October 2007

Is all of the talk about the White House and UFOs unique to the 2008 presidential elections? Hardly. Ufologists have been inserting themselves into the American political scene for decades. And one website - www.presidentialufo.com - is devoted to the subject. Although you would think that they…

Via Hot Air

It's just that so little of it seems to get much attention in the major media! Leave it to THE WEEKLY STANDARD's own Dean Barnett to capture the situation: SO WHAT'S HAPPENED the past several months? One thing's for sure--you wouldn't know the story by reading the New York Times. Throughout Iraq,…

The American Spectator's Phil Klein has a great catch. Turns out Giuliani never said the leading Democrats wanted to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House, which the AP has reported he said. Here's Klein: Now, it's perfectly accurate for Giuliani to hit Obama for wanting to invite Ahmadinejad…

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Karen Hughes, a longtime friend of the president, has announced her resignation as undersecretary of state, effective at the end of this year. Hughes was supposed to enhance the image of the United States in the greater Middle East, but, in this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Stephen Hayes…

Do you find American presidential politics sometimes boring? (You're not alone!) Just look at Indonesia, where the politicians sing: Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has released his first music album, a collection of love ballads and religious songs he wrote, state media said. The…

The most important moment of last night's Democratic debate was Senator Clinton's equivocation on issuing driving licenses to illegal immigrants. Why is this important? Because, you may recall, former California governor (and Democrat) Gray Davis's plan to do exactly this in 2003 fueled the…

Update: And there's none forthcoming...see the email from the L.A. Times below. I wrote earlier in the week about Los Angeles Times media critic Tim Rutten's attempt to weigh in on the Beauchamp story with this piece that was riddled with factual errors. Rutten described the disfigured woman…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: The Real Iraqi Miracle, by Dean Barnett. From National Review: Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, by Andrew McCarthy. From the Wall Street Journal ($): Bush's North Korea Meltdown, by John Bolton. From the Washington Times: Winning in Afghanistan, by Harlan Ullman. From the…

The House has now joined the Senate in passing an extension of the Internet Tax Moratorium: A bill to extend a moratorium on Internet access taxes for seven years was approved 402-0 by the House Tuesday, less than two days before it was set to expire. The House initially approved a four-year ban,…

The Hill reports that Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) has announced that the House is not likely to vote on FISA 'anytime soon,' apparently waiting to see how the Senate handles the issue: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) has postponed a vote to amend the 1978 Foreign Intelligence…

This exchange between Tim Russert and Dennis Kucinich is from last night's Democratic debate: RUSSERT: Congressman Kucinich, I want to move to a different area, because this is a serious question. The godmother of your daughter, Shirley MacLaine, writes in her new book that you sighted a UFO over…

Christmas may be cancelled, at least in Iowa, according to this Advertising Age story. Ira Teinowitz reports: TV spending on the 2008 presidential campaign is climbing so fast in the Hawkeye State that between now and the Jan. 3 primaries it threatens to overwhelm outlays by holiday-related…

IN THE FACE OF MEDIA indifference, the facts on the ground in Iraq have changed--dramatically and for the better. The deaths of Iraqi civilians over the past two months have declined precipitously. Before the surge and its accompanying change in tactics took effect, often 3,000 Iraqis would die…

It's 11:00 p.m. Do you know where your 21- to 34-year-old is? They are probably in a bar! According to an advertisement for "I Am TV" - I have no clue what that means either - in the current Advertising Age, 75 percent of bar-goers are 21 to 34 years old. They average two evenings per week at their…

Have the Afghan government and NATO forces cracked the code with dealing with the Taliban-controlled district of Musa Qala in the violent province of Helmand? A report from the em>Telegraph indicates Afghan and NATO forces may have found a pro-Taliban commander and tribal leader willing to turn on…

Jay Cost devastatingly argues against the idea that Giuliani is only "now playing to win" in New Hampshire. Has Giuliani "changed strategy"? Here's Cost: OK - so we have the logic of the political campaign dictating that a candidate like Giuliani amp up his pitch in the fall. We have an alternative…

John Edwards said last night that the Kyl-Lieberman amendment to the 2008 Defense appropriations bill expressing the sense of the Senate that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards should be designated a terrorist organization was written "in the language of the neocons." What does that mean? Kathryn J.…

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IMAGINE A TOOL exists that would weaken potential Iranian nukes without waiting for resolution of the debate over sanctions, force, and diplomacy. If we found such a device, shouldn't we fund it immediately rather than waiting for Iran's nuclear program to come online?

THE AMERICAN ATTEMPTS to rehabilitate the Yemeni regime of Ali Abdullah Saleh have not succeeded. Yemeni authorities recently pardoned Jamal Al-Badawi, convicted mastermind of the 2000 USS Cole bombing. All the terrorists who bombed the American warship and killed 17 American sailors are free,…

President Bush and congressional Republicans shouldn't worry about political fallout from blocking the Democratic legislation to expand the children's health insurance program known as S-chip. They have a good argument against it that most Americans will buy and a credible alternative. So there's…

It's that time of the year, folks. Project Valour-IT has turned into a blogosphere monster, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy voice-activated laptops for soldiers' who have lost the use of their limbs. coxforkumvalourit.gif

Mike Huckabee has made it into the "top tier" at least in Iowa, to judge by the latest Rasmussen poll of likely Republican voters in the Hawkeye state. Huckabee's position on Hillary is that he can beat her. During a lunch with 20 or so reporters here in Washington today, Huckabee said, "Assume…

One of the most lame and tiresome things about the American anti-war movement is the way some activists both spout off about how brave they are in speaking truth to power, and then complain about the legal penalties they suffer for breaking the law as part of their protests. Few seem to recognize…

The good news for Democrats: there's plenty of time for improvement. The bad news: this is starting to look like one of the most ineffective, unproductive, Congresses in memory. Approval of Congress overall has fallen to 22 percent. Speaker Pelosi's approval rating among Californians has fallen to…

The November 2007 AEI Political Report begins with a comparative look at candidate standings in the Gallup poll a year before the election: In November 1975, Ted Kennedy led all comers among the Democratic faithful in Gallup's polling, including the eventual nominee, Jimmy Carter, who barely…

On July 6 of this year, I pointed to a survey showing that 60 percent of Americans opposed a war with Iran. I also noted at the time that given "the substance of the left/libertarian opposition to a more confrontational approach in dealing with Iran," I wouldn't be "too surprised when that 60…

WEEKLY STANDARD contributing editor, and regular DAILY STANDARD columnist Irwin Stelzer has come in at #68 on the Telegraph's list of the most influential American conservatives. Stelzer is wedged in between David Brooks--a former senior editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD--and WWS pal Erik Erikson of…

There are tons of interesting facts in the November 2007 AEI Political Report. One fact struck me as particularly interesting, however. In September, when ABC News / Washington Post pollsters asked respondents whether they approved of Bill Clinton's presidential job performance, 66 percent approved…

Leaders from both sides of the aisle have said they are willing to compromise on the S-chip legislation, but the Washington Post reports today: The breaking point may have come Thursday, when Democratic leaders brought to the House floor a slightly revised bill to expand SCHIP by $35 billion over…

Yesterday I noted that Barack Obama stepped in the proverbial macaca when his campaign headlined a southern concert tour with gospel singer Donnie McClurkin, a gentleman who speaks optimistically about "curing" homosexuals. At least you can't call McClurkin a hypocrite; he proudly boasts of curing…

From the Washington Times: Getting LOST, by Senator James Inhofe. From the Politico: New Congress at War Over Everything, by Patrick O'Connor. From Ares: Russian Stealth Bomber, Fighter, MaRV, by Bill Sweetman. From the Guardian: Welcoming the Tyrant, by Peter Tatchell. From Contentions: The…

BUMPED Update: Readers are emailing more gems...click on the extended entry at the bottom of the piece to read them. The Huffington Post routinely allows its authors to write about subjects with which they are completely unfamiliar, largely uninformed, and generally ignorant--take Laurie David and…

A parent bemoans the less-is-more trend in Halloween costumes for teen and pre-teen girls: Cheryl Cirenza shook her head in exasperated disbelief. 'This is all so inappropriate. It's really disturbing,' she said, eyeing a wall of such girl and preteen costumes as Major Flirt in army green, the…

Earlier this year, our British allies released a powerful new weapon in the war on terror--the badger: British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra. Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating,…

Iraqi police in Anbar province scored a victory against al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership in Anbar province on Monday. Iraqi police killed Abu Tiba al Karbuli and two aides and captured another during an engagement north of Ramadi. "A police patrol came under fire from two civilian cars carrying…

The Wall Street Journal reports on the stunning success of Representative John Murtha in channeling taxpayer dollars to pork-barrel projects in his district, including awards for companies under FBI investigation and others which show no results, as well as many for projects the Pentagon did not…

According to Eli Lake's profile of Giuliani senior foreign policy adviser Charles Hill, Team Rudy wants you to know that its candidate's foreign policy is his, not just his advisers': Like President Bush and Senator Clinton, Mr. Giuliani has said repeatedly that military options remain on the table…

One of the joys of campaign season is coming across the entertaining websites that ask you questions about your politics and then match you with a presidential candidate. Another friend of the Campaign Standard sends me this link to another of these candidate-match sites called Connect 2 Elect.…

A friend sends in a link to this funny S-CHIP parody commercial:

IT IS THE BEST of times, it is the worst of times--best of times for America's airlines, worst of times for the passengers they are cramming into their airplanes. Not as good for the carriers as the wonderful days when regulation guaranteed them a quiet, profitable life, nor as bad for the…

MOST STANDARD READERS probably think the big campaign news of the days is Mitt Romney landing the endorsement of New Hampshire senator Judd Gregg. As an avowed Romney supporter, I applaud this development, while simultaneously questioning its import. How many people who vote actually care about…

In Shirley MacLaine's new book, the actress-turned-mystic describes Dennis Kucinich's encounter with an unidentified flying object: Dennis found his encounter extremely moving. The smell of roses drew him out to my balcony where, when he looked up, he saw a gigantic triangular craft, silent, and…

IMG_0011low.jpg A life-size replica of the original G.I. Joe at

Perhaps it's time to back away from the ledge. There's at least one sign that a Clinton Restoration isn't inevitable. Pollster Scott Rasmussen's latest pits Hillary Clinton in head-to-head match-ups with some of her likely GOP opponents. There's good news all around. Giuliani defeats Hillary by two…

Just 24 hours after the capture of 11 Sunni and Shia tribal leaders in northern Baghdad, the Iraqi Army has freed eight of the sheikhs. Meanwhile, Multinational Forces Iraq has identified the Mahdi Army commander responsible for the kidnappings and has begun to name other Mahdi Army leaders as…

Tim Rutten's latest column for the Los Angeles Times, titled "Drudge, New Republic battle over 'Baghdad Diarist'," is remarkable for the number of factual inaccuracies it contains. Granted, the Beauchamp affair is complicated, and for those of us who have followed it closely there has been a great…

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel has been promising for months that his legislation to 'fix' the AMT would promote fairness and equity. It already seems to have won strong support from Speaker Pelosi and the rest of the House Democrats. Harvard's Greg Mankiw, however, calls…

From the OC Register: War, like life, is not a movie, by Mark Steyn. From the Washington Times: Iran Continues to Meddle, by James Lyons. From the Raleigh News & Observer: A Fading Fighting Force, by Joseph L. Galloway. From Foreign Affairs: Losing Russia, by Dimitri Simes. Bonus Video: CNN Covers…

Thomas B. Edsall writes that Clinton is "going for the kill" in Iowa: The decision of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to send 100 or more new staffers into Iowa demonstrates that she and her aides have determined to their own satisfaction that she can cripple Barack Obama in the…

What is Condoleezza Rice thinking? Last week, the Secretary of State turned to former President Jimmy Carter for advice on Middle East, which, to put it in terms that Rice, an avid NFL fan might understand, is like asking Rex Grossman how to play quarterback. Or it would be if Grossman had publicly…

Over at his new blog "connecting the dots," Gabriel Schoenfeld--who is always a "must read" when it comes to intelligence matters--is discussing Kenneth Timmerman's new book, Shadow Warriors. I have not yet read Timmerman's book, but Schoenfeld is discussing one of Timmerman's claims that I have…

After days of sporadic fighting, intermixed with beheadings and ceasefires, the Pakistani military has again called for a halt in fighting with the Taliban in the settle district of Swat. Meanwhile, the Pakistani government is bragging about the number of "militants" (read: Taliban) it killed in…

The Cardinal is back, after a few days in the tropics chasing Huguenots and converting the lost. I see Romney has captured his long sought endorsement from Sen. Judd Gregg. While endorsements are worth little in New Hampshire, they are very helpful in spinning elite media and keeping donors happy.…

In case you need more evidence that a socialized government-funded health care system is a bad idea, London's Daily Mail reported yesterday: Record numbers of Britons are traveling abroad for medical treatment to escape the NHS - with 70,000 patients expected to fly out this year. And by the end of…

Early in 2007, Congressional Democrats split their conference--pitting moderates against liberals--as they considered whether and how to fund the Iraq war. They ultimately held their troops in line to pass an Iraq funding bill with a forced date for surrender. But when the president vetoed the…

Mark Blumenthal and Charles Franklin note here that Mike Huckabee may soon overtake Rudy Giuliani in Iowa polling. Giuliani is trending downward, while Huckabee is on the rise. Looking at Blumenthal and Franklin's data, it becomes clear that the Iowa GOP caucus currently is a two-tier race, with…

I'm one of them! (There aren't too many of us.) Patrick Ruffini updates his analysis of Facebook demographic data here. Ruffini adds more context here. Note that about the same number of self-identifying liberals (35 percent) and conservatives (35.48 percent) express interest in the Will Ferrell…

A Mitt Romney partisan once told me that the former Massachusetts governor's campaign strives to win every news cycle. If so, the campaign hasn't done its job that well ever since Romney won the Ames, Iowa, straw poll back in August. And even then the political class seemed to conclude that the…

Last Wednesday, the foreign ministers of China, Russia and India held a meeting in the northeastern Chinese city of Harbin. This was the first time that the trilateral forum had taken place in China. In the joint communiqué issued afterwards, it was emphasized that trilateral cooperation among the…

Bill Kristol makes the case for a wide-open Republican race for president. Among the scenarios Kristol outlines: Thompson wins or runs a strong second in Iowa, as almost everyone else underperforms (except Huckabee?). Having over-performed in Iowa enough to be the story, Thompson over-performs in…

Iran was the topic of the day on the Sunday Morning talk shows. Republican presidential hopeful John McCain laid out the basic problem to George Stephanopoulos on This Week, saying "This is the most unstable part of the world right now. The Iranians have dedicated themselves to a certain…

Lars and the Real Girl

Phony Hate Crimes (cont.)

Perhaps the Democratic sweep in last November's elections was providential. Consider what might have happened if Republicans had suffered setbacks on November 7, 2006, but had narrowly maintained control of Congress.

