The Morning Blog

It's almost Coptic Christmas! Here's a quick breakdown of the differences between Coptic Christianity, Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Sadly, it's also a summary of the extremely tense situation facing Copts in Egypt.

One of the very, very few things that I liked about the health care bill is that it supported end of life planning. Then it didn't. Then it did. Now once again, it does not. Let's be very clear here: One of the ultimate expressions of the nanny state is its insistence that adults do not deserve autonomy over how their lives end. The idea that government has any role, ANY ROLE AT ALL in a person's decision to die peacefully rather than strapped to a bed with tubes and drugs coming out of every imaginable orifice is simply obscene. Your life and thus your death, should belong to you and you alone.

This Chinese stealth jet is so sneaky, even blog comments disappear!

Dick Cheney has a new heart pump. He may have to decide shortly whether to go for a full heart transplant soon. Any chance they could give him Ted Kennedy's? I think that'd be fun. At any rate, Cheney is becoming more and more of an American Darth Vader. Fun fact about the pump: Because of the way it operates, Cheney now has no pulse.

Arizona soldiers bravely on with its anti-immigrant hysteria. At this point, it's becoming more tragedy than farce. They're currently considering legislation that would literally create a second class of American citizen: those born to illegal immigrants. This is what they're doing: They're attempting to doom infants to a life in the underclass. Somehow, they believe that this will survive Constitutional scrutiny. Let's review Section 1 of the 14th Amendment shall we?

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

But oh no! These children are in fact those pernicious anchor babies that will keep their illegal parents here forever! Despite the fact that they cannot prevent the deportation of their parents or even file paperwork in support of their parents legal immigration until they're 21. Something that leads to this shameful situation:

Maria Ledezma knows as much. Just off a bus that deported her from Phoenix to the Mexico border town of Nogales, she was sobbing as she explained the series of events that led her to be separated from her three daughters, ages 4, 7 and 9, all American citizens.

“I never imagined being here,” said Ms. Ledezma, 25, who was brought to Phoenix from Mexico as a toddler. “I’ll bet right now that my girls are asking, ‘Where’s Mom?’ ”

It's grotesque.

Whoops....

Whitewash should be left to fences. Not literature: New versions of "Huck Finn" and "Tom Sawyer" are being published in which the word 'slave' will be substituted for the n-word...Oh, let's just come out and say it: The word is 'nigger'. The word Mark Twain chose to use in his book was 'nigger'. Is it an offensive word? You betcha. Indisputably. I feel uncomfortable writing it. But in what context did Twain choose to use this word? WHILE WRITING ABOUT THE SLAVE HOLDING SOUTH. Indisputably, an offensive time! It was a time when millions of people were treated as less than human; one of the ways in which this was done was LANGUAGE, language that Twain carefully and deliberately chose to portray his characters.

On a lighter note, here are things that blink and whir.

On an even lighter note, this sounds like a wonderful museum! Quite literally in fact, the Musical Instrument Museum sounds quite wonderful!

Bill Clinton should be embarrassed to have made this short list. Chavez isn't asking for an ambassador, he's asking for a security blanket.

Anatomy of an assassination. My impression is that the Mossad is frequently successful but rarely, if ever discreet. And I think they sort of like it that way. They want people to know what they're capable of so they can exist as a sort of Israeli Boogeyman.

Finally, here's a rundown of Japan's killer food.