Don’t worry, I’m probably not going to make these headline summaries a regular feature. Other bloggers do it better.

Still, I must again express my amazement at how, on any given day, a quick scan of the headlines reveals a world gone awry. Just from Ace and HotAir today:

• The IRS may be spying on your Facebook page and Twitter stream, for God-knows-what reason.
• Hundreds of leftists celebrate Thatcher’s death by partying and/or rioting. Meanwhile, an MSNBC host claims that she embodied greed. So much for human freedom, I guess.
• In Massachusetts, people are no longer allowed to defend themselves from wild animals.
• When are women *not* entitled to control the product of their bodies? When a creepy, duck-speaking lefty feels the need to take control of their kids.
• On the Aurora shooter, a tragedy of errors.
• It comes out that police were warned about him, a month before. That kinda works against the narrative in favor of gun control, so now…
• The Fox reporter who brought it out may go to jail. And…
• The rest of the media doesn’t care. A contrast to the Plame case which, remember, was much ado about nothing (except that it played against a GOP President).
• Meanwhile, North Korea threatens to launch nuclear missiles… and Obama still wants to cut missile defense spending.
• And lefty GWU students can’t get over the fact that a Catholic priest would teach Catholic teachings.

I need to start looking for things that are going right. Of course Obamacare, which kills both jobs and worker benefits, isn’t one of them.

But maybe the fight for gun rights is. Like seeing Mark Matteoli (of Sandy Hook) or Manuel Martinez (formerly of Communist Cuba): two men who understand freedom, and speak out in its favor.

Wow…

GDANSK, Poland — Polish officials unveiled a statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II on Saturday, honoring two men widely credited in this Eastern European country with helping to topple communism 23 years ago.

People look at a new statue of former President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II that was unveiled in Gdansk, Poland, on Saturday, July 14, 2012. The statue honors the two men whom many Poles credit with helping to topple communism.

The statue was unveiled in Gdansk, the birthplace of Lech Walesa’s Solidarity movement, in the presence of about 120 former Solidarity activists, many of whom were imprisoned in the 1980s for their roles in organizing or taking part in strikes against the communist regime.

The bronze statue, erected in the lush seaside President Ronald Reagan Park, is a slightly larger-than-life rendering of the two late leaders. It was inspired by an Associated Press photograph taken in 1987 on John Paul’s second pontifical visit to the U.S.

Below is the original AP photo and the new statue of these two great leaders for freedom in the last century.

Albert Camus has long been one of my favorite writers.  Indeed, I quoted the Nobel Prize-winning author in my very first blog post (with the quotation reposted here).  While Camus always considered himself a “man of the left,” I have long called him “the first neo-conservative“.  He had always strongly opposed tyranny which he first witnessed in fascist societies, particularly under the Nazi occupation of Paris, but soon began to see not just in Communists societies, but also in leftist movements.

His opposition to Stalin and Stalinism earned him the scorn of his one-time allies in the French left, including Jean-Paul Sartre, an apologist throughout his life for Soviet tyranny — and a man who dressed up his own participation in the resistance to Nazism.

Sartre became increasingly jealous of Camus after their split, particularly since the Algeria-born Frenchman had produced a far broader range of work than had he. I’d often wondered if maybe Sartre had leaned on his friends in the KGB to dispose of the more talented writer. Camus died in a car accident on January 4, 1960.

Now, David Zincavage, based on an account in an Italian newspaper asks, “Did the KGB arrange the death of Nobel Prize winning writer Albert Camus in a car accident in 1960?”

An article which appeared in the Italian paper Corriere della Sera on August 1 quotes Eastern European scholar Giovanni Catelli, who discovered that the complete version of the Diary of Czech poet and translator Jan Zábrana contained a reference to the death of Albert Camus omitted from abridged French and Italian translations.

Read the whole thing.  Well, this story doesn’t support my speculation about Sartre, but does raise some interesting questions.

Remember, Albert Camus was one of the first prominent literary men of the left to publicly criticize Communist.  His outspoken critiques of the brutal system could cause more intellectuals to question their defense of the Soviet Union. (more…)

This is the single most effective and chilling campaign ad I’ve seen in quite some time.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Much will be made, no doubt, about this article, noting how Communist thug Fidel Castro considers the Stalinization of Health Care Act of 2010 (is my name for it starting to make sense now?!) a “miracle” and “about time”.

Now, ask any Tea Partier and he’ll tell you you can’t choose your fans any more than you can choose your family members. Fair enough, but look at what else Fidel wants the US to do, post haste:

…the Cuban leader also used the lengthy piece to criticize the American president for his lack of leadership on climate change and immigration reform

Hm… climate change

Hm… immigration reform

Now, I’m not one to suggest that Obama is taking his cues from our nearest Communist dictator. Just that it surely is curious that he’s pretty much doing just what his “amigo” suggests he should.

-Nick (ColoradoPatriot, from TML)