Unca Darrell

JANUARY 31 / "Lawfare" is a great word

IT DESCRIBES the use of law as a weapon of war. But the word cannot also be applied to domestic politics, as the use of criminal charges to bring down adversaries who cannot be defeated at the ballot box. The chief advocate and practitioner of political lawfare is the left. In Texas, the franchise belongs to Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and her hard-left predecessors in office. 

Recent victims, nationally, include Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. He was convicted on corruption charges that were later thrown out. Another victim, closer to home, was Texas Representative Tom DeLay. After his career and finances were ruined, all charges were thrown out.

Think what you will of his politics or character, what was done to him in our name was far worse than whatever it is he was supposed to have done. It was an abuse of power. It was profoundly anti-democratic.

Which brings us to . . .

JANUARY 30 / Governor Abbott just said no to . . .

. . . crony capitalism. Good on him.

AUSTIN -- Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday proposed . . .

JANUARY 29 / Sowell on how central planning never works but never gives way to what does

SOME OF THE MOST SWEEPING and spectacular rhetoric of the Left occurred in 18th-century France, where the very concept of the Left originated in the fact that people with certain views sat on the left side of the National Assembly.

The French Revolution was their chance to show what they could do when they got the power they sought. In contrast to what they promised -- "liberty, equality, fraternity" -- what they actual produced were . . .

JANUARY 19 / What the Houston Chronicle forgets

"SOMETIMES IT FEELS like [read as if] our nation has forgotten more than we remember about [Dr. Martin Luther King's] crusade for justice," the Houston Chronicle says today.  

Folks are fixating on Dr. King's call for a colorblind society, the Chronicle says, and forgetting the economic leftism in the last year of this great man's life: "meaningful jobs at a living wage," etc.

Fair enough. But on Dr. King's legacy as on so much else, the Chronicle bids fair to serve as our city's forgetter-in-chief.

JANUARY 14, 16 / UPDATED, BUMPED: "All of the choices will be bad"

SO SAYS George Friedman about the "war" -- he uses the word -- between the West and Islamic extremism.

[Go to the bottom for the update. It's good.]

We are entering a place that has no solutions. Such a place does have decisions, and all of the choices will be bad. What has to be done . . .

JANUARY 16 / Think you've got problems?

Consider these numbers, collected before the emergence of ISIS and now likely much longer:

JANUARY 15 / Edmund Burke on the arrogance . . .

. . . of revolutionaries or, as we have it, fundamental transformers:

Burke's fundamental objection to revolutions inspired by rationalistic ideals was their arrogance. As he wrote in Reflections, "We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that this stock in each man is small, and that the individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations, and of ages." In Burke's view, knowledge is held not individually but . . . 

JANUARY 12 / Mugged by reality?

Two quickies:

In a remarkable breach of political correctness, the Houston Chronicle ran a three-column headline today that says, "1.6 million fill Paris streets to decry Islamic extremism." Even more remarkable . . .

JANUARY 7 / Former senator James Webb is the cure . . .

. . . for what ails the Democrat Party. He's an adult. He has common sense. He likes America.

But his chance of getting through the primaries is less than a snowball's. His party is dominated as it is by government employees and their unions; by welfare recipients, guilty white liberals, and trial lawyers; by race hustlers, eco-hustlers, crony capitalists, and Goldman Sachs; by university professors, college sophomores, and the crazy wing of the feminist movement; and by Occupy sympathizers, grievance mongers of every stripe, and the greater fruitcake community.

Unfortunately, one sad fact will condemn his candidacy with most of the rest of us, at least in a contest against a reasonably sane and competent GOP candidate:

JANUARY 6 / At least people are finally willing . . .

. . . to use the once-forbidden word . . .