Clifford D. May reminds us of some militant Islamist quotes in the National Review Online:

"We are in the process of an historical war between the World of Arrogance and the Islamic world," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has declared, "and this war has been going on for hundreds of years."

"We are not fighting so that you will offer us something," said Hussein Massawi, a former leader of Hezbollah. "We are fighting to eliminate you."

"Rome will become an advanced post for the Islamic conquests, which will spread though Europe in its entirety, and then will turn to the two Americas, even Eastern Europe," Yunis al-Astal, a Muslim cleric and Hamas parliamentarian has pledged.  "Very soon, Allah willing, Rome will be conquered, just like Constantinople was, as was prophesized by our prophet Muhammad."

Nice people.

Fox News/AP has this quote re: the polygamists in Texas:

Texas child welfare authorities have argued that all the children, from newborns to teenagers, should be removed from the ranch because the sect pushes underage girls into marriage and sex and encourages boys to become future perpetrators.

As opposed to our culture-at-large, which pushes underage girls into sex without marriage and encourages boys to become future perpetrators.

Who will return lost innocence to Miley Cyrus?

David Ranson boils tax policy down to its essence in the WSJ Opinion Journal:

The interactions among the myriad participants in a tax system are as impossible to unravel as are those of the molecules in a gas, and the effects of tax policies are speculative and highly contentious.  Will increasing tax rates on the rich increase revenues, as Barack Obama hopes, or hold back the economy, as John McCain fears?  Or both?

[Economist Kurt] Hauser uncovered the means to answer these questions definitively.  On this page in 1993, he stated that "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP."  What a pity that his discovery has not been more widely disseminated.

... The federal tax "yield" (revenues divided by GDP) has remained close to 19.5%, even as the top tax bracket was brought down from 91% to the present 35%.  This is what scientists call an "independence theorem," and it cuts the Gordian Knot of tax policy debate.

See especially the graph in the article.  (I like pictures.  I know you do too.)

We remember and honor those who served and gave the last full measure of devotion.

John Hinderaker at Power Line has an excellent write-up of the oil executives' testimony before Congress.  Here's a sampling from Shell's John Hofmeister:

According to the Department of the Interior, 62 percent of all on-shore federal lands are off limits to oil and gas developments, with restrictions applying to 92 percent of all federal lands. We have an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Atlantic Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the Pacific Ocean, an outer continental shelf moratorium on the eastern Gulf of Mexico, congressional bans on on-shore oil and gas activities in specific areas of the Rockies and Alaska, and even a congressional ban on doing an analysis of the resource potential for oil and gas in the Atlantic, Pacific and eastern Gulf of Mexico.

When many of these policies were implemented, oil was selling in the single digits, not the triple digits we see now. The cumulative effect of these policies has been to discourage U.S. investment and send U.S. companies outside the United States to produce new supplies.

As a result, U.S. production has declined so much that nearly 60 percent of daily consumption comes from foreign sources.

And Hinderaker himself reminds us:

On the average, 15% percent of the cost of gasoline at the pump goes for taxes, while only 4% represents oil company profits.

Finally, lads, if you still think the oil companies are making too much money, that's easily fixed: buy oil stocks.

A friend of mine (we'll call him "Loose Ukrainian") recommends that the average citizen go through the recent farm bill and look for the following terms:

"Free SUV or pick up for home gardeners"

"Got a lawn?  Here's the green"

"billion dollar set aside for your bee hive"

"Not planning on becoming a farmer?  Here's some money for you too"

Happy hunting.

In case you missed it, Annie Jacobsen wrote an eye-opening piece in Pajamas Media about the TSA's evaluation of pilots to carry firearms:

As one air marshal told CNN, “TSA screeners [who] have no college, no law enforcement, no military background,” are being fast-tracked to carry guns on planes.  TSA acknowledges that 36 screeners recently became air marshals.  Meanwhile, pilots are being turned down.

In this evidence, Captain David Mackett sees a disturbing trend: “Ultimately, there is ample evidence suggesting the TSA is abusing the psychological screening process to unjustly dismiss FFDO candidates.”  The TSA bills the American taxpayer approximately $350,000 per air marshal, per year.  Armed pilots are volunteers and fly armed for free.

