Unqualified Offerings

By Mona
.
“Hi, I’m from the FBI, and having paid low-life scum to lie about you, I intend to get myself promoted and send you to prison for 30 years.”

By Thoreau
Looks like pot smoking increases the risk of developing psychotic disorders.
Now they may have to legalize it, just so they can bring it into the open and then do a sequel to the tobacco suit. As long as it remains underground, the only suit they can bring is “The State Attorneys General vs. [...]

By Mona
.
Commentary’s Max Boot approvingly quoting Napoleon, my emphasis:

“In war, moral considerations account for three-quarters, the actual balance of forces only for the other quarter.” If we set a withdrawal timetable [from Iraq], the moral balance will tip against us even faster than the actual balance of forces—with deadly consequences.
.
We can [...]

Off to the Outer Banks with the extended fam. We’ll be in Salvo. I don’t think there’s internet in the house, but I’ll hit the wifi hotspots now and then. In the meantime you’ll have Thoreau and Mona and maybe even Neel to keep you amused and outraged.

By Thoreau
This administration is so uniquely awful that even Walter Mondale has found a way to come out of the woodwork and remind us that he looks pretty awesome by comparison:
Three decades ago we lived through another painful example of a White House exceeding its authority, lying to the American people, breaking the law and [...]

By Thoreau
The latest Economist has an article on something that should have been blindingly obvious to me, and has no doubt been discussed many times before, but this is the first I’ve heard of it:
The biggest problem with wind and solar energy is that supply can fluctuate on a daily and hourly basis, but it [...]

By Thoreau
I was in NYC (Manhattan, to be specific) for a few days, to discuss projects with some colleagues and see a few friends one last time before moving to California.  My wife and I did some of the usual tourist things, but what made the biggest impression on me was the subway.  Yes, it’s [...]

Show some stones, Senators. A special prosecutor would take forever to report, even if you got one installed. Most testimony would be in camera before a grand jury. It would take a round of testimony under oath to produce fresh lies for a perjury indictment, assuming a special prosecutor indicts him at all. Cite him [...]

Pretty interesting article about nerdism whose thesis is that nerdiness amounts to a willful “hyperwhiteness.” I find it at least half compelling. Then I remember that there was a concept of nerdiness back in rural Southwestern PA when I was growing up in the 1970s – believe me on this – and that my white [...]

By Mona
.
So….Texas Governor Rick Perry has appointed creationist Don McElroy to head the Texas State Board of Education. According to James Randi quoting “bad astronomer Phil Plait”:

Here is a letter McElroy sent out to his fellow State Board of Education members:
My Personal Confession
Given all the time in the world, I don’t [...]