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The New Editor posts on the 67th anniversary of Churchill’s “finest hour” speech.
John Fund writes on Harry Reid’s union card-check bill.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has decided to hold a vote this Wednesday on perhaps the most unpopular element of the Democratic agenda. The Employee Free Choice Act has already passed the House, but now it faces real hurdles in the Senate because, contrary to the name, it undermines workplace democracy.
Under the so-called card-check bill, a company would no longer have the right to demand a secret-ballot election to certify a union, thus stripping 140 million American workers of the right to decide in private whether to organize. …
Jeff Jacoby says the lawsuit by the jerk judge in DC is no joke.
… The population of lawyers in America has soared in recent decades, and with their increase has come an explosion in the lawyer’s stock in trade: regulation, disputation, and litigation. In 1978, noting that the number of US lawyers had increased to 462,000, Time magazine rued the way laws and lawsuits were taking over American life, making it ever more difficult to rely on custom and common sense in settling differences. It quoted then-Chief Justice Warren Burger: “We may well be on our way to a society overrun by hordes of lawyers, hungry as locusts, and brigades of judges in numbers never before contemplated.”
If that was true then, how much more so today, when the “hordes of lawyers” (including non practicing ones like me) have swollen to nearly 1 million? A century ago, there was 1 lawyer for every 714 Americans. Today the ratio is 1 to 288. …
Christopher Hitchens goes to bat for Scooter Libby. That case plus the idiot administrative law judge Jeff Jacoby wrote about make it very hard to maintain respect for our country’s legal system.
Michael Barone writes on the primary system.
Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, the leaders in Republican polls during most of the year, have announced they will not compete in the straw poll held in Iowa on August 15. Fred Thompson, who is polling well and expected to enter the race, may also opt out of this early test of strength. Florida has moved its primary to January 29, just one week after New Hampshire and shortly after the actual Iowa caucus, in defiance of Democratic Party rules. (Florida Democrats risk being tossed out of the national convention but say they don’t care.) Michigan Democrats have also said they’ll hold a caucus January 29, or even earlier if New Hampshire acts on its threat to move its primary back.
All these moves are threats to the rule that Iowa and New Hampshire vote first. In fact, the process was begun by the Democratic National Committee, which has authorized a Nevada caucus and a South Carolina primary just after the Iowa and New Hampshire contests. Now others are joining in the attacks.
And a good thing, too, is my gut reaction. I have thumbed through my copy of the Constitution many times to find the part that says Iowa and New Hampshire come first, and I have yet to find it. …
Patrick Ruffini at Hugh Hewitt notes an interesting poll in South Carolina.
Hugh Hewitt posts on the idiot Robin Wright in WaPo.
Two posts from the Captain on the Duke dénouement.
Pickerhead is convinced no good is going to come out of our fascination with ethanol. Volokh has a post along those lines centering on food prices.
The Economist has more on the innovative Japanese process for embedding vaccines in food.
GETTING two for the price of one is always a good bargain. And according to a paper in this week’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that is what Tomonori Nochi of the University of Tokyo and his colleagues have done. Using genetic engineering, they have overcome two of the limitations of vaccines. One is that they are heat-sensitive and thus have to be transported along a “cold chain†of refrigerators to the clinics where they are used. The other is that, although they stimulate immune responses inside the body, they often fail to extend that protection to the outside, where it might prevent bacteria and viruses getting inside in the first place. …
Village Voice writes on health inspectors in NY city. We should be pleased when a left organ sees the foolishness of government functionaries.
…The pizza is baked at 550 degrees, a temperature that kills any bacteria you can test for. Anyway, the inspectors whom the department calls sanitarians don’t really test for bacteria. There can be salmonella jumping on your organic leaf spinach, and they won’t be able to tell. There are no swabs or bacteria cultures or Petri dishes involved. The only scientific apparatus employed is a thermometer, and, as Markt said, “a handheld computer that they use to input their reports. They don’t have a lot of gadgets I’m aware of.” Like ancient oracles, these sanitarians look for signs. As far as we’re concerned, if the milk isn’t refrigerated at the optimal temperature — or in Dom’s case, in a refrigerator fast enough to cool anything a certain number of degrees within a set period of time — it doesn’t matter. If the milk goes sour, you can taste it. And sour milk is not a health problem: It’s called yogurt. …
Dilbert’s best story ever is in the humor section. Go to www.pickerhead.com