Ladies and gentlemen. It has often been said that the reason terrorists hate America is because they hate our freedom. The values that make this country strong, that make this country great -- these are what they fear, what they resent, what they would take away from us. These terrorists could be hiding anywhere; they could be lurking behind the ( Read more... )

You probably all remember the cereal featured in Calvin and Hobbes, Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. It was meant to be everything that was wrong with kids' cereal, being made primarily of sugar and making a mockery of the idea that breakfast was a healthy start to the day. Obviously, it wasn't a real cereal; no real parent would ever serve their ( Read more... )

There's a saying that goes "any publicity is good publicity." PayPal is testing that theory out today; they've kicked off the Chanzusolmas season by shutting down a drive to send toys and money to poor children. You see, the woman running the charity, April Winchell, used a PayPal "donate" button, which evidently you're not meant to do if you're ( Read more... )

I'm a fan of the theory behind government regulation. I believe that left to themselves, many industries will run roughshod across the environment; they will engage in unfair practices to squeeze out competition; and they will lie, cheat and steal to get a larger market share. Solely self-regulated industries are, in the end, bad for the consumer ( Read more... )

Merry Firstmas! Today is the official start of the season of me complaining about people starting Christmas too early. I know some people have already started complaining about folks putting up Christmas decorations more than a month ahead of time, but call me a traditionalist -- I like to wait until December before I start to mutter ( Read more... )

Back in high school, I used to have a lot of heavy books to lug around. At one point, I put every book and notebook I was required to have for school into my backpack, and weighed it; fully laden, it was just under 40 pounds. Of course, I had a locker at school, and generally didn't need to schlep the entire pile at once, but on weekends, that's ( Read more... )

NaNoWriMo is drawing to a close, and I have written precisely zero new words in my book. In my defense, I never claimed I was participating in NaNoWriMo; for that matter, my book's not a novel, so it wouldn't've counted anyway. I did finally write the ending to Manifest, six and a half years after I started writing the story. I might even post ( Read more... )

It's long been known that Fox News delivers an extremely slanted viewpoint, a bias which even they sarcastically admit with their tongue-in-cheek slogan, "Fair and Balanced." It's not subtle; in a recent report, Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly referred to pepper spray as "a food product, essentially." Step aside, Congress, Fox News is beating you ( Read more... )

As I assume you know by now, on Friday, a police officer pepper-sprayed several dozen seated, unarmed, peacefully protesting students. He walked deliberately down the line, spraying them in their faces from less than three feet away. He did this because they refused to move, and because he thought this was an acceptable response ( Read more... )

There's a big to-do today about a bill currently in Congress. It's a spending bill that, among other things, blocks earlier efforts by the USDA to make school lunches healthier. The big rallying cry is "Congress has declared pizza to be a vegetable!" There are, naturally, comparisons to Reagan's attempt to declare ketchup to be a vegetable, and ( Read more... )