More from Zombie here.

Hat tip: Little Green Footballs

Guns Save Lives by John Stossel.

It's all too predictable. A day after a gunman killed six people and wounded 18 others at Northern Illinois University, The New York Times criticized the U.S. Interior Department for preparing to rethink its ban on guns in national parks.

The editorial board wants "the 51 senators who like the thought of guns in the parks -- and everywhere else, it seems -- to realize that the innocence of Americans is better protected by carefully controlling guns than it is by arming everyone to the teeth."

...

While they search for -- excuse me -- their magic bullet, innocent people are dying defenseless.

That's because laws that make it difficult or impossible to carry a concealed handgun do deter one group of people: law-abiding citizens who might have used a gun to stop crime. Gun laws are laws against self-defense.

In an interview with ABC News' Cynthia McFadden Democrat nominee hopeful Hillary Clinton played the gender card yet again, and successfully continued her whining streak.

Asked why she thinks so many women may be feeling sorry for her, Clinton said, "I think a lot of women project their own feelings and their lives onto me, and they see how hard this is. It's hard. It's hard being a woman out there. It is obviously challenging with some of the things that are said that are not even personal to me so much as they are about women.

"And I think women just sort of shake their head," Clinton continued. "My friends do. They say, 'Oh, my gosh, this is so hard.' Well, it's supposed to be hard. I'm running for the hardest job in the world. No one has ever done this. No woman has ever won a presidential primary before I won New Hampshire. This is hard. And I don't expect any sympathy, I don't expect any kind of, you know, allowances or special privileges, because I knew what I was getting myself into.

Waaa!

My word. Is it at all possible to say "hard" that many times in a given statement?

"Every so often I just wish that it were a little more of an even playing field," she said, "but, you know, I play on whatever field is out there."

Haha! I'm sorry, but this sort of speak can only be classified as one thing...

Oh lighten up, it's Friday!

=)

I dig this story.

After completing two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Wayne Leyde won $1 million from a scratch-and-win lotto ticket on Tuesday.

Now that he's won, Leyde, a 26-year-old member of the Washington National Guard, says he's still going to volunteer to go back to Iraq for a third tour and won't spend any of the money in the meantime.

Contrary to popular belief, some liberals seem utterly determined to prove that they are, in fact, anti-choice. Take the new Los Angeles law concerning pet sterilization.

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Tuesday signed one of the nation's toughest laws on pet sterilization, requiring most dogs and cats to be spayed or neutered by the time they are 4 months old.

The ordinance is aimed at reducing and eventually eliminating the thousands of euthanizations conducted in Los Angeles' animal shelters every year.

"We will, sooner rather than later, become a no-kill city and this is the greatest step in that direction," Councilman Tony Cardenas said as he held a kitten at a City Hall news conference.

The clever positioning of this law as a justified means to an end to the euthanization of animals is sure to cause the vast majority of Los Angeles residents to glaze over it without a second thought.

But the underlying precedent being set is far more important: the government's ability to control what people do with their personal property.

I'm not being over-dramatic here. Why is it now the government's responsibility to force citizens into the sterilization of their pets? Shouldn't this *CHOICE* be made by the pets owner?

The ordinance does exempt some animals, including those that have competed in shows or sporting competitions, guide dogs, animals used by police agencies and those belonging to professional breeders.

The average pet owner, however, must have their dog or cat spayed or neutered by the time it reaches 4 months of age (as late as 6 months with a letter from a veterinarian). People with older unneutered pets and newcomers to the city with animals also have to obey the law.

First-time offenders will receive information on subsidized sterilization services and be given an additional 60 days. If they still fail to comply they could be fined $100 and ordered to serve eight hours of community service. A subsequent offense could result in a $500 fine or 40 hours of community service.

Think of the expansion of bureaucracy this sort of law requires.

If my buddies and I set up an annual race between all the neighborhood dogs, are we then exempt under the law's "sporting competition" language? Or what if I take my cats to Minnesota the next time I visit my relatives, and have them catch a few barn critters from my uncles farm - are they then protected as hunting animals?

Who investigates claims of exemption? Who enforces violations?

Does anyone think this is a useful delegation of law enforcement time, effort, and money? I wonder how, exactly, Los Angeles officials plan on enforcing such a pathetic law. Will police officers now routinely stop citizens with animals and check their... uh... equipment? Will police officers now routinely take calls from distraught neighbors, worried about the family next door that just had kittens?

Oh that's right, cops in Los Angeles are bored enough as it is. I have more than my fair share of friends in the LAPD and will be sure to follow up with them on their new role as pet peck*r checkers.

