I’m guessing that an NFL star with a $92 million contract would find raising seven kids to be less of a financial strain than the rest of us might. Better he spend that money on them than on sports cars, bling, and blow.

You may think it’s absurd to require soldiers to have non-functioning firearms in the presence of the president, but the Secret Service probably remembered how Anwar Sadat died.

Or the even more ridiculous: the black man/Asian woman relationship, of which I’ve seen more on TV than in real life, and those I have seen in real life were war brides who married black servicemen for a green card.

Well, there’s also Kevin Johnson/Michelle Rhee.

I’m glad Patricia Washington has the courage to speak up on this. After all, no one would ever dare to talk about “angry white men,” would they?

I wonder whether Dylan Matthews, Ezra Klein, and the folks at Vox believe that anyone who wants to should just be allowed to walk into Israel and get a job (and a home) there. (If they turn out to be anti-Zionists and answer yes, then flip the question and ask whether any person who wanted to should have been allowed to just step off a boat into Mandatory Palestine and get a job (and a home) there.)

If “they stole shit,” without breaking and entering into a building, and without use or threat of physical force, then what they committed was theft, not burglary, and not robbery.

“Americans are appallingly bad at math. Struggling with fractions hinders their understanding. What is three fifths of seven eighths? Now find that on your inch ruler.”

I did it in my head . On my inch ruler, it’s just a hair over a half inch. That’s as close as I ever need to be

“What is 0.6 x 0.875 =?

“0.525 There, I did it in my head without recourse to a pencil or calculator. And if my calipers allows me to read 0.875 then it allows me to read 0.525. That’s why Engineers use tenths and hundredths and thousandths.”

I bet you’d have had a bit more difficulty doing it without a pencil or calculator if the question hadn’t used numerals but had been written in words, the way you posed your fractional problem: What is six tenths times eight hundred seventy-five one-thousandths?

“I will never understand why Americans cling to absolutely ridiculous and arbitrary idiosyncracies . . . .”

Good point! And I’ll never understand why people in other countries cling to *their* absolutely ridiculous and arbitrary idiosyncracies. I refer, of course, to their refusal to convert to the universal use of US dollars and cents for their currency. The problem of converting from one monetary unit to another is a lot more troubling that having to convert from English to metric units when dealing with foreigners. At least the number of inches per meter doesn’t change from day to day.

““One reason Americans are so dumb and can’t do Math is simply because most adults can’t handle fractions, can’t add em, multiply em or divide them. ”

So we’re going to make them smarter–and teach them to handle fractions–by adopting a system of weights and measures that doesn’t require them to use common fractions at all?

And what can possibly account for this disparity? RAAAAAAACCCCISSSSSSSSMMMMM!

Seems like the solution is simple: women should just exercise the choice to become trans men and rake in all the social privilege that comes with being part of the phallocracy (even if they, technically, don’t happen to have phalluses).

“So, to be looking at women’s fashion on a tall, skinny guy with no hips, there’s no way you can project yourself into those clothes.”

I thought tall, skinny, and with no hips was a classic type of female model. Think Kate Moss and (for real oldsters) Twiggy.

When I was still in high school (which puts it around 1969-71), I recall reading an article about the ephemeral nature of teen slang. It was published, IIRC, in the New York Times Magazine and was entitled, “If You Think It’s Groovy to Rap, You’re Shucking.” (I guess the word “shucking” was still cool at the time the article appeared.)

I wish there were some way people could reserve their handles, to avoid the confusion that can occur when more than one person comments under the same name. (I say this because I see that there is a handful of comments made by a “Seamus” that isn’t me.) On many sites, you have to register your name, and if you try to use a name that someone else has already claimed, you have to pick a different one. (In fact, I think that was the case on one of Sailer’s previous hosts.)

I am proud to say that, although a boomer myself, I have never (not even in the late 60s) used the word “groovy” except ironically.

In the meantime, Hillary’s home state wants to give non-citizens “state citizenship” entitling them to suck taxpayer-funded state benefits and VOTE in state and local elections. Plus, artificially inflate New York’s electoral vote allotment and congressional representative allotment!

