November 2007

The Corner posts the transcript from today's press briefing: Q Why should we depend on him? MS. PERINO: Because he is the commander on the ground, Helen. He's the one who is making sure that the situation is moving -- Q You mean how many more people we kill? MS. PERINO: Helen, I find it really…

kawwaz+family.jpg Reports of the demise of the Kawwaz family were premature.

There are certain numbers that for a Boston sports fan have a talismanic quality. 16 - The number of Celtics championship banners hanging from Boston Garden. 4 - The number that Bobby Orr wore. 58 - Grady Little's IQ. Among such figures is 86 - The number of years Boston fans had to wait for their…

The raids on the home and offices of Adnan al Dulaimi, leader of the Accordance Front, the largest Sunni bloc in parliament, highlight the real need to hold elections in Iraq. After discovering weapons and a car bomb near Dulaimi's offices on Thursday, U.S. and Iraqi troops conducted a follow-on…

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Noah Shachtman has some good follow-up at the Danger Room to his latest piece on Iraq for Wired. I noted the piece earlier this week, particularly the efforts of one Sergeant Joe Colabuno and his psy-ops campaign in Fallujah. Here's some of what Shachtman writes today, picking up on a problem he…

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, Saad al-Hariri's Mostaqbal party agreed to a constitutional amendment that would allow Lebanese Armed Forces Commander Michel Suleiman to be elected president. Up until now, Hariri and his March 14 allies (the date of the 2005 Cedar Revolution) had resisted Suleiman's…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Cameron's Conservatives, by Tim Montgomerie. From the New York Post: Winning Baghdad, by Ralph Peters. From the Washington Post: CNN Admits Holes in Screening of Questioners, by Howard Kurtz. From the Telegraph: Interview with John Bolton, by Con Coughlin. From Shanghai…

There's an interesting story in today's New York Times regarding Rudy Giuliani's highly creative relationship with the blizzard of impressive statistics he often cites about himself as mayor of New York City. It is not uncommon for pols to maintain a extensive mental library of triumphant…

Former HuffPo contributor Barry Sanders is at it again. Last month Sanders wrote a horribly misinformed article for the Huffington Post on "the military's addiction to oil." The piece was riddled with factual errors, and when the WWS and others pointed a few out, Arianna threw the guy under the bus…

Congressman Norm Dicks traveled with Representative John Murtha on his recent trip to Iraq. Upon his return, he adopted the same line that many Democrats are using nowadays: "There is a sense of normalcy you didn't see before. In that sense, the surge is being successful," Dicks, D-Bremerton, said.…

I can't say this is a surprise: Congressional Democrats are reporting a striking change in districts across the country: Voters are shifting their attention away from the Iraq war... First-term Rep. Nancy Boyda (D-Kan.) - echoing a view shared by many of her colleagues - said illegal immigration…

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent meeting with the Dalai Lama at her official residence in Berlin has caused a strong political backlash, not only from Beijing but also, more surprisingly, from Merkel's left-wing SPD coalition partner as well as Germany's business community. The Chinese, for…

The QOTD(SF!) comes from today's David Brooks column, in which the intrepid columnist visits China: Tired of the bureaucracy, [Chinese businessman Edward] Tian resigned from Netcom and has founded China Broadband Capital. It funds firms that are using cellphones as the next information technology…

A parody video from the mad geniuses at The Onion:

Having outlined a possible winning scenario for Mike Huckabee, let's look at a big problem potentially standing in his way. While the national parties don't exactly have Star Chambers complete with powerful insiders wearing monk's hoods and pulling party strings from a candlelit secret chamber…

The Obama-Bloomberg breakfast this morning raises the obvious thought: isn't Obama-Bloomberg a logical 2008 Democratic ticket? Bloomberg brings executive experience, maturity, resources, and some bipartisanship (he is a nominal Republican) to an Obama candidacy, while being acceptable on…

THERE HAS LONG BEEN a special relationship within the special relationship between Britain and America. This is the close friendship of Britain's conservative party with America's Republican party. It was particularly strong when Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan were in office, and it remained…

pakistan-swat-taliban-sword-11052007.jpg Taliban in Swat celebrate in the streets.

Map of Salahadin province and the Za'ab Triangle region. Click map to view.

