The good people over at Freedom Works, who are planning a big Tea Party on 9/12, asked me to spread the word about their new "cool site to help people get connected."

So, check it out and sign up: http://912marchondc.ning.com/

From my column today:

Sanford’s sin, like that of any adulterer, is absolutely nauseating – and, absent repentance, is deserving of a deeper circle of hell than Dante would ever ascribe to it. This is why only a few conservatives would trust Sanford again unless he cuts off all relations with his mistress, demonstrates genuine contrition, works fervently to rebuild his family and earns the forgiveness of his wife and kids.

And indeed if Sanford’s conversion is accepted as sincere even by his most wounded wife, who are we to deny him our support for any political pursuit based on this sin – especially when he has excelled more than most at his job as governor? Democrats never asked Bill Clinton to step down when he cheated on his wife, even when he explicitly lied under oath and to the entire country. Likewise, few if any Republicans withheld their vote from “heroic” John McCain in 2008 for cheating on his wife – and proceeding to marry another woman.

[...]

Putting Sanford’s marital infidelity aside, the governor has been a hero to anyone who has ever paid taxes, and more importantly, anyone who wishes to live in a prosperous country. It may be for this reason that only 18 percent of South Carolina voters, even after the recent hullabaloo, say that Sanford’s ethical standards are lower than most politicians’. It is incredible then that so many seem to care more about Sanford’s sin in Argentina than about the hundreds of remaining politicians putting every American into debt for decades to come. Our priorities are more than skewed.

Read the rest here.

Friends,

I have sad news. As of today, I will indefinitely stop blogging here on a daily basis. I will, however, continue writing a weekly column for North Star Writers Group.

I know this seems to come out of nowhere. It wasn’t too long ago when I asked you for feedback (which you kindly provided plentifully) with an eye on developing my blog further. And I hope that demonstrates that I had almost as little notice as you did about this. But I did recently make this decision on my own and I believe it is the best one for my immediate future.

This was a very, very difficult decision to make, and it is equally difficult to share it with you. I began blogging in March 2008, and over the past year the blog’s readership and exposure have grown tremendously. It is an honor to look at my traffic stats and realize that there are so many people I’ve never met who sit down at their computers, go online, and read my blog – often every day or several times a day. It has also been a sincere pleasure to hear from you and build friendships with those of you who contacted me regularly, and with other bloggers with whom I exchanged links.

This is why it’s so hard to stop. But it is also reflective of how significant the reasons are for which I have to stop. To state it briefly, daily blogging devours considerable time – more than it looks, and more than you would expect. Quality blogging consumes even more. And as you know, I am not a full-time blogger. Until last month, I was a law student. This blog was a side endeavor, and a sidekick to my column, which receives more attention. I did the blog because I loved it. I never made a cent from it. And it definitely cannot sustain me. In fact, it can only hinder the activities that will put food on the table and other things in which I will be investing my time. I can’t share all, but let me start you off with the fact that I have the bar exam at the end of July followed by the launch of a career in the law.

Now, I’m not necessarily stopping all blogging. The website will stay up at least for a little while. I might make occasional posts on here: announcements, breaking stories, columns, and even good old standard blog posts. So do check back from time to time – but don’t expect much. Keep reading my columns. And if you would still like a higher dose of Ibrahim and you enjoy photography, check out my sister’s photography website – you won’t regret it.

This decision is not all sadness, of course. It is an opportunity for me to work on bigger and better things. If you haven’t already, please sign up for my weekly email newsletter by requesting subscription through the contact page. This is how you can receive my column once a week, and how you can be updated about the other things I am working on to promote the values I have been promoting on here.

And of course, I am still around as a friend. If you know me, please keep in touch. And if you don’t, please get to know me. I have read every single message I received since I launched the blog, and I will keep doing it until I stop receiving them.

Well, I guess that’s it. I am going to leave the comments open on this post to give you an opportunity to respond. But first, I want to make sure I point out that as tough as blogging has been, you made it thoroughly enjoyable. If you weren’t reading, I wouldn’t have been writing. Thank you, thank you, thank you. It will be a very strange feeling to stop blogging daily, but until I come back, I’ll be proud of every day I did it. God bless.

Interesting stuff.

Check out how the laws of economics worked under Peter the Great, as they always do. (via CfG)

One of the problems with usual political debates is that people tend to point to, say, a president, and say "oh yeah this guy did great things with the economy," or "that guy failed to fix the economy."

The problem with such debates is that either way, they imply that economic health depends on how smart a certain politician was, or how timely a government's policies were. They imply that government should always "do something" to "stimulate" the economy, and that the options come down to, say, knowing which industries to subsidize, as opposed to whether or not to subsidize any industries at all.

The reality is, economic principles are a lot like a hard science - they are full of facts that cannot be reasonably debated (yet are debated). It is a fact that free trade benefits the globe more than any combination of protectionist policies. It is a fact that beyond taxing for things like roads and law enforcement, taxes are harmful to the economy. It is a fact that price controls hurt the economy.

So it should not matter who is in office, as long as these known and tried basic principles are followed. Any other "creative" economic actions or policies are by definition harmful to the economy - the only difference between them is how harmful they exactly are.

