140 articles
A BLOCK FROM MY APARTMENT BUILDING in northwest Washington, there was a McDonald's restaurant that catered to the elderly, a few homeless, and tourists from the nearby zoo. The wait was long and the service slow. There might have been only two or three employees in the kitchen putting all the…
IN APRIL 2003, Brown University president Ruth Simmons invited more than a dozen members of the Brown community to serve on a Committee on Slavery and Justice. The committee lay mostly dormant until March of this year, when its existence was made public (Brown arranged for the news to break in the…
THE BEST ADVICE for today's investors may have been penned some 350 years ago by the poet Robert Herrick, "Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, . . . this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying." The American economy looks set for robust growth this quarter and next. After that, many…
SPRING HAS SPRUNG, which politically means it isn't pollen season but instead the pallid period between the primaries and the conventions. For scribes and pundits, that means open season for all sorts of crackpot thinking.
A YEAR AGO, possible civilian casualties loomed large in the debate over whether to invade Iraq. Opponents of the war estimated likely casualties in the hundreds of thousands. One heavily cited United Nations report projected 100,000 to 500,000 Iraqi civilians would die or suffer injury and/or…
ON AUGUST 26, 1995, a militant Islamic group led by a 24-year-old French Muslim named Khaled Kelkal attempted to blow one of France's high-speed trains off its rails. Luckily, the bomb's detonator, which used an ordinary 12-volt battery, failed. Later that fall, other bombs would go off in France:…
Mr. Multilateral
I HEARD IT ON FEBRUARY 27, 2004, for the very first time: an argument on a major media outlet for polygamy. "It doesn't really matter to me who marries who," said attorney Ron Kuby on ABC 770 talk radio. "You can't deny millions of people rights because you are afraid other people might demand…
I Haven't Slept in my own bed for more than a month now. For two weeks, I spent all my nights in hotel rooms as I traveled the country hawking my new book. The rest of the time my wife and I have been residents of the guest room in my parents' home, because we are transitioning slowly and…
FOLKS OVER AT the National Education Association headquarters are gloating. "Clearly, the ground on [No Child Left Behind] has shifted," said a statement released by the national teachers' union last week. "While publicly castigating NEA for what he called 'obstructionist scare tactics,' U.S.…
Postmodern History
"Terrorism is a propagandistic stereotype and nothing else. . . . 'Terrorists' are what Goebbels called the Russian partisans and the French resistance. . . . 'Terrorists' are what one calls the Iranians who fight against an authoritarian regime in Iran, the Vietnamese who fought against the French…
I EXPECTED THE NEW ANTIWAR DRAMA Embedded to be artless, thudding propaganda, filled with commonplace observations passed off as a major exposé. What I didn't expect was a play that might have been written for a convention of conspiracy-mongers. Theater of some kind is what I anticipated when I…
WHEN I WAS A KID, my parents found Jesus, took to Him like otters to water, and left the more traditional churches of their upbringing to enlist as full-fledged evangelicals. Depending on where my military-officer father's assignments took us, we did turns in all kinds of nearly indistinguishable…
LET'S BEGIN WITH THE OBVIOUS: Whatever the motives of Spanish voters, however much the Aznar government mishandled the aftermath of the attack--last Sunday's Spanish election was a victory for terror. Some say that the election result was an expression of democracy. That's true. It was an…
THE ELECTION VICTORY of Spain's antiwar Socialists in the wake of al Qaeda bombings has left American commentators worried. The war on terrorism, it seems, is endangered by what Italy's Corriere della Sera calls "the spirit of Munich . . . blowing across Europe." And that spirit appeared to be…
London
Baghdad
ARE THE SPANISH COWARDS? Or do they simply not grasp the nature of the war on terror?
