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When I was in the Navy, I once witnessed a bar fight in downtown Olongapo (Philippines) that still haunts my dreams. The fight was between a big oafish Marine and a rather soft-spoken, medium sized Latino sailor from my ship. All evening the Marine had been trying to pick a fight with one of us and had finally set his sights on this diminutive shipmate of mine... figuring him for a safe target. When my friend refused to be goaded into a fight the Marine sucker punched him from behind on the side of the head so hard that blood...

A Difficult Lesson.

A parent from Plymouth, N.Y., has sent along another example of liberals gone wild. Fishing through her son's backpack (he's a ninth-grader), she found a crumpled up handout from the health teacher. The title caught her attention: "Dysfunctional 'Family Rules.' " The handout is excerpted here with original punctuation, grammar and capitalization: "Here is a list of some of the unworkable rules found in dysfunctional families: "Boys shouldn't cry. (they should be like diminutive adult males, independent, self contained, and tough. they should bear pain and hurt with a kind of stoicism and emotional flatness exemplified by rugged males in...

On July 7, 1846, a contingent of Marines raised the American flag over Monterey, California, to mark a proclamation by U.S. consul Thomas Larkin that the territory was being annexed as a consequence of the war with Mexico. Much of the future state had already been taken from Mexico's nominal control by an uprising of American settlers under the Bear Flag. Victory in the Mexican War meant that the country gained Texas, California, and everything in between, comprising most of what is now New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. Next to the War of Independence and the Civil...

IN 1986, I OBSERVED an election in Mexico's northern state of Chihuahua and learned almost everything I would ever need to know about election fraud. Last week, I observed elections again in Mexico, but this time, I concluded that the United States and the world could learn much from Mexico about how to conduct and judge a free and fair election. This might come as a shock. After all, the election looked messy from the outside. It took four days before Mexico's Federal Election Institute, or IFE, announced a winner — Felipe Calderon, the leader of the conservative National Action...

Former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay has just died, just over a month after being convicted of fraud, and almost five years after his company's cataclysmic collapse. The common perception of Lay is that he and other Enron leaders brought about the company's fall because, eager to make money, they schemed to bilk investors. The ethical lesson, it is said, is that we must teach (or force) businessmen to curb their selfish, profit-seeking "impulses" before they turn criminal. But all this is wrong. Enron was not brought down by fraud; while the company committed fraud, its fraud was primarily an attempt...

The lessons of LondonOn this first anniversary of the July 7th Tube and bus bombings, I'll be re-posting all weekend long some of my commentary on the slaughter and its lessons for Britain and the rest of us. This is what I wrote an hour or so after the bombs for The Daily Telegraph the following morning - July 8th 2005: One way of measuring any terrorist attack is to look at whether the killers accomplished everything they set out to. On September 11th 2001, al-Qa’eda set out to hijack four planes and succeeded in seizing every one. Had the...

I watched The African Queen, again this week. That classic movie, starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn, offered a clear explanation of several current news events this week. What is the lesson of The African Queen? It is this: Understand your circumstances, and set your goal based on that. In that movie, the goal was to sink the German warship, The Louisa. And that goal dictated the tactics which had to be taken, regardless of danger or odds against them, to reach that goal. As a reminder of that fine movie, the tactics were for Charlie Allnut and Rose Sayers...

June 19, 2006 The Bolshevik's 'Gay Pride' Disaster and its Lessons for America Linda Kimball By its nature, Christianity is both a patriarchal and hierarchal religious and philosophical worldview. Since it teaches that mankind is ‘fallen’ (has a sinful nature which is the source of evil) it requires as a consequence, that moral constraints (social taboos) be placed on man’s sin-nature to encourage him not to act upon sinful urges, which always eventually lead to suffering and evil. The seven great sins are: pride (self-love), envy, wrath, gluttony, lust, sloth, and greed--the source of all manmade social ills and suffering....

When is a loss really a win? It's a common practice, trying to spin a political defeat into a victory. But in the case of the race to fill Randy "Duke" Cunningham's seat in the House of Representatives, the silver lining might not be that hard to find. snip NOW PAC organizers worked on the Busby campaign, reaching out to voters across the county. The NOW PAC put Hays in San Diego prior to the April 11 Special Election, and sent her and another organizer Monely Soltani there again in late May to work on the run-off vote, held concurrently...

Lessons Not Learned by Mychal Massie George Wilhelm Hegel is credited with saying, "What experience and history teach is this – that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principle." To merely suggest that there is an abundance of wisdom contained in that 21-word sentence is a gross understatement. And nowhere at present is its truth more evident than in the mishandling of the illegal immigrant situation. Just as radical Islam is not a religion, it is a murderous cult of unparalleled evil, and just as abortion is not about choice, but the selfish, paganistic...

