:: Netmarcos' Notes ::

:: Tuesday, May 31, 2005 ::

You go read it. I am confident that it is within California's new guidlines for length.: "The California Assembly is betting that kids learn more with small books.
Lawmakers voted Thursday to ban school districts from purchasing textbooks longer than 200 pages.
The bill, believed to be the first of its kind nationwide, was hailed by supporters as a way to revolutionize education.
Critics lambasted Assembly Bill 756 as silly."

Silly doesn't even come close.

:: Mark 4:19 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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It's about time. Webshots AP News Headlines: "WASHINGTON - The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Priscilla Owen as a federal appellate judge, ending the four-year ordeal of the Texas jurist who was thrust into the center of the partisan battle over President Bush's judicial nominations.

The 56-43 vote to appoint Owen to the New Orlean-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a consequence of an agreement reached earlier this week that averted, for the time being, a bitter dispute over Democratic use of the filibuster to block Bush's judicial choices. "

:: Mark 2:22 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Hooooraah for the Rednecks.
OpinionJournal - Cross Country

The best part of this story is that while the elite media's agenda on the Minutemen played well on the coasts, Arizonans weren't buying it. A poll found that 57% of the state's residents supported the border-watch project, which sent the editorial page of Tucson's Arizona Daily Star into a stammering fit, calling the number alarming. Of course, this is a paper so politically correct it can't even bring itself to call illegals illegals. Its writers refer to them as migrants or, my favorite, border crossers. But as the Minutemen plan to expand operations to five more states--and a new citizen group, the Yuma Patriots, begins patrolling--that 57% heartens me. It looks to me like the rednecks won.

:: Mark 11:00 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Just in case you were not aware, this is why "the Left in this country is so opposed to the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown.

It is my thesis today that the sheer tenacity of the collectivist impulse — whether you call it socialism or communism or altruism — has changed not only the meaning of our words, but the meaning of the Constitution, and the character of our people.

Government is the only enterprise in the world which expands in size when its failures increase.

:: Mark 6:22 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Alan Reynolds answers the question,"How is the American Dream getting along these days?"

Recent "news" reports implying it has become more difficult for young Americans to live better than their parents fail to identify any genuine problem. And they suffer from one added handicap: They are demonstrably untrue.

Excelent analysis of recent claims by various sources that the American Dream is failing. You should read the whole thing.

:: Mark 9:00 AM [+] :: (0) comments
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Go read all of this one...and no, it is not a story about some communist government atrocity.
ABC News: State Secret: Thousands Secretly Sterilized

From the early 1900s to the 1970s, some 65,000 men and women were sterilized in this country, many without their knowledge, as part of a government eugenics program to keep so-called undesirables from reproducing.

:: Mark 3:17 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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A recent Newsweek articel inspires "W" to start his own blog!

Bush sat at his desk, tapping his fingers on the surface. "Bored. Bored. Bored," he muttered. "Hey, Rover," he finally called out, "Anything I should be doing?"

:: Mark 2:01 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Now THIS entry by Glenn Reynolds in a debate on constitutional interpretation is fabulous!

Obviously, the part about a " well regulated Intelligentsia" only refers to state-paid academics such as myself, and it would be absurd to read this provision as extending the right to own and read books to the Great Unwashed. That way lies madness.

Go read it all.

:: Mark 5:58 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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Please read Robert L. Pollock's review of David L Phillips' new book "Losing Iraq"The Armchair Analyst

...Mr. Phillips comes to his subject with more venom than fair-mindedness: In all seriousness he compares the Bush administration's "jihadist vocabulary" to Osama bin Laden's. Still, just a little contact with actual Iraqis might have prevented such silly lines as: "The first days of liberation were an unmitigated disaster."

Really? As in, not mitigated by the fact that the worst mass murderer in Arab history had been deposed? The Iraqis I spoke to at a mass grave south of the capital during the first of my two trips to Iraq (May 2003 and June 2004) certainly didn't think so. I heard some of them surreally but sincerely express their desire for Iraq to become America's 51st state, even as they sorted through bits of bone and clothing for evidence of their loved ones.

:: Mark 5:04 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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An alert to all readers! Oregon mulls a new tax that environmentalists and privacy advocates will hate
Named a Vehicle Milage tax, the proposal would tax all drivers based on miles driven, rather than on fuel consumed.

Under a VMT a motorist would pay a tax for each mile driven, probably around 1.25 cents. To administer this tax, a global positioning system would be mounted in each car. As a driver fuels up, the device would relay mileage information to the gas pump, which would calculate the VMT. A simple electronic odometer-reading device would do the trick, but Oregon is looking at GPS devices because they would also allow for charging higher VMT rates for miles driven in 'congested' areas during rush hour or to exempt miles driven out of state.

Holy smokes.

:: Mark 4:59 PM [+] :: (0) comments
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