Many years ago I gave the Mencken Day lecture at the Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore. After my lecture, a man in his late seventies, possibly early eighties, came up to tell me that he knew H.L. Mencken. He then drew out of a battered briefcase a small light brown frame, in which, tapped out…

Irish Travellers

Virginia has gone for every Republican presidential candidate since 1968. But this model southern conservative stronghold has been moving to the left in recent years. Democrats captured the governorship in 2001 and 2005, and Jim Webb defeated incumbent Republican senator George Allen in a nasty…

Visit the Virginia Military Institute, in Lexington, and cadets will show you the statue of General George C. Marshall '01 on the edge of the parade ground, and add proudly that Marshall was (and remains) the only soldier ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize (1953). They do this partly because…

The Lady Upstairs

George Orwell was the greatest political essayist since William Hazlitt, and like Hazlitt's, his essays delight even when they're wrong. Probably Orwell's most famous essay is "Politics and the English Language" (1946), a rambling and deliciously witty attack on writers who allow political clichés…

India After Gandhi

Bill Clinton

Overshadowed by Iraq and Afghanistan in the global war on terror, less scrutinized than Turkey as a laboratory of Islam's compatibility with liberal democracy, Algeria remains a crucial testing ground for the ability of postcolonial Islamic societies to develop modern institutions. Algeria is also,…

Last February, Senator Hillary Clinton proposed to cap the number of American troops in Iraq at their level on January 1, 2007--roughly 140,000--and begin a withdrawal within 90 days.

Louisville

If there were any doubt about the reach of militants in Pakistan, last week's events should have put them to rest. The ostentatious procession celebrating the return home of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto was tragically cut short by twin bombs that killed over 130 and wounded several hundred…

Without much fanfare, college lectures are being put online, for free. MIT lectures can be downloaded from iTunes University, and you can watch Cal professors pontificate on your computer via YouTube. Is this some new trend? Do colleges feel threatened by Wikipedia? Something funny is going on. No…

FRED BARNES'S FINE piece in the new issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD ("The Two-Man Race") is particularly useful for its reminder that a helpful way to think about a presidential election--or any election--is to consider the "scenario" each candidate has for winning. When I was in politics, we used to…

Reading the blog of the Far Eastern Economic Review, you come across the parody video below, produced by the folks at Hot Air. It's about everybody's favorite fugitive Democratic fundraiser. There are moments when the singer is a little off-key, but he compensates with his enthusiasm:

Here's the pull-quote from the Washington edition of this story in today's Times: "Washington wants to tighten the screws on Iran, but there's not much thread left." Next time I need to thread a screw, I know whom to call. UPDATE, 5:00 p.m.: A handy reader points out that I'm incorrect; the above…

IN MASSACHUSETTS, JOHN Kerry cultivated a reputation for unparalleled arrogance when interacting with mere plebes who stood in the way of something he wanted. If a restaurant hostess had the audacity to tell Kerry he would have to wait for a table just like the ordinary shmos milling about the…

It's been clear for several days that the House of Representatives was going to defer consideration of the controversial resolution to officially recognize the Armenian genocide. The New York Times carries the obituary today. How quickly did the U.S. relationship with Turkey get 'back to normal?'…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Torture Logic, by Gabriel Schoenfeld. From the New York Post: A Maginot Line in the Sky, by Ralph Peters. From the Christian Science Monitor: Osama bin Laden's Growing Anxiety, by Fawaz A. Gerges. From Hot Air: Response to TNR, by Bryan Preston. From the Wall Street…

The pollster who must not be ignored, Scott Rasmussen, has produced a couple of doozies today. In his daily presidential tracking poll, Rasmussen shows Mike Huckabee surpassing Mitt Romney for the first time nationally. Huckabee now sits at 12 percent while Romney is at 11 percent. Although…

So apparently those annoying emails you get in your inbox from right-wing friends and relatives are part of a larger conspiracy to spread lies and misinformation about the left. Who knew? Apparently Christopher Hayes does, as he's written a long, detailed examination of the issue for the Nation.…

Red agencies/ districts controlled by the Taliban; purple is defacto control; yellow is under threat.

Representative Dennis Kucinich has apparently told a blogger conference call that he'll raise the issue of impeachment on the floor of the House of Representatives -- through a point of personal privilege: ...Rep. Dennis Kucinich announced he will go before the U.S. House of Representatives on a…

This Reid Wilson post at Real Clear Politics is worth reading. Wilson argues that there are parallels between Mitt Romney and Howard Dean, and that either John McCain or Rudy Giuliani will become the 2008 version of Dick Gephardt who takes Dean/Romney down with him in a flurry of negative…

Today's David Brooks column on technology and autonomy is filled with great lines, but here's my favorite: Musical taste? I have externalized it. Now I just log on to iTunes and it tells me what I like. I click on its recommendations, sample 30 seconds of each song, and download the ones that…

According to the New York Sun and the Washington Post, the UN Secretary General has published a report linking an al Qaeda affiliate in Lebanon, Fatah al-Islam, to Syrian intelligence. Fatah al-Islam has engaged in heavy fighting with Lebanese forces at times, but under constant pressure seems to…

I don't know why we never thought of this: While it appears from more than one point of view that the War in Iraq and the War on Terror are situations from which we may never be able to extricate ourselves, from the mountains of Pakistan comes a very simple solution: convert to Islam. Before we…

Jonathan Martin reports here that Kansas Senator Sam Brownback warmly received Mayor Giuliani on Capitol Hill yesterday: Standing just outside his Senate office suite next to Giuliani, Brownback, an ardent abortion opponent, said twice that he was 'much more comfortable' with his former rival's…

From today's Washington Post story on Syria's latest shenanigans: Syria has cleared away all traces of a large building that experts say was bombed by Israeli jets last month because it was suspected of housing a partially finished nuclear reactor, according to a new satellite image that shows only…

In the first of two columns on Fred Thompson's campaign, Jay Cost argues that Thompson is breaking the media's rules - and winning support because of it. Here's Cost: People outside the Beltway, whose daily lives are not regimented by the news cycle, appreciate that the perpetual campaign has…

The invasion in Iraq was always a gamble in that it gave al Qaeda a cause to fight the "crusaders" in the heart of the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has called the U.S. a "paper tiger" in the past, and predicted the U.S. would shy away from combat in Iraq once the fighting got tough. And the United…

Bill Kristol puts on his contrarian's cap in his latest Time magazine column and explains why things may not be as bad as they seem for the Grand Old Party: The Democrats are going to nominate either a one-term Senator (Clinton) or a half-term Senator (Obama), neither with much in the way of…

ALTHOUGH DEMOCRATS HAVE a clear advantage nationwide, Virginia Representative Tom Davis thinks the GOP still has a shot at some wins in 2008. "Don't write us off. I think the political landscape will be vastly different next November than it is right now," he said at a breakfast with reporters on…

THE INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES used by the Bush administration in the war on terror, says the editorial page of the New York Times, have "dishonored" our history. Have we, the paper asks while wagging its finger, become "a nation that tortures human beings and then concocts legal sophistries to…

Time to give credit where it's due. As Souther California suffers through one of it's worst fire seasons on record, a friend sends along a six month old article from the Politico. In a piece titled "Perfect storm brews in California," author John J. Pitney Jr. displays deep insight into the…

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Reading Best of the Web Today, I came across this New York Sun review of Valerie Plame's new book. Here's the best quote: Mr. Wilson comes out badly according to his wife's account: invariably abusing her, storming off, or on the verge of tears, and when the White House concedes that the yellowcake…

WHILE PINCH-HITTING for Hugh Hewitt on his radio show the other night, I predicted on air that the team that won Game 1 of the World Series would go on to sweep. My thinking was that if the Rockies could defeat Josh Beckett, they would get to the soft under-belly of the Sox' pitching rotation,…

PBS aired a new FRONTLINE documentary this past Tuesday titled "Showdown With Iran." The documentary was produced with the intent of highlighting the source of tensions between the U.S. and Iran since 9/11, but it fell well short of providing an accurate portrait for a variety of reasons. At one…

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States government faces a budget deficit of $343 billion from 2008-2017. With total spending over that time near $36 trillion, the projected deficit is essentially a rounding error--one that could easily be closed by trimming projected…

Across the board, German political and media circles breathed a big sigh of relief after the defeat of populist Polish prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski by Donald Tusk, leader of the pro-EU and market-friendly Civic Platform party, in early parliamentary elections on Sunday. Until two weeks ago,…

In this fascinating extract from his new book, John Lee of the Australian Center for Independent Studies invokes Robert Conquest and goes on to explain Beijing's predicament: That the reported instances of [Chinese social] unrest are rising exponentially obviously suggests a rising tide of…

Thomas DeFrank was a young reporter for Newsweek when he encountered Gerald Ford for the first time. Ford was vice president at the time. The two became friends, a phenomenon that was rare in those days and is all but extinct today as a wall of distrust divides politicians and the press. DeFrank…

From ABC News: Bomb Iran? U.S. Requests Bunker-Buster Bombs, by Jonathan Karl. From RealClearPolitics: Who's Afraid of an Iranian Bomb? by Victor Davis Hanson. From the Washington Post: Baghdad Diarist Was On Guard When Questioned by Editors, by Howard Kurtz. From Michael Yon Online: Beauchamp and…

Reading today's Opinionjournal Political Diary, you come across a reference to this op-ed on running for president in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. The article is by Donald J. Boudreaux, who is the chairman of the economics department at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. Here's…

From General Sherlock's briefing yesterday: GEN. SHERLOCK: "In Iraq, since the final surge forces arrived in June, our operations against terrorists and extremist groups have had a sustained positive effect. "Overall violence is down in many areas of Iraq. For example, in and around Baghdad,…

Afghanistan is often referred to as 'the forgotten war," but in the case of NATO, it should be called the ignored war. Radio Free Afghanistan details NATO's lack of serious commitment to the Afghanistan mission. "As NATO's defense ministers begin a two-day meeting in the Netherlands today, the…

First Read's Matthew Berger has an entertaining post on the Rudy Giuliani / Red Sox controversy. Writes Berger: For the past few days, I have been defending Rudy Giuliani on the whole Yankees-Red Sox thing. I am a die-hard Yankees fan myself and have been known to travel to New York in October if I…

The Democratic margin of control in the US Senate is one seat, and Harry Reid has apparently decided to flip one seat to the GOP in 2010. Reid has told [his circle of advisers] that he will definitely seek a fifth term, according to McCue and others who have attended the sessions, and he is…

Louisville men's basketball coach Rick Pitino is in a state about the new schedule for the Big East conference, which forces his team to play Georgetown and Marquette twice and away games at Pittsburgh and Connecticut. When asked by the Washington Post's Camille Powell about his feelings toward Big…

In a little-noticed interview with Michael Tomasky in the Guardian America this week, Hillary Clinton was asked, "What specific powers might you relinquish as president, or renegotiate with Congress - for example, the power to declare a U.S. Citizen an enemy combatant?" Clinton didn't name any…

Nagad, Djibouti

MoveOn.org has sent a message to its members announcing the start of a coordinated campaign to prevent the U.S. from a military strike against Iran. From their E-mail: To be honest, I don't even like to think about the possibility of war with Iran. But here's the unfortunate truth-plans for an…

Here's a Soren Dayton post that summarizes many of the questions surrounding the GOP primary. Dayton wants to know eight things: When will the primary calendar coalesce? Will Giuliani falter? Will Giuliani still be able to compete in Florida and on February 5 if he under-performs in the early…

Just one week after the Taliban fought the Pakistani military to a standstill in the al Qaeda safe haven of North Waziristan, the military has deployed over 3,000 paramilitary forces from the Frontier Corps, Frontier Constabulary, and Frontier Reserve Police to the settled district of Swat in the…

This Newsday story contains many fascinating details about a mob plot to assassinate then-prosecutor Rudy Giuliani in 1986. Here's the key quote: In September 1987, [alleged FBI double agent Roy] DeVecchio reported that [Colombo captain Gregory] Scarpa told him that the five mob families talked…

Today Bob Kerrey announced he will not seek the Nebraska U.S. Senate seat that is up for grabs in 2008. This is good news for former secretary of agriculture Mike Johanns, an early favorite to replace retiring U.S. senator and antiwar Republican Chuck Hagel. Meanwhile, according to the Evans-Novak…

Today's Page Six highlights two items of interesting political gossip. One item deals with Barack Obama's low-impact workout habits: Barack Obama barely breaks a sweat when he works out. The presidential candidate visited the Century City Equinox gym in L.A. on Saturday at 7 a.m. for a five-minute…

The Drudge Report has posted a a series of documents that reveal the lengths to which the New Republic's editors, specifically Frank Foer and Peter Scoblic, went to cover up the truth about the Scott Beauchamp stories. This is the end of the road, and a long road it's been. When we started looking…

Today's Jay Cost post on Clinton and Obama is worth reading. It's long and complicated, but here is Cost's conclusion: Rudimentary analysis is really all that is valid right now. So, here is mine. Clinton and Obama both have a ton of cash. They both have good messages that could appeal to the…

The new issue of First Things features a symposium on the 2008 presidential election. Nat Hentoff, John J. DiIulio Jr. and Weekly Standard contributing editor (and First Things editor) Joseph Bottum all contribute. Bottum's piece contains this interesting analysis: Which leaves Fred Thompson. He…

American universities pride themselves on being bastions of free speech and diversity of opinion, where all are given respect and a chance to voice their views. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for instance, was given a courteous reception (and TV time) at Columbia University in September,…

The Politico reports on the refusal of some moderate Democrats to make required donations to the party's campaign committee: A large group of "Blue Dog" Democrats has refused to give money to the party's campaign committee so far this cycle, underscoring simmering tension inside the Caucus and…

Democrats vowed to change the culture in Washington. And while their ethics reforms were criticized by clean-government advocates for not going far enough, they're tried to take credit for 'draining the swamp' anyway. How will they do that now though, considering that even with the additional…

Watching An Inconvenient Truth for the second time last night, I was struck by the way in which the Nobel Peace Prize-laureate's film makes blatant emotional appeals at every opportunity. Isn't this a little odd, considering that the film's star recently authored a book that bemoans the end of…

Dean Barnett has an excellent piece on THE DAILY STANDARD today. It's the greatest story never told--the recent drop in U.S. casualties that has gone, up until now, largely unnoticed by the mainstream press. Barnett covers a lot of ground, it's well worth reading. Also worth reading is this story…

Ramesh Ponnuru continues to make the case for John McCain and, both practically and ideologically, he's not unpersuasive. Ponnuru sees McCain as an excellent conservative candidate: He is solid on almost all of the important issues: the war, judges, entitlements, abortion, trade ... Even on taxes,…

While much of the reporting around Osama bin Laden's most recent audiotape focused around the failure of leadership of al Qaeda in Iraq and the problems with cooperation between Sunni insurgent groups and tribes, a small but important detail slipped by the press. Bin Laden clearly addresses a…

Slowly, Mitt Romney is rediscovering the rationale for his campaign: a Washington outsider with significant business experience who governed successfully a heavily Democratic state. Over the last year, Romney's large, unwieldy crew of consultants, media types, and pollsters have focus-grouped the…

Last night on Fox News Channel, political consultant and author Dick Morris presented an intriguing metaphor for the GOP primary. Basically, Morris said, one should think of the Republican race as a tennis tournament. On the center court, you have Giuliani and McCain competing for the moderate and…

THE U.S. NAVY is by far the most powerful naval force in the world, perhaps equal in combat power to all the rest of the world's navies combined. The U.S. Navy alone operates large deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, their air groups (each more potent than most of the world's air forces) and…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD's Nick Swezey turned in a dominant performance on Jeopardy! last night, pulling in a total of $32,001. In a key moment early in the contest, reigning Champ Shad Small was flummoxed by a question dealing with a "type of [weather] front with little or no movement." Swezey, showing…

It's a good thing Congressional Democrats didn't wait until the last minute to begin figuring out how to revise and renew FISA. It's clear that it's a very divisive process for them. Senator Kit Bond--the senior Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee--held a conference call yesterday with…

From this AP story on the recently released Bin Laden tape: CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Osama bin Laden called for Iraqi insurgents to unite and avoid divisive 'extremism,' speaking in an audiotape aired Monday and apparently intended to win over Sunnis opposed to al-Qaida's branch in Iraq. Um, isn't it a…

f22_j.jpg Looking les and less likely.

