Unqualified Offerings

By Mona
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In 2003, on his rancid Fox show Bill O’Reilly waved around HRC’s 1969 Wellesley senior thesis addressing the merits of the American radical Saul D. Alinsky. Therein, Clinton apparently describes Alinsky as “charming” and gushingly likens him to Thomas Paine. And, as MSNBC has documented, the Clintons have taken some pains [...]

Quondam UO guest-blogger Jennifer makes her choice for 2008.

By Thoreau
The editors of the Economist are just begging me to cancel my subscription.  Yes, George Bush has indeed done things that could be seen as humanitarian in Africa. But he’s also created a new Pentagon command focused on a continent where the US has a long history of picking client states to favor, [...]

By Thoreau
I come here not to argue against the workability of humanitarian intervention, but rather to praise the alternatives. While discussing foreign policy with some colleagues last night, I suggested that even when humanitarian interventions work out well (by whatever criteria you like) that is still not sufficient argument for intervention. Specifically, I [...]

Benjamin H. Friedman at the Cato blog tackles "The Four-Percent Folly." Kant apparently said, "Ought implies can," meaning that before you say someone should do something, you need to be sure they can do it. The four-percenters claim that Can implies Ought. As Friedman argues, this is nonsense all by itself, and I’m not so [...]

Cause Thoreau seemed to like last week’s okay, the following, title poem of my unsold collection from the 1990s:
 
Against Simplicity
Water filled the shallow, bulky basin in physics lab. Our teacher, Mr. Burch, centered over it a wire rack, from which a shaft extending downward broke [...]

For you, Loyal Readers, and you alone, the secret winning move for any "Simon Says" session:
Simon Says, go forth – and conquer the world for SIMON!!!!!

Talk about your meanings of is! From AP . . .
"I have always said that the one thing that I have not seen myself doing is running for elected office in the United States," she said at a news conference to discuss her recent trip to Africa.

My emphasis. Sometimes these things need drawing out. [...]