Yesterday it looked like the Chinese explanation for changing their minds about the Kitty Hawk's port call to Hong Kong was going to be nothing more than that it was a "misunderstanding." Now, via Murdoc, they appear to be singing a different tune: China hinted Thursday that Congress' honoring of…

Another day, another poll showing Americans are changing their views on the war in Iraq: The latest Rasmussen Reports tracking poll finds that 47% of Americans now say the U.S. and its allies are winning the War on Terror (see crosstabs). That's up from 43% a month ago and reflects is the highest…

As predicted, the latest purported bin Laden tape blames American foreign policy (that is, his conspiratorial notion of America's foreign policy) for al Qaeda's terror. The Associated Press has reported translations of excerpts of the tape, which were broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Bin Laden says he was…

When the Army-Navy game goes down on Saturday, Navy is a two touchdown favorite to win its sixth straight Commander in Chief Trophy. But according to this college football blog, Army has already pulled off a win of its own--kidnapping Navy's goats. A 'cadet-team-sized element' reportedly…

From the BBC: The Iranian government has announced a campaign against rap music which it considers obscene. The Ministry for Culture and Islamic Guidance said illegal studios would be closed and rap singers "confronted". An official condemned rappers for using very vulgar words, but it was not…

Via Instapundit, Bob Krum remarks on CNN's failure to vet the questioners at last night's debate--at least three of whom turned out to be declared supporters of Democratic candidates or outright plants from Democratic campaigns: I'm not the biggest media bias basher out there by any stretch, but…

According to the Associated Press, when John Edwards started a poverty think tank at the University of North Carolina in 2005, he gave the university a 'ticket wish list.' One would presume that Edwards can afford to buy his own tickets, but then again, you'd think he could afford his own haircuts.…

Mark Steyn captures the feelings of many current and former Fred Thompson enthusiasts in this post over at The Corner: I wrote about the Republican and Democrat presidential candidates last weekend, and got a lot of mail from Fredheads and others demanding to know why I hadn't mentioned Senator…

The Army's strategic vision for their own UAV force has been more or less in motion for the past few years. First they wanted four classes of unmanned vehicles, each tasked with supporting a unique level of command (platoon, company, battalion, brigade). Smelling redundancy, Army leadership burned…

This New York Times bestseller list from January 10, 1943, is fascinating to read, especially when you consider that several of the books on the list (none of which I've ever heard of) were adapted into movies (none of which I've ever seen). As one Times commenter puts it, "What a wonderful…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Debate Wrap-up, by the editors. From the Christian Science Monitor: Where to Find Progress in Iraq, by Jon P. Dorschner. From Foreign Policy: Should the U.S. Abandon Pervez Musharraf? by Daniel Markey and Husain Haqqani. From Real Clear Politics: A Few Good People, by…

Secretary Gates recently warned that because Congress has not passed legislation to fund the war on terror in fiscal year 2008 (which began October 1), the Department of Defense is being forced to plan furloughs for civilian personnel. To that end, Army Vice Chief of Staff General Richard Cody has…

The Cardinal has posted an interesting 200 scenario this morning over at the Campaign Standard. In response to the boss's declaration that now, more than ever, the Republican race is a five way battle, Richelieu deigns to agree: I see my good friend, the distinguished neo-Jacobin Monsieur Kristol,…

This recent Soren Dayton post on Mike Huckabee makes a salient point in light of Fred Thompson's recent attacks on Huckabee's tax record: I suspect that the continual attacks on Huckabee aren't going to be so threatening. First, his voters probably don't care. As Richard Land said about Duncan…

There's a ruckus in the blogosphere over the plan of the Virginia Republican party to require voters in its primary to sign a statement saying they 'intend' to support the party's presidential nominee in 2008. Tracy Mehan of the American Spectator writes: What is pretty clear is that the SBE [State…

Gabe Schoenfeld had a post up yesterday at his Commentary blog Connecting the Dots about a recent visit by Natan Sharansky to the magazine's offices. Schoenfeld challenged the one time Soviet dissident to a game of chess. Perhaps I found this more interesting than most--when I was at school, I…

I pass this along from a friend who favors Thompson: Read Fred's op-ed in today's Des Moines Register, 'Reclaim greatness: Lower taxes. Enforce laws.' It's excellent. Watch the Thompson campaign's new 2-minute web video, 'Revolution,' at http://fred08.com. It's terrific. Think about the…

Last night's CNN / YouTube GOP presidential debate has occasioned many fine letters to the editor. Here's my favorite, from a reader in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: My big question is how come the GOP candidates did not know that this was [bad] idea in advance? It took me exactly 20 seconds after the start…