It wouldn’t have any effect on the size of New York’s congressional delegation or electoral college strength. Aliens, including illegal aliens, are already counted in the census and taken into consideration in allocation of representatives. Which is why we have our own version of “rotten boroughs”–voting districts with relatively few actual voters: http://www.cis.org/ImmigrationReview33-ImmigrationHouseSeats

Geoff Cameron and Clint Dempsey are both white. Dempsey is a poor white from East Texas who grew up with Mexicans. Cameron is a typical Northeast masshole. The dark hair and brown eyes throw people off I guess.

You're blocked on DOD computers in Afghanistan/CENTCOM. May have something to do with servers being located in Germany.

Wes Anderson seems to be a very talented filmmaker who is reluctant to take himself seriously. He should try shooting someone else's script. In contrast, his contemporary PT Anderson has the opposite problem. He needs to lighten up, since the humor in his films is filled with menace. They should should film each other's scripts and see what happens.

"Thanks to the first hand account of one Sir Harry Paget Flashman, I know all the important parts."

Flashman also provided some pretty useful information about fighting a war in Afghanistan.

"Actually impeached and deposed by the national legislature, but it's so much fun to pretend otherwise."

The procedures set forth in article 111 of the Ukrainian constitution for impeachment and removal of the president were not followed.

"You keep using that word ['democracy']. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Because as everyone knows, elected politicians never lie to get elected, never abuse their power or betray their citizens when in office. Being elected, even "fairly," doesn't give you the right to do whatever you want.

Among the things you apparently aren't allowed to do, even if you are democratically elected, is decline to join the European Union. And if you do so decline, you had just better be prepared to have your public spaces illegally occupied by rebels who are willing to use violence to get their way.

It was one of the last episodes in the tv series.

Steve Jobs was half-Iranian/half-white American and he looked white. He was literally passing. Of course, his father was the Iranian one and his mother was the white Caucasoid one.

Since when are either Syrians or Iranians non-whites? (The Iranians are even Aryans, which should make the Nazis happy.) Was Eddie Albert's character in "Oklahoma!", Ali Hakim, not supposed to be white? What about Danny Thomas white? (And when his character went to Mayberry, North Carolina, where he was arrested by Sheriff Andy Taylor, was he treated as "colored" rather than white?) Is Ralph Nader non-white? Former Senators James Abourezk and John Sununu? The late Senator George Mitchell? Helen Thomas? William Baroody (head of the American Enterprise Institute between 1962 and 1978)? Najeeb Halaby (head of the FAA under Kennedy; father of Queen Noor of Jordan)?

In English law, duress is no defence for murder – although it might be used as a defence for other crimes.
So, plainly, UK law says that you must allow 5 to die rather than to deliberately take the life of one by your own wilful action.
As long as the 'intent' to kill is there, followed by the actual act, then it's a murder, and that cannot be argued with.

There isn't any "intent to kill." The intent is to divert the trolley from the five people. You'd be perfectly happy if, after being directed toward the one man, the trolley derailed and ran into the curb without hitting anyone.

In the fat man scenario, on the other hand, you *are* intending, if not the death of the fat man, an event whose natural and expected outcome is the death of the fat man. You would *not* be perfectly happy if something diverted the path of the fat man on his way down from the bridge to the trolley track, so that he hit the curb and was not in the path of the runaway trolley.

Interesting that most of the worst countries appear not be those from sub-Saharan Africa, but from the Muslim world.

Canada has had same-sex marriage since 2005. Couldn't the study have compared children raised by same-sex "married" couples to those raised by heterosexual married couples? Or if 2005 is too recent, couldn't the study have compared children raised by unmarried same-sex couples to those raised by same-sex couples (some who were both biological parents, and some where one or none of the couple was a biological parent of the child, so that the homosexual angle will be the only variable between the two grooups)? As it is, the apologists for SSM will point to the difference are claim that the comparison was apples-to-oranges.

How does G.K. Butterfield possibly pass as black?

(And although slavery isn't intrinsically a racial issue, it's worth pointing out that white people are also the first ones to whom it occurred that slavery was morally problematic. If it weren't for white people, slavery would still be legal throughout the world (as opposed to technically illegal but still widely practiced in places like Mauretania and the Sudan).)

"Fact of the matter is, we are dealing with whites, Aryans if you prefer, who have historically been the most virulently racist genetic group in history. All groups are racist, but none as virulently as European whites."

