Today I flew on US Airways from Burbank to Philadelphia. As I boarded the first leg of the flight, I noticed that the fellow behind me was carrying a water bottle and a coffee cup.

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In these troubling times, I like to repair to my library and find explanation, if not solace, for what appears to be a world gone berserk.

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If you think those “Click it or Ticket” seat belt enforcement drives are all about your safety, give it another think. State and local law enforcement agencies have a huge financial incentive to dole out as many tickets as they possibly can — in order to qualify for the federal grant boodle dangled before their noses like a savory porkchop in front of a hungry blue tick hound.

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In summarizing winners and losers of the Israel-Hizballah conflict, my colleague Bill Roggio wrote the following in declaring Hizballah a winner:

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Over the past few days, Turkey has been hit by a string of bombings. On Sunday night and Monday morning, four separate blasts injured at least twenty people. The first blast, which came around 11:00 p.m. Sunday in the garden of an Istanbul school, wounded at least six. Then, just after midnight, the Aegean Sea resort town of Marmaris experienced three blasts. According to the Turkish Daily News, the first of these bombs “ripped through a shuttle bus ferrying tourists along one of the resort’s main streets” after being placed under one of its seats. Subsequently, two other bombs stashed in garbage bins exploded, causing no injuries, “though some reports suggested those had not detonated properly.”

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In television’s “Jesus of Nazareth,” Judas betrays the Man from Galilee. A Roman soldier asks, “What kind of person are you, if I may ask?” His query is universal — since what we are dwarfs what we have.

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There are 2 million Muslims in the U.K. In a recent poll, 81% of them said that they considered themselves Muslims before they considered themselves British. In America, towns like Deerborn, Michigan and Oakland, California house communities of U.S.-born citizens of Arab/Isamic heritage that actually hate America. They only part of American culture they embrace is the Hip-Hop Gansta culture.

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From the AP yesterday: “Lebanon’s prime minister says Lebanon will not have direct contact with Israel and will be the last Arab country to sign a peace deal with the Jewish state.”

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During the Confederacy’s greatest battles against the Union army, the Yale-Harvard regatta went on undisturbed.

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I was thinking today of Rabbi Eliezer’s dictum in the Talmud: �Repent one day before your death.� When his disciples asked the obvious question: �How can one know the day of his death?� Rabbi Eliezer responded: �Then let him repent each day, lest he die tomorrow.�

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Recently I had a provocative conversation with my friend Kevin. Kevin is not a reflexive, blame-America-first type, which is why I took the conversation so seriously. He’s a new father, and I think he is genuinely concerned about safety in the world for his son’s sake. In the conversation, Kevin exhibited what I see as a common confusion of cause and effect. But I’d be intellectually dishonest if I said I couldn’t see truth in anything he said.

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The author of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People has weighed in on the Lebanon war. In this Web-posted essay, dated August 29, he follows the expected pattern and blames Israel. But even by the standards of left-wing intellectuals, his tone is unusually naive. To wit:

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It’s not uncommon to lose interest in a sports franchise as one gets older. But in the last few years it has amazed me how many of my friends have become hostile to our once-beloved Washington Redskins. Not indifferent, mind you — angry.

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My 14-year old daughter and I are having dinner. In-between bites, I suddenly look at her and say, “You never got a summer reading list.” We’re moving from the ‘burbs, and she’s about to start a new high school in Manhattan.

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A lot of air travellers have been griping about the intensified hassles associated with flying in the wake of tightened restrictions after 9/11 and the recently uncovered plot involving planes departing from London’s Heathrow Airport.

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Now that it’s election season in Kansas, the politicians at the Statehouse in Topeka are talking about one more try at making English the official language of the state. As a commentator for my local public radio station–but in the voice of a retired farmer, William Jennings Bryan Oleander, Honorary Mayor of Here, Kansas–I had to say something about the weakness of a place that fears others so dramatically as we in the United States seem to, with talk of saving our language, culture and borders from incursions by immigrants. Here’s what Mr. Oleander had to say:

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(First published in the Vallejo Times-Herald) 

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For about a week during Israel’s bombing of Lebanon, Iraqis of all stripes — who are normally killing one another — were getting along. I came across the following Los Angeles Times headline: “Iraqis Find Rare Unity in Condemning Israel“:

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Vernon Robinson is a very, very, very conservative politician. This month, the African-American firebrand won the Republican Primary Election in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District — in part, on a campaign against what he calls the “Foreign Homosexual Importation Act” (which, something tells me, formally goes by another name).

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On Sunday I posted several photos of Saturday’s immigration protests — “fiasco” is more like it — down in Maywood, Calif., teasing at my L.A. Daily News column on the subject today. Since Sunday, the news of counterprotesters going postal (literally) and raising the Mexican flag over federal property has spread like wildfire across the Web, but I was lucky enough to have been in the middle of the whole reconquista-fest. Read on:

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A Political Mavens sneak peek! Here’s my op-ed in tomorrow’s (8/30) Dallas Morning News. If you crave past columns, go to:

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The real victims of the Valerie Plame non-issue, it turns out, were those who believed in the honorablity of two men: Richard Armitage and Colin Powell.

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The sharpest edges of public life come because people with a platform forget that words have meaning.  Thus, one of James Burnham’s famous “laws” is that “He who says A must also say B.”  In this case, that means that by saying one thing, you also imply a lot of other things and must agree with other logical extensions and conclusions.

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Any upright, sentient being ought to know better than to believe in bizarre vote-fixing schemes in the 2004 election.  They especially should know better than to accuse specific others of such a thing without public evidence and an airtight case.  Yet here is John Kerry accusing Ohio’s Ken Blackwell of fixing an election.  Think about that–he is accusing another elected official of directly and purposefully undermining a democratic election.  That’s not calling him names or saying he’s a bad person.  That’s telling voters that he believes another person committed what amounts to treason.

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It has the paperwork. It even has the authority. But will Europe do anything with this opportunity to prove multilateral muster?

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Before I solidify some early credentials as a heartless SOB, let me add my voice to the happy chorus reacting to the safe release of Fox News journalists Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig.

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Meet Jason Thomas. He was dropping off his 2 year old daughter at his mother’s house on the morning of September 11, 2001. His mom told him the news about the attack on the World Trade Center. “They got us” was his first reaction. His second was to retrieve his Marine uniform from his car (he served from 1996-2000) and speed to the WTC site.

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By now I’m sure everyone knows that global warming is one of the last cards the hard Left has left to play. Their predictament evokes the title of Kazuo Ishiguro’s book “Remains of the Day.”

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The Dakota Fanning episode is the bottom, reached after 40 years of misogyny.

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This is one of the most insightful and important foreign policy articles since 9/11.

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Hollywood — indeed the whole of the entertainment business — would like you to believe that they operate outside the boundaries of the Laws written for mere mortals. The evermore degrading images and content of entertainment “product” our culture, particularly our children, are subjected to is the proof of Hollywood’s moral decline.

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By J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss : | 24 Aug 2006

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Drudge thinks it’s headline-worthy that Joe Biden said his home state of Delaware was a civil-war slave state–the implication being that Joe has, once again, gotten ahead of the truth. I was surprised at the truth, and maybe you will be too. Its northeastern location notwithstanding, Delaware was in fact a slave state, though it did not secede. Google it and see!

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In responding to Mike Long’s suggestion of linking to Songs For Aging Cynics, I failed to provide the link to the AppleItunes outlet, which I believe allows customers to purchase individual songs. Those interested in the anti-Madonna masterpiece should go to Old Man Moan. Overall link is:

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Just back from “The Illusionist” with Paul Giamatti and the great Edward Norton.

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