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Have the best 4th ever. From Reason TV.
Michael Ledeen has an interesting way to look at the Fourth.
And the WSJ reports on efforts to find better fireworks.
The technology is from China. The 45,000 pounds of explosives, monitored from a command center on the Intrepid battleship, will need to soar as high as 1,000 feet in the sky. Around 9:20 p.m., a new, experimental model known as the “ghost shell” will explode across the night sky, then vanish—only to reappear and disappear several more times in a wave pattern.
This year’s Fourth of July fireworks show in New York—more than 10 times larger than the one in Washington—needs to be bigger, brighter, longer and louder than last year’s.
The U.S. has set off fireworks on Independence Day since the first celebration in 1776 when John Adams wrote to his wife Abigail that July 4 should be marked with “illuminations from one end of this continent to the other from this time forward forevermore.” …
David Warren has July 4th thoughts from north of the border.
The Dow has been tanking again, and new figures show the U.S. economy shedding jobs at an accelerating rate. One might criticize the U.S. government for the first trillion or two of “stimulus” spending, by observing that it hasn’t worked. But that would be too easy.
Yes, it was crazy, in the middle of a crisis created by debt, to see how far they could run up debt. It was crazy to shore up nearly worthless assets, in the face of irresistible market forces. At a time when the entire investment system desperately needs to be de-leveraged, it was crazy to oil the gears.
But it gets crazier. In the middle of this economic mess, the U.S. politicians are debating not one, but two new programs of unprecedented size, without the slightest understanding of the economic consequences. One is a vast new “health care” plan, to be sold almost entirely on emotion, with President Obama’s snake-oil skills. …
Mark Steyn’s first look at Palin’s news reflects his good sense.
… National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.
Charles Krauthammer has a go at the Ricci decision.
… At the near half-century mark of the Civil Rights Act, racial minorities have seen remarkable social advancement. The younger generation is infinitely more racially tolerant and accepting. We’ve made great racial progress. But the fundamental unfairness that underlies the racial spoils system continues to rankle. That’s what animated the Ricci case.
We’re 45 years beyond passage of the Civil Rights Act. We have a black attorney general and a black president. As with every passing year we move generationally away from the era of Jim Crow, it becomes less and less justified for the government to mandate “remedial” racial discrimination. Which is why Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in one of her last opinions wrote that “the Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”
The import of Ricci, which raised the bar on reverse discrimination, is that it heads us once again toward that day — and back to true colorblindness that was the original vision, and everlasting glory, of the civil rights movement.
Megan McArdle thinks too much credulity greeted Wal-Mart’s advocacy of corporate health care mandates.
I find it hard to believe that none of the liberal commentators breathlessly celebrating Wal-Mart’s “capitulation” on national health care have even entertained the most parsimonious explanation: that Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market, and hammers Wal-Mart’s competition. Yet somehow, this appears nowhere in any of the analysis. …
One of the cap and trade bill’s most obnoxious provisions makes The Corner.
… the Waxman-Markey bill contains a little-publicized provision that would require private homeowners to retrofit their homes to meet federally-mandated energy-efficiency standards when they put their homes up for sale. …
Mark Steyn comments.
… speaking as a foreigner, I confess I’m finding it harder and harder to see why you fellows bothered holding a revolution. Under this bill, it will be illegal for me to sell my property to a willing buyer without first bringing it into line with some twerp bureaucrat’s arbitrary and ever shifting “environmental” regulations originally designed for California, and which have helped turn the Golden State into the foldin’ state, …
Shorts from National Review.
London Times reports new swine flu cases in Great Britain are expected to reach 100,000 daily by the end of the month.
More than 100,000 swine flu cases could be diagnosed every day by the end of next month, the Health Secretary has warned. Britain has moved past the stage of trying to contain the spread of the virus and into the “treatment phase”, Andy Burnham told the House of Commons.
Cases of the H1N1 virus were doubling each week in Britain and could reach six figures daily by the end of August if current trends continued, he added. Anyone with flu-like symptoms will be advised to stay at home and telephone their GP for advice. Doctors have warned that “several million” people could become ill as the flu season returns in autumn and winter.
Mr Burnham emphasised that most people who had become infected with the virus had developed only mild symptoms but widespread disruption to the economy is expected as people take days off work with flu. …
Borowitz reports Ruth Madoff has broken her silence.