tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-104264762025-10-24T20:20:27.737-05:00What E'er Be Sloshin'AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-17568067217745560122012-02-24T10:12:00.002-05:002012-02-24T12:08:37.796-05:00

I turned on the TV the other day and Groundhog Day was playing (isn’t it always). It was the part where Bill Murray’s character is sitting in the diner stuffing his face with sweets and Andie MacDowell disgustedly quotes Scott at him: The wretch, concentred all in self,  Living, shall forfeit fair renown, And, doubly dying, shall go down  To the vile dust from whence he sprung

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1270180481720625782008-11-01T21:31:00.001-05:002009-10-10T17:17:56.092-05:00

In 1864, as America trod the bloody fields of fratricide and Abraham Lincoln staidly bore the rhetorical slings and arrows of Democratic opponents who accused him of mismanaging the Union's four-year war against the outmanned and outgunned armies of the Confederacy, a wholly different type of war raged in British Naval circles. For several years, the Jacks of the Royal Navy had struggled

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-63240423549370338682008-08-06T22:25:00.001-05:002008-08-06T22:25:14.502-05:00

I've sometimes thought it might be entertaining to join an organization espousing political views completely different from mine. The idea would be to attend enough meetings to start fitting in and then begin "innocently" provoking other members; the challenge would be to provoke as much conflict as possible without getting kicked out. So I really had to laugh when I read Mother Jone's recent

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-8508766328911489352008-05-29T15:57:00.001-05:002008-08-06T21:17:22.392-05:00

We just returned from a fantastic 5,000 mile family vacation across the southern and southwestern US. The trip included visits with extended family members we rarely see plus planned and unplanned detours to explore whatever we found interesting (map thumbnails courtesy of my wife--who now has enough pictures to supply her photo-a-day blog for about a decade!). Most nights we stayed with

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1148490689645562672006-05-24T11:44:00.000-05:002006-05-24T17:35:31.260-05:00

NRO's Stephen Spruiell recently noted the Washington Post's use of passively constructed leads to turn major Talibani defeats into lamentable generic violence. CNN joins in with today's story titled "Afghan fighting: Another 29 killed": At least 29 people have been killed in the latest bloodshed in the escalating conflict in southern Afghanistan, according to the U.S.-led coalition. The

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1147547549701040752006-05-12T22:04:00.000-05:002006-05-13T19:07:00.453-05:00

Early last month, in keeping with my recent habit of occasional repartee with leftish bloggers, I took Can't Take it Any More to task for his hyperventilation over President Bush's so-called leak of classified information. The entire "leak" presscapade was so singularly silly I didn't comment beyond one short and sarcastic post. But my conversation with CTAM left me somewhat disturbed because he

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1146927679122381682006-05-06T09:56:00.000-05:002006-05-08T20:07:42.540-05:00

Brewster's Millions is one of those silly, B-comedies you must learn to love young, or not at all. Still, there's some ageless charm in the tale: it's been remade at least five times since young Cecil B. DeMille's original 1914 encelluloidation. In the 1985 version, "Monty" Brewster (Richard Pryor) is a minor-league baseball pitcher who discovers he's sole heir to a long-lost (white) uncle's $

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1146286679489831682006-04-28T23:53:00.000-05:002006-05-02T09:30:51.446-05:00

Sometimes I wonder why liberals care so much that Gore won the popular vote in 2000, or that the populations of states represented by Democratic senators are larger than those represented by Republicans. Do they feel more emotionally secure believing the majority of Americans really do agree with them, despite losing elections? Or do they simply enjoy dreaming that a few rejiggered Constitutional

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1146096845823037572006-04-26T19:12:00.000-05:002006-04-28T20:29:53.106-05:00

My wife wanted me to blog on Neil Young's new "Impeach the President" song. Yawn. What a rebel. I have no idea what the music sounds like, but he could have assembled the lyrics by copying and pasting randomly from any one of a million angry-lefty blogs. Poetic and subtle they aren't. Well, put him ahead of that ex-ER actor for next year's Heroic Hollywood Dissident Award anyway.UPDATE: Ok, on

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1145941364751017432006-04-25T00:00:00.000-05:002006-04-25T20:28:02.483-05:00

Several pundits on the right and left believe overturning Roe v Wade would prove politically disastrous for Republicans, principally by mobilizing a great army of heretofore silent pro-choicers and secondarily by demotivating pro-life conservatives. Ramesh Ponnuru argues that this view is completely wrong because the public is not nearly so pro-choice as the left wishes. He theorizes in a related

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1144465793825525782006-04-07T22:06:00.000-05:002006-04-07T23:14:09.130-05:00

So the media now has angst in it's pants over President Bush's release of classified intelligence information to counter the false information Joseph Wilson was spreading about Iraq's attempts to purchase enriched uranium. That's bad you see because the public has no right to know the truth--unless it sells newspapers! And it's bad because it was political! Verrry baaaad! It's only good to

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1144201827924175152006-04-04T20:46:00.000-05:002010-01-21T14:42:15.759-05:00

In the summer of 1994, before my final semester at Grove City College, I served as a congressional intern for Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA). The internship program included a weekly public policy seminar with GCC alumnus Paul McNulty, then counsel for D.C. law firm Shaw, Pittman, Potts, and Trowbridge and previously spokesman for the Bush (senior) Justice Department. At the time Paul was mulling a

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1143605888257487822006-03-28T23:14:00.000-05:002006-03-29T21:48:20.793-05:00

