Quote of the Day

Arthur C. Brooks in The Wall Street Journal.

To put a modern twist on the old axiom, a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at 40 either has no head, or pays no taxes.

I wish that those who did not pay taxes did not vote.

Heh

Arlen Specter reminds us once again that "senile" and "senate" have the same Latin root.

Bullets, Brass, Powder, Primers...

Yesterday I placed an order for eight pounds of Winchester 760 smokeless powder, at twenty-one dollars a pound delivered to my front door. The price includes shipping, handling, insurance, and hazmat fee. Bullets are on their way. Primers I found last weekend. Brass I have plenty of.

Time now to tool up. This is my birthday wish list.

    Lee Classic Cast Single Stage Press         85.99
    Lee Collet 2-Die Neck Sizer Set 7mm-08      24.99
    Lee Auto Prime Press Mounted Priming Tool   14.99
    Lee Universal Depriming and Decapping Die    9.99

    RCBS Uniflow Powder Measure                 67.99
    RCBS Model 502 Magnetic Powder Scale        64.79
    RCBS Standard Scale Check Weights           27.99
    Lyman E-ZEE Flo Powder Trickler             15.79
    Frankford Arsenal Powder Funnel 16 Nozzles  18.99

    Lee Case Length Gage 7mm-08                  4.49
    Lee Case Trimmer Cutter with Ball Grip       5.89
    RCBS Chamfer and Deburring Tool             15.49
    RCBS Primer Pocket Brush Combo              13.49

    Lyman Turbo Pro 1200 Case Tumbler           51.99
    Lyman Turbo Brite Brass Case Polish          6.09

    RCBS Dial Caliper 6" Stainless Steel        42.99

    Frankford Arsenal Perfect Fit Tray           4.99
    MTM Flip-Top Ammo Box                        3.67 

I won't need every item on it, at least not right away, but need and want are often indistinguishable, especially when you're buying presents for yourself.

45 Million Year Old Beer

The Fossil Fuels Brewing Company of Northern California will use a strain of yeast grown from spores preserved in amber for forty-five million years.

During his research, Dr. Cano, periodically working with Mr. Lambert, isolated a few yeast strains that resembled modern Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In other words, they are similar to the yeast we use every day for brewing and baking, except the newly discovered yeasts were much further back in the evolutionary chain. Essentially, Dr. Cano isolated the long lost ancestors of modern brewing yeast....

Thanks to Improbable Research.

Leg o' Grasshopper?

For the ultimate in carnivorous cuteness check out Cowboy Blob's caption/photoshop contest.

And the Winner Is...

The winner of the 2009 Iowahawk Earth Week Virtual Cruise-In...

The sheer, mindboggling nerve it took to pull off a eco-prank like that simply shames anything I've ever accomplished, and I daresay the same goes for you. And here's the best part: most of the clueless ecoweenie marks still don't realize they've been punked!

Your Sunday Derb

OK, it's not a regular item and it actually appeared on Friday, but John Derbyshire's op-ed on one of this term's Supreme Court cases ought to be part of your Sunday afternoon news-bath.

Ricci v. DeStefano takes place in a time of general public exhaustion over racial inequalities. We'd really rather just not think about it. Fifty years ago it all seemed cut and dried. Just strike down old unjust laws, give the minority a helping hand, give the non-minority some education about civil rights and past disgraces, and in a few years things will come right.

We coasted along under those assumptions for a generation. When it became obvious that things were not coming right in the matter of test results, scholars and jurists got to work on the problem.

Liberals, with their usual coarse stupidity, naturally assumed it was just a matter of spending more money on schools....

Conservatives, thoroughly race-whipped by the liberal media elites, preferred to go along with whatever liberals said, except that they made, and still make, mild throat-clearing noises about school vouchers. It has turned out in practice, however, that the only people keen on school vouchers are the striving poor, a small (and dwindling) demographic with no political weight, and whom nobody in the media or academic elites gives a fig about. The non-striving underclass has zero interest in education; middle-class suburbanites like their schools the way they are, thanks all the same; and teachers' unions see vouchers as threats to the public-education gravy train their members ride to well-padded retirement.

And nothing has changed.

I assume that this essay will wind up as a chapter in Derbyshire's upcoming book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, to be published in September.

