Category: Aggregated

For a month now, the Saudi air force has been bombing Yemen to reverse a takeover of that nation of 25 million by Houthi rebels, and reinstall a president who fled his country and is residing in Riyadh. The Saudis have hit airfields, armor and arms depots, and caused a humanitarian catastrophe. Nearly 1,000 dead, 3,500 wounded and tens of thousands homeless. The poorest nation in the Arab world is near collapse. Dependent upon imported food, Yemen faces malnutrition and starvation. And the United States has been an accomplice in the Saudi bombing of Yemen. Why? Why is Yemen’s civil … Continue reading →

On Tuesday the Court held in Rodriguez v. U.S. that suspects cannot be detained beyond the scope of a routine traffic stop for the sole purpose of performing a dog sniff. The 6-3 ruling is indeed a big win for the 4th Amendment. But our old friend and former-Flex Associate Director Scott Morgan emailed me a note about why this ruling is particularly special. Hey Steve, Great ruling today! Of course, everyone’s going to talk about the rarity of the Court upholding the 4th Amendment these days. What I noticed (and hope more people see) is that this case only happened … Continue reading →

A History of Medieval Europe, RHC Davis Look, I hope you aren’t expecting a six-volume masterpiece…. Davis summarizes the reasons for the fall (actually a slow, grinding, gradual decline) of Rome into four: …by the beginning of the fifth century the Roman Empire had been suffering from economic decline for at least two centuries. …the Romans were already being “barbarized.” …the barbarians were already becoming Romanized …the precise manner in which the barbarian settlements were made. I will expand on one of these: the economic decline.  Let’s just say it is expensive to run an empire. The primary cause of … Continue reading →

Like so many other “official” social and governmental institutions that were birthed during the Progressive Era a century ago, the Federal Bureau of Investigation – better known as the FBI – has been held up as a model of governmental professionalism. The G-Men, as they were called, were to be the cream of the crop of professional and “scientific” lawmen, incorruptible, diligent, and generally correct about everything. Progressives believed that all of American life needed to fall under central governmental control, and law enforcement should be no exception. Journalists touted the “professional” lawmen of the FBI, contrasting them with the … Continue reading →

The early Greeks had a better, more basic understanding of weather and climate than the people involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Indeed, the word climate derives from the Greek word klima, meaning inclination, referring to the climate conditions created by the angle of the Sun. They paid great attention to the wind, realizing its role in creating local, regional and seasonal conditions. They even erected a tower to the wind in Athens (Figure 1) with sculptures representing each major compass direction. Figure 1 The Greeks focused on the more important horizontal movement of air, technically called … Continue reading →

Pay attention. In recent months, the U.S. stock market has gone nowhere: up, down, up, down. No pattern. Yesterday, the world’s stock markets tanked. No warning. Wham! No single central bank is responsible. No single central bank can goose the world’s stock markets. No coordinated policy is likely . . . yet. There is no sell-off panic . . . yet. This was “a warning shot fired across the bow.” This has the look of a market top. One day’s stick market action rarely calls attention to itself. This one is not comparable to the 22% worldwide one-day collapse in … Continue reading →

#1. The capital city is basically a ruin. energy.sgpco.com Tehran’s skyline is truly mediocre. #2. Everyone lives in a mud shack. homesoftherich The Tabatabaei house in Kashan is a pretty miserable place to while away your days. #3. The villages are pretty much what you’d find anywhere else. Amos Chapple If Palangan village, on the border with Iraq, looks mildly impressive, it’s just because of the lighting. Nothing to do with the near-vertical positioning of the houses.  #4. The architecture is plain and lackluster. ravenectar.com Why would anyone want to visit the Nasir al-Mulk Mosque in Shiraz? #5. Meh. facebook.com/Iran.Architecture Oh Shiraz, is this the … Continue reading →