Just one thing to note in addition to Noonan's post. F-22 Raptors from Elmendorf Air Force Base in Alaska conducted their first ever intercept of Russian bombers on Thanksgiving day. There was a similar incident over the summer--disputed by the Pentagon--in which Russian officials claimed that…

I'm not generally what you might call a bias sniffer (life is too short!), but John Podhoretz is right about CNN's so-called "standards" for questioners during last night's GOP debate: The scandalous aspect last night is that three Democratic operatives were allowed to pose as 'unaffiliated voters'…

The Norwegians are reporting that Russian submarine and bomber sorties jumped in the latter half of 2007. While this isn't exactly breaking news, the "hey, it's cool guys" reaction from the Norwegians--a nation that once postured its entire military against Soviet land, air, and sea incursions--is…

I see my good friend, the distinguished neo-Jacobin Monsieur Kristol, has broken into his ample wine supply again and insulted the monarchy. A weekend chained to the cheap seats at an Alabama tractor pull would seem fitting punishment for my rabble loving friend's imprudence, but alas, we…

The hall hosting the first ever GOP YouTube debate was big and raucous. At the start of the broadcast, Anderson Cooper promptly informed the audience that "the questions all came from you." I can't remember ever having felt so empowered. The prelude to the questions was a topical two minute folk…

You can get your fill at the Campaign Standard, where Fred Barnes, Bill Kristol, Richelieu, Steve Hayes, and Terry Eastland have all weighed in. For my part, I'm with Fred: When the CNN-You Tube debate among Republican presidential candidates began with a guy named Chris Nandor playing a guitar and…

Richelieu, being an aristocrat, indeed a French aristocrat, may scorn the "vaguely threatening parade of gun fetishists, flat worlders, Mars Explorers, Confederate flag lovers and zombie-eyed-Bible-wavers as well as various one issue activists hammering their pet causes" that we saw asking…

PAKISTAN'S GROWING WAVE of internal terror that led Pervez Musharraf to assume dictatorial powers on November 3 is commonly blamed on the country's poverty. Such an assessment, however, is not supported by the facts. Between 1979 and 2007, per capita income in Pakistan jumped from 600 PPP-$ to…

Two Hours of Humiliation

"NO MATTER WHAT happens, get Kasparov." So shouted one riot officer Saturday during the violently disrupted Dissenters' March in Moscow, according to David Nowak of the Moscow Times, one of the few newspapers left in Russia that doesn't have its reporting redacted by the Kremlin. When Nowak asked…

The best performance wasn't turned in by one of the candidates. No, the Oscar goes to that Thompson ad. It doesn't introduce Thompson - he doesn't even speak.The ad features Mitt Romney when he was pro-abortion rights, and Mike Huckabee when (as governor of Arkansas) he was agreeable to increasing…

When the CNN-You Tube debate among Republican presidential candidates began with a guy named Chris Nandor playing a guitar and singing, my wife Barbara exclaimed, "This is humiliating. This is really bad." Of course she was right. And then things got worse. This debate not only was mortifying to…

Rudy Giuliani is probably the strongest debater of the group, but he botched the question on gun control that was directed to him. The question asked why someone who supports the 2nd Amendment would say what Giuliani said in 2000: "Anyone wanting to own a gun should have to pass a written exam."…

What a depressing debate. CNN's long slide into mediocrity accelerates. Is this what running for president of the greatest democracy in the world has become? Standing in front of CNN's corporate logo in a hall full of yowling Ron Paul loons and enduring clumsy webcam questions from Unabomber…

PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS the presidency is still "a joyous experience" for him. "People ask if I would do it again. I would." And one reason for his upbeat mood in talking to a dozen journalists Wednesday is progress in Iraq, including revenue sharing by the central government with the provinces.…

The latest South Carolina poll confirms some disturbing news for Rudolph Giuliani's presidential campaign: According to pollster Charles Franklin and friends, Giuliani's trend-lines in Iowa, Michigan, and South Carolina are all downward, while his trend in New Hampshire remains steady at around 20…

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President Musharraf has officially stepped down as chief of staff of Pakistan's army. Tomorrow he will be sworn in as the president of Pakistan. According to Pakistan's attorney general, Musharraf may drop the Provisional Constitution Order in the next several days. Pakistan's Daily Times reports:…

