Blogworthies XLIX

Because The Blog from the Core simply can't cover everything.

Noteworthy entries @ Captain's Quarters, Power Line, The Volokh Conspiracy, The Diplomad, JunkYardBlog, Michelle Malkin, Mere Comments, No Left Turns, In the Red Zone, Power Line (again), Flos Carmeli, Rightwingsparkle, C-LOG, ut unum sint, Sapor Sapientiae, Instapundit.com, Turnabout, Sed Contra, Dust in the Light, Dyspeptic Mutterings, Damnum Absque Injuria, Varifrank, and Mound City Musings.

Journalists Can't Be Bloggers? @ Captain's Quarters:

Wired runs a provocative article today which argues that journalists find it increasingly difficult to maintain blogs along with their reporting. Media outlets have started to actively discourage even their free-lancers from blogging, and analysts question the effect on credibility when reporters opine on line: ....

Does Zimbabwean Law Overrule the Constitution? @ Power Line:

If that seems like a stupid question, you haven't been paying attention. One of the most important contemporary issues is the effort by liberals to interpret our Constitution based on "international opinion," as reflected in court decisions and legislative enactments in other countries. Most Americans naively believe that the Constitution means what it says, and the job of judges in Constitutional litigation is to apply the language of that document to the facts before them. The left has long rejected this "simplistic" view, and has argued that general phrases in the Constitution must be interpreted so as to conform that document to "enlightened" opinion in this country. It is a small step to argue that the Constitution must conform to "enlightened" opinion as it exists in the "world community," a view that has gained increasing currency on the Supreme Court....

John Lott Responds... @ The Volokh Conspiracy:

... to some posts (linked to at the end of this one) that criticize his work in light of the National Academy of Science report on gun control laws: ....

Hey Lefty! Give The UN Your Money, NOW! @ The Diplomad:

As our little blog has gained readership and moved up in the NZ Bear's brutal Ecosystem, we have drawn the ire of deranged pimply-faced trolls — seeking the attention in our comments page that they could never get from their mommies or other women — and from some rather nasty, ignorant, and poorly written lefty blogs. (Note: We won't link to them; why give them the clicks on their site meters?)

That is good, very good....

In This Day and Age... @ JunkYardBlog:

it's a shame we still have so many bigots in the world. Michelle Malkin gets to deal with that reality every day. Lucky her.

Here's the formula. Liberal minority member = off limits to all attacks of any kind, even if they're as dumb as a stump. Conservative minority member = fair game for all attacks, the more personal and racially driven the better, now matter the quality of their ideas or intellect....

Minority Conservatives And The Sellout Smear @ Michelle Malkin:

.... In the column, I excerpted a few of the countless hate e-mails that come into my mailbox every day. Here's a bigger, uncensored sample from just the past few months: ....

Grimm Tales, Grimmer Myths @ Mere Comments:

A pleasant way to help keep up one’s German is to read from the original edition of Grimms’ Maerchen. Today it was The Seven Ravens, which begins thus: ....

Andrew Sullivan should know better @ No Left Turns:

Andrew Sullivan becomes unhinged over this statement by President Bush:

President Bush said yesterday that he doesn’t "see how you can be president without a relationship with the Lord," but that he is always mindful to protect the right of others to worship or not worship.

Here’s Sullivan’s (over)reaction: ....

Our Man In Waziristan @ In the Red Zone:

Oswald Spengler wrote in The Decline of the West that it was Napoleon's tragedy that each of his victories utlimately advanced the economic and political power of his nemesis, England. One wonders if Osama bin Laden isn't, at least in some ways, serving America as the same sort of convenient enemy: one whose apparently growing power and successes in the field actually work to favor the strategic interests of the very forces he is ranged against....

A First-Hand Account From Sumatra @ Power Line:

What follows are excerpts from an email home by a Navy Commander who serves on the USS Abraham Lincoln and is flying helicopter missions in support of tsunami survivors in Aceh. We obtained permission to publish it because it gives a reliable, first-hand account of the extent of the devastation there, and of the great work being done by our armed forces: ....

Fleeing or Being? @ Flos Carmeli:

.... What I love about Sr. Ruth's book is that she details certain points at which the modern psyche so completely diverges from the "weltanschauung" of St John's time that we must be careful about how we follow his advice. That the emphasis on HOW to go about things has shifted a bit, even though the things we must be about remain eternal....