100 Days, 100 Mistakes

According to the New York Post.

But hey, who's counting?

100. "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother." —Obama to Rep. Peter DeFazio, after the Democratic congressman voted against the stimulus bill.

Oh.

Primer Crisis

I went to the gun show forty-five minutes early and was sixth in line. It was worth it though. There were 800 Remington No. 9½ Large Rifle Primers there, and I got them. Paid twice the normal price, which I figure was fair because

there
are
no
primers
available
on
the
internet.

Or anywhere else at this time.

Crescent Venus

And our own moon. Today's APOD.

Bang. Boom!

Go watch Alan's video.

In the Mail Today

He'd probably write thanks for last night if I asked him.

Happy Arf Day

"Green Gone Wild: Elevating Nature Above Human Rights tells the real story behind the politicized birth, the oppressive tactics, and the harsh impact of modern environmentalism."

Sounds worthwhile, if you must pay any attention at all to this dismal "science."

Actually, my favorite ecological treatise is There's a Hair in My Dirt! A Worm's Story by Gary Larson.

Ammo Econ 101

Tam analyzes the ammo shortage. Reason three: production capacity.

The manufacturers are running full tilt. The only way they could make more ammunition is to build more plant, and they are not going to do that for several reasons. The first is that this bubble will contract sooner or later. Joe and Jane Sofaspud are going to realize that they really don't need 10,000 rounds of Winchester .45 in the basement, and that minivan payment isn't getting any smaller. They'll sell it to Annie Appleseed and Ivan Ipsc and demand will cool down.

She's got three other points, all clear and concise. Read it.

Antebellum Grandpa

Joseph P. Duggan had the job of editing the letters to the editor for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. One day the editor called him into his office.

"Did you get a letter from Miss _____? And not publish it?"

I searched my memory. "Oh, yes, I think that's the name of someone who sends these long, rambling things advocating total, unilateral U.S. disarmament."

"So? You mean to tell me you did receive a letter from Miss _____ and you threw it away?"

"Well, yes — yes, sir. I didn't think that's the kind of letter we publish."

"Son, don't you know who she is? Let me tell you something. Miss _____ is President Tyler's granddaughter."

"President Tyler? He was President in 1841, and this is 1981. His granddaughter?"

"Yes, his granddaughter. And our newspaper always publishes letters from persons of the stature of a granddaughter of President Tyler."

True, and a true story. And according to Wikipedia "as of 2009 Tyler has two living grandsons."

It's Always Darkest...

Mark Steyn's new book, Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West is now available.

On August 3rd 1914, on the eve of the Great War, Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, stood at the window of his office in the summer dusk and observed: "The lamps are going out all over Europe." Today the lamps are going out on liberty all over the western world in a more subtle and elusive and profound way...

I've ordered mine.

This should make a lovely companion to We Are Doomed by John Derbyshire, also on order. Oh, it's going to be such a jolly summer!

Wrong Answer

Fox News wants to know Did Miss California's answer cost her the crown?

As Miss North Carolina might say: Duh.

Here we have two young ladies who are essentially identical in every particular, right down to the Levantine roots of their bottle blond hair. And then one of the judges, who by the way is gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), asked Miss California for her opinion on gay marriage. And the poor girl, dizzy from the bright lights and apparently suffering from severe malnutrition, gave it to him:

I think in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised.

Bzzzzzzt! Wrong answer. Next!

Everyone's entitled to their opinion, but only if it's the correct opinion.

Pulped

Newspaper Death Watch notes that the world's largest maker of newsprint has filed for bankruptcy.

Abitibi-Bowater, which was formed from a 2007 merger, is struggling to pay $8.78 billion in debt. Even though the Canadian company controls 45% of the North American-based newsprint market, a steep drop in demand has slammed its business.

Odd, isn't it, that blank paper is newsprint, but printed it's newspaper? And pretty much worthless in either form?

No News Today

If there was, I missed it.

I went to the range, to a barbecue, and to the airport. Did some steep turns, some slow flight, power-on and power-off stalls, and three pretty nice landings. It's like riding a bicycle. You never really forget; you just lose your currency.

We'll return to your regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.