You must be joking. White people are the first ones to whom it ever occurred that racism might be wrong. And as far as I can tell, damn near the only people who have consistently embraced the idea that it's wrong as a matter of principle (as opposed to embracing it for the sake of personal or group advancement, or just for the sake of sticking it to Whitey).

and having more children than their neighbors

I find it very hard to believe that he was canned because people were upset at his anti-papist joke. In fact, I thought that papists, fundamentalists, and evangelicals were the only people you safely *could* make fun of these days. I suspect (on the basis of no evidence other than the implausibility of the cover story) the trustees had been wanting to get rid of him for a long time, and they just seized on this as the excuse to tell him it was time to go.

Doublespeak Talmudic bullshit. Ex post facto law means you are being prosecuted for something that was legal when you did it.

But it *wasn't* legal when she said it (at least if the authorities are correctly interpreting the 1972 "Loi Pleven"). She simply enjoyed parliamentary immunity that meant she couldn't be prosecuted for violation of the law, unless her immunity were removed.

If the rules for removing immunity were on the books when she made her statement, then there's no retroactive criminalization, any more than there is in the case where a diplomat is stripped of diplomatic immunity so he can be prosecuted (see, e.g., http://www.spokesman.com/stories/1997/feb/16/diplomat-stripped-of-immunity-after-fatal-car/).

In the U.S., members of Congress enjoy immunity from prosecution or suit for anything they say on the floor of the House or Senate (and, under governing judicial interpretation, in the course of their official duties). There is no procedure for stripping a congresscritter of such immunity, which means that if the constitution were amended to allow such stripping, and a member were then prosecuted for statements made on the floor of the House before the constitutional amendment, *that* would constitute a retroactive prosecution, and yes, there would be something fishy about it.

Many of them mention that ubiquitous photo of Dzhokhar with his hair tousled and too few hairs on his chin to shave.

Kinda like Trayvon Martin's picture.

same guy i think poking fun at danish language.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-mOy8VUEBk

so many unproduced jar jar binks and howard the duck scripts

New Zealand's history is interesting in that modern human settlement only took place by Polynesians in circa 1250-1300. Eurpeans came a mere 300 or so years after the first settlment took place. I wonder what would have happened had Europeans made the journey there sooner and the Maori a few hundred years later. Who would the Indigenous people be then? Still the Maori, since their people were already in the region, or the Europeans by the virtue of their discovery and settlement of the place?

Probably the same thing will happen as happened with white people in the former Cape Colony in South Africa: They may have gotten there before the Bantu, but they still have to give preference to the "disadvantaged" late arrivals.

Whatever else unlawful he may have done, Zimmerman is certainly guilty of stupidity for going out there to confront Martin when it was (apparently) clear neither life nor limb — his or anyone else's — was in immediate danger.

Except, as best we know, he didn't "go out there to confront Martin." He went out there to *follow* Martin, so he could direct the cops toward him when they showed up.

Interesting that NR has been so consistently purging its most interesting writers: John O'Sullivan, Peter Brimelow, our host here. Some would include Joe Sobran, though I haven't been as impressed by what I've read of him.

The real question should be whether you've been impressed by what you've read *by* him.

Only five games? MLB suspended Marge Schott for a lot longer than that when she expressed much more guarded praise of *her* favorite dictator.

The rise of lacrosse in suburban (white) schools likely correlates to the the lack of good white American basketball players.

The organization GuyanaUSA argues that so many Guyanese have moved to America that the U.S. might as well take over the whole country.

Well, for a while there, the country was governed by an American (Janet Jagan, the widow of Prime Minister and President Cheddi Jagan).

Is there really such a thing as a "nice eighth grader." From my experience, eighth graders (especially eighth grade boys) are about the lowest form of human life. (And I say this as a former eighth grade boy. I got better.)

That strategy is one that Roissy has been known to recommend.

"certainly a contentious suggestion, but i'd like to stop seeing cancer survivors described as "heroes"."

If I can't stop laughing since reading this sentence, does that make me a bad person?

I've yet to have cancer, but I did get my start in the entertainment industry editing porn. I don't mind those girls being called "stars." It's just about all they've got.

So we shot him in the back. During the first Gulf War, we slaughtered retreating Iraqi soldiers on the Highway of Death, and we used plows mounted on tanks to bury Iraqi soldiers alive who were doing nothing but sitting in their trenches. Those are legitimate actions to take toward combatants who are not attempting to surrender.

