Did my matzos come?

When they say, "People should be able to mock Muhammad and not fear for their safety."

Until then, no chance.
 

Once environmentalists realize that the earth is cooling, not warming, will they lobby for an all-coal economy?

The linked column explains something I've been curious about: how solar activity and cosmic radiation together affect planetary temperature.

(Via Drudge.)
 

Funny juxtaposition from Stephen Pollard.
 

In April Andrew Sullivan objected to remarks by former Ambassador and Undersecretary of State John Bolton:

What staggers me [. . .] is Bolton's point-blank view that the US had no responsibility to impose order after the invasion, and no responsibility for security within the country. Bolton actually says that the only error Bush really made was not giving the Iraqis "a copy of the Federalist papers and saying, 'Good luck.'" Yes, he says he's exaggerating for effect, but he is conveying the gist of the policy. The casual recklessness and arrogance of these people never cease to amaze. The world is theirs' to play with - and the victims of predictable and predicted violence are left to help themselves[.]
 

Do we have the right to defend ourselves by taking action that will cause havoc elsewhere?

With apologies to Mr. Sullivan, and to "the victims of predictable and predicted violence" in Iraq: Yes, we do. Keeping our country safe and peaceable is difficult enough. If another nation threatens or attacks us, whether it's that nation's people, its leaders, or a rogue group operating within its borders, we must respond. And if by eliminating the danger, we create the conditions for disorder in the enemy nation, such is the price that that nation pays for its actions, including allowing the danger to grow in the first place.

I favor a high standard for retaliation, and Iraq qualified. As I noted previously, former UN weapons inspector David Kay "maintained that Mr. Bush was right to go to war in Iraq, and characterized Saddam's regime as 'far more dangerous than even we anticipated' when it was thought he had WMDs ready to deploy." Removing Saddam was necessary and proper, even if violent chaos was an unavoidable consequence. We have the right to defend ourselves from those who would harm us.

How should we view the current volatility in Iraq? I'll quote (as I've done twice previously) Daniel Pipes:

Fixing Iraq is neither the coalition's responsibility nor its burden. The damage done by Saddam will take many years to repair. Americans, Britons, and others cannot be tasked with resolving Sunni-Shiite differences, an abiding Iraqi problem that only Iraqis themselves can address.
 

I'd add that we can't simultaneously battle our numerous enemies, clean up any excess damage (however calculated), and keep the home front safe and secure. Those three jobs are too much to ask of the most efficient and scrupulous bureaucracy, which goodness knows we don't have. Fighting our enemies and keeping our citizens safe: that's enough to be going on with.
 

Changes to the blogroll: Clive Davis and Stephen Pollard have shifted to The Spectator's site, so I've updated their addresses; and, with regret, I've finally removed The Diplomad, which I kept hoping would return. If you never visited The Diplomad, take a look and see why I kept the link up so long.
 

Don Boudreaux, Chairman of the Economics Department at George Mason and co-proprietor of Cafe Hayek, is one of my favorite bloggers. So it's a great disappointment to me that he describes Michelle Malkin as a "xenophobe" and "xenophobic" for opposing a sharp increase in immigration to the US. I've always found Boudreaux not only intelligent but also decent and thoughtful. That such a man ascribes Malkin's concern (and mine) to irrationality is quite dispiriting. Would he respect our views more if we had economics degrees? Or does he consider xenophobic all who worry about immigration, whatever their (our) credentials? These are questions that until recently I'd not have imagined asking. What a shame.
 

Because I want intelligent, honorable, articulate conservatives in the White House for sixteen straight years. If Romney gets the nod this time around I'll vote for him enthusiastically, but Thompson in 2008 and Romney in 2016 would be better for the country.

Note: I reserve the right to change my mind on this.
 

Thomas Sowell:

It is an exercise in futility to try to refute words that are meaningless. If a word has no concrete meaning, then there is nothing that can be refuted. “Price gouging” is a classic example.

The phrase is used when prices are higher than most people are used to. But there is nothing special or magic about what we happen to be used to.

When the conditions that determined the old prices change, the new prices are likely to be very different. That is not rocket science.

How have conditions changed in recent years? The biggest change is that China and India — with more than a billion people each — have had rapidly growing economies ever since they began relaxing government controls and allowing markets to operate more freely.

When there are rising incomes in countries of this size, the demand for more petroleum for both industry and consumers is huge. Increasing the supply of oil to meet these escalating demands is not nearly as easy. . . .

Oil-company executives make big bucks incomes, almost as much as liberal movie stars who are never criticized for “greed.” And if Big Oil CEOs worked for nothing, it is unlikely to be enough to bring the price of a gallon of gas down by a nickel.

But facts are not nearly as exciting as rhetoric — and the role of most political rhetoric is to be a substitute for facts.
 

Blaming George W. Bush for the rise of radical Islam is like blaming Bill Clinton for the spread of AIDS.
 

Michael Ledeen's right. Where's the MSM on this?

Rarely have so many journalists, politicians and commentators so totally missed a headline. There are now five American hostages in Iran. . . . The Americans were taken hostage for the same reasons the regime has routinely taken foreign hostages from the first year of its existence: to resolve internal power struggles, to demonstrate to the Iranian people the hopelessness of their condition by directly challenging the infidels to do anything about the humiliation of their countrymen, and to impose their will on a Western world the mullahs view as feckless and paralyzed. When the American embassy was overrun in the fall of 1979, Khomeini famously proclaimed that the Americans “can’t do a thing,” and today the regime is trying to show that neither the Americans nor the Brits (five more of whom were taken hostage in the past couple of days) can do anything to challenge the mullahcracy. . . .

It is a basic tenet of the Iranians’ worldview that nothing of great significance will occur in the world without American support, which in practice means they are unlikely to launch a revolution until and unless they see signs of such support. It also means that the mullahs constantly seek to demonstrate that America is impotent, thus hoping to discourage potential challenges from below. What better way than to take American (and British) hostages, and show that the United States (and Her Majesty’s government) are powerless to do anything about it?
 

Infuriating.