Obama, Congress restore horse-slaughter industry:
President Obama last month quietly signed into law a spending bill that restores the American horse-slaughter industry, just a few months after a government investigation said the ban on slaughtering was backfiring.
The domestic ban didn’t end horse slaughter but instead shifted the site of butchery to Mexico and Canada – which meant increased abuse or neglect as the horses were shipped out of the country and beyond the reach of U.S. law.
The ban had been imposed in 2006 when Congress defunded the government’s ability to inspect plants that butchered horses for consumption. Without inspections, the meat couldn’t be sold, and the industry withered.
But the Agriculture spending bill Mr. Obama signed the week before Thanksgiving dropped the prohibition on inspections, and the administration said it now stands ready to conduct them should anyone open a horse-slaughter plant.
Congress is in the pockets of Big Horsemeat!
Actually, not so much. On the whole, I don’t see why horses differ from other livestock that prompted this ban except some people like horses as more than an animal.
But Congress managed to restore a freedom opposed by PETA and the HSUS through and signed by the President. A bit of how it really happened:
This year, the House version of the Agriculture spending bill maintained the slaughter-ban language, but the Senate did not. When the two chambers reconciled their bills, the language was not in the final version.
Mr. Obama signed the spending bill by autopen on Nov. 18. He was traveling in Asia at the time the bill was presented to him, so he used the automated signature machine for the second time in his presidency.
Make no mistake: this restoration of freedom was not brought to you by the Republican-controlled House, but by the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Cynically, one could posit that the Republicans in the House are not that eager to start restoring freedoms and overturning bans, whether they’re esoteric issues like slaughtering horses or more everyday-life-affecting decisions to compel usage of little glass mercury bombs throughout your home. Maybe that’s a good question for your Republican Congressman if you have one.
(Link to the Washington Times story seen on Instapundit.)
I have an advanced reader’s edition of this book, and, blimey, I wouldn’t send this out for review. It contains misspellings and improperly formated sections. As some of you know, I’m working over another book presently, and I’m gnashing my teeth about every last missing comma and whatnot. But the difference between me and a professional is that this ARC contains those errors, but the pros will weed them out by the time the book has gone to press, whereas I’ll publish something with typos in it. And it drives me crazy.
This book essentially collects and standardizes information from the various visitors’ bureaus in a number of cities and towns throughout Missouri to show you what you can find if you hop on a highway for an hour or two in the state.
As advertised, this is a book of questions and answers about various things, such as why the sky is blue except at sunset, why the ocean is blue, who Dr. Pepper was, why the mile is 5,280 feet, and whatnot. It runs about 128 pages and is probably geared to a younger audience, so don’t expect that it’s a science textbook. The questions are not so esoteric that Cecil Adams would cover them in The Straight Dope columns nor Slate in 
This books finds Bolan hitting a joint in Buffalo to rescue a Canadian undercover policeman who is the brother of a dead compatriot of The Executioner. Bolan catches wind of a plot to take the Mafia international with a meeting in Montreal. While there, Bolan impersonates an Black Ace, again, to infiltrate the hotel taken over by the mafiosos and their crews. Once there, he finds a group of terrorist Free Quebeckers who might be planning something for the 1976 Olympics–or maybe just for Mack Bolan.
After reading