Little Rebellion Now and Then

Helena, Montana:

Gov. Brian Schweitzer has signed into law a bill that aims to exempt Montana-made guns from federal regulation, adding firepower to a battery of legislative efforts to assert states' rights across the nation.

"It's a gun bill, but it's another way of demonstrating the sovereignty of the state of Montana," Democrat Schweitzer said.

Since the law applies only to those guns that are made and kept in Montana, its impact is limited. The state is home to just a handful of specialty gun makers, known for recreating rifles used to settle the West, and most of their customers are out-of-state....

Its supporters next plan to find a "squeaky clean" Montanan who wants to send a note to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives threatening to build and sell about 20 rifles without federal dealership licensing. If the ATF says it's illegal, the gun bill's backers plan to file a lawsuit in federal court with the goal of launching a legal showdown that lands in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Montana Shooting Sports Association, which drafted the bill, has said it will raise the money to pay for any legal costs.

"It doesn't cost us any money and I like guns," Schweitzer said after signing the bill.

"I like big guns, I like little guns, I like pistols, I like rifles, and I would like to buy a gun that's made in Montana," Schweitzer said.

You might want to go back up to the second paragraph and double-check, but Schweitzer is a Democrat. A western Democrat. We could use a few more of those.

Thanks to some Old Grouch.

Red Scare

"It Could Happen Here!"

A PRESENTATION OF
THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY

JANET NAPOLITANO, DIRECTOR

IN CONJUNCTION WITH
THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
AND THE HOUSE ANTI-TAX ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE

AN IOWAHAWK EDUCATIONAL FILMS PRODUCTION

Watch it. It's your civic duty.

The Alternative Fuel Joke

Kimberley A. Strassel in The Wall Street Journal tells a Congress joke. It wasn't meant to be a joke, though. It's all true.

Back in 2005, Congress passed a highway bill. In its wisdom, it created a subsidy that gave some entities a 50-cents-a-gallon tax credit for blending "alternative" fuels with traditional fossil fuels. The law restricted which businesses could apply and limited the credit to use of fuel in motor vehicles.

Not long after, some members of Congress got to wondering if they couldn't tweak this credit in a way that would benefit specific home-state industries. In 2007, Congress expanded the types of alternative fuels that counted for the credit, while also allowing "non-mobile" entities to apply. This meant that Alaskan fish-processing facilities, for instance, which run their boilers off fish oil, might now also claim the credit.

What Congress apparently didn't consider was every other industry that might qualify. Turns out the paper industry has long used something called the "kraft" process to make paper. One byproduct is a sludge called "black liquor," which the industry has used for decades to fuel its plants. Black liquor is cost-effective, makes plants nearly self-sufficient, and, most importantly (at least for this story), definitely falls under Congress's definition of an "alternative fuel."

Wait, that's just the set-up. Here's the punchline.

In order to qualify for the credit, alternative fuel must be mixed with a taxable one. (The government might want to encourage alternative fuels, but not to the extent that it loses its gas-tax revenue.) This means that to qualify, the paper industry must mix some diesel with its black liquor. This has sent environmentalists around the bend. They have accused the industry of burning fossil fuels that it didn't used to burn, simply to get the tax dollars.

Haw!

Tax Day in Oregon

In Medford, Oregon, the Tax Day Tea Party met at 9:00 in the parking lot of the New Far East restaurant.

From there we marched to the county courthouse.

The line stretched for six city blocks.

On the lawn in front of the court house we milled around, listening to speeches and such.

In Klamath Falls, Oregon, a two-hour drive away, the party started at 12:00 noon at Veteran's Park.

The weather was 45° and sunny, with a brisk wind.

In Grants Pass the crowd was revved up and going strong long before the 5:00 start time.

The courthouse is on the main thoroughfare, and the rush hour traffic honked and waved.

Once again, professional speakers (talk radio hosts I assume) delivered a pungent message.

Of the three crowds, Klamath Falls was the smallest, Medford was middling, and Grants Pass was the largest — about 400, 500, and 700, would be my guess.

Update: According to the local fish wrap, my estimates are way low. They say 800 rallied in Medford.

P.S.
Clueless Emma has photos from Salem, Oregon.
Camera 47 has photos from Corvallis, Oregon.
Finding Ponies has photos from Bend, Oregon.

Party Time!

I'll be out and about all day.

