Keith Burgess-Jackson

I leave you this fine evening with a column by Thomas Sowell.

Here is a scene from today’s stage of the Tour de France. The stage winner was German cyclist Stefan Schumacher, who averaged 30.78 miles per hour on the 18.3-mile course. Here is tomorrow’s stage. Prediction: Frenchman Sandy Casar, German Jens Voigt, and American Danny Pate break away early on in the 144.1-mile stage, build a 20-minute lead, and miraculously hold off the charging peloton. Casar wins it from Voigt, with Pate finishing third.

Here.

Dr John J. Ray, my polymathic friend Down Under, is the proud owner of a Geneva Bible. Ah yes, but does he have a Jefferson Bible?

Addendum: Here is an online edition of the Jefferson Bible.

To the Editor:

Your excellent editorial was not strong enough. Barack Obama is in a process of betraying those who voted for him in the primary.

The Democrats have no one in leadership who genuinely leans to the left. Mr. Obama has been a little left of center on some issues, thus making him the only candidate that a good leftist could even consider.

We believed him when he talked about change. But he is showing himself not to be a man of integrity, but an opportunist, like the rest. Too bad. Hope springs eternal—but not in 2008.

Andrew P. Connolly
Manorhaven, N.Y., July 4, 2008

Note from KBJ: Somebody get this moonbat a clue. The Democrat primary is over. Obama won. Now he’s trying to woo a different audience: moderates. Letters such as this must delight him, for they “show” that he is not as radical as many of his supporters. Yes, there is a risk to this strategy, but it’s one John McCain faces as well. The risk is that by moderating (i.e., tacking to the center), one antagonizes the radicals enough to make them either stay home or vote for a minor-party candidate (e.g., Ralph Nader or Bob Barr). The election may come down to which candidate pisses off fewer true believers. Since Obama has a younger base of support, and since young people don’t grasp as well as their elders how American presidential politics works, this has to favor McCain.

In England the Left is socialistic, communitarian. The entrepreneurial, lottery-style character of American litigation, with its contingent fees and class actions and giant windfall verdicts and swashbuckling multimillionaire plaintiffs’ lawyers and constant harping on rights, is uncongenial to the communitarian Left. The American Left is more populist, more rights oriented, more anti-Establishment, and financed to some degree by campaign contributions from plaintiffs’ lawyers.

(Richard A. Posner, Law and Legal Theory in England and America [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 110)