Against the Government’s position, I can see no purpose in disputing that our helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein has inflamed Islamist totalitarian groups. Why deny what we should take pride in?
– Oliver Kamm
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Against the Government’s position, I can see no purpose in disputing that our helping to overthrow Saddam Hussein has inflamed Islamist totalitarian groups. Why deny what we should take pride in? We embrace these concepts of the private sector, the marketplace and freedom of expression. So the contrast is stark and the choice is clear. Actually it was a much cheerier gathering than I expected: usually the Tories have a leader who embarrasses them, but this year they have no leader and everyone’s full of beans. – Eamonn Butler at the Conservative Party Conference The political system tends to lag behind technological change, which is often a good thing. I remember attending a House subcommittee hearing in the 1980s on whether the U.S. should create a phone-computer system modeled on the state-funded French Minitel, a text-only network being promoted as the wave of the future. Fortunately, the Internet exploded – making Minitel obsolete – before Congress could fund such a project. – Glenn Harlan Reynolds reviewing this book
Colin MacCabe, writing in the Observer, on why he has left the Labour Party. Meanwhile, you’ve got how many (admittedly very stupid) Australians in Indonesian prisons for something like 20 years on drug charges? So I guess the message here is kill some infidels and you’ll get two years with time off for good behavior, have a couple tabs of ecstasy on you and you’ll do 20 years in a third world prison.
– Joss Whedon
– Making the Law, Hansard Society, 1993. So much for separation of powers in the view of serious British parliamentarians.
– Commenter thoreau, at Hit and Run. For centuries, philosophers and poets have tried to understand what happiness is, and what might contribute to it. In recent decades, scientists have started to come up with the answers. Happiness is electrical activity in the left front part of the brain, and it comes from getting married, getting friends, getting rich, and avoiding communism. In an interview for the New York Daily News in 1997, the actor and entertainer Clint Eastwood explained how the world would change if politicians adopted a flat tax:
Go ahead, Gordon. Make our day. |
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