“It’s too bad Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name isn’t Hillary Rodman Clinton,” my son says. “Maybe she could rebound from her current situation.”

How small of all that human hearts endure
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.

— Samuel Johnson

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed legislation that prohibits the use of handheld mobile phones while driving in the state.

Effective July 1, 2008, the legislation prohibits drivers from using a wireless telephone while operating a motor vehicle unless the driver uses a hands-free device. Drivers who violate the law will face a base fine of $20 for a first offense and $50 for each subsequent offense.

I can’t talk on my cell phone while I’m driving?

What a dopey law!

Can I still eat a chili dog while I’m driving? Can I drink a beverage? Can I try to find my favorite song on the CD player? Can I perform any number of activities that require the use of at least one hand and are at least as distracting as a phone call?

Has anyone else noticed that we have too many laws? And that every new one takes away one more precious freedom or one more hard-earned dollar, usually for no good reason?

Once upon a time there was a political observer who was thoughtful, intelligent, witty and polite, not an angry demagogue.

I know, it sounds like a fairy tale . . .

In December 2009 we will suffer a massive nationwide psychological depression. People assume that all of their problems can be blamed on George W. Bush personally. When the hated King Bush II has been back to Texas for a year and the beloved Obama has been in office for a year, people will look around for a quick status check. They will still be stuck in horrific traffic. They will still be paying insane prices for crummy housing in bleak, lonely communities. Their children will be getting a terrible education at the local public school, perhaps developing to about 15 percent of their potential. If in a hip urban area, criminals will still be smashing their car windows and taking their GPS. They will realize that virtually none of the things that are unpleasant about their life have anything to do with the federal government, except for the war in Iraq, which a quick check of the headlines will reveal that we are still losing.

— Philip Greenspun

I get very, very frustrated when I . . . hear certain Americans talk about how difficult the problems we face are, how overwhelming they are, what a dangerous era we live in. I think we’ve lost perspective. We’ve always had difficult problems, we’ve always had great challenges, and we’ve always lived in danger.

Do we think our parents and our grandparents and our great grandparents didn’t live in danger and didn’t have difficult problems? Do we think the Second World War was less difficult that our struggle with Islamic terrorism? Do we think that the Great Depression was a less difficult economic struggle for people to face than the struggles we’re facing now? Have we entirely lost perspective of the great challenges America has faced in the past and has been able to overcome and overcome brilliantly? I think sometimes we have lost that perspective.

— Rudy Giuliani

Although former Vice President Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize this week for his work as a global-warming performance artist, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled early today that President George Bush would receive the gold medal, the diploma and the $750,000.

— ScrappleFace

The dictator and the useful idiot

Keep before you the swift onset of oblivion, and the abysses of eternity before us and behind; mark how hollow are the echoes of applause, how fickle and undiscerning the judgements of professed admirers, and how puny the arena of human fame. For the entire earth is but a point, and the place of our own habitation but a minute corner in it; and how many are therein who will praise you, and what sort of men are they?

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, IV.3

Bob Kerrey’s WSJ opinion piece is the best thinking I’ve seen lately by a Democratic politician on the war in Iraq . . .

When the government says ‘Islamic militants,’ it sends a message to the public that Islam and militancy are synonymous.

— Sohail Mohammed, a lawyer who represented scores of detainees after the 9/11 attacks.

No, that’s not correct. What law school did you go to?

If Islam and militancy were synonymous, then you could just say “Islamic” or “militants” and “Islamic militants” would be redundant, like “past history” or “unexpected surprise.”

So actually, when the government says “Islamic militants,” it sends a message that Islam and militancy are not synonymous, although you can’t help noticing that most terrorists are in fact Islamic . . .

Even when asked something noncontroversial, what he [Barack Obama] personally did to improve the environment, he said 3,000 campaign volunteers planted trees on Earth Day. With a prod from moderator Brian Williams, the NBC anchor, Obama added he’s “been working” to install energy efficient light bulbs at home. He sounded out of touch.

— MSNBC

Is this the new version of the old joke? How many senators does it take to “work on” changing a light bulb? One to propose a bipartisan commission. One to threaten to de-fund the light bulbs. One to demand the impeachment of Bush and Cheney for keeping us all in the dark. One to vote to pull out the first of the light bulbs by fall of this year with a view to getting them all pulled out by the end of 2008.

