columnist and author of the 'nanny state'

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In 1993, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the forerunner to Fatah, signed on to the Declaration of Principles with Israel. The agreement, brokered by the United States, said the parties would engage only in bilateral negotiations to reach any agreement on the final status of a Palestinian state.

This week, in the august body where Zionism was once declared racism, where “human rights” councils are regularly led by the world’s most impressive Jew haters and votes condemning Israel are more common than any other, Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian National Authority, will break this agreement, as he has so many others.

More at New York Post.

John Stossel touches back on a A Libertarian’s View of Gay Marriage (note: I’m not a “L”ibertarian).

Seth Mandel at Commentary links to my column on Rick Perry’s smarts and makes a stong point: Press Forgets Obama’s Anti-Intellectual 2008 Campaign.

Libertarians hunt humans — and other tales.

Science when it suits them.

Finally, our first release by the Mercury Ink imprint, Michael Vey: The Prisoner of Cell 25 Richard Paul Evans, is a New York Times #1 bestseller.

This week, I appeared on “Stossel” to debate the future of gay marriage with Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage.

In short, my position entails government abandoning the marriage business. This would permit individuals to enter into their own legal arrangements and accept — or not — any definition of marriage that suits their own moral or social outlook. It would remove the issue from courts and the vagaries of democracy. What other private relationship needs a useless stamp of approval from the state?

Needless to say, this position is probably deeply unpopular in the real world for two reasons. 1.) Social conservatives would see it as weakening of traditional marriage. 2.) It would not grant the legal, societal and state endorsement gay marriage advocates are seeking.

Judging from this appearance, though, hipster libertarians types are on board.

(c/p the blaze.)

(David Harsanyi, Creators Syndicate,)

Blaze.

You know what they say; one man’s terrorist is another man’s democratically elected congressman.

That’s just one of the many lessons of the debt ceiling compromise, a deal that heralds a new era of electrifying political rhetoric. Nazis are out. Jihadists are in.

The tea party “acted like terrorists,” Joe Biden reportedly said of negotiations. One reasonable New York Times columnist called the tea party the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP, and the other advised the radicals to “put aside their suicide vests” — for now. And in a sweeping assault on the tea party, metaphors, syntax and clarity, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews packed everything he’d read on the blogs into a glorious globule of rhetorical confusion.

But fret not. Terrorist analogies are welcome when democracy fails to break to the left. Republicans should never refer to the Congressional Progressive Caucus as a bunch of wealth-destroying jihadists who wear suicide vests packed with prosperity-killing stimulus plans. That kind of hyperbole would be catastrophic, leading to violence and/or another alarmist Diane Sawyer television special. But Bob Beckel is just being cute when he discusses the “tea terrorist party” on Fox News. (He later apologized.)

And it turns out that the extremist freshman wing of the Republican Party (which wing isn’t extreme, though — am I right?) voted 59-28 in favor of the bipartisan “sugar-coated Satan sandwich” debt deal. What kind of namby-pamby hostage takers are these people? (Did you know that 95 House Democrats also voted against raising the ceiling? From what we’ve learned about staggering dangers of fooling around with this policy, we apparently have another 95 nihilists running around D.C.)

If you’re wondering why these elected officials, representing their constituents within the system, are the equivalent of terrorists, a Democratic congressman from Pennsylvania bores to the heart of the matter: “This small group of terrorists,” Mike Doyle explained, “have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Well, damn near impossible. Washington will have to squeeze by on $43,900,000,000,000 over the next decade while wrestling with real cuts that are likely to rise to zero — or maybe less. If we can’t spend money, who are we as a people?

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Michael Vey

Here is the news item on Mercury Ink:

Glenn Beck has found a new outlet for his “million book ideas”. The right-wing radio host is launching a publishing imprint in conjunction with Simon & Schuster.

Already the author of seven consecutive number one bestsellers, across fiction, non-fiction, self-help and children’s picture books, Beck has a new non-fiction title, The Original Argument: The Federalists’ Case for the Constitution, Adapted for the 21st Century, out later this month, and a new novel out this autumn. But his current dominance of America’s book charts isn’t enough for the author, who announced yesterday that his production company Mercury Radio Arts would be launching a publishing division.

… at The Blaze.

Harsanyi: All the drama’s on TV
Television today consistently has become the place to explore the American cultural and political experience.

If you’re feeling tense and beleaguered, the recently concluded first season of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” probably wasn’t for you.

The show’s violence and ceaseless tension did not make for a relaxing viewing experience, to say the least. But you should know this: Not only is “The Walking Dead” an artistic high point for the zombie genre (OK, that’s not a very high bar), it also may be the smartest show on television. It’s a gripping and gritty study of how people react to hopelessness and fear — and, need it be mentioned, hordes of awfully hungry, man-eating undead in various stages of decomposition.

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