And of course, this means that economic principles have always been true (as they were with Peter the Great) and will always be true. You can't say, "oh, tax cuts worked during the Reagan years, but we need a different policy for a different time." No. That's like saying, "oh, there was gravity in the 19th century that made things fall to the ground, but we're not sure there is gravity today." It's ridiculous. Free trade, tax cuts, and privatization have always worked because of the laws of economics - and these laws will always hold true.

See more here.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

It saddens me that people are compelled to take so much time from their lives to simply demand sanity from the government instead of doing something they love, but when some people do it, they do it very well.

Llewellyn King, a fellow columnist at NSWG and a veteran of the newspaper industry, explains how newspapers got it wrong.

Reading the column I was amazed at how old-fashioned and closed-minded the entire concept of a newspaper has been under its caretakers. To them, thinking outside the box means fitting nine stories on the front page, instead of seven. What an incredible lack of innovation. No wonder it's a dying industry.

Seriously:

With steep state budget cuts under debate in Sacramento, Los Angeles County supervisors voted Tuesday to push for changes to CalWorks and other government aid programs they said would save nearly $270 million.

Included in their suggestions is a novel proposal: Put unemployed parents to work caring for their own children.

I love how they say that such a program would "save" $270 million. Of course, if you weren't spending an unbelievable amount of money on a welfare state in the first place, you wouldn't have to "save" anything. It's like they assume that the $270 million is a normal amount that they are supposed to be spending, and they have now made a glorious achievement by "saving" it.

I question the fiscal responsibility of a government that considers paying parents to care for their kids as "saving" money.

You may remember the Doolittle Raid from the movie Pearl Harbor. A few months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. responded with a small but highly symbolic aerial attack on a Japanese home island. It was called the Doolittle Raid. And it was amazing.

If you want to learn more about it, you can start with this Wikipedia article and continue with the many sources it offers at the end. I just wanted to post this cool section about its survivors:

The Doolittle Raiders have held an annual reunion almost every year since the late 1940s. The high point of each reunion is a solemn, private ceremony in which the surviving Raiders perform a roll call, then toast their fellow Raiders who passed away during the previous year. Specially-engraved silver goblets, one for each of the 80 Raiders, are used for this toast. The goblets of those who have died are inverted. When only two Raiders remain alive, they will drink a final toast using the vintage 1896 bottle of Hennessy cognac which has accompanied the goblets to each Raider reunion since 1960. The vintage was chosen because it was the year of Jimmy Doolittle's birth. The bottle of cognac and the goblets had been maintained by the United States Air Force Academy on display in Arnold Hall, the cadet social center. On 19 April 2006, the memorabilia were transferred to the National Museum of the United States Air Force.

As of 2009, only nine Raiders are still alive. Only eight were able to attend the 64th anniversary reunion held in Dayton, Ohio, in April 2006. Seven attended the 65th anniversary in 2007 in San Antonio, Texas, six attended the 66th anniversary in 2008 in Dallas, Texas, and four attended the 67th anniversary in 2009 in Columbia, South Carolina.

You don't see me praising the Republican National Committee everyday, but I thought this was a pretty effective ad:

During an interview the other day, Obama swatted a fly that wouldn't leave him, and killed it. Amusingly, the animal rights people are upset and  they don't believe Obama thinks before he acts.

But since we're discussing craziness anyway, my question is, in light of the mini camera helicopters I wrote about the other day, couldn't a foreign government conceivably attach a mini camera to a fly that can apparently enter and roam around the White House with relative ease? Or can't they manufacture an electronic fly themselves?

That would be a darn good way to know everything the President knows. Just don't fly it too close to him.

Here's a good ten minute clip of moments from a presidential debate between Ahmadinejad and Mousavi prior to the election. It is pretty fascinating to see Mousavi criticize Ahmadinejad's behavior relating to foreign policy, and the other debating points:

This makes me so happy because I'm a spelling freak. Can you get a perfect score?

From Rasmussen:

Eighty percent (80%) of U.S. voters want the government to sell its stake in General Motors and Chrysler as soon as possible.

A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 11% disagree and want the government to retain ownership for a long time.

[...] Voters feel nearly as strongly about the ownership interest the government has taken in several bailed-out U.S. banks. Seventy-one percent (71%) say the government should sell that ownership to private investors as soon as possible.

Nineteen percent (19%) think the government should retain ownership of the banks for a long time.

Sounds like something Republicans can play with in 2010.

Imagine getting a letter in the mail one day telling you that your house will be forcefully taken over by the government, and then razed. Not for an essential highway, nor a crucial utility. But for business executives that cozied up to corrupt politicians who now assert that building a tattoo parlor where your bedroom used to be is essential for the economic survival of the community.

Nauseating.

Pop quiz: What kind of nation has recently adopted this unbelievable disdain for property rights?

Answer: America.

(HT: Andy Roth)

Yesterday I posted a video of a University of Tehran dorm after government thugs attacked it and the students in it.

Here are some pictures showing the damage in more detail. (Again, HT to Andrew Sullivan)

What is wrong with these people?