Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
Yet Peter Beinart at the Daily Beast wants her to apologise for it: The day after the story appeared, I received an email from a prominent Democratic lawyer offering me the same kind of assistance that the Obama administration seems to have provided the Times. In a previous Beast column, I had criticized Kagan’s action …
Continue reading "Elena Kagan's Most Principled–and Idiotic–Position"
He did anyway, in his address to Hampton University: US President Barack Obama lamented Sunday that in the iPad and Xbox era, information had become a diversion that was imposing new strains on democracy, in his latest critique of modern media. Obama, who often chides journalists and cable news outlets for obsessing with political horse …
Continue reading "Obama Shouldn't Bemoan the Diversions of the Technological World"
The first, from Mother Jones: Late on Thursday night, an effort to rein in the mega-banks that brought the American economy to the brink of disaster died on the Senate floor. Sens. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had offered an amendment that would have broken up the biggest banks and forced them to …
Which says they're too proud for their own good: When State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley refused to tell reporters which countries have offered assistance to help respond to the BP oil spill, the State Department press corps was flabbergasted. "As a policy matter, we're not going to identify those offers of assistance until we are …
That's one way to deflect the sorry reality of the situation: "I would not be surprised if the White House said, you know, we might be able to, guess what, do what? Use this crisis to our advantage. Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in," Brown told Neil Cavuto. "We …
Continue reading "Robert Gibbs: When Conspiracy Theories Are Easier to Take Than the Truth"
As the Qur'an would say, it's a clear sign: Pakistan was carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of British India in 1947, the world's first modern nation based solely on Islam. The country's name means "Land of the Pure." The capital city is Islamabad. The national flag carries the Islamic crescent and star. The cricket …
Continue reading "If the Cricket Team Wears Green, It Must Be an Islamic State"
I've documented on this blog and related ones some of the "interesting" business trips I have taken, especially outside the US. One of those took place in 1980, when my brother and I, fresh from an offshore technology exhibit at Earl's Court, took a plane to Hamburg to meet with a prospective German representative for …
Janet Daley at the Telegraph is right about this: What Gordon Brown did was to insult a quintessential Labour supporter for expressing opinions that are probably held by three quarters of the white working class core vote. That is a whole different ballgame – and its consequences are likely to be irreversible. It's one thing to insult …
Continue reading "It Is Gordon Brown's "Joe the Plumber Moment," Only Worse"
...things were different, as Le Salon Beige reminds us, in this quote which appeared in a French gay magazine in 2001: In France, homosexuality comes from a pedophile culture with André Gide. In 1968, there was even a pederast revolutionary action committee. In the speech of GLH at the start of 1975, there is a …
Continue reading "Homosexuals and Paedophiles Not in League? Back in the Old Days…"
Now we have the spectacle of Repbulicans battling it out over Social Security, in Florida of all places: Marco Rubio appeared on a Sunday talk show this month to say something remarkable. The Republican running for Florida's Senate seat suggested we reform Social Security by raising the retirement age for younger workers. Florida is home …
Continue reading "Rubio and Crist: The Reality of the Retirement Age in Social Security"
Positive Infinity 