Today Team Rudy attacked Fred's record on immigration. Jim Geraghty notes some sloppy opposition research from the Giuliani campaign. Here's Geraghty: [Reader] Jeff notes that on the four votes cited by Giuliani, the percent of Republican Senators who voted the same way as Thompson were 96 percent,…

From the New York Post: Why the Surge is Working, by Pete Hegseth. From THE DAILY STANDARD: Warden Stone, by Christian Lowe. From the Wall Street Journal: A Kurdish Lesson, by Brett Stephens. From the International Herald Tribune: Russia's Doing Great. Or Is It? by Eugene Rumer. From Contentions:…

At the Values Voter Summit, held this past weekend in Washington, Mike Huckabee gave a speech that confirmed his status as the best orator among the Republican presidential candidates. "The audience seemed ready to follow this presidential long shot into the lion's den," writes Rich Lowry. What…

Charlie Cook is one of the nation's leading election analysts and progonosticators. In his latest column (sent by E-mail, with no link currently available), he warns that while everything seems to be going Democrats' way, their streak of good luck is bound to end. Further, he says that Democratic…

Red agencies/ districts controlled by the Taliban; purple is defacto control; yellow is under threat.

You may recall the left-wing attempt to to smear GWU's Young America's Foundation ahead of the upcoming Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which is sponsored by David Horowitz and features events at campuses across the country. Seven students with no affiliation to YAF or IFAW posted phony anti-Muslim…

After almost a year of silence, Osama bin Laden has issued his third tape in less than two months. Based on excerpts from bin Laden's latest audio tape, titled "Message to the people of Iraq," he views the situation in Iraq as dire. Bin Laden is clearly concerned with the defection of Sunni…

The rationale for John Edwards's presidential candidacy appears to be that he is a southern, white-male Democrat with broad appeal who, in a general election, could capture some of the states that make up the region where he grew up. But what if he can't capture those states even in a primary…

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Now this is just silly. Mitt Romney, traveling in South Carolina today, plans to propose a "'Reagan Zone Of Economic Freedom' to fuel a new wave of global prosperity." Here's a portion of the press release: The Reagan Zone Of Economic Freedom would act as an alliance working together internally, in…

In case you hadn't noticed, Newsweek has launched a brand new website. It's part of a larger redesign: The simple idea behind the redesign of Newsweek is the theory that people want to read more, not less, according to editor Jon Meacham. "Some people in our business believe print should emulate…

Michiko Kakutani tears apart Susan Faludi's silly new book in today's New York Times. Writes Kakutani: [Faludi] insists, 'a feminist perspective on any topic was increasingly AWOL' after 9/11. Thus, she argues, various antifeminist impulses ('the cumulative elements of a national fantasy') surfaced…

This Tom Bevan post has a noteworthy take on the recent GOP debate in Orlando. Bevan, like many observers, was struck by the degree to which the mere mention of Hillary Clinton electrified the Republican debate audience. Writes Bevan: The visceral reaction Hillary generates is not unique to Florida…

Think the prospect of a Dennis Kucinich presidency is frightening? Apparently, so does he! Here's a portion of a Kucinich fundraising email that arrived in my inbox last night. The subject line is "Make Your Halloween Party a Dennis Kucinich Debate Party." The email says: Spice it up - Make it a…

The good news for Mike Huckabee is that he's been discovered by the national media. That's also the bad news. Now that the former Arkansas governor's success at the debates and in the latest round of Iowa caucus polling has established Huckabee as a possible contender, albeit a longshot, he'll have…

HEALTH CARE is often touted as yet another sign of American exceptionalism. While the Canadians and the British provide "universal" care through government-run systems, it is said, the U.S. depends on free markets. In reality, the American health-care market has been heavily distorted by public…

Hotel outpost.jpg An old hotel in southwestern Samarra, just west of the Golden Mosque,

THIS PAST FRIDAY was the twentieth anniversary of the stock market crash of 1987, when the Dow Jones Industrial average fell by over 500 points, or 23 percent in a single day. That was almost 60 years after the great crash of October 1929, when share prices also fell 23 percent, but over a two-day…

MOST PEOPLE DON'T know about the website Icasualties.org. Icasualties.org is run by a bunch of lefties who have dedicated themselves to aggregating all the bad news out of Iraq over the past few years. Each day for the past thirty-four months, Icasualties.org has documented every Coalition military…

IT MAY NOT BE the most dramatic operation going on to defeat the insurgency and weed out al Qaeda operatives in Iraq, and it may not grab the biggest headlines. But one Marine general is waging his counterinsurgency fight by attacking the battlefield of the mind, rather than kicking in doors and…

John McCain put out the following statement in response to Osama's latest jibba jabba: "The release of another purported Osama bin Laden audio recording reminds us that he and his henchmen must be hunted down and the al Qaeda terror network destroyed. But bin Laden's return to the airwaves to beg…

NRO's milblog, the Tank, has struck a blow against Hezbollah that deserves recognition as blogging above and beyond the call of duty: I snatched a Hezbollah flag - the yellow banner with the green fist and rifle - from one of the enemy's strongholds in Lebanon recently. And when I say stronghold, I…

The divisions between al Qaeda and their erstwhile Sunni allies in the insurgency intensified over the weekend as the Islamic Army of Iraq and the terror group battled in Khannasa, just south of the city of Baghdad near Salman Pak. Over 60 were reported killed in the three day battle, which…

This Jay Cost post analyzing Rudy Giuliani's primary strategy is worth your time. Most political professionals say Giuliani is pursuing a "February 5 strategy" in which he plans to survive the early primary states, win Florida on January 29, 2007, then go on to victory in the February 5…

Video via Hot Air.

On Friday, I wrote about the failure of the Senate to consider legislation by Senator Sununu to make the internet tax moratorium permanent. I mentioned that Senator Landrieu objected to a unanimous-consent request by Senator McConnell to consider the bill. Senator Landrieu has requested that we…

Frank Rich is an embarrassment to the left, yet it fell to Stephen Colbert to prove the point by reducing the absurdity of the Frank Rich column to a mere two sentences: Bad things are happening in countries you shouldn't have to think about. It's all George Bush's fault, the vice president is…

From today's David Carr column on Stephen Colbert's appearance on Meet the Press yesterday: For decades, my 84-year-old father in Minnesota has taken a church-and-state approach to Sunday mornings: First church, then Sunday morning talk, sometimes phoning me afterward with updates about who said…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Sunday Night Report Card, by Dean Barnett. From Defense Tech: Corps Asks for MRAP Slowdown, by Christian Lowe. From the Washington Post: Five Myths About Rendition, by Daniel Benjamin. From the Honolulu Advertiser: Deterrence a Key Part of U.S. Sea Strategy, by Richard…

Reading this Walter Mossberg plea for cellphone deregulation in today's Journal, one cannot help thinking this is a natural issue for a Democratic or Republican politician who wants to seem market friendly while also acting in the best interests of consumers. By expanding consumer choice - that is,…

THE WEEKLY STANDARD's own Nick Swezey will be appearing on Jeopardy! tonight (check your local listings for show times). Nick is our advertising director, and by all accounts he has a freakish aptitude for worthless trivia. He filmed the show back in August, and despite repeated entreaties from…

From Joseph Kahn's New York Times analysis of the recently concluded national congress of the Chinese Communist Party: BEIJING, Oct. 22 - To judge by the reports in China's state-run news media, the Communist Party took a bold step toward democracy at the just completed 17th National Congress,…

I cannot recommend more highly Ryan Lizza's profile of Mitt Romney in the October 29, 2007, New Yorker. The piece discusses Mormonism, Romney's business background, and his performance on the stump. Most important, however, is Lizza's discussion of what he calls "Bainism," or Romney's consultant…

We are now entering week ten of the New Republic's shameless stonewalling in the Scott Beauchamp saga. Over at Powerline, Scott Johnson pulls a gem from the TNR archive--Frank Foer on the "wisdom" of stonewalling: [I]t's not just his analyses--Gergen's moral impulses are also impeccable. During his…

IT'S NOT DIFFICULT to find blog posts analyzing yesterday's lively Republican presidential debate. In other quadrants of the blogosphere, you can easily locate tons of purple pixels lauding the Red Sox' magnificent pennant clinching victory last night. But only here at THE DAILY STANDARD, thanks to…

Via Instapundit, blogger Michael Yon writes from Iraq today about "the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq." He says: No thinking person would look at last year's weather reports to judge whether it will rain…

200px-James_L._Jones.jpg Our next VP?

Apparently, this is not a joke. Chuck Norris has endorsed former governor Mike Huckabee for president. The other candidates better study these Chuck Norris facts, or else they are in big trouble.

This Washington Post story on surveillance in Vegas is worth reading. It would be easy to dismiss the article as a so-so attempt at slightly paranoid public-interest journalism. But then you get to thinking that surveillance and privacy are likely to be hot-button issues in any future politics.…

In recent weeks, official Chinese media have devoted much space to the life and exploits of Che Guevara, as well as events in Cuba marking the 40th anniversary of his death, which fell on October 9. In recounting Guevara's credentials as a revolutionary, emphasis was placed on the inspirational…

A friend of the Campaign Standard writes in to let you know about a controversy brewing inside the Beltway: On the same day that Rush Limbaugh raised millions for charity auctioning off a letter from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid smearing Limbaugh as 'unpatriotic,' the White House announced the…

The Turkish press reports that Turkey's Ambassador to the United States is preparing to return to Washington, satisfied that the House will apparently not vote on legislation to recognize the Armenian genocide. The Turkish ambassador to the US is to return to Washington, D.C., after being recalled…

The November/December 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs includes parallel statements on U.S. foreign policy by John McCain and Hillary Clinton. The McCain text is titled "An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom: Securing America's Future." The Clinton contribution is striking in its formulaic banality.…

Last night there was another debate, which was up against sports on TV and having a life in general. I saw a little more than half of it. All the majors did better; Romney much improved and on a far stronger Mr. Fixit message, Fred back on his vitamins, Rudy smooth, Huckabee effective, and McCain…

Drip, drip, drip--secrets are leaking out of our government at the pace of Chinese water torture. In the most recent case, bureaucrats somewhere in the U.S. intelligence apparatus indirectly disclosed the existence of a unique operation, privately run, that was tapping into al Qaeda's web servers…

Republicans are downcast, depressed, and demoralized. Bush is unpopular. Cheney is even more unpopular. Scandals continue to bedevil congressional Republicans, and it's hard to see the GOP taking back either the House or Senate in 2008. History suggests it's not easy to retain the White House after…

Carlisle vs. Army

Democracy's Good Name

Dearborn, Mich.

Phony Hate Crimes Watch

Lions at Lamb House

Ward Connerly delivered one of the big wins for conservatives on election day 2006--a lopsided victory (58-42 percent) for the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, which banned racial and gender preferences in state university admissions and contracting and hiring.

Like many a good research-monkey in Washington last week, I found myself combing through the fine points of the State Children's Health Insurance Program bill. Reading the proposed law online, I learned it would not only extend insurance coverage to families making 300 percent of the poverty level,…

In mid-July the top three Democratic presidential contenders paid their respects at an important shrine on the pilgrimage circuit of party fundraising: the Washington-based political arm of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. With its unceasing and aggressive advocacy of what it calls…

Philip Larkin

HILLARYCARE 2.0

With its marijuana coffee shops, the Netherlands has a reputation for being the most drug-friendly country in Europe: the epitome of the continent's permissive cultural attitude to illegal drug use. The Dutch have long favored "harm reduction" rather than law enforcement in their drug-related…

As relations between Washington and Tehran deteriorate, critics of the Bush administration are seeking to cast blame for the rocky relationship not on Iran's nuclear program or support of terrorism, but on President Bush's intransigence. At the root of the attacks is the administration's supposed…

Rudy Giuliani has a problem. It's bigger than he imagines and could doom his presidential prospects. The problem is his pro-choice position on abortion. It's one he cannot finesse by simply saying he "would keep the balance exactly where it is now." That means abortion would remain legal, limited…

Twice during the past half century, the Democratic party has faced a challenge from its left wing. In the late 1960s, it was the mass movement of the New Left that rose up to defy the party's liberal-progressive core. Following a contest of ideas and of wills, the liberal center collapsed and…

Michael Clayton

One thing I noticed during tonight's debate, other than Romney's persistent name-dropping and the audience's apparent ignorance of Giuliani's cell-phone problems, was the energy level among all the candidates. From McCain to Huckabee to Tancredo to Paul to Thompson, I think every candidate enjoyed…

The GOP presidential debate (on Fox News Channel) begins at 8:00 p.m. Sunday night. The seventh game of the Red Sox-Indians series (on the Fox network, as it happens) is, I believe, scheduled to begin at 8:07 p.m. A number of potential debate viewers - and a huge number of Sox fans in New England,…

Editor's note: For more on the campaign, go to Campaignstandard.com.