WWS contributor Jennifer Chou sends along a link to this story that just hit the wires: Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi told President George W. Bush on Wednesday that Beijing's refusal to let a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier into Hong Kong was a "misunderstanding," the White House said. There's…

"Mitt Romney, meet Willie Horton!" enthused Chris Matthews on Hardball, about the commotion created by the news that Romney, when governor, appointed a judge who let a murderer out of jail without supervision, a murderer who went on to kill, in this case two people, again. And there is the end of a…

UNTIL THIS PAST WEEKEND, John Howard was the great survivor of Australian national politics. In May 1989 he was sacked as leader of the center-right Liberal Party, and quipped that a return to the leadership post would be like "Lazarus with a triple bypass." A few months earlier, a popular Aussie…

The wonders of nuclear fission never cease. Discharge from nuclear power plant turns Lake Anna into hot springs: MINERAL, Va. -- As fisherman Roger A. Hanna Sr. sped across Lake Anna one morning this month, the air temperature hovered barely above freezing. But his digital water gauge registered a…

kittyhawk1.jpg No General Tso for the crew of the Kitty Hawk.

EMILY's List recently launched a website called You Go Girl! to convince Iowa women that "Caucusing can be fun!" - and to caucus for Hillary Clinton while they're at it. The website features a step-by-step guide to caucusing, along with information about Hillary, video testimonials (from women just…

Jay Cost on how to watch tonight's Republican debate: Don't worry about who is winning the debate. Don't play the same meaningless game the press plays. Instead, watch to see how the five top candidates go after one another. Who attacks whom? What are the lines of attack? Do they wait until they…

The Pew Research Center has released the results of its latest poll on Americans' views on Iraq and the state of the nation. The dramatically improved view of the situation in Iraq has attracted a great deal of attention--and rightly so. But Pew soft-pedals the good news in its summary, and you…

Does Hillary Clinton have a new campaign theme song? If she continues to let her husband campaign for her, she just might. Despite the slew of reports of progress and increased security in Iraq, Bill Clinton thinks it is wise to insist (at Hillary's campaign events) that he opposed the Iraq war…

Image from recently released Al Furqan / Al Qaeda in Iraq execution video. Click to view.

From the Financial Times: Iraq Must Seize this Precious Chance for Peace, by Anthony Cordesman. From Real Clear Politics: Al Qaeda's Emerging Defeat, by Austin Bay. From the Washington Times: Peace Through Confusion in Taiwan Strait, by Paul Greenberg. From National Review: The 'Empire' Strikes…

Press reports indicate that a new tape from Osama bin Laden is about to be released. This account from Adnkronos International (AKI) provides an interesting detail about how the video will be distributed: A new al-Qaeda video containing Osama Bin Laden's latest message "must be posted to Western…

The effort to stop the Iraq war seems to be falling apart. Democratic leaders in Congress are trying to extend funds without incurring the wrath of war opponents, polls show the American people recognize the improvements on the ground in Iraq, and now an Iraq war veteran and leader of the anti-war…

Here's a secret I can share after years of working on Capitol Hill: many people who call Congressional offices do not get calls back. With thousands of people calling each day, it's hard to return them all. And if you're calling to give the representative or senator a hard time over a vote or…

Wired has just published a piece by Danger Room editor Noah Shachtman titled "How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social--Not Electronic." After reading the piece, I'm not sure the title really works--no doubt it's about the bad that can come of relying too…

According to this MediaBistro report, TV Guide recently asked the top presidential candidates in both parties to name their favorite television shows. The candidates' (admittedly frivolous) replies are nonetheless interesting, because they reveal something about the sort of frivolity each campaign…

John Dickerson has a concise summary of the ongoing war between Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Here's Dickerson: "Giuliani's essential charge is that Romney changes positions. Romney's is that Giuliani doesn't tell the truth." Sounds right to me! Dickerson also touches on something important in…

Mike Huckabee's new TV ad is only his second, and it's dramatically different from his first. That ad, which had Chuck Norris endorsing Huckabee, virtually mocked the very idea of such an ad (though maybe that's the only way the ad could have been done). The new ad has no humor. It means business.…

Over at NRO's Media Blog, Tom Gross has the completely unsurprising story of Ahmed Yousef, a senior Hamas official and occasional op-ed contributor for the Washington Post and New York Times. Yousef was able to get both papers to run pieces "defending [Hamas's] policies in Gaza" (this according to…

