Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
I’ve been re-reading a wonderful book that I first read when it was published a little more than a decade ago: As Thousands Cheer: The Life of Irving Berlin, by Laurence Bergreen. As anyone who enjoys popular music knows, Irving Berlin was one of the most extraordinary composers on the
Continue readingYou and I know that children — thank goodness! — are remarkably adaptable. Indeed, the younger they are, the more adaptable they are. It’s for this reason that pricey private schools and public schools in wealthy communities offer foreign language classes to the kindergarten set, rather than waiting, as they
Continue readingI’ve got a few news stories to throw out at you, all of which, in my mind, are related. At the end, I’ve got a couple of questions for you. First, the news stories, many of which are just from the last couple of days: Under the Labour Government, England
Continue readingI kid you not — the language I put in quotations in this post caption is the precise language the BBC uses to describe those who are engaged in a little bit of urban unrest In France. You know, the kind of innocuous urban rioting that results in more than
Continue readingWhen it comes to managed health care, the law of unintended consequences just keeps rolling along. The news out of England today tells the story of a woman who has been barred from New Zealand, where her husband has already moved, because she is “too fat.” Apparently in the conflict
Continue readingAlthough the base loathes illegal immigration, Republican politicians have been trying to make nice with the vocal illegal immigrant community, and therefore helped scupper any hopes this past political season that Congress would pass a reform bill tightening our borders and removing the amnesty reward for existing illegal immigrants (as
Continue readingThere are only two dates in British history that one needs to remember according to the authors of the wonderful 1066 & All That: A Memorable History Of England, Comprising All The Parts You Can Remember, Including 103 Good Things, 5 Bad Kings And 2 Genuine Dates . The title
Continue readingWell, the Board of Stupes, er, Supes, did it. They will now issue identification cards to all residents, legal or not, and require employers to accept them: The Board of Supervisors voted today to make San Francisco the largest U.S. city to issue municipal identification cards to its residents, regardless
Continue readingAs you may recall, about 10 months ago, when I returned from a European vacation, one of the things I blogged about was Switzerland as part of a larger post I did about Europe’s changing face: A train conversation with an unusually sweet lady in Switzerland resulted in my learning
Continue readingMatt Bai has written a new book, The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers, and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics, which looks at the movers and shakers who are working hard to remake the Democratic party. It sounds like an interesting, well-written book, and one that anyone interested in American politics should
Continue readingThe Democrats and their fellow travelers have been terribly upset since its inception by the Patriot Act, which they see as an infringement of their civil liberties. In that context, one of their chief fears is that the federal government will impose a national ID requirement, which they believe will
Continue readingApparently the feds, after going through all the bureaucratic steps, are fence building like crazy along our Southern border. An even better thing is the fact that, where the fences have already gone up, the number of illegal immigrants has gone down: New barriers have had an effect in San
Continue readingThe results are in at the Watcher’s Council and I have to admit to being pleased, since my post Cosmic Ironies came in first. This was the post in which I looked at my Dad’s family history in pre-WWII Germany and thought about the little twists of fate that saw
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