Impeachable

As hard as it is with her other gifts, I admire Peggy Noonan primarily for her mind. But I think she's off here:

"If Bill Clinton, who thought Iraq had WMDs, had invaded Iraq post-9/11 and not found them, he would have been thrown out of office. That's because no one ever believed what Mr. Clinton said, and they wouldn't have believed his explanations. They assumed most of what he did had a cynical and self-serving basis."

That first sentence is the problem.

It's tempting to think that if an irresponsible dalliance with a motormouthed ditz almost got him, surely this would. But this time he would have had the truth on his side for a change, and I for one wouldn't have been pushing for his impeachment and removal on those grounds.

But maybe then we would have been treated to seeing Jamie Gorelick getting fired in disgrace, instead of being empaneled to investigate what is partly her own mess.

Diaperless Babies Seen As Earth-Friendly Solution

See this:

"As environmentalists celebrate the 34th annual Earth Day, some in the green movement are now advocating 'diaper-free' babies to help save the planet.

Citing concerns about plastic disposable diapers clogging landfills and the amount of washing and detergents that cloth diapers require, many environmentalists are taking a page from tribal cultures and seeking to eliminate the use of the baby diapers altogether.

The green movement is now promoting diaperless babies as a 'retro, cutting-edge, environmentally friendly scheme' to mothers throughout the industrialized world.
...
'There is a way to have a baby and NOT use diapers,' says one website advocating diaperless babies. Parents are urged to get in tune with their infant's body signals and hold babies over toilets, buckets and shrubbery or any other convenient receptacle when nature calls."

Sheesh, where do I start?

A few minutes with Frasier

Kelsey Grammer gets a writeup in OpinionJournal - Dorothy Rabinowitz's Media Log.

Why the Columbine killers did it

Right here. Surprise! - the contemporary reports got it wrong.

Via Instapundit and others.

Would Meryl Yourish sleep with you?

Click here to find out.

Brad Pitt and I are not on the list.

Seniors Losing Homes to Medicaid Liens

Confirmed nonlawyer Clayton Cramer points to this:

Some Nevada senior citizens say they fear losing their homes to the state after the Nevada Supreme Court upheld state liens on the estates of people who received Medicaid health care costs.

"They should warn people when they receive Medicaid that they are given a loan," said Henry Ringel, 79, of Las Vegas. "I love this country, but when we pass away we won't be able to leave our son anything. I worked for our home and now they can steal it away."

Justices ruled April 1 that the Welfare Division can continue to put liens on homes of widows and widowers to ensure the recovery of some health care costs provided for their spouses.

State Human Resources Director Michael Willden said taxpayers should not have to cover medical costs to enable a person to pass valuable property to descendants.

"The taxpayers are putting out this money and we have an obligation under federal regulations to try recover it," he said.

Interesting.

While you're over there at CC's place, check out HIV in the porn biz, assorted anniversaries, "toothing", condom effectiveness, and the Terry Nichols' trial in OKC (or The Case of the Missing Meat), and discrimination against straights.

John Kerry: a serious man?

Gary Farber was in high dudgeon about an obvious joke by Rush Limbaugh yesterday. Let's see what he thinks of this cut from John Kerry's interview with Tim Russert this past weekend (as found in yesterday's WSJ Best of the Web):

Russert: You committed atrocities.

Kerry: Where did all that dark hair go, Tim? That's a big question for me.

C'mon, Gary. This isn't a radio host known for joking about political issues. This is a candidate for President of the United States.

I don't like Kerry, I heard him say it, and it's very clear from the context that it's a joke. Unless you're humor-impaired, like GF's post was yesterday - whatever Rush said surely isn't any worse than a Presidential candidate joking about having committed atrocities in Vietnam.

Time for another addendum?

Good riddance

Just who was the man the Israelis blew up last week?

Rantisi was a pediatrician who practiced an innovative variety of physician-assisted suicide: sending bomb-laden young Arabs to blow themselves up, killing many Israelis in the process. An obituary in the Guardian, a left-wing British paper, describes him as "the man who loved the Palestinian children so much that he admitted openly that he was prepared to slaughter Israeli infants to guarantee the future of their Palestinian counterparts."

Israel may or may not love Palestinian children, but it does a better job than the Palestinian "leaders" of looking out for their welfare. "Israeli government sources said they had struck at the first available opportunity, but had to wait for weeks because Rantisi had surrounded himself with children," notes the Associated Press.

From WSJ's Best of the Web.

In Heaven there are no colostomies

Back in the 70's and early 80's David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace made a fortune with a series of "People's Almanacs" and "The Book of Lists". They were huge grab bags of information. Just how accurate they were is questionable, but they made for fascinating reading.

