"Walmart is a big... purchaser..."

Somehow the proverbial cat got hold of the proverbial silver tongue.

Sad.

Ann C. Uncovers Inconsistency

Ann Coulter shows the absolute hypocrisy of the line "hey, it's only speech!" in this piece about those despicable Phelps cult people. Here's the meat:

True, speech will often be involved in inflicting emotional distress on someone, say, for example, standing outside a funeral with signs that say "God Hates You!"

Similarly, words are used in committing treason ("The Americans are over here!"), robbery ("Your money or your life!") and sexual harassment ("Have sex with me or you're fired."). Copyright law prohibits speech that uses someone else's words, and insider trading and trade-secrets laws prohibit the use of words revealing insider information or trade secrets.

The fact that "speech" was involved in the Fred Phelps cult's assault on Matthew Snyder's funeral is a mundane and irrelevant fact. The question is: Did that speech constitute intentional infliction of emotional distress? Hey, look! That reasonable man over there is nodding his head "yes." If so, the First Amendment is as irrelevant as it is to a copyright law violation.

The Supreme Court has upheld shockingly restrictive bans on speech outside of abortion clinics: content-based restrictions on the speech of pro-lifers singing, "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight, Jesus loves the little children of the world."

Is abortion more sacrosanct than a son's funeral? Is singing "Jesus loves the little children" deserving of less First Amendment protection than placards saying, "God Loves Dead Soldiers"? Hey, reasonable man over there -- got a minute?

WHK has a great iPhone app

This is cool for iPhone users. Go to the App store and search on "whk". You'll see the search result come up "Newstalk 1420 WHK". Select it and download it for free. Then you can listen to all the stuff I listen to and be cool like me.

The engine behind this is AirKast which specializes in mobile phone broadcasting. There is a great feature that allows playing the station in the background via Safari and Quicktime. I haven't seen that feature yet on the other radio apps I have, one called iheartradio which I use to listen to Rush on WTAM 1100 and another generically called "Talk Radio" which is very clumsy to use and which I haven't use much as a result. But anyway it is nice being able to use the phone while you listen to the station in the background. It has been a complaint by users and developers alike that it's next to impossible to get apps to run in the background on the iPhone. Airkast deserves credit for finding a way around that.

Now I'm going back to listening to Michael Medved and Jeffrey Lyons argue about movies.

Erick Erickson: "Go with the army you have"

I can't argue with any part of this. Matches my sentiments exactly. I especially liked the line "A lot of the blame for things these days is being foisted up by a press all too happy to highlight Republican problems and ignore Democrat problems." That always bears repeating.

Ed Koch: "Foul whiff of Munich"

Read it and weep, seriously. Excerpt:

The Times also reported that “Mr. Chavez had suggested before Mr. Putin’s arrival that the countries could cooperate ambitiously on nuclear energy and a satellite-launching base in Venezuela.”

What would we do if Venezuela invited Russia to build a missile launch pad, or Russia provided Venezuela with the plans and materials for building nuclear weapons? Would there be a replay of the Cuban missile crisis of the 1960s?

Based on our continuing failure to confront North Korea and Iran with regard to their nuclear activities, I suspect we would do nothing. I fear that we have lost the battle and lost our nerve. It appears that the Obama administration has decided to live with the idea that these two rogue states—North Korea and Iran—can do as they please on the nuclear front.

There is a foul whiff of Munich and appeasement in the air.

Word on the Street

The other day I had new garage door openers installed. The old ones worked OK, but they had weak safety features. Here's a quote from the installer, a small businessman:

"A lot of installers will be going out of business because of new EPA regulations dealing with disposal of old garage doors. You have to buy special bags to put them in, plus you have to register each one, fill out forms about lead paint--that kind of thing. That's Hope and Change for you. But just wait a year and this is going to seem like nothing. I'm telling you, Hope and Change is going to hit hard, man. Just wait."

But wait... I thought they wanted to help small businesses? Oh, yeah, I forgot. They don't understand the first thing about what real business people need.