An Open Letter to Southpark Republicans. @ Rightwingsparkle:

Settle in because I have something to say....

Gay Adoption @ C-LOG:

The Supreme Court refused to hear a case challenging a Florida state ban on gay couples adopting children. The Court let stand a lower court ruling that upheld Florida's right to have a blanket policy prohibiting gays from adopting children.

The Court is right, for these reasons: ....

Holocaust museums and education @ ut unum sint:

Holocaust Museum Houston and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum both serve to memorialize the Holocaust. But both state that they have as their mission the teaching of lessons learned from it so that similar things do not happen again — and they therefore have no problem drawing comparisons and making analogies....

Smart people and believing in God @ Sapor Sapientiae:

You asked me:

"Why is it that there are smart people who believe in God, and smart people who don't?"

Paraphrasing the philosopher Blaise Pascal: There is just enough light for those who want to see, and just enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition....

Every week, Newsweek spams me... @ Instapundit.com:

... with press releases about its new stories. I usually ignore them because by the time they're out they're already old news to blogosphereans. But this piece, with its combination of blatant bias and factual inaccuracy, seems so typical that it's worth a comment....

Grand strategic ramblings @ Turnabout:

From a traditionalist conservative point of view, the modern world looks doomed. Its insistence on rooting out all social institutions not based on free-floating choice and formalized expertise — that's what "inclusiveness," its highest moral principle, is all about — leaves no place for the settled informal connections and understandings that make possible decent human relations or even ordinary rationality. So it seems headed for chaos, tyranny and neo-primitivism as institutions stop functioning in an orderly above-board fashion and rely instead on force, fraud, bribery and durable pre-rational connections like blood and tribal loyalties. From a trad standpoint, then, the future can look like post-Soviet Russia, only with less common culture and more numerous and varied Chechens.

All of which may seem on the gloomy side, but dum spiro spero (in the vernacular, "where there's life there's hope"). So where's the hope?...

Crossing The Tiber @ Sed Contra:

.... In the meantime, a couple of days ago, a correspondent pointed me to this notice of a minister in the Episcopal Church of the USA who has renounced his orders in favor of priesthood in the Roman Catholic Church....

"We are the new party of the inclusive!" @ Dust in the Light:

My, my, how quickly pandering and moral compromise become virtues when one tastes victory. We can't blame libertarians (or "South Park Republicans") for wanting to mold the Republican Party in their own image, but without jumping into the factional spitting match, I submit to you this: when those for whom the term "Big Tent Party" inspires adolescent snickers become too prominent in it, the Republican Party will crumble....

You know, I was thinking just the other day... @ Dyspeptic Mutterings:

"I haven't perused new material from Cult of the Condom Newsletter lately. John Allen's been on hiatus, and Joe Feuerherd's grown a little too Guccione-esque for my tastes. Still, I wonder if there are any freshly-published brain-droppings from a sensitive boomer who breaks out in allergy-induced skin lesions whenever he encounters Christian orthodoxy?" ....

Moron of the Day: Senator Barbara Boxer @ Damnum Absque Injuria:

As if her shameful attempt to disenfranchise the state of Ohio were not bad enough, California’s newly re-elected idiot Barbara Boxer further embarasses herself by non-explaining her actions on her web site....

Today, I was "Unprofessional"... @ Varifrank:

Over the past 6 weeks, I've been deeply enmeshed in one of those "go live at the end of the year" projects that we in the IT industry have learned to love. The kind where managers assume that since no one is working, why that would be the perfect time to go live!

Of course, it means that your doing complex work at the point of maximum distraction with many many holidays and no staff.

This year we had a major distraction, and I'm bothered that I described it that way....

Andrew Archie on Facing East @ Mound City Musings:

"One Sunday morning, a woman traveling from New England on business, had decided to visit the parish of St. Michael and St. George because it was the closest Episcopal church to where she was staying on campus at Washington University. At the end of the service, being enormously intrigued by the altar, she inquired at the back door, 'Why is your altar against the wall so you have to turn your back to the congregation?'" ....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Sat. 01/15/05 09:39:27 AM
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