87 articles
GIVE THE UNITED STATES military some credit. After wiping out Saddam Hussein's sons, Uday and Qusay, with a barrage of small-arms fire and TOW missiles, they not only put their bodies on display--they made them look presentable (after those initial photos that could have appeared in Fangoria). No,…
WHILE NEWS ABOUT California's recall election is changing as fast as tickers on Wall Street, two things are certain: there will be a recall election October 7, and it will be a vicious campaign: Gray Davis has vowed to fight like a Bengal tiger--which both Democrats and Republicans will tell you is…
THE blacking out of 28 pages on Saudi complicity in the 9/11 attacks isn't the only hole in Congress' report on the terrorist atrocity: The rest of the report skirts issues and evidence that point directly to the desert oil kingdom. Consider the case of 9/11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid…
THE GOOD NEWS is that we may turning the corner in the debate on post-war Iraq. The phony Niger/uranium scandal has run out of steam: There never really was enough oxygen there to sustain a firestorm in the first place, and the release of excerpts from October's National Intelligence Estimate has…
ONE OF MY PARTNERS as an observer at the South African elections of 1994 was General Olusegun Obasanjo, now president of Nigeria. We traveled around together a bit during those two weeks in May, through Soweto and the migrant labor camps near Johannesburg. We talked a lot. A smart, decent fellow,…
MUSEUM FATIGUE is a familiar experience even for the most ardent art lovers. Sometimes it is simply that the flesh is weak, particularly the feet. But even martyrs and marathoners are susceptible to aesthetic overload, a sense that there can be too much beauty, too many centuries. For a while the…
The Literary Life Cynthia Cotts, "Press Clips" columnist for the Village Voice, reports that there's been a "quiet revolution" at Bookforum, the small but ultra-chic quarterly spinoff of Artforum, the large and venerable quarterly review: Former editor Andrew Hultkrans is out, and Eric Banks is in.…
American Massacre
KARL ROVE is a genius. No--Rove probably gets more credit than he deserves for political smarts, and the president gets too little, so let's rephrase that: George W. Bush is a genius. Almost two weeks ago, the president ordered his White House staff to bollix up its explanation of that now-infamous…
EVER SINCE the Bush tax cut passed nine weeks ago, the left has been foaming at the mouth over the supposed injustice done to low-income workers who were left behind with no income tax relief. Of course, anyone who even casually follows these debates knows the reason these workers did not receive…
THIS MONTH, Hong Kong has been swept up in the most dramatic events since its 1997 return to Chinese rule. On July 1, half a million people marched to protest new national security laws that would threaten rights of association, press, and religion. Next, the defection of a leading pro-Beijing…
Gentleman Revolutionary
AT THE RISK of blowing my cover as a debonair man of refinement, I have a confession: I like booty. Not the lust-generating fleshy musculature advertised by J.Lo or Beyoncé Knowles. That would be cheap booty. I like the kind that's free. Often in this business, prospective subjects assume your…
A GERMAN FRIEND born in 1941 once recounted that he had been so hungry as a small child that, left unsupervised in the pantry, he ate an entire jar of mustard. The conversation made a strong impression on me, in part because of his bitterness toward the occupying powers that had presided over such…
ANYONE WHO THINKS the face of the GOP sisterhood belongs to pro-choice moderates like Maine senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins should take a look at another Republican woman from the Northeast: Melissa Hart. The two-term Pennsylvania congresswoman has a 96 percent rating from the American…
DENNIS MILLER insists he's not an across-the-board conservative, which may technically be true. Still, there's no doubt America's most sophisticated and most political comedian has been coming out of the conservative closet in a very big way. He hung out with President Bush and campaigned for him…
The Holy Reich
Baghdad
IT WAS JULY 7, the Monday after the Fourth of July weekend, and chaos reigned at the White House. President Bush and his senior staff were frantically preparing to leave later in the day for a five-day trip to Africa. Ari Fleischer, beginning his final week as White House press secretary, answered…
Books in Brief The Wandering Hill: Vol. II of the Berrybender Narratives by Larry McMurtry (Simon & Schuster, 302 pp., $26). The arrogantly absurd Lord Albany Berrybender, his equally eccentric family, and a corps of retainers again populate this second volume of Larry McMurtry's four-novel…
DOES MAUREEN DOWD know what she's talking about? Her New York Times column specializes in highly personal attacks on George W. Bush and his aides. Clearly she knows how to be snide. But Dowd also has written in recent months about the war in Iraq, Saddam Hussein's strategy, the aftermath of the…
