Author Archives: Brendan

Peggy vs. Sully

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Peggy Noonan has a column out today about how the Democrats’ proposed “invention of a huge new entitlement carrying huge new costs” is “terrifying” voters. She makes some good points about Democrats’ unseemly disdain for actual voters with actual concerns. Still, Andrew Sullivan is not impressed with her take on the underlying issue: Where is there an entitlement? There is… Read more »

Meteor alert!

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SpaceWeather.com has the scoop on a possible Perseid outburst next Wednesday morning, in the wee hours: This year’s Perseid meteor shower could be even better than usual. “A filament of comet dust has drifted across Earth’s path and when Earth passes through it, sometime between 0800 and 0900 UT (1 – 2 am PDT) on August 12th, the Perseid meteor… Read more »

Message vs. messenger

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In the course of talking about “Cash for Clunkers,” blogger Conor Friedersdorf makes an important, broader point: Here’s the thing: “the right” is an utter disaster at the moment. You’ve got frightening numbers of people who think President Obama is an illegal alien who faked his Hawaiian birth certificate; adherents who get much of their information from a cable news… Read more »

Gibbs backtracks on “elected leader” comment

Sounds like President Obama gave somebody a tongue-lashing: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Wednesday said he had misspoken in calling Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Iran’s elected leader and that Washington will let the Iranian people decide whether Iran’s election was fair. “Let me correct a little bit of what I said yesterday. I denoted that Mr. Ahmadinejad was the elected leader… Read more »

Thought for the day II

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You’ve probably already heard about this story: A recent college graduate is suing her alma mater for $72,000 — the full cost of her tuition and then some — because she cannot find a job. Trina Thompson, 27, of the Bronx, graduated from New York’s Monroe College in April with a bachelor of business administration degree in information technology. On… Read more »

Thought for the day

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Many years from now, when historians look back on this decade, which day will they say “changed the world” more: 9/11/01, or 9/15/08? Perhaps the answer is 9/11 simply because it was more of a self-contained event, which, all by itself, set enormous changes into motion — whereas the collapse of Lehman Brothers was merely one catastrophic event among many… Read more »

On reading the bill

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Glenn Reynolds, advancing the conservative talking point du jour, asks: “Is it representative government when your representatives don’t read the bill?” Perhaps not. But if not, then it also wasn’t “representative government” when the Republican Congress passed the 342-page-long Patriot Act, or the 415-page-long Medicare prescription drug benefit bill, or the 1,700-plus-page-long Bush/Cheney energy bill of 2005, without reading them…. Read more »

Steamboat photos

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As I mentioned previously, I’m in Steamboat Springs this weekend. You may have noticed that I have a new masthead banner, with a photo from my trip. Here are some more pictures: I particularly like that last one — an armed armadillo inside a tourist kitsch shop in downtown Steamboat. Heh. Lastly, here’s a vertical panoramic shot (made by stitching… Read more »