No one really knows what happened in Haditha just yet, but perhaps this article can lend some perspective.

I've never much believed in this campaign finance reform nonsense.  I'm no constitutional scholar, but it seems pretty clear to me that money is speech, etc.  But forget all that for just a moment.  Remember that little box that you can check on your tax return that throw a dollar into the hopper for publicly funding political campaigns?  Well, it turns out that next to no one uses it.  This is OK, ironically, because no serious political candidate takes that money, since it restricts the total they can raise.  But does that stop them from trying to put that money aside anyway?  No. If fact, in 1995, they raised it from $1 to $3, and even less people opted in. But as George Will writes this week (the entire column is a must read):

Because by now 90 percent refuse the $3 checkoff, the Federal Election Commission lobbied the largest manufacturers of tax preparation software to take two measures to promote the checkoff system.

Hitherto, the companies' software, reflecting their customers' obvious preference, used "no" as the default option. But the FEC got the companies to change that, and to include an advertisement for the checkoff, saying it "reduces candidates' dependence on large contributions from individuals and groups and places candidates on equal footing in the general election." That bit of puffery is simplistic to the point of tendentiousness: Large hard-dollar contributions (larger than $5,000) are illegal, and there is much more to "equal footing" than hard-dollar equality in the post-convention sprint to Election Day.

So now they want to turn it into an Opt Out system?  What a bunch of hypocrites.

I've never much believed in this campaign finance reform nonsense.  I'm no constitutional scholar, but it seems pretty clear to me that money is speech, etc.  But forget all that for just a moment.  Remember that little box that you can check on your tax return that throw a dollar into the hopper for publicly funding political campaigns?  Well, it turns out that next to no one uses it.  This is OK, ironically, because no serious political candidate takes that money, since it restricts the total they can raise.  But does that stop them from trying to put that money aside anyway?  No. If fact, in 1995, they raised it from $1 to $3, and even less people opted in. But as George Will writes this week (the entire column is a must read):

Because by now 90 percent refuse the $3 checkoff, the Federal Election Commission lobbied the largest manufacturers of tax preparation software to take two measures to promote the checkoff system.

Hitherto, the companies' software, reflecting their customers' obvious preference, used "no" as the default option. But the FEC got the companies to change that, and to include an advertisement for the checkoff, saying it "reduces candidates' dependence on large contributions from individuals and groups and places candidates on equal footing in the general election." That bit of puffery is simplistic to the point of tendentiousness: Large hard-dollar contributions (larger than $5,000) are illegal, and there is much more to "equal footing" than hard-dollar equality in the post-convention sprint to Election Day.

So now they want to turn it into an Opt Out system?  What a bunch of hypocrites.

Now that this is out, it might be time for me to upgrade my iPod.  Especially now that the rumored full-screen video iPod has delayed.

Windows Vista Beta 2 is out.  And boy howdy is the web site pretty.  :-) I'll update you all shortly after I've had a chance to install it.  I'll also be installing Office 2007.  I've seen a demo of this, and it looks amazing!

This is another one of those asinine phrases that no one seems to ever want to back up.  They say that illegal aliens do jobs that Americans just won't do.  Which jobs, exactly, are they talking about?  The auto parts factory jobs they just arrested a bunch of illegals at a few months back?  The cook at the local Denny's?  The guys who do the landscaping in my neighborhood? All of this is a bunch of crazy BS.  Plenty of American citizens do those jobs every single day.  Thomas Sowell is right:

How many times have we heard that illegal aliens are taking "jobs that Americans won't do"? Just what specifically are those jobs? Even in occupations where illegals are concentrated, such as agriculture, cleaning, construction, and food preparation, the great majority of the work is still being done by people who are not illegal aliens. The highest concentration of illegals is in agriculture, where they are 24 percent of the people employed. That means three-quarters of the people are not illegal aliens. But when will the glib phrase-mongers stop telling us that the illegals are simply taking "jobs that Americans won't do"?

If you want to talk about people who will do jobs for less that the prevailing wage for which Americans will do that job, then fine.  Even my job can be done more cheaply in India.  But to say that illegals do jobs that just plain would not get done is both insulting to us and them.

I was at a concert the other night, and between songs the piano player started talking about Found Magazine.  The premise is that people send in found things, like notes, Polaroids, and other sorts of found Americana, and they publish it.  Interesting premise. Apparently it's been around for a while, though I've never heard of it.  Anyway, the piano player had found a cocktail napkins somewhere in the bar that night that he decided he was going to send on in.  On the napkins was written:

Leroy, I love your voice, but I'm scared.

Your guess is as good as mine.  :-)

George Mason Professor Walter Williams and Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus have  just won the Adam Smith Award for Excellence in Free Market Education.  Congratulations to both of them!  Better choices could not have been found. Dr. Klaus helped guide The Czeck Republic to great prosperity after the fall of Communism in 1989.  He served as the minister of finance and then prime minister from 1992 to 1997, and in 2003 was elected President. Dr. Williams is one of my favorite writers.  I'm a regular reader of his column, and his most recent makes it clear why he deserves this great prize.  The money quote:

Profit is cast in a poor light because people don't understand the role of profits. Profit is a payment to entrepreneurs just as wages are payments to labor, interest to capital and rent to land. In order to earn profits in free markets, entrepreneurs must identify and satisfy human wants in a way that economizes on society's scarce resources.

Well, my parents finally got an offer on their house.  After firing the first two agents, they listed with a third one this week, but oddly, the agent didn't really seem to matter.  The house went into the MLS this morning, and they got a full price offer this afternoon.  The buyer is pre-approved for her loan and everything, so it looks like this should pretty easily go through. While I'm excited about this, I also have mixed feelings about it.  My parents have owned that home for 30 years.  I spent all of my memorable childhood there.  I'm sad to see it go. That said, I'm happy that my parents are able to retire and travel the world a bit.  It's gonna be weird not having them around all of the time, but I'll just have to remember that I've been lucky to have them so close at hand all of these years.  Most of my friends have rather distant family. And as for the house, I'm gonna miss it, but I'm guessing that will fade pretty quickly with time.  While I'd sure like to see it remain in the family, I don't have any desire to move back to that part of the county any time soon, so it would likely just get rented out, at which point, I think it will quickly lose it's appeal. That said, I'm one of those guys who to this day cries at the end of St. Elmo's Fire.  I love moving on to new adventure, but I just absolutely hate leaving things behind.  I'm the king of nostalgia.  I can't even look at photos of my high school girlfriend without still getting sad about it.  Man, I wish I could change that about me. But, at least the house has finally sold, and the next chapter in all of our lives can begin. 

"The Bush Administration has seemed never to notice that Mexico is not the 51st state, but a foreign country--one that is engaged in a slow-motion invasion of America. . . . " Steve Sailer - VDare.com