Just in time for MLK’s Birthday, new Blogger Jeremy Freedman looks at race in America — all these years after Dr. King’s famous “dream” of a coming American meritocracy. He concludes with this sentiment: We can all get together and do better on race. I don’t think we have to scrap every last vestige of affirmative action, but that would be preferable to the current rant and rave until you

Not much in the way of quantity in store for y’all today… instead, we’ll be tweaking the site design (always striving to make it better), and watching football playoff games (always on the lookout for excuses to drink beer). More this evening — the protein wisdom crew

A follow-up to our entry on Manuela Ruda and her husband, the London vampire duo who slaughtered a German friend, drank his blood, then (for dessert?) fornicated in some satin-lined coffins they keep lying around… From The Telegraph: “A woman who says she and her husband killed a German friend with 66 knife wounds on orders from the devil has claimed that she became a satanist in Britain.” […] Manuela

Alex Knapp at Heretical Ideas writes that volcanoes should better respect the people and animals who live around them…

“Airline security personnel at Phoenix’s international airport questioned a retired general and war hero about the Medal of Honor he was carrying before he boarded a flight to Washington, D.C.,” The Washington Times reports. “‘They just didn’t know what it was but they acted like I shouldn’t be carrying it on,’ retired Marine Corps Gen. Joseph J. Foss of Scottsdale, Ariz., said yesterday in a telephone interview.” ‘I kept explaining

Jacob Sullum, writing in Reason, examines the cloning controversy through a libertarian-tinted lens: [President Bush’s Council on Bioethics chairman, University of Chicago bioethicist Leon]Kass’ most compelling argument against reproductive cloning is that it would frequently produce babies with serious birth defects. Most scientists agree that, given the current state of technology, trying to produce a cloned baby now would be reckless. But this objection will lose its force once the

“…New York City developer Forest City Ratner abandoned the design of a September 11 memorial it commissioned after the project brought outcries from firefighters and the public,” Beth Henary reports for The Weekly Standard. “Forest City Ratner, which manages fire department headquarters where a memorial will eventually stand, expressed a desire for the memorial to be a respected object in the community, a reality that clearly wasn’t coming to pass

For those of you who’ve never read Leon Wieseltier’s (in)famous New Republic piece on Cornel West, “All and Nothing at All: The Unreal World of Cornel West” (originally published March 6, 1995), TNR has reposted it in full on its website. Famous line: West’s work is noisy, tedious, slippery… sectarian, humorless, pedantic and self-endeared. The more things change, the more they stay the same; West is more powerful today than

Gleaning from cyberspace some of the more interesting of today’s Enron “drifts” (and clearing my taskbar in the process), I give you… “Enron Bet on Global Warming!!”, SupplySideInvestor.com “Enron So Far,” Michael Lynch in Reason Andrew Sullivan (keep on scrollin’ down) and Virginia Postrel on The New York Times’ Paul Krugman and his prominent place in the Enron house-o’-cards… Hillary and the Enron moolah… “What Scandal?” The National Review’s Rich

The Somali Justice Advocate Center is calling on moviegoers to “boycott” Ridley Scott’s “racist” Black Hawk Down, FOXNews reports. I’d like to make a counter suggestion. What’s say, in lieu of an actual boycott, we each go see the film instead — immediately! twice! — as all free and interested people who wish to hold an opinion on it should do. Only then can we decide whether or not there’s