War is what happens when language fails.
Margaret Atwood, The Robber Bride (1993), Ch. 6
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Margaret Atwood
Author: Redactor
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Fourth to Ratify
On January 2, 1788, Georgia became the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution.
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Townhall: Terrorists in Plain Sight
Should we “err on the side of security”?
We shouldn’t err at all. That gets us nowhere. And unthinkingly sticking to failed notions of security is not helping avoid mistakes.
Click on over to Townhall. Then back here for more intel.
- The Intercept: From Paris to Boston, Terrorists Were Already Known to Authorities
- Washington Post: Suspect in Berlin market attack was radicalized in an Italian jail
- CNN: How the Berlin attack unfolded
- Telegraph (London): Tunisian suspect was investigated over earlier terror plot
- Truth in Media: Trump Says He Supports Reauthorizing Patriot Act, NSA Metadata Collection
- Washington Times: FBI admits no major cases cracked with Patriot Act snooping powers
- Washington Times: NSA chief’s admission of misleading numbers adds to Obama administration blunders
- MyShadow.org: Lies and Revelations – Why mass surveillance is not about catching the “bad guys”
- Telegraph (London): Who is Salah Abdeslam and who were the Paris terrorists? Everything we know about the Isil attackers
- Politico: The FBI’s Growing Surveillance Gap
- The Daily Beast: Omar Mateen, Terrorist Who Attacked Orlando Gay Club, Had Been Investigated by FBI
- New York Times: 2 U.S. Agencies Added Boston Bomb Suspect to Watch Lists
- ABC News: Recruiter Shooting Suspect Under FBI Investigation
- The Federalist: NY, NJ Bomber Rahani the Latest Terrorist to Pass FBI Investigation
- Electronic Freedom Foundation: A Coalition says to Congress – End 702 or Enact Reforms
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Brion McClanahan
Purpose is what separates success from failure. Those with a guiding purpose, however small, can make a difference in the lives of others.
That is why I always suggest think locally and act locally. You can change the world, even if it is just your own. At the end of the day — or year — that is really all that matters.
Brion McClanahan, email newsletter for The Brion McClanahan Show, December 30, 2016
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Slave Trade
On January 1, 1808, the importation of slaves into the United States was banned.
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Video: 2016 — best year ever?
Lots of people are saying that 2016 was “the worst.” Dan Hannan disagrees:
Krist Novoselic, my colleague at FairVote.org, here gives a little talk about how we can change our democratic processes for the better. “We’re getting there,” he says, about the organization’s substantial election reform — a non-partisan variety of reform that, he says, will benefit all Americans. For some reason not many people have seen this video:
But are things really all that good? A lot of folks will say that the President-elect is the most dangerous trending topic. But Professor Gad Saad suggests, in this entry of The Saad Truth, that the worst trend is the victimology cult:
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Thomas Sowell
The old are not really smarter than the young, in terms of sheer brainpower. It is just that we have already made the kinds of mistakes that the young are about to make, and we have already suffered the consequences that the young are going to suffer if they disregard the record of the past.
Thomas Sowell, “Random Thoughts, Looking Back,” his final syndicated column upon retirement, National Review (December 27, 2016).
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Bricked Windows
On December 31, 1695, Englanders received a new tax, a window tax. One of the main responses to this was the bricking up of many British windows.
This last day of the year in 1991 marked the complete cessation of all institutions of the Soviet Union.
New Year’s Eve 1992 saw the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. This has been dubbed the “Velvet Divorce.”
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Jack Williamson
The humanoids protect people so well they won’t let them drive a car lest they have an accident or let a woman hold a needle lest she stab herself, . . . With the Patriot Act, people are trying to overprotect us by taking our freedoms away. I’d repeal it if I could.
Jack Williamson, author of The Humanoids (1948) and The Humanoid Touch (1980), science fiction novels in which humanity is overrun with “well-intentioned” robots.
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A law student
On December 30, 1919, Lincoln’s Inn in London, England, admitted its first female bar student.