Rudy Giuliani's position on abortion is evolving in a pro-life direction. Addressing an audience of social and religious conservatives, Giuliani made two new points: as president, he would veto any bill increasing the number of abortions, and he would support any "reasonable suggestion" to reduce…

Mike Huckabee is a likable pol who has excellent communications skills. He's down to earth and can tell a joke, which, in a Republican field filled with alpha males, distinguishes him from the pack and makes him seem a little more, well, normal than the other candidates. But is he really, as David…

On Wednesday afternoon, the House was forced to indefinitely defer its consideration of the Democrats' bill to extend FISA. By Wednesday evening, leading Senate Republicans and Democrats had agreed to a compromise bill. It was expected that this bill could move quickly and be signed into law. But…

From Instapundit, a list of Amazon.com's 100 DVDs you should own. The list is fun to read, but it also raises a lot of questions. I mean, I enjoyed Number 42 on the list, but do I really have to own it in order to be a film buff? Also, I couldn't find a single Woody Allen movie on Amazon's list.…

This Kate O'Beirne piece in National Review is well worth your time. O'Beirne argues that conservatives ought to take a second look at John McCain: The Christian-conservative leaders toying with the ruinous idea of a third-party challenge represent the legitimate concern that the nomination of Rudy…

Voters in Louisiana go to the polls tomorrow to choose their next governor. There is little question that U.S. congressman Bobby Jindal will win the most votes; he did back in 2003, and every poll taken in recent months shows him well in front of the others running. But Louisiana has a unique…

We've been following the halting progress of the Internet Tax Moratorium. Earlier this week Members of the House were denied the opportunity to vote on a permanent extension, and instead overwhelmingly passed a four-year extension. While it seems likely that the Senate will soon pass this…

The question the Republican presidential candidates are asking themselves today is whether, by the end of this weekend's Values Voter Summit at the Hilton Washington, they will be in better position to win the nomination than before. Surely Fred Thompson is thinking about that, but if you judge on…

From the Washington Post: Pelosi's Armenian Gambit, by Charles Krauthammer. From the Long War Journal: Sophisticated attack targeted Bhutto in Pakistan, by Bill Roggio. From the Times: The US is a great place to be anti-American, by Gerard Baker. From the Wall Street Journal: What Happened at…

Tomorrow, in an anticipated speech, Mayor Giuliani will address the Values Voter summit here in Washington, D.C. From what I've heard, Giuliani's speech may resemble the address he delivered earlier this year to the Conservative Political Action Conference. That would be a mistake. Granted,…

Pete Stark tells San Francisco's KCBS radio that he stands by his attacks yesterday on House Republicans and President Bush: During his outburst, the Fremont lawmaker said "you don't have money to fund the war, or children, but you're going to spend it to blow up innocent people if we can get…

Yesterday, Mayor Giuliani traveled to Chicago, where he talked about legal reform. Giuliani brought a similar message to the Univesity of Iowa in Iowa City the day before. You may be wondering, why is Giuliani suddenly talking about legal reform? It's not the most exciting issue, to say the least.…

Before we get carried away with exactly how much money Hollywoood has given to the Democratic presidential candidates, it also should be noted that H-wood gives to Republican contenders as well. Actors Kelsey Grammer and Adam Sandler have donated to the Giuliani campaign and Robert Duvall has…

Last night, the Boston Red Sox sat on the brink of elimination as the Cleveland Indians looked to clinch their first pennant on their home turf since 1743. Like every other member of Red Sox Nation, I was desperate and afraid. I knew I had to do something. So I called my friend, former co-blogger,…

Hillary may be edging out Obama in total fundraising, but he's holding his own in Hollywood, Variety reports. In the third quarter, Obama pulled in $580,000 from the film, TV, and music industries while Clinton snagged $530,589. (Edwards was a distant third with $96,052.) Variety attributes the…

Frustrated by the lack of progress toward surrender in Iraq, veteran John Bruhns has quit the anti-war group AAEI: The leading Washington coalition for ending the war in Iraq has lost its highest-profile Iraq veteran. John Bruhns, a former Army sergeant who participated in the 2003 invasion, left…

Toronto's Globe and Mail reports today on public opinion inside Afghanistan. The numbers are pretty remarkable: 59 percent "believe President Hamid Karzai represents their interests," 84 percent have "a lot" or some confidence in the national army, and most significant I think, "64 per cent of…

Gary Bauer is the only person I know who has both run for president (in 2000) and served as president of the Family Research Council (in the 1990s). So I called him this week, figuring he'd have some thoughts about FRC's Values Voter Summit, which opens today at the Hilton Washington and will…

ONE OF THE UNTOLD successes of the Bush administration has been the progress made in the fight against illegal drugs. During the past six years, during which John Walters has been director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, drug use among the most critical American age groups, 12- to…

RUSSIAN TYRANT-IN-WAITING Vladimir Putin's plan to restore a one-man dictatorship in Moscow has caused anxiety in the thin ranks of Russian liberals as well as among partisans of secure independence in the former Soviet republics. It should also stimulate concern in Europe, the United States, and…

Does Andrew Sullivan read stories before he comments on them? In this case, I suspect he didn't, otherwise he's engaging in pure military-related fantasy. In response to this article from the Houston Chronicle reporting that Ron Paul and Barack Obama lead all candidates in fund raising among…

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Fred Thompson takes a lot of heat for his, um, lackadaisacal campaign style. As Stephen F. Hayes notes here, Thompson's style leads many in the media to set expectations low - so low that the former senator easily exceeds them. I think the larger critique to be made of Thompson is that his campaign…

Hulk Huckabee

The only pollster that really matters is Scott Rasmussen of Rasmussen Reports. In addition to his unrivaled track record, Rasmussen is also the only pollster who is currently screening for likely voters. So when Rasmussen says something, we ought to pay attention. Yesterday, Rasmussen released a…

One of the reforms adopted by Democrats when they took control of Congress this year was 'pay-go.' Simply put, pay-go requires Congress to offset tax cuts and new entitlement spending with tax increases or spending cuts. As long as Congress sticks to the pay-go rule, it ensures that Congress does…

It's subscription only, but today's Opinionjournal's Political Diary contains a Tom Bevan item on the latest Gallup poll. Writes Bevan: Even Barack Obama, who has the highest favorable ratings of any candidate in the field, is apparently not immune. Last week Mr. Obama announced that his campaign…

Glenn Greenwald is up in arms (what else is new?) over the fact that the Senate has moved to protect telecom companies from lawsuits related to their cooperation with the federal government in domestic surveillance. The Washington Post reports on the measure: Senate Democrats and Republicans…

This isn't good: China's newest attack helicopter is powered by Canadian-built engines, a development military analysts say could spark a backlash against Canada's aerospace industry from U.S. lawmakers concerned about technology being transferred into the wrong hands. Other analysts are…

From City Journal: An Anglosphere Future, by Christopher Hitchens. From the Wall Street Journal: Gen. Sanchez's Scream, by Daniel Henninger. From the New York Post: Putin's Persian Pals, by Peter Brookes. From the Washington Post: Portents of A Nuclear Al-Qaeda, by David Ignatius. From the…

A new Harris Poll of 2,565 adults has some encouraging news for proponents of the U.S. effort in Iraq. While Americans remain skeptical of the mission and have little trust in either Congress or the president, their view of the situation in Iraq has improved. In March, 51% of respondents said the…

As I noted last week, Democrats tried to pass legislation that would make it more difficult for U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor suspected terrorists both at home and abroad. But luckily, as NRO columnist Andrew C. McCarthy reports, House Republicans, led by minority leader John Boehner and…

This mass email from Sen. John Kerry just arrived in my inbox. The senator writes: I don't write to you that often about films, except when they strike a very special chord and cry out for some special attention (think "An Inconvenient Truth," or Leo DiCaprio's "Eleventh Hour.") A couple weeks ago,…

No one's ever accused Pete Stark of having any class, or of serving as an example for civil discourse in Congress. He's lived up to his reputation today. During debate this morning, he accused Republicans of funding the war for the fun of seeing innocents die: "But you're going to spend it to blow…

Democratic outfits like MoveOn.org and other antiwar groups have been pounding Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell all year because of his support for President Bush's Iraq policy and his skill in thwarting Democratic efforts to end the war and pass liberal legislation. TV ads zinging…

At this point, it's obvious the Iranians will happily work arm in arm with both Sunni and Shia extremists. They offer support to the Special Groups and al Qaeda in Iraq and then to the east, they supply the Taliban and al Qaeda with much the same materials: The top NATO commander in Afghanistan…

Most of the media will miss this, but if Sam Brownback is indeed dropping out, the big winner will be Mike Huckabee. It's all about Iowa. Brownback's support there was small, but it was centered in Iowa's hardcore Christian conservative circles, where Huckabee will now have little competition.…

Take a look at this Jim Rutenberg piece on the uncertainties the candidates may face while campaigning during the holiday season. Here's my favorite part: Tom Rath, a Republican Party leader in New Hampshire who is an adviser Mr. Romney, said voters would frown upon candidates who campaigned on…

Next Monday, Al-Baqee--a new coalition of American Muslims--will take an initiative that other citizens and leaders of our country should have begun immediately after 9/11: The group has called a protest against Saudi Arabia's support--by preaching, money and recruitment--of terrorism. The…

Michael Scherer reports here on a second meeting among some social conservative elites scheduled for this Saturday in Washington, D.C., just hours after Mayor Giuliani addresses the "Values Voters Summit." Scherer writes: Conservative circles have been buzzing for weeks about the possibility of a…

So thanks to Eric Cantor's shrewd parliamentary maneuver, House Democrats have been forced to defer a vote on terrorist surveillance legislation. The debate is on over who was playing politics--but Democrats give the game away by admitting they may be forced to allow debate on amendments. Look at…

FOR OVER 200 years, the military academy at West Point has schooled future Army officers in the ways of large-scale industrial war and, as the old joke goes, has established a reputation of having 200 years of history, untouched by progress. But with the United States the world's only remaining…

In the debate over the House resolution condemning Turkey for the Armenian genocide of 1915, there's been little discussion of precedent. But there is one. In 2000, House speaker Dennis Hastert was confronted with much the same dilemma. As the boss explained on Fox's Special Report earlier this…

If you hadn't already noticed, Dean Barnett is now an official member of THE WEEKLY STANDARD team. He's already fired up a few pieces for THE DAILY STANDARD, including a just posted look at "the ridiculous saga of the 'attack' on Randi Rhodes": THERE'S A GOOD CHANCE that if you read this magazine,…

THERE'S A GOOD CHANCE that if you read this magazine, you've never heard of left-wing radio talker Randi Rhodes. Consider yourself lucky. I used to listen to Randi Rhodes periodically when she had a show broadcast in South Florida. I considered her to be obnoxiousness personified, but then again, I…

Congressman Eric Cantor reports on his blog that House Democrats are stalling the FISA debate. According to Cantor, they don't know how to address the vote that House Republicans intend to force on whether or not intelligence agencies should be permitted to pursue Osama bin Laden and other…

The BBC reports on the upcoming Australian election: Had it not been for the man dubbed "Bush's brain," the former Labor leader Kim Beazley might be taking aim for his third shot at winning a federal election; John Howard would be confidently expecting a fifth term in office; and the Australian…

In yesterday's special election for the open seat in Massachusetts's 5th Congressional District, Democrat Niki Tsongas defeated Republican Jim Ogonowski 51 percent to 45 percent. It was a surprisingly close race in a district where Democratic incumbent Marty Meehan ran unopposed in 2006 and crushed…

The political direction in Washington is shifting. The White House, in a defensive crouch for much of 2007, is beginning to go on offense. The Democratic Congress is increasingly on defense. If this trend continues, the dreary prospects for Republicans in the 2008 election may improve. Look what's…

Eric in Indiana asks, "What about Fred Thompson?" My indulgence, sorry. Actually forgot to mention Fred in my post. Whoops ... although Fred is a doing a good job these days of being easy to forget, canceling campaign appearances and all. Fred's financial report was healthy, with a decent pile of…

The New York Times's Janet Elder writes a column 'on polling,' and reveals a surprising finding: Americans seem to regard the Iraq war as a part of the war on terror: The language used to talk about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the language used to take the nation to war in Iraq have…

Just when you thought the phony scandal was over, and Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV had gone off into the sunset, Wilson's wife Valerie Plame Wilson is readying her memoirs for publication next Tuesday. AP's Matt Apuzzo reports: Plame writes about the leak, the scandal and the perjury trial of…

Since winning the Nobel Peace prize last week, Al Gore has denied reports that he is mulling entering the 2008 presidential race. Still, media speculation continues over whom Gore may endorse in the Democratic primaries. I can't help thinking, however: Hasn't Gore transcended American politics, to…

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"Redskins Can't Win Consistently" That's the headline that the editors at the Post Express chose for this Jason La Canfora article on the nation's capital's NFL franchise. The much-hyped 'skins currently are in third place in the NFC East.

Not many people are familiar with the House Rules Committee, or why it has so much power to determine what legislation passes the House. Simply put, the Committee sets the terms for debate of all significant legislation--how long a bill is debated, who may offer amendments, what amendments may be…

Matt Fong quote to the contrary notwithsanding, there's another way to interpret this Washington Post report on the many big-dollar GOP voters who haven't yet opened their wallets for a particular candidate: More than a third of the top fundraisers who helped elect George W. Bush president remain…

Jay Cost writes on the beginning of the real campaign. According to Cost, the real campaign Is about persuading voters - who by their own admission are still quite persuadable - in the early states. So, it's about clever television advertisements, solid organizations that can get out the vote, and…

IN MY PREVIOUS life as a blogger, I was a prominent supporter/shill for Mitt Romney. Having officially morphed into a journalist this week, I hoped to get my hands on the elixir that gives New York Times reporters the Olympian detachment that so distinguishes them. Alas, I woke up today much the…

Be sure to check out this Soren Dayton post on the possible consequences of a December 11, 2007, New Hampshire primary. Dayton writes: On the GOP side, this opens up the game much, much more. Mitt Romney was hoping to boomerang with Iowa. But, in RCP, Romney is only +4 percent. While his…

Via this New York Observer piece, here's Empire State congressman Charles Rangel on Mayor Giuliani's chances of winning the Republican nomination: 'It's totally unbelievable,' said Charles Rangel, the dean of the New York Congressional delegation and a longtime adversary of Mr. Giuliani. 'I refuse…

There's a thick jumble of new data now coming out about the financial strength of the various campaigns, courtesy of the Federal Election Commission. The only question is whether there are any hidden numbers in all these reports that reflect a game-changing new reality in the race. The answer is…

From the Hill: "Recovering from stroke, Johnson pushes earmarks": When news of Sen. Tim Johnson's (D-S.D.) brain hemorrhage first broke in December 2006, Kevin Kephart was immediately concerned for the lawmaker's well-being. But the vice president of research at South Dakota State University (SDSU)…

From Right Wing News: The John Bolton Interview, by John Hawkins. From Minding the Campus: The ROTC Is Not Invited At Harvard, by Anthony Paletta. From the Wall Street Journal: Iran's al Qaeda, by Bret Stephens. From the New York Post: The Critics Relent, by John Podhoretz. From the Washington…

The Hill reports that several prominent House Democrats will hold a press conference today calling upon leadership not to schedule a vote on the Armenian genocide resolution that threatens to undermine Turkey's support for U.S. efforts in Iraq. Five House Democrats plan to hold a news conference…