Meanwhile, if you're stuck at work, here are some links.

Bill Whittle: Why You Should Attend A Tea Party
WSJ: This Tax Is For You
Andrew Cline: It's Way Past Tea Party Time
Peter Ferrara: The Tea Party Revolution
Prof. Reynolds: Tax Day Becomes Protest Day

Goldwater Fan

Local blogger Jim Wickre has been reading Bob Dylan's autobiography, and came upon this startling statement. Quoth the balladeer:

I had a primitive way of looking at things and I liked country fair politics. My favorite politician was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn't any way to explain that to anybody....

There still isn't. But it's nice to know.

Doing Anything Wednesday?

As I've said before, I'm taking Wednesday April 15 off. Against my better judgment I'm not going to spend the day shopping for ammunition and shooting up what I find. Instead I plan to attend a few Tax Day Tea Parties. There's one in Medford at 9:00, one in Klamath Falls at 12:00, and one in Grants Pass at 5:00. You'll see me and my silly little sign hanging out at all three.

TaxDayTeaParty.com has more information on these and other parties, but here it is in a nutshell.

The Medford Tea Party will gather at 9:00 at the Far East Restaurant, 236 N. Front St. Contact Jerry McCauley at highlandglen@ccountry.net.

The Klamath Falls Tea Party will begin at 12:00 at Veteran's Park. They have more information on their web site.

The Grants Pass Tea Party will meet at 5:00 in front of the County Courthouse, 500 NW 6th St. There will be signs, flags, T-shirts, speakers, and pocket copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence for participants. Contact Jack Swift at jhswft@earthlink.net.

For a misanthrope like myself, hanging around in crowds can be quite a strain. That's why I've scheduled a couple hours of driving time, just me and Mr. Beethoven, between each party.

I'd like to say that I will take my camera and engage in a little citizen journalism, but if there's anything more pathetic than my interpersonal skills, it's my photography. Nevertheless, if you see me there, show me a big cheesy smile. If I get any good snaps, I'll post them here.

The Sylvanite Mine

I spotted it from across the river, a glorious wreck, a dark hole in the hillside. I knew right away it was the Sylvanite Mine. I had located it on the topo map a year ago, so I knew approximately where it was. I just never expected it to be so obvious.

After double-checking that I could reach it by crossing only public lands, I headed up the hill through waist-high poison oak, relying on my hand-held GPS to guide me there.

What had appeared from across the river to be some sort of gate turned out to be a stamp mill, a machine to pulverize the ore before extraction of the gold and silver.

Ten minutes of searching on the web turned up the following, from The Ore Bin, Volume 25, No. 6, June, 1963, pp. 104-105.

"Sylvanite Mine: The property is in sec. 2, T. 36 S., R. 3 W., about 3 miles northeast of Gold Hill in Jackson County, and comprises 132 acres of patented ground which, the record shows, includes four full mining claims and two fractional claims. The owner of record in 1951 was George Tulare, Route 2, Box 371, Gold Hill.

"The discovery and early history of the mine are not of public record. Various published reports show that, beginning in 1916, owners and operators were, successively, E. T. Simons, with Stone and Avena, Denver, Colorado, lessees who found scheelite (tungsten ore) associated with the gold ore; Oregon-Pittsburg Co. in 1928; Discon Mining Co., A. D. Coulter, Manager, discoverer of the high-grade ore shoot along the Cox Lyman vein in 1930; Western United Gold Properties; Sylvanite Mining Co.; and finally Imperial Gold Mines, Inc., in 1939. This last company built a concentrating mill of 140 tons daily capacity and cleaned out underground workings to expose the openings where the rich ore shoot had been found.

"... Ore shoots are said to be from 5 to 12 feet thick and have averaged from $5 to $15 a ton. They have a gangue of quartz and calcite and carry galena, chaicopyrite, and pyrite. A fracture zone roughly parallel to the Sylvanite vein cuts the Cox-Lyman vein and at the intersection a rich ore shoot was found on the hanging wall, producing $1,000 per lineal foot of winze in sinking 600 feet. Discontinuous pockets of ore were found in the hanging wall of the shoot for 200 additional feet of depth. The winze reached 900 feet below the surface. This ore shoot was reported to have yielded about $700,000.

