Around the World Wide Web 17

1. A video of a woman in South Africa who has a hippo for a pet.

2. Senator Charles Schumer says no more judges will be confirmed to the Supreme Court during Bush's Presidency. I can't imagine any Senator saying this in the past. It's an indication of how poisonous relations are between the two parties right now. The hatred runs deep.

“The Supreme Court is dangerously out of balance. We cannot afford to see Justice Stevens replaced by another Roberts, or Justice Ginsburg by another Alito.”

By "out of balance" Senator Schumer means "not liberal." He assumes liberalism is balance and anything else is out of balance.

Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents...

Precedent will become the legal lodestone for liberals in the coming years. They have spent over a century erecting the welfare state/mixed economy, passing libraries full of laws, and they will fight to the death to see that no law is repealed. Liberal was always a meaningless word when applied to the American socialist left; now it is even more meaningless, as "liberals" have become conservatives of the welfare state. Conserving big government is their first principle.

And if you think the left is unhinged now, imagine what it would do if we ever elected a President determined to repeal laws that interfere with the economy. Actually, I don't think anyone's imagination is up to the task, considering that the left is insane in its hatred of George W. Bush, a President who has increased spending, increased government regulations and passed the biggest welfare program since LBJ. A President who fought for capitalism would incite a political-cultural apocalypse, possibly even a civil war if enough leftists were willing to die for their beliefs. (On second thought, the idea of a bunch of aging hippies with rifles is too absurd...)

3.  Walter Williams discusses a lesson that I think is an important step to wisdom: people don't care about you. It's not that they're out to get you, it's just that they have more important things to think about.

4. Should the Republicans do a You Tube debate? It seems like an Information Revolution kind of thing, regular Americans asking questions instead of the gatekeeper big media. The problem is that CNN picks the question, so the liberal gatekeeper is still there, choosing questions liberals think are important. Ed Morrissey has a solution. 

5. California nightmare:

Escheat is a feudal concept that arose from the despotism of the Dark Ages. It stemmed from the principle that property rights depend upon the sufferance of the sovereign, and when a person dies or disappears without heirs, his property reverts to the feudal lord.

California revived this medieval doctrine in 1959 and began seizing personal assets on the smarmy pretext that after a few years of account or safe-deposit box inactivity, property is obviously "lost," and the state needs to "protect" it by selling it off and depositing the proceeds into the general fund.

Today in California, no one's property is safe. When a family sets aside an investment for college or retirement, it may be in for a nasty surprise just three years later. After a lifetime running a small shop, Benny and Sally Fong could have retired on their shares of Warren Buffett's holding company, Berkshire Hathaway, that had grown in value to more than $1 million. But when they tried to redeem their nest egg, they discovered the state Controller's Office had sold the shares – for just $171,000.

6. Robert Tracinski's case is here. Noumenalself argues against him here and here.