On the other hand, "Blink" was a great Doctor Who episode.

I wasn't until I read the seventh paragraph, with expressions like "mashed to a pulp" and "wasting their precious youth on a Sisyphean endeavor" that I guessed this was from The Onion.

That's just a ridiculous age for a Supreme Court justice, but it hasn't been an issue because he's a liberal.

It was an issue with regard to Stevens's (equally liberal) predecessor, William O. Douglas, because Douglas (more than a decade younger than Stevens is now) had so clearly lost his marbles.

Schopenhauer thought that arranged marriages were better because romantic love is just an illusion that will wear off. An Indian I know had a arranged marriage. He told me he wanted to get married on a certain date because it was the date of his parent's marriage. He said he didn't care who the girl was. Talk about different cultures. A lot of people would benefit from arranged marriges.

Yeah, but as Apu (in "The Simpsons") said in response to his mother's efforts to arrange a marriage for him, "But mother, one out of every 28 arranged marriages ends in divorce."

So does Downey's Sherlock Holmes use a seven-percent solution of cocaine to sharpen his mind?

There goes Sailer again, engaging in his anti-semitic slurs that Jews are smart.

If you read his PowerPoint presentation on Muslims in the U.S. Military, you have to wonder how he ever got an undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech, much less a medical degree.

At least Henry Kissinger *pretended* to make peace in Vietnam to win his prize.

Did Polanski even ask Clinton for one, or was he too arrogant to do so? Clinton would have been a slam dunk.

The only thing Clinton could have issued a pardon for was for flight across state lines to avoid prosecution, which, unlike statutory rape, is a federal offense.

So why exactly doesn't the roofing contractor pay? Doesn't worker's compensation cover all employees, even ones employed illegally?

So much for Rogers and Hammerstein's theory that prejudice is something that "you have to be carefully taught."

I'm sorry, but "adult tricycle" is one of those oxymorons, like "jumbo shrimp" or "military intelligence."

The striking title certainly didn’t hurt.

Yeah, but it would have been nice if the movie had bothered to explain the title. (Yes, we learn at the end that Snape is in fact "the Half-Blood Prince," but we never learn why he's called that. I understand that when you adapt a book for the big screen, you can't include everything, but the title shouldn't be one of the things that's just left hanging in space.)

Judging from what we know, the only "words exchanged between the police officer and Mr. Gates" were on the police officer's part completely professional, and on Gates' part, an insane tirade.

I'm not going to let Sgt. Crowley off the hook here. We don't know how he asked Gates for his ID, but if it was anything like the way cops typically ask in this kind of situation, it wouldn't have been deferential or delivered in a tone suggesting the cop acknowledged that the person in front of him may well have every right to be where he was. Since Crowley was responding to a 911 call regarding a possible B&E, I'm betting he decided he would "take control of the situation" until he could sort out the facts, which would have meant treating Gates like a suspect until he had demonstrated that he was a lawful resident rather than a burglar. That's just what cops do under these circumstances, as Washington Post writer Neely Tucker explains here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/21/AR2009072102782.html?sid=ST2009072103463

But he added that with all that's going on in the country with health care and the economy and the wars abroad, "it doesn't make sense to arrest a guy in his own home if he's not causing a serious disturbance."

That's a great idea. Local cops should stop enforcing local laws and should concentrate their efforts on health care, getting the economy moving, and ending the wars abroad.

What a maroon. (That's Obama, not Sgt. Crowley.)

Oops, that should be "embarrassingly [rather than 'notoriously'] error-ridden." (I was trying to quote from memory, since I couldn't block two quotes at once, and I was too lazy to paste one quote, then go back and copy the second one.)

I followed the link saying that Gates's book was "notoriously error-ridden." One of the alleged errors listed was that "The Magna Carta is known as the Great Charter "because of its massive size." I know this sounds like a howler, but when I was studying medieval history, I was taught that in fact the Great Charter was called that precisely because of its size, and in comparison to the accompanying Charter of the Forest, and that only later was it held to be "great" because of its importance for English liberty.

This theory may be debatable, but the fact that Gates adhered to one side in the debate doesn't make him an idiot. (He's an idiot for lots of other reasons.)

