Links and Minifeatures 02 19 Sunday Part II

Eidelblog has a good article on the "windfall" for oil companies, and how it is a good thing, despite the NY Times characterizing it as a corporate giveaway.

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Belmont Club has a wonderful account of the century ago Moro guerrilla war in the Phillipines. It makes several points worth making, the most important of them being at the end. Some readers may consider it long, but it is worthwhile.



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My local tree killers had a good article today about Congressman Pombo, trying to bring environmental legislation out of the 1970s mindset. While I consider myself an environmentalist, I have always believed that extremist environmental legislation is not only a Bad Idea, but mostly unconstitutional as well. Species have been arising and going extinct for hundreds of millions of years. To take the tack that we have to stop the earth's biological clock completely is irrational, and as far as I can understand the relevant issues, bad science. We do need a certain amount of unbroken open space, for any number of reasons, and we probably need more than we've got in many urban locations. But many of the things that property owners have to do to appease the environmental neo-nazis are beyond rationality.



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The local rag also has some good information about immigration loopholes that get exploited because employers have no requirement to verify documents.



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Captain's Quarters says it very well when he says that the press corps will have earned the right to criticize the newshandling of others when they actually run all of the news, like they keep saying their job is, rather than self-censoring because they are afraid that, for instance, some islamic crazies may target them. They bait the White House because they know it is safe - their press pass won't even be suspended. But the logic they use to bait the White House goes by the boards as soon as there are possible consequences to them.



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Victor Davis Hanson has two worthwhile columns in Why No Nukes For Iran? and A European Awakening Against Islamic Fascism?



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Volokh Conspiracy went back and dug out an old Dr. Seuss political cartoon from before he made it big in children's books. The one he showed, from August of 1941, is still relevant in a different way today.



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Via Instapundit comes the story of a wounded soldier and widow of an american soldier won a 102 million verdict from an Al Qaeda financier.



Facetious snark: Don't you just love it when one enemy of civilization attacks another?



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Tomorrow is the President's Day Holiday here in San Diego schools. You'd think that with all the stuff about Dr. Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks that the school went over with the Kindergarten class, of which my daughter is one, they could at least have familiarized her with exactly who George Washington and Abraham Lincoln were. No such luck. My wife and I got a completely blank stare when we asked her what the school has taught about the two most important Americans ever. We did our best to remedy the situation on a kindergarten level, but the level of resistance is high, as if to say, "If it's so important, why didn't the school teach it?" I have a parent conference Tuesday; I think I'm going to ask a few pointed questions.