More Good Reading on the Net

At Jo-Joe Political Joe has a amazing easy to read post about President Obama’s recent press conference. Joe does not feel that Barry was always accurate and he proves that via a little trip through Washington, DC, the Constitution and recent history. It’s a fun trip because Joe’s prose is marvelously clear. In this piece as in the best of Joe’s prose the words never get in your way they just lightly draw you along. Joe's writing is deceptively simple since it is full of facts and ideas but never feels at all difficult to digest. I envy his ability with the English language.
Pundit and Pundette ask the questions that Brian Williams, George Stephanopoulos and Harry Smith don’t even understand. Like why close the schools but not the borders. Or what has beauty come to mean if a major magazine will apply it to Rahm Emanuel and Timothy Geithner. They also give you some photos of GTOs.
Jane Q. Republican writes about Obama’s reticence to make good on his promise to make abortions more available than candy bars. A good quote from Jane Q., “ Still, it’s interesting to see Obama flat-out renege on a core commitment to the Left.  I wonder just how many of these Mulligans he has remaining.” She also has a good little piece about the Chief’s snarkiness about Tea Parties and Fox News. The Man puts the ‘really petty’ in ‘just how really petty can you get?’ I like the graphic that goes with this one.
And so it goes in Shreveport has a post about some rather questionable behavior by ABC News and the ACLU. It seems they are making very public the identities and locations of a couple of psychologists who worked for the CIA. Read it for yourself because Pat lays it out clearly with its twists and with comparison to the Valerie Plame incident. Personally, it sounds to me like ABC and the ACLU are motivated by meanness and pay back. It’s not pretty and does not bode well for our ability to gether intelligence.
Betsy’s Page has a post about who might end up in Justice Souter’s seat and some of the internal complexities of the senate that might come into play. She has more about senate complexities in the next post about Democratic senators’ anger at Reid for giving Arlen Spector seniority credit in the Democrat caucus for all of his years as a Republican. The piece bears reading since there are some twists that Betsy explains very clearly.

Does the ACLU Care about Intrusive Surveillance?

I guess any kind of intrusive surveillance is OK, as long as it’s for taxes instead of catching terrorists.
Posted by Deuce Geary on at 3:24 am

How else to explain a report in the Charlotte Observer that North Carolina is considering monitoring vehicle mileage of private citizens in order to tax them according to mileage and road use? The monitoring would be accomplished either through regular odometer readings or, more ambitiously, through GPS tracking:

With gas-tax revenues plummeting, the state of North Carolina is looking seriously at taxing motorists for how far they drive.

If the “road-use tax” is implemented, it would at first be simple – with the state checking your odometer annually and taxing you based on how many miles you have driven. But transportation experts say new GPS technology could allow the state to charge people different rates based on when and where they drive, in an attempt to manage congestion.

I’m anticipating no objections from the ACLU, at least as long as the government promises not to to use the GPS monitoring to identify, track, or apprehend terrorists.
HatTip/The Skeptcrats

Daddy, How Did You Become a Natavist?

"Daddy, how did you become a nativist?"
"It was easy, Jimmy.  I just wrote some stuff that pissed off a liberal and he started calling me names"
"You said 'piss' Daddy.  Is that worse than being a nativist?"
"Nothing is worse than being  a natavist.  It means that Hillary and Harry Reid don't like me.  It means I think there is a noncomprehensive solution to immigration.  And I might be put on trial
at The Hague."
"Does that mean they'll take me away from you?"
'Let's hope not. But someday they might start seperating relatives of hate criminals from the herd." 
"Are you a hate criminal, Daddy?  Who do you hate?"
"It's not that I hate anyone, Jimmy.  You don't have to hate anyone to commit a hate crime.  Liberals think that it's a hate crime to say something they don't want to hear.  They can be
controling and manipulative.  And they also have this problem that psychologists call
projection.  I'll explain it to you when you get older."

The Culture Wars. the ACLU and Ceramics

I was at the local hospital the other day and I stopped in the gift shop. As the little volunteer lady was ringing up my stuff I noticed a ceramic Mary, Joseph and Jesus in a manger on the shelf behind her. This clicked in with things I’ve been reading and thinking about lately. I said to her, “ Someday soon the ACLU might come in here, say that most of the patients’ stays here are paid for by the federal government and demand that the baby Jesus be removed from the hospital.” And as I walked away , I thought, “The ACLU will probably also simultaneously demand that foot baths be installed for the two Muslims that live in this town.”
I liked the volunteer’s reply. She just said, “ Well, if they do, we’ll all quit.”