This commentator seems to live in an alternate reality when it comes to the Second Amendment.

The frightening thing, to me, is his job description:

Dick Meyer, a veteran political and investigative producer for CBS News, is Editorial Director of CBSNews.com based in Washington.

Nope, no bias there…

Steyn hilariously points out the simplistic and idiotic inability of the press and politicians, particularly in Europe (but in the US, too) to tell their “right wingers” apart.

A reader tipped me off to this latest bit of insanity from Bezerkely.

The English R1A reading and comprehension course, titled “The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian Resistance,” states in its course description that “conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections”?a violation of the university’s Faculty Code of Conduct.

According to the course description, the class “takes as its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight for their own self-determination.”

I have some suggestions to further flesh out the curriculum.

English R1A, titled “The Politics and Poetics of White Aryan Resistance.”

This class takes as its starting point the right of white people in America to fight for their own self-determination. Liberal thinkers are encouraged to seek other sections. Instructor: David Duke

English R1A, titled “The Politics and Poetics of Native American Resistance.”

This class takes as its starting point the right of the aboriginal peoples in America to fight for their own self-determination. Cowboy thinkers, and Custer and John Wayne apologists are encouraged to seek other sections. Instructer: Russell Means

English R1A, titled “The Politics and Poetics of Feminine Resistance.”

This class takes as its starting point the right of the non-conservative women in America to fight for their own self-determination. Misogynists, male chauvinist pigs, and rapists (i.e., all heterosexual men) are encouraged to seek other sections. Instructer: Catherine McKinnon

I’ve got a comments section–feel free to come up with your own.

[Saturday morning update]

The Angry Clam blog at Berkely is all over this story.

Today’s Salon has a very interesting article about the possible future of blogging by Steven Johnson.

Professor Volokh has a nice little piece in today’s Journal defending the Justice Department’s defense of the Second Amendment. I take issue with one of his points, however.

And the right, if firmly accepted by the courts, may actually facilitate the enactment of modest gun controls. Today, many proposals, such as gun registration, are opposed largely because of a quite reasonable fear that they’ll lead to D.C.-like gun prohibition.

While this may be true for “modest gun controls” in general, I don’t think that it will have much effect in terms of resistance to registration. Even with a formally-recognized right to own guns, many will still view registration as a potential prelude to a rapid and preemptive confiscation, because any government that contemplates consfiscating guns is likely to be indifferent to Constitutional concerns.

If one’s view of the right to bear arms is as a last line of defense against tyranny, then allowing the government to know who has all the guns and where they are weakens that defensive posture considerably.

For those who say that registering guns is no different than registering cars, there is no right to drive in the Constitution. A compromise might be a requirement to register guns that are going to be actually carried in day-to-day activities (just as a car that is going to be driven on the public highways has to carry a registration), but that necessarily doesn’t imply a requirement to register all guns that are purchased or owned. When owning unregistered guns is a crime, only criminals will have unregistered guns…

Our pet idiotarian “Eric Blair’s” posting has been extremely sparse recently. He hasn’t posted anything in a week, and he hasn’t posted anything entertaining in much longer than that. The Warblogger Watch group on Yahoo seems to be populated almost exclusively by “warbloggers.” I guess the trolls got bored. I’ve taken down his permalink. I might keep the quote at the top of the blog for a while, though. I still wear it as a badge of honor.

This is shameful.

The Chinese police in Shenyang apparently kidnapped the North Koreans seeking asylum in the Japanese embassy there. So who did the Japanese government criticize for this violation of its sovereign territory? Their embassy staff.

I’m still looking for criticism of the Chinese government from Tokyo, but I won’t hold my breath. And the poor souls are probably on their way to Pyongyang right now for torture and interrogation.

I just hope that our embassy officials there, who have some other North Koreans in their protection, will have some testicular fortitude.

Fox News is making their daily announcement that the church standoff is about to end.

The current chairman of the Senate committee that oversees NASA authorization made the following statement.

I want to recapture the vision of John F. Kennedy’s commitment to putting a man on the moon by 1970. Today, it is not enough to endlessly circle the Earth in low orbit. NASA should set the goal of putting a person on Mars and work with Congress to set a date to do it. But the aim must be to reach Mars both safely and cost-effectively, or not at all.

Of course, he did it in the context of an overall statement that NASA must get its finances and management house in order before such a thing can be seriously contemplated. And of course, he may not be the chairman next year…

And a rerun of Apollo would be daft. Apollo set us back decades–I’d hate to think of the effect of Apollo to Mars.

[Update at 2:44 PM PDT]

Mark Whittington has some further interesting thoughts on this.

Some folks are arguing whether or not there’s a Saddam connection to September 11.

WTF difference does it make, to anyone but a Eurohypocrite and their fellow travelers here? We don’t need such a connection to justify replacing him, any more than we would have needed proof of past crimes to take out Osama prior to September 11, if we had known what he was planning.

The “War on Terror” (quotes because it’s clear, in light of current Israeli/Palestinian policy, that it’s no longer that) isn’t about revenge–it’s about prophylaxis. A good offense, particularly with thugs like this, is not just the best, but probably the only defense.