You know, I don't think there is a historical precedent for a movement in the metropole that wants to get rid of a territory.

Malaysia. Singapore. 1965.

I guess he is getting his Sherman McCoy moment now, in spades.

Maybe a different figure of speech would have been more prudent.

And here I thought this was another instance of the "Pool's Closed" meme from 4chan.com (see http://blogs.ign.com/gabor42/2007/09/03/65279/)

In the early 1970s, affirmative action was widely considered to be a logical extension of civil rights principles: Even President Nixon—a man not known for his enlightened racial attitudes—supported it.

The way "affirmative action" was first billed, it was "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed, and that employees are treated during employment, without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin." In other words, it was perfectly consistent with ultimately color-blind treatment of job applicants, school applicants, etc. So there was no big opposition when Presidents Kennedy and Johnson mandated its use. But contrary to Professor Ford's suggestion, "affirmative action" instantly became controversial when President Nixon started using the term to mean use of racial preferences, and the strong and vocal opposition to the practice that began in the 70s has remained with us ever since.

Is Bazelon non-Hispanic? I just assumed it was a Hispanic name. If so she has nothing to lose from supporting AA.

The significant thing about Bazelon's ancestry is not that it came from Latin America (it didn't), but that she is the granddaughter of the late David Bazelon, who for years worked mischief on the law from his seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It's nice to see that irrationality is a family tradition.

Is there anyone so totally dishonest as to believe that Clarence Thomas was/is "qualified" to be on the High Court?

Believing that Thomas was/is qualified is not dishonesty. Maybe you meant to say "Is anyone so stupid as to believe. . ." or "Is anyone so dishonest as to pretend to believe. . .".

The latter [i.e., the British response to the communist insurrection in Malaysia] was the only successful and humane counterinsurgency action… ever.

I take it that your omission of the British response to the Mau Mau insurrection in Kenya was a deliberate one?

so the idea of lots of spades is ludicrous

That’s racist!

Yes, Rosenbaum is livid about the crime of stealing Indian lands, . . .

No, what he’s livid about is “genocide to steal the land.” If he were upset about simply stealing land from natives, he’d have to condemn Zionism.

Nevertheless, some of us ‘goyim’ have been at this for a long while

It’s not just the goyim. Consider, for example, Adam Sandler’s “Hannukah Song”.

The address on the X-ray machine said Muenchen instead of Munich. It seems that the Germans prefer that their cities’ names be pronounced their way, instead of ours.

If by “address,” you meant the way to get in touch with the manufacturer, then it’s not surprising that you’d want to use the form that would best enable the postal authorities in Germany to get your letter to its destination. I’ll bet that even the Chinese say “Oxford” rather than “Niujin” when they’re addressing a letter. (And they probably use Roman characters, not Chinese ideographs, to do it.)

Beijing is a transformation of one of their cities into our language. In fact, most WESTERN China scholars consider it more accurate and hence the use of pinyin rather than Wade Giles.

Big deal. Who determined that we should use an accurate transliteration of the Chinese name of the city, anyway? And if there is such a rule, why doesn’t it apply to the Chinese names of English cities, such as Oxford/Niujin?

Is it just me, or does Michelle Obama look like a darker version of Sigourney Weaver?

The change from Peking to Beijing is not about enforcing PC standards on white America. The reason for the change in spelling is because pinyin is a more accurate reflection of the romanization of the Chinese language than Wade-Giles.

John Derbyshire reports that the Chinese use the name Niujin to refer to what we English speakers call the city of Oxford. If they can transform the names of our cities when speaking their language, then we should be able to do the same when speaking in English about their cities.

In contrast, St.Petersburg and Volgograd were changes in toponyms (a reversion, in both cases).

Actually, only the first was a reversion. When Stalingrad was renamed, the Soviets didn’t want to revert to the original name, Tsaritsyn, so they came up with the new name of Volgograd.

The obvious fact is that the GOP is totally terrified of being accused of being racist. McCain categorically denounced the mention of Rev. Wright in GOP ads back in April. Wright’s name wasn’t mentioned at the GOP convention or in any of the debates. That’s why he’s ranting on about William Ayers, whose connections to Obama are much more tangential than Obama’s connections to Wright. . . . But, Ayers is white, so he’s okay to attack, but Wright is black, so he’s off-limits. Of course, the GOP isn’t getting any credit for their restraint.

