The Scrutinator

Michelle Malkin rounds up the Voter ID issue. I'm glad the issue is still discussed and lame reasonings debunked.

Re-wording it, 5/19/2006: Consider the High school student sneaking into his/her parents' room and stealing their IDs. The non-voter casts two fraudulent votes with impunity. (How many parents would prosecute their kid for that?)

As I originally put it: But imagine this scenario: pro-Democrat high school student (perhaps under the influence of a leftist teacher) sneaks into his parents' room and steals their IDs on election day. Ouch. Would they prosecute him? I doubt it.

By The Scrutinator @ 10:38 PM  ::  0 comments

The reason some liberals need therapy is because they've traumatized themselves by buying into such demagoguery.

...and hysteria.

Hat-tip: Two Minute Offense

By The Scrutinator @ 5:16 PM  ::  0 comments

Satellite images show Communist reporter/hostage Giuliana Sgrena's story is fabricated.

Hat-tip: Instapundit

The LA Times omits the key supporting facts. (Hat-tip: Powerline)

And Roger L. Simon, about the LA Times' treatment: "I can see why some people at the LAT are so dismissive of bloggers. I would be too, if I were so completely humiliated."

By The Scrutinator @ 4:59 PM  ::  0 comments

Roger L Simon doesn't disappoint with his perspective on the Bolton hearings against the backdrop of U. N. corruption.

For another excellent read, Mark Steyn's piece in the Chicago Sun-Times is a knee-slapper (hip-slapper?): Bolton's just too hip for scaredy-cat Dems.

By The Scrutinator @ 2:08 PM  ::  0 comments

Welcome back, Socialist Wankers. (Haven't heard from you in a while, though I've been a bit out of it myself.)

Before I go further, here are my views on Socialism:

I think Socialism is great for certain situations: on small scales, and when participation is voluntary. I think about monastaries and convents, Israeli kibbutzim, and even open-source software projects. They work well, and I commend them for it.

But on the national scale, Socialism is the worst blight ever perpetrated on this wretched planet (particularly its twin: Communism). I don't say that to justify other horrific ideologies. But Socialism is the worst. By any objective measure (like human life or poverty), Socialism has done more to murder and impoverish than anything else, by a wide margin.

So, back to today's article. If you didn't like this (or this), today's article from City Journal is really going to get your goat: The Roads to Serfdom.

By The Scrutinator @ 10:56 AM  ::  30 comments

Ouroboros-IM.jpg

By The Scrutinator @ 2:13 PM  ::  0 comments

Today's good read reveals the Vietnam mindset that compels Zarqawi.

A "Tet offensive" (i.e., public-opinion victory, but militarily--who cares?--victory or defeat) is much harder to pull off, as we don't have a single Walter Cronkite, whom we trust, to tell us we're losing. Our cynicism about the media makes us look closer--fatal to Zarqawi and the anti-war left.

By The Scrutinator @ 9:14 AM  ::  0 comments

Here's the AP's latest antagonistic angle on the U.S. military: Army Town Struggles to Save Abandoned Pets. Full of juicy quotes painting soldiers and their families with a broad brush.

Note that the AP doesn't give us any perspective on how many pets these shelters were taking in before Afghanistan and Iraq, nor do they compare statistics to the general population or other parts of the country. All we get are the perceptions of interviewees: Beate Hall ("I would say 95 percent of these animals come from military homes"), Steve Albin ("there's still the 5 percent of the military..."), and Linda Cordry ("...they had to belong to somebody...")

Cordry says she's found an abundance of dogs in military neighborhoods — from emaciated dogs in back yards of vacated homes to puppies left in Dumpsters.

"They're all dogs of war to me." Apparently, they're all dogs of war to the AP, too.

By The Scrutinator @ 1:34 PM  ::  2 comments

In my own passage out of the left, nearly twenty years ago, it occurred to me that my revolutionary comrades never thought to address the obvious questions for social reformers: "What makes a society work? What will make this society work?" In all the socialist literature I had read, there was not a chapter devoted to the problem of how wealth is created. Socialist theory was exclusively addressed to the conquest of power and the division of wealth that someone else had created. Was it any surprise that the socialist societies they created broke records in making their inhabitants poor?

By The Scrutinator @ 2:43 PM  ::  4 comments

Today's piece by Daniel Okrent, NY Times' Ombudsman, is excellent. He discusses the Columbia University scandal.

The Times, the note explained, had been given a one-day jump on other media in exchange for its agreement not to "seek reaction from other interested parties."

...a former reporter and editor with three major newspaper chains, spoke for many: "The idea that editors and reporters would even have to be told not to do such a thing in the first place, let alone that they would 'forget' the policy, defies belief."

And that Columbia University would demand that students' reactions not be sought? That they would make this part of the deal?

And don't miss Paul Mirengoff's related article: Conduct Unbecoming

Hat-tip: Michelle Malkin

By The Scrutinator @ 9:07 AM  ::  0 comments

Ok, this sure isn't news (published in 1997), but it's the best perspective I've seen on giving a helping hand: From The Oregonian, "Something to believe in: These programs for homeless take no government funds - and no jive about recipients' hard luck or victimhood"

Bride-Of-Scrutinator asks me to add this (though neither of us consider ourselves libertarian): Solving the tenacious problem of homelessness.

Update: Here's the organization's web-site: www.step13.org.

By The Scrutinator @ 7:58 PM  ::  0 comments