96 articles
THE "RULE OF TERRI'S CASE" has struck again. The term was coined by Pat Anderson, attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents Bob and Mary Schindler, who complained: "If following a legal procedure will likely result in Terri dying, it will be adhered to. But if a procedure could make that outcome more…
IT'S TRADITIONAL for Washington, DC power brokers and wannabees to keep a "face wall"--a collection of signed photographs or letters from the politicians they've met or worked for over the years. The typical face wall extensively features the beaming face of the curator, documenting his or her…
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"A VOTE for the Liberals is a vote for the Boers!"
TURKEY'S PRIME MINISTER Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to meet with President George Bush in Washington today. Among the topics that will be discussed are Iraq's political future. While the aim of this parley is to correct the recent dissonance in U.S.-Turkish relations, recent signals from…
Manchester, New Hampshire
Kuwait City, Kuwait
Manchester, New Hampshire
THIS IS THE SEASON of high-level international meetings and, therefore, the season of many discontents. Europe's concerns about the fall of the dollar and America's fiscal profligacy were aired at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, as were America's concerns about the inability of…
Nashua, New Hampshire
IN DECEMBER 2001, Karl Rove gave a provocative impromptu speech about the decline of the religious right. As a rule, presidential political strategists aren't paragons of forthrightness, but on this morning at least, Rove seems to have been wearing his neutral analyst's suit. Claiming that 19…
Manchester, New Hampshire
Clever Girl
The O'Neill Fizzle
SINCE 9/11, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly declared that the United States is in a new kind of war, one requiring new military forces to hunt down and capture or kill terrorists. In fact, for some years, the Department of Defense has gone to the trouble of selecting and…
IN HIS TENURE as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael Powell has spoken eloquently, and with genuine foresight, about the "digital revolution," which he calls "the most important economic development of our time." Powell has made clear that if the United States is going to…
Des Moines
Timeless Cities
LET US BEGIN by acknowledging the many and various respects in which Howard Dean's presidential campaign isn't weird. I visited New Hampshire on January 2, the traditional stretch-run kickoff date for that state's primary, intending to see four of the candidates, Dean among them, all in a single…
A RECENT PSEUDO-SCANDAL at the Justice Department is yet another depressing reminder of intractable racial taboos--although not the kind we usually hear about from hand-wringing pundits and civil-rights scolds.
"EVEN REVENGE had been slaughtered," James Welch wrote near the conclusion of "Fools Crow," his 1986 novel about the massacre on the Marias River in Montana on January 23, 1870.
IN SMALL TOWNS across America--from New England village greens to sun-drenched county seats in California--there are FBI agents pounding on the doors of libraries, demanding to know what books the citizens are reading. Inside stand librarians, white-haired and apple-cheeked, resisting as best they…
WITHOUT ACTUALLY meaning to do so, the Bush administration has pulled off one of the most remarkable nonproliferation victories since the advent of the nuclear age: Libya, a hostile, isolated dictatorship, pledged to give up its support of terrorism and its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. This…
Books in Brief "The American Way": Family and Community in the Shaping of the American Identity by Allan Carlson (ISI, 211 pp., $15). Taking on those who posit individualism, capitalism, or diversity as the dominant theme of American life, Allan Carlson makes the case that the United States is best…
THE KHAKI PANTS at Harold's clothiers were a steal at $20. That they had been marked down from $100 made them irresistible, even though the 38-inch waist was two inches bigger than I was wearing at the time.
Manchester, New Hampshire
BREAKFAST was a little hectic the other day. It was a school day, but we gave Mommy a break. The Divine Mrs. M., God bless her, was sleeping in, and Daddy was spinning all the plates--literally and figuratively. Normally my wife is up at first light, gliding effortlessly like Donna Reed, dressing,…
Manchester, New Hampshire
WHEN CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS set sail from the port of Palos de la Frontera on Aug. 3, 1492, no doubt there was some peasant standing on the wharf, muttering to himself, "A fine waste of royal escudos. As if we don't have enough problems at home. Why are their stinkin' majesties funding a voyage to…
Concord, New Hampshire
Manchester, New Hampshire
Manchester, New Hampshire, Thursday, January 22
PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES are often downright boring. They frequently disappoint journalists because the candidates don't fight among themselves. More often than not, debates are marked by the relentless avoidance of candid answers. But presidential debates always have two things: winners and losers.