"A total of more than 2,560 lineal feet of underground development work has been done. In addition, numerous surface pits and cuts, now caved, have been dug by pocket hunters.

"Seemingly little effort has been made to explore the scheelite possibilities, although it is known that the Imperial Gold Mines Co. had such plans. They ran into difficulties underground because of caving ground, and presumably war-time conditions finally forced them to close down."

That figure of $700,000, in 1939, would be equivalent to about $10 million today.

Captain Phillips Rescued!

Neo-neocon broke the news, but it's also on Fox:

American sea Captain Richard Phillips was safely rescued Sunday from four Somali pirates, who had been holding him for days in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa, a U.S. intelligence official said.

Three of the pirates were killed and one was in custody after what appeared to be a swift firefight off the Somali coast, the official said.

Initial reports indicate Phillips jumped overboard for a second time and the military was able to take advantage of the situation.

Too bad about that fourth pirate. Is ammunition that expensive?

Lost and Found

What if you found an old camera in a junk shop? What if you took it home and it still had film in it? What if the photos were of someone's honeymoon in 1940?

Lost Films.

Thanks to Instapundit.

Done Rendering

I spent the day doing taxes. Finished them, photocopied them, wrote the checks, addressed the envelopes.

I'm beat.

To Remain Silent

Mathew 27:11-14

And Jesus stood before the governor: and the governor asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest. And when he was accused of the chief priests and elders, he answered nothing. Then said Pilate unto him, Hearest thou not how many things they witness against thee? And he answered him to never a word; insomuch that the governor marvelled greatly.

Mark 15:2-5

And Pilate asked him, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answering said unto him, Thou sayest it. And the chief priests accused him of many things: but he answered nothing. And Pilate asked him again, saying, Answerest thou nothing? behold how many things they witness against thee. But Jesus yet answered nothing; so that Pilate marvelled.

Luke 23:3, 9

And Pilate asked him, saying, Art thou the King of the Jews? And he answered him and said, Thou sayest it.... Then he questioned with him in many words; but he answered him nothing.

The three synoptic gospels are in agreement on this point.

Jesus took the fifth.

Every Single Word

Benjamin Balint reviews Good Book: The Bizarre, Hilarious, Disturbing, Marvelous, and Inspiring Things I Learned When I Read Every Single Word of the Bible.

At times he admires the Bible's grand notions of justice or finds its laws — e.g., the injunctions in Leviticus 19 to render justice blindly, to love the stranger and to feed the poor — "monumental and beautiful." He senses that his experiment in close reading has joined him in new ways to Jewish life.

More often, however, Mr. Plotz finds the Bible ridiculous. God, he writes, is "a kind of celestial Donald Trump" or "like Norman Mailer on a bad day." Much of Genesis reads to Mr. Plotz like a "smutty" soap opera — "Dynasty in the desert." Leah (one of Jacob's wives) and her sister Rachel quarrel "like contestants on a reality show." Jacob himself is a "metrosexual." Moses sometimes acts "more like a drug lord than a prophet." His brother Aaron is "the Fredo Corleone of the Sinai."

And that's just the Pentateuch....

By David Plotz, at Amazon, and in my wish list.

Say A Little Prayer

Heh.

Reached by Reuters via satellite phone, the pirates on the lifeboat sounded desperate as they watched a U.S. warship and other foreign naval vessels close to them.

"We are surrounded by warships and don't have time to talk," one said. "Please pray for us."

Lord have mercy on their heathen souls.

Lessons of History

Jeffrey Lord inThe American Spectator remembers three other hijackings under three other presidents: the USS Pueblo in 1968 (Johnson), the S.S. Mayaguez in 1975 (Ford), and the Achille Lauro in 1985 (Reagan).

Deal With It, Barry

Nairobi (Rooters)

Somali pirates hijacked a U.S.-flagged, Danish-owned container ship on Wednesday with 20 American crew on board in the latest of a sharp rise in attacks off the Horn of Africa nation, officials said.

Danish-owned, is it? Guess it's Denmark's problem.

The Maersk Alabama is owned and operated by Maersk Line Ltd, a Norfolk, Virginia-based subsidiary of A.P. Moller-Maersk and the world's biggest container shipper.