— Mark Steyn

After winning 11 state primaries in a field of 16 contenders, I won the Democratic presidential nomination. I then lost the general election to President Nixon. Indeed, the entrenched incumbent president, with a campaign budget 10 times the size of mine, the power of the White House behind him and a highly negative and unethical campaign, defeated me overwhelmingly. But lest [Dick] Cheney has forgotten, a few months after the election, investigations by the Senate and an impeachment proceeding in the House forced Nixon to become the only president in American history to resign the presidency in disgrace.

Who was the real loser of ‘72?

— George McGovern

Wow, that is a provocative question. It really made us wonder if we’ve been wrong all these years. Accordingly, we went back and checked. Turns out the real loser was McGovern, just as we had thought!

— Best of the Web Today

“People don’t stop killers,” writes the Instapundit. “People with guns do.”

The idea is that if one of the Virginia Tech students had had a gun with him, he could have come to the rescue like Dick Dauntless, and shot the Korean.

Well that’s true. But what if 300 students had guns, and they were all on the look-out for a student with a gun? I’m failing to see the genius of this plan, though no doubt I’ve overlooked something obvious.

— Harry Hutton

I wish I’d thought of that.

I was just going to say that if you base public policy decisions on extreme, unrepresentative events, you may wind up with a cure that’s worse than the disease . . .

Further deadly sewage floods are feared after a wave of stinking waste and mud from a collapsed septic pool inundated a Gaza village, killing five people, including two babies. . . .

It highlighted the desperate need to upgrade Gaza’s overloaded, outdated infrastructure — but aid officials say construction of a modern sewage treatment plant has been held up by constant Israeli-Palestinian fighting.

— Associated Press

In related news, the Jerusalem Post reports that Israel recently stopped selling metal pipes to the Palestinians after discovering that the pipes were being used to build rockets that were then launched back into Israel.

Bombed with their own metal — ironic!

The punch line is what the Palestinians were supposed to be using the pipes for: building a sewage system in Gaza.

My instant reaction to the 9/11 attacks was that they were a nuisance that got in the way of more pressing concerns. . . . Accepting that fascism is worse than western democracy, even western democracies governed by George W Bush and Tony Blair, sounds very easy in theory, but it is very difficult to do in practice when you are a habitual enemy of the status quo in your own country.

— Mark Cohen, What’s Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way

While you’re waiting for the end of the world, have a look at this frightening interview, in which Jeff Stein, Congressional Quarterly’s national security editor, talks to Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, about the major players in Islamic terrorism:

Al Qaeda is what, I asked, Sunni or Shia?

“Al Qaeda, they have both,” Reyes said. “You’re talking about predominately [sic]?”

“Sure,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Predominantly — probably Shiite,” he ventured.

He couldn’t have been more wrong.

Al Qaeda is profoundly Sunni. If a Shiite showed up at an al Qaeda club house, they’d slice off his head and use it for a soccer ball.

That’s because the extremist Sunnis who make up al Qaeda consider all Shiites to be heretics.

Al Qaeda’s Sunni roots account for its very existence. Osama bin Laden and his followers believe the Saudi Royal family besmirched the true faith through their corruption and alliance with the United States, particularly allowing U.S. troops on Saudi soil.

It’s been five years since these Muslim extremists flew hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center.

Is it too much to ask that our intelligence overseers know who they are?

I say no. I was telling my dad about this interview last night . . . when I got to the “Al Qaeda — Sunni or Shia?” question, he said, “They’re Sunni,” very matter-of-factly, like I’d asked him if Derek Jeter plays for the Yankees or the Red Sox.

Keep in mind that Rep. Reyes gets paid $165,200 a year to know more about this stuff than the average 70-year-old retiree.

And Hezbollah? I asked him. What are they?

“Hezbollah. Uh, Hezbollah…”

He laughed again, shifting in his seat.

Funny stuff! I’ll bet he misses this one too . . .

“Why do you ask me these questions at five o’clock? Can I answer in Spanish? Do you speak Spanish?”

“Poquito,” I said–a little.

“Poquito?!” He laughed again.

“Go ahead,” I said, talk to me about Sunnis and Shia in Spanish.

Reyes: “Well, I, uh….”

Was that Spanish? OMG, I feel a lot safer now!

