I have mixed feelings about legalizing drugs, despite conservative proponents such as Bill Buckley. However, this War on Drugs™ has long since passed the point where people can think that most anti-crime measures are reasonable. Case in point is this article by Jacob Sullum. Excerpt:

At my local drugstore, shelves of cold and allergy medicine have been replaced by merchandise cards hanging from metal rods. If I want to buy one of these remedies, I have to take the corresponding card to the pharmacist's counter, wait in line, show my ID and add my name to a register.

This procedure, required by an "emergency order" from Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, is supposed to prevent me from using the pseudoephedrine in products such as Sudafed and Dayquil to cook up a batch of methamphetamine in my garage.
...
Hard as this collateral damage is to justify, it pales next to that suffered by other innocent victims of the government's war on methamphetamine. Last summer, for instance, state and federal agents arrested 49 convenience store clerks and owners in Georgia on charges they sold pseudoephedrine and other supplies to informants posing as meth cooks.

The supplies, including matches, charcoal, antifreeze, coffee filters, aluminum foil, and cat litter, were all perfectly legal. The charges, carrying penalties of up to 25 years in prison as well as fines and asset forfeiture, are based on the doubtful premise the defendants knew or should have known what the fake customers pretended to be planning.

All but a few of the defendants are Indian immigrants, and many have a weak grasp of ordinary English, let alone the slang of black-market meth manufacturers. Several said they assumed the guy who bought matches and camping fuel, saying he needed to "finish up a cook," was having a barbecue.

This is the logic of the war on drugs. By criminalizing possession of a substance readily manufactured using innocuous everyday products, the government created the illicit labs it is trying to shut down by criminalizing the sale of those innocuous everyday products.

Perhaps recognizing that the lives of most Americans have not been affected by the "meth epidemic," prohibitionists are determined to spread the pain around.

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And it's from Hog On Ice:

HereÂ’s how it works. Dan Rather tries to palm off a memo written in crayon, and one blogger notes that Crayola didn't make that color back when Bush was in the Guard, and another blogger says they did, but it was only available in the mental institution where Bill Burkett used to spend time, talking to the kitties printed on the wallpaper. Sooner or later, we figure out the truth, and then Dan gets a gold watch and a paint-by-numbers kit and some new slippers.

Okay, more like an extended post theft than a quote. But it made me giggle like a schoolgirl.

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WHEREAS, It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor;

WHEREAS, Both the houses of Congress have, by their joint committee, requested me "to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness:"

Now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday, the 26th day of November next, to be devoted by the people of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a nation; for the signal and manifold mercies and the favorable interpositions of His providence in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enable to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted' for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and, in general, for all the great and various favors which He has been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions; to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually; to render our National Government a blessing to all the people by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed; to protect and guide all sovereigns and nations (especially such as have show kindness to us), and to bless them with good governments, peace, and concord; to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and, generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

--George Washington - October 3, 1789

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Doubly bad, I suppose, if you attempt to open the door of an airplane in mid-flight so as to have a puff.

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I'm probably the last person on the Internet to have noticed, but Buckhead, he of Rathergate fame, has posted Clues for the Clueless on his webpage, detailing his investigation into the forged documents. Check out this excerpt from Part I of his explanation:

Ever since the controversy over the CBS use of forged memos erupted, those disappointed by the exposure of the forgeries have wondered if the whole thing wasn't some sort of set up perpetrated by the Dark Lord, Karl Rove. Integral to this paranoid theorizing was their slack-jawed amazement that anyone could have observed and commented that the documents were fake based on typography as quickly as I did. How could anyone not on the inside have articulated a technical and convincing explanation that the documents were fake within a few hours of the broadcast? Well, here's your answer. It's probably too late to make any difference, but I am no longer able to stifle myself now that Mary Mapes' has written a several hundred page book parading her venomous disregard for those who exposed her lies and her delusional self-image as the Joan of Arc of investigative journalism.

So, how did I know?

The short answer is that I am 47 years old and I am not a blithering idiot.

Personally, I think that he should stop beating around the bush and get to his point. Strictly my opinion, of course.

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Graumagus created a new one. Excerpt:

Some time later this week I'm scheduled to be struck by a frozen meteor of blue feces released midflight from a faulty airline toilet resevoir. I won't be lucky enough to die from the hit, instead it will permanentally stain my head and face blue and give me brain damage so I wander the earth like a slack-jawed, drooling, Pictish village idiot complete with stank ass lumpy woad paint. It will forever limit my career options to begging for sandwich crusts and ketchup packets, being a Wal-mart greeter, or becoming economic advisor for Governor Blagojevich.

My advice? Start drinking heavily.

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A new phase in post-victory celebrations is at hand. I dunno about you, but I'm waxing nostalgic for the day when people simply set fire to random cars. I guess that makes me an old fogey.

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It's time for the 2005 Weblog Awards. Nominations are now open.

Personal request: someone-I have no idea who, because it sure wasn't me- nominated me last year for, I believe, best humor blog. Notice the 2004 Weblog Award Finalist image in the sidebar. It sure would be nice to be nominated again this year....

