The Anchoress

Still under the weather, and I’m supposed to be in bed, but I snuck out to read news. A quick spin around the internets:

Check out the nifty interview of Jim at Gateway Pundit. Very nice and the attention is more than deserved, as you can see simply by scrolling down his site each and every day. Always interesting and informative, and often GP brings you stories no one else is mentioning.

The American Thinker looks at an “insider” DU poll that is a little depressing.

Buster is begging me to fisk this woman but I haven’t the energy. He says if I don’t do it by Sunday, he might do it for me. He has quite a lot to say about her. I personally think there is a happy medium between over-doting on kids and being so detached from them that you can’t bear to sit through a movie with them - in a theater - without text-messaging your friends. There must be a happy medium between insisting that you spend every second with your kids and insisting that your own life comes first. This lady does not live in the happy-medium place.

I loved driving my kids around, and was sad when they got their licenses and that part of my life ended. We had some of our best, most productive chats in the car as I chauffered my kids and their friends from one place to the other, and some of our biggest laughs. I can still remember the time my Elder Son, an uncanny mimic, had me laughing so hard with his impressions of our parish priests that I - completely breathless - had to pull over or risk getting us all killed. This mother can’t bear the idea of subjegating her life or freedom or time to the needs of her kids and she’s apparently afraid of spending “30 hours a week” (!) driving them around. What a shame. I miss those car-times, a lot.

Melanie Phillips writes: What is essentially a war of defence and of survival, however, is being presented to Britons in their armchairs as a war by Israel of unconscionable aggression, with all the suffering taking place among the Lebanese who are in turn presented as the innocent bystanders caught up in a war in which they have no standing. The fact that Hezbollah was elected to the Lebanese parliament, holds government portfolios and has been allowed to operate with impunity by the Lebanese as a state within a state to carry out its murderous objectives towards Israel is almost totally ignored. Yes, innocent Lebanese are dying and suffering in this war, and that is awful. Innocent civilians, tragically, are always victims in any war. But Lebanon itself is not an innocent bystander at all. Right. Also, read Krauthammer and Beinart, if you missed them.

Ed Morrissey relates that Israel is calling up 30,000 reservists. This shouldn’t have been as difficult as it has become. But Israel is trying to make war as nicely as possible, to please the critics. It doesn’t really work. Churchill never sent out flyers to let the enemy know where they would next be striking. Israel does, pays for that in blood, and is still criticized.

Dr. Sanity has (and links to) brilliant commentary on that new and odd development in modern warfare - the need to make war while being “nice.” You’ll want to read it.

The Democrats are vowing to obstruct again, and defeat John Bolton’s appointment to the UN. Why? Other UN officials don’t like him!. Awwww…and here we thought his job was to look after US interests…turns out it was to make other officials like him. Check out Bolton eviscerating John Kerry and handing him his entrails in that video. Democrats: what leadership! I want them in power, mmmmhmmmm!

Did you hear WMD were found in So. Iraq? Neither did I.

Mamacita is writing about education and testing and you should read it, if you have kids. Yes, we have some pretty lousy schools. Some of them are lousy because they hired lousy teachers. However, I believe that many of our “lousy” schools are bad because of the political pressure of certain families who WILL NOT ALLOW their kids to be challenged, punished, or in any way whatsoever held responsible for their own actions, and by a society that insists that it is not a kid’s fault if he/she behaves badly: it’s SOCIETY’S fault, poor kids, poor poor kids, and they crush, kill, destroy, disrupt, vandalize, talk back, threaten, bully, sleep, sell drugs, take drugs, rape, harass, street-talk, mug, skip, and otherwise renege on the unwritten school/society/student contract because of somebody else, not themselves. The poor things can’t help it. It’s not their fault. They’re victims of the system. It is this lack of backup from families, and administrators who are unwilling to buck the political system of a community and crack down HARD on offenders, that are our worst problem. Spot on. My best pal is a high school Social Studies teacher in a very “rich” school district and the parents are, in her words, “out of control and disinterested in having their kids held accountable for their own work.”

Ever get invited somewhere only to find out your there to make it easier on the inviter? Tracey has. We’ve all been there, she reflects on it.

There are so many great things to link to, but I’m getting really tired and can’t do all the nice chit-chatty-lead-in stuff right now, and while I know I am missing many important bloggers, I hope they’ll forgive it. Meanwhile, just trust me when I say that if you go to any of these following links, you will be reading something good, thoughtful and important! Gerald on Baby Boomers, Alexandra’s Voice from the Grave, Victor Davis Hanson’s Vocabulary of Untruth, Blue Crab’s Acts of Barbarism and his defense of Condi against unconscionable condescension, Siggy’s Future Written Yesterday, Shrinkwrapped’s futher thoughts on strategy and on narcissism. Patterico has everything you ever wanted to know about sockpuppetry.

And don’t forget to check out my blogroll…lots of good stuff there. Now, I’m really done.