MUCH OF THE RECENT political controversy about the existence in Iraq of a nuclear program (and WMD) has focused only on the narrow issue of the alleged attempts by Iraq to acquire uranium from the small African country of Niger. Ignored in the debate have been Saddam Hussein's public statements on…
"George Bush has left us less safe and less secure than we were four years ago." --Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), July 22
ONCE UPON A TIME, there was another president named Bush, and he, too, gave a speech that later gave him fits. In 1989, during a nationally televised address on drug law enforcement, George H.W. Bush held up a bag of crack cocaine that he said had been seized right across the street from the White…
GEORGE GORTON, Ken Khachigian, and Sal Russo are the three best Republican political consultants that California has produced over the past quarter century. Today they work for Arnold Schwarzenegger, Darrell Issa, and Bill Simon, respectively. All three have played the part of key strategist to one…
PAY ATTENTION to Ishtar al-Yasseri. She's the editor of Baghdad's Habezbouz, one of the hundreds of Iraqi media outlets now operating throughout the country--over 85 newspapers and periodicals have launched since May 1 alone--that will shape public opinion there for years to come. And thanks to the…
THIS AFTERNOON, a ceremony will be held for the 2003 Medal of Freedom recipients in the East Room of the White House. President Bush's list is uniformly excellent, and incredibly revealing when compared with some of Bill Clinton's picks for the nation's highest civilian honor. Clinton's choices, of…
GET THEM ON TELEVISION. On Tuesday, CENTCOM confirmed the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein in Mosul, Iraq. According to Lt. Gen. Rick Sanchez, "The bodies are in a condition where you could identify them." It may sound gruesome, but the Bush administration should work expeditiously to provide the…
ONE OF THE TASKS of conservatism, perhaps the chief one, is to oppose ideas that would provide an attractive payoff now but would be harmful in the long run. For example, yes, giving a lot more money to the poor would be nice, but over time it creates welfare dependency and the pathologies that go…
"I WAS ADORED ONCE . . ." one of Shakespeare's characters sighs to another in "Twelfth Night." Alan Greenspan must be having similar thoughts as he faces the new-born enmity of the bond investors who once worshipped him. The Federal Reserve Board chairman, the man who warned of "irrational…
Sacramento
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION is incessantly criticized, and not only from the left, for a variety of safety measures it introduced in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Senator Patrick Leahy, for example, said in November 2001, "We don't protect ourselves by bending or even shredding our…
The First Grace
I WAS OUT OF TOWN on a reporting trip a couple months ago, hanging around with a group of people I thought might make a good story. They had gathered near dawn on a bluff by a river. It was a striking site and I wanted to record its details in my notebook, as a way of splashing a little color into…
AS TONY BLAIR heads for America to collect his Congressional Gold Medal this week, he must be thinking, "With America for a friend, I surely don't need any enemies." He gambled that his new friend, George W. Bush, would see loyalty as a two-way street. So far, he is losing his bet. Britain's prime…
WE ARE LIVING IN another low, dishonest decade, it seems--at least where the intersection of race and American electoral politics is concerned. Following the 1990 census, the Republican National Committee--determined to press its partisan interests in forthcoming state-by-state congressional…
Seriously Funny
Najaf
A VOTE IS IMMINENT in the House of Representatives on whether to vastly expand the importation of prescription drugs from a long list of nations including Canada, all of the European Union, Eastern European nations to be admitted to the E.U. in 2004, Israel, and South Africa. The House vote is an…
Books in Brief Director's Cut by Roger L. Simon (Atria, 241 pp., $23). No one opening the eighth adventure of California private eye Moses Wine can avoid noticing its politics. In the first paragraph, Wine, the radical Berkeley grad who "had espoused every so-called progressive cause from anti-nuke…
Roone
Who's Lying? Any doubts that Democrats would try to use the Iraq war against George W. Bush were erased late last week with the release of two ads accusing the president of lying. The first comes from the left-wing activist group Move On (founded during the Clinton impeachment to defend a president…
Baghdad
A LOT OF PERFORMERS disagree with me on this, but I hate it when audiences whoop to show their pleasure. Before the taping of an HBO special years ago, the producer walked out to whip the audience into a frenzy, which he thought was a good thing for a comedy show. "Are you going to get crazy…
THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.
