From Joshua Claybourn of the supremely on-the-ball Hoosier Review: The FBI considers Luke John Helder to be the top suspect for a recent rash of pipe bombs across the Midwest. Apparently Luke was an avid Internet user. Here is his band’s web site. His bio reads, “He digs Nirvana (and Cobain) a great deal, and that’s pretty evident in, well, his life! Most of his songs are very Nirvana-esque, which

Pim Fortuyn update, from the Norwegian Blogger: Pim Fortuyn was killed by a 32 year old animal rights activist and left-winger, who was offended by Fortuyns suggestion to restart the fur trade. Apparently Fortuyn has actively spoken for removing the ban on fur trading in the Netherlands, something that our animal activist, who has participated in the struggle against medical tests on animals, did not like to hear. […]I don’t

In response to George Will’s indictment of the anti-semitism coming out of Europe (“‘Final Solution,’ Phase 2”), European Commissioner for external relations (huh?) Chris Patten carefully crafts this silly rejoinder (“Stop Blaming Europe”), published as an Op-Ed piece in today’s Washington Post: Anti-American prejudice in Europe is repugnant. It comes as a shock to me to find in a country I love and admire the mirror-image of this — a

In response to George Will’s indictment of the anti-semitism coming out of Europe (“‘Final Solution,’ Phase 2”), European Commissioner for external relations (huh?) Chris Patten carefully crafts this silly rejoinder (“Stop Blaming Europe”), published as an Op-Ed piece in today’s Washington Post: Anti-American prejudice in Europe is repugnant. It comes as a shock to me to find in a country I love and admire the mirror-image of this — a

Writing for The American Prospect, Aaron Marr Page counsels conservatives to “tone down the outrage over affirmative action.” After all, observes Page, “the use of racial preferences has been legally sanctioned by the Supreme Court since the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke decision upheld ‘the attainment of a diverse student body’ as a compelling state interest. The schools are not breaking the law as it exists

I’ve posted on this type of thing before, but we can never be reminded enough of the role universities play in the suppression of free speech. To that end, here’s University of Alabama professor of English Diane Roberts, writing on “free speech zones” in The New Republic: Free speech zones first emerged in the late 1980s. And since then they have grown increasingly common at America’s public universities. Berkeley, the

“The U.N. General Assembly scheduled an emergency session Tuesday, with Arab and developing nations pressing to condemn Israel for alleged atrocities in the Jenin refugee camp and for blocking a U.N. fact-finding mission from looking into the fighting in the camp. A draft resolution introduced by Sudan on behalf of the Arab Group of nations and by South Africa on behalf of the Nonaligned Movement of developing countries would ask

Prozac? No need. Have yourself a Pez, instead: A new analysis has found that in the majority of trials conducted by drug companies in recent decades, sugar pills have done as well as — or better than — antidepressants. Companies have had to conduct numerous trials to get two that show a positive result, which is the Food and Drug Administration’s minimum for approval. What’s more, the sugar pills, or

A few days ago I started a discussion here about the ethics of manipulating certain livestock traits through bio-engineering (to factor out the animal’s awareness or its pain threshold, for instance). That discussion was picked up and expanded upon by the urbane and erudite Doc Weevil. Now this, from researchers at the University of Bonn: “The killing fields: Thoughts on man’s inhumanity to plants”: Scientists at the University of Bonn

Philip Murphy of The Invisible Hand sends me this notice of the death of Pym Fortuyn: Backlash! Pym Fortuyn, the charismatic neo-conservative Dutch politician is assassinated. Anyone care to link this to the Euro-hysteria regarding anything and anyone conservative? Fortuyn was no fascist. He made the conversion from Left to Right, a conversion that speaks volumes about a person’s maturity and wisdom. He was therefore far more of a threat