When Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to blow up Flight 253, it was a victory for the West. High fives all around! We caught a would-be terrorist red-handed! Our security measures are working. Our enemies are forced to use bogus, unreliable methods when they try to bomb us. In fact, if our security were tighter, Abdulmutallab might never have even ( Read more... )

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Oh wait. They were just hookers. Never mind. No one cares.

Wisconsin authorities may well have arrested the North Side Strangler, murderer of prostitutes (link).

See original waitress rant here.

Republican governor Mark Sanford admits to his affair, not long after Republican senator John Ensign has done the same. Why don't these powerful men live up to their own standards and keep it in their pants? Or if they can't live up to their own standards, why don't they make the politically smart, calculated choice to keep it in the pants?

Back ( Read more... )

The political opponents of ev psych accuse its proponents (e.g., me) of wickedly supporting the "status quo."  This accusation is bizarre, but I know where they're coming from. I remember being a young man impatient with society's imperfections and hostile to the "establishment." But over the last 20 to 25 years I've acquired a different ( Read more... )

The Republicans are staging "tea parties" across the country to protest taxes, and apparently to protest not having a real political party any more. Apparently the history books were wrong, and the Boston tea party was about taxes, not about representative government. What do you say to the folks who think these tea parties are a good thing? It's ( Read more... )

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If you're against farm subsidies, does that make you liberal or conservative?

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With gas-tax revenue down, thanks to a recession and to higher-mileage cars, the government is looking at ways to collect ta per mile driven rather than per gallon of gas consumed. If we need higher gas-tax revenues, how about just increasing the gas tax?

My old gas-tax rant.

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