Perhaps most disturbing about Robin West’s attack on homeschooling is that it’s published in a scholarly journal, even if it does come out of the University of Maryland. One might expect more thoughtfulness, even from a second-rate scholar. But instead we get breathless fear mongering like this: “In other words, in much of the country, if …
Here’s a conundrum. We put automatic sinks in public restrooms because we can’t trust our fellow man to turn off the water properly. We put automatic flushers on the toilets because we can’t trust him to flush. (We can’t trust him to lift the lid, either, so I suppose it’s a matter of time before …
I’m wondering if these researchers would have been fine with The Goonies if only all the kids had worn bicycle helmets while pedaling to the treacherous caverns.
Ordinarily I’m not a fan of government meddling, but sometimes I am ready for a regulation requiring products made in whole or part in China to be labeled as such. Poisoned toothpaste, animal food, infant formula, building products that rot and emit toxic fumes, and now deadly children’s jewelry indicate — as if we needed any …
It’s no secret, my belief that, no matter how fetching or emotionally available a vampire is, the only proper response to him is a stake through the heart. Now Father Orthoduck opens a new can of worms, suggesting that one reason modern Americans have a tougher time slaying bloodsuckers can be laid at the feet …
I don’t know which is creepier, the fact that U.K. public schools are going to start teaching five year-olds the names of private body parts, or the fact that the U.K. has a “Children’s Secretary.” And given the aberrant practices of ruling politicians and Royals over the years, does anyone in the U.K. really want …
What my kids call theirs are just fine, thank you Read More »
Dear Nabisco MegaCorporation, Once upon a time there was a delicious little cracker called Harvest Grain. This cracker didn’t ask for much, nothing, really, other than to be crispy and nutritious and delectable in Tony’s mouth. Tony and his Harvest Grains were very happy together. Sometimes Tony would spread a tasty cheese spread on his …
Really? I mean, really? I know the Nobel Peace Committee has a sad history of defaming itself, beginning, some would say, with its award to Henry Kissinger in 1973, and solidified, any reasonable person would agree, with the award to Yasser Arafat in 1994. The 2002 award to Carter suggested that it’s good thoughts and …
On a long drive through red-state country yesterday I decided to listen to talk radio. I heard Rush Limbaugh mock the First Lady, in his extended rant about her lobbying Olympic officials to place the 2016 games in Chicago, because she said sports can give children a sense of what they can accomplish, that they …
In the parking lot of a local college I saw a window sticker that I’d forgotten, a grainy picture of George W. Bush with the treasonous slogan: “Not my president.” As a southerner who believes Sherman brought with him the terrible and just judgment of God, I can’t help thinking that anyone who says this …
I’ll begin by saying that I did not get a ticket. I’m stipulating that right up front, because I know some of you smart-alecks are going to ask. I haven’t had a ticket, in fact, since I accidentally tapped a crossing guard with the front end of my Volkswagen in high school. And he had …
Saturday, we made our last visit to the Kansas State Fair. The final count is two trips with the family, one trip by the family without me, and one trip just with Wife to see Huey Lewis and the News, whose members — I don’t care if you hated the 80’s and Back to the …
I don’t know when or how the American experiment will end, but I am fairly certain that the dread day will find most of us texting or carrying about signs or otherwise expressing our deeply felt, ill-reasoned, poorly articulated opinions about it. This nationwide bout of narcissistic expression began, I am certain, with the first …
I recently learned that public school officials in my area sent a letter to parents of their students, asking for the names and addresses of any children they know who are not enrolled in public school. This is troubling, because the historical response of many school districts to home-schoolers is to sic social services and the …
Memo to my local school board: be careful what you wish for Read More »
I don’t think C.S. Lewis was a violent man, but I think even he might have been moved to take up something heavy and begin bashing the exhibit that trades in his name as well as that of his beloved creation, Narnia, currently on display in Kansas City. The reign of the White Witch, for …
Anyone who doesn’t think that government bureaucracy eventually destroys all it touches should read this solicitation by the U.S. Department of the Treasury for consultants to provide “two, 3-hour Humor in the Workplace programs.” You’ve never seen, I promise you, a more humorless treatment of humor. It specifies, among other requirements, that: “Participants shall experience demonstrations …