Frederick Morgan (1922-2004)
WHO IS the unilateralist candidate for president this year, the man who's willing to push our allies away and who questions the patriotism of those who disagree with him? That would be John Kerry, at least on the issue of trade. Kerry may like to portray himself as a multilateralist, whom foreign…
"YOU CAN'T ORGANIZE a war with lies." With these words, and a condescending smirk, the victorious leader of Spain's Socialists, José Luiz Rodríguez Zapatero, summarized the meaning of his victory over America's brave ally José María Aznar. "Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush must do some reflection and…
Baghdad
OKAY, I give up. What, exactly, is a "spiritual leader"?
NEXT WEEK, Air America Radio debuts its around-the-clock radio station of the left. Al Franken will play the marquee role, filling the noon-to-3:00 p.m. slot. Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead will run the morning program with Public Enemy rapper Chuck D. And comedienne Janeane Garofalo will be…
PARIS HILTON and her younger sister Nicky, the staple bicoastal "it" girls have been trading off their good looks and $3.8 billion hotel fortune for years.
HURRY. Get your Wonderfalls quick. Before it's too late.
TODAY the New York Times expressed its opinion about Richard Clarke and the 9/11 commission. In an editorial this morning, the paper hunkered down to the tough job of assigning blame for underestimating the threat of terrorism. It will be little surprise in whose direction the gray finger points.…
IN THIS SPRING'S PENNSYLVANIA SENATE PRIMARY conventional wisdom has incumbent Arlen Specter coasting to victory over challenger Rep. Pat Toomey. Specter starts out with all the advantages. He has the backing of the Republican establishment--the White House, Pennsylvania's junior senator, Rick…
YEARS AGO, once colleges and universities had decided to make race and ethnicity "a factor" in their admissions, many of them cast about for additional ways to advance educational opportunity for minorities. So they came up with scholarship and financial aid programs, freshmen orientation programs,…
THE WASHINGTON POST opened its Wednesday coverage of Tuesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on an amendment to the United States Constitution concerning marriage with the hardly neutral declaration that "[d]espite indications that a bill to amend the Constitution to ban gay marriages has…
Baghdad
QUICK, what's the first thing you think of when it comes to Spain?
IN BETWEEN ERUPTIONS of exceptional violence that propel the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back to the front pages, life goes on in the Palestinian Authority. Friday sermons, in particular, go on, and every Friday at noon, one of them is broadcast live on the radio and shown on the PA's single TV…
Baghdad
MADRID REMINDED INVESTORS of something they had chosen to forget--that there is risk out there that is unlike any other. It is possible to make an informed guess as to where the dollar is headed, or the price of oil, or the demand by China for the various commodities it is gobbling up at a furious…
Taipei
"FRANKLY, I FIND IT OUTRAGEOUS that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."
LOOKING BACK, there is nothing surprising about the carefully plotted spasms of outrage at the reference, in a Bush campaign ad, to the terrorist attacks of September 11 through the fleeting shot of a flag-covered stretcher, and the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center in downtown New York.…
Cape Town, South Africa
"WE HAVE good relations with China, the best relations we've had with China in 30 years," Secretary of State Colin Powell has been saying recently. Whether you agree with that assessment or not, the odds are several areas of conflict will soon make U.S.-China relations a lot rockier. Here are six…
FOR THE FIRST TIME since September 11, 2001, terrorists have struck the West in a spectacular way, murdering (at last count) 199 innocents and injuring a thousand others with a dozen bombs planted in Madrid's commuter-rail system at rush hour, three days before national elections. The first…
Chiang Kai-shek
IT WAS THE WEEK of March 4, and the Bush reelection campaign was ready to go on the offensive. One campaign official told the New York Times that the president was "eager" to start the debate with Massachusetts senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee. Another, Matthew Dowd, the president's…
Being Human
THE UNITED NATIONS Commission on Human Rights begins its 60th session this week in Geneva. For the next six weeks the 53 member states will generate, if nothing else, a cacophony of moral indignation.
