Some ex-diplomat dude at the Toledo Blade has written an op-ed piece that offers a plan for disarming America.  Essentially he recommends that we search the whole country to confiscate all the weapons and store them in museums and armories.  I couldn’t decide if it was meant to be tongue-in-cheek or not. Either way, I have a suggestion for him: Since they have been so effective in disarming Iraq and eliminating violence there, he could enlist all the military brass involved in that operation to help him cleanse America of firearms and violence.

CBS News reports:

For the first time astronomers have discovered a planet outside our solar system that is potentially habitable, with Earth-like temperatures, a find researchers described Tuesday as a big step in the search for “life in the universe.”

The planet is just the right size, might have water in liquid form, and in galactic terms is relatively nearby at 120 trillion miles away. But the star it closely orbits, known as a “red dwarf,” is much smaller, dimmer and cooler than our sun.

It doesn’t take much to get a bunch of astronomers excited. So what if earth-based humans might be able to live on the planet? It would take about twenty years to get there if we could first figure out how to travel at the speed of light. To me this is about the same as a group of scientists breathlessly announcing that a new species of fleas has been discovered. On second thought, no. Knowing about a new brand of fleas is much more likely to affect us than knowing about this new planet.

Today I was listening to CBS News on the radio while hauling a load of trash to the dump (somehow that seems appropriate). They reported that some expert (didn’t catch the name) had issued a new warning of dire consequences to come from global warming. He estimates that the world will face severe food shortages within about a hundred years. Whoa! I think I’ll run to the market tomorrow and stock up.

He also said that people who are “most vulnerable and least able to adapt” to the adverse effects of global warming will suffer the most. Where do they find these experts? The weak will suffer more than the strong? The poor will suffer more than the wealthy? They should hold a conference to discuss and expand on this guy’s thinking.  I’ll suggest another twist on his logic:  A person standing in the path of a speeding bullet is more likely to be hurt by the bullet than a person not standing in its path.

I’ve noticed that there are about three articles per week on global warming in the news feeds that I track on the internet. They seem to follow a particular format. Each article contains at least two elements: a new warning of its consequences and a declaration that the debate of its causes is over. I’m sure there is an organization somewhere that is tasked to pump the articles out.

Glowarm dissenters can take comfort in the fact that the people staffing that organization don’t appear to be all that bright.

There is no ‘War in Iraq.’ There hasn’t been since Baghdad and the Saddam regime fell in 2003. Our operations in Iraq since then have been just policing actions. I’ve written about the ‘Iraq War’ myself. This blog even has an ‘Iraq War’ category. But, if you consider the difference between what we’re doing in Iraq and the way wars are usually conducted, you have to admit that what’s going on in Iraq is not a war.

The ‘War in Iraq’ is a lot like our ‘War on Drugs.’ Our government insists that we’ve been at war with the purveyors of illegal drugs in America for years, but we’ve made no significant progress. There are many reasons that we’ve made little progress in this ‘war’ — and many reasons why we shouldn’t be in it — but the biggest reason is that the ‘war’ is crippled by its rules of conduct. And the reason it has these crippling rules of conduct is that it’s a policing action and not a war at all. If it was a war we wouldn’t have to get a court order to raid a suspect’s home or business. We aren’t serious enough about achieving the objectives of the ‘War on Drugs’ to be calling it a war. Neither are we serious enough about securing Iraq to be calling it a war.

In Iraq we have a lot of vague political objectives but no military objectives. The military is better suited to capture and hold operations than it is to ‘persuade everyone to behave and learn to like us’ operations. Most of the time we don’t even know who is the enemy. The Iraqi elements fight among themselves and we stand by bemused by it all, not really knowing which element we want to prevail.

The only way to subdue and control the people of a foreign nation is to first beat them into submission. Take away everything they have and treasure and make them dependent. This would require destroying all their institutions and much of their infrastructure, killing or imprisoning all their leaders, and, of course, completely disarming them. Then, once all their hope is lost, ride in to their rescue and rebuild their lives for them giving them prosperity that they never knew before. Afterward, talk about returning to the old ways won’t gain much traction. (Please understand that I’m not recommending that this is what should have been done in Iraq. I’m simply saying that given the objective of turning Iraq into an America-like democracy, this is the only approach that would work. I’ve said before that I think we should have left Iraq to the Iraqis as soon as we captured or killed Saddam, his sons and most of his henchmen.)

In the future I hope we don’t go to war unless it is absolutely critical to our survival as a free nation. When we do I hope we really mean it and are prepared to see it through (that means do what is neccesary to win).

It’s all over the news.  Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger are locked in a custody battle over their eleven year-old daughter, Ireland. Daddy said some really bad things to Ireland through her voicemail when she wouldn’t answer his calls.  Mommy released the message to the media — apparently in violation of a court order.  Daddy says Mommy is a bad parent.  Mommy says Daddy is a bad parent.  It seems to me that the judge should consider granting custody of both parents to Ireland.

As expected, the Virginia Tech massacre has resulted in a hue and cry for more restrictions on the ownership and possession of guns. There should be debate about why such horrendous attacks occur and how to prevent them, but the primary focus should be on the attackers and what motivates them to commit such heinous acts. Take away guns and evil people will find other means to wreak havoc. Timothy McVeigh proved that possibility in Oklahoma City more than ten years ago.

