Richard Mellon Scaife, the Pittsburgh philanthropist and reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, whose support for right-wing causes laid the foundations for America's modern conservative movement and fueled the 1998 impeachment of President Bill Clinton, died on Friday. He was 82.

That he didn't live to see another president Clinton.

And this-

Mr. Scaife (pronounced Skayf) inherited roughly $500 million in 1965, and with more family bequests and income from trust funds and investments in oil, steel and real estate, nearly tripled his net worth over his lifetime. But unlike his forebears, who were primarily benefactors of museums, public art collections, education and medicine, he gave hundreds of millions to promote conservative political causes.

Okay, sure - maybe it is manipulative to send children alone on a journey to America - because who would hate on children?  To me, it's just desperation, plain and simple.  I have no idea what it's like to be so desperate I'd send my little child off alone hoping he or she would get here in one piece and be fed and sheltered on arrival.  And how are they greeted when they get here?  Like cockroaches.

I know we can't save the world, and I have plenty of anger for the governments of these other countries, that they aren't doing more to improve the economic and social conditions such that the way fewer people feel compelled to come here.  But then, I have plenty of anger for my own government, that keeps trying to shrink the safety net for American citizens.

But watching the news coverage of this story sickened me.  I guess I just don't get that level of selfishness and hate, and all things considered, I hope I never do.

We have plenty of low skill jobs and obamacare to offer, plus free transportation once you get to the USA.

[T]here is at home and abroad an anti-democratic influence, even more cynical and sinister and dangerous than Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin combined. I refer to those who think democracy is a fair weather ideal - to guide us in soft times - but that when the going is tough we cannot save it without losing it. This doctrine has every base quality of fascism without either its candor or courage. Let us in America never forget that liberties trampled by conquest may be regained, but liberties abandoned by an indifferent people are never recovered. Nor are they deserved.

Look, people will find others attractive for a variety of reasons, and will glance at, stare at or even photograph them accordingly. That's relatively benign, as are public "wardrobe malfunctions." It might be embarrassing, tasteless and crass, but it's otherwise harmless. As a legislative analyst, that's not what I'd seek to prohibit or criminalize, because gawking is an expression of curiosity, which is an innate part of human nature.

But purposefully going out of one's way to peek up a woman's skirt or dress or for that matter, looking up a man's cargo / Bermuda shorts, with neither that person's knowledge nor consent is the voyeuristic equivalent of groping.

Would you approve of surveillance cameras in department store changing room or restrooms, videotaping or photographing customers in various states of undress without their knowledge or consent? I doubt it. Therefore, I should think that peeking up a woman's skirt is the equivalent. At that point, we're not talking about a benign act of circumstance but rather. one which is unnecessarily and even maliciously intrusive.

At least, were I drafting such a prospective statute, that's how I would define it. Further, I would make clear the legislature's own intent in the attached committee report, which would also include a concise and unambiguous description of the problem that's being addressed by the measure, for such occasions as when the law -- if approved and enacted -- might be later challenged in court.

"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) -- Jefferson Smith (James Stewart) is appointed to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate, and refuses to surrender his idealistic notion of democracy in the face of double-dealing and outright corruption.

"From Here to Eternity" (1953) -- Directed by Fred Zimmemann. When three Hawaii-based soldiers (Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra) find themselves stationed in the same infantry unit, their lives inexorably become intertwined in the months preceding the Japanese military assault on Oahu and the U.S. entry into the Second World War, which in turn leads each of them to a radically different fate and destiny.

"Seven Days in May" (1964) -- Directed by John Frankenheimer. When the president (Frederic March) signs a nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union, a U.S. Army colonel who's personally opposed to the president's policy (Kirk Douglas) stumbles upon an active plot led by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Burt Lancaster) to remove the president and renounce that treaty, and he seeks to thwart the military coup before it can materialize.

"All the President's Men" (1976) -- Directed with contemporaneous urgency by Alan J. Pakula, Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) and their editor Ben Bradlee (Jason Robards) attempt to unravel and dissect the story behind the June 1972 attempt by Nixon White House operatives to wiretap the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate Hotel complex.

"Friendly Fire" (1979) -- Directed by David Greene, and based on a true story. After Peg and Gene Mullen (Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty) bury their eldest son Michael (Dennis Erdman), who was killed in Vietnam in 1970, Peg -- who had privately opposed the Vietnam War, even before her son was drafted -- runs into numerous obstacles when seeking to learn the truth about his accidental death from misdirected U.S. artillery fire. The military's repeated attempts to thwart her inquiries eventually lead to the political radicalization of the formerly mild-mannered Iowa farm couple, who become renowned public critics of the Nixon administration's Vietnam policies.

"Glory" (1989) -- Director Edward Zwick tells the story of the 54th Massachusetts Colored Regiment, an all-black unit of the Union Army composed primarily of former slaves and led by an young and idealistic white officer (Matthew Broderick), which valiantly but unsuccessfully assaulted the Confederate fortifications at Battery Wagner in Charleston, SC in May 1863, and was tragically shot to pieces for the effort.

"Saving Private Ryan" (1998) -- Directed by Steven Spielberg. After surviving the D-Day ordeal at Omaha Beach in Normandy, an infantry company lead by Capt. John Miller (Tom Hanks) sets out to find a missing soldier who's to be returned to his mother, after several of his brothers were killed successively in the war within weeks of one another.

"Black Hawk Down" (2001) -- In Ridley Scott's gripping recounting of the U.S. Army's failed 1993 attempt to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, American soldiers on the ground rise to the occasion for each other when their commanders fail them and the mission goes badly. Their very best individual and mutual efforts are absolutely needed, just to survive their predicament.

"The Fog of War" (2003) -- A remarkably candid and contrite Robert McNamara speaks plainly on camera about his admittedly flawed judgment and leadership as LBJ's Secretary of Defense in the Vietnam War, grappling publicly with the sometimes bitter lessons he learned as a direct result of his own failings. With the obvious benefit of hindsight and retrospect, the elder McNamara confronts his own headstrong and impetuous younger self for posterity's sake, and posits how others in the future might learn from his mistakes and errors, leaving his audience the better for it.

"Good Night, and Good Luck" (2005) -- As Edward R. Murrow (David Straithern) and his CBS News colleagues find themselves sited in Sen. Joseph McCarthy 's crosshairs in what became an historic and heroic confrontation, director George Clooney uses actual archived footage of the late senator to place him front and center, allowing the audience to see that red-baiting demagogue for the monster he truly was.

"John Adams" (2008) -- Directed by John Hopper, this seven-part TV miniseries tells the remarkable and engrossing story of our country's second president (Paul Giamatti), spanning the period from his 1770 appearance in court as defense counsel for five British soldiers accused of murder in the infamous Boston Massacre, to his death at age 90 on the 50th anniversary of the signing of the adoption and signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Dave Weigel at Slate:

Despite the very public, check-this-out nature of coal rolling, the practitioners I talked to were sometimes reluctant to appear in the media.One big reason: The EPA was cracking down on devices that allowed truck drivers to remove diesel particulate filters. Coal rollers spoke in worried tones about Edge, the Utah company that took a $500,000 hit for selling more than 9,000 of the units, which allowed drivers to improve their mileage at the cost of tons of new particulate emissions.

"I talked to a guy today who was almost crying about it," one seller told me. "He said, I only get 10-12 miles to a gallon now. Before the filter, I was getting 20 mpg, and a whole lot more horsepower."