It’s about time that local police be allowed to carry around the same firepower that criminals use. Although I would say that the police shouldn’t be the ones playing catch up. The men in blue should always have superior weaponry to anything that the scum of this world can bring to street...

Over at the World Wide Rant, I learned about a new screensaver program devloped by Lycos which aims to give spammers a major headache by automatically making hits on web sites advertised in spam, driving up their bandwidth costs. The effort is bound to be controversial. The screensaver (which is supposed...

“Former President Bill Clinton was no fan of email, in part because his lawyers said it could be subpoenaed. But privacy concerns didn’t scare former Vice President Al Gore, who emailed with abandon while in office,” says Washington Whispers. “And now historians are eager to check...

The Knights Templar, an ancient order of which I’m a fourth generation member, has submitted a formal request for reconciliation to the Vatican for persecution of the order in the 14th century. The Knights Templar order was formed in 1118 at the end of the First Crusade to protect Christian pilgrims...

Over at Mode for Caleb, Caleb McDaniel thinks about the new World War II memorial on the Mall. His reflections challenge the way modern American thinking about the war has become too shallow to understand the horror, the cost and the outcome of the conflict. The conclusion he reaches that war is always...

Today marks the third anniversary of George Harrison’s death. Prof. Cooper has a nice tribute up to a guitarist in the greatest band the world has known.

Tomorrow’s Christian Science Monitor editorializes about a Philadelphia school district’s decision to allow companies to bid for naming rights on a new high school. I am a Republican, a free-trader and a pro-business sort of guy. But before those things I am a citizen who believes there...

China may be becoming increasingly assertive in its diplomacy (as Dan Drezner and I write), but it stands to lose a lot of money–perhaps a tenth of GDP–because of its substantial reserve holdings in dollars, Brad Setser says. In the Financial Times this weekend, one writer suggested that...

Mrs. PTB and I along with some friends traveled to St. Louis over the weekend to walk about 25,000 steps in and out of antique shops (one in the group was wearing a digital pedometer and I always asked for updates to give me a sense that indeed walking into a pub was a form of exercise). If you like...

At Hoosier Review, Zach Wendling comments on the unfolding crisis in Ukraine by noting the research speciality of Dr. Condoleeza Rice, U.S. Secretary of State-designate. Given the involvement of Russia in the presidential election between Yanukovich and Yushchenko, and Moscow’s clear desire to...