Suppose that Cho Seung-Hui had encountered difficulty in legally acquiring a gun. Then the obvious alternative would have been to try to get one illegally. But suppose he wasn’t street-wise enough to do that. Would a psychopath, or whatever label properly applies to this pond scum, just give up? Not likely. It might take him longer to pull off an attack but he would most likely just find another way. If he could manage to chain all the doors to a large building without being challenged, he could probably manage to improvise a backpack full of explosives. Instructions on how to build bombs are readily available. The death toll from an alternative approach could have been much higher than 32.

We have to accept that for law-abiding citizens to have guns the criminal elements are also going to have access to guns. And we have to acknowledge that banning guns won’t keep guns out of the hands of the criminal elements. Remember, that’s why they are called ‘criminal elements’; they don’t abide by laws. Virginia Tech, with its ‘gun free zone’, gave Cho an advantage; he knew that he could methodically gun down the students and teachers without any significant resistance. If just one student, teacher or staff member had a gun available to use against Cho the death toll might have been much less.

The liberal media would like us to react emotionally and agree to further inroads against our rights as indidviduals. Instead let’s try to look at the issue logically. Which would give you the most comfort when you hear someone trying to break into your home: knowing that it is against the law for anyone to have a gun or knowing that you legally have one beside your bed? Which do you think gives the criminal contemplating breaking into your home the most discomfort: knowing that it is against the law for anyone to have a gun or knowing that you might legally have one beside your bed?

The Crestview News Bulletin reports that a “Baker Fire District referendum flames out.” Baker is a small town here in NWFL. The district was asking for an increase from $56 to $85 for annual residential assessments and from $90 to $125 for commercial assessments. The referendum, which was conducted by mail, was defeated 311 votes to 186 votes.

Commission Chairman Ben Carr speculated that having to pay the return postage on the ballots might have suppressed participation in the referendum and implied that it might have affected the outcome. He seems to believe that there were at least 126 voters who were willing to pay 29 to 35 dollars more each year for fire protection but weren’t willing to pay 39 cents to say so.

While I can believe that having to pay the return postage could have suppressed more ‘yes’ votes than ‘no’ votes, I seriously doubt that it affected the outcome. It’s easier for me to believe that the voters were influenced more by their level of confidence in the fire district commission than by a one-time 39 cent cost.

The temperature got down to 40 degrees here at my house this morning — in Florida!  And we are almost a month into Spring.

CBS News reports, in an article titled “Duke Case Spurs Campus Culture Cleanup,” that Duke University administrators are undertaking an introspective examination of campus culture. But wait. Before you jump to the conclusion that they are talking about looking into why they immediately presumed that the accused lacrosse players were guilty and took several punitive actions against them, consider this:

The notoriety of the case forced Duke to the front of academe in this evaluation of student life and campus culture. But colleges across the U.S. are also soul-searching and refining policies in the wake of the case, recognizing that Duke is not the only campus where the confluence of race, sex, privilege, and booze could spark a scandal.

“In part because of the Duke scandal, there’s a trend in higher education towards increasing accountability for perpetrators, more and better support for victims, and … more intensive prevention programs,” says Alan Berkowitz, a social justice consultant in Trumansburg, N.Y.

Not sure about who they mean by perpetrators and victims? Read on:

… since the case came to the fore last spring, colleges have been instituting or hurrying planned changes to address the problems of an athletics-dominated college atmosphere, where even Division III schools are relying on fine-tuned squads to draw recruits and prestige.

Still not certain what they think the real problem is? Keep reading:

“The Duke situation does reinforce the importance of not presuming a student is guilty, but, while tragic for the individuals involved, it has also had the important effect of causing universities to rethink the role athletes play and the rules that govern conduct,” says Karen-Ann Broe, a risk analyst at UEI.

Yes, they are still piling on the athletes. The athletes are the perps! While admitting that it is not good to prejudge someone, they still intend to blame the athletes for the whole thing.

I can save the university administrators a lot of money. No matter how many nannies you hire to lecture to a bunch of college boys some of them are going to get themselves and you in trouble. Don’t assume that you can do anything to make college life all that different from life in general.

Why does the Internal Revenue Service encourage us to file our income tax returns electronically? The answer is quite simple. Because they can process electronic returns faster and less expensively than paper returns. But that begs another question. If it is less expensive for the IRS to process electronic returns than paper returns, why do we have to pay extra to file electronically?

E-filing costs ten dollars or more whether you pay it directly or it’s included in the cost of your tax-filing software. Filing by mail only costs about a dollar for most people (postage, envelope, paper and printing). E-filing is more convenient for most of us too, but that doesn’t justify our having to pay about ten times the cost of filing by mail.

Each year I prepare and file three returns: my own, my mother’s and my wife’s mother’s. It took me less than an hour to print the returns, address the envelopes and mail the returns. I saved about 27 dollars. Until the IRS lowers the cost of e-filing to about that of filing by mail, I will continue to file by mail.

The current charge for e-filing is just another tax.