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Up from Mexico Way: A Lawsuit Against U.S. Gun Manufacturers

By Selwyn Duke

In the early days it was Pancho Villa, then it was undocumented Democrats and drug runners, and now we have the latest incursion across our southern border: The Mexican government is poised to file a lawsuit against our domestic firearms manufacturers over U.S.-made guns that are finding their way into Mexico. Writes CBS News:

"Sources say Mexico's frustration with U.S. efforts to stop the flow of weapons has pushed them into this novel approach. The law firm [that has been retained] is looking at charges that may include civil RICO. The contract was signed on November 2, 2010 by a representative of Mexico's Attorney General, at their Washington embassy.

"On November 5, 2010 President Felipe Calderon expressed his frustration to CBS News correspondent Peter Greenberg: 'We seized more than 90,000 weapons.... I am talking like 50,000 assault weapons, AR-15 machine guns, more than 8,000 grenades and almost 10 million bullets. Amazing figures and according to all those cases, the ones we are able to track, most of these are American weapons.'"

Frustration with efforts to stop a cross-border flow....

Wow, we wouldn’t know anything about that.

Read the rest here.

No, Beauty is Not in the Eye of the Beholder

By Selwyn Duke

The American Thinker’s Rick Moran recently wrote a blog piece about how some Catholics in France destroyed two of Andres Serrano’s creations, excreta that some euphemistically refer to as art.  Moran opened by saying that his topic would make for lively debate among commenters, and he was right.  And it has also provoked a lively response from me.

In his piece, Moran states, “Art, as we learned when growing up, is in the eye of the beholder.”  Yes, most of us did learn this growing up—and we learned wrong.  That is to say, unless “art” doesn’t really exist.

Gandhi Reconsidered: When Paganism Met Progressivism

By Selwyn Duke

When an Indian-born man I knew a couple of decades ago expressed an intense dislike for Mohandas Gandhi, I found it a bit surprising. Wasn’t the “Great Soul,” that quintessential 20th-century icon, India’s George Washington?

That certainly is the narrative created by historians — who, history has taught us, can tell a lie — and works such as Richard Attenborough’s award-winning 1982 film Gandhi. But there is a reason why Indian-born novelist Salman Rushdie responded to that movie by lamenting, “Deification is an Indian disease. Why should Attenborough do it?” And with Gandhi back in the news owing to a newly published biography about him, it’s fitting to examine what that reason might be.

Any discussion of Gandhi should start with what most characterizes his image: non-violence and respect for all peoples. And the image certainly is a bit different from the reality. Everyone knows, for instance, about how Gandhi advocated non-violence in India’s struggle against the British; what is less well known is that, after the British’s 1906 declaration of war against the Zulus in South Africa, Gandhi encouraged that nation’s Indians to support the military effort, writing, “If the Government only realised what reserve force is being wasted, they would make use of it and give Indians the opportunity of a thorough training for actual warfare.” And while the British weren’t amenable to this — thus, ironically, doing more at that time to ensure Indian pacifism than the drum-beating Gandhi — he was appointed a Sgt. Major in the British army and allowed to lead a stretcher-bearer corps.

Read the rest here.

Illegal Aliens Get More Welfare Benefits Than Citizens

By Selwyn Duke

Whether or not illegal aliens are doing jobs Americans won’t do, they’re certainly getting benefits Americans don’t get. This is the finding of a Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) report stating that a whopping 70 percent of illegal-immigrant households with children receive handouts via a government program. The rate for immigrant households with children overall (both legal and illegal) is 57 percent, versus only 39 percent for such native households.

This puts the lie to open-border advocates’ claim that immigration is a net plus for our nation. While this might have been true prior to the nanny state’s rise, when immigrants had to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, today’s statist, entitlement culture has changed that equation. As pressing one for English and Mexican flags waved in street protests evidence, many today come here not to assimilate but because “America, land of the free” has come to mean free stuff for non-Americans.

Read the rest here.

Socialized Medicine Director Dies After Waiting Nine Months for Operation

By Selwyn Duke

It’s a bit like a supermarket manager dying of starvation or a bottled-water distributor dying of thirst: In the U.K., a former National Health Service (NHS) director died because she was forced to wait for medical care — at her own hospital. The Daily Mail reports:

Margaret Hutchon, a former mayor, had been waiting since last June for a follow-up stomach operation at Broomfield Hospital in Chelmsford, Essex.

But her appointments to go under the knife were cancelled four times and she barely regained consciousness after finally having surgery.

Her devastated husband, Jim, is now demanding answers from Mid Essex Hospital Services NHS Trust — the organisation where his wife had served as a non-executive member of the board of directors.

He said: "I don't really know why she died. I did not get a reason from the hospital. We all want to know for closure. She got weaker and weaker as she waited and operations were put off."

Not to be cruel, but the reason is simple.

It’s called government-run health care.

Read the rest here.