I see where the Review-Journal published without notable dissent (lede story, Page 2B, Jan. 16) another one of these cooked-up “report cards” on how Nevada is doing, this one from a Henderson-based outfit calling itself the Children’s Advocacy Alliance.
As usual, the finding was: “We suck.”
More than 700 and perhaps as many as 1300 years ago — back when the peace-loving Muslims were trying to conquer Europe by the sword (till they were stopped at Tours by Charles Martel) — the ancestors of the people who became the Aztecs passed through what is now Utah and Arizona, on their way south.
Left behind were relatively peaceful farmers, the Anasazi, likely the ancestors of today’s Pima and Papago (Tohono O’Odham.)
On Dec. 31, the daily Miami Herald editorialized:
“The Bush administration last month gave the National Rifle Association a parting gift by lifting a decades-long ban on concealed weapons in national parks. …
“These harmful new rules could take years to undo,” warned the suntanned statists. “Make no mistake, though, they must be taken off the books before they can do too much damage. …
SPECIAL TO SHOTGUN NEWS
President-elect Barack Obama hasn’t even taken office yet. But he’s already got one big group of Americans on their feet and moving.
What is Barack Obama’s position on the rights to bear arms?
Over the weekend, Israeli troops and tanks invaded Gaza, the coastal strip of land south of their country which is inhabited almost entirely by Muslim Arabs, speaking the same colloquial Arabic as the Egyptian residents of the Sinai.
From the tone of some of the news coverage, one might get the impression Israeli generals and politicians occasionally wake up in the morning and — motivated by little more than boredom — say, “Hey, the weather’s nice. What say we invade a neighboring Arab state and kill some people?”
“Corruptissima republica plurimae leges,” warned Publius Cornelius Tacitus, the Roman senator and historian: “The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.”
“If you have ten thousands regulations, you destroy all respect for the law,” agreed the similarly pragmatic Winston Churchill, a few millennia later.
California Correspondent writes to respond to my piece on the global cooling of 2008:
“You may be aware of Bjorn Lomborg, a Danish scientist who was long skeptical of global warming. He is not any more. His complaint is with what he perceives as hysteria, and unsound policy. I wonder if your line of reasoning has more to do with ideology and your view of (proposed) policy, than a considered look at the science at work. The mechanism of global warming is well established. …
As usual, it was initially reported as unmitigated “happy news.”
“Your Metered-Dose Inhaler is Changing to Help Improve the Environment,” is how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration chooses to present word that the inhalers used by those who suffer from asthma and other respiratory ailments are being pulled from the shelves as of Jan. 1.
My relatives in New England are fighting their way out from under a giant ice storm. Here in Las Vegas it’s been snowing all week, several weeks earlier than our usual one-day-a-year photo op of snow and icicles sparkling one of our palm-bedecked golf courses before melting away by afternoon. The National Weather Service calls it “a rare snow event.”
Why? It’s getting colder. 2008 was the coolest year in a decade.
At hearings in Las Vegas Tuesday, Nevadans who have lost their jobs or their homes — or both — told a federal panel that $700 billion transferred to their Wall Street pals by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and (Federal Reserve) Inflation Secretary Ben Bernanke have done nothing to improve financial conditions outside New York.
The three-week-old panel, created by Congress to monitor the bailout monies it authorized in October and chaired by Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren, chose to hold its first “field” hearing in Southern Nevada, according to the hearing schedule, because of its status as “Ground Zero of the Housing and Financial Crises.”
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