The Proper Care & Feeding of Husbands
A YEAR HAS PASSED since the invasion of Iraq, and while no sensible person would claim that Iraqis are safely and irrevocably on a course to liberal democracy, the honest and rather remarkable truth is that they have made enormous strides in that direction. The signing on March 8 of the Iraqi…
WE WERE RUNNING LATE. The law school classmate I had come to Spain with convinced me there was no way we would make our train. Around 8:45, we gave up and decided we would have to take a bus from Madrid to Toledo.
Health Nut
Sacramento
WHEN I MEET Florida representative Katherine Harris in her Capitol Hill office, she pumps my hand and greets me in a gravelly voice. "I lost it somewhere in Iraq," she explains. "I think it was the sand." Harris is not as forbidding as she appears on television. She's small, athletic-looking,…
Teddy Kennedy's New Expert
THAT CHINA'S NATIONAL PEOPLE'S CONGRESS convened last week is not news, though it provided the occasion for prime minister Wen Jiabao's first address to the rubber-stamping body, a 90-minute affair which, quite predictably, was well received. That China released two dissidents, Wang Youcai and…
Books in Brief
Nietzsche's Sister and the Will to Power
AN ATTENDEE of the DC Independent Film Festival once jokingly suggested that Carol Bidault de l'Isle, founder and director of the week-long film showcase, re-name the event the "What the Hell Is Going on Here? Festival." Bidault laughs, but is the first to admit that such a description is not all…
Baghdad
ON MARCH 19, 1979--25 years ago today--an energetic congressman from Tennessee delivered the first televised speech on the House floor. That congressman was Al Gore, and this is what he said in the one minute allotted to him by then-House speaker Tip O'Neill:
Tel Aviv
Baghdad
JUST STOP. IT'S OVER. FORGET ABOUT IT. There's always next year. For college basketball fanatics, today is when it all ends. The beauty of your brackets marred by upsets or upsets that never happened. Will Mississippi State beat Duke? Probably. Georgia Tech over Kentucky? Maybe. Connecticut over…
JOHN KERRY presented President Bush with a St. Patrick's Day gift via the Wednesday morning New York Times. Responding to a new Bush ad reminding voters that Kerry had voted against last year's $87 billion dollar appropriation to support the troops deployed in Iraq, Kerry responded: "I actually did…
Baghdad
WITH MORE THAN SEVEN MONTHS between now and Election Day, President Bush and John Kerry already are in full battle cry. Once the smoke over this election clears (which, last time, took a long time), we will have the answers to such questions as: Will Bush suffer the same fate as Herbert Hoover?
ALL INDICATIONS point to a close presidential election in 2004, and in such a tight battle every vote and dollar will matter. While the Democrats won 80 percent of the Jewish vote in 2000, 2004 may prove to be a far different story and the Jewish vote may determine the fate of the presidency and…
"TWO OUT OF THREE AIN'T BAD," sang Meat Loaf some years ago--a song of which my good wife reminded me (well, to be exact, told me about) when I worried that I had not been entirely accurate when I named three countries in which I thought our ambassadors are not doing as much as they might to uphold…
BOWING OUT OF THE RACE for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination last week, John Edwards addressed a crowd of cheering supporters outside a high school in Raleigh, North Carolina. What he chose to talk about mainly was his warm admiration for the party's freshly minted de facto nominee, John…
Political Philosophy and the God of Abraham
THE LAST THREE YEARS have been good for taxpayers, as Congress and the president worked together to reduce levies on three separate occasions. Now it's year four of the Bush administration and, while the deficit balloons and Democrats play class politics in the presidential election, the general…
AN AUTHENTIC and laudable American dissident died at the end of January, his passing almost unnoticed in the mainstream media. William Herrick, 89, was a veteran of the Spanish civil war of 1936-39. He wrote a memoir and 10 novels, one of them a lightly disguised roman à clef about the war in Spain.