THE BIG-NAME ENDORSEMENTS for Howard Dean began as the Iowa caucuses drew near. In December, Al Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000, lauded the ex-Vermont governor as "the only major candidate" who was right about Iraq. Gore urged Democratic voters to halt their infighting and rally…
Claremont, New Hampshire, Thursday, January 22
Bedford, New Hampshire
Manchester, New Hampshire
New Hampshire, Wednesday, January 21
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW why ordinary folks find it difficult to understand what economists are saying about the American economy, consider the question of jobs. We know a few things. We know that jobs are such an emotive political issue that one candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination…
Manchester, NH
Manchester, New Hampshire, Tuesday, January 20
HOWARD DEAN'S BELLOWING the roll call of the states on Monday night may capture the weird sweepstakes this election season, but Wesley Clark can't be counted out just yet. Most of the cameras were in Iowa while the general tromped around the Granite State, but the record he left is promising when…
Manchester, New Hampshire
Des Moines
IT WAS HARD TO TELL from the headlines and instant controversy, but President Bush's January 7 immigration speech was not about granting amnesty to illegal aliens. Instead, the president has proposed a measure that would dramatically curtail illegal immigration. However, to the consternation of…
IT IS THE CALM before the storm in the Terri Schiavo case. The Florida woman, who was in the throes of a court-ordered death by dehydration last October when Florida's legislature and Governor Jeb Bush intervened, continues to receive tube-supplied food and water. But this good news may not last.…
The Two Colin Powells
ON CHRISTMAS DAY in Erbil--the semi-official capital of the semi-official entity known as Iraqi Kurdistan--over 100 delegates from across northern Iraq gathered in a meeting hall that resembled nothing so much as an inner city high school auditorium, complete with rows of battered faux-leather…
IN DECEMBER, President Bush signed a bill regulating spam, those unsolicited emails that clog up your inbox with advertisements for pornographic websites, shady investment opportunities, and products promising to augment certain body parts. I've been thinking lately that the ban didn't go far…
Eugene McCarthy
IF HOWARD DEAN'S VAUNTED Internet campaign has a guru, it's arguably Howard Rheingold, author of "The Virtual Community," "Smart Mobs," and other works of techno-sociology. Rheingold, once called the "first citizen of the Internet," established himself during the early '90s as the leading proponent…
NOT ALWAYS, BUT OFTEN, there comes a point in a Howard Deaniac's life when it's no longer enough to blog yourself silly, or to throw Dean-centric house parties, or to quit your job, move to Burlington campaign headquarters, and start dressing like a bike messenger. Sometimes, you've got to take off…
The new $100 million filming of "Peter Pan," directed by P.J. Hogan for Universal Pictures, bills itself as "the timeless story as you've never seen it before." Much of it looks very familiar, however. Sure, there are some new special effects that make the children's flight to Neverland look as if…
London
Detroit
Books in Brief Confronting Jihad: Israel's Struggle and The World After 9/11 by Saul Singer (Cold Spring, 296 pp., $14.95). The situation in Israel, particularly the confrontation with Palestinian terrorism, is often discussed formulaically in the West, with Israel and its supporters treated as a…
IN LATE DECEMBER, Mohamed Hussein Fadlallah, spiritual leader of the Lebanese radical organization Hezbollah, released to the Western media a letter in which he complained of a "stripping of liberties from Muslims, even when they have not disobeyed the law," and warned of an emerging climate…
THE DEMOCRATIC REVERSAL on taxes has come full circle. Forty years ago, Democratic president John F. Kennedy believed tax increases would neither balance the budget nor create jobs. Kennedy proposed deep cuts in income taxes that were enacted by an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress after his…
Ottumwa, Iowa
CLONING ADVOCATES are playing a shell game with the American people. At the federal level, they advocate the legalization of human cloning but assert that cloned embryos should be destroyed after 14 days of development and never implanted in wombs (the Hatch / Feinstein Bill). But this is a…
WHENEVER I EXPRESS my penchant for reality television in the circle of snide, knowing, not-as-smart-as-they-think-they-are crosspatches that I'm cursed to call friends, I often do so defensively, as if I am advocating Satan-worshipping or kid-touching. No more. From it's earliest dawn--when MTV's…
FOR A LONG TIME, it was "the movies" that people went to see. Then it was "films." And then "indie films." For a certain segment of the movie-going audience--and for critics stuck reviewing "Waterworld"--the indies were a godsend: highbrow fare that proved how much could be done with a literary…
IN THE NEW EDITION of Rolling Stone, cover boy Howard Dean puts George W. Bush on the couch: "This president is not interested in being a good president. He's interested in some complicated psychological situation that he has with his father."
