Riddle Me This #2

This one comes from the Tipsheet at Townhall:

Why, especially with the Sequester going on, does the Department of Homeland Security need, of all things, bagpipes?

Does this mean that we're headed for our version of the Highland Clearances?  (To learn more, you can also go here and here.)

Read More

Maryland To Tax Rain

When George Harrison wrote his 1966 song Taxman, he did not come up with anything as outlandish as what my state has enacted.  As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction.  Here in Maryland, starting this July, we will tax the runoff from rain, to pay for a project intended to decrease the amount of runoff that ends up in the Chesapeake Bay.  (H/T a12iggymom)

Read the story at the Daily Finance (including video below), the Gazette and Intellihub.

UPDATE:  Sorry to say, but the video is no longer available.

Read More

Margaret Thatcher 1925-2013

Margaret Thatcher, who served as the United Kingdom's first female Prime Minister, died today at age 87 after a stroke.  Known as the "Iron Lady", a sobriquet bestowed by the Soviet media, Thatcher was the leader of Britain's Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990, and Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, when she was ousted from both positions in favor John Major.  During her time in office, the United Kingdom's government moved rightward, privatizing some of their state-run businesses, and won a war against Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982.  She was also a major ally of American President Ronald Reagan during the waning years of the Cold War, and later advised his successor George H. W. Bush "this is no time to go wobbly" as he considered his response to Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.  After stepping down, she was named a Baroness and served in the House of Lords.

Margaret Roberts was born in 1925 in Grantham in central England.  Her father was a grocer and a Methodist lay minister.  She received a degree in chemistry at Oxford University and worked as a research chemist before becoming a barrister.  She may have helped to invent what came to be known as "soft-serve" ice cream.  She married local businessman Denis Thatcher in 1951, and gave birth to fraternal twins Carol and Mark two years later.  In 1959, she was elected to the House of Commons for the first time.  She stopped making public appearances in 2002 after suffering a stroke, making an exception to attend Reagan's funeral in 2004, and later had several smaller stokes.  Her husband Denis, 11 years her senior, died in 2003. Funeral services will be held at St. Paul's Cathedral, followed by a private cremation.

Read more at CNN, Fox News, the Guardian, BBC News, the Wall Street Journal and the Independent.

Read More

Yom HaShoah

This evening was the start of Holocaust Remembrance Day.  It will end at sunset tomorrow, following the Jewish and Biblical tradition of reckoning a day from one sunset to the next.  Yom HaShoah is observed on the Jewish Calendar date of 27 Nissan, which was chosen because the date fell after the Passover, but within the time of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.  The corresponding date on the Gregorian Calendar can vary quite a bit, due to the Jewish Calendar being based on lunar cycles and sometimes adding a "leap month".

Read more at About(dot)com and Monkey In The Middle, written by Findalis, one of my friends in the blogosphere.

In 2000, I had the somber privilege of visiting Auschwitz and Birkenau, both located near the Polish town of Oświęcim.  (Birkenau and another unit named Monowitz, used to supply German chemical plants with slave labor, started out as sub-camps of Auschwitz.)  One of the barracks at Auschwitz has been converted into a museum, full of exhibits containing artifacts taken from the prisoners, similar to those at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, but much larger.  Auschwitz still includes the wire fences with posts with curved tops, a few ovens used for cremation, and the ominous sign "Arbeit macht frei".  Only a small fraction of the numerous wooden barracks remain at Birkenau, but the camp otherwise has largely been preserved.

Read More

NYC Pay Phones Take You Back

In an attempt to promote an art exhibit, the ad agency Droga5 (whose name resembles "droga", the Polish word for "road") has enabled 5,000 pay phones in Manhattan to connect the caller with someone reminiscing about the way things were in 1993, the year which saw the first attack on the World Trade Center and the first election of Mayor Rudy Giuliani.  Among those recounting the past is former NY Yankees pitcher Jim Abbott, who threw a no-hitter that year.

Read the story at SF Gate and CBS New York.

It's notable that there still are pay phones in New York City.  For those of you too young to remember them, read about them here.

Read More

Wednesday Links

Some stories in the news from earlier today:

From Human Events, a crook invades the home of a Colorado prosecutor and meets the Second Amendment.

From Investors Business Daily, as Obamacare crumbles, its namesake goes back to fundraising.

From CNN Money, most individual health insurance plans don't cover everything required by Obamacare.

From the New York Post, basketball player Kobe Bryant praises Magic Johnson's son EJ for coming out.

Also from the New York Post, and from the "you can't make this up" department, five schools in Norway have rescheduled their mid-term exams to allow students to attend a Justin Bieber concert.

From My Fox NY, a school in Ohio has taken down a portrait of Jesus which had been displayed since 1947.

From World Net Daily, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad goes on trial (in absentia) for crimes against humanity.

From the Washington Times, an Islamic cleric has given permission for Syrian rebels to rape non-Sunni women.

From the Jerusalem Post, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu promises a strong response if rockets are fired into Israel from Gaza.

From the Military Times, North Korea has stopped workers from South Korea from entering an industrial complex in the north, but used by both countries.

From Fox News, the U.S. Military will deploy a missile defense system in Guam, in response to threats from North Korea.

From WKRG, the Carnival Triumph has broken away from her dock.

From the Daily Currant, Egypt has issued an arrest warrant for American comedian Jon Stewart.

And from the Canada Free Press and my neck of the woods, at a hearing by the Maryland legislature, a 15-year-old witness testifies in favor of gun rights.

Read More

The Blacks Of Iraq

Iraq has a black minority population, who are there for essentially the same reason as the black people in the United States, and experience many of the same problems faces by black Americans.  They descend from slaves taken from Africa centuries ago, and number about 2 million.

This 2008 article in the Los Angeles Times recounts how some black Iraqis were rooting for then-Senator Obama to win the American presidency.  According to the New York Times, some of them were courted by Iraqi political candidates in the 2010 elections.  As Frontpage Mag reports, slavery is still practiced in parts of the Islamic world.

Read More