Another in a series of roundups from National Review Online:

Kevin D. Williamson on Obamacare:

That leaves us with a system that is private in name only - which is the point. It is meaningless to say that we have a private system in which private consumers buy insurance from private insurers when the insurers have been forbidden to price their products, and have instead been converted into something somewhere between a public utility company and a government contractor. Sure, you are free to buy any insurance you want - but if what you want is a lower rate for being a non-smoker, the point is moot, because it would be a crime for anybody to sell it to you.

Lee Habeeb and Mike Leven explore how the Wright brothers beat government funded "experts" to the invention of the airplane:

The War Department, in its final report on the Langley project, concluded: "We are still far from the ultimate goal, and it would seem as if years of constant work and study by experts, together with the expenditure of thousands of dollars, would still be necessary before we can hope to produce an apparatus of practical utility on these lines." Isn't that just the kind of arrogance you'd expect from government bureaucrats? If their best minds can't do it with our money, no one can.

On December 17, 1903, only nine days after Langley's second failed experiment, two Ohio men did what the War Department, Langley, the Smithsonian, and all of that government investment could not. With $2,000 of their own money and little fanfare, the Wright brothers launched the first powered heavier-than-air machine to achieve controlled, sustained flight with a pilot aboard. From dunes four miles south of Kitty Hawk, N.C., the Wrights' Flyer flew for 59 seconds, traveled 852 feet, and ushered in the era of modern aviation.

Rich Lowry takes down MSNBC's proclamation that society "owns" your kids:

The truth is that parents are one of society's most incorrigible sources of inequality. If you have two of them who stay married and are invested in your upbringing, you have hit life's lottery. You will reap untold benefits denied to children who aren't so lucky. That the family is so essential to the well-being of children has to be a constant source of frustration to the egalitarian statist, a reminder of the limits of his power.

Mark Stein looks at the dearth of press coverage of a Philadelphia slaughterhouse :

The U.S. media's unanimous agreement to see no evil is sick and totalitarian. A very small consolation is that, with news judgments like these, the wretched American press is doing a pretty good job of sawing through its own neck.

I'll leave those of you with a strong stomach to read the testimony the press is ignoring.

The always quotable Jay Nordlinger:

You'll love something the Associated Press did - just love it. Listen: "Senate opponents of a treaty regulating the multibillion-dollar global arms trade said Wednesday they have the votes to block ratification of the pact, which is also opposed by the outlaw regimes of North Korea, Syria and Iran."

Reminds me of what the "MSM" used to do back in the Cold War: When pro-lifers peeped up, the media would mention that Ceausescu's Romania banned abortion.

Nice, nice . . .