Keith Burgess-Jackson

Josh Hamilton of my adopted Texas Rangers turned 27 years old yesterday. Today, in Minnesota, he hit a solo home run in the top of the 10th inning to give the Rangers an 8-7 victory over the scrappy Twins (after the Rangers had blown a 4-0 lead). He had two other hits as well. Hamilton now leads the American League in all three Triple-Crown categories. He has 12 home runs, 53 runs batted in (in 48 games!), and a .335 batting average. As someone who has watched him play every day this season, I can tell you that he is the real deal. Do not be surprised if he wins the Triple Crown this year, and if he does, he will be the league’s Most Valuable Player as well.

Addendum: Here is a story about Hamilton. Scroll down to see the picture of Josh with his daughter Sierra. She is going to keep him clean and sober.

Addendum 2: There has been no Triple-Crown winner in 41 years. I became a baseball fan in 1967, when I was 10 years old. That year, Carl Yastrzemski of the Boston Red Sox won the Triple Crown. I thought it was a common occurrence, since Frank Robinson of the Baltimore Orioles had won the Triple Crown the year before. Ha! These are the only Triple-Crown winners in my lifetime. See here for a list of winners.

Sometimes I wonder what world New York Times reporter Linda Greenhouse is living in. She calls federal appellate judge Richard A. Posner a “conservative icon.” I’ve read hundreds of thousands of words by Judge Posner since the early 1980s, including many judicial opinions. There is no sense of “conservative”—legal, moral, political, constitutional, epistemic, judicial, linguistic, or methodological—in which he is a conservative. What could possibly explain Greenhouse’s bizarre label? Is a conservative simply someone with whom she disagrees on some issue?

Here is a scene from today’s stage of the Giro d’Italia. Here is tomorrow’s pancake-flat stage.

I’m not the only conservative who will not vote for John McCain. See here.

Virginia Commonwealth University is bought and paid for by the tobacco industry, just as the Democrat Party is bought and paid for by George Soros.

Here.

Those of you who are interested in the American West, as I am, will love the maps that are available on this site. In my next life, I’m going to follow all the trails. Why not this life, you ask? Because I’m done traveling. From here on out, my traveling will be vicarious.

Here is a story from today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

Taco Bell thieves thinking outside the law
By Deanna Boyd
Star-Telegram Staff Writer

FORT WORTH—Yo quiero Taco Bell.

That’s apparently the mindset of two robbers who police believe have “run for the border” four times since April 9, seeking dinero, not dinner.

The two men, wearing bandannas over their faces and with gloves, entered the stores waving pistols and ordering everyone to the floor. They demanded money and fled in a dark four-door sedan, police said.

Police say they believe that three Taco Bells have had their bells rung by the same robbers on four occasions: April 9 and May 7 at 1701 S.W. Loop 820; May 8 at 10800 South Freeway; and Friday at 3150 Sycamore School Road.

Note the playfulness of the prose, which has the effect of minimizing the seriousness of the crime. I have seen this sort of playfulness dozens of times over the years, almost always in connection with robbery. Is robbery funny? It’s a crime against the person, just as rape is. Can you imagine a story like this about a series of rapes?

To the Editor:

Re “Gender Issue Lives On as Clinton’s Hopes Dim,” (front page, May 19):

The reason Hillary Rodham Clinton’s supporters, women or otherwise, are so angry is that it is likely that not only will Hillary Clinton have been regarded as having prevailed in most of the debates, not only will she have won most of the large and swing states, but it is also likely that she will have won more popular votes than either of the other two candidates left in the race for the presidency, and yet it will be she who is asked to bow out.

And this will be after having endured the worst press beating I have ever seen heaped on a candidate. The shame of it is that she is the candidate with the most reasoned approach to multiple problems, and many of us will be left with no candidate whom we could wholeheartedly support.

I would not be at all surprised if she were to be the first independent candidate to have a real shot at the presidency.

Deborah Moran
Houston, May 19, 2008

Note from KBJ: The team that wins a baseball game is not the team with the most hits, the most home runs, the most innings in which runs are scored, the fewest errors, the best record, the largest payroll, or the best uniforms. It is the team that scores the most runs.

(I tried to post this as a comment on your blog, but I think the number of URLs mentioned caused it to be filtered out.)

Townhall.com does a poor job in allowing you to subscribe to a single author. If they used the metatag called “inpostauthor” it would be easy to get exactly what you want, but for some reason they fail to do this. As an imperfect solution, you can still set up a Google alert that will email you blog posts by Fred when they come up, but you will also be notified of posts by other blog authors on Townhall.com that only mention Fred. Here are the steps:

1) Go to http://blogsearch.google.com/

2) Set the search as: blogurl:www.townhall.com/blog “Fred Thompson”

3) Click “Search Blogs.” You will see that the results contain blog posts by Fred and posts that just talk about Fred. You can just live with these extra results, or you can eliminate some of the other authors individually. For example, to remove posts by Matt Lewis from the search results, add “Matt Lewis” to your search string.

4) At the bottom of your search results, where it says “Stay up to date on these results” you should see an option to “Create an email alert” for your search. Click on the link and it should allow you to enter the email address where you want the alerts sent.

From here forward you will get an email from Google when a blog post matching your search criteria appears on the site. You can end these alerts at any time from within the email that you receive. I hope this helps.

Adam

Note from KBJ: Thanks, Adam! I followed your instructions. I’ll let you know how it works.

Puritanism is alive and well—in the most unlikely of places. Secular elites in the United States and Europe have been trying for some time to purify the lives of ordinary people. Here in North Texas, the city of Arlington is proposing to ban the use of plastic bags by grocery stores. Al Gore and other global warmists want us to raise our thermostats, use fluorescent bulbs, drive less, and in general reduce our “carbon footprints.” There are wars against smoking, selling fatty foods, driving SUVs, and other activities. Hillary Clinton wants to force everyone to purchase health insurance. The idea seems to be that ordinary people are incapable of making wise decisions. They must be educated, manipulated, and coerced if necessary, for their own good and for the good of the larger “family.” (Progressives conceive of society as an extended family.) Can you think of other examples of progressive puritanism? The irony, of course, is that it’s usually conservatives who are viewed as puritans.

Although the United States seems more like England than like any other European country, the American national character is virtually the opposite of the English. Deference, fatalism, self-restraint, and non-aggressiveness are just about the last characteristics that one would ascribe to Americans. Litigation is a kind of fighting, and Americans are fighters; the modern English, outside of the soccer stadium, are not.

(Richard A. Posner, Law and Legal Theory in England and America [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 109 [italics in original])