NO ONE KNOWS for sure where Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's democracy movement, is being held captive by the military junta that has ruled her country since 1988. Sources say Suu Kyi, who pro-government forces captured in a bloody attack on May 30, is a prisoner…
HOWELL RAINES'S appearance on "The Charlie Rose Show" last Friday was filled with delicious moments. Andrew Sullivan (channeling Leon Wieseltier) has done a small dissection and other journalists have merrily piled on. It now seems possible that Raines could become not just a disgraced editor, but…
THE OTHER DAY, my e-mail in-box saw an extraordinary convergence of two clear and present dangers: weapons of mass destruction and spam. Specifically, Saddam's secret deal with Niger to build weapons-grade uranium has wound up embedded in the Internet's oldest confidence game. You've probably seen…
THE POET Archibald Macleish wrote, at the beginning of the Second World War, "How shall freedom be defended? By arms when it is attacked by arms; by truth when it is attacked by lies; by democratic faith when it is attacked by authoritarian dogma. Always and in the final act, by determination and…
Memo To: Editors and Editorial Page Editors
ONGOING NEGOTIATIONS over who will manage the National Bison Range, a national wildlife refuge in Moiese, Montana, are making some people uneasy. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a branch of the Department of the Interior, currently manages the Bison Range, located within the Flathead Indian…
I'M OUTRAGED. I can't believe the president would try to distract attention from his domestic problems by attacking foreign regimes based on suspect intelligence. He should be impeached! Actually he already was. I'm referring of course to Bill Clinton, who in 1998 bombed terrorist bases in…
THE NAMING of Iraq's interim Governing Council is a big step in the long process of midwifing institutions for a country reborn. With a few diehard Saddam loyalists fighting on, the men and women serving on the council may be risking their lives by working with Americans to lay the foundations of a…
SOON AFTER the Supreme Court wrapped up its work this year, no fewer than five of the justices left for Europe. Most of them will spend several weeks there. They like it there. Europe, in fact, is where most justices tend to spend their summers, attending legal conferences and seminars in cities of…
A FEW WEEKS AGO, in between segments about a robot that helps dig through rubble and a mosquito-zapper made by a high schooler at a science fair, CNN's Fredricka Whitfield had this tidbit to offer: "An Australian inventor has come up with a gun that fires a million rounds per minute. It's called…
ECONOMISTS AGREE that a progressive freeing of trade contributed importantly to world economic growth since World War II. With the current world economy best described as fragile, many policymakers are pinning their hopes for renewed growth on a successful conclusion of the so-called Doha round of…
SO, HERE WE ARE. After the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence v. Texas striking down that state's anti-sodomy law, the question has been, Is gay marriage next? Barring some unforeseen event, the supreme court of Massachusetts will declare homosexual marriage legal this week. The nation's legal…
THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.
THE INDISPENSABLE Glenn Reynolds has linked to an article in the Nashville Tennessean written by a Tennessee judge who believes he is in possession of documents linking Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. The judge is Gilbert S. Merritt, a federal appeals court judge invited to help Iraqis…
KHALED DUMEISI, a newspaper publisher in northern Illinois, was surprised when federal agents showed up at a modest condominium in suburban Chicago to arrest the man known to his colleagues in Iraqi intelligence as "Sirhan." He shouldn't have been shocked. First, the FBI, according to a complaint…
Kuwait City
REMEMBER the Iraqi National Museum tragedy? In April it was reported that 170,000 priceless pieces had gone missing in the aftermath of the U.S. victory in Iraq. It turns out now that only 33 exhibition quality pieces are missing, along with 3,000 to 5,000 other items that were in storage.…
EVERY SUMMER, I come upon the same discovery. Hot weather makes women more beautiful and men more ugly. The former discard layers to reveal a natural loveliness of soft, interconnected curves, while the latter do the same to reveal their top-heavy bodies teetering on grotesquely disproportionate…
WHEN GENERAL TOMMY FRANKS addressed his retirement ceremony audience on Monday, he didn't mince words. The news accounts focused on his striking endorsement of the president's "bring 'em on" challenge to Fedayeen terrorists attacking U.S. forces in Iraq, but equally important was his prediction of…
