Jonah Goldberg on the Pythonesque quality of the healthcare summit.

Writing at NRO:  "It reminded me of that old Monty Python skit where British soldiers are equipped with the world’s funniest joke, a joke so funny that even to hear it guarantees you’ll die laughing. The British army translates the gag into German (different translators for each word so as to prevent their own deaths) and has its troops read the German version as they march through Ardennes forest. Suddenly, Nazi soldiers start falling dead from the trees.

Substitute “boring” for “funny” and you’ll get a vague sense of how dull this summit was.

Kids Portray Fellatio In French TV Commercials

via Pat Dollard.  Cuz, you know, not smoking trumps pedophilia.

The uses and abuses of the "health ID" numbers in the healthcare reform bill

At Big Government: "Now imagine that you and your spouse give birth to a child in this brave, new America, in a hospital linked by law to the federal citizens database.  Immediately upon your child’s birth, a hospital clerk assigns your newborn with a “Unique Health Identifier” (UHI), a specially coded number, which is then put into a national electronic database, along with your newborn’s fingerprints and any other identifiers the bureaucrats in D.C. have demanded.

Sex.  Weight.  Length.  Race. Apgar score.  Health appraisal at birth, including any disfigurements or handicaps, identifying traits or birthmarks, and DNA markers.   Information about the child’s parents, such as names, age, race, number of prior pregnancies, number of prior births, number of prior abortions, education attained, occupations, finger prints and criminal records, if any, are also stored.  Almost anything can be included in the database for future government needs, whatever those might be."

Obama to Britain: Drop Dead

Via the London Times: 

 Washington refused to endorse British claims to sovereignty over the Falkland Islands yesterday as the diplomatic row over oil drilling in the South Atlantic intensified in London, Buenos Aires and at the UN.

Comments and other links at The Corner.

Even More on The Coming War Over Public-Sector Pensions

From Reason:  "The basic bargain about public-sector work, hammered out decades ago in a very different world, is supposed to be: You give up status, upward possibility, and compensation now for job security and payoffs later in retirement. That has never really been true and is certainly less so now. Yes, public-sector jobs ofer more security than their private-sector counterparts, but compensation is also higher on average and the benefits, especially in retirement are gold-plated to the nines. That bargain, which is unsustainable economically, is going to hit the rocks. The only question is: Who is going to pay? Taxpayers or the public-sector workers?"

After this fiasco over swine flu, we should never believe the State scare machine again

UK: "So the Government, as the Daily Mail has revealed, is trying to get rid of £1billion-worth of unwanted swine flu vaccine - because the deadly epidemic they were promising us all last year never materialised."

IAF introduces fleet of unmanned drones that can reach Iran

The Israel Air Force on Sunday introduced a fleet of large unmanned planes it claims can fly as far as Iran.