And what gives Los Angeles city officials the right to allow show animals to reproduce, but not the "average" animal. Does the fact that my wife and I haven't wasted hard-earned dollars entering our beloved cats in some sort of pet pageant make them any less deserving of the ability to reproduce - if we so choose?

I could go on and on about the absurdity of this law.

What it all comes down to is the fact that this is just one more clear-cut case of liberals - yes liberals, the LA City Council isn't made up of conservatives - unnecessarily expanding the role of government over what should be the decisions of private citizens.

I heard the news on my way to work this morning.

From Wikipedia:

William Frank "Bill" Buckley, Jr. (November 24, 1925 - February 27, 2008) was an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style was famed for its eloquence, wit, and use of uncommon words.

Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with libertarianism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of U.S. Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.

Buckley was the author of a series of novels featuring the character of CIA agent Blackford Oakes, along with dozens of other books on writing, speaking, history, politics, and sailing. Buckley referred to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative. He was based in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut. Buckley often signed his name as "WFB."

For quite some time now I have been openly harping on global "warming" hysterics. Throughout my debates I have maintained that within the next 20 (or some odd) years, we will begin to see signs of the next global climate cycle - a cycle that will bring global "cooling".

It appears I was wrong.

Apparently we won't have to wait that long.

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

Meteorologist Anthony Watts compiled the results of all the sources. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to erase nearly all the global warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year time. For all sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news. (all emphasis mine)

This will undoubtedly be positioned by global "warming" hysterics as... you guessed it... more evidence OF global "warming".

Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.

The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January "was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average."

China is surviving its most brutal winter in a century. Temperatures in the normally balmy south were so low for so long that some middle-sized cities went days and even weeks without electricity because once power lines had toppled it was too cold or too icy to repair them.

There have been so many snow and ice storms in Ontario and Quebec in the past two months that the real estate market has felt the pinch as home buyers have stayed home rather than venturing out looking for new houses.

In just the first two weeks of February, Toronto received 70 cm of snow, smashing the record of 66.6 cm for the entire month set back in the pre-SUV, pre-Kyoto, pre-carbon footprint days of 1950.

And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its "lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.

The ice is back. (emphasis mine)

Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.

After all, global "warming" has different effects on different places, right?

Oh, what an easy debate it must be.

While many are focused on Fidel Castro's resignation in Cuba, we see more pleasantries out of the other socialist paradise.

Venezuela has adopted an unprecedented system of food rationing similar to the ration cards used in Cuba, after several months of food shortages that have caused popular discontent.

The Ministry of Nutrition announced last week that beneficiaries of the government's food distribution program would only be allowed one purchase a day. The amount of food allocated to each family would be based on a "social study" the government performed, it said.

Earlier this year, the government created a distribution network known as Pdval -- financed by the state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela, or PDVSA -- to solve shortages of groceries like beef, eggs and milk that have sparked long lines in recent months.

According to Asdrubal Chávez, President Hugo Chávez's cousin and the coordinator for Pdval, the distribution centers will now keep a registry of families shopping at each center to ensure that no home receives a "surplus" of staple products.

Under the new rationing system, government distribution centers will open at 8 a.m. and each customer will be given a control number that will allow him to shop for food that day. The customer will also fill out a registry card with his name, ID number and the products and quantities to be purchased.

Hat tip: Crush Liberalism

Hillary's turn toward sarcasm is surely a sign of desperation.

"Let's just get everybody together. Let's get unified. The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect. Maybe I've just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be. You are not going to wave a magic wand and have the special interests disappear."

I told you, this is getting fun!

As the Republican primary has begun to turn down a clear path these past few weeks, I've been more inclined to pay a little more attention to the Democrat race between senators Obama and Clinton.

Tonight I watched a replay of the Democrat debate in Texas. I must say, it is indeed fun watching Obama absolutely mop the floor with Clinton. No matter the clever line or tactic du jour Hillary pulls out from under her sleeve to toss at Obama, she just can't seem to touch him.

I find it amusing.

I have looked forward to a presidential election that pits any one of the Republicans against Hillary. But to be honest, I think watching her lose in the primary could be a pretty swell time as well.

While both candidates would be utterly terrible for this country, deep down I'm gleefully hoping Obama will take the wind out of the Clinton sail once and for all... and then of course lose to McCain.

This needs to be said...

If you're a conservative toying around with the idea of protesting the vote in November, or perhaps wasting your vote with a write-in, because you're unhappy with John McCain as the likely nominee, YOU ARE ACTING LIKE A LIBERAL.

