The government continues to take our money and hand it to the dairy industry to overproduce, so we can pay more for milk, and they can take more of our tax money to store the surplus.

“They keep making it and we keep buying it,” said Steve Gill, an Agriculture Department official.

No kidding? Give that man a raise for mental acuity.

This kind of outrageousness has been going on for so long that I’m just numb to it, but it’s useful to remind ourselves of the stupidy and venality of government policies occasionally, particularly as elections approach. Unfortunately, both parties are guilty.

The Supreme Court has ruled that candidates campaigning for judgeships can describe themselves and their opponents.

Cheerfully, this bodes ill for McCain-Feingold.

Jon Dougherty has the scoop on Magaw and his opposition to armed pilots. It would threaten his plans at empire building.

Putting this pompous, power-hungry gun-grabbing bureaucrat in charge of airline security is one of the most infuriating things that Bush has done. By itself, it’s enough to cost him my vote next time. Not that I’d ever vote for a Democrat either, of course.

Tapped says we all should be outraged over this column by Cal Thomas.

On the eve of our great national birthday party and in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when millions of us turned to God and prayed for forgiveness of individual and corporate sins and asked for His protection against future attacks, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has inflicted on this nation what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the terrorists.

Well, like all aspects of this pledge deal, I’m having trouble getting very worked up over it. If he’d said, “I believe it’s a greater injury…” then I might say, what an idiot. But he’s simply saying that many will conclude that, which may, as far as I know, be perfectly true.

Some people get pretty upset about God, and his name, and taking it in vain, and saying it or not saying it. I’m not one of them, though I try not to needlessly offend people whose beliefs differ from mine.

And to be honest, while I don’t think that this particular decision is all that big a deal, I do think that bad judicial decisions can, and have, damaged more property and killed more people than the Islamists could dream of doing.

[Update at 12:46 PM PDT]

Orrin Judd agrees with Cal. Or at least he’s one of the people that Cal’s talking about.

Another government employee has been arrested for forest arson. It’s a county employee, hired to count Mexican spotted owls in New Mexico.

Thomas James, at the Louisiana Mars Society (whose blog I just added to the left, in the Space/Science category), has an on-point critique of the most recent report from the Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry.

I haven’t read it in full myself, but when I do, I’ll try to get around to saying something intelligent about it. But for now, read his.

If, that is, you can manage it without making your eyes bleed. He really needs to fix the colors on the site–the links themselves are unreadable.

I wonder if there’s more to the story of the Las Vegas threat than the FBI wants us to know? J.J. Johnson thinks so. He interviewed the man who picked up the Arabic phone call himself.

The Las Vegas Review Journal article on Saturday sent us on a mission. We were determined to meet Michael Hamdan for several reasons:

1. The FBI said that the story was not credible but did not provide any reasons for this conclusion – as if somehow in the last two weeks the FBI itself has acquired the credibility to pass judgment. They have missed tips before.

2. The FBI mentioned a polygraph, but never stated that Mr. Hamdan had failed it. In typical government newspeak, they implied a connection and hoped their 8th grade reading level subjects would make that assumption.

3. Mr. Hamdan claimed that the FBI did not return his phone calls. This happened to us in 1996, in the aftermath of the pipe-bombing at the Olympics.

4. Mr. Hamdan was demonized by the local media. Due to our past experience, that was a clear red flag.

In short, we’ve seen this movie before.

I’m wondering if the FBI is saying publicly that there’s nothing to it, to prevent panic and reduction in casino business over the holiday, while hoping to find/prevent the perps from carrying it out. If so, they’re playing a very dangerous game.

I disagree with Philip Shropshire about almost everything, but he understands why space is important.

CAIR has responded to the president’s speech with their usual disingenuousness. They continue to ignore the fundamental issues, and they continue to ignore the sick culture at work in the territories, and the Arab world at large. If they want to promote “American-Islamic relations,” this isn’t the way to do it.

“The speech was a step in the right direction, but it fell short of offering a clear vision of the ultimate destination. Core issues such as the status of Jerusalem and existing Israeli settlements, final borders and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes, were not addressed in a way that offers hope for a just and comprehensive settlement to the Middle East conflict. It was the failure to address these vital issues that brought us to the current impasse.

No, it was a failure on the part of the Palestinian “leadership” to negotiate these issues like civilized human beings, instead choosing to send children to bomb other children (and often babies) with poisoned construction fasteners, as a means of achieving unattainable goals, that brought us to the current impasse.

“The right to freedom should never be conditioned on the whims of a hostile party and must not face a veto by any individual, group or government opposed to peace. It is up to the Palestinians themselves to choose their leaders in a free and independent political process. That leadership should reflect the hopes and aspirations of all Palestinians.

Sorry, but no. Not when those “hopes and aspirations” include (as demonstrated in their own textbooks, public statements, web sites, radio addresses, etc.) the goals of the destruction of the state of Israel, and the murder of its citizens.

“Our policies in the Middle East should be based on American national interests and on universal values of freedom and justice, not on the political and religious agenda of an influential domestic lobby for a foreign government.”

Ahhh, it didn’t take them long to trot out the old, “the American policy is in thrall to the evil Jews” argument. It’s deniable, since they won’t be specific about what the “domestic lobby” is, or who the “foreign government” is, but most of us are capable of reading between the lines, as they intend. Unfortunately for them, some of us are capable of reading between the lines between the lines, which they didn’t intend.

Awad thanked the president for his statements in praise of Islamic culture and its contributions to world civilization. He said those comments were particularly significant given the current atmosphere of anti-Muslim rhetoric.

The “current atmosphere of anti-Muslim rhetoric”? What atmosphere would that be? The only rhetoric I hear is anti-Islamic-terrorist. Does Mr. Awad think that it’s over the top to criticize people who glorify the murder of innocents in the name of his religion? If not, I’m waiting for him to say so, and to join in the criticism.

I haven’t a lot to say about the 9th Circuit’s ruling yesterday, but since it’s such a hot new story, I’ll say, what did you expect?–it’s the 9th Circuit.

And I agree with those who say it’s a tempest in a teapot either way (about on a par with flag burning). Primarily I agree with Brink Lindsey, though.