I still get surprised when complete strangers call my office, give only a first name and some financial- or insurance-sounding affiliation, and then ask me to call them back. No information. No “Hey, we met at the ice-cream social and I just wanted to follow up on something you said,” or — the more likely …
As I bribe my children with candy to find me one of the two dozen sippy cups cleverly hidden by the baby throughout the house, it occurs to me that I have a solution for that institution remarkably like children in its propensity to lose things and then disavow responsibility for them: the airlines. After …
Dear United: Next time how about you kiss me first? Read More »
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. We don’t want Obama to speak at Notre Dame, because we don’t want the Church associated with his support for abortion. So we’re outraged about that. But we do want him to give a speech in front of a plaque representing Jesus, and so we’re outraged about …
“She’s taking it to the chiropractor,” smirked one Newton Medical Center technician to another as my wife waited for them to hand over an x-ray scan of baby Isaiah’s arm. We were twenty hours into an ordeal, sparked the night before when he came wailing to his mother, his arm held tight to his side. She …
I couldn’t believe, when I first read it, that Harvard’s chaplain is an atheist. Then I felt stupid for being surprised. That die was likely cast when Harvard’s overseers struck Christo et Ecclesiae from its place surrounding Veritas on the university’s seal. What need Christ and Church, after all, when we can have unadulterated truth? Somewhere in …
I once heard Charles Murray say he was booed by faculty at an Ivy League school for announcing that half of Americans have below-median intelligence. Here he is in front of a friendlier audience, proving once again that it’s possible to be a thorough-going conservative without behaving like a mean-spirited tribal shaman: “We know from …
If only he’d come along when people had longer attention spans Read More »
Amusement of the day: while flitting about the A.M. band, I happened upon Rush Limbaugh giving a speech, in which he declared that we don’t believe in grouping people, unlike them. And not surprisingly, all the Dittoheads in the audience agreed with Rush that they are individualists prone neither to tribalism nor to painting their opponents with …
We don’t believe in grouping people like they do Read More »
John Derbyshire on the negative consequences (he notes there were positives as well) of the Rush Limbaugh radio revolution: “Did the Limbaughs, Hannitys, Savages, and Ingrahams lead us to this sorry state of affairs? They surely did. At the very least, by yoking themselves to the clueless George W. Bush and his free-spending administration, they …
Forty-four minutes. That’s how long it took a post by a black seminary professor, referencing a stomach-turning white supremacist blogger (and self-professed Christian) who called him a “negro theologian,” to get a response from someone complaining about black racism. I could never understand, when I was at the University of Michigan during the heyday of political …
I can’t abide people who are already salivating at the prospect of Obama’s failure, who are convinced that he is a godless Marxist with a secret plan to steal our guns, open our borders, and make us all work like slaves on wind-energy farms while turning our daughters into lesbians with kindergarten sex-education seminars. The reality is that …
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. American mega-companies buy shoddy lead-painted toys and chemically poisonous clothes from China, and market them to our children. We stupidly trust the American mega-companies because we have happy memories of the days when you could get killed by a lawn dart or by falling from the top …
Dear Quaker Oats Megalith, You might recall that I warned you once before about disguising newfangled “quick” foods as the older, take-an-extra-three-minutes-to-cook-it fare. Well, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, and I hate you double. That’s right, I accidentally bought those pulverized nubbins you call “Quick Oats,” mistaking them for the whole …
You’ve probably never heard of Blackstreet Capital Partners, a private-equity fund in Maryland that buys underperforming companies and attempts to make them profitable. And you’ve almost certainly never heard of a company they own, SFCA Inc. But perhaps you’ve heard about infants dying after being strangled in bassinets made by a company once known as …
Dear SanDisk Corporation, I have admired your thumb drives from the beginning. They fit in my pocket. No more inadvertantly inserting a data CD in my truck and wondering if I’d accidentally purchased some kind of post-Modern German techno-punk-death metal fusion music. You were providing the public with a much-needed product. But you couldn’t stop there, …