ATTENTION BOOMERS. Remember the good old days? How we locked arms and ended the war? Well, the time has come to dust off the placards and rally once more in America's plazas to stop another vicious war based on lies and deceit--one being waged against us personally. You may not have noticed, but it…
THE U.S. OCCUPATION of Iraq is still in its early stages. It is ludicrously premature to call it a failure, as some critics already do. Assuming that the United States and Britain keep their nerve in the face of growing guerrilla attacks, there is little doubt that they can still make good on…
ROSY SCENARIO, Iraqi version, suddenly finds herself out of favor. Not so long ago, she was the belle of the postwar ball. With a bit of tweaking by highly skilled American technicians, and some money that could be generated by the sale of oil, Iraq's industry would be restored to its pre-Saddam…
THE BIG HEADLINE in the Michigan affirmative action cases is that the Supreme Court, in an opinion written by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, sustained the use of race in admissions policies. Less publicized is the fact that the court also held, near the end of its ruling in the law school case, that…
THE ARMED FORCES of the United States are too small to support the missions required of them in the post-9/11 world. In many of the situations we now face, using troops on the ground is nonnegotiable, and America has too few of them. If that assertion seems counterintuitive given the impressive…
God's Secretaries
BACK IN THE LATE 1980S, several of my Yale Law School classmates and I launched into yet another earnest and well-meaning discussion about racial diversity. On that particular evening we turned to the faculty and proceeded empirically. As we counted the individuals of minority race, I casually…
Moorestown, New Jersey
Off with Their Heads
Living History
Moneyball
DURING a question-and-answer period following one of his lectures, the political philosopher Michael Oakeshott was asked what he thought about England's place in the European Union. "I don't," Oakeshott replied, "see that I am required to have an opinion on that." I found that response very…
The Jurisprudence of Elvis Poor Dick Gephardt. Summoned to Chicago to appear, along with all the other dwarfs, at a bow-and-scrape "forum" of Democratic presidential hopefuls sponsored by Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition on June 22, Gephardt merely did what he was supposed to do. He bowed. He…
CALIFORNIA, it appears, is on the verge of staging its first ever recall vote on a sitting governor. If the requisite nearly 900,000 signatures are gathered, as now seems imminent, and the recall petitions qualify in July, a special election will be held in the fall. Voters will decide whether…
IN RESPONSE to the Supreme Court's decisions in the Michigan race-preference cases, President Bush issued a statement. "I applaud the Supreme Court for recognizing the value of diversity on our nation's campuses," he said. "Diversity is one of America's greatest strengths. Today's decisions seek a…
SENATOR EDWARD KENNEDY is more politically astute than Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle. He understands the legislative process far better than Senator Hillary Clinton does. He is a much cooler head than Senator Jay Rockefeller. And there's a good chance he'll turn out to be smarter than the…
IN A SPEECH in Washington on February 26, 2003, President George W. Bush spoke of his hope that a change of regime in Iraq would herald the Arab nations' joining the worldwide movement toward democracy. Some critics dismissed this "pious hope," arguing that Arab culture, and Islamic civilization…
Credibility Gap? GIVE STEPHEN F. HAYES CREDIT. With only a couple of days between the New Republic's deadline and THE WEEKLY STANDARD's, he didn't have much time to defend the Bush administration from our charges that it systematically exaggerated what American intelligence knew about Iraq's…
Books in Brief Raising America: Experts, Parents and a Century of Advice About Children by Ann Hulbert (Knopf, 450 pp., $27.50). Faced with the wall of parenting manuals in bookstores these days, a parent can understand why Dr. Spock said the most common problem is hesitancy. Ann Hulbert's "Raising…
The Spartans
NOT EVEN the most determined Pollyanna would claim that the reconstruction of Iraq has gone smoothly. Although many early reports of trouble were exaggerated (see Baghdad Museum, looting of), instances of civil unrest continue, including protests and even a few riots. Neither weapons of mass…
THE DAILY STANDARD welcomes letters to the editor. Letters will be edited for length and clarity and must include the writer's name, city, and state.
SO WHAT, exactly, did parents do with their children before television? People have been having kids for a long time, so I know it must have been something. I just don't know what. By the way, when it comes to permissive over-telefication--That's probably not a word, but it sounds like one, doesn't…