Among the British Marines captured by the Iranians, one is a woman who is also the mother of a young child. There is outrage in the British tabloids and government that the Iranians are holding her. Theodore Dalrymple comments:
If it is true that women and young mothers are entitled to special consideration when they [...]

A recent article in the International Herald Tribune reports about poor whites in England. As with all news media reports on the lives of the poor, there is no questioning the fundamental pillars put in place in the 20th century to sustain the anti-poverty welfare states. The news media is conservative in this way: [...]

Spam sucks. And people that sit around all day creating spam to fill our email inboxes and comment boxes on blogs suck too.
I have a spam blocker on this blog that helps quite a bit. I just checked how it is doing, and in the last year it has blocked 226,547 spam comments! Even with [...]

Break out the champagne - NoSpeedBumps is two years old today! On March 27, 2005, I wrote my first post here.
To those regular or semi-regular readers of NoSpeedBumps, I would like to thank you for stopping by. If it were not for you folks visiting here on your own initiative (not just via Google hits), [...]

Let’s hope not, but this makes you worry:
LOS ANGELES - It took political officials nearly a month to respond to the slaying of Cheryl Green. Since then, the 14-year-old African-American girl has become the face of brown-on-black violence in this city.
… Hate crimes rose 34 percent in 2005 in Los Angeles, the latest year for [...]

In New York City. I am looking out at Times Square as I write this. Staying at the W. Obviously this hotel was named to show the love that people in New York City have for George W. Bush.
My daughters are with me and met and talked for awhile with one of Bob Marley’s [...]

What is worse, beheading Christian schoolgirls or smuggling drugs? Apparently in Indonesia beheading Christian schoolgirls is the lesser crime.
Publius Pundit writes:
“Death to Christian schoolgirls! Death for drug possession! 20 years for Islamic militants!”

China, like the more developed countries, has coming retirement woes:
The proportion of people 60 and older is growing faster in China than in any other major country, with the number of retirees set to double between 2005 and 2015, when it is expected to reach 200 million. By midcentury, according to United Nations projections, roughly [...]

I often write about the anti-poverty welfare state and big government’s impact on the poor. A sad fact of our time is that no matter the evidence, many many people will refuse to believe that the welfare state and larger government can do more harm than good. For a political leader to bring up scaling [...]

For a long time now I have been saying that the solution to Iraq is to move toward an internal withdrawal on to large bases in Iraq. I feel like I have been a lone wolf here because this idea is seldom if ever discussed by mainstream politicians or thinkers.
Interestingly, Hillary Clinton while posing [...]

Whatever you think of the Iraq war right now, this is a curious finding reported by the London Sunday Times:
Most Iraqis believe life is better for them now than it was under Saddam Hussein, according to a British opinion poll published today.
The survey of more than 5,000 Iraqis found the majority optimistic despite their [...]