Steve Dillard's Speech

Feddie On "The Most Dangerous Branch"

Feddie of Southern Appeal has sent along a video of his speech to the Federalist Society of Mississippi College. The introductory remarks cease at 2:10.

It's a good speech. On April 15th, it can be hard to focus your attention away from the Congress / IRS as the "most dangerous branch" due to the confiscatory taxation schemes you'll be encountering (about which more later). Still, when your blood pressure drops enough to consider an argument about the continuing Constitutional imbalance "emanating," as it were, from the Supreme Court.

93 Transcript

Echoes of the General Militia of Flight 93:

Via The Geek, we can now see the Flight 93 recorder transcript. It's amazing to reflect that we have not seen it before.

We should have seen it before. We should have seen the hijackers speaking before now. This is what they said, while the American men of Flight 93 came for them:

They want to get in there. Hold, hold from the inside. Hold from the inside. Hold.

There are some guys. All those guys.

There is nothing. When they all come, we finish it off. There is nothing.

May the enemy ever find us thus: every hand a sword, every sword risen against them. It is in this capacity, our individual capacity as free men to stand up for the right and the common order, that we have our best defense against both terror and tyranny. Wherever they go, whenever they come, let them find us ready, and able, to rush them.

If you are not ready, prepare. You do not know when you may be called to your duty.

What's happening here?

Howdy All,

Being a Texan... I've had my head in the sand, excluding near everything to concentrate on this immigration travesty. Anyone have the scoop on this?

thievery

Thievery:

I'm afraid I'm quite ill, having contracted something unpleasant while at a two-day conference on Thailand. That's cut into my energy for blogging, and also my capacity for thinking, so I'm just going to steal from some good bloggers I know. If you haven't read these links, you ought to do so anyway.

If you don't read Geek w/A .45, you might have missed Publicoa's "Culture." It's a good piece, and Joel Legget will like it particularly because of the invocation of the Webb book Born Fighting.

If you haven't read InstaPundit -- I know, it seems unlikely, but a couple of you have told me you don't -- you might want to look into the UC Santa Cruz situation.

You'll also want to read Cassandra's take on it. This is one of those situations that can make even mild-mannered men like me call for viol... er, well, I suppose we've seen a few of those situations lately. Still, I'm mild mannered by my community standards, I assure you.

BlackFive examines the new book Cobra II, in which a retired General officer is harshly critical of the Iraq war. B5 collects several top milblogger responses, also.

And finally, Doc is having too much fun at the expense of the nurses.

Home Run

Straight Out of the Park:

A home run from Cox & Forkum, with a good editorial for background.

Malay goes green

"Malaysia Goes 'Green'"

An article in TODAY Online examines the sharp turn in Malaysia. "Green" in this case doesn't mean a turn towards environmental politics, but a turn towards radical Islam:

No one jokes about such matters in Kuala Lumpur any more. Last week, students Ooi Keang Thong and Siow Ai Wei were charged with disorderly behaviour for allegedly kissing at the Kuala Lumpur City Centre Park. If convicted, they could face a year in jail.

By itself, the incident might have passed without debate, but it came after a series of developments that have left Malaysians wondering which way their country is headed.

Last year, Mount Everest climber M Moorthy was buried as a Muslim. His wife protested, but her pleas went unheard after the High Court ruled that it had no jurisdiction over the Syariah Court's ruling that Moorthy had indeed converted to Islam.

Early last month, Malaysia's Inspector-General of Police Bakri Omar made it compulsory for all policewomen attending official functions to wear the traditional tudung headdress, regardless of race or religion.

Non-Muslims have started protesting. But even for them, the boundaries have been spelt out. Two weeks back, Minister in the Prime Ministers Department Nazri Abdul Aziz said that non-Muslims making provocative remarks on Islamic affairs could be charged with sedition.

And these are the moderate Muslims who run the government of Malaysia. The relatively conservative Muslims belong to the Islamic political party, the Parti Islam seMalaysia (PAS); or to one of the radical movements, such as Hizb-ut Tahrir.

I think it puts an interesting spin on this piece of predictive fiction (hat tip to Subsunk at BlackFive). Malaysia is one of the best examples out there of a Muslim country making progress -- but sometimes steps forward are met with steps back.

Firefighters

Heroes & Volunteers:

I think I have mentioned that I spent a good part of my youth in the company of volunteer Firemen, thanks to my father who was one. Indeed, in due course he became a Captain among them, and the President of their association, the first office of which entitled him to wear a red instead of a black helmet. He almost always refused, on the grounds that the purpose of the red helmet was to ease identification of officers on the ground in the chaos, and his Captaincy was related to the fire-safety division of the VFD. Thus, while he was the equal of the Captain of the firefighting section, he didn't want to be stand on ceremony when it could cause confusion. When fighting fires, he wore a black helmet like everybody else.

If, like me, you have cause to love firefighters, read this. I am indebted, again, to the indispensible Arts & Letters Daily.