Prime Post

Today this blog turns 7 years old, which is a prime number.

And, this marks the 1,013th posting, which is also prime.

Just Bad Luck

On the campaign trail in Iowa, Obama says:

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa. "But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck." Obama listed three events overseas -- the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises -- which set the economy back.

How the Arab uprisings hurt the economy isn't quite clear to me, but be that as it may, recall Heinlein wrote in 1973:

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded- here and there, now and then- are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.This is known as "bad luck."

UPDATE: Great minds thinking alike? Surely independently, Instapundit posted the exact same juxtaposition exactly one hour after I did!

Posted at 10:00 pm by Glenn Reynolds

Ha!

2012 Via Palantir

Here is a hilarious guide to the 2010 election campaign, as seen through the lens of Middle Earth.

Orcs are public sector unions, ACORN, anyone who writes for Huffington Post, and every other evil, statist minion ever identified by Glenn Beck. Speaking of Beck, his closest equivalent is Denethor, Steward of Gondor — well-spoken and intelligent but more-than-slightly crazed.

The photographic juxtapositions alone are worth hitting the link and reading it all.



For extra credit, don't miss this "unused dvd commentary" dialogue by Zinn and Chomsky on the Fellowship of the Ring...

Judicial Engagement

Perhaps some good news from the judicial branch:

In striking down Obamacare’s individual mandate today, the Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used the term “judicial engagement” to describe the proper role of courts in deciding constitutional cases. The Institute for Justice coined that term and today marks the first time a federal court has used it in this context. Instead of deferring reflexively to Congress as courts so often do, the Eleventh Circuit correctly observed that “the Constitution requires judicial engagement, not judicial abdication.” Institute for Justice president Chip Mellor praised the ruling: “We have more government at every level than the Constitution authorizes. This decision is an important step towards the direction of limited government.”

If Judicial Engagement is the opposite of judicial activism, by reining in government power to accord with the structure of the Constitution, rather than to arbitrarily expand it for the sake of expediency, I'm all for it!