MORE THAN TWO CENTURIES AGO, when the framers decided to amend the Constitution to protect religious liberty, they wanted to constrain the federal government. So in the amendment that became our first, they told Congress to "make no law respecting an establishment of religion nor prohibiting the…
THERE ARE TWO THINGS to be said about President Bush's new plan for dealing with illegal immigrants. The first is that the plan reflects a beautiful sentiment. Immigrants slip into the United States illegally for all the right reasons. They want to find jobs, raise families, and decide their own…
"I HAVE NOT SEEN smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection. But I think the possibility of such connections did exist, and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did."
THE DOLLAR IS DOWN. Oil is up. America is running huge trade and budget deficits. The Japanese are intervening massively in the currency markets to prevent the yen from rising, and the Chinese show no signs of abandoning the renminbi's peg to the dollar. So the euro is bearing the brunt of the…
TWO BIG DATES are coming up in the presidential campaign: The Iowa caucuses will take place on January 19. The New Hampshire primary follows on January 27. But the key date in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination may well turn out to have been October 10, 2002. On that day,…
Jerusalem
Alexandria, Virginia
IN DECEMBER, the Bush administration suffered two legal setbacks in the war on terror. An opinion of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit challenged the government's claim that it has the right to detain terror suspect Jose Padilla (the "dirty bomber") without giving him access to the…
Ferghana, Uzbekistan
St. Paul
The South Park Division
The Nazi Conscience
The Israelis
Bad Publicity
The Main Enemy
I WENT to a rock club the other night. When we arrived, a 5-foot-3 college-age guy with an acoustic guitar was onstage. He didn't look like a rock star. He looked like the kids I once sat next to in AP Calculus, earnest and self-effacing--ingratiating, even. This was a look he gave every evidence…
Books in Brief Howard Dean: A Citizen's Guide to the Man Who Would Be President edited by Dirk Van Susteren (Steerforth, 230 pp., $12.95). When the New York Daily News called former Vermont governor Howard Dean a "motor mouth" for his comments on the Middle East this fall, Vermont's Rutland Herald…
Fanny
HOWARD DEAN'S campaign wants you to know that he used to be a practicing physician. Campaign literature refers to him as "Gov. Howard Dean, M.D." At public events, his supporters wave signs proclaiming "The Doctor Is In." Dean often addresses issues--mainly non-health care issues--by referring to…
The Great War
WELL, you live, and you learn.
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.
IT HAS BEEN WIDELY OBSERVED that Dean for President--or, as the partisans call it, "Dean for America"--isn't so much a political campaign as a movement. But if that's true of the Deaniacs in general, it's doubly true of their virtual selves. The online Dean world isn't so much a virtual community…
NANCY PELOSI was upset after the federal appeals court upheld the new congressional districting map for the Lone Star State Tuesday: "This is just the latest attempt by President Bush, Tom Delay, and other Republicans to dismantle the Voting Rights Act. The Texas redistricting plan shows once again…
INDIA'S PRIME MINISTER, Atal Behari Vajpayee, met Pakistan's president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in Islamabad on Monday on the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit. The two erstwhile enemies shook hands and then agreed to hold formal talks starting next month. The…
TO DIE PEACEFULLY at home at 93, attended by a cherished wife, and four children, and some of seven grandchildren--full of years, as the Bible has it, and loved and esteemed on every side--is given to few. It was the only fit end for Richard L. Masland, an eminent neurologist and faithful man, who…
IF ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER hasn't turned Sacramento into a circus, then why the big top on the north lawn of the State Capitol? The outdoor tent was erected to accommodate the media crush that accompanied last night's State of the State Address--there wasn't sufficient room inside the grand old…
LAST MONTH two American brothers, Michael Ray Stubbs, 55, and Jamil Daud Mujahid, 56, were arrested by Philippine authorities just south of Manila in the town of Tanza. Philippine Naval intelligence had been tracking their movements and allegedly caught the two interacting with "known leaders of…
JIM HAKE traveled to Camp Pendleton Marine Corps Base near San Diego a few days before Christmas to meet with senior officers of the 1st Marine Division. During the visit, Hake learned from the Marines what Iraqis could really use right now: frisbees.
AS ECONOMIC FORECASTERS cranked up their models at the end of last year, many pored over the printouts and decided that Robert Browning had it right when he wrote, "Never glad confident morning again." The economy seemed in such bad shape that the Democrats looked forward to teaching another Bush…
ON JANUARY 4, HBO will premiere the fourth season of "Curb Your Enthusiasm," its Golden Globe award-winning, "unconventional" sitcom starring writer-comedian Larry David. The show is an acquired taste. David, who also serves as executive producer of "Curb," is best known for his work on another…
AS WILLIAM GOLDMAN is fond of saying, this was the worst year in Hollywood history.
TO JUDGE by Libya's promise to give up its weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's get-tough approach in Iraq and Afghanistan has impressed our enemies. But what about our ostensible allies?