Unqualified Offerings

Every few months there’s talk about how the US will start withdrawing troops Real Soon Now, followed by articles about how maybe we won’t. The interest the establishment media shows toward these episodes baffles me. The government has hundreds of officials giving briefings pretty constantly, don’t they? They can’t all end up on the front [...]

Packing tonight for our drive to sunny (better be!) Florida for Christmas week. We’ll be shuttling between Avon Park and Sarasota, a town I’m sneakily fond of. Of course, it may have gone to hell in the five years since I was last there, who knows?
I should still be blogging – the McDonalds in Avon [...]

I don’t burn with outrage at the very thought of drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge anyway, but it seems to me that if you think there’s anything to “peak oil” theory, then drilling in ANWR becomes a downright good idea. If you don’t believe in peak oil you can probably afford [...]

Radley continues to pursue the Cory Maye case and learn ever more disturbing things:
I think this reflects even more poorly on the way the raid was handled. Only one of the eight officers — the officer from the task force — had any narcotics training at all. He was on the four-man team who executed [...]

I gotta go all the way to Logan’s blog to get cheered up by commenter Anodyne?
I accept that selection bias on some cognitive dimension may make it more likely for some people to be attracted to libertarian principles and arguments than others. But do you believe that self-identifying libertarians are any more likely to adhere [...]

Honestly, just last night Mrs. O and I had a conversation in this very room about how the domestic spy program and the blatant assertion of untrammelled executive power that characterizes the Gonzaleschina are Nixon’s Revenge – not just the same mindset, but the same people, propounding the same principles. The idea is not original [...]

Steve asks in comments downblog:
Did you ever think you’d see the day when you’d have to ask a bunch of self-proclaimed libertarians if any state action was morally indefensible even if it was done in the name of national security?
Um, no? I didn’t?
Richard frigging Posner has flunked the test on this one
Sigh.

Eve tips me to a Santa rampage in New Zealand.

1. My attitude is not the problem. YOUR POLICIES are the problem. The people who actually have the power to conduct policy are the problem.
2. Anyone who wants to prate about their sincerity and their positive outlook as if it somehow outweighed the foreseeable results of their own goddam hubris, while the Administration they’ve trusted [...]

Diana Moon tips me to the early returns from Iraq, and the early reaction in some of its parts. Returns:
The election commission last night announced shocking preliminary results of the elections in 11 Iraqi provinces. The results “after counting 89% of the votes in Baghdad showed that the UIA [United Iraqi Alliance, the main religious [...]