Today on the Willie Lawson Show

I'm scheduled to go back on the Willie Lawson Show this afternoon at 12:15 (EST). Topics include Slaying Leviathan, Scott Brown, health care, and the grassroots movement. Please tune in!

King's Arms Tavern

The pewter salt cellar feels cool and slightly gritty to the touch; it sounds a soft clap when replaced on the wooden table. The reproduction Chippendale and Queen Anne furniture, and the maps and other prints on the painted wooden walls of the King's Arms Tavern's tightly packed eleven rooms, represent styles favored by the well-off planters and other ladies and gentlemen in the very stratified society of colonial Virginia.

The King's Arms opened in 1772, although during the War for Independence its name was changed to Mrs. Vobe's, after its owner, and later to Eagle Tavern. Today it operates under its original name, and offers a comforting continuity in Colonial Williamsburg, where other eating establishments change format frustratingly frequently.

Taverns like the King's Arms, as well as coffeehouses, figured prominently in the birth of the American republic. Mrs. Vobe's provided food, drink, and lodging to American soldiers. George Washington sometimes dined there when visiting Virginia's capital.

They also provided venues for men catch up on the news and debate events of the day. In the 21st century, sporadically pleasant servers in period costume bring baskets of bread lined with reproductions of the Virginia Gazette.



The Tavern offers 18th-century menu choices including peanut soupe, fried chicken, and game pye, which features venison, rabbit, and duck. They have a daily pasta dish, and call it macaroni. The meaty fare smells hearty, and it is--soft, salty comfort food whose flavor comes from its main ingredients rather than blends of spices and herbs.

Sadly, like most everything at Colonial Williamsburg, it is overpriced. Baron von Steuben once ran up a bill of 300 Spanish dollars for food, drink, and lodging there, and it's not hard to imagine how. A couple today could easily spend above $100 in today's American currency on a single soupe-to-syllabub dinner with drinks, and, frankly, the food isn't worth it. But like Mrs. Vobe's clientele, today's visitors are paying for the atmosphere and the location near the Capitol. And travellers who truly want to include a tavern experience in their Williamsburg visit may well find it worth planning for a meal at the King's Arms Tavern.

Today on WINA

I'm scheduled to talk about Slaying Leviathan today at 1:15 (EST) on the Rob Schilling Show on 1070 WINA in Charlottesville. If you're in the area, I hope you'll tune in!

"Whole Body Imaging": Never Waste a Crisis

White House Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel's mantra never to waste a crisis has grown a whole lot sicker.

The Obama Administration is pressuring foreign governments to degrade U.S.-bound passengers with naked X-rays. The pretext for this is, of course, the wanna-be underwear bomber's aborted--by normal people, not bureaucrats--attempt to blow up a plane over Detroit on Obama's birthday (observed), despite the fact that the so-called "whole body imaging" machines can't penetrate plastic or rubber that resembles skin, though they do give the government's voyeurs a clear view of passengers' flab, moles, scars, sores, sweat, nipples, buttocks, and genitals.

One of the few things that government does well is exploit its own incompetency to expand its power over the people whose rights its supposed to secure. But taking advantage of the acknowledged failures to "connect the dots" regarding the "underwear bomber"--including the fact that the guy's own father reported him as a threat--to violate the corporal privacy of America's citizens and guests takes government power-grabbing through incompetency to a deeper, sicker level.

Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither. And that's exactly what they'll get.