Quickies

I've asked a couple of people about the attraction to The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. Typically, I stay away from such novels as most of them turn out to be poorly written and trite plots. My friends basically confirmed this for me and I was leaning towards not bothering with the book. When I was a teenager, I read Stephen King. King is a good writer for a mid to late teen. By the time I was in my 20s, however, I had moved on to more challenging literature. That's not to say that I'm a complete book snob (I'm not), but it's not my cup of tea. Hey, I read Sci Fi that isn't exactly literature, too. After reading this post, though, I'm really convinced that I'm not going to read Brown's top seller.

Hey, fetus fetishists, a new study says that the U.S. newborn survival rate ranks low. Thank god we have you pro-life people around as we really couldn't sink much further.

Hit and Run, the Reason magazine blog, has a good take on Democrats and their strategy to run on in this election cycle. Clip:

Once a decade or so, voters are willing to roll back the imperial presidency and empower the Congress to take the executive down to size. If the opposition party runs away from a fight over presidential power because they're scared to investigate it, that party deserves to lose.

Here, here!