Author: Moe_Lane

Back from the DC Tax Day Tea Party.

Very short version: organizers estimate 3,000 altogether. I am not trained in crowd estimating, but it was busy when I got there an hour early with a buddy and stayed busy up to the point where persons currently unknown (although certainly people weren’t shy of guessing) temporarily closed Lafayette Park by tossing a box over the White House fence around 2:30 or so. The nature and tone of the demonstration can be accurately described by this fact: when we were let back in, one of the organizers called for a cheer for the Secret Service for the fast and efficient way that they did their jobs – and got one. This despite the fact that said Secret Service had to shut down the Treasury stage site the day of the protest. Or the fact that by then we had been rained upon for roughly three hours straight.

I have a bunch of videos, which I’ll be putting up as I process them. It was a good time: lots of polite people, lots of American flags, surprisingly little litter. Picture gallery below.

Crossposted at RedState.

Continue reading Back from the DC Tax Day Tea Party.

Early night for me tonight (pledge drive post).

I have a get-together to attend tomorrow, video camera and other assorted electronic gear in hand… but not, alas, a laptop; mine’s still broken, which is why I have a pledge drive to replace it going on.  Alas, I’m still not seeing any of that sweet, sweet right-wing shill money yet…

The donate button’s to your right.

Moe Lane

PS: You should go to one of these events tomorrow.  No matter what your political affiliation is.  There.  End of me telling you what to do.

Somali Pirates up the ante.

As you probably noticed, I’ve been polite in reacting to the administration’s handling of the first wave of Somali piracy. This has been mostly out of pragmatism: like Jonah Goldberg and Ed Morrissey, my interest is in seeing dead or stopped pirates, and my generally low opinion of Democratic Presidents aside when it comes to setting foreign policy, this is actually one time when Obama’s natural instinct for detachment would be fine. The military knows how to handle piracy, particularly when they’re not required to worry about nation building whatever euphemism the administration eventually comes up with to replace ‘nation-building.’  Which they wouldn’t even have to, in this case.  I’m even pleased to see the chest-beating bravado from the Online Left: it’s, well, cute – and God knows that their ideology gives so few opportunities to act anything like the ‘primitive’ men that they publicly deride and privately envy.

Besides, I also knew that this was going to happen (via Jammie Wearing Fool): Continue reading Somali Pirates up the ante.

Apparently David Weigel likes the kiss of the lash.

And him a former Reason writer, too. Well, none fervent as a convert.

What? Where does it say in the rules that I can’t get to do armchair psychoanalysis, too? Admittedly I’m going for ‘sardonic’ rather than ‘grumpily resentful,’ but that’s just a personal taste sort of thing.

See also The Liberty Papers.

Moe Lane

PS: Weigel does get one point back for using the word ‘cosplay,’ even if he wrote it in between wiping the sweat off of his brow. I’m not an unreasonable man.

Crossposted to RedState.

Today’s Podcast: Tea Parties, the Bush Six, and International Affairs.

I did my twice-monthly radio podcast with Fausta today – we discussed Tea Parties, Cuba, the “Bush Six,” pirates of Somalia, the Vatican’s rejection/non-rejection of pro-choice ambassadors, the DHS rightwing extremist issue, and even a quick mention of IL-05.  And, oh yeah, I sneered at the pro-torture Left.  Just because I felt like it.  Podcast and the various links mentioned after the fold.

I would like to note that the stories “The Bush Six to Be Indicted” and “The Practice Of Law Is Under Indictment — Where Is The ABA?” are of particular importance.  To recap: the Daily Beast is reporting that six members of the Bush administration are going to be indicted in a Spanish court for offering legal advice.  I was, shall we say, rather vehement in my commentary, which can boil down to “If the Obama administration does not make it clear that this is intolerable, the current people in government had best hope that the Democrats stay in power for the rest of eternity.”  With a lot more angry stammering, but then this topic annoys.

Not to mention makes me worry more about the future of our democratic system more than anything else going on right now.

Moe Lane

Continue reading Today’s Podcast: Tea Parties, the Bush Six, and International Affairs.

Alas, not an update to the squirrel detonation story.

Let me just repeat the title again: Spokane parks to detonate squirrels using propane-fueled explosions. To paraphrase Bloom County, that title just sings.

Anyway, Stop the ACLU (via Hot Air’s Green Room’s Laura) takes this opportunity to kick PETA a little for equating military medical trauma exercises using animals (I’m sanitizing what happens there) with torture of humans. I’d be a lot more impressed with that argument if PETA was willing to put up volunteers ready to get deliberately and seriously injured in order to give the doctors somebody to practice on. Or if I thought that PETA was recruiting from the percentage of the population that thinks that having less dead or permanently crippled American troops was a good thing.

Hey, the next neocon you see in PETA’s ranks will be the first, you know what I mean?

Crossposted to RedState.

Oh, so that miserable SOB is in Escape from Hell?

And being handled properly*?  I always knew there was a reason why I liked Niven & Pournelle.

We will be the ones who decide who to remember from that day. We will remember people like this man:

hero_1

Professor Liviu Librescu
1930-2007

…and not his murderer.

Two days until the second anniversary of the Virginia Tech shootings.

Moe Lane

*I know this murderer’s name, but I will not repeat it.