Althouse on Gosnell: “But, why wasn’t more written sooner?”

Gosnell is an abortionist on trial for murder, but the political issue is abortion. Why would the media not cover that? Duh.

Come on. Add the obvious: The media perceive the Gosnell story as a threat to abortion rights.
By the way, why are we calling what he did “abortion”? Just as a matter of clarity in the language. The grand jury report says that his method of ridding women of their unwanted late-term pregnancies was to induce labor and deliver the child. That’s not abortion. That’s childbirth. We’re not even in the gray area where a strange term like “partial-birth abortion” could be used. It was complete birth, followed by murder. Why don’t abortion rights proponents come down hard on that distinction? He wasn’t an abortionist (in most of these instances), but an obstetrician-murderer. If abortion rights proponents don’t want to talk about that, I’d like to hear exactly why they have a problem.

Read the whole thing.

Christmas in the Hanoi Hilton

Retired Air Force Col. Lee Ellis: stud.

Ace of Spades: Where We Go From Here

Read the whole thing:

At the heart of every conservative’s worldview is this simple truth. You—not your lucky rabbit’s foot, not some cosmic lottery, not your circumstances, your parents, your race, gender, or disability—YOU determine the life you live. Belief in self-determination is at the very foundation of our ideology. It is why conservatives champion liberty and personal responsibility while rejecting collective guilt, class envy, tribalism and victim-hood. It’s what defines us. It’s what we believe and it’s who we are.

(h/t Instapundit)

Begin here to understand guns in America

Larry Correia, author of “Monster Hunter, Inc.” and other novels offers an incredibly detailed review of the issue of guns & gun control in America today. A long but worthwhile article. Read the whole thing. Read it here.

Mark Evanier: My Larry Hagman Story

This is a great story about Larry Hagman. Read the whole thing.

What a nice, thoughtful gesture. I certainly wasn’t expecting anything from him, particularly something like this. But I don’t wear hats and I certainly don’t wear hats like this. Bridget, on the other hand does. She looks good in everything but she really looks good in this white Stetson except, of course, that it’s a size or two too big for her. Fortunately, the box also contains a slip that says that if it doesn’t fit, bring it back to the store and exchange it. I tell Bridget the hat is hers. “Take it back and get one that fits.” Three days later, she goes to do that.I’m working at home when I get a frantic call from her — from a pay phone at the store in Beverly Hills. At first from her tone, I think she’s been mugged or beaten up or that something horrible has happened. “Calm down, Bridget,” I tell her. “Take a deep breath and tell me what happened.”She takes a deep breath and says, like she’s telling me the Earth has been invaded, “It’s…it’s a fourteen hundred dollar hat!”

Long-distance runners lap up miles for the love of it

Duh.

“It’s so rare in sporting culture for those who aren’t physically or aerobically gifted to feel included in something that’s competitive but not exclusive.
“While it’s tough to categorize athletes, Chertok said, long-distance running seems to be appreciated by those who enjoy solitude – or periods of solitude – and are OK with monotony.

NYT/Nate Silver: GOP Lack of Techno Talent Hurts Campaigns

In Silicon Valley, Technology Talent Gap Threatens G.O.P. Campaigns:

It does not require an algorithm to deduce that the sort of employees who may be willing to donate substantial money to a political campaign may also be those who would consider working for it.
Since Democrats had the support of 80 percent or 90 percent of the best and brightest minds in the information technology field, it shouldn’t be surprising that Mr. Obama’s information technology infrastructure was viewed asstate-of-the-art exemplary, whereas everyone from Republican volunteers to Silicon Valley journalists havecriticized Mr. Romney’s systems. Mr. Romney’s get-out-the-vote application, Project Orca, is widely viewed as having failed on Election Day, perhaps contributing to a disappointing Republican turnout.

Nate Silver had a great track record in polling the last election. Unfortunately.

ZeroHedge: The Top Ten ‘Fiscal Cliff’ To-Do List

Nice detail on the fiscal cliff. Here’s the list.

Read the whole thing here.

NYT/Ross Douthat: The Birthrate and America’s Future

There are many great reasons to have a large family. This one is more controversial & has stirred up more commentary than thought.

It’s a near-universal law that modernity reduces fertility. But compared with the swiftly aging nations of East Asia and Western Europe, the American birthrate has proved consistently resilient, hovering around the level required to keep a population stable or growing over the long run.
America’s demographic edge has a variety of sources: our famous religiosity, our vast interior and wide-open spaces (and the four-bedroom detached houses they make possible), our willingness to welcome immigrants (who tend to have higher birthrates than the native-born).

John P Kotter/HBR: Accelerate!

Keeping up with the pace of modern life.

We cannot ignore the daily demands of running a company, which traditional hierarchies and managerial processes can still do very well. What they do not do well is identify the most important hazards and opportunities early enough, formulate creative strategic initiatives nimbly enough, and implement them fast enough.
The existing structures and processes that together form an organization’s operating system need an additional element to address the challenges produced by mounting complexity and rapid change. The solution is a second operating system, devoted to the design and implementation of strategy, that uses an agile, networklike structure and a very different set of processes. The new operating system continually assesses the business, the industry, and the organization, and reacts with greater agility, speed, and creativity than the existing one. It complements rather than overburdens the traditional hierarchy, thus freeing the latter to do what it’s optimized to do. It actually makes enterprises easier to run and accelerates strategic change. This is not an “either or” idea. It’s “both and.” I’m proposing two systems that operate in concert.

Here’s the link.