Jay Nordlinger on the problems of products bearing communist symbols. He also draws my attention to this (close to home) controversy which features further attempts to delegitimize Israel: apparently the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign thinks that student choirs should not be allowed to tour Israel. Clare College always seems to find itself at the centre [...]

Mark Steyn lists the ludicrousness of the US governmental and media reaction to the Fort Hood shootings. Everyone awaits the backlash….

“Instead of a big essay on “what ‘balloon boy’ says about 2009,” Rich appears to have turned in a piece on what Balloon Boy says about 2003. Perhaps it was a typo in the editor’s memo. But, at the time George W. Bush and (by the way) every senior Democrat were going on about WMDs [...]

In case you missed the story, Glenn Beck reported that White House Communication Director Anita Dunn cited Mao Tse-Tung as one of her biggest influences in a speech. Don’t take my word for it. Watch:

She claims, and Christian Science Monitor takes her word for it, that her comments were obviously “ironic”. Watch the speech [...]

After all, if you’re an immigrant, there’s nothing new about Obama: Been there, done that. He’s the land where we grew up, , with its union bullies and marginal tax rates and government automobiles and general air of sclerosis, all re-emerging Brigadoon-like from the mists entirely unspoilt by progress. It’s like landing at Ellis Island [...]

Government subsidized advice on:

How to smuggle underage prostitutes across borders.

Biggovernment.com continues to provide secret ACORN footage, this time from San Diego.
(If you don’t know this story yet, see these earlier posts).
That this story isn’t getting more coverage in the US press just goes to show how utterly rubbish the American newspaper industry is. This is [...]

A few days ago Mark Steyn, guest hosting for Rush Limbaugh, said this about Barack Obama’s video address to American schools:
Obviously we’re not talking about the cult of personality on the kind of Saddam Hussein/Kim Jong-Il scale.
You can check this by listening to this clip:

The New York Times reported this so:
Mark Steyn, a Canadian author [...]

Song of the week this week is ‘Morning Train’ by Florrie Palmer.
The topic is train songs, which go from Johnny Mercer’s “I thought about you”:

via Felix Leclerc’s “Train du nord”:

Apparently there’s a song by Jerome Kern and P.G. Wodehouse called “The Enchanted Train” about the Long Island Rail Road. I cannae find [...]

In case you missed it Ted Kennedy is dead. As with the death of all controversial figures this has led to the typical “should we speak ill of the dead” debate. My position is that is perfectly ok to speak ill of the dead, so long as it is done tastefully. It requires a different [...]

BBC covers Iran like so….
“Until recently, the United States was singled out as the Islamic Revolution’s principal opponent. This has changed.”
“By offering an ‘open hand’ to Iran since taking over as president, Barack Obama has challenged Iran’s traditional view of the ‘Great Satan’.”
“Britain, almost by default, has emerged as the target of Iranian ire.”
Thus managing [...]