BERLIN -- Germany needed workers. Turks needed work. So starting in 1961, the country invited Turkish ''guest workers" to come do the dirty jobs that Germans didn't want. ... Nobody grasped that the country -- and the continent, because neighboring nations soon undertook similar experiments -- was on the brink of a transformation whose effects are still reverberating across Europe. ... In Germany, guest workers -- mostly poorly educated young men who were issued special visas allowing them entry for one or two years to take unskilled jobs -- helped the nation to become the third-richest in the world. The...

Uno De Mayo has come and gone with none of the predicted effects – no drastic plunge in retail sales, no nationwide economic earthquake, the only businesses shut down the ones that agreed to do so beforehand.  But still we’re assured the marchers have “made their point”.     We can probably be excused for thinking that the point would have been made if only three marchers had bothered to show up. This is one of those issues where the media has made up its mind and is going to shove the correct interpretation down the throats of the booboisie no matter what...

TOYOTA, Aichi -- At a center for teaching Toyota production methods, workers from around the world learn bolt-tightening by moving dance-like to a metronome and practice paint jobs by studying videos of their performance. "It comes from experience. The body knows how to learn," says Kazuo Hyodo, a 30-year veteran on the assembly line as he demonstrates how to stand, finger the bolts and listen to the buzz of the drill for proper bolt-tightening Toyota style. "Hear that? That sounds metallic, and you're screwing it in too tight." At a time when Toyota Motor Corp. appears on track to overtake...

President Bush could discover something important if he puts down his talking points long enough during his trip to California this weekend. Bush is using the visit to tout his energy policies; but the country would be better served if he took the time to learn from the state's energy strategy, which is emerging as an integrated alternative to the president's incomplete plan. Piece by piece, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrats in the state Legislature are fashioning a comprehensive response to two of America's most pressing problems: the intertwined challenges of global warming and energy independence. Their approach — call...

One of Britain's leading fee-paying schools is to offer classes on happiness to combat the malaise in society caused by materialism and celebrity obsession, its headteacher announced. "We are introducing classes on happiness," said Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, in Crowthorne, Berkshire, west of London. "We have been focusing too much on academics and missing something far more important." A psychologist will oversee a pilot project teaching "happiness lessons" -- or "well-being" as it is being called -- from the start of the next academic year. Pupils aged 14 to 16 will be given one lesson a week, learning...

Children should expect some of their lessons to be boring because life is not a "Disney ride", teachers said yesterday.Too often pupils and parents expected lessons to be "all singing, all dancing" when the reality was that some learning could be tedious and hard work. Zoe Fail, a mathematics teacher. thinks that children are not bored enough because their lives are over-stimulated. "Being bored encourages thinking skills and imaginative play," she said. "I remember being bored but I am not bored now because I know how to deal with it." Miss Fail, from Kent, told delegates at the Association of...

AOPA Says Its Efforts Kept Young Pilots Flying, While Grounding "Stunt" Flights It was ten years ago today -- April 11, 1996 -- that a Cessna 177 Cardinal took off and headed straight for a huge thunderstorm cell outside of Cheyenne, WY. The plane, already over its gross weight limit, was no match for the powerful storm... and the encounter ended, sadly but predictably, with the deaths of the three people onboard. Accidents such as this occur far too frequently for any pilot's taste, but rarely do such mishaps attract as much media attention as this one did. The NTSB...

If you watch Kiefer Sutherland and "24," you learn to handle 60 minutes of tension, heartbreak and deception each week. And that's just between the characters of the president and the first lady. But although fans love it, even the most ardent learn to overlook a lot regarding plot devices and characters. Example: Jack Bauer, toughest guy on the planet and lead terrorist hunter, who can withstand torture, gunshots, drugs and severe mental anguish, found a pretty cool job for his annoying daughter, Kim. After her stint as a runaway and a troubled teen in season one, she became an...

Earlier this week, President Bush urged that the debate on illegal immigration be conducted in a “civil and dignified” manner. I agree. And perhaps no one needs to hear that admonition more than Mexican President Vicente Fox, with whom President Bush is now meeting. President Fox has made it clear that he has nothing but contempt for our laws and our people. And his remarks have been anything but civil or dignified. President Fox has called U.S. border control efforts in San Diego and Texas “discriminatory.” He said those of us opposed to illegal immigration are part of “minority, xenophobic,...