I actually read one pro-Obama site specifically claim that the Republicans’ use of Ayers was racist because it was obvious that they were doing so to avoid pointing to Wright. So I guess that if the GHW Bush campaign, instead of making an issue of Willie Horton, had found some white murderer who took advantage of his furlough from the prison where he was serving a life sentence to escape and commit armed robbery and rape, it would *still* be guilty of racism, since everyone would know they were *really* talking about Horton.

That is why you people are still burned about OJ and have forgotten who Blake and Spector.

On the contrary, I remember vividly how, when Blake was acquitted and Spector got off with a mistrial, white audiences erupted with whoops of glee. Oh, wait, white people never did anything like that.

Well, Netanyahu grew up in America, has American university degrees and is an American citizen, so he could be an American VP.

But he hasn’t been a resident of the U.S. for the past 14 years (see Article I, section 1, clause 5 of the Constitution, made applicable to the Vice President by the 4th clause of the 12th Amendment).

There is NO deterrent value to certain crimes. Rape is one of them. Murder is another. People who commit those crimes are not going to be “deterred” by the penalties, regardless of how terrible they might be.

Yeah, but the people who *don’t* commit those crimes may well have been deterred by the penalties.

I say this based on my knowledge of criminal behavior gleaned from my stay in the Federal joint.

In other words, Hack drew his conclusions by talking only to the people who *weren’t* deterred.

Many non-whites openly revel in the demographic demise of whites but funnily enough many black nationalists wouldnt turn down a night with some white starlet.

I don’t see any inconsistency between “revel[ing] in the demographic demise of whites” and taking steps to increase the likelihood that white starlets will have non-white children.

How do you reach the conclusion that “Israelis are in a position to oppose unrestricted immigration”?

Oh, I don’t know. Could it possibly be your reference to the possibility that “a similar view [i.e., opposition to unrestricted immigration] is held by an Israeli Jew”? It seemed pretty clear to me that you believed that Israeli Jews were in a position to hold such a view.

It’s also clear you’ve never heard of the 1939 White Paper which limited Jewish immigration to Palestine to 15,000 a year for 5 years. Great timing!

I guess I also never heard that the White Paper stayed in effect to this day, that there was next to no Jewish immigration into Palestine before 1939, and that the Arab majority of the population of Palestine successfully excluded Jews from coming in after 1944. Oh wait, none of that is true.

What do you find so surprising about my concern for my country’s immigration policies? More to the point, could you please explain why it is “patriotism” when an American is against unrestricted immigration to his country, but “ethno-centricism” when a similar view is held by an Israeli Jew?

It’s ironic that the only reason Israelis are in a position to oppose unrestricted immigration is that they and the Brits overrode the Palestinian Arabs’ wish to restrict immigration. Talk about pulling the ladder up.

If that’s true, then let me be the first. I’m sick of arrogant Irish-Americans who don’t know where their loyalties lie and who would put the interests of illegal Irish immigrants ahead of their own country.

Or when then championed the cause of the IRA back during the Troubles. But while I can understand why they would do that, entirely incomprehensible to me was how Mario Biaggi was even more pro-IRA than the Irish. He didn’t even have the excuse of the Christian Zionists of thinking that he was helping bring about the rule of Christ on earth.

Most of us would agree that a distinction should be maintained between Gentiles who fall in love with Jews and Gentiles who haul them off to concentration camps. But . . . the net effect is indistinguishable, and it’s the bottom line that counts.

That’s a good one. Can I try?

“Most of us would agree that a distinction should be maintained between Gentiles who obtain our money by sales of goods to us in voluntary exchanges and Gentiles who rob us at gunpoint. But the net effect is indistinguishable, and it’s the bottom line that counts.”

Or:

“Most of us would agree that a distinction should be maintained between Gentiles who impregnate us through marital intercourse and Gentiles who impregnate us by rape. But . . . the net effect is indistinguishable, and it’s the bottom line that counts.”

Or:

“Most of us would agree that a distinction should be maintained between Republicans who come to power by winning more votes than the Democrats in a lawful election and Republicans who come to power by stuffing the ballot box. But the net effect is indistinguishable, and it’s the bottom line that counts.”

ben franklin:

I think you missed Gitlow v. New York, 268 U.S. 652 (1925), which held that the 14th amendment incorporated the 1st amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech (though it didn’t use the word “incorporate”);.