The Norman Podhoretz Reader
In 1995, when I was a junior editor at the Wall Street Journal, I was handed "The Daniel J. Boorstin Reader" to review. I had heard of the author but had never read his work. As I dove into this 900-page compendium, I quickly discovered that Boorstin had a discerning eye for detail, an ability to…
VICTIMS' RIGHTS
Complaining Is for Earnest People
PRESIDENT BUSH has demonstrated his willingness to stand alone internationally. Yet for little better reason than go-along, get-along multilateralism, the administration is now pushing the Senate to ratify the Law of the Sea Treaty, which was just unanimously voted out of Richard Lugar's Senate…
BRING IT ON! And there they stand, thumbs in their belts, snorting at each other from opposite corners--the Vietnam vet with three Purple Hearts and numerous medals, and the commander in chief, architect of two wars, with one bad guy's scalp on his belt. Are they tough? Are you kidding? But wait.…
A SENIOR WHITE HOUSE OFFICIAL spoke privately the other day about dramatic progress in the Middle East. Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds have broken an impasse and are on the verge of a historic compromise on a new Iraqi constitution. It mandates a pluralistic, democratic Iraq when the United States…
New York
WHENEVER ANYONE under the age of 50 sees old newsreel film of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak of 1941, he is almost certain to be brought up by the fact that nearly everyone in the male-dominated crowds--in New York, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland--seems to be wearing a suit and a fedora…
WE DIDN'T ARRIVE here overnight, all at once--here at the tail end of this hallucinatory primary season, when politics slipped down the rabbit hole of postmodernism and became an activity that is only about itself. Scanning back through the last few years and my own meager experience, I can find…
Books in Brief Digressions on Some Poems by Frank O'Hara: A Memoir by Joe Le Sueur (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 305 pp., $25). Beauty has rarely revenged itself on wit with such thoroughness as it does in this book. Le Sueur's memoir would make a biopic to stand beside "Citizen Kane" or "Mommie…
City
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.
SPAIN has now had its 9/11.
AS THE WAR enters a phase where most of the fighting is far removed from the networks' cameras, it gets harder and harder to find reliable news on the conflict's many fronts.
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is Hollywood's latest reprise of a time-honored theme, the teen movie. During the last 30 years, the industry has churned out one enterprise after another, producing standouts such as Risky Business, Dazed and Confused, Porky's and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, to name just a few…
ONE SUSAN LINDAUER was arrested today on charges that she acted as a spy for the Iraqi Intelligence service, and accepted $10,000 for the information she gathered. See the full story here. Lindauer is identified as a "Takoma Park, MD woman" in news accounts, which allege that she made multiple…
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS has just made public the accumulated papers of the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, who served from 1971 to 1994. More than a half-million items fill 1,576 boxes. For obvious reasons, the papers on the abortion cases are likely to draw the most interest.
A LITTLE NOTICED LITIGATION in the United Kingdom could be a harbinger of medical woes to come here in the United States. Leslie Burke, age 44, is suing for the right to stay alive. Yes, you read right: Burke, who has a terminal neurological disease, is deathly afraid that doctors will refuse to…
"NOT EVERYBODY got everything they wanted in this law--that's the way of democracy." So said Paul Bremer, top American in Baghdad, at the signing of Iraq's historic Transitional Administrative Law on Monday. This interim constitution sets the ground rules for Iraqi self-government after the…
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.
