what we now consider to be the Bill of Rights. One was never passed, while another dealing with Congressional salaries was not ratified until 1992, when it became the 27th Amendment. Based on the Virginia Declaration of Rights, the English Bill of Rights, the writings of the Enlightenment, and the rights defined in the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights contains rights that many today consider to be fundamental to America.

The First Amendment provides that Congress make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting its free exercise. It protects freedom of speech, the press, assembly, and the right to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.

The Third Amendment prohibits the government from quartering troops in private homes, a major grievance during the American Revolution.

The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable search and seizure. The government may not conduct any searches without a warrant, and such warrants must be issued by a judge and based on probable cause.

The Fifth Amendment provides that citizens not be subject to criminal prosecution and punishment without due process. Citizens may not be tried on the same set of facts twice, and are protected from self-incrimination (the right to remain silent). The amendment also establishes the power of eminent domain, ensuring that private property is not seized for public use without just compensation.

The Sixth Amendment assures the right to a speedy trial by a jury of one's peers, to be informed of the crimes with which they are charged, and to confront the witnesses brought by the government. The amendment also provides the accused the right to compel testimony from witnesses, and to legal representation.

The Seventh Amendment provides that civil cases also be tried by jury.

The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, excessive fines, and cruel and unusual punishments.

The Ninth Amendment states that the list of rights enumerated in the Constitution is not exhaustive, and that the people retain all rights not enumerated.

The Tenth Amendment assigns all powers not delegated to the United States, or prohibited to the states, to either the states or to the people.

See what I mean? It's the ROV. And it's wrong in significant places. Take a look at the second amendment. For instance.

What is the point of presenting a baby-talk version of the basic law of the land, unless the presenter hopes that some of those who read it might mistake it for the real thing; which would change their perception of what the Bill of Rights means.

From Jerry Pournelle's mail.

Added: Obama has also spoken favorably of FDR's idea of a second bill of rights, more European or Soviet in style, in that it would list entitlements, as opposed to freedoms.

Gleanings

The Periodic Table of Awesome. (via)

Ex-Star Wars boffins build mosquito-blasting raygun (via)

The Chia Obama. (via)

Barack Obama is tired of your motherfucking shit. (Audio, NSFW) (via, via)

The third party for all the third partiers. (via blake, somewhere)

Bad ideas in the Nutmeg State

Proposed, a state AIG bonus tax:

In the latest proposal to recoup the AIG bonus money for taxpayers, state Senate Democrats are calling for an 80 percent tax surcharge for anyone who receives a bonus from a company receiving federal bailout money.

Senate President Pro Tem Donald Williams, the highest-ranking senator, said the law would apply only to Connecticut residents, and the surcharge would be paid through their state income tax. Many of those receiving bonuses worked out of the AIG financial products division in Wilton in Fairfield County.

Vengeance is theirs.

***

Proposed, making the state legislature even more like an oligarchy:

An upstate lawmaker has a novel idea for coping with Connecticut's fiscal crisis -- get rid of two-thirds of the General Assembly.

State Sen. Gary LeBeau, D-East Hartford, proposed a bill to combine the part-time Senate and House of Representatives into one full-time body, decrease the total number of legislators from 187 to 60 and have them serve four-year terms instead of two.

Sen. LeBeau's press release. I think it would make more sense to have more legislators, and pay them a lot less, but no-one asked me.

***

And the state Supreme Court upholds the DUI conviction of a man who was not driving:

Drunken people don't actually have to drive their cars to be charged with operating a motor vehicle under the influence of alcohol or drugs, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

The court's 5-0 ruling came in the case of Michael Cyr, who was arrested in Manchester in February 2005 in a parking lot near a bar. He had started his car remotely and then sat in the driver's seat intoxicated, but never put the key into the ignition and didn't drive anywhere.

Another story on this, with more comments.

Don't take any wooden nutmegs.

Monckton writes again, and he's not holding back this time

No indeed, he's getting downright snarky.

Where are they all today, those bed-wetting moaning Minnies of the Apocalyptic Traffic-Light Tendency--those Greens too yellow to admit they’re really Reds?

The main message of this conference to the bed-wetters is this. Stop telling lies. You are fooling fewer and fewer of us. However many lies are uttered, the scientific truth remains unalterable.

The Forces of Darkness, with their “global warming” chimera, came perilously close to ending the Age of Enlightenment and Reason. They almost ushered in a new Dark Age. Yet they have failed. Why? They have failed because you, here, have had the courage to face them down, to confront their falsehoods, and to nail their lies.

The Age of Light and Reason shall not die. Dylan Thomas wrote, “Do not go gentle to that last goodnight: Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” You have not raged in vain. The world is not cooking: It is cooling. Every opinion poll--even those conducted by the bed-wetters themselves--shows that global public opinion is cooling as fast as the global climate.

Read the whole thing.

And to close out St. Patrick's Day,

"There's no one as Irish as Barack O'Bama." With karaoke lyrics.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, in 23 hours, 58 minutes. Not a record, but pretty good time.

Thanks again to A Tangled Web, who have a different YouTube, and some comments.

And: Moe Lane has spotted a St. Pat's Day Christopher Dodd item. Thanks to the invaluable Instapundit.