Given his penchant for pagan motifs, I wonder why Lewis didn’t become a catholic like Tolkien (who played an important part in Lewis’ conversion).

Lewis’s student Christoper Derrick wrote a whole book on this subject, “C.S. Lewis and the Church of Rome.” IIRC, its conclusion is the same as the one by Tolkien cited above by tom piatak, to the effect that his Ulster background just wouldn’t let him take that step. Frankly, I find that rather unsatisfying as an answer, but it’s as good a one as we’ve got.

Chuck Schumer and Eliot Spitzer got perfect SAT scores of 1600 when young. Their high IQ only helped them be evil geniuses, the kind Superman comics had

Also, Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter both supposedly had pretty high IQs. A lot of good it did them.

On the other hand, the plot of “Sarah Marshall,” like most films sponsored by Aptaow, a devoted family man, offers an endorsement of bourgeois values, particularly the threat of venereal diseases spread by the promiscuous likes of Sarah’s new boyfriend.

Huh? The threat of venereal diseases is now a bourgeois value?

As a non-white person I understand why you would like this type of a ‘moral’ position.

Are you saying that you’re a non-white person? That’s what your sentence means.

No, not that he was shot by a Muslim – I don’t recall that being mentioned.

No, it wasn’t mentioned. What *was* mentioned was that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan was a Palestinian Christian (Protestant, IIRC). (He may have converted to Islam in prison, but he was a Christian when he shot RFK.)

Jews in Russia who were oppressed horrifically and could not EVER escape being Jews chose to back the side that promised to uproot and destroy all the old religious and racial traditions and offer them a place? End the progroms and allow them to be boring bureaucrats?

Wow. That’s news. In other groundbreaking affairs, kids like sweets.

But in Czarist Russian, Jews *could* “escape being Jews,” simply by converting to Orthodoxy. The czars didn’t practice racial anti-semitism, the way Nazis did.

Uh, I was thinking of voting for a third-party candidate.

So when DNAPrint reports that, genetically speaking, I’m 14% American Indian, this actually means I might be part Jewish rather than part Amerind? Damn! No affirmative action bennies for me, after all. (Since I was adopted, in the days of closed adoptions, I have no clue as to the ethnic background of my natural parents–except what I can tell by looking in the mirror, which indicates a substantial European component.)

Oh, yes, a few others who at the time considered the expulsions of the Germans from Eastern Europe to be immoral: George Orwell, Sen. William Langer (R-N.D.), George Kennan (see http://www.hungarianhistory.com/lib/vardy/vardy.doc (pp. 247-48, 259-60))

Also, a correction to my earlier post: Robert Murphy wasn’t a diplomat, but rather political adviser to General Eisenhower.

It’s worth remembering that, after World War II, millions of people were forcibly relocated — including German-speaking minorities in Europe. These German-speakers were relocated back to Germany to eliminate a pretext for another war. This wasn’t considered illegal or immoral at the time . . . .

Actually, a lot of people did — and still do — think it immoral. British publisher Victor Gollancz, for example, said, “If the conscience of men ever again becomes sensitive, these expulsions will be remembered to the undying shame of all who committed or connived at them . . . . The Germans were expelled, not just with an absence of over-nice consideration, but with the very maximum of brutality.” Robert Murphy, an American diplomat, said in a cable to the State Department, “Here is retribution on a large scale, but practiced not on the Parteibonzen, but on women and children, the poor, the infirm. . . . Knowledge that they are the victims of a harsh political decision carried out with the utmost ruthlessness and disregard for humanity does not cushion the effect. The mind reverts to other mass deportations which horrified the world and brought upon the Nazis the odium which they so deserved. Those mass deportations engineered by the Nazis provided part of the moral basis oil which we waged war and which gave strength to our cause. Now the situation is reversed. We find ourselves in the invidious position of being partners in this German enterprise and as partners inevitably sharing the responsibility.”

When this sort of stuff is done in the Balkans today, it’s called “ethnic cleansing” and generally regarded as an atrocity.

See http://www.crimesofwar.org/thebook/deportations.html