columnist and author of the 'nanny state'

Secularists submit!

Having mentioned Bill Kristol in my column today, I was reminded of a really cool copy of Oriana Fallacci’s The Rage and the Pride the Weekly Standard sent me after I reviewed the book for the magazine.

“Always love your country — but never trust your government!” If every journalist lived by Robert Novak’s credo, this nation would be a far more entertaining, enlightened and admirable place.

My weekend with the kids.

Instapundit posts on the recent scary* ABC News story — “Fear for Obama’s Safety Grows as Hate Groups Thrive on Racial Backlash” — and notes that “we didn’t see this kind of concern when people were saying the same kinds of things about Bush.”

I suspect that’s true. And it reminded me of the threat of eco-terrorism.

For nearly seven years, the nation has turned its terror focus on Al Qaeda and the hunt for Usama bin Laden. But there is a domestic terror threat that federal officials still consider priority No. 1 — eco-terrorism …

FBI estimates place damages from these attacks at well over $100 million. So far, no one has been killed.

It’s a problem that’s unlikely to go away.

If Rush Limbaugh “legitimizes people who are on the edge to go do something or say something,” as the ABC piece points out, couldn’t others make a strong case that people like Al Gore, or other global warming hyperalarmists, are legitimizing environmental extremists? After all, if you incessantly preach that humans are destroying the earth for our children with mansions, beef and gratuitous energy use, isn’t it our moral obligation to do something?

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*”The Paranoids Are Out to Get Me!” Jesse Walker at Reason has a great piece on the militia scares.

“If anybody did escape, they’d have a surprise,” he said. “We’re a community of hunters. Just about everybody has guns.”

Though his obsessive habit of denigrating anyone he disagrees with can become grating, there is no getting around the fact that James Wolcott is a tremendously talented writer*. I read him all the time.

But this post hit me as both humorous and logically unstable.

Glenn Beck Must Love Hitler, He Has Him on the Show So Much

So while I was writing the post below, I had Fox News on mute, and glanced up at one point to see Hitler’s face staring back at me in closeup. Then a three-quarter shot of Hitler, montaging into another evil, menacing closeup.

It was Glenn Beck’s show, of course. And not the first time I’ve seen him parade the Fuhrer across the screen.

Glenn Beck must love Hitler, he has him on the show so much. Those mesmerizing eyes, staring at us from the deathly depths of psychopathic depravity, yes there’s something about those twin dark pools that Glenn Beck can’t resist.

If we allow that Glenn Beck “must love” Hitler because Glenn Beck purportedly features the notorious despot repeatedly on his television show, certainly we can deduce that James Wolcott must love Rush Limbaugh ( at least 96 mentions on his blog), Sarah Palin (276), Michelle Malkin (39), Jonah Goldberg (56) and Glenn Reynolds (28)/Instapundit (13) .

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*by “talented,” I am referring to prose style not substance.