ELSEWHERE

Hey! Affirmative action has its uses. At least it led to the downfall of the notoriously biased Howell Raines.

Some fruitcake slashes at police with a knife and it’s the fault of the police when they shoot him? Only in San Francisco (I hope).

Taxes wasted on bureaucracy: In the British National Heath service, the National Office of Statistics found that, while resources rose by 6 per cent in real terms in 2001, treatments to patients rose by only 3 per cent

You live and learn: Like most people I thought that South Korea’s “sunshine policy” towards the North was simply designed to avert war. This article explains that it is acually a form of collaboration with the North. Reunification of the two Koreas would, of course, be a huge economic drain on the South.

Good comment: “To certain critics of U.S. policy in Iraq, the only thing worse than going to war with Saddam Hussein is the fact that we won”. Via The Federalist

Good to see that the judge in the case made a laughing-stock of the ridiculous Federal prosecution of a medical marijuana grower.

What fun: Greenies are at one-another’s throats over windmills. Maybe that fad will pass soon too. How anybody ever thought windmills could be a reliable source of power-generation escapes me.

A disturbing article in the “Speccy” by someone of Pakistani Muslim origin. He says that anti-Western Islamic TV stations are accessible worldwide through satellite and that they are widely watched by Muslims in the West. So even in the West Muslims are getting fed a diet of ferocious anti-Israel and anti-Western propaganda that glorifies terrorism. No wonder a couple of British Muslims recently became suicide bombers. Muslims everywhere are being made a danger to us.

Libertarian socialism? A prominent UK politician says that there is such a beast but goes on to advocate government dominance of just about everything. Perry de Havilland has more.

"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay sharply attacked China's leadership recently, demanding that the United States forge a trade agreement with Taiwan despite Chinese opposition. Calling China 'a backward, corrupt anachronism, run by decrepit tyrants, old apparatchiks clinging to a dying regime ...'“ He’s right but 1.2 billion people are not to be trifled with and they have liberalized an awful lot in recent years -- so much so that their capitalism is in some ways more unbridled than we ever now see in the West.

Clinton’s Energy Information Agency estimated Kyoto’s annual cost to the U.S. at up to $400 billion ..."

Understandable: While four out of five Americans would describe an unwed mother and her children as a 'family,' fewer than one in three would apply the term to a gay or lesbian couple raising children."

Michael Darby is not very happy about a government policy of shooting “brumbies” (Australian wild horses).

Chris Brand discusses the Spanish conservative philosopher, Ortega Y Gasset.

In my academic posting here (or here) I report a study of South African Afrikaners (whites of Dutch origin). I found that they were conservative and ambitious but not maladjusted in any way. And pro-Apartheid voters among them were not particularly conservative!

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