The indefagitable, Thomas Sowell

Love reading Thomas Sowell's columns. Some things worth repeating from today's column:

The vocabulary of the political left is fascinating. For example, it is considered to be "materialistic" and "greedy" to want to keep what you have earned. But it is "idealistic" to want to take away what someone else has earned and spend it for your own political benefit or to feel good about yourself.....

When political commentators from the Fox News Channel had books whose sales would normally make the New York Times' non-fiction best-seller list, the New York Times changed the rules for putting books on that list. Thus best-selling political books by Mike Huckabee and Dick Morris appeared last Sunday on a more obscure list of miscellaneous personal advice and how-to books, such as "Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook."....


The Obama administration seems to be following what might be called "the Detroit pattern"-- increasing taxes, harassing businesses, and pandering to unions. In the short run, it got mayors re-elected. In the long-run, it reduced Detroit from a thriving city to an economic disaster area, whose population was cut in half, as its most productive citizens fled.

Ownership of Gun Saves Life

Had they not owned a gun, perhaps we would be hearing about the "tragic murders" in Florida. The media tends to ignore stories where guns save lives.

When a burly ex-convict forced his way into a posh Florida home last week, he had no idea what awaited him -- a 25-year-old beauty queen with a pink .38-caliber handgun.

Meghan Brown, a former Florida pageant queen, shot and killed 42-year-old Albert Franklin Hill during a home invasion March 12 at the 2,732-square-foot house she shares with her fiance in Tierra Verde, Fla.

Hill barged into the home at around 3 a.m. after Brown responded to a knock at the front door, according to a police report. He allegedly grabbed the 110-pound Brown around her nose and mouth and dragged her to an upstairs bedroom.

The woman’s fiance, Robert Planthaber, said in an interview that he was quickly awakened by the altercation and ran to Brown’s side.

"I attacked him and took a severe beating to the head," Planthaber told FoxNews.com. "But I got him off of her long enough for her to scramble to the room where she keeps her pink .38 special.”

Brown, who reigned as the 2009 Miss Tierra Verde, snatched her gun from a nearby bedroom and shot the suspect several times – hitting him in the chest, groin, thigh and back, her fiance said. Hill was pronounced dead at the scene.

Panthaber, a 42-year-old arborist, said he believes he and his fiancee were targeted because of their wealth. He claimed a pizza delivery man and possible accomplice staked out the home for three months before Hill attempted to burglarize it.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2011/03/22/armed-beauty-queen-fatally-shoots-intruder-florida-home-invasion/#ixzz1HOEHA7ln

Japan and Nukes

While the earthquake and subsequent tsumani has caused tremendous problems at a nuclear power station in Japan, I don't see how these problems should cause the world to panic about existing nuclear facilities.

Germany is rushing to shut down all nukes. I expected better from Merckel.

The appropriate questions should be:

• Are you on a fault line?
• Are you next to the ocean?

If "no", then the whole incident is not applicable.

Obama, DOMA, and Gay Marriage

One word: Laughable!!!

1. Is Obama suddenly against the estate tax? Obama and the Democrats have the big proponents of the estate tax, but now they use the estate tax to justify getting rid of DOMA. No estate tax, no tax bill for Windsor.
2. If Windsor received the money tax free, then died, her heirs would pay the $350,000 tax bill. How is it less of a sob story? 
3. Similarly, if Syper left all her money to her sister, wouldn't liberals attack the sister if she complained about the tax bill?
4. Where's all the talk about "the rich" not paying their fair share? Windsor inherited about $4.5 million! (In 2009, the estate tax deduction was $3.5M + the remainder is taxed at 45%=). In other circumstances, liberals would be outraged that Windsor is complaining over a tax bill.

Yahoo News: The Obama administration announced last week that it will no longer defend in court a part of the Defense of Marriage Act that forbids the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage.

One widow's story was one of two cases pending in federal courts cited in the announcement of President Obama's decision, Bloomberg reports.

Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were together for more than 40 years when Spyer died in 2009. Not longer after her partner's death, Windsor received a $363,053 federal tax bill--a liability that she would not have faced had the federal government recognized their union.

The New York couple married in Canada in 2007 in their 70s, after they found out that Spyer's multiple sclerosis was getting worse. Spyer was a psychologist who had become quadriplegic from the disease before her death, and Windsor worked for IBM. They met in the 1960s at a restaurant in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. "We danced so much and so intensely that she danced a hole through her stockings," Spyer said in the New York Times' write up of their wedding.

Windsor is suing for the tax money back from the federal government, and the Obama administration has effectively decided she's right by dropping its defense. The administration will continue to enforce the law unless it is struck down by the courts or Congress.