People are calling Academy AwardTM-winning director Jonathan Demme's Man From Plains his most terrifying film since Silence of the Lambs! That's what I'm calling it, anyway. In case you've missed it, Jonathan Demme, worried that his Manchurian Candidate remake wasn't enough on the nose, has decided…

As a follow-up to previous articles about the Internet Tax Freedom Act, the House has passed a 4-year extension of the ban. The measure is likely to be taken up and passed in the Senate before the current ban expires on November 1. Although supporters of making the ban permanent had enough votes to…

It's a sign of just how successful conservatives have been on the tax issue that the Democratic House overwhelmingly voted to extend the Internet tax ban for another four years. Of course, it's worth noting that there are serious criticisms one can make about such a ban. Here's Christopher Caldwell…

The captains writing in today's Post are projecting their own experiences from 2005 onto the situation in Iraq today. Regarding the sergeants and specialists who wrote the op-ed for the Times, I would submit that they are being absolutely frank and honest about their own experiences in the war--but…

Back in July, Christopher Caldwell penned this profile of Ron Paul for the New York Times Magazine. Here's Caldwell's thesis: Paul represents a different Republican Party from the one that Iraq, deficits and corruption have soured the country on. In late June, despite a life of antitax agitation…

The House of Representatives has more than 20 committees, and more than 100 subcommittees. With all those chairmen, all those jurisdictions, and all those issues, it can be extremely hard to get attention for important legislative efforts. That's why press secretaries on the Hill go to extreme…

Slate has a piece up explaining why Gore's Nobel is so well deserved. The author, Stephen Faris, uses science to prove his point: that climate change has a direct relationship with armed conflict. His first example is Darfur. As evidence of global warming's effects on that conflict, Faris points…

According to this Yeas & Nays item in the local Examiner, Giuliani's cell phone started ringing at yet another fundraiser. The event was at Cafe Milano in Washington's Georgetown neighborhood. Apparently Gina Lollabrigida was in attendance. Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin report: It happened again. A…

Take a look at this NBC First Read item on Hillary Clinton. The First Read team writes: Lots of folks keep bringing up Howard Dean when talking about Clinton's vulnerability vs. inevitability. The comparison, though, doesn't work since Dean never led the national polls by this much - a new…

I've written before on the Internet Tax Freedom Act and the unwillingness of Congressional Democratic leaders to schedule a vote on legislation supported by a strong, bipartisan majority in Congress. Now Congressional Quarterly reports that House Democrats are using a procedural trick to prevent…

The video below, from this Wall Street Journal article on Chinese dictator Hu Jintao's opening speech to this week's party congress, gives a small taste of political rhetoric in a Communist society:

From the Los Angeles Times's review of the new Radiohead album: The first time I listened to Radiohead's 'In Rainbows,' I loved it, no holds barred. Joy warmed my ears as the album's 10 songs poured forth from a freshly unzipped download; this music was as intricate and challenging as one would…

That's what we learned from today's op-ed in the Post. The piece, written by 12 former Army captains and titled "The Real Iraq We Knew," is no doubt an accurate portrait of Iraq circa 2005. As many folks have already pointed out, "Only two of the 12 captains had been in Iraq as late as 2006, with…

Here's a great cocktail party scenario, courtesy of the Campaign Standard and your favorite Cardinal. Third place usually isn't worth spit in American politics. But this year things could be different on the Republican side. It's still early and much will change. But the third place ticket out of…

IF YOU DON'T support using federal funds to help middle-class families get health insurance, then you can't call yourself pro-life. Or so says Catholics United, a "non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the message of justice and the common good found at the heart of the Catholic Social…

"NO WAY, NO HOW . . . Aw, come on!" That was Rudi Giuliani's reaction when it was suggested during the recent presidential debate that London might replace New York as the financial capital of the world. And he didn't even know at the time that the Labour government of Gordon Brown was about to…

The USA Today politics blog has an interesting preview of Fred Thompson's speech tonight at a dinner hosted by the New York State Conservative Party. Here's Thompson's key point: Some think the way to beat the Democrats in November is to be more like them. I could not disagree more. I believe that…

The other day in Exeter, New Hampshire, a little boy asked Mayor Giuliani how he would prepare the United States for a possible alien invasion. "This could be the next Steven Spielberg!" Giuliani said, after he gave his answer. Here's the video. It's priceless stuff:

The New York Times reports on the apparent suicide of Charles D. Riechers, the second-highest ranking member of the Air Force's procurement office: The official, Charles D. Riechers, 47, came under scrutiny by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this month after the Air Force arranged for…

This Bob Novak column is worth your time. Up until only recently, Novak has been highly skeptical of Rudy Giuliani's frontrunner status. Not anymore: Contrary to the conventional wisdom, Giuliani has stubbornly kept first place in national surveys of all Republican voters. His elevated status…

You can read John McCain's Foreign Affairs essay here. Notice the title - "An Enduring Peace Built on Freedom" - and this paragraph: We should go further by linking democratic nations in one common organization: a worldwide League of Democracies. This would be unlike Woodrow Wilson's doomed plan…

539px-Buk-M1-2_9A310M1-2.jpg China's Buk-M1-2 SAM

Here's a Mike Allen report on the GOP race that's worth reading. Allen writes: Romney aides see they are facing a fight and are pushing back hard. Kevin Madden, Romney's national press secretary, said: 'Other campaigns will flail about and try and attempt to launch angry attacks on us, and we're…

539px-Buk-M1-2_9A310M1-2.jpg China's Buk-M1-2 SAM

Every serious campaign hits a big slump in the pre-primary season, be it John McCain's time in the immigration reform wood chipper or Fred Thompson's Zombie on Ice announcement tour. Rudy Giuliani's big slump will surely come soon enough. But for now, Mitt Romney is in the ditch. In some ways,…

Jed Babbin and McQ of QandO tackle Speaker Pelosi's decision to schedule a vote on HRes 106, a resolution to recognize the Armenian Genocide. Babbin notes the obvious--Democrats who have been unable to end the Iraq war directly, now seem to have found a way to cripple the military effort…

Bloggers are all over this news report from AFP: Top US Democrats Sunday vowed to press ahead with a bill condemning the mass killing of Armenians decades ago as genocide, brushing off Turkish fury over the sensitive issue. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said possible reprisals…

From the Washington Post: Al Qaeda in Iraq Reported Crippled, by Thomas E. Ricks and Karen DeYoung. From the Wall Street Journal: Solidarity With Iran, by Akbar Atri. From the Honolulu Advertiser: Taiwan Leader Making Some Noise, by Richard Halloran. From National Review: Deterrence Lost, by…

From Fox News: A letter sent to Rush Limbaugh's boss demanding he be chastised for comments he made on the air about "phony soldiers" is now on the auction block, and the latest bid is a cool $45,000. One hundred percent of the money raised from the eBay auction will go to educate the children of…

It's now nine weeks since TNR's last statement on Scott Beauchamp. Powerline does an excellent job of reporting where things stand now: It's been another week without word from the New Republic on the status of its "investigation" into the columns of TNR Baghdad Diarist Scott Thomas Beauchamp. "The…

From a correspondent who wishes to remain anonymous: Some conservatives have dismissed Frank Rich's latest column ("The 'Good Germans' Among Us") as just another tasteless outburst from the silliest op-ed columnist in the New York Times's stable. They don't realize it's a subtle piece of whimsical…

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) opens its 17th congress today. Expected to last approximately one week, the conclave will set Beijing's policy agenda for the next five years. In the run-up to the congress, People's Daily last week ran eight articles drawing on an online discussion with Chen…

During his visit last Sunday to the Redemption World Outreach Center in Greenville, South Carolina, Barack Obama became the only presidential candidate to endorse the establishment of "a Kingdom of God." Obama has been praised for previous remarks on religion and politics, but his appearance before…

John McCain made an appearance on Face the Nation this Sunday, laying out just how he would deal with Iran's nuclear ambitions: I would say that the Iranians can't have a nuclear weapon, in my view. But I also believe that we've got a lot of things to do--that we could do, including getting other…

Do Republicans really favor the expansion of S-chip by 2-to-1? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says so every time she makes her pitch for what I call S-chip-plus. It would extend S-chip, the federal program begun in 1997 to give health insurance to poor children not covered by Medicaid, into the middle…

Chelmsford, Mass.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutiérrez, who fled the Cuban Revolution at the age of six in 1960, is the Bush administration's point man on Cuba policy. He is often asked whether the U.S. embargo is working. "My answer is an emphatic yes," he recently explained. "The embargo has denied Castro…

Winnfield, Louisiana

The Terror Presidency

The presidential campaign is young, yet in the lives of the candidates we already have the makings of a full season's run of Desperate Housewives. We have the ex-mayor who once held a press conference to announce to his second wife and the world that their marriage was over; his social-climbing…

Bad Girls

Last February I woke up one morning in New Jersey and realized I couldn't take one more winter there. I had to move to a warm climate. I was thinking Scottsdale, but then the chance to work in my family's business in Dubai came up.

The Heartbreak Kid

Edward Hopper, Man of the Right

Edward Hopper

My wife and I motored down to southside Virginia last weekend for a poignant event in the family chronicles: our last Parents' Weekend at Hampden-Sydney College, where our son is in his final year. The process of abandoning the nest can be prolonged in 21st-century America, I concede, but this was…

The Assistant

Champaign, Ill.

Holyoke, Colo.

At the most recent Democratic presidential debate, Tim Russert asked the candidates to name their favorite Bible verse. The answers tended toward the unexceptionable--including the Sermon on the Mount (not a "verse," but who's counting?) and the Golden Rule. Watching the debate, I idly wondered how…

Rahm Emanuel, the chief intimidator for House Democrats, didn't go for subtlety. Republicans who oppose expansion of the S-chip program will be denying "10 million American children their health care," he told Major Garrett of Fox News. Chuck Schumer, his counterpart in the Senate, took the…

It's hard to know exactly what to expect from a film festival that caters to conservatives. Will the program consist of films made by conservative filmmakers? What even makes a movie conservative?

Are We Rome?

That the official line from the editors at the Washington Post, who declare that: A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus,…

Take a look at Marc Fisher's amusing column on POTUS '08, the new XM Radio channel exclusively devoted to the 2008 presidential election. Here's Fisher: So I subject myself to 24 hours of Channel 130, POTUS '08 (the name is the acronym for president of the United States). There, I learn that 'the…

The Democratic Strategist blog points to a noteworthy study on Virginia's emergence as a battleground state. Here's the study's main conclusion: The last two election cycles have shown a significant shift in the voting habits of Virginians, making the state contentious in all races including the…

Over at the Plank, Noam Scheiber writes the following about Al Gore's triumph: Watching Al Gore take a well-deserved victory lap this afternoon, I couldn't help wondering what George W. Bush must be thinking. I mean, I know the guy still believes history will vindicate him and all, but, really,…

As former Wisconsin governor Tommy Thompson endorses Rudy Giuliani for president, political reporters are speculating whether Nobel Peace Prize-laureate Al Gore will endorse a candidate in the 2008 Democratic primaries. Question is, do endorsements matter all that much? Probably not. Remember:…

From Al-Ahram, which, according to Wikipedia, is one of Egypt's most widely circulated newspapers and also the country's second oldest, we get a unique perspective on North Korea: Indeed, there are advantages to being "backward" -- lower expectations, a highly egalitarian social structure, less…

This morning I had the opportunity to participate--along with a number of other bloggers--in a meeting with OMB Director Jim Nussle. Nussle took advantage of the timing of this session to call attention to the recent release of economic data showing the third consecutive year of decline in the…

Murphy.JPG

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: The numbers tell the story: The surge in Iraq is working, by Jonathan V. Last. From the Wall Street Journal ($): Tangling With the Taliban, by Matthew Kaminski. From the Independent: The Full Horror of the Junta's Crackdown Revealed, by Rosalind Russell. From the New…

The Institute for the Study of War has published another installment of its Baghdad Neighborhood Project, this one focusing on Washash and Iskan. The report notes that "Washash remains one of the few remaining 'hotspots' for ethno-sectarian violence in the capital" and that "by controlling access…

Today's New York Daily News has a report on more trouble for Bernie Kerik that you can read here: Bernard Kerik's legal nightmare is about to get worse, with federal prosecutors expected to file charges against the former police commissioner that will likely include allegations of bribery, tax…

Earlier this week, Sen. Chris Dodd announced a fundraising ploy in which some lucky donors would accompany him to Fenway Park for this year's American League Championship Series. Unfortunately for Senator Dodd, it turns out this violates Major League Baseball regulations. Maybe before announcing…

Yuval Levin and Peter Wehner, scholars at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, have an excellent article in today's New York Sun that you can read here. They write: On what issues can conservative principles point to popular reforms today? The most prominent domestic policy concerns of the day…

Jonathan Martin links to this ABC News story, which points out that Mitt Romney has already spent more of his own money than Steve Forbes did in 1996 and 2000. ABC reports: By the end of the third quarter of this year, according to Federal Election Commission reports, Romney had loaned his own…

Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize will fuel unfounded - to date - speculation that he may jump into the presidential race. The latest I've heard comes from Tim Russert on the Today Show. Russert said Gore was not going to run unless the Democratic nominee were "incapacitated" for some reason next spring.…

Over at the Atlantic blog, Marc Ambinder is discussing the Kyl-Lieberman amendment that urges the administration to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization, and the kerfuffle raised by Senator Obama in the Manchester Union Leader over it yesterday. Senator…

Fred Barnes writes in with a preview of this week's Beltway Boys: The Hot Story: One on one. The presidential campaigns now feature Barack Obama versus Hillary Clinton on the Democratic side, Mitt Romney against Rudy Giuliani on the Republican. Who's prevailing? For the moment, it's Hillary and…

TODAY THE GERMAN parliament is scheduled to vote on whether to extend the Bundeswehr's 3,000-strong ISAF military deployment in Afghanistan for another year. While there is no doubt that Chancellor Merkel's Grand Coalition has enough votes to get the measure passed, the much-anticipated Bundestag…

HuffPO.jpg

Earlier today, Arab scholar Fouad Ajami spoke in very candid terms about the situation in Iraq, which he's visited eight times. He is also one of the few Westerners to meet with Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. The lunch, sponsored by the Hoover Institution, allowed members of the media, including the…

Giuliani has added a few names to what is already a stellar lineup of foreign policy advisors. Among those included in this latest announcement are Michael Rubin, David Frum, and our very own Thomas Joscelyn: Joscelyn is a terrorism analyst, economist, and writer living in New York. Most of…

From The Onion, an article entitled "Thousands March on Washington For a Little Fresh Air, Exercise": 'Are people just going to storm the Vietnam Memorial and the Smithsonian every time we have a nice day in the capital area?' said D.C. Metrobus driver Jeff Paulsen, who was some eight minutes…

Thomas B. Edsall points out a thought-provoking Bloomberg article on recession fears and the impact an economic downturn may have on presidential politics. Suffice it to say, a recession probably would hurt the incumbent party. American and global politics, like American and global society and…

