Better Than Drudge

recent posts

about

  • What Everyone Forgets When Debating Gun Control

    Bald Eagle in Front of FlagBy Selwyn Duke

    In the wake of the Aurora mass shooting, the usual pattern is playing out with respect to gun control.  People such as Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Piers Morgan and Bill Moyers are beating the drum to restrict firearm ownership, as others try to beat them back.  One side says we’d be safer if guns were rarer; the other says that more guns equal less crime.  One side says guns kill people, the other that people kill people.  Facts and feelings are bandied back and forth (although one side specializes in the facts and the other in the feelings), but in all the commentary, some of which is very good, one point is universally missed.

    (more…)

  • The Aurora Propaganda Award Goes to…

    Back to School DuncecapBy Selwyn Duke

    The New York Daily News.  Hands down.

    The winning entry is an anti-Second Amendment Rights piece written in the wake of the Colorado tragedy, one in which virtually every line contains a callow, melodramatic appeal to emotion or an outright falsehood.

    (more…)

  • Bill O’Reilly’s Anti-gun Blarney

    By Selwyn Duke

    We expect anti-gun nonsense from people such as Bill Moyers and Little Big Gulp Bloomberg, but we might hope that Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly wouldn’t evoke an eye-rolling “Oh, really!” when discussing the subject. But as the crusty commentator further proved last night while arguing with a guest, Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), he still hasn’t done his homework on the firearms issue.

    In full-fire mode while talking about the Aurora tragedy with Chaffetz, O’Reilly insisted that there should be special reporting to the FBI when people purchase, as he put it, “heavy weapons … mortars, howitzers, machine guns.” The ignorance displayed through that comment is profound.

    First, if we instituted O’Reilly’s policy, obtaining a mortar, howitzer, or machine gun would be far easier than it currently is, as such weapons are tightly controlled under the National Firearms Act.

    Read the rest here.

  • The Injustice of Penn State’s Punishment

    By Selwyn Duke

    It is true that punishment should fit the crime, but it should also fit the criminals.

    The NCAA just announced what sanctions it will impose on Penn State University (PSU) in response to the horrible child sex-abuse scandal that rocked the nation. Almost none of the sanctions, however, make sense. This is because they amount to institutional punishment — not individual punishment. Yet it was individuals who committed the acts of commission and omission in question.

    Read the rest here.

  • Tea Party Targeted by “All the Bolsheviks’ Children” (ABC)

    Angel vs. DemonBy Selwyn Duke

    It wasn’t just that ABC’s Brian Ross was wrong in suggesting that the “Jim Holmes” he found on a Tea Party website was the same man who committed the heinous crime in Aurora, Colorado.  It’s that his comment was indicative of stupidity and corruption.

    (more…)

  • Handicaps and Handicapped Thinking

    874847_lowBy Selwyn Duke

    Just as mighty contests can rise from trivial things, mighty principles are often slain in their name. And good examples of this are often found in sports.

    There’s an Olympic runner named Oscar Pistorius who has made headlines for two very unusual reasons. First, he has no legs below the knee. Second, he’s not competing in the Special Olympics — but on the grand stage set to commence in London this month.

    Pistorius, a South African whose blade-like prosthetics have earned him the nickname “blade runner,” qualified for the Olympic 400-meter event. And he did it by beating able-bodied competitors. This makes his story inspirational to many, an accomplishment one may think should only be applauded. Yet there is another side to it: Some say that Pistorius may have an unfair advantage.

    This claim was made most recently by American Olympic gold medalist Michael Johnson, who said that while he considers Pistorius a friend, it’s ultimately wrong to allow prosthetic-wearing competitors to square off against the able-bodied. Writes the Telegraph:

    Read the rest here.

  • Where Obama is Right about Unearned Success

    Back Obama-TTO-003379By Selwyn Duke

    When Barack Obama said in Roanoke, Virginia, recently that “if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own,” he wasn’t all wrong. In fact, he knows well someone whose life thus attests. This person is a man of mixed race who billed himself as black. Growing up in a very liberal state, he was surrounded by guilt-ridden white liberals who told him his flatulence smelled like roses. He benefited from scholarships granted on the basis of race and other types of affirmative action, and was elevated beyond his capacities despite being a marijuana-addled, mediocre student. He wrote a few things (poorly), but “his” magnum opus was penned by a talented terrorist friend whom, he has said, he barely knew. He then vied for public office, and won a state seat by running unopposed. But the best legs-up were yet to come. When he decided to run for the U.S. Senate, he had a prostrate media in his corner. And when he ran for the presidency, they cranked it up into high gear, making this nobody a household name and his nefarious past disappear.

    But there’s a kicker here, too: Obama didn’t even get his you-didn’t-get-there-on-your-own speech on his own. It’s essentially the same speech that Elizabeth “Fauxcahontas” Warren gave in September 2011 when she said, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own — nobody.” 

    Read the rest here.

  • Why Equality Must Die

    By Selwyn Duke

    One of man’s faults is that he always swings from one extreme to another, without taking more than a pit stop in that lonely land called Enlightened Distinction. For example, it’s understandable that the French Revolutionaries would have adopted “égalité!” as part of their battle cry, coming as they did from a society in which class distinctions trumped all. But now we’ve come full circle, from preserving group-defined inequality regardless of merit — to enforcing group-defined equality regardless of merit.

    A case in point is a recent ruling mandating that New York City must hire unqualified black and Hispanic firefighters. Writes Judicial Watch:

    The Clinton-appointed federal judge who referred to a city fire department as a “stubborn bastion of white male privilege” has ordered it to give minority applicants who failed “discriminatory” tests priority hiring and retroactive seniority.

    That’s in addition to a previous damages award of $128 million for the black and Latino candidates who couldn’t pass a mandatory test to join the New York City Fire Department. Last year the same federal judge, Nicholas Garaufis, asserted the city’s fire department was “a stubborn bastion of white male privilege.”

    Read the rest here.

  • Please, No Rice with That Romney

    By Selwyn Duke

    With the rumor that Condoleezza Rice is a frontrunner to be Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential pick, she’s the talk of the town.  She’s so intelligent, so sophisticated, so statesmanlike and so scholarly that she could make you wonder if Hillary Clinton really ever was “the most intelligent woman in America.”  That’s the pitch, anyway.  But when you check this Rice’s ingredients, you have to ask, where’s the beef?

    When assessing this, I’m reminded of how the late Christopher Hitchens put Bill Clinton’s so-called intellectual prowess in perspective.  The 42nd president has a long history of making statements, Hitchens pointed out, yet what has he ever said that was profound or memorable?  Of course, like Clinton and “I feel your pain” or lawyering the word “is,” Rice has made memorable statements.  But they’re all hamburger helper—way past the sell-by date.

    (more…)

  • The Real Reason John Roberts Upheld ObamaCare?

    By Selwyn Duke

    It’s now well established that Chief Justice John Roberts had ulterior motives for upholding ObamaCare.  The usual theories involve his being concerned about the Court’s, or maybe even his own, losing of respect by seeming to operate in a partisan manner.  But, to ask what may appear a rhetorical question, why such concern about respect?  Is it just vanity, the desire to be viewed as a font of temperance and intellectualism?  Perhaps.  But there actually could be a more tangible area of self-interest.

    (more…)

Recent Comments

Categories

June 2026
M T W T F S S
1234567
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930