ALL OF THOSE DISENCHANTED FOLKS who have been staying away from the voting booths because they say that all politicians are the same, so why bother voting, no longer can claim that excuse. GWB and JFK (get used to it, that now refers to John Fitzgerald Kennedy's initialsake) may both be millionaire…
IT'S AN AXIOM IN WASHINGTON that government programs never die, and they don't fade away either. Instead, they invent new rationales to perpetuate their existence ad infinitum. So it was rather stunning when, last Monday, the Army announced the cancellation of its prized $39 billion Comanche armed…
John Gardner
The Anti-Semitism of the Intellectuals
AS A GROWING BAND of ragtag rebels converged on Port-au-Prince last week, threatening to topple Haitian dictator Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Bush administration's policy at first appeared hesitant. The situation was admittedly confusing. But happily, by the end of the week, the administration…
Night and Fear
Democracy and Tradition
Jesus in Beijing
ACCORDING TO THE NEWSPAPERS and the CIA, Iranian "hard-liners" dealt their country's reform movement and fledgling democracy a heavy, perhaps lethal, blow on February 20. With over 2,000 candidates "disqualified" before the parliamentary elections even took place, the ruling clerical elite ensured…
The Right Stuff
HERE'S A DOG that won't hunt: John Kerry's accusation that President Bush's reelection campaign is questioning his patriotism. This elevates a Democratic refrain--if we disagree with Bush on national security, we're called unpatriotic--to a ridiculous new height. In Kerry's case, his record on…
AT LAST WEEK'S OPENING OF Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," I never expected actually to see Jesus. Yet there he was, carnival-barking on the Connecticut Avenue sidewalk outside the Avalon Theatre in Washington, D.C. He stood out in his long brown hair and tunic. "Blessed are the…
IN JANUARY, JOHN PEARCE started a website devoted to discouraging Ralph Nader from running for president. Four years ago, Pearce, a 49-year-old businessman, supported Al Gore. He watched in horror as Nader, then the Green party candidate for president, siphoned off progressive votes from Gore in…
Books in Brief
PRESIDENT BUSH'S endorsement last week of a constitutional amendment preserving the current understanding of marriage, and the decision of John Kerry and other leading Democrats vehemently to oppose it, ensures that the marriage debate will be front and center in American politics. And it will be…
THE OTHER MORNING, I came to grips with a minor disability. Thrusting aside residual feelings of guilt, I poured my morning coffee into a travel cup. Then I went outside and, walking down the street from my house to Union Station, I drank it.
Advocacy Groups Permitted to Use Unlimited Funds . . . Ruling Favors Democrats
I'VE MENTIONED LT. RUSSELL BATES before in this column, a Marine pilot, my friend Pete Hamilton's nephew. Pete and his wife, Marcia, brought their four girls out from Connecticut and stayed with us last Thanksgiving, and his sister, Trish, another pal forever, made everyone a fabulous meal at her…
FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT was completing his second term and wanted a third one, but the unwritten rule written by George Washington said that presidents serve only two terms--and FDR's own patrician code said that it was unseemly to let ambition show so nakedly. So he did what was like him to do: He…
Editor's note: The following are highlights of Vice President Dick Cheney's remarks at last night's annual Gridiron dinner. Although the speech is off-the-record, they were obtained by The Daily Standard.
IT'S NO EXAGGERATION to say that Ralph Nader's independent candidacy for president faces many hurdles. Nader isn't on the ballot yet--anywhere. He has little money, having only raised $175,000 during his campaign's exploratory phase and $250,000 since announcing his candidacy. And he has to…
AS THE BRIGHT LIGHTS in Hollywood have run out of ideas for movies, they've made a habit of turning to other artistic mediums for source material. One time-honored tradition--pinching the theater--has come back in vogue ("Chicago"), but the multiplex is a monster which needs constant feeding. So…
WITH PROVOCATIVE SHOWS like Sex and the City, "The Sopranos," Curb Your Enthusiasm, and "Six Feet Under," the HBO channel has become one of the biggest players for its parent company, Time Warner, Inc.
The Supreme Court has taken another crack at explaining the government's proper relationship to religion. Unfortunately, last week's ruling in Locke vs. Davey, while it may seem limited just to the facts of a difficult case, could lead to substantial discrimination against religion. The defendant…
JOHN EDWARDS had one thing right: There are two Americas. But he botched the description of the line dividing these Americas--not surprising given that, after all these months and all that trial lawyer cash, he managed only to win the Democratic primary in South Carolina, which is like a Republican…
WOULD JOHN KERRY have been better off not winning the Democratic presidential nomination so easily and so quickly? It's not an entirely idle or silly question. And the reason is that Kerry has emerged from the primaries with his candidacy and his record largely unchallenged. He hasn't been…
FOR MORE THAN A MONTH, one of our national papers of record, the New York Times, has been examining "conservative forces in religion, politics, law, business and the media." No, that isn't made up. The quoted material comes from Times national editor Jim Roberts, announcing last month that David D.…
YEARS DIVISIBLE BY FOUR are not good for free trade. When Americans go about the quadrennial chore of choosing a president, the candidates seeking their votes know one thing: everyone disadvantaged by the free international movement of goods and services and jobs knows who they are. But the…
JUST AS LEAP DAY occurs once every four years, there's the quadrennial tradition of California having little--if any--say in the presidential nominating process.