McCain conducted another blogger call today, talking this time from his campaign bus which is cruising across Iowa. McCain opened the call by referring back to his statement during the debate that the hypothetical scenario about an imminent Iranian threat is "closer to reality" than we might think.…

Democratic leaders have for years criticized President Bush's arrogant foreign policy, and promised that things will change if the voters send a Democrat to the White House. One way it will change, apparently, is that our key trading partners will be on probation from day one of Hillary's…

Here is one of the closing paragraphs of John McCain's health care speech today: The final important principle of reform is to rediscover our sense of personal responsibility. We must personally do everything we can to prevent expensive, chronic diseases. Our rights in this country are protected by…

Advertising Age's Campaign Trail blog has a noteworthy item on the air wars that you can read here. Writes Evan Tracey: If you had told me back in January that after Labor Day Rudy Giuliani would have aired zero TV ads, John McCain would have just run his first ad, Mitt Romney would have run ads…

Anti-war activists are excited that nearly 90 House Democrats (and Ron Paul) are writing to President Bush to inform him that they will no longer support the war. Actually, that's an exaggeration. FOUR House Democrats have written to the president to tell him they will no longer support the war. An…

Michael Luo of the New York Times reports on a letter written by an evangelical public relations executive to 150 "conservative & evangelical leaders" urging them to back Mitt Romney. Mark DeMoss, a Southern Baptist whose first employer was Jerry Falwell and whose clients include Franklin Graham,…

A few musings. It will be interesting to see when the Rudy v. Romney spat reaches paid media. Both are vulnerable. And Romney's campaign is fumbling a bit, both in strategy and message. Neither Rudy nor Romney can wait to the last minute and give the other an opportunity to launch a late attack.…

Washington Post journalist Robin Wright ran a prominent story today about how "two dozen Iranian American and human rights groups" have written a letter calling for Congress to cut democracy funding for Iran. She goes on to describe the signatories as an assortment of "liberal and conservative…

From the World Politics Review: Berlin and Vienna Stand Against the West, by Matthias Küntzel. From Reason: An Interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, by Rogier van Bakel. From RealClearPolitics: Hope Yet for Iraq?, by Victor Davis Hanson. From Powerline: It's the Coverup That Kills You, by Scott Johnson.…

This Christopher Orr post reminds me that today is Elmore Leonard's birthday. Although some people discount him because he is "just a crime novelist," Leonard will be remembered as one of the great American writers of the twentieth century. If you haven't read any Leonard, I urge you to pick up,…

Fox News reported yesterday: President Bush urged Congress on Wednesday to extend an expiring terrorist surveillance law that modernizes the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, saying new measures supported by Democrats don't go far enough to protect the country. Speaking on the South Lawn at…

This New York Times article on Bill Richardson is long, but worth your time. Here's the key point about the man whom staffers call "the guv": Polls show Mr. Richardson having the support of roughly 1 in 10 voters in Iowa, and about the same in New Hampshire. He has raised a healthy $5.2 million in…

The Pentagon held another in its series of blogger roundtables yesterday morning. Major General Kevin J. Bergner, deputy chief of Staff for Strategic Effects, MNF-I, was the featured guest. Bergner spoke at length about the concerned local citizens (CLCs) that have had made such a tremendous…

Jimmy Carter was interviewed yesterday by Wolf Blitzer on CNN where he lambasted the Bush administration for making up its own definition of torture and the Republican candidates for "competing with each other to appeal to the ultra-right-wing, war-mongering element in our country." And Carter…

According to this Fox News story, Giuliani went after Romney at a meeting with Fox News staffers yesterday. Giuliani focused on Romney's "attorney test." According to the report, Giuliani suggested Romney should have covered his mouth after saying that he would check with his attorneys before using…

This First Read post offers a glimpse of John McCain's many charms: On the Straight Talk Express yesterday, McCain interrupted his characteristically candid gaggle with the traveling press with an unusual exclamation. "I'm heartbroken. HEARTBROKEN!" he said, pointing at a television screen mounted…

NOT ALL OF Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's encounters in New York during his recent trip were testy. The Shiite theocrat had what the New York Times called a "warm, even friendly exchange" with 150 church officials at the United Methodist Women's Church Center for the United Nations.

Red agencies/ districts controlled by the Taliban; purple is defacto control; yellow is under threat.

During last night's GOP debate on CNBC, both Ron Paul and Tom Tancredo declined to guarantee that they would support the GOP nominee, no matter who that nominee may turn out to be. This raises the question of whether either man would run as an independent if they weren't satisfied with the…

National Review Online's David Freddoso and radio talker Mark Levin go toe to toe with John Podhoretz over whether or not Rudy Giuliani is a conservative. Freddoso and Levin say Giuliani is not a conservative; Podhoretz says he is. Who's right? Giuliani adopts more conservative positions than…

The Treasury Department announced today that it had designated three Saudi nationals as Specially Designated Global Terrorists ("SDGTs"). All three are accused of providing funds to al Qaeda's affiliate in the Philippines, the Abu Sayyaf Group ("ASG"). The first, Abdul Rahim Al-Talhi, is described…

According to this article in Der Spiegel, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, the finance minister of Italy's ruling Prodi government, has caused a political scandal over a throw-away reference to the "bamboccioni," or "big babies," who live with their parents well into their thirties. Padoa-Schioppa mentioned…

Until he left the White House in July, Dan Bartlett had been on George W. Bush's payroll pretty much his whole professional life, starting with the 1994 race for governor of Texas. So it's not terribly surprising that he would find fault with the rivals to succeed his old boss. But if you read past…

The Politico reports that DC's well-heeled tax lobbyists are scrambling to figure out whose ox Charlie Rangel will gore when he introduces his massive tax bill in the next few weeks: By now, everyone knows Rep. Charles B. Rangel is poised to introduce the "mother" of all tax reforms, the biggest…

This item from NBC's First Read blog is extremely perceptive: Gut check: Or is it a head or heart check? How many GOP primary voters are finding themselves split on whom to support because their head tells them Romney is the brightest guy to put up against Clinton; their heart wants them to believe…

Campuses across the country will be participating in Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week from October 22-26, 2007. According to the Terrorism Awareness Project, "[t]he purpose of this protest is as simple as it is crucial: to confront the two Big Lies of the political left: that George Bush created the…

Is Nancy Pelosi saying that she wishes Iraq war protesters were treated like the homeless? "Look," she said, the chicken breast on her plate untouched. "I had, for five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering neighbors, hanging their clothes from…

So far today I have received five emails from the Romney campaign - and it's just about lunch time. Yesterday I received 25 emails from the Romney campaign. That's a typical number. Whether all those emails actually are necessary for Romney to become the GOP nominee is an open question. As is the…

The line-item veto? That almost certainly won't determine who the GOP nominee is. But you can see why Mitt Romney brought it up in the Michigan debate. Romney is trying to distinguish himself from Rudy Giuliani as the more conservative choice. To question Giuliani's commitment to fiscal restraint,…

Read it at the Campaign Standard. Fred Barnes writes that Thompson passed the test, Richelieu says Rudy's the best so far, and Continetti has an exclusive from the Giuliani camp: Today the Giuliani campaign plans to launch an attack on Mitt Romney's comment during the CNBC debate last night that he…

Today the Giuliani campaign plans to launch an attack on Mitt Romney's comment during the CNBC debate last night that he would check with White House lawyers before launching a preemptive attack on Iran without congressional authorization. "You sit down with your attorneys and tell you [what] you…

LAST MONTH IT was reported that a 54-year-old veteran FBI official, Carl L. Spicocchi, had been jailed in Arlington County several weeks earlier for abducting, holding and physically assaulting his girlfriend. Specifically he is accused of dragging her around by the hair inside of her apartment,…

CHINA HAS BEEN expanding the size of its naval fleet for the same length of time--about 25 years--that the U.S. has been decreasing its Navy. A Congressional Quarterly article warned ominously that China will possess nearly twice as many submarines as the U.S. in 2010, and is likely to surpass the…

First impressions are supposed to be 90 percent of politics. If that's the case, Fred Thompson should have a decent shot at the Republican presidential nomination. The impression he created in Tuesday's Republican debate in Detroit wasn't that of a dominant figure or a replica of Ronald Reagan. But…

Rudy's best debate so far. Romney somewhat improved from his weak showing at the prior FOX News debate. The new McCain is the old McCain, which is also a better and more effective McCain. Of the Big Four, Fred Thompson was weakest and this was his first night. A sober performance, but lackluster…

Nancy Pelosi has gotten better. She calls Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid "a master virtuoso legislator," but as Reid's counterpart in the House she's just being polite. It's clear now that she's the star of the Democratic congressional leadership. Reid is a klutz and she isn't. Pelosi has gotten…

The best line of the debate came from Fred Thompson after Mitt Romney unleashed a canned joke about how the presidential campaign is a little like Law and Order: "This is a lot like 'Law & Order,' Senator. It has a huge cast, the series seems to go on forever, and Fred Thompson shows up at the…

Jay Cost has a smart post on today's GOP debate that you can read here. Writes Cost: Presidential campaigns have a bit in common with pop songs. Pop songs have hooks that try to attract listeners to tap their feet, sing along, and buy the single. Presidential campaigns have hooks, too. It is the…

Dearborn, Michigan Moments ago, as Senator John McCain walked through the lobby of the Hyatt Regency here, some 100 (mostly young) supporters yelled as if they were seeing the Rolling Stones for the first time. Although many of them were probably only 10 years old when McCain ran for president in…

So, tomorrow will be two months since TNR's last official statement on the credibility of Scott Beauchamp's stories. In that statement, the editors reaffirmed their "commitment to the truth" and slammed the Army for preventing them from talking to Private Beauhcamp. The Army was "stonewalling"…

Today's Opinionjournal Political Diary (subscription only) has a fantastic John Fund item on political pandering to ethanol interests. Here's a taste: The force-feeding of ethanol has now created its own national security and food security problems. Corn prices have nearly doubled, leading to huge…

David Brooks has a thought-provoking column today on what he calls the "odyssey years": There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones,…

This is an excerpt from John McCain's address this morning to the Detroit Economic Club: I am running for President to restore the trust of taxpayers in their government. Americans have lost trust in their government to spend their hard earned money wisely. Today, the government spends more money…

The web is buzzing with news this morning that the latest video of Osama bin Laden was possibly leaked by someone inside the U.S. intelligence community to the media. That leak reportedly led al Qaeda to shut down a hole in its Internet infrastructure, called "Obelisk," thereby closing a fruitful…

Map of Salahadin province. Click map to view.

The Washington Post reported today: A small private intelligence company [SITE] that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave…

Rob Reiner has made a clever, funny short film for Hillary Clinton that you can watch here. I chuckled a few times, but the film also reminded me that Reiner's best movie is now more than 20 years old. Also, the film's slogan, "Everyone Has a Role," probably will do little to dispel some of the…

You can read the latest Gallup Poll on the state of the Republican presidential race here. Gallup notes: The basic structure of the national Republican race for president has remained relatively stable since early September. A new Gallup update on the status of the GOP race, based on interviews…

Who would have imagined that the march of technology would eventually force Mahmood Ahmadinejad to confront trolls on his blog. Nevertheless, a lively debate has broken out among the commenters--you might even call it a flamewar. There are the critics: Martha Washington mtv...@gmail.com How does it…

The Republican presidential candidates are scheduled to debate this afternoon on CNBC. This is a highly anticipated debate, since it will be the first in which Fred Thompson participates, and also the first since Mitt Romney began attacking Rudy Giuliani's economic record. And there are other…

We've chronicled the shift in recent months in the attitude among the netroots towards moderate and conservative Democrats. Just a few months ago, the paramount goal of the left was achieving Congressional majorities--even if it meant backing Democrats who occasionally voted with the president. But…

IN THE LATEST EDITION of the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh returns to one of his favorite themes: The Bush administration is preparing for war with Iran. Well, that is, may be preparing for war with Iran.

THE EMISSION OF HOT air at international meetings designed to prevent the earth from warming is rising. Just last week, more than 80 heads of state convened in New York under the aegis of the UN to decide how to tackle climate change. This was followed immediately by Bill Clinton's modestly titled…

You can find the New York Times's update on David Guthartz, "executive president" of the New York Ferrets Rights Advocacy / The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ferrets, here. Guthartz, of course, is famous for a July 1999 exchange with Mayor Giuliani over the mayor's handling of ferret…

Everything old is new again. George Allen, once a chattering class false frontrunner himself for the GOP nomination, is set to endorse Fred Thompson. I doubt the media will be able to resist going the ironic route as they cover this. One gaffe-happy-stumble-bum endorses another. The Thompson High…

An interesting question from Greg Stanko--vice president of Public Affairs for Ogilvy PR: It got me thinking about the last several weeks since the MoveOn.org ran its famous, or perhaps more correctly infamous, "Will General Petraeus Betray Us?" ad. While almost everything that could be written…

The Boston Globe's James Carroll writes today about the 'troubling turn in American history,' and notwithstanding the tripe that follows, it seems the 'troubling turn' occurred in 1492. Carrol seems to think that America can't get anything right without doing somebody wrong. These developments…

Yesterday more than 5,500 people attended pro-democracy rallies in Hong Kong. Currently Hong Kong citizens directly elect only half of the politicians who comprise their local legislative assembly. A committee under Beijing's influence appoints Hong Kong's "chief executive." Beijing has said Hong…

You may remember the Democrats' S-chip poster child, Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old boy from Baltimore, MD, whose parents relied on Maryland's S-chip program to pay for his health care following a severe car accident. Graeme recounted his sob story to Congress in an effort to show the mean…

The latest Des Moines Register poll highlights some noteworthy Iowa-caucus trends. Among them: Edwards has declined in Iowa; Clinton's lead is real, but not unstoppable; and the Giuliani-McCain trend in Iowa is downward, while the Thompson-Huckabee trend is upward. But here is the most salient…

The Daily News reports on Italian-American support for Rudy Giuliani here: About 12 percent of contributions to Giuliani's campaign have come from Italian-Americans, based on a review by The News. That's about double the percentage drawn by Republican rivals John McCain and Romney, and one-third…

Jerry Seinfeld speaks to Time magazine on the difference between writing and acting: 'If you read something somebody else wrote, no matter how well you read it, you didn't think of that,' says Seinfeld. 'I once had a bit I was going to try and do. I love when people talk about movies, they go, "Oh,…

According to this Marc Ambinder report, it's looking as if the Iowa GOP caucus will be held on Thursday, January 3, 2008. According to Ambinder, the Iowa Democrats prefer that the caucuses be held on Saturday, January 5, 2008. The two parties have until next Monday, October 15, 2007, to reconcile.…

Fred Thompson's campaign is set to announce today that former Virginia senator George Allen, former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham, and former State Department official Elizabeth Cheney will serve as the three national co-chairs of Thompson's presidential effort. Howard Baker, the former…

There's little new news coming out of Burma. The junta, having shut down Internet access inside the country, has all but stopped the flow of information to the outside world. It's difficult to know exactly what is going on there now, but it seems more likely than not that the Burmese push for…

Last week I reported that Chinese cyber-police were keeping a watchful eye on bloggers who were cutting and pasting foreign press reports on developments in Burma to fill the information gap left by the official media. The cat-and-mouse game continues. Using the keywords "miandian minzhu" (Burma…

The Age of Turbulence

Cheating at Canasta

A  saying from the German Middle Ages suggests that a couple who cannot have children may be more burdened than a couple who do have children.

