And there’s more where he came from.

CAVUTO: You`re okay with, in this case, profiling?
KOCH: Absolutely. All I care about is that, when I get on that plane, I want to have a reasonable assurance that I`m going to land safely….
CAVUTO: And you also mentioned about the message we`re sending the world when we try to step back from calling this for what it is-
KOCH: Right.
CAVUTO: -a war. Now, the administration`s tried to avoid that to have better relations and to reach out–
KOCH: Has it helped?
CAVUTO–to those 1.4 billion Muslims.
KOCH: Has it helped?
CAVUTO: Well, his approval and America`s regard has gone up in those countries. He says and they say–
KOCH: Isn`t that nice? Did they stop trying to kill us?

Related – your security is in the very best of hands.

Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society – intellectuals certainly can renounce war, “and that does not stop your neighbor from building up the biggest army in the world and coming in and killing you.”
Part 4 of 5 – watch the other portions here.

Chris Selley hosts Lorne Gunter, Kelly McParland and Marni Soupcoff for The National Post (Podcast)
h/t Ron

From The Torch:

Army Lieutentant Andrew Richard Nuttal is our latest fatality. He had a blog. Excerpts from his final entry…

It is arguable whether the human race have been gainers by the march of science beyond the steam engine. Electricity opens a field of infinite conveniences to ever greater numbers, but they may well have to pay dearly for them. – Winston Churchill

Via Jack’s Newswatch (h/t Maz2)

We’ll make them join unions; we’ll meddle with wages,
We’ll subsidize books with Canadian pages
We’ll give them a Charter with rights no one knows,
With rulings from judges that no voter chose.

h/t kdl

The president and Mrs. Obama are reportedly outraged…

Strangely enough, Theodore Roosevelt, who was shot while making a speech, and finished it, was not reported to have been outraged. When Puerto Rican nationalist terrorists attacked Blair House, with three wounded, two dead, and at one point only a machine-gun on the stairs between Harry Truman and assassination, the president was not reported to have been outraged. And when Ronald Reagan, bullet near his heart, was wheeled into the emergency room at George Washington University, he was most likely not outraged—because had he been he likely would not have had the wit to say to his surgeons before he was put under, “I hope you’re all Republicans.” Apparently, outrage, like attention span and a good deal else, has devolved with American history.

How can we slow down this destructive process?
One word, friends: friction.

On the Madness of Crowds;

After all, how rational is it to pass laws banning one kind of light bulb (and insisting on their replacement by ones filled with poisonous mercury vapour) in order to “save electricity”, while ploughing money into schemes to run cars on … electricity?

Damian Brooks, that is. Best analysis of the detainee hoo-ha you’ll see.
You might also listen to Terry Glavin, just back from the Sandbox, on Rob Breakenridge at AM 770 CHQR, Calgary, Dec. 9.

Den Beste!

Even better.
h/t Shipped Out

An excellent presentation, with an excellent addendum;

Slice your average environment correspondent through the middle and you’re going to find a left-leaning liberal arts graduate who is utterly out of his/her depth. Their world view is being swept from underneath them and they are being shown—in ways that they do not really and have never had to understand—that the guys they thought were the goodies are in fact “at it” and that those they have spent a decade disparaging as deniers were in fact spot on.

Blake Hurst is a farmer in Missouri…

I’m dozing, as I often do on airplanes but the guy behind me has been broadcasting nonstop for nearly three hours. I finally admit defeat and start some serious eavesdropping. He’s talking about food, damning farming, particularly livestock farming, compensating for his lack of knowledge with volume.
I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food. Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is.
But now we have to listen to self-appointed experts on airplanes frightening their seatmates about the profession I have practiced for more than 30 years. I’d had enough. I turned around and politely told the lecturer that he ought not believe everything he reads. He quieted and asked me what kind of farming I do. I told him, and when he asked if I used organic farming, I said no, and left it at that. I didn’t answer with the first thought that came to mind, which is simply this: I deal in the real world, not superstitions, and unless the consumer absolutely forces my hand, I am about as likely to adopt organic methods as the Wall Street Journal is to publish their next edition by setting the type by hand.

Required reading for all but those who spent the last 2 weeks on a combine.

Nigel Farage – a must watch.
The Economist has more on Baroness (Catherine) Ashton.
h/t Adrian

On September 11, 2009 CEI and the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights held an “intellectual ammunition” strategy session at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to brief those participating in the 9/12 March on Washington on the ideas of liberty.

Videos here.

“What if I directed my firefighters to smash in the door of a residence in Pelham and confiscate all the matches, lighters, candles and the four liters of gasoline kept for the lawn mower, then displayed these items on a table for maximum effect, and called a press conference at which I explained that the community was safer because we had removed items that could be used to start fires?”

Related.

When Padraic O’Brian bombed a restaurant in London with massive loss of life, the media was puzzled. “True, he used to go to IRA rallies,” said a cousin, “and he would rant for hours about how the British invaders should be wiped out” but the media reported that this had nothing to do with this attack which was caused by his psychological problems. As he fired at pursuing police, O’Brian yelled: “Up the republic!”
The Guardian reported: “His Irish identity and political views had nothing to do with the motives for this tragic act.” The newspaper urged that the main lesson coming out of this event was the need to fight more firmly to ensure that Northern Ireland was handed over to the Irish Republic and that Israel be wiped off the map.

From the “Conversation with George Bush” in Saskatoon this afternoon, revealing that his father agonized over the media criticism his son was receiving;

“He’d read the editorial pages, he’d watch the nightly news, and I didn’t. I mean, why watch the nightly news when you are the nightly news?”

(Honourable mention: “I was in Bucharest, Romania to give a speech to the Romanians…. obviously.”)