The Feds Did It Right: "Vanilla Isis" Arrested After Armed Invasion of Oregon Refuge

The federal government showed great patience and discipline in waiting out the very unregulated militia that occupied a bird sanctuary.  Despite the clear desire of "Vanilla Isis" to have a shoot-out with their own government, they were taken peacefully, with the exception of one hothead who drew on the arresting officers.

The Feds have clearly learned since Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Y'all Qaida, on the other hand, has not.

Consumers of the City, Producers of the Polis.

A developing thought from our research into why people choose to live where they do.


Some fear the city.

Some view the city as consumers.  They see the city as a source of goods and services that they can take or leave at their convenience.

Some view the city as a polis. They view themselves as producers of the polis, a task they are engaged in all the time.

The President of Mount Saint Mary's University is doubly wrong

I rarely sign protest petitions or call for someone's immediate resignation, but this case warrants it.

First, President Simon Newman wrote to faculty to get them to push out weak students before a federal deadline each year, in order to improve the university's retention statistics.  He put his order delicately:

"This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads."

This is a reprehensible position for any college administrator to take, especially at a Catholic institution.

Then he made it worse, by summarily firing his critics, though they have tenure.

I have signed the petition.  

NARAL is Foolish to Criticize the Doritos Ad

As a centrist, I object to extremism on either end of the spectrum.  As a cheerful person, I object to humorlessness, particularly about minor things.

Therefore, I was doubly sorry to see that NARAL Pro Choice took to the public tweet-waves to criticize a silly Doritos ad that played during the Super Bowl.

The ad showed a man casually eating Doritos during his wife's ultrasound examination.  They discover that the baby responds to the Doritos being waved near the mother's belly.  When the mom, in disgust, brushes the Dorito away, the baby leaps to being born in order to chase it.  As I said, silly.

NARAL, though, chose to make the silly, and very wrong-headed complaint that showing a baby reacting thus through ultrasound is "humanizing fetuses."

They have come in for richly deserved scorn, even from people, like me, who support the legal option of abortion.