Those Diabolically Clever Racist Republicans!

DIABOLICALLY CLEVER RACIST REPUBLICANS HIDE THEIR RACISM BY SUPPORTING BLACK CANDIDATE HERMAN CAIN.

Thus reasons that brilliantly incisive political pundit Janeane Garofalo.

Of course, if Republicans supported a white candidate, instead...why, they'd be RACISTS.

"Attila and the Witch Doctor" in Venezuela

Readers of Ayn Rand's For the New Intellectual will recognize these archetypes, what she described as a symbiotic relationship between "mystics of muscle" and "mystics of mind." And they'll also grasp how it relates to the following amusing news story:

Shamans from tribes in Venezuela's Amazon jungle held a ceremony at the Miraflores presidential palace Saturday to help Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recover from his cancer treatment.

Chavez, who insists that he was "not sick but recovering" from cancer, greeted the shamans wearing a track suit in the colors of the Venezuelan national flag and wore a crown of feathers the visitors gave him.

Members of the Yekuana, Jivi and Wayuu communities danced, sang and prayed as they invoked their ancestors to protect the Venezuelan leader.

The ritual was aimed at protecting Chavez "against enemies and bad health," said Miguel Morales, a shaman from the Jivi community.

It also serves "so that he is left in peace, politically," he said.

I just couldn't make this stuff up.

A 9/11 commentary: "Unilateral Moral Disarmament"

Not long after the attacks of September 11, 2001, I wrote a commentary on the meaning and source of the attack for a magazine called Navigator.

Nothing in the intervening ten years has caused me to alter my fundamental analysis of the ideas at the root of the assault on America. As we contemplate the tragic losses of human life from that infamous day, and the philosophy at the heart of the attack, I thought I'd share with you that commentary:

"Unilateral Moral Disarmament."