Captain Mackett cited an example from the written part of the psyche test — since changed — that asked: “Would you like to be a fighter pilot?”  Considering that many commercial pilots are and have been fighter pilots it’s natural that many would answer that question with a “Yes.”  According to Mackett, the TSA concluded that these pilots “had overly aggressive personalities and disqualified them from the program.”

This is especially aggravating, since as John R. Lott, Jr. has pointed out, the disarming of pilots is a relatively recent occurrence:

Despite all the concern about hypothetical risks, arming pilots is nothing new. Until the early '60s, American commercial-passenger pilots on any flight carrying U.S. mail were required to carry handguns. The rule, which dates to the start of commercial aviation, was meant to ensure that pilots could defend the mail if their plane ever crashed. Indeed, U.S. pilots were still allowed to carry guns until as recently as 1987.

Q.E.D.

Frederica Mathewes-Green writes a fun piece in National Review Online, in which she lists movies that were better than the books on which they were based.

A sample:

The Princess Bride.  The novel is “relentlessly meta,” my daughter Megan says, and employs a sure-sounds-real-phony narrator along with other tricks.  She liked it, but many people who loved the movie’s ironic flip found the book to be too much — strange and unrewarding.  One correspondent writes, “Get used to disappointment, William Goldman!”

The California Supreme Court, yet another judicial body proving itself adept at playing "Where's Waldo" with their state constitution, found therein the right to gay marriage.  This is as good a time as any to recall Hamilton's words in Federalist #78:

Whoever attentively considers the different departments of power must perceive, that, in a government in which they are separated from each other, the judiciary, from the nature of its functions, will always be the least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution; because it will be least in a capacity to annoy or injure them.  The Executive not only dispenses the honors, but holds the sword of the community.  The legislature not only commands the purse, but prescribes the rules by which the duties and rights of every citizen are to be regulated.  The judiciary, on the contrary, has no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.

If only the court had mere judgment.  Can we say it now?  Long experience has shown that Hamilton underestimated the hubris of some and cowardice of others.  We now live in a time when great deference is shown to our wise courts regardless of their reasoning.  But the executive and legislative bodies would be considered radical indeed if they did not comply.  (Though in this case those bodies certainly concur with the outcome, and are glad not to be held responsible by the voters.)

In any event, let us remind ourselves of the state's interest in marriage.  It is not, as is widely touted, that the state should affirm the loving relationship between two consenting adults.  For one, this is none of the state's business, and two, given the strong desires of the human heart, such adults really need no help from the state.

Rather, the state's interest in marriage is the protection of children.  Children do best when they have a mom and a dad, bonded in stable marriage.  Though this arrangement is not always possible for one reason or another, it is in everyone's interest that this ideal be encouraged, sanctioned, and celebrated.  The diversity of other alteratives, though allowed in a free society, should not.

In the end, though I buy to some extent the argument that promotion of gay marriage will tear down and diminish traditional marriage, I think the cause and effect are more strongly seen in the reverse.  Today in America we have an ever declining view of traditional marriage, and therefore there is not as much impetus to halt the sanction of gay marriage.  Some day it may be that among cohabitating couples, gays alone will be the ones who bother to marry.

I don't always care for Peggy Noonan, as my tastes run toward hard argument rather than impressionistic rambling.  But she serves up some enjoyable wit today:

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times.  This was after Mississippi.  "We can't let the Democrats take our issues."  And those issues would be?  "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued.  Why not?  Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

As we head into the wilderness, we may as well keep a sense of humor.

I did not see Speed Racer, but I could have told you it was going to bomb.  (Though I didn't, so I realize my claim is not well supported.)  In any event the trailer looks like someone dumped a box of crayons into a blender, hit "puree" and filmed.  If you want color without the speed, rent Dick Tracy.

According to the Washington Times:

The Metropolitan Police Department has joined other major U.S. cities in arming patrol officers with assault rifles to protect them against criminals with high-powered weapons, weeks after being released from a federal program that monitors the use of excessive force.

The Chicago Police Department is making similar plans and the City of Miami Police Department is already using such weapons.

But D.C. and Chicago are gun free zones!  Why do the criminals have guns at all?

Ok, so I took a year off.  I'll try not to make a habit of it.

The following bumper sticker idea occurred to me:

Obama for messiah
McCain for president