A Curious Little Blog

Obama finally decided to end the controversy about his birth by releasing his birth certificate.  This can only mean one thing:  he felt it was hurting his popularity.  He had a legitimate birth certificate all along.  Being an American citizen is a requirement for the presidency, and some people were questioning whether he qualified.  He was actually spending money to defend himself against lawsuits that requested him to prove his citizenship by releasing the birth certificate.  I thought the most likely explanation for his stubborness was that there was something embarrassing on the birth certificate -- perhaps it named him a Muslim -- that he didn't want made public.  Since there isn't, the only logical explanation is that he refused to release it because he wanted to keep alive the meme that his opponents consisted, at least in part, of nut cases.  (Well, everyone politician's opponents consist in part of nut cases, but let us say, a larger proportion than usual.) Ima

It's the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War (actually earlier this month, but it is being celebrated the whole year), and with it comes a whole new debate about the Confederacy, the right of secession, and the use of the Confederate flag today.  While most people probably associate Southern apologists with conservatives, I have been seeing many attacks on the Confederacy and the flag from conservative sources, one of which goes so far as to nominate Jefferson Davis as the worst person in American history.  It probably is true that most Southern apologists are conservative, but it is apparently far from true that most conservatives are Southern apologists. This is unfortunate, because the case for secession is at the core a case for liberty.  This is, of course, a controversial statement, but I think a defensible one -- in fact, the only logical one.  Here, then, is a brief but long-considered defense of the Confederate States of America. The CSA starts with two s