“Right now, there is agreement, sort of, on both sides, or maybe even all sides, that . . . . people are successful now not because they’re good, but because the system is rigged. . . .
“The difference is that the Left looks at a rigged system and says we need a bigger system.”
Andy Levy, February 20, 2016
Zombie government wants to eat our brains. Click on over to Townhall, for this weekend’s Common Sense column. Then come back here for more brain pickings:
“Criminalizing offensive speech is a far greater and essential danger to freedom than terrorism is. Anybody who wants to criminalize speech that they find offensive differs from the terrorists only in degree, not in kind.”
The nation’s capital has a mass transit system plagued with problems of nearly every kind. And now comes the revival (very expensive) of the streetcar system. Reason TV provides a brief survey of the history of DC streetcars:
“When both parties agree, grab your wallet.”
John Stossel, February 19, 2016
Beginning on Feb. 20, 1944, and lasting through Feb. 25, 1944, the United States Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF) launched a series of missions against the Third Reich that became known as “Big Week.” In six days, the Eighth Air Force bombers based in England flew more than 3,000 sorties and the Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy more than 500. Together they dropped roughly 10,000 tons of bombs. The daylight bombing campaign was also supported by RAF Bomber Command operating against the same targets at night. The campaign helped the Allies achieve air superiority, so the invasion of Europe could proceed. While U.S. industrial might could entirely replace losses during the “Big Week,” Germany was unable to do so.
Are Republican presidential candidates getting the NFL draft and the military draft confused?
Get drafted by the NFL and you’re a millionaire. Participation is voluntary. Get “chosen” by the Selective Service System for the military draft and you could wind up in combat. Participation is involuntary.
Last Sunday at Townhall, I wondered why Republican presidential candidates keep talking about registering young females for a future draft like they are bestowing some great benefit, as if women are clamoring for the equal chance to be conscripted.
Sen. Marco Rubio first agreed that draft registration should be expanded to women. He then elaborated, “I’m open to Selective Service being opened up to women that want to be a part of it.”
Wait a second . . . the current male-only draft registration isn’t optional. It’s mandatory — under the threat of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. This I know first-hand.
After Sen. Ted Cruz suggested Rubio and other presidential contenders were “nuts” to support forcing women to register, Rubio tried to explain on Fox News Sunday: “What I’ve never said and I don’t support is that we are going to draft women and force them into combat roles. That’s absurd.”
The senator volunteered that he did not “believe anyone ever will” be drafted, because “that’s not the nature of modern warfare.”
“I’m actually in favor of a volunteer armed forces,” he told host Chris Wallace. “I’m not even sure we need Selective Service anymore.”
Calling it “just a registry of names for a draft that’s never going to happen,” Rubio added, “I don’t know why we still have Selective Service.”
Me neither.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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February 19, 1942, was a sad day for constitutional rights, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt signing Executive Order 9066, authorizing the Secretary of War to prescribe certain areas of the country as military zones. These zones were used to incarcerate Japanese Americans in internment camps.
There weren’t ever hearings on any judicial nomination until the 1930s.
Kevin Gutzman, February 17, 2016
I do not like the idea of happyness — it is too momentary — I would say that I was always busy and interested in something — interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happyness.
Georgia O’Keeffe, a corrective note marked in Anita Pollitzer’s mss. biography of the artist.