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Mark Steyn was in the Western Standard. He starts out thinking about Vermont – all environment, no people.
In St. Albans, Vermont, just south of the Quebec border, I happened to find myself behind a car bearing the bumper sticker “TO SAVE A TREE REMOVE A BUSH.” Bush, geddit? As in George W. of that ilk.
It seemed a curious priority considering that, at that point, on all sides, east, west, north, south, there was nothing to see but trees. Hemlock, birch, maple, you name it, Vermont’s full of it. The state is more forested than it was a century ago, or two centuries ago. It’s on every measure other than tree cover that Vermont has problems. It’s a beautiful state to drive through–picture-postcard New England town commons with clapboard churches and grade schools–until you pull over and realize the grade schools are half empty. I used to joke that Vermont was America’s leading Canadian province, but in fact it’s worse than that: demographically speaking, the Green Mountain State qualifies for membership in the European Union. It has the lowest birthrate of any American state. The number of 20 to 34-year-olds in Vermont has fallen by 20 per cent since 1990. Some schools have seen student populations fall by a third since 2000. Vermont’s family tree is all tree and no families.
IBD with another editorial on Jimmy Carter. Maybe someone can get him committed.
Chicago Tribune with a good editorial on earmarks.
Instapundit posts on a new fund-raising gimmick. Now the lobbyists pay to meet staff.
… I’m actually in favor of this. With members of Congress spending most of their time fundraising, most actual lawmaking work has devolved to the staff. So if we can get the staff busy fundraising, too, maybe we’ll just see less legislating overall. Which, based on recent performance, would pretty much have to be an improvement.
Howard Kurtz tours the commentariat checking on how Hillary’s doing.
Hillary Clinton is inevitable.
That, at least, is the consensus view of media wizards, strategists, pollsters and other kibitzers, that HRC is a virtual lock for the nomination. An official with a rival campaign told me that Hillary has an 80 percent chance of being the party’s candidate, and most neutral observers would probably go with a higher number.
So why is there such unease about her within the party? …
Speaking of politicians, Anne Applebaum is tired of the way they talk.
“Eager to preserve the English language against a rising tide of nonsense,” a British newspaper last week asked readers to compose a piece of prose “crammed with as many infuriating phrases as possible.” The results make for entertaining reading.
“I hear what you’re saying but, with all due respect, it’s not exactly rocket science,” begins one excellent example. “The bottom line is you wear your heart on your sleeve and, when all is said and done, this is all part and parcel of the ongoing bigger picture.” Another declared, “[L]et’s face facts here, this could so be my conduit to a whole new ball game. Awesome, or what?” …
WSJ gives a good history lesson comparing the Duke lacrosse players to the Scottsboro Boys.
Imagine this: In a Southern town, a woman accuses several men of rape. Despite the woman’s limited credibility and ever-shifting story, the community and its legal establishment immediately decide the men are guilty. Their protestations of innocence are dismissed out of hand, exculpatory evidence is ignored.
The Duke rape case, right? No, the Scottsboro case that began in 1931, in the darkest days of the Jim Crow South. …
Thomas Sowell reminds us there’s unfinished business at Duke.
… there are many other people who disgraced themselves in hyping a lynch mob atmosphere when this case first broke last year.
The New York Times, which splashed these Duke students’ pictures on the front page, along with inflammatory charges against them, and went ballistic on its editorial page, carried the story of Nifong’s disbarment for prosecuting them on page 16.
The 88 Duke University faculty members who took out a hysterical ad, supporting those local loudmouths who were denouncing and threatening the Duke students, have apparently had nothing at all to say now.
Not only did many Duke University professors join the lynch mob atmosphere, so did the Duke University administration, which got rid of the lacrosse coach and cancelled the team’s season, without a speck of evidence that anybody was guilty of anything.
This is one of the few times when Jesse Jackson is speechless, even though he was loudly supporting the bogus “rape” charges last year.
John Stossel wishes Bill Gates knew something about economics.
Dropping out of college didn’t stop Bill Gates from making tons of money, but it kept him from classes where he might have learned about the beauty of spontaneous market processes.
Never mind. I forgot that he attended Harvard. He might not have learned about markets after all. …
… He told the grads, “The market did not reward saving the lives of these children [in poor countries], and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.”
What is Gates talking about?
Can he name one poor country that permits the free market to operate? The problem is not that the market doesn’t make it profitable to save lives — it most certainly does. The problem is that Third World countries have overbearing, corrupt governments that are obstacles to private property and freedom. That’s why the children’s parents have no voice or power. …
George Will examines labor’s agenda.
Democracy is rule by persuasion, but the unpersuasive often try to coerce the unpersuaded. Recent days have provided two illustrations of this tendency, both of them pertaining to labor unions, whose decades of declining membership testify to their waning power to persuade workers that unions add more value to workers’ lives than they subtract. …
The New Editor says anti-smoking creeps are costing some jobs in Vegas.
Adam Smith posts on environmentist’s war against the poor.