ANDREW KLAVAN: the voice of addiction. Someone needs to revoke the prescription for the drugs he's taking.

TECHWISE CONVERSATIONS: Smart guns and gun control:

There are a number of potential biometric controls—ways that guns can be made to fail to fire if they don’t recognize the person holding them. Could they have spared the life or well-being of a Sandy Hook student? An Aurora moviegoer? A Tucson congresswoman? We can’t know till we ask the question.

One reason for the technological lacuna in the national discussion is that the technologies haven’t been discussed much, even among technologists. And they haven’t been implemented very much, either, apparently less for technological reasons than political ones.

No, it's not political reasons; it's practical. A weapon only I can shoot is a weapon my wife can't shoot -- or my son, or my daughter, my granddaughter.

That's not a tool that's particularly useful. To use Spitzer's analogy correctly, think of an automobile that only I can drive.

ENDNOTE: I'm getting more and more disappointed in the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. For a professional society, it is getting far too politically correct for my taste.

THE REAL PREDATOR.

ONE BILLION RISING. Are we sure there shouldn't be at least some minimum limits on sufferage?

YES, let's really hike the minimum wage.

WOULD NEW GUN LAWS spark widespread civil disobedience? Yes.

RIGHT: take Wall Street banks to trial for not disobeying the law. Makes perfect nonsense.

COMMENT OF THE DAY:

Look at the media's track record. Clarence Thomas, Sarah Palin, Jindal, Rubio, Cruz, Allen West, Michelle Bachman .... all treated with utter disdain. Labelled as stupid, extreme, whatever.

Yet they offer Pelosi, Boxer, Sheila Jackson Lee (astronauts planted a flag on Mars?), Hank "Guam may tip over" Johnson. Total up their brain cells and you couldn't reach a vegetative state.

With the addition of a few more Democrats (I'm thinking of Harry Reid, Al Franken, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and Alan Grayson) they might be able to reach a persistent vegetative state.

YOU SHOULD BE THANKING ME: I've set a new goal for America. Be sure to click through to the Mark Steyn piece.

WHAT? I have to pay higher taxes as well?

ABORTION RIGHTS GROUP strives for youthful image. James Taranto comments:

If you're under 40, NARAL's efforts make it much likelier that your mother didn't even have children. There's something both poignant and funny about a group devoted to abortion puzzling over its difficulty in finding young people to support it.

From Best of the Web (third item).

A LONG WAY HOME: some interesting history from World War II.



The YouTube link is here.

AFTER THE 'TOUGHEST' GUN LAW, gun crime rose.

HUH?

The study also revealed something counterintuitive: The people most knowledgeable about science and who had the best grasp of math and numbers were the ones least concerned about climate change. On both sides of the issue, those who held the strongest opinions knew the most about science -- suggesting that the more information you give people, the more entrenched they can become on their own beliefs.

Let's try this again ... the ones who knew the most about science were the least concerned about climate change. Okay. But on both sides, the ones who knew the most science held the strongest opinions. Aren't those statements contradictory? Or is one 'most' stronger than the other 'most'?

STATISTICS DON'T LIE, but liars routinely misuse statistics.

IN ITS PURSUIT OF 'SAFETY', the government too often sacrifices freedom.

NINJA BUREAUCRATS.

AND THEY'RE BUSY killing themselves, too. Problem solved.

PRETEND GUN CONTROL: Gun control advocates won't know the difference if we pass laws banning a bunch of made-up things that sound scary. So ... no more unicorn horn-tipped bullets and rainbow clips.

SO HOW LONG IS 170 LBS? 'Mass Equals Time' Redefines Weight Standards.