In the course of rummaging through some old stuff I found one of them. This is some of what it said of the Muslim Paradise:

In Paradise every desire of the soul and body shall be satisfied. Whoever drinks the fragrant milk-white waters of Mohammed's Pond, which is a month's journey in circumference, will never again be thirsty. Other refreshments will include milk, wine, dates, honey, manna, fattened birds, and beef from cattle that graze in the Garden of Eden. Body wastes will be eliminated through perspiration. All male inhabitants will become fair, beardless, curly-haired, 90 ft. tall and 33 years old. Blackeyed houris, or nymphs, of perfect beauty, free from excretions of any kind, await them in pavilions of green cushions. Other beautiful damsels will refrain from beholding any but their own spouses. Every man in Paradise will marry 500 houris, 4000 virgins, and 8000 nonvirgins

.And then there's Hell:

Hell has seven levels. The first and mildest is for sinners among the true believers, who will enter Paradise after purification. The second is for Jews, the third is for Christians, the fourth for Sabians, the fifth for Magians, the sixth for abandoned idolators, and the seventh and worst for hypcrites of all religions. In Hell the damned wwill be broiled, beaten with red-hot iron maces, suspended by their tongues, forced to dring boiling water and molten copper, and will have their brains boiled and their flesh cut with scissors of fire. True believers, lying on couches in Paradise, will see the damned suffer and laugh at them scornfully.

Is it accurate? Beats me. This came from the 3rd People's Almanac, which was published in 1981. It's likely that information for it was still being compiled in 1979 and later while the nuts who took over Iran had our hostages, and Islam wasn't getting really good press about then.

Well, I thought it was interesting anyway. Never mind.

Who was Fabrizio Quattrocchi?

Hint - he wasn't a Spaniard. Via National Review Online:

"In like manner, the terrorists present the world with an endless supply of lies, which generally take the form of accusing us of what they do (and we don't). Many of their actions are staged precisely for the benefit of reporters (like the horror scene of the four dead American contractors a couple of weeks ago). They brought in the television cameras the other day to film the execution of an Italian hostage, Fabrizio Quattrocchi, but something went wrong. After forcing him to dig his own grave, they put a hood over his head and ordered him to kneel so he could be killed. He wouldn't go for it. He tried to remove the hood, and defiantly yelled at them 'I will show you how an Italian dies.' The scene was a propaganda disaster for them, and good old al Jazeera, the modern mother of lies, announced that they had the tape but wouldn't release it because it was too terrible to witness. It was terrible, but not in the way al Jazeera wanted us to think. It showed Western bravery, not Arab domination, so they couldn't show it."

Is it true? It's good enough for me.

Ripoff!

I could redirect my blog to point to the renascent Protein Wisdom site, but that would be a bit too blatant. This is blatant enough:

Q: How many "progressives" does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: How dare you question our patriotism!

Much more at the actual site, including the comments, Michael Moore and John Kerry abuse, and great graphics including a babe with her skirt in the air advertising the next Rocky Mountain Blogger Bash. Go there, lest you should be mistaken for a flaming twisted fanatical vegan prick.

Original Income Tax Form

Dean links us to the original income tax form, which he found here.

It's not so easy to read, but it appears that no one with less than about $3000 of income had to pay any taxes. That was close to 3 times the average income of the day - see this for some examples of 1913 prices. It doesn't take a tax lawyer to figure out that the taxes start a lot lower income today.

Likewise note the highest percentage of tax - 6%. That's well below the lowest rate we have today, and a fraction of the highest.

Remember this the next time some SOB says he'll only raise the taxes on "the rich". That's how this abomination got into the door in the first place, and how it has expanded to provide the funds to permit the govt to become the monstrosity it has become today.

Jeff Jacoby: Faith in the depths of Hell

From the notes of a rabbi in Lithuania during WWII, a question:

"In October 1941, 'one of the respected members of the community' asked Rabbi Oshry if he could commit suicide. His wife and children had been seized by the Nazis, and he knew that their murder was imminent. He feared that the Nazis would force him to watch as his family was killed, and the prospect of witnessing their deaths was a horror he couldn't bear to face. He begged for permission to take his own life and avoid seeing his loved ones die."

Follow the link for the answer.

And note that today, April 19, is Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Heaven's Gate

Has it already been 7 years since we heard of these guys?

Remember how they dressed up their "containers" in Nikes?

I didn't see it, but someone tells me that a Keds commercial was produced that showed the corpses wearing Nikes and suggesting that Keds were preferred by level headed people. I've found references to something like this being done as a spoof on SNL, but my source insists that there was an actual commercial.

I tried a whole bunch of keywords in googling for this but came up dry. Did anyone ever see such an ad? Do you have a link to it?

Chirac's War for Oil

Right here.

Stolen from Malcolm S. at Occam's Toothbrush.

Where angels fear to tread

Mike Silverman points out a Bleat which addresses gay marriage as only Lileks could.

Lileks is more liberal than I am on this, if only because I'm not convinced that gay marriage won't have effects extending far beyond the relationships themselves. Even so, he notes he's at risk of being branded as a bigot. In my experience, that is defined as "anyone who doesn't agree with gays".

Mr. Silverman writes this:

I want to get married for the same reason almost every other couple (gay or straight) does: because I love someone and want to make a public commitment to spend the rest of my life with them, in sickness and in health, wealth and poverty til death do us part. House, two jobs, dog. Thanksgiving and Passover with the in-laws. Gas grill in the backyard, vegetable garden, and Adult Swim at 10 PM every night.

To which I ask - why can't you have this without rewriting the law on marriage? That's what makes this my business and everyone else's too. Why must you rope in the rest of us?

And whatever happened to the people who have been telling us for years that marriage was a trap and couples should just live together?