An Important Perspective on Obama and Ayers

During the April 16 debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, moderator George Stephanopoulos brought up “a gentleman named William Ayers,” who “was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.” Stephanopoulos then asked Obama to explain his relationship with Ayers. Obama’s answer: “The notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was eight years old, somehow reflects on me and my values, doesn’t make much sense, George.” Obama was indeed only eight in early 1970. I was only nine then, the year Ayers’s Weathermen tried to murder me.

Read the whole thing.

Alex Jones is a Psychopath

I've seen signs posted for someplace called Infowars.com, the first being in a bathroom stall with pictures meant to suggest conspiracies and such. I never thought much of it . . . just loony stuff.

Unbeknownst to me, it is the website for radio show host Alex Jones, who is a conspiracy theory nut. The self-written Google blurb suggests that the site contains "strong opposition to socialism, communism, and the New World Order", yet the guy is apparently a supporter of leftists. Go figure.

Now, Alex Jones has gone utterly bonkers, behaving like quite the monster upon sighting conservative blogger Michelle Malkin.

After seeing the video of Alex Jones going bonkers, I can only hope that a monster like him gets hounded and harassed by someone twice his size in similar fashion someday.

Whereas Michelle Malkin handled the event with dignity and grace, a cowardly psychopath like Alex Jones would certainly wet his pants from their tiny, tiny contents.

Meh

I wish I had more time to elucidate my thoughts here. But I don't, for now. I'll be back to this someday.

A Legal Defense is a Federal Crime?

A rather interesting article, alarming at times. Perhaps the most alarming thing is this:

The U.S. Attorney’s office also added new charges of felony obstruction of justice, citing the disruptive nature of the flesh-and-blood defense. The prosecutors weren’t just rejecting the defense as an argument for innocence. They were saying that it was, itself, a crime.

Um, excuse me, but if I'm a defendant in a death-penalty case, the attempt to call my legal defense a crime . . . even if it is based on tenuous and objectively illogical legal theories . . . is horsecrap of the first order. I mean, if I shoot the judge or kill a witness or something, then yeah, I'm obstructing the hell out of some justice. But arguing a point of law is, however sadly it can sometimes be, what courts are for.

Also scary in the article is the use of federal law to retry cases where a conviction has already occurred in order to get a harsher penalty. The occurrence of local or state dismissals being retried federally has increased, which seems an obvious case of double jeopardy despite whatever legal loophole arguments are employed. For a case to be retried directly in the way described is even worse on the double jeopardy front.

It seems that there is a lot of convergence these days that would allow a new liberal fascism to develop. Perilous times, indeed.

Bacterial Awesomeness

This is fascinating, though you wouldn't think so if you were doing it. Taking a population of bacteria, dividing it by twelve, and watching the populations develop for twenty years sounds like great fun, no?

Twenty years into it, Richard Lenski of Michigan State noticed that one group of bacteria were eating the other component of the feed they were given. The bacteria weren't supposed to be able to do that . . . their little bacteria species was identifiable, in part, from the fact that they couldn't eat that. It was just in there because it was part of the standard growth medium.

This is basically akin to cats . . . who cannot taste sweets according to various sources . . . developing a sweet tooth all of the sudden, snarfing down Reese's Pieces and ice cream (after batting the Pieces across the floor for awhile, of course).

Now as for me, I'm curious to know whether their sudden citrate-tooth . . . which other bacteria have . . . is something that might've involved some vestigial code from a common ancestor that was simply reactivated, or if this was a major change that occurred quite independently.

Either way, though, massive kudos for Lenski, and more pointing and laughing at young-Earth creationist loons.

Fascinating: Obama's Record

Haven't heard much on this before. It's a must-read and must-confirm and must-discuss.

Obama seems capable of sugarcoating his near-communist views most excellently (so you don't even recognize them while he's saying them . . . only later in reviewing what he said), but seeing what he actually does is rather interesting.

The article's not some harsh hit piece, so near as I can tell . . . while there's mention of his long association with Wright in a quote of someone else, the author doesn't fixate on Obama's association with black racists like Wright, terrorists like William Ayers, or his America-loathing wife.

All in all, a good and informative article, but as with all things one must check it out.

Google Making Us Stupid? Perhaps, But . . .

I'm not sure that it is the internet making us stupid. I think it's more that it allows us to exercise our existing stupidity. That, and the fact that it means our village idiots and resident hippies get to roam free, spewing their babble en masse, instead of being contained and isolated and eventually trainable as once they were.