Crotch Crisis Cripples Army is the headline: The Army is retrofitting 1 million uniforms to bolster pants that have been tearing during the rigors of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Soldiers in Iraq began reporting "crotch durability problems" with their combat uniforms in July 2005, according to…

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IN THESE VIRTUAL pages, we've had some internal debate as to whether two candidates have viable paths to the Republican nomination or whether the correct figure is five. In truth, the actual figure right now is one. Only Mitt Romney has a plausible path to the nomination that doesn't rely on the…

MUCH OF THE WORLD has expressed shock and outrage at the sentences recently handed down by a court in the Saudi Arabian city of Qatif. Judicial authorities there ordered that a 19-year-old woman be lashed 200 times and jailed for six months after she was kidnapped at knife-point and raped by seven…

The AP reports: Hundreds of Iraqi refugees boarded buses for home on Tuesday in the first convoy from an Iraqi-funded effort to speed the return of families that fled the country's violence and insecurity. Many Iraqis have headed back on own their own from Syria and elsewhere as extremist attacks…

The 2008 Republican primary campaign was quiet today, probably because the candidates are prepping for tomorrow's CNN / YouTube presidential debate. The fun starts at 8 p.m. Wednesday evening. Look for the Giuliani-Romney spat to dominate most of the opening round of questions. Look for McCain to…

The Washington Post reports today on the unholy alliance between House Democrats and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez. You may remember recent remarks by the retired general in which he berated the Bush administration's Iraq strategy as "catastrophically flawed," leaving out that little bit about how he…

The F-16 in the picture is painted in the classic manner of U.S. Army Air Corps pursuit (fighter) aircraft of the 1920s--blue fuselage, yellow wings and empennage, red, white, and blue stripes on the control surfaces (except, in this case, no stripes on the horizontal stabilizers, because the bird…

Today, the New York Times reports on the Clinton campaign's efforts to woo elderly women. It's clear that the campaign is scrambling for female supporters at campaign events, the Times reports, using those who do show up as "welcome set pieces, visibly demonstrating the candidate's effort to…

ugly bride.jpg The honeymooners pose for a candid.

With the withdrawal of British forces from the heart of Basra and an overall reduction of British forces in the south, the security situation in the largely Shiite city has come into question. Critics of the British move believe those forces have essentially surrendered the strategic city to the…

Gregg Easterbrook, in his capacity as "Tuesday Morning Quarterback" columnist for ESPN.com's "Page 2", has waged a long, bloody war against NFL teams punting on fourth-down-and-short-yardage situations. The statistics don't add up, Easterbrook claims. Rather than punting and delivering the ball to…

According to this article, posted at the Drudge Report, YouTube suspended the account of an Egyptian "anti-torture" activist whose videos included Egyptian police violence against anti-government protesters: Wael Abbas said close to 100 images he had sent to YouTube were no longer accessible,…

Marc Ambinder gives us six reasons Mitt Romney should be worried about the Iowa caucuses. Support for Romney is less intense than support for Huckabee; so far the Iowa press has gone easy on Huckabee; a large portion of the social right is beginning to determine that a Huckabee victory in Iowa…

Who would have guessed? And who knew Last Call with Carson Daly was still on the air?

As the presidential campaign unfolds, it's striking to note that the main Democratic storyline is the rejection of Clintonism. Even as the party seems poised to nominate the wife of the former president, the Democratic candidates are rejecting Bill Clinton's tone and policies. Where Bill Clinton…

What in the name of Katharine Graham has happened to Beltway high society? According to this New York Times article, DC swells are throwing parties where they force their guests to consume food that hails from--you better sit down--Costco. Actually, the Times story displays a wonderful ignorance…

Albeit 3,300 years ago. The New Scientist asks, Were Cursed Rams the First Biological Weapon?: Ancient written texts from the Middle East may reveal that the use of biological weapons dates back more than 3300 years, according to a new review. The historical documents hint that the Hittites - whose…

From the Middle East Journal: An Edgy Calm in Fallujah, by Michael J. Totten. From THE DAILY STANDARD: Columbia's Concern, by John McCormack. From the New York Times: Following the Fundamentals, by David Brooks. From the Kansas City Star: Military Planners Mull Possibility of Cyber War, by Dave…

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Not as honorable as you might think. STATEN ISLAND (CBS) ― A man who dresses from head-to-toe as a ninja, complete with samurai-style weapons, and burglarizes homes in mostly upscale areas of Staten Island, has struck again, police believe, twice over the weekend. That would bring the total…

