VIA: Thursday, December 18 (Updated)

• Your tax dollars not working: Another reason to loathe the EPA -- EPA Goes Man-Hunting VIA JunkScience: "The list’s creation seems a furtherance of the Greens’ larger campaign to plant the idea within the public’s mind that all environmental “transgressions” fall along a criminal continuum."

• Beautiful and moving: Laundry and Life: A Solstice Meditation @ The Task at Hand "When I was a child, helping to hang summer laundry was all taste and smell and sound - the rough woody dryness of clothespins in my mouth, the sweetness of clover crushed by bare feet, freshening breezes snapping towels to warn of building afternoon storms."

• Bush on what he leaves behind:

  "We leave behind an unprecedented commitment to extending the reach of liberty and democracy. Key organizations devoted to supporting freedom enjoy stronger government support than ever before. Official U.S. policy now requires our diplomats to seek out and support dissidents and democratic reformers in unfree nations. And it is now the stated policy of the United States to seek the end of tyranny in all nations, for all time." - President Bush Discusses National Security, Homeland Security and the Freedom Agenda at U.S. Army War College

• Hillary Smash State! Hillary Good! zenpundit. says it's clobbering time for Foggy Bottom.

• I love the smell of the Whopper in the morning. Smells like victory. FLAME - Body Spray "The WHOPPERｮ sandwich is America's Favorite burger. FLAME by BK captures the essence of that love and gives it to you. Behold the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat." [FEEL THE HEAT! VIA: A Hamburger Today]

• Good Men: Daphne on her Uncle Jim, "one of the greatest gifts of my life."Come Near Me, While I Sing Of Ancient Ways ｫ Jaded Haven

• When you can't deliver California, what good are you to Democrats? Gay leaders furious with Obama @ Politico.com

• Thomas Sowell : Postponing Reality - Townhall.com "The current bailout extravaganza.... is a triumph of the non-judgmental philosophy that we have heard so much about in high-toned circles." [VIA Carpe Diem ]

• Austin Bay reporting on Mexico's Cartel War: Year Three

• Would you like to shout from the rooftops that "Homosexuals and lesbians should be exterminated in this life" and get a pass? It's easy. Just be a Muslim in Canada. SteynOnline - Steynposts

• Polaroid's Instant is Over: Photojojo -- Polaroid: R.I.P. in 14 Days and here's how to cope if you must.

• Cobb: Basra vs Detroit "The murder rate in Basra, Iraq, a city of 1.6 million is now lower than that of Detroit. Smells like victory."

• Lady Thatcher: "€œThe problem with socialism is that sooner or later you run out of other people’s money." - Belmont Club » The taxman cometh

• Violent, Strategic Dislocation Inside the United States "Politically incorrect as my opinion may be,I think the politicians who have the power to preventmass casualty events and fail to exercise due diligencebecause they're owned by the House of Saud or beholden to the Nation of Islam or eaten up with multiculturalism should suffer for their failures with their lives...."

• Intellectual Insanity in Our Time, Example #3,606,719: CARPE DIEM: Markets In Everything: Naming Rights for Bats Purdue University has the goods: The school is auctioning the naming rights to seven newly discovered bats and two turtles.

• The Other American Auto Industry Plenty of car makers make a go of it in this country--they're just non-union and not headquartered in Detroit.

• How do you know when a news story is full of crap? When Dr. Phil comes on some show to say it's "very real." -The Daily Gut

• The News is Insane, Enjoy. "Caroline Kennedy, worthy by suffering, is reported upstate in insanely drafty horse barns on an HRC invented listening tour, the updated and accelerated version for Senate appointees."

• One Cosmos: Where There's Holy Smoke, There's Divine Fire "If we actually lived in a world of scientific truth but no intrinsic beauty.... our very lives would be a cold and joyless task, like removing the Guy Ritchie tattoos from Madonna's wizened hide."

• Hollywood squeezes off another stinker: "You can't spell cliché without 'Che.'"

• David Warrren: "This is the core financial principle of the welfare state. It is a Ponzi scheme on a scale vastly beyond even Bernard Madoff's imaginings. But instead of having the people who conceived and executed this scheme arrested, we have honoured them as great humanitarians and 'progressives.' "