William James

Kiev

Captain Steve Gerber, the ranking American soldier on the scene, scans the perimeter of the Afghan village for signs of activity. There's a roar in the distance and a Humvee is hurtling down the rough dirt road, kicking up mud in its wake from the recent rain.

The Kingdom

On September 18, in Conaway v. Deane, Maryland became the latest in a string of non-Bible Belt states whose high courts have declined to impose recognition of same-sex marriages.

You've heard the analogy. A national mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance is just like the requirement that drivers buy auto insurance. Mitt Romney, for one, cited the analogy in touting his health care plan as governor of Massachusetts several years ago. An aide to Senator Hillary…

THE DODD-FATHER

The Scent of Desire

At this writing, on Friday, September 28, the Burmese military regime has brought its heavy hammer down on the thousands of people demonstrating against the country's 45-year-old dictatorship. Police and troops have fired on protesters, killing at least 13 people. Buddhist monasteries have been…

In his grand confrontation with the Iranian president, President Lee Bollinger of Columbia University did his best to satisfy his American critics. He was tough, not soft; he avoided euphemisms, called the man whom he was addressing a "petty and cruel dictator." President Ahmadinejad had been…

Every now and then, when I pause to reflect on our ever-changing world, I wonder whatever happened to Bigfoot. Weren't we supposed to have found him by now? A television series from the late 1970s claimed that man's continual expansion into the wilderness would eventually bring us face to face with…

It has become a truism in liberal circles that Ronald Reagan brought us Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. The accusation could already be heard mere weeks after 9/11. Articles developing the "blowback" thesis metastasized around the Internet. Given the staying power of ideologically convenient…

General Petraeus said today that while al Qaeda continues to pose the most immediate threat to security in Iraq, Coalition strikes against the group have eroded its capacity to spur sectarian violence. The upshot: Iran increasingly looks to be the most serious long-term threat to peace and…

"You know, education--if you make the most of it, you study hard and you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. "If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq." --John Kerry So, you got stuck in Iraq, or Afghanistan as the case may be. But you can still "make an effort to be…

Last week Rudy Giuliani said this: "Every poll shows that I would be, by far, the strongest candidate against Hillary Clinton. There hasn't been one taken in the last six or seven months that shows anything other than I'm the Republican that has the best chance to beat her." If you take out the "by…

From Jim Landers of the Dallas Morning News we learn that the Kurds are worried about Iran's ongoing relationship wiith Ansar al-Islam, an al Qaeda affiliate in Iraq. Note, in particular, what the mayor of one Iraqi city had to say about Iran's support for Ansar al-Islam: "From time to time Iran…

Via Reason's Hit & Run blog, we get a taste of the Junta's propaganda...they're evil and illiterate.

John McCain loves a good joke. But his joke about appointing Alan Greenspan to a tax reform commission even if the former fed chief were dead is old. How old? Try almost eight years old. It's time for some new material! And besides, once McCain reads Andrew Ferguson's review of Greenspan's memoir,…

Ian Bremmer, author of The J Curve, is penning a series of dispatches on China for Slate. Here's Bremmer on why Beijing has so far been able to stifle dissent: National pride, resistance to the encroachments of Western popular culture, and a deepening mistrust of Western definitions of liberty and…

Yuval Levin has penned a sharp response to David Brooks's column today on Burke and contemporary American conservatism. Writes Levin: Like it or not, and conservatives don't always like it, America's traditions are idealistic, and are in some respects also ideological. And they tend to be expressed…

We are constantly told by the Left that the American people support their efforts to get the United States out of Iraq as quickly as possible. The Netroots demand that Congress put more pressure on the White House, since Americans supposedly stand with them on pushing for withdrawal on a timetable…

Jay Cost has an excellent post on Mitt Romney's long-rumored "Mormon speech". Cost offers advice Romney should take: I think Romney needs to be a little bit charitable here - and do something other than rail against religious "bias." I think his speech should recognize that Mormons and non-Mormons…

THE JOBS MARKET is not collapsing, as panicked investors were led to believe last month when the government reported that the economy had lost 4,000 jobs. Well, it turns out that the early tallies were wrong, and that the economy actually added 89,000 jobs in August. Yet the published, incorrect…

It's a short walk from our offices to the Mayflower Hotel, where Americans for Prosperity are holding their annual meeting. Republican presidential candidates are getting 7 minutes each at the podium, which leads Mike Huckabee to joke that if Jesus had been invited here this morning he would have…

This New York Times piece by Michael Powell on Mayor Giuliani's radio show is worth your time. It's a study in contrast between Giuliani's mayoral personality and the more laid-back presidential candidate. And yet, reading the piece, and listening to the audio links, one cannot help feeling wistful…

A new Fox News poll reports that about 1 in 5 Democrats (19 percent) "thinks the world will be better off if America loses the war in Iraq." Shocking. Only 11 percent of Americans as a whole say the same, and only 5 percent of Republicans. The better news from the poll is that 87 percent of…

You've probably heard by now that Barack Obama has well-reasoned and articulate views on the wearing - or not wearing - of the U.S. flag pin on one's lapel. In Iowa yesterday, a reporter for the Cedar Rapids ABC affiliate asked if the lack of a flag pin on Obama's lapel was a "fashion statement."…

North Korean despot Kim Jong Il to South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun: I'm an Internet expert too. It's all right to wire the industrial zone only, but there are many problems if other regions of the North are wired." If only Roh had had the courage to point out that a lack of Internet access is…

Weighing in (again) on the presidential race, James Dobson had an op-ed yesterday in the New York Times under the headline, "The Values Test." The "values" by which Dobson and some co-pro-family advocates have decided to test presidential candidates concerns (no surprise here) abortion. A candidate…

Hard to find anything very meaningful in the GOP money numbers. Rudy earns kudos for an impressive $16 million cash on hand. His campaign is managing its expenditures very well. Romney's weak $9 million cash on hand would be a problem, but MittWorld has two strong excuses. First, they essentially…

On Sunday, October 7th, 2007, a team of 30 military amputees will run in the 23rd Army Ten-Miler in Washington, D.C. The amputees' team is named "Missing Parts in Action" (MPIA), and most of the runners were injured only eight to 18 months prior to the race. The team captain is Maj. David Rozelle,…

Ever since 1998 the U.S. Congress has, under Republican leadership, extended the Internet Tax Freedom Act. That statute forbids states and localities from enacting taxes on internet access, with few exceptions. That moratorium is scheduled to expire on November 1, and Congressional leaders can't…

When Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution wrote in the New York TImes that the surge was working, they were widely criticized by the antiwar left, which went to great lengths to undercut their findings. The two scholars could do nothing to convince their liberal critics…

"LOOK AT IT THIS WAY," Gunnar Heinsohn said. "Your family is in a shooting war with a family across the street. Your forces consist of a father, mother and one child, perhaps two. The other family has a father, mother and seven children, perhaps eight or nine. For your family, the loss of one…

Let's say you are Mitt Romney. Your lead in New Hampshire seems to be shrinking. You decide to attack your closest rival in the state, Rudy Giuliani. You choose to go after . . . Giuliani's economic record. Um, doesn't that seem to be a tactical mistake? Doesn't Giuliani have much larger…

Andrew Sullivan is yet again calling the president a "war criminal." This time in response to today's New York Times article revealing that the Bush administration has subjected terror suspects captured abroad to 'severe' and 'brutal' interrogations. Sullivan has a history of trotting out the…

In this Politico interview, Rudy Giuliani declined to attack his fellow Republicans: "The degree of difference with the Democrat candidates is huge," [Giuliani] argued, minimizing intraparty distinctions his GOP rivals hope to exploit. "The real differences here are with the Democrats." The day…

London

Just today, my friends at Atlantic Community--a new Berlin-based online think tank--published the last installment of an interesting three-part survey gauging how 14 think tank experts from ten different European countries assess the potential consequences of a quick U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq…

From the Wall Street Journal: Modern Heroes, by Robert D. Kaplan. From the Houston Chronicle: Don't Forfeit Space Lead to China, by Kay Bailey Hutchison. From the Los Angeles Times: Securing Space, by Kevin P. Chilton. From USA Today: A Liberal's Lament: The NRA Might Be Right After All, by…

The Des Moines Register's David Yepsen attended Barack Obama's foreign policy speech in Iowa on Tuesday. Yepsen's review is positive: Invoking Kennedy imagery is a delicate thing for any politician to do but Obama succeeded in pulling it off. The Illinois senator used the fifth anniversary of an…

The Times's Michael Luo has the goods on Mitt Romney's direct attack on Rudy Giuliani here. According to Luo, this is what Romney said at an "Ask Mitt Anything" event in New Hampshire: In spending, how do you reign in government spending? I don't think there's any tool more important than the line…

The Sunni insurgency continues to fracture as U.S. and Iraqi forces are on the offensive in central and northern Iraq. Izzat Ibrahim al Douri, the Sunni insurgency's most wanted Baathist leader, has formed a new insurgent front which is willing to negotiate, while a faction of the 1920s Revolution…

Yesterday I joined several other bloggers in a conference call with Senator John Ensign, chair of the Senate Republican Campaign Committee. He walked us through the races to watch next year. It's no secret that analysts are viewing 2008 as a very tough year for the GOP, and there's even speculation…

LATER THIS MONTH, officials from Canada and the Netherlands plan to lobby their NATO counterparts to do more in Afghanistan. If the past 12 months are any indication, they shouldn't expect much.

Maybe we should just cancel the primaries, the conventions, and the general election. It's Hillary, and she's inevitable. After all, the mainstream media say so. She's ahead of Obama in national polls! - which, as Richelieu noted yesterday, have not been an infallible guide in the Democratic party…

Today's Wall Street Journal contains two must-read pieces: a front-page article titled "Republicans Grow Skeptical on Free Trade" by John Harwood, and an important opinion piece, "Modern Heroes" by Atlantic correspondent and Naval Academy professor Robert D. Kaplan. Harwood discusses the apparent…

The Christian Science Monitor had a report yesterday from a correspondent in Babil province, south of Baghdad. It seems the Anbar model, which has led to a dramatic drop in violence in that province, is now being successfully applied in Babil as well: The violence has dropped dramatically, say US…

The Log Cabin Republicans have a new ad attacking Mitt Romney that you can watch here. Here's the script: NARRATOR: For years he's fought conservatives and religious extremists . . . Mitt Romney. ROMNEY: I believe that abortion should be safe and legal in this country. . . . I believe that since…

The Romney campaign sent along this incredibly glossy and well illustrated brochure outlining the governor's policy proposals. It's an informative and revealing read. It's informative because it contains a lot of policy detail. It's revealing because it shows that Romney's consultant mentality is…

New Hampshire's WMUR followed Mayor Giuliani while he traveled throughout the Granite State yesterday. Here's the video:

John Hawkins at Right Wing News makes a great catch. He notes that even when the HuffPo tries to pose as a defender of the troops, they can't help impugning them: This quote from Huffington Post columnist Stan Goff is so ironic that it's almost funny (emphasis mine), "Right-wing buffoon Rush…

First Read's Domenico Montanaro raises the possibility of people raising the possibility that Bill Richardson may jump into the fight to replace Pete Domenici. Notes Montanaro: The New Mexico filing deadline occurs after the voting in early primary and caucus states. I'm inclined to agree with…

Just one day after the announcement of the capture of Muthanna, a senior al Qaeda facilitator of foreign fighters in the Sinjar region on the Syrian border, Multinational Forces Iraq announced the capture of a major financier in Baghdad. The yet to be named al Qaeda financier was captured by the…

Over at Power Line, John Hinderaker reports on Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty's 59 percent approval rating. You can find my take on Pawlenty here. Because of his Sam's Club conservatism, Pawlenty was interesting before he had to deal with a hostile legislature and a terrible infrastructure crisis.…

Bill Kristol just emailed me to encourage you to read this Jay Cost item on Hillary Clinton's "inevitability." Writes Cost: What we are witnessing today is a perfect example of the next stage of the media echo chamber. Media elites have furiously talked up Clinton for three weeks. Because the…

The Politico's Roger Simon has been spending time on the road with Fred Thompson recently. You can find his latest dispatch here. Suffice it to say, the media seem to be "misunderestimating" Thompson's chances. Here's the piece's best anecdote: Ryan Spidell, 19, who works in the kitchen at the…

Is there a more confused issue in the public discourse than the matter of Iraq's ties to al Qaeda prior to the March 2003 invasion? I doubt it. At an ABC News blog, Jake Tapper claims that Senator Barack Obama was right to call out (in a speech he gave yesterday) Senator Hillary Clinton for saying…

David Brooks on On the Road at 50: If Sal Paradise were alive today, he'd be a product of the new rules. He'd be a grad student with an interest in power yoga, on the road to the M.L.A. convention with a documentary about a politically engaged Manitoban dance troupe that he hopes will win a…

Timothy P. Carney reports on Chuck Schumer's plans for the 2008 Senate races here: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), in his second term running the Senate Democratic campaign, publicly expresses doubt about picking up an additional nine seats to achieve a filibuster-free Senate. But he has been…

Captured mortars with Iranian markings. Click to view.

