Michael Weiss at the New York Sun reports on our decision (see Roger’s post below) to snub the Times of our precious review copies:

Encounter Books, the conservative publishing house run by Roger Kimball, will no longer send review copies to the New York Times. In an amusing and much-discussed item posted to the company’s Encounter Intelligence Web log, Mr. Kimball explained that the Times has “studiously” ignored almost all of his titles, and so if it plans to review any in the future, it will have to buy them like any other reader.

Read on…

Beginning today, June 23, 2008, Encounter Books will no longer send its books to The New York Times for review. Of course, the editors at the Times are welcome to trot down to their local book emporium or visit Amazon.com to purchase our books, but we won’t be sending gratis advance copies to them any longer.

Read more…

Read Andy McCarthy’s take on the Supereme Court’s Boumedine decision, from the National Review Online:

It is difficult to single out the most outrageous aspect of Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion in the Supreme Court’s cataclysmic Boumediene ruling last Thursday: The reckless vesting of constitutional rights in aliens whose only connection with our body politic is their bloody jihad against Americans; the roughshod ride over binding precedent to accomplish that feat; or the smug arrogance perfectly captured by dissenting Chief Justice John Roberts’s description of a “constitutional bait and switch” — a Court that first beseeches the political branches to enact a statutory procedure for handling combatant detentions, and then, once a thoughtful law is compliantly passed, invalidates the effort for its failure to satisfy the eccentric predilections of five lawyers.

Read on…

Here’s a roundup to celebrate our future dietary habits: according to Ted Turner the human race is doomed to cannibalism (due to global warming, of course). Note the sub-headline of this Atlanta Journal-Constitution article: “Billionaire environmentalist says world has too many people.” Solution: eat them!

Hungry? Why wait

Read on…

Incredible. In a Whittaker Chambers-level about face, David Mamet, no longer a “brain dead liberal,” gushes about Thomas Sowell:

I began reading not only the economics of Thomas Sowell (our greatest contemporary philosopher) but Milton Friedman, Paul Johnson, and Shelby Steele, and a host of conservative writers, and found that I agreed with them: a free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism.

And that’s in the pages of the Village Voice no less (?!) If your mind is not sufficiently blown you’ll want to read the whole thing.

(Mamet and Alec Baldwin)

Roger Kimball says “it gives one faith in human nature”…

Yes, our authors are buzzing about Eliot Spitzer debacle (one NY Times commenter quickly re-dubbed New York’s ‘Elliot Ness’ as ‘Elliot Mess’.) Who isn’t? And yet, even as the shocking revelations pile up, perhaps the most surprising result of this squalid episode, as Fred Siegel observes, is the sudden ascension of soon-to-be governor - and friend of school choice - David Paterson.

Well he doesn’t look blind…

Part 2 of Peter Robinson’s 5-part Uncommon Knowledge interview is posted on National Review TV…

Thomas Sowell talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about ‘the misleading nature of measured income inequality, CEO pay, why nations grow or stay poor, the role of intellectuals and experts in designing public policy, and immigration.’

Listen to it here.

Or read this recent Wall Street Journal interview with Mr. Sowell…

This week, National Review TV showcases yet another Uncommon Knowledge interview with an Encounter author — this time its Bruce Thornton and his book Decline and Fall. In this first installment, Bruce and Peter Robinson discuss the demise of European civilization:

The symptoms: Economies are less adaptable and competitive because of an enormous regulatory burden; social welfare entitlements are incredibly expensive; and, demographically, Europeans simply aren’t reproducing. At the source of this demise is a loss of the foundational belief system that created the West — that created Europe — in the first place.

This comes hot on the heels of Bruce’s NRO interview just few weeks ago…

Daylight Savings Time: Why?

William Willett invented daylight savings time in 1905 “during one of his pre-breakfast horseback rides, when he observed with dismay how many Londoners slept through the best part of a summer day.^[18]” Plus, Willett, a golfer, “disliked cutting short his round at dusk.”

Willett is also the great-great-grandfather of Coldplay frontman Chris Martin, who dedicated his Grammy award to John Kerry.

It gets worse…