Here's why:

When confronted with disappointment, liberals have a three-pronged modus operandi:

1) Get emotional
2) Whine and stomp their feet
3) Protest

Case in point: Iraq. Nuff said.

Following the suspension of Mitt Romney's campaign (a campaign of which I was an adamant supporter), many conservatives across the country appear to be in disarray. Faced with the inevitability of a John McCain nomination, many conservatives are indeed acting like liberals.

1) Get emotional
Conservatives have become disgustingly emotional in response to John McCain's success. Citing a few - and mostly non-consequential - legislative blunders, conservatives are up in arms.

There's seems to be a collective "John McCain wasn't my choice for the nomination, this is poopy" whine coming from conservative circles. "Waaa! I wanted [insert more conservative nominee here], I didn't want McCain. Waaaa!"

It's quite sad, really.

2) Whine and stomp their feet
Following this fit, conservatives who have taken this liberal course of reaction begin whining and stomping their feet.

"McCain isn't this, McCain isn't that, I don't want him to be the nominee, no I don't, I don't, I don't!"

3) Protest
That some conservatives are willing to protest the upcoming election, in response to a John McCain candidacy, is perhaps the most disturbing of all.

The asinine "this country must suffer because [enter more conservative nominee here] didn't get the nod, yes, the country must pay" mentality is mind boggling. To be honest, it's an idea reminiscent of the communist Soviet Union - that the people/country must suffer in order to become great.

As conservatives, we tend to pride ourselves in the ability to put logic over emotion. Apparently that is no longer a value to some conservatives.

It's time to take the logical (not emotional) step and rally behind the now inevitable candidacy of John McCain. He's not perfect, we have disagreements. Get over it.

If you believe the Left should govern as a punishment for the people not choosing a candidate up to your conservative standards, you're a fool (and I don't use that term lightly).

"That's utopianism and it doesn't belong on the right." - Dennis Prager ("The Dennis Prager Show," 2/11/08)

Any conservative headed down this reactionary path of illogic, should ask him/herself one question: Would Clinton/Obama be better?

If you answer yes, you are not to be taken seriously as an intellectual or a conservative. If you answer no, you know what you must do.

What is best for the conservative movement is a Republican Party united behind its candidate. Taking Romney's lead, we need to accept and reach out to John McCain, and unite behind a GOP poised to battle either one of the two quasi-socialist candidates the Democrats are attempting to thrust upon America.

Field trip: Head over to Hugh Hewitt's blog and read Seven Reasons To Support The GOP's Nominee

GOP presidential nominee hopeful Mike Huckabee recently put words to the lingering campaign strategy that has people asking, "What the Huck?"

Huckabee said his "brokered convention" strategy is predicated on a victory in Texas, the country’s largest Republican state.

"We think Texas is an important state," Huckabee told me. "We know how important it is to win Texas."

Huckabee says with an upset win in Texas, and a win in the Ohio Republican primary the same day, Huckabee could deny front runner John McCain the nomination in the primaries.

"If we win Texas, I think it changes the dynamics of this race. It could well go all the way to the convention. If the convention delegates pick the president, chances are they would pick the most conservative. I would be the one they would end up picking, if that’s the criteria."

One thing is for sure, Huckabee is a fighter. Huck's "fight to the end" mentality recently led him to the Alamo, where his use of the iconic Texan landmark as a symbol of his against-all-odds campaign for the GOP nod, came shortly after John McCain's victory in the Wisconsin primary.

Look, I don't mind Huckabee giving conservative voters choice in the primaries. I do believe, however, that his strategy is stalling a critical healing and uniting phase that is surely needed within the Republican Party today.

If Huckabee loses in Texas (as McCain's current 12-point spread would suggest is bound to be the outcome), I think it will be time for Huckabee to take a page out of the Romney play book and bow out gracefully... for the betterment of the party.

On a side note: Huckabee is going to be preaching at all three Sunday morning services at my church at the end of March. I am definitely looking forward to hearing him in person.

Hat tip: Hot Air

The Least Unpredictable Campaign Ever? by Hugh Hewitt.

McCain-Obama: Will the domestic campaign hold any surprises whatsoever? Or will only the backdrop from abroad change, and with it the election dynamic?

John McCain will talk about the wide war and the dangers our enemies pose. He will do so every day all day, and every headline from the world that underscores the plans and attacks of the jihadists will be an exhibit in his appeal for support.

Barack Obama will do everything except talk about the future course of the war. He'll talk about health care. He'll talk about foreclosures. He'll talk about jobs going overseas. He'll talk about George W. Bush and "change" every day, all day.