RIP Alexander Solzhenitsyn etc.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of the great heroes of the 20th century, passed away last night in Moscow. His courage in writing and publishing The Gulag Archipelago in 1974 was immeasurable. The book itself is one of the most important in human history. Those who lived under the horrors of communism, indeed under any totalitarian nightmare, had no greater ally. RIP.

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30 years ago today, Jimmy Carter established the Department of Energy. $4.00 a gallon gas, major decreases in domestic energy production and dramatic increases in our reliance on foreign sources for our energy tells you that it worked out exactly as one would expect from a major government expansion.

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With the Olympics set to begin next week in by far the greatest polluting country in the world, there will never be a better time for Al Gore to show up and forcefully speak out. We shall see if there is any sincerity in his fire and brimstone rhetoric or if the whole thing is just a ruse designed to make him a billionaire. Tick, tock…

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While on the subject of the rotund VP cum preacher, enjoy this limerick from Scott Cram:

There once was a man named Gore,
who thought he had a climate change cure,
then things like grain and rice,
went far up in price,
now he's to blame for starving the poor!

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Why does the notion that the concept of “mutually assured destruction,” which kept the US and the Soviet Union from engaging in nuclear war in the Cold War, still have traction in some circles as being applicable to the Iran dilemma? Soviet communism was a rational (albeit evil) ideology, more interested in survival than the destruction of its enemy.

Can we really assume that Shiite fundamentalism’s apocalyptic tendencies are all just an act? It’s not like the willingness to sacrifice most of their own in order to destroy Israel is a fringe position in the Iranian government, it comes from so many including from those at the very top.

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When David Beckham moved from Madrid to Los Angeles, did he have to learn Spanish?

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Wisdom from the great Thomas Sowell on how it is that a 9/11 or the constant attacks on Israel can happen at this point in history:

There was a time when it would have been suicidal to threaten, much less attack, a nation with much stronger military power because one of the dangers to the attacker would be the prospect of being annihilated.

"World opinion," the U.N. and "peace movements" have eliminated that deterrent. An aggressor today knows that if his aggression fails, he will still be protected from the full retaliatory power and fury of those he attacked because there will be hand-wringers demanding a cease fire, negotiations and concessions.