Even people who benefit from big government love it less when they have to live under it.

What a shock eh? It's way easier to build an ideal society with other people's money, I guess.

The latest converts to the church of It’s Okay When We Do It

The subset of the lawyerly elite who happened to be Democrats became apoplectic when the Bush administration held POWs at Gitmo (without trials!), used water-boarding (on a few), and did whatever they wanted to in order to prosecute their wars. And now? Well now that they're in power they've pulled an Emily Litella on all that shit.

Since taking office the Obama administration did stop with the water-boarding stuff it's true but they escalated things by starting to do targeted killings of  terrorists some of whom were American citizens,  and Gitmo remains open for business .) It now seems to Obama that the Bush-era executive war powers excesses are somehow okay now that they're the ones doing it. Lawyers that once condemned Bush as a constitution shredding maniac are now writing legal memos justifying the use of the same measures that Bush used and even worse they are presenting them with a straight-faced seriousness that defies understanding. And those of us who opposed all of this when Bush did it (and still oppose it now as well) are ridiculed as isolationists, legal nit-pickers, and worse! Go figure?

Well that was then, and this is now you  see.

Sign of the times...cont'd. June 9, 2011

From the comments section of an Ann Althouse blog post:

"Protesting Bush's wars was patriotic and American and Right and Just. Protesting Obama's wars is just Racist."

This describes the political zeitgeist of this time and place perfectly. Since January 20th 2009 the peace movement has entirely vanished from American political consciousness. Charges of racism never cease.

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Hey, I needed cigarette money!

Ayn Rand accepted Social Security? Does that invalidate (on its own) everything she wrote about individual responsibly and autonomy?

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Stowaway microbes may have contaminated Mars, hinder search for life - Popular Science

Hutaree defense team challenges their "no-bail" status with increasing effectiveness - Detroit News

So Prime Minister what do you really think? - The Sun (U.K.)

British PM Gordon Brown shows his utter contempt for a typical member of his party's base. Calls a simple working-class woman a bigot and cry-baby for her questions to him on a forgotten but still live microphone.

Buy guns because you want them not as an investment - Notes From The Bunker

My feelings exactly. Just buy what you need or want. Leave the "investment" stuff to the professionals.

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N.H. State Liquor Commissioner arrested for DWI - Manchester Union-Leader

Obama to close the Guantanamo detention camp, but to open two more - American Conservative

"As yet there is no sign that the notorious eight-year-old detention facility is close to a shut down. Worse yet, there is evidence that, when it finally is closed, it will be replaced by two Guantanamos — one in Illinois and the other in Afghanistan."

Saturn's moons Dione and Titan as seen by the Cassini robotic orbiter - Astronomy Pic of the Day

Why I Give My 9 Year-Old Autistic Son Pot - Slate (Marie Myung-ok Lee)

Seems to work out just fine says the author.

Myth Busters Adam Savage speech to Harvard Humanist student group - boingboing

About why he's an atheist.

Jonah Goldberg on the Tea Party movement - LA Times

The tea parties are a delayed conservative backlash against Bush.