OK, it's U.S.-flagged, owned and operated by an American company, with twenty American crew on board.

Who's going to deal with that?

Is this the crisis Joe Biden foretold?

No, this is just the warm-up.

Update: The crew is back in control. They have one pirate tied up. The other three seem to have accidentally fallen overboard.

Update: Now they're saying that the three are in a lifeboat and holding the captain hostage.

Cheery Little Tome

It sounds absolutely wonderful.

Derbyshire aims in this book to pour cold water on all "schemes for political improvement," both at home and abroad, to argue that our civilization is in its twilight, and to show that while there are things we could do to save the situation, we won't do any of them, because we have sunk into a collective mindset that won't let us. Hence: We are doomed.

It's not a frivolous subject. Still, every sinking ship should, like the Titanic, have a band playing on deck as she goes down. He aims to bring the bad news with a light touch, to highlight some of the ironies, and to emulate the late, great Samuel Beckett, who seasoned his sermons on futility ("we give birth astride a grave") with jokes and slapstick.

John Derbyshire plans to publish in September, unless the world ends first. Amazon, ever the optimist, is taking pre-orders now.

I for one will buy it. How could I resist?

Praise For Wikipedia

L. Gordon Crovitz in The Wall Street Journal.

In 1993, Microsoft launched an innovative multimedia encyclopedia, Encarta, delivered through CD-ROM. It nearly put the Encyclopaedia Britannica out of business. Last week, Microsoft announced that it will close Encarta down.

Encarta could not compete with Wikipedia, which plays by different rules, using the online medium to beat earlier encyclopedias at their own mission. Created and maintained by anonymous people around the world, Wikipedia is by far the biggest and most popular encyclopedia ever. Despite being created by amateurs, it has the potential to become the most professional.

This may be a startling claim....

Or may be not. You can always claim that something "has the potential."

Actually, I first raved about Wikipedia in December, 2005, in an email to various friends. I compared it not to some Platonic ideal, but to the actual pulp-based product I had used in college.

Some years ago in a library somewhere I picked up a volume of some famous encyclopedia (Britannica, maybe?) and flipped to the article on Warren G. Harding, my favorite test case since so much of what people know of him is not true, and I've done enough reading to know better. Sure enough, the article was riddled with misinformation. I checked the date of the article--it was twenty years old (the encyclopedia was a current edition). I checked the author. Some no-name from an obscure university.

Wikipedia, I said, could not be worse than that.

You certainly can't trust Wikipedia on any controversial topic. But I might generalize to say that you can't trust anyone on a controversial topic. Any one. My history professor, when asked to recommend a book on some topic, would always recommend three — one from the right, one from the left, and one from the middle. Read them all and make up your own mind.

Trillian and Her Half Sister

Photo by Kyle Cassidy (click to bigify), who, besides having a blog, has published a book I've been meaning to buy.

I know! I'll put it on my wish list (birthday coming up)!

Thirty Years After

Here's something a little longer to print out and read this weekend.

Three Mile Island -- Thirty Years After, by William Tucker, from The American Spectator.

It's worth your time.

First Ladies of the World

Left to right, Gursharan Kaur (India), Michelle Obama (United States), Kim Yoon-ok (Korea), Sarah Brown (Britian), Margarita Zavala (Mexico), and Svetlana Medvedeva (Russia).

Click the picture for more, including Ban Soon Taek (UN), Chikako Aso (Japan), and Laureen Harper (Canada) to the left and Emine Erdogan (Turkey), Margarida Barroso (EU), Therese Rein (Australia), and Dr Pimpen Vejjajiva (Thailand) to the right.

Bill Clinton wants to know which is larger, Michelle's hips or Svetlana's bust. I'd say it's pretty close.

Derbyshire's March Diary

John Derbyshire's diary is especially readable this month.

Oh, and you do know, don't you, that his twenty latest articles are always available here?

Lenin Gets It In The End

That's not my headline; it's the AFP's.

Vandals blew a gaping hole in the rear end of a statue of Communist leader Vladimir Lenin on Wednesday, but Russian officials were not amused...

"We are deeply disturbed by this monstrous event. Any aggression, any vandalism of monuments deserves a broad social condemnation," committee chairman Anton Gubankov said in a statement.

Still, it was pretty funny.