I hate the term, but she really is the picture of the "neo-con"stereotype: aggressive military hawk while being socially liberal (pro-abortion, pro-affirmative action, etc etc). No thank you.

Some of the finest works of history were written by non-historians, and that includes some historical fiction that gets events, people, and mood right. You'll learn as much from Herman Wouk's Winds of War books about WWII as you'll learn from any "proper" history text, and maybe more. THE seminal work of history about Nazi Germany is The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, written by a reporter who was there. For years academics blew it off as just "journalistic writing", but no one has yet written a better book on the subject.

BTW, in your admiration for Mcpherson, you do realize that the reason he loves the Civil War so much is that he sees it as a progressive revolutionary war, an important step in America's path to a progressive government, perhaps even a socialist government. He used to do guest appearances on Pacifica's network and for the World Socialist website as well. 

Stand athwart history yelling "stop!" or get out of the way for those that will. Either we do that or we surrender to every twisted node of "progress" that comes down the road.

If you think it's been bad up to now, watch as the boomers enter fully into their dying years. Remember the jokes about how Bill Clinton would have to be physically pulled from the White House, scratching lines in the carpet as he went? Now picture than on a massive scale with boomers in their later years. It's just another variant of the "eternal youth" dream that boomers have always had. 

I think this principle goes for a lot more than just medicine. It's especially applicable to culture and other areas of life. Paul's "Be ye separate" makes more sense to me every day.

Sounds like he has too much integrity to sell his soul. Which also probably means that he'll never get his stars.

Casey, what it comes down to is this: as long as we continue with the growing fantasy that gender is just an oppressive social construct, and that men and women don't have natural roles that are different, it's inevitable that women will be infantry, even if they can't match the physical standards set for men. You and I both know what's going to happen there: the physical standards will be lowered to accommodate them. It's inevitable.

Or we could quit looking for dragons to slay abroad and reduce the size of the military in manpower terms.  But that makes too much sense, so by all means, lets keep pulling mothers from their kids and sending them into combat.

You got it, they stink on ice!

So basically "What New Mexico's Governor can teach the GOP" is, when you cut the BS, adopt an amnesty policy, stat. She can call it whatever she likes, but that sounds exactly like what she's proposing. "Pragmatic" is the key here, as it basically is shorthand for "we can't send all those people back".

Yes, we can in a way. We can send enough back that people get the message. Stop prosecuting burglary, and you'll get more of it. Enforce laws. Eisenhower did it, and guess what? "Self Deportation" DOES work. When you enforce the law and refuse to cave in to illegal aliens, hey, they tend to go home more. What a shock, eh? 

Reagan tried amnesty, remember? Look how that worked out. Any kind of a benefit for illegal aliens... amnesty, the DREAM Act, etc... is begging for more illegals. Because that's what happens when you reward illegality. You get more of it. So I can only conclude that Republicans pushing for this stuff either A) are completely blind to history, or B) want more illegal aliens for various and sundry reasons. Illegal immigration is not a conservative idea. Libertarian, yes. Conservative, no. 

And what happens when these same people in power get home schooling banned?

This in a nutshell. Californians know what's going on, and yet they still vote for the same people that make the situation worse. At some point you have to blame the voters and not just the politicians. As the saying goes, you bought it, you own it.

In San Francisco, that sort of thing usually costs extra.

She'd be more useful as a stripper.

I don't think there's a conservative case for breaking them up. I DO think there's a conservative case for letting them fail, and telling the public straight out ahead of time "Look, if they screw up, they, and their investors and customers, are going to have to pay for it. Uncle Sugar ... meaning you the taxpayer... isn't riding to the rescue any more"

TCM is pretty much all I watch these days. I long ago gave up on network television. I refuse to subsidize the likes of Glee or Good Christian Bitches.

So I'm upset that Ben Mankiewicz appears to be slowly but surely taking over for Robert Osbourne. His idea of "classic" seems to be not the black and white movies from 1920 to the mid 50's that I love so much, but color movies from the sixties and seventies that favor liberal political themes. TCM showed some shlocky movie from the early 80's the other day. It's the beginning of the end for TCM, I fear, at least as we know and love it.