Chris Barna's Weblog Politics, Culture, Occasional Musings on Life.

From New York Times

With a mix of moral lessons, outrage and an apocalyptic view of the future, Mr. Beck, a longtime radio host who jumped to Fox from CNN’s Headline News channel this year, is capturing the feelings of an alienated class of Americans.

Via Instapundit:

Generally the extinction effects have to be so rapid that their is no time to mitigate or adapt. Space based phenomena like massive asteroid or a nearby gamma ray burster are the kind of situation that we currently could not handle. This is why there is need to stop pissing around with penny ante crap and get serious about moving civilization to full Kardashev level II. At that level there is no known threat other than all out super-war that would be a risk to such a civilization. Even things like the sun going nova could be detected and handled as such a civilization would have its own highly efficient nuclear fusion and other power sources. – Next Big Future

From San Jose Mercury News:

A UC Berkeley law professor who provided the Bush administration with a memo justifying torture for terrorists may face academic punishment for his off-campus work.

UC Berkeley leaders are wrestling with that decision as a federal investigation into John Yoo’s legal advice to the Bush administration apparently winds down.

Via Harpers and Andrew Sullivan.

From Newsweek:

Obama has had no trouble attracting job applicants—he’s received some 300,000 for 3,300 positions. But of the top 373 open slots that require Senate confirmation, according to The Washington Post, Obama has been able to fill only 43 so far. A superstrict vetting process has weeded out or driven off some otherwise very qualified candidates, most notably Obama’s highly touted pick to reform health care, Tom Daschle. Nominated to be Health and Human Services secretary, Daschle withdrew after it was disclosed he had failed to pay about $140,000 in back taxes and interest on a car and driver provided as a corporate perk. The White House says scores of candidates are stuck in a Senate-confirmation logjam.

From Time:

China has picked a strange time to lay down a marker in defense of economic nationalism — and an even stranger industry in which to do it. Amid a global recession, with Beijing’s state-owned companies fanning out across the globe trying to invest in or buy foreign producers of minerals, precious metals, oil and gas, China’s Ministry of Commerce on March 18 formally blocked what would have been the largest acquisition by a foreign company in China, a $2.4 billion deal.