This Week on the Web (February 3 – February 9)
Quote of the Week:
“We gave them a civil war? Why? Because we failed to prevent it? Do the police in
Editorial Cartoon of the Week:
Cox and Forkum
NEWS
Wash. initiative would require married couples to have kids
NWCN.com
An initiative filed by proponents of same-sex marriage would require heterosexual couples to have kids within three years or else have their marriage annulled.
Initiative 957 was filed by the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance. That group was formed last summer after the state Supreme Court upheld
Under the initiative, marriage would be limited to men and women who are able to have children. Couples would be required to prove they can have children in order to get a marriage license, and if they did not have children within three years, their marriage would be subject to annulment.
All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized" and people in those marriages would be ineligible to receive any marriage benefits.
COMMENTARY
Fred Singer,
The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its "Fourth Assessment Report," but just in the form of a 12-page "Summary for Policymakers." The report itself, about 1,600 pages, will be available only in May. The IPCC explains it needs time to "adjust" the scientific report to make it consistent with its summary.
The summary actually is a semipolitical document negotiated by delegates from 150 governments. Evidently, the IPCC, which prides itself on being strictly scientific and policy-neutral, wants to make its report politically correct.
This raises legitimate doubts about the scientific credibility of the IPCC's conclusions.
[…]
Some cite the fact that the climate is currently warming and the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is increasing. This is true, but correlation is never proof of causation. In Europe, the birth rate is decreasing and so is the number of storks. Does this correlation prove that storks bring babies? Besides, the climate cooled for much of the 20th century, between 1940 and 1975, even while carbon dioxide was increasing rapidly.
Andrew
The dust of those doomed towers had barely begun to settle before some Americans began asking themselves who, beyond Al Qaeda, was really responsible. Suspects included the Jews (as usual), the sinister Bush White House, the complacent Clinton White House and, in the view of Jerry Falwell, God. It's a tribute to the power of his imagination that, despite this strong competition, in "The Enemy At Home" (Doubleday, 333 pages, $26.95), Dinesh D'Souza has managed to come up with a startlingly original selection of fresh suspects ranging from Madonna to Robert Mapplethorpe's awkwardly positioned whip. In essence, argues Mr. D'Souza, it's the "depravity" (a word he savors with a little too much enthusiasm) of our culture that has provoked a violent reaction among some fol lowers of Islam, and threatens to push large numbers of those he de scribes as "traditional" Muslims into the extremist camp.
[…]
But, as history shows us, there are some adversaries who can never be appeased. Mr. D'Souza may be conveniently vague about exactly what it is we are supposed to do to our lifestyle to win over our putative Muslim friends in waiting (Ban the bottle? Bring the burqa to Berkeley?), but he does find plenty of room for the grumbling and raving of one Sayyib Qutb. Poor, peculiar Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian philosopher whose writings have been a major inspiration for many of today's Islamic radicals, was disgusted by the "animalistic behavior" he claimed to have witnessed on a visit to
You see, Dinesh, there really is no pleasing some people.
UCLA Penalizes Student Group's Exercise of Free Speech
ARI Media (via Principles in Practice)
UCLA has cravenly scuttled a student-sponsored forum on
Scheduled for Feb. 6, the canceled event was to feature a debate between Carl Braun of the Minutemen and Dr. Yaron Brook, an open-immigration advocate and president of the Ayn Rand Institute. The forum, sponsored by the UCLA student group L.O.G.I.C., was approved by the administration weeks ago. When the student group learned that protesters from outside the university threatened to disrupt the event, it asked UCLA to protect the group's exercise of free speech by providing security for the event.
UCLA refused either to let the student group pay for its own security—claiming not enough security would be available—or to hold the event without security.
"The administration's decision is a double injustice," said Dr. Yaron Brook.
[…]
"By preventing the event from taking place, UCLA apparently hopes to appease the protesters by doing their work for them. That an American university is suppressing, rather than enshrining, freedom of speech is a moral travesty."
[…]
"Free speech protects the rational mind: it is the freedom to think, to reach conclusions and express one's views without fear of coercion of any kind. And it must include the right to express unpopular views. UCLA—which like other universities grants tenure to protect intellectual freedom—ought to recognize the crucial importance of this principle and defend it," said Brook.
Quotable
At the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee, the senator from
Take? Isn’t that a confiscation of private property? Author P.J. O’Rourke framed it perfectly on a recent edition of CNBC’s Kudlow & Co.: She’s “Hugo Chavez in a pants suit.”
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Other links
Web Logs
Principles in Practice– Principled commentary on cultural matters and current events from “The Objective Standard”
Cox and Forkum – Political cartoons and commentary
The Conspiracy to Keep You Poor and Stupid – Donald Luskin
Dollars and Crosses – CapitalismMagazine.com
Rule of Reason – The Center for the Advancement of Capitalism
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