While browsing through the footnotes of Charles Murray's latest Commentary magazine essay on race and IQ differences I ran across an interesting bit of trivia on Charles Krauthammer: Murray mentions that one of the highest scores he's ever observed on the "backward digit span" component of the Weschler IQ test was 12 by Krauthammer (and under less than perfect conditions).A quick search turned up

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1139540657934358252006-02-09T22:00:00.000-05:002006-02-15T22:02:36.053-05:00

Last night I became suddenly curious about the fate of Michael Crichton's last book, State of Fear . In case you aren't familiar with it, Crichton makes an unusual direct plea to his readers, through an author's note and scientific journal citations embedded in the text of his fictional story, that we resist global warming alarmism.It's been more fun to read the hysterical liberal comments on

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1137428074754975342006-01-16T11:12:00.000-05:002006-02-14T21:03:06.516-05:00

DNA tests last week proved again that Roger Keith Coleman was guilty of raping and slitting the throat of his sister-in-law. I used the Coleman case as an example of the extreme gullibility of death-penalty opponents in my Deadly Innocence article. How long before the first Coleman apologist insists the test results were faked as they did in the case of James Hanratty in Great Britain?Not

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1137215800851181432006-01-14T00:14:00.000-05:002006-01-14T01:55:03.986-05:00

I've been tinkering with ways to quantify NFL schedule strength differences in terms of wins and losses. While working on that I noticed a timely tidbit last night that's worth sharing before tomorrow's big game.Seattle's opponent win percentage this year is the third-lowest in the past five years (I've only compiled data back through the 2001 season). Washington, on the other hand, is tied with

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1137118380475178462006-01-12T21:09:00.000-05:002006-01-12T21:13:00.530-05:00

I haven't paid much attention to the Alito Supreme Court nomination hearings. Once you know a little about the nominee the process quickly becomes quite tedious--aside from the occasional comic relief from Senatorial buffoonery. But I just can't refrain from pointing out this comment left on the Washington Post Campaign for the Supreme Court blog because it captures so perfectly the degree to

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1136698542713870752006-01-08T00:33:00.000-05:002006-01-08T09:33:05.840-05:00

Something about playoff time in the NFL spurs sportswriters to fill their pages with ever thicker helpings of gibberish. I've been in the mood to bash them recently so here's another round.NFL.com asked its stable of writers to predict playoff winners for this weekend through the Super Bowl. And boy is there a lot of gibberish. Green Bay Packers safety Darren Sharper notices that Redskins

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1136688126963130232006-01-07T21:38:00.000-05:002006-01-09T10:32:56.530-05:00

You know you found every bit of luck you needed to win an NFL playoff game when: You set a new record for fewest yards of offense ever by a playoff winning team (120)Your opponent's yards per rush (3.0) are more than double your yards per pass (1.4)The other team gains over twice as many yards of offense (120 versus 243)Your quarterback's total passing yards (41) are barely more than your average

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1136529076104651512006-01-06T00:03:00.000-05:002006-01-06T17:37:08.626-05:00

It's when you read the sports pages, where all the facts and statistics are simple and readily available that you begin to realize how bad some newspaper writers are at getting their stories straight. Thomas Boswell builds up the Redskins' chances of going deep into the playoffs in his latest column by emphasizing Joe Gibbs's past success at taking weak teams to the Super Bowl. To do this he

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1136168308976094402006-01-01T21:16:00.000-05:002006-04-08T21:56:23.306-05:00

The Washington Redskins sealed their first playoff appearance since 1999 when Sean Taylor scooped up a fourth-quarter Eagles fumble, rambled 39 yards, and launched himself into the endzone. Taylor's score was the perfect capstone to a season nearly sabotaged by what must have been one of the worst strings of fumble recovery luck experienced by an NFL team.After the first seven games of the season

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1135223587572279852005-12-21T22:50:00.000-05:002005-12-21T22:52:29.486-05:00

Gotta love this if you're a Skins fan: Dallas Mavericks guard Darrell Armstrong was met with boos by the home crowd after shouting "How 'bout them Redskins?" before his team's game against the Timberwolves Sunday night. Armstrong, a North Carolina native and fervent Redskins fan, was also fined $1,000 by Mavericks managment.

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1134957065145279502005-12-18T20:49:00.000-05:002006-01-03T22:55:43.906-05:00

Last week the Redskins made one-third of their fumble recoveries for the season to edge Arizona. This week they made one-fourth of their interceptions and sacks for the season to crush Dallas and sweep the season series. Perhaps it's too little too late, but sweeping Dallas is a sweet salve to sooth the sting of a statistically stolen season if the Skins miss the playoffs!UPDATE: With Atlanta's

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1134853470334301482005-12-17T16:02:00.000-05:002005-12-17T23:09:24.203-05:00

Sometimes life seems like an extended satire.I traveled to Roseville, Minnesota for work last week, and the "high-speed" Internet access at the Residence Inn there routinely took more than three minutes to load articles from major newspapers around the country. (Thus there was little time for blogging.)While catching up on the mail this weekend I discovered that DHL has "lost" one of the data

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10426476.post-1134627900745541302005-12-15T01:23:00.000-05:002005-12-15T01:27:39.240-05:00

I haven't written about the Redskins or their fumble recovery problems for several weeks, but Football Outsiders has some interesting commentary in response to a reader question and in this week's power rankings.In the first article FO shows that Greg Williams's defenses don't historically have problems recovering fumbles and also provides a breakdown of the typical offense/defense recovery rate

AThttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06347668287413314992noreply@blogger.com3