Okay, I can be tacky and nominate myself. Feel free to move about the cabin now.

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Are you reading the Dilbert Blog? If not, you're missing out. Check out this post and its followup.

Sure, Scott Adams makes with the funny every day, but you might not have noticed that the guy can actually write pretty well.

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Tape a chocolate bar to the outside of your microwave. If the chocolate melts you will know that the microwaves are escaping and it is time to have the oven serviced.

A mouse trap, placed on top on of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep.

Old telephone books make ideal personal address books. Simply cross out the names and addresses of people you don't know.

Before attempting to remove stubborn stains from a garment always circle the stain in permanent ink pen so that when you remove the garment from the washing machine you can easily locate the area of the stain and check that it has gone.

Lose weight quickly by eating raw pork and rancid tuna. I found that the subsequent food poisoning enabled me to lose 12 pounds in only 2 days.

Avoid parking tickets by leaving your windshield wipers turned to fast wipe whenever you leave your car parked illegally.

High blood pressure sufferers: Simply cut yourself and bleed for a while, thus reducing the pressure in your veins.

Olympic athletes. Conceal the fact that you have taken performance enhancing drugs by simply running a little slower and letting someone else win.

Heavy smokers: Don't throw away those filters from the end of your cigarettes. Save them up and within a few years you'll have enough to insulate your ceiling.

Create instant designer stubble by sucking a magnet and dipping your chin in a bowl of iron fillings.

X File fans: Create the effect of being abducted by aliens by drinking two bottles of vodka. You'll invariably wake up in a strange place the following morning, having had your memory mysteriously 'erased'.

A sheet of sandpaper makes a cheap and effective substitute for costly maps when visiting the Sahara desert.

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Stop by and wish Cal Tech Girl a Happy Birthday, a birthday that she shares with the US Marine Corps, God love 'em.

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But the news is so good, I don't care: Steven Den Beste is back blogging again, this time at Red State. Check out this excerpt in his bio:

Yup, it's me alright. Accept no substitutes.

By the way, please show some couth and don't gush all over the comments.

What is this couth thing, and why is he talking about it?

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The first Avian Flu death was reported in Anaheim, California. Look at the picture in the extended entry. It's horrifying. more...

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From Rabbi Shmuley Boteach. Excerpt:

The American male is broken, and in his own brokenness, he is compromising his marriage and crippling his children. Immersed in a culture which is obsessed with success through competition, he is trained to forever feel like a failure. Rather than peering inside himself to discover his own unique gifts, he stares in front to see who has surpassed him, and behind, to see who is gaining on him.

The modern American male has little self-esteem and is a muddle of broken dreams. He lives in a society resembling not a circle, in which all are treated more or less as equals, but a pyramid, in which only a tiny few are perched at the top and the overwhelming majority are made to feel that they are at various stations of the bottom.

He is painfully aware that the recognition and respect of his peers will not come from assisting his kids with homework, or remaining faithful to his wife. All around him, the culture glorifies men who have built businesses even as they have abandoned wives, like Jack Welch and Donald Trump. Treating his co-workers with dignity will never bring him into the Forbes 400. Reading his children a bedtime story will not get him an invitation to the White House.
...
Bereft of inspiration, he fails to inspire his children. He does not parent them so much as admonish them. So they are reduced to searching for substitute heroes, and like him, they become TV addicts. The company of friends soon becomes far more fulfilling than their father's company, further isolating parent from child.

The great tragedy of this daily scenario is the fact that all along this man was a hero, only he never saw it. He got up every day to feed his children. He struggles with temptation, yet came home to his wife. But that never made him feel good about himself, because he bought the lie that a man is only important if he is rich or famous.

Read it all.

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It leads to experiments like this one: What is the Ultimate Jell-O® Shot?

This experiment shows promise as well. Paraphrasing an old line from Dennis Miller: I wear two condoms all of the time and, when I get ready to make love, I take one off, which makes me feel like a wildman. It's kind of like a batter in the on-deck circle swinging two bats so that one bat will feel light by comparison.

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You Passed the US Citizenship Test

Congratulations - you got 10 out of 10 correct!

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How does your boss stack up against this one?

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John Henke finally posts a followup to his review of left-wing blogs. This time, right-wingers are in his sights. Notable excerpts:

(1) Instapundit— right-leaning, pro-Iraq war (neo)libertarian; essentially, Glenn Reynolds is the managing editor of the right side of the blogosphere, and linkage from Instapundit can make or break a post, a blog or a controversy. As Reynolds has noted in the past, "InstaPundit is not an unbiased news service. It consists entirely of my opinions and such links to factual items as I find interesting." Fortunately, Reynolds reads and links widely, and, if not unbiased, he's at least relatively even-handed.
...
(5) Hugh Hewitt— If you were to combine all three Powerline bloggers, Sean Hannity and any given Republican Party Chairman in some sort of GOP experiment to create the most reliable Republican pundit ever...you'd have Hugh Hewitt: the distilled essence of The Party Man.
...
(13) ScrappleFace; IMAO; Lileks; Cox and Forkum— Republicans are funny, too! Granted, they can't draw like Ted Rall, write like Mark Morford, or make people laugh like Michael Moore. But, really, that's a compliment.

