Playing a little cat…

Playing a little catch-up here, due to being on the road last week.

• Federal Takeover Dept.: This article should make you feel safer. I know I felt so much better while flying last week that box cutters and chemicals can still be smuggled onto airplanes. I would really like to see a study done on how much (if any) safer we are, now that airport security workers get their paychecks on federal paper stock instead of from private companies. It would have to be in an apples-to-apples way; whatever kind of tests they used to do.
  UPDATE: Apparently, the items had been smuggled on-board 5 weeks earlier.
• Truth in Labeling Dept.: The Congressional Black Caucus needs a name change–perhaps the Congressional Liberal Black Caucus–because it’s clear they aren’t concerned about all blacks in general. Here’s a story that points this out. “The black Democrats said [nominee Janice] Brown’s conservative credentials make her unfit for the D.C. judgeship. ” Democrats continue to insist on conditions to judgeship that they’d be suing over if the shoe was on the other foot.
• “World Ends, Minorities Hit Hardest” Journalism Dept.: Sarah at the blog “Trying to Grok” is a military wife, and lends her perspective to the daily life of a military family, especially relating to Iraq. She had a post recently (and has had further follow-ups) showing how a mainstream news source like the Washington Post can take a perfectly balanced article (in this instance, a case study of both the good and bad from Iraq in “Stars and Stripes”) and turn it into what amounts to another declaration of “Iraq is a quagmire!” Bias is busting out all over.
• Repackaging Dept.: Moderate Democrats (for liberal readers, that should be “reactionary, right-wing traitors”) are suggesting that the party rethink its position on gun control. Now, I would rather they rethink it on constitutional grounds instead of simply being concerned about “alienating them[selves] from mainstream voters” (i.e. change what we say we’re for, so they’ll like us). And I’d rather it not be a simple change of terminology from “gun control” to “gun safety” (i.e. a thorn, by any other name, still hurts you). But still, it looks like there could be some movement in the right direction. We can only hope. And vote.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!