I really hate people who don’t put in the effort. Maybe instead of shutting it down at 5 p.m., he could go till 7, 8, or 9 p.m. and try to learn something about the people who’d like to end Western civilization as we know it. Oh sure, it would mean missing the free taquitos at happy hour, but wouldn’t it be worth it in the long run?

I apologized for putting him “on the spot a little.” But I reminded him that the people who have killed thousands of Americans on U.S. soil and in the Middle East have been front page news for a long time now.

It’s been 23 years since a Hezbollah suicide bomber killed over 200 U.S. military personnel in Beirut, mostly Marines.

Hezbollah, a creature of Iran, is close to taking over in Lebanon. Reports say they are helping train Iraqi Shiites to kill Sunnis in the spiralling civil war.

“Yeah,” Reyes said, rightly observing, “but . . . it’s not like the Hatfields and the McCoys. It’s a heck of a lot more complex.

“And I agree with you — we ought to expend some effort into understanding them. But speaking only for myself, it’s hard to keep things in perspective and in the categories.”

I totally know what you mean! I have a hard time keeping up with all the latest developments in my business too! But I try. I make a daily effort.

My dad couldn’t believe it: “No, he didn’t really say that.” But he did!

This must be why people endure the personal indignities necessary to succeed in politics.

You can make a very nice income without doing any actual work.

You can kick the president’s ass for years on his handling of major issues without offering any ideas of your own, and without even knowing the basic facts.

You can endanger the entire nation by being entrusted with a key national security position despite the fact that you’re as dumb as a rock, and then laugh in the face of a man who exposes you as a fraud and a dangerous imbecile.

Willful incompetence never had it so good!

I don’t usually offer investment advice, but in this case I’m going to make an exception. Long: blankets, canned goods and shotgun shells.

You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.

— John Kerry

And I think this reveals, is a glimpse into what the Democrats actually mean when they say we support our troops. They support them as victims, as children, as people too stupid to know better. But they don’t support them in the mission they’re fighting, thousands of miles away.

— Mark Steyn

A German opera house announced that it would cancel its staging of Mozart’s “Idomeneo” because Berlin police concluded that staging the opera — which includes a scene in which Jesus, Buddha, Poseidon and Muhammad are beheaded — would pose an “incalculable security risk” from jihadists. Germany, recall, proudly opposed the Iraq war — but still narrowly missed a Spain-style terrorist attack on its rail system this summer.

A leading Muslim spokesman in Germany explained that he was all for free speech, as long as it didn’t offend Muslims. The Germans’ all-too-typical appeasement of terrorism no doubt makes them “safer” and “creates” fewer terrorists.

And all it cost them — for now — is Mozart.

— Jonah Goldberg

Under Mr. Bush and the Republican Congress, incomes today are $1,000 less for the typical household than during Bill Clinton’s final year in office; incomes for the typical working-age household have declined every year since the president took office.

— Howard Dean, Democratic National Committee chairman

BOO HOO HOO! The President made my income go down.

I’ve never understood the mechanism behind the president or Congress making my income go up or down. Can someone explain that to me?

You know who I think makes my income go up or down? ME! I’ve made decisions that made my income go UP, and I’ve made decisions that made my income go DOWN.

Who is the target audience for this tripe? People who want to believe they have no control over their own lives? People who need to blame all their problems on others?

It’s always someone else’s fault. It’s my boss’s fault, it’s my spouse’s fault, it’s the president’s fault . . .

Look in the mirror, you schlubs!

What a dismal vision of America. Elect some Democrats, you sorry losers! Oh, and we won’t be fighting terrorists in Iraq anymore. We’ll be fighting them in the streets of major American cities.

He’s not exactly Winston Churchill, is he?

The educated coastal public thinks that evangelical Christianity is America’s number one religion. They are wrong. It is the Worship of Unearned Riches, and Las Vegas is its holy city. The belief that it is possible to get something for nothing is more potent in our land than the belief that the Son of God will return to rescue mankind. The Religion of Unearned Riches was established here in the desert by organized crime. It has turned us into a nation of slobs, clowns, patsies, and cravens. Las Vegas is what we have become. Is it any wonder that the rest of the world despises us?

— James Howard Kuntsler

I live a few hours’ drive from Las Vegas. I share the author’s contempt for the place, right up until the last sentence where he suggests that there’s something uniquely American about irrational greed. Other countries don’t have casinos and lotteries?

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