Read the rest.

Update: I checked out the left-wing blog review again and I simply have to post this excerpt:

( Oliver Willis —- Ridiculously partisan shill who spends a lot of time complaining about how partisan other people are. Worth reading, if only for the frequent pretzel-logic and double-standards.

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1 Hi All, I think that this recent backlash against Hugh is sort of strange. I heard his original talk-like-a-pirate day, and he hung up on people who would not give it a go! The guy admitted to piloting a snowmobile into a tree (pictures were available). Why was he not mentioned as being someone funny on the Right? This is not the sort of person who is a sycophant, or say a Mr. Factor with the embarrassing ego. Does anyone think that he is not a very smart and talented man? I think that he would destroy most of his critics in any debate. The Powerline lawyers did not side with Hugh who is also a lawyer in the Miers' debate (I tend to distrust lawyers generally, but I read many on the internet). If the point was that both sites contain very competent lawyers, then I would have to agree. My guess is that this is not what was meant. Lileks is in a totally different class. He predates everyone else listed as far as I know. I would not even presume that most of the conservative bloggers who are funny are Republican (I have always been an independent and have no desire to change as I am in one of the blue states). As for laughing and Michael Moore, are we laughing with him or at him? Mike

Posted by: Mike at November 07, 2005 09:47 AM (Q7mr/)

2 "I think that this recent backlash against Hugh is sort of strange." I don't. Hugh impugned the movtives of most of Miers' critics. He also made the following contradictory statements: 1) Con Law isn't that hard, so you don't need any judicial experience in it to understand 2) Most people probably don't understand the Con Law complexities of ::some case that I cannot remember exactly:: The final straw, though, was when Hugh posted in the NY Times after Miers withdrew her name, essentially blaming any and all future troubles of the Republican party, including but not limited to the 2008 presidential election, on conservatives who had the temerity to question the Miers' appointment. I believe that Allah made the following comment regarding Hugh over at Ace's place: "Fuck that guy." I disagree with the sentiment, as I believe that Hewitt is a staunch defender of things conservative. However, his tunnel vision, I'm-right-and-those-who-disagree-with-me-are-stupid-and-wrong, sanctimonious diatribes against people who usually side with him politically was pretty asshatted. Just my opinion, though. I could be wrong. But I doubt it.

Posted by: physics geek at November 07, 2005 02:52 PM (Xvrs7)

3 Hi PG, I found the whole Miers' debate strange. I thought that the choice was also strange. Miers was not anyone's first pick (I sort of wonder if it was Bush's first pick either). I can't know the vagaries of such a crazy political process (a brilliant long-term "strategery" or just a total miscalculation). What bothered me was the immediate nasty response from many conservatives whom I admire. They did not know much of anything about Miers, but were adamant about what a dire choice it was. Maybe it was, but how could they know so soon with little research and study? It seemed like mostly hubris to me. They later came up with more solid arguments than we expected better, but it took them a while. I was undecided through the whole thing, but I tended towards the arguments of Hedgehog, Beldar, and Hugh. I think they were cool and collected compared to many on the other side. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. The seeming incongruity about con-law statements by Hugh is easily explained I think (being trained in physics myself, I am only guessing--Hugh does tend to answer his e-mail, so you might try asking him). In the first statement which I recall him making on his radio show, he was referring to Supreme Court nominees (top lawyers--yes, even Miers). I do not know the context of your second supposedly contradictory statement by Hugh, but I suspect that he is talking about the general public. What might have been easy for Feynman is definitely not easy for most people (impossible in most cases--how is that for hubris? ). Mike P.S. I was a huge fan of Allah, but I do not know much about him at all. He stopped blogging before I got much of a handle on him. He was funny. If I wanted to hear drivel such as "Fuck...", I would check out the left side of the blogosphere. You characterize Hugh as writing sanctimonious diatribes, but after the withdrawal he had his movie guru come up with the top ten films about defeat. One man's diatribes are another's reasoned arguments. I thought that most people argued agreeably, but I thought your side generally got closer to crossing the line of civility. I know; you doubt it.

Posted by: Mike at November 11, 2005 12:37 AM (ewHjH)

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Four words or less. Check out the reviews for Serenity:

River: the Reaver Slayer

Whedon' need no Alliance

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Okay, so the incident happened three years ago. An inquest is in progress, though. Excerpt:

A UNIVERSITY student died after being hurled 100ft through the air by a medieval-style "trebuchet" catapult, an inquest heard yesterday.

Kostydin Yankov, 19, an Oxford University student, suffered multiple injuries and serious spinal damage when he fell short of the safety net.

He was on a day trip with the extreme sports club, The Oxford Stunt Factory, to Bridgwater, Somerset, in November 2002 when tragedy struck.

A jury at Taunton Coroner's Court in Somerset heard that Kostydin - Dino to his friends - was the fifth person to be "fired" by the device on the day of his death. All four people who went before him landed at the nearest end of the safety net.

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