Thursday's various & sundry [updated]

Scroll down for updates.

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My links widget is still broken so here are a few items I would have put there if I could. Today's theme, so far, seems to be civilizational breakdown. Enjoy!

Mark Steyn: The Last Laugh

We are not yet a totalitarian society, but the touchiness of America’s wretched academy is certainly providing a fine pilot program.

Christopher Orlet: Youth or Consequences

Last week, a judge in St. Louis released seven middle school students after the key witness failed to show up for a hearing. The juveniles were accused of beating a local man almost to death. What had the poor man done to deserve such a thrashing? Not a thing. He was simply walking home from the grocery store. The attack, it turned out, was part of a popular craze our local youth call the knockout game, though it is anything but a game. One elderly man has already died from a similar assault.

After the dismissal, the teens celebrated outside the courtroom, high-fiving one another.

Police had arrested the young thugs after they bragged about the beatings on a Facebook page. Evidently, the teens believed society could do nothing to them, even if they crowed publicly about their exploits. It turns out they were right.

George Neumayr: 'Abortion is as American as Apple Pie'

Hoffman bluntly acknowledged that abortion involves killing an unborn child: "In the beginning [pro-lifers] were calling it a baby. We were saying it was only blood and tissue. Let's agree this is a life form, a potential life; you're terminating it. You don't have to argue that abortion stops a beating heart. It does." Nor does she insist that abortion is a minor medical procedure: "I can't say it's just like an appendectomy. It isn't. It's a very powerful and loaded decision."

Like Alexander Sanger, Hoffman sees abortion as a laudable act of self-defense against the encroaching unborn child. Referring to her own abortion, Hoffman writes in a soon-to-be-released memoir, Intimate Wars: "With my choice I was fighting for the right of all women to define abortion as an act of love: love for the family one already has, and just as important, love for oneself. I was fighting to reclaim abortion as a mother's act. It was an act of solidarity as significant as any other I had committed."

Love. I don't think that word means what she thinks it means.

I'll add more items through the day.

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Unreal: 

“There are too many holes in the certified totals from the Iowa caucuses to know for certain who won, but Rick Santorum wound up with a 34-vote advantage. Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday."

Sheesh.

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Instapundit: ISN’T THIS LEAKING DIVORCE DETAILS OF A RIVAL kind of an Obama trademark? I’m just sayin’ . . . .

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I've started a new widget. See "Recommended Reads" on the upper right.
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Linked at MichelleMalkin.com -- thanks!
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