A few stories big and smallish

Light blogging most of the day due to errands and then a function tonight at Buster’s school, but a few things to think about:

A child appears to be coming out of a coma on the eve of a planned pulling of her nutrition. This is going to keep happening, you know. Doctors DON’T know everything, particularly when it comes to the human brain, and the spirit, as well. This child is a minor, could not have declared her intentions for herself even if – at some point previous – she’d had a chance to. I hope to get a chance to write on it later or tomorrow.

An alumni group from UCLA is paying students to give them a heads up on “radical” professors.

“We’re just trying to get people back on a professional level of things,” said the group’s president and founder, Andrew Jones, a 2003 UCLA graduate and former chairman of the student Bruin Republicans.

Some of those targeted say it’s a witch-hunt reminiscent of Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communism crusade in 1950s.

“Any sober, concerned citizen would look at this and see right through it as a reactionary form of McCarthyism,” said education professor Peter McLaren, one of those cited by the association. “Any decent American is going to see through this kind of right-wing propaganda. I just find it has no credibility.”

The association’s action led to the resignation of at least one of its 20-plus advisory board members.

“That just seems to me way too intrusive,” said Harvard historian Stephan Thernstrom, an affirmative action opponent and former UCLA professor. “It seems to me a kind of vigilantism that I very much object to.”

I have problems with it. I wouldn’t call it McCarthyism, and I DO think this alumni group may well intend merely to try to move professors back to teaching without indoctrinating. But I don’t think this is the way to go about it. Your thoughts?

Osama’s truce offering sounds like baloney on rye to me…but it could well be an indicator that AlQ knows it has lost.

Alexandra, meanwhile, has a huge and up-to-the-minute round up on Iran.

Robert Novak is writing on The Barrett report and Gateway notes that it shines a light of hypocrisy on someone who just a few days ago railed against corruption and cronyism as though they were bad things. Some are finding the revelation that Peggy Richardson, former IRS commissioner during the Clinton years and a “close friend of Hillary’s” very interesting.

Speaking of the Barrett Report, the boys at Powerline are shocked, shocked that the NY Times sees no whistleblowers in whoever leaked an advance copy of the thing. Check out their phrasing.

The American Thinker says the press should ask Hillary the hard questions in ’06. Yeah, that’s gonna happen! GayPatriot has more thoughts.

Hello, new home constructions are at an all-time high. BUT…construction fell off in December…as it always does…BUT…that means bad news is just around the corner…as it always is when the press reports on anything to do with the economy while Theevilbushitler is president.

Andrew Klavan asks, WHY did God choose the Jews?

All bigotry is wrong, of course, but there’s something about this particular form of prejudice that is weirdly reliable as a sign of deeper wickedness. Perhaps it’s because the Jews contributed so much to humanity’s moral code that to hate them as a race is to despise the restraints of morality itself.

Whatever the reason, true, virulent anti-Semitism is such a good indicator of the presence of evil that I’m tempted to believe that when God made the Jews his chosen people, this is what he chose them for: to be a sort of Villainy Early Detection System for everyone else.

Unfortunately, in his infinite love for his creation, I suspect the Big Guy may have overestimated our intelligence. Maybe he thought that after Hitler we’d just, you know, like, get it. Instead, we still see apparently intelligent people appeasing, making excuses for and even embracing the sorts of stinkers who ought to set off the Big Alarm.

That’s why I think the system could use more bells and whistles — a loud honking noise perhaps, or even closed captioning for the morally impaired. Thus, when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the Holocaust is a “myth” or that Israel “must be wiped off the map,” you would hear a loud honk and words would appear in the air below his face: “Hello. I am an evil madman. Please stop negotiating with me now and proceed to cripple my nuclear capability by any means necessary.”

Jack Kelly explains what it is he doesn’t like about the news media. Good piece

WMD stuff found in Iraq. I don’t know why this is in my pile, but there you go.

Lorie Byrd writes about the new season of “24”. If you’re going to comment, don’t tell me anything about this season, yet! I’m only up to season 3 on DVD!