Rebranding America
AMONG THE EVENTS that doomed Howard Dean's candidacy, one that has been insufficiently parsed took place on January 11 during a question-and-answer session in Oelwein, Iowa. A Bush supporter, Dale Ungerer, got up and condemned the press and the Democratic candidates for over-the-top criticisms of…
I LIKE DOGS in the abstract, as a class. I like dog-lovers, too, and think them superior to other men, because I admire their capacity for fellow feeling and their willingness to claim the mantle of stewardship to which all of us are called, so the Bible says. I like movies about dogs. I can watch…
WHILE THE WORLD understandably focuses on AIDS in Africa, malaria continues to devastate the children of that continent. Dr. Wenceslaus Kilama, a Tanzanian malaria specialist and head of Malaria Foundation International, alarmingly explains that every 30 seconds a child in Africa dies from the…
JUST BEFORE CHRISTMAS the Department of Health and Human Services released the National Healthcare Disparities Report. It documents an all-too-familiar problem in public health: the poorer health status of individuals on the lower rungs of the socioeconomic ladder and the fact that they often…
The Greater Good
Jerusalem
BioEvolution
CONGRESSWOMAN Marilyn Musgrave, a first-term Republican from rural eastern Colorado, is, in the words of one reporter, "taking freshman feistiness to a new level." Dressed in a raspberry-colored suit, with simple blond hair framing a pretty face, Musgrave hardly comes across as aggressive. Yet she…
WHEN FORMER Alabama supreme court chief justice Roy Moore speaks in sympathetic venues, he is "treated like a rock star, signing autographs and getting thunderous standing ovations," according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Moore's cult following (as well as his newly unemployed status) has…
CHINA CENTRAL TELEVISION's "Economic Person of the Year" for 2003 is Xiong Deming, a 42-year-old pig farmer from Sichuan Province. But Ms. Xiong wasn't singled out for any entrepreneurial or agricultural undertaking of her own. Rather, her 15 minutes of fame are the result of a chance encounter…
A RECENTLY INTERCEPTED MESSAGE from Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi asking the al Qaeda leadership for reinforcements reignited the debate over al Qaeda ties with Saddam Hussein's fallen Baath regime. William Safire of the New York Times called the message a "smoking gun," while the…
American Dynasty
Books in Brief Never a Matter of Indifference: Sustaining Virtue in a Free Republic, edited by Peter Berkowitz (Hoover, 161 pp., $15). In his introduction to this collection of essays, Peter Berkowitz observes that the contributors share a belief in public policy's power to shape citizens--and an…
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
THE TAWDRY Laci Peterson murder case has a significant twist. Scott Peterson is charged with two homicides--for killing both his wife Laci and his unborn son Conner. Under California law ("murder is the unlawful killing of a human being, or a fetus, with malice aforethought"), an unborn child is a…
AMERICAN STUDENTS are being overworked, says an alarmed chorus of newspapers, magazines, and books. As described by the popular media and even some academics, the crisis is reminiscent of "Sister Carrie" and Industrial era child-labor scandals. "Overbooked: Four Hours of Homework for a Third…
AMERICAN EFFORTS towards a democratic Iraq seem to have created some strange bedfellows in the Middle East. The Sunnis of the region--from Baathist loyalists in Iraq and hardcore Wahhabi zealots in Saudi Arabia to secular-minded elites in Amman, Cairo, and elsewhere--are now united around a common…
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.