“Sneaky sperm whales had been snagging an easy meal by stealing black cod from deep-sea fishing lines off Sitka, Alaska. Now, underwater video has revealed their cod-thieving secret: The giant marine mammals pluck the fishing line at one end to shake the black cod free at the other end.”
http://www.livescience.com/animals/090526-whale-clicks.html
How little we know of the secret lives of these masters of the Earth’s Oceans!
“In a 21st-century version of the age of discovery, teams of computer scientists, conservationists and scholars are fanning out across the globe in a race to digitize crumbling literary treasures.”
Chief Justice Roberts is awesome! Compare his final comment to the weak apologia of Stevens with Breyer’s concurrence.
I wish America had statesmen who would speak in this frank and direct manner to the President and our spendthrift Congress!
“The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys. … The multiplication of public offices, increase of expense beyond income, growth and entailment of a public debt, are indications soliciting the employment of the pruning knife. … We must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. … The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. … If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy. … I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious. … The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground. … [A] wise and frugal government…shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government. … Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.” - Thomas Jefferson
“I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents… If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions. … The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. … There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” - James Madison
“I apprehend no danger to our country from a foreign foe … Our destruction, should it come at all, will be from another quarter. — From the inattention of the people to the concerns of their government, from their carelessness and negligence, I must confess that I do apprehend some danger. I fear that they may place too implicit a confidence in their public servants, and fail properly to scrutinize their conduct; that in this way they may be made the dupes of designing men, and become the instruments of their own undoing. Make them intelligent, and they will be vigilant; give them the means of detecting the wrong, and they will apply the remedy.” - U.S. Senator Daniel Webster (1782-1852)
“A Republic, if you can keep it.” - Benjamin Franklin
These words are as relevant today as when they were authored. The issues regarding the relation of people and their governments have not changed and have been debated at least from the time of Plato. The ideals of the Enlightenment were subsequently incorporated into the U.S. Constitution and establish the correct balance. To posit that somehow the issues of today are unprecedented displays a profound ignorance of history to the contrary.
For those who pontificate regarding Israeli “proportionality” and argue for a status quo ante, I recommend reading The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement – Hamas. An excerpt:
The Prophet, Allah’s prayer and peace be upon him, says: “The hour of judgment shall not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them, so that the Jews hide behind trees and stones, and each tree and stone will say: ‘Oh Muslim, oh servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him,’ except for the Gharqad tree, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Recorded in the Hadith collections of Bukhari and Muslim).
Via the BBC:
“The US space agency’s (NASA) Mars rovers are celebrating a remarkable five years on the Red Planet.
The first robot, named Spirit, landed on 3 January, 2004, followed by its twin, Opportunity, 21 days later.
It was hoped the robots would work for at least three months; but their longevity in the freezing Martian conditions has surprised everyone. The rovers’ data has revealed much about the history of water at Mars’ equator billions of years ago.”
The advances in electronics, robotics and communications these planetary missions demonstrate are absolutely amazing!
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” - John Adams, ‘Argument in Defense of the Soldiers in the Boston Massacre Trials,’ December 1770 US diplomat & politician (1735 - 1826)
Charles Krauthammer describes the latest Gaza conflict cogently:
“Some geopolitical conflicts are morally complicated. The Israel-Gaza war is not. It possesses a moral clarity not only rare but excruciating.
Israel is so scrupulous about civilian life that, risking the element of surprise, it contacts enemy noncombatants in advance to warn them of approaching danger. Hamas, which started this conflict with unrelenting rocket and mortar attacks on unarmed Israelis — 6,464 launched from Gaza in the past three years — deliberately places its weapons in and near the homes of its own people.”
Why can’t AP communicate with such clarity?
Peter Wallison from AEI speaking at the Reason Foundation Dinner. In 25 minutes no less!