Brian Gongol
Pirates hijack a huge oil tanker
The pirates are from Somalia, which has completely fallen to pieces as a nation-state and has no real central government at this time. The loss of a single oil tanker isn't enough to make world oil prices go wobbly all over again -- but if it becomes apparent that the security of any oil tanker can be threatened by high-seas thugs with guns, that's going to make maritime shipping a more dangerous and more costly endeavor than it ought to be. While there's legitimate reason to look out for the potential for terrorists and others to use high-tech tools to cause trouble, piracy is just old-fashioned crime. The US dealt with it in Thomas Jefferson's day by fighting back -- but one significant difference between then and now is that Jefferson had a nation-state to threaten. Somalia has no such central power, and yet has more people than Sweden.
PJ O'Rourke thinks the conservative movement has been killed by mock conservatives
"We've had nearly three decades to educate the electorate about freedom, responsibility, and the evils of collectivism, and we responded by creating a big-city-public-school-system of a learning environment."
LA wildfires force 40,000 people to evacuate
The Los Angeles Fire Department deserves credit for using lots of relatively-new tools to help inform the public: They have a weblog, a Twitter feed, and a YouTube channel.