Mayor Giuliani is in New Hampshire today, where he is attempting to gain momentum as Mitt Romney's lead there diminishes. The new Giuliani radio ad playing in New Hampshire can be heard here. My favorite part: GIULIANI: We laid out a very, very specific set of goals that we want to achieve because…

Fred Thompson has joined the battle over Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" remarks with this blog entry. Here's Thompson: Congressional Democrats are trying to divert attention from insulting our military leader in Iraq and pandering to the loony left by attacking Rush Limbaugh. He is one of the…

Alyssa Milano2.jpg

According to this Reuters report, the highly regarded British screewriter Steven Moffat will pen three Tintin movies: British scribe Steven Moffat, best known for writing the new "Doctor Who" series, is turning his hand to "Tintin," the DreamWorks movie trilogy collaboration from Peter Jackson and…

Yesterday I wrote that Democrats in Congress had decided to capitulate on Iraq funding, and kick the can down the road until next year. Yet just minutes after I published that, the media was awash with headlines about how Democrats had decided to dig in and hold the president's feet to the fire:…

From the Wall Street Journal: The Realignment of Iraq, by Bartle Bull. From the Washington Post: Federalism, Not Partition, by Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Leslie H. Gelb. From USA Today: The Case for Soft Partition, by Edward P. Joseph and Michael O'Hanlon. From Ares: USAF's Secret Long-range Bomber…

In the video below, Barack Obama claims that some who voted in October 2002 to authorize the use of force against Saddam Hussein are now rewriting history:

Via the Danger Room, I see our friends at Castle Argghh!!! (last seen at the White House meeting with President Bush) are running a contest to rename the Global War on Terror. We've been around this block before, but it seems that our new chairman of the Joint Cheifs, Admiral Mike Mullen, is…

Has Hillary Clinton all but locked up the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination? You'd think so from the gravity with which the media treats polls showing her well ahead of Barack Obama. The lead story on page one of the Washington Post on Wednesday was headlined: "Clinton Widens Lead in Poll".…

James Fallows says hizzoner would feel right at home in China: At restaurants here, everyone's mobile phone is out on the table, next to the chopsticks. (Except for the ones being yelled into between bites.) There's perfect coverage in subways and elevators, so the (yelling) conversations need…

Joe Lieberman has an op-ed in today's New York Daily News titled "How American power can help bring peace to Burma." Lieberman stops short of calling for direct military action against the regime, but he brings us a step closer to such action be calling for "our military and intelligence…

Thomas B. Edsall is one of the smartest political writers in America, and his latest book, Building Red America, despite these valid criticisms, is required reading. Yet I can't help thinking this post is a little, you know, hyperbolic. Edsall asks: "Is the GOP Committing Suicide?" Good question!…

This David Leonhardt column comparing the demographics of Iowa, New Hampshire, and the rest of the United States is well worth your time. Here's the key point: It's not just age and health insurance that make the economies of New Hampshire and Iowa unusual, either. When you take a few minutes to…

Bloggers are buzzing about Rush Limbaugh's "phony soldiers" comment and Senate Democrats' attempts to smear the radio host. Right-wing bloggers are outraged at the gruesome attempt to twist Limbaugh's words and defame a patriotic supporter of our troops--and agree that Limbaugh should be defended.…

The US military has long maintained that al Qaeda in Iraq is led by foreign al Qaeda. Over the past year, senior al Qaeda operatives such as Omar Farouq, one of Osama bin Laden's lieutenants and al Qaeda's operations chief in Southeast Asia, and Abd al-Hadi al-Iraqi, one of bin Laden's senior…

Another day, another blasphemy against rational political analysis by the media. This time, a new national poll from the Washington Post complete with howls of new insight: It's over. Hillary is unstoppable. Rudy commands. Media polling is strange journalism. The media both creates a story by…

What happens when "America-bashing terror supporters" use one of your images, and steal your bandwidth, to add images to their translation of a Seymour Hersh article? This is what happens. rules.jpg

Rudy Giuliani made a campaign swing through my hometown of Philadelphia the other day, stopping for an obligatory cheesesteak at Geno's Steaks in the spiritual heart of South Philly. Geno's, you'll remember, grabbed international headlines when owner Joey Vento put a sign out front declaring "This…

A reader writes your Cardinal: Can you, s'il vous plait, apply your considerable clairvoyance to the conundrum that appears to be developing regarding la reine Hillary Rodham Clinton in terms of her national polling largesse versus the rumors/articles claiming that she will have "reverse"…

AS SENATE MAJORITY leader, Lyndon Johnson used to attribute the politics of the dairy industry to the fact that every state had "at least one dairy cow and two senators." But today, with the global expansion of agricultural trade, Johnson's adage would have to be amended to note that many foreign…

Newt.jpg Cyber Newt

You can read the Giuliani campaign's "Fourth Quarter Kickoff Strategy Memo" here. It's more restrained and sensible than the maps Giuliani aides have been passing around inside the campaign that you can read about here and here. In the memo, Giuliani strategy director Brent Seaborn mentions this…

Ramesh Ponnuru links to my post on Thompson and 1994 and says: "Thompson can, I think, legitimately claim to have the most consistently conservative record of any of the top four candidates." Soren Dayton has the numbers here. Ponnuru goes on to say that: This back-to-the-revolution tactic…

Goldfarb has already linked to this Foreign Affairs essay on Burma by Michael Green and Derek Mitchell. Still, it's worth pointing out this paragraph in particular: But China's position could shift, particularly as Beijing considers its longer-term interests. China, like many other states on…

The quote of the day comes by way of Mike Boyer at FP Passport. Boyer's had some excellent coverage of the situation in Burma over the last week or so, and today he highlights this story about Sylvester Stallone, who has just left Burma after working there on a Rambo sequel. Stallone calls Burma "a…

Via Instapundit, over at the Corner Stanley Kurtz points out another attempt by the press to bury the good news coming out of Iraq: Today, on the front page of The Washington Post, we see the third in a three-part series on roadside bombs in Iraq. The stories in this series have been centered on…

A little while ago I wrote about the plans of Ways and Means Committee Chairman Rangel to raise taxes by as much as $1 trillion over the next decade. Today several Democratic leaders in the House have debuted a plan to raise income taxes 'to pay for the war.' According to the Congressional Budget…

Your Cardinal is always astounded at how much childish energy the campaigns waste fan dancing and playing silly games with each other over the timing of their quarterly fundraising announcements. The numbers are still a fog of spin and early claims, but if the early claims are to be trusted, it is…

The Washington Post features the results of their latest poll, and uses a headline suggesting bad news for the administration and the war in Iraq: Most in Poll Want War Funding Cut Most Americans oppose fully funding President Bush's $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a…

From the New York Post: Saved by the Surge, by John Podhoretz. From Investor's Business Daily: Iraq's Golden Silence, by the editors. From Slate: Burma's Foul Regime Depends on Beijing, by Christopher Hitchens. From the Wall Street Journal ($): Palestinian Propaganda Coup, by Natan Sharansky. From…

It pours. Theres all kinds of good news coming out of Iraq recently. Yesterday it was reported that Coalition forces had discovered a desperate letter from the al Qaeda chief responsible for transporting foreign operatives to Iraq, the late Abu Osama Al Tunisi. Al Tunisi was killed by U.S. forces…

Hillary Clinton has surprised the political world with the announcement that her campaign pulled in $22 million in primary money ($29 million overall) in the third quarter. Clinton's number overshadows her main rival Obama's $19 million third-quarter-primary-money haul. Here's the question, though:…

Douglas Schoen, the Democratic pollster, has a worthwhile take on the national poll numbers. Schoen's article can be found here. Here are the key grafs: The fact that a Likely Voter sample shows more support for Thompson than a sample of all adults also makes intuitive sense because we know that…

Today, bloggers are buzzing about another disgusting episode in the California Hates the Troops Files. On September 28, OC Blog reported: On September 27th 204 Marines and soldiers who were returning from Iraq were not allowed into the passenger terminal at Oakland International Airport. Instead…

Michael Mann is the most talented director now working, and so it was safe to assume that his talents even would apply to a 60-second spot for Nike.

The Senate yesterday passed the annual defense authorization bill with little fanfare. Although it was intended to be the vehicle for any Iraq restrictions Democrats could come up with, it passed by an eye-popping 92-3. If you needed any proof that the measure contained little to provoke…

The other day, the Politico's Roger Simon interviewed Fred Thompson in Cedar Falls, Iowa. Simon casts off a lot of the filters through which the media have reported on Thompson to deliver a straightforward report. Here's the best part: When I asked him if he is an 11th Commandment man--Never speak…

There's no link to this, but on CNN's American Morning today, Transportation Secretary Mary Peters said the following: It is in the best interest of airlines, of airports, and certainly of those of us at USDOT and FAA to make sure that we're not chronically delaying passengers. So the efforts that…

Blake Hounshell's excellent item on why analysis of despotic regimes is like celebrity gossip journalism can be found here. Says Hounshell: A lot of cultural expertise and background knowledge goes into analysis of what a man like Vladimir Putin is thinking. But at the end of the day, as Dmitri…

THE TURMOIL OF THE past several months has had one advantage: we now have a clearer picture of where the U.S. and world economies are headed. And how monetary and regulatory policies are likely to change.

My colleague Matt Continetti is doing a bang-up job at our new blog, The Campaign Standard, posting this afternoon on a recent essay by Joshua Muravchik that appeared in the pages of Commentary. Continetti points to this key graph: As for the neoconservatives, they have taken their lumps over the…

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Stephen F. Hayes recently previewed Fred Thompson's forthcoming attack on his principal rivals for the GOP nomination: Thompson intends to sharpen the differences he has with two of his rivals--Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani--by asking a simple question: Where were you during the 1994 Republican…

Zoonosis may sound like an underrated U2 album, but actually it's the scientific term for the process by which a pathogen travels from animals to humans. It's also the subject of this incredible National Geographic story by one of my favorite writers now working, David Quammen. Quammen writes on…

Soren Dayton's smart take on this New York Times story about social conservative intimations of a third-party run should Rudy Giuliani win the Republican nomination can be found here. Dayton's most interesting point: There are now about an equal number of "War on Terror" conservatives as there are…

Joshua Muravchik has penned an incisive and authoritative essay in Commentary on the past, present, and future of neoconservatism, which can be found here. Here's the key graf: As for the neoconservatives, they have taken their lumps over the war in Iraq. Nonetheless, the tenets of neoconservatism…

A second New Hampshire poll, this one from the famously bouncy ARG, shows a three way tie in N.H. between Romney, McCain, and Giuliani. All primary polls are tricky, but this makes the second poll in a row in N.H. to show a three-way tie. Let me interpret this Gospel. The race is, as primaries tend…

A friend of the CAMPAIGN STANDARD writes in: Larry Sabato, the ubiquitous professor from the University of Virginia, has an intriguing proposal for replacing the front-loaded schedule that has turned the presidential primaries and caucuses into a one-month sprint from early next January to early in…

Michelle Malkin summarizes the faux outrage from the left over Rush Limbaugh's comments about phony soldiers: Here is what this phony fiasco is really all about: It's about the MoveOn.org Democrats trying to save face in the aftermath of the disastrous "General Betray Us" smear. They want their own…

From the Washington Times: Trends in Iraq, by Michael O'Hanlon. From the Middle East Journal: The Peace Corps with Muscles, by Michael J. Totten. From Foreign Affairs: The Battle Over Burma, by Michael Green and Derek Mitchell. From FP Passport: Getting Serious about Burma, by Mike Boyer. From the…

Roll Call reports that a few months after Silvestre Reyes became chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he asked his brother to create a political action committee called BEST PAC. That committee received tens of thousands in donations from employees and clients of a lobbying firm. Those…

As the WWS noted earlier today, major news wires report that both Iraqi civilian deaths and U.S. military deaths have declined dramatically. The Associated Press reports: A total of 64 American forces died in September -- the lowest monthly toll since July 2006. The decline in Iraqi civilian deaths…

It's about Putin, and can be read here. Incidentally, this disturbing AP story--apparently Putin plans to become prime minister after leaving the presidency, thus mooting the importance of the presidency altogether and retaining his power--gives me the chance to link to David Remnick's recent,…

A little-noticed Wall Street Journal story on Rudy Giuliani overseas fundraising in Kazakhstan can be found here. According to the story, the Almaty fundraiser was the third overseas event for the Giuliani campaign (there have been two previous events in Great Britain). You may be wondering why…

As the level of American casualties in Iraq falls to its lowest level in more than a year, while Iraqi casualties fall as well, Erick at Red State notes that as tragic as the loss of life is, the final year of the Carter administration saw greater losses of life among U.S. soldiers than any year of…

The Hillary bubble among the elite media has begun to burst and a new Iowa poll shows Obama pulling narrowly ahead in the caucus. Ah October, a chill in the air and a churning in the stomachs of campaign hacks everywhere. This is getting serious. HRC is paying the same price for her Bond villain…

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Today's report on civilian casualties in Iraq from Reuters, "Civilian killings in Iraq plunge in September: government": Civilian deaths from violence across Iraq fell by 50 percent in September from the previous month to the lowest level recorded this year, government data showed on Monday.…

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Bill Kristol wasn't the only person thinking about dynamic change in presidential primaries yesterday. Dean David Broder wrote this column on the developing fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Broder's hook was this 25 September CNN/WMUR poll that's received so much attention. Here's…

The demise of Newt Gingrich's campaign before it even began was probably the biggest story of the week, and the former speaker of the House took to This Week to explain his reasoning: "The McCain-Feingold Act criminalizes politics. … well, we learned yesterday morning, this was the decisive…

The Right Place, The Right Time!

Shakespeare's Philosophy

NOT SO FUN

A Perfectly Good Family

Chicago

Like a lot of you, I wasn't able to make it to Liverpool for International Beatles Week this August, though I hear it was fab; indeed, gear. In consolation I bought myself a pass to the annual Fest for Beatles Fans held outside Chicago, at the O'Hare Hyatt, in Rosemont, Illinois--a site less…

On October 2, 2003, Senator John Kerry voted for an $87 billion appropriation to fund U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that was paired with rescinding some Bush tax cuts. It failed. Two weeks later, worried about Howard Dean's surging presidential campaign, Kerry joined only 11…

Hugo Chávez

THE AWARD OF AWARDS

Ira and Abby

Asians are like spectators in a movie theater. They are all looking at the screen, which is America, rather than at each other.

While al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood have become household names, another Sunni Islamist group of nearly equal importance--Hizb ut- Tahrir (HT), or the Islamic Liberation party--remains little known in the United States. That may be changing. HT's activities in places as far-flung as Britain,…

One and done. That's what some commentators are saying about the decision of the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy committee to cut the Fed funds rate by 50 basis points (half of a percentage point), twice what the market had been expecting. They reason that chairman Ben Bernanke had a choice…

A few weeks after Republican Eric Cantor of Virginia was elected to a second term in the House of Representatives in 2002, he got a phone call from Roy Blunt, the Republican whip and third-ranking member of the House leadership. Cantor figured his wish had come true and he was getting a seat on the…

Even before he was elected, Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, California, had made a name for himself among House Republicans. He was running for retiring Ways and Means chairman Bill Thomas's seat, and the campaign quickly raised over $1 million--most of which he didn't need to spend in a district…

Like many other House Republicans, Wisconsin's Paul Ryan felt deeply torn over the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill. He was loath to endorse a massive new entitlement program, given the already parlous future of U.S. retirement spending. But Ryan also viewed Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), the…

David Holden is a savvy guy. He doesn't consider himself a political junkie, but he has been closely following the presidential campaign as it unfolds around him. Holden runs Hair Biz, a salon at 4 N. Main Street in Concord, New Hampshire. Hillary Clinton's campaign office is two blocks up, and his…

World War IV

The 2008 presidential campaign has seen the Democrats more outspoken on health care than they have been since the early 1990s. The three frontrunners have produced health care proposals that would greatly increase the role of the government in funding and managing the nation's health insurance…

Last week we heard from Scott Beauchamp's commanding officer, Col. Ricky Gibbs. Gibbs said that Beauchamp had admitted to the investigating officer that his stories for the New Republic were false--or, as he put it later in the briefing, that, while Beauchamp had not "recanted," he "does not stand…