The Las Vegas Review Journal carries a blunt editorial today on the latest poll demonstrating the growing unpopularity of Majority Leader Harry Reid among Nevada voters: More evidence surfaced over the holiday weekend that Democratic Sen. Harry Reid's dalliance with the MoveOn.org crowd is costing…

Today's Roger Simon story in the Politico has the headline "Buzz Eludes McCain Despite Efforts." Which efforts are those? Well, the article mentions two: McCain's new television spot and a lunch McCain hosted for some political reporters at his Crystal City, Virginia, headquarters the other day.…

Glenn Greenwald has been waging his own little war against Time columnist Joe Klein for more than a week now owing to what Greenwald says was a "factually false" description of the FISA legislation in the House in Klein's latest piece. According to Greenwald, the error lies in Klein's claim that…

Jay Cost weighs in on the ongoing debate over whether or not there is such a thing as "electability." Cost's conclusion: All of this .. means that perceptions of electability are probably manipulable. This would explain why candidates - and not just analysts - are participating in the conversation.…

Are you one of those people who wait until the last minute to shop for Christmas? Do you never know what to get that special someone in your life? Are you tired of the same-ol'-same-ol' shirts, slacks, jewelry, socks, fruitcake, incredibly expensive yet slightly discounted consumer electronics,…

Move over, Graeme Frost . Over at Politico, Ben Adler reports on the plight of Jeff Traylor and his girlfriend Amanda Caffall, who may be the new faces of the movement for universal government-run health care. In the year between graduating from college and attending law school, Traylor found…

A friend sends along a link to this Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial on Harry Reid's sliding poll numbers. The editorial is based on a recent Reno Gazette Journal poll which found that Reid's approval rating has sunk to around 39 percent and his disapproval rating is at an impressive 49 percent.…

Justin.bmp

ON NOVEMBER 12, 70 Columbia university professors issued a "statement of concern" criticizing university president Lee Bollinger's various failures of leadership, including his handling of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's September 24th speech at Columbia.

IF YOU'RE LIKE most movie lovers, you probably have little idea of how motion capture technology works. You also probably don't care. If you go to a movie that relies on motion capture technology, you likely go to be entertained, and not to marvel at the filmmakers' expertise with this…

THE HOUSING MARKET remains weighed down with unsold inventory, oil prices flirt with $100 per barrel, the dollar spirals downward, food prices spiral upward, and interest rates on millions of mortgages are about to be reset at levels that owners might not be able to pay.

Reuters reports U.S. Navy steps up fuel deliveries to Gulf forces: The U.S. military has stepped up chartering of tankers and requests for extra fuel in the U.S. Central Command area, which includes the Gulf, shipping and oil industry sources say. A Gulf oil industry source said the charters…

There has been a lot of talk recently about a "a quiet process of apparent concessions and small gestures of approval between the United States and Iran in Iraq" as it was described today by Iran expert Gary Sick at FP Passport. Go read the whole post to see evidence of this courtship, most of…

The new 30-second ad that Mike Huckabee has put on the air in Iowa represents a quite remarkable step in presidential politics. Maybe my memory betrays me, but I don't recall a major presidential candidate who made such an unabashed, unambiguous appeal for support on the basis of religious faith.…

Newsweek has a fascinating look at the investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher, a 21-year-old British coed killed this month while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy. Using Skype and Facebook, caribinieri were able to identify and trace the location of suspect Rudy Hermann Guede, a…

Inside the Air Force reports in their latest issue: Army infantry units should be equipped with laserguided mortar rounds, according to recommendations from the first phase of a larger Army precision fires capabilities study, sister publication Inside the Army reports. The recommendation comes out…

and I'll tell you who you are--so the old saying goes. By that measure, Mike Huckabee is an unlikely up-and-comer in the Republican presidential primary. Bob Novak's column calling Governor Huckabee a 'false conservative' has attracted a great deal of attention today. Less noticed is this…

AP reporter Matthew Barakat details the ongoing controversy surrounding the Islamic Saudi Academy, a K-12 school with campuses in Alexandria and Fairfax, Virginia, that is owned by the Saudi embassy and accused of promoting Islamic extremism: The academy opened in 1984 and stayed out of the…

By my count, since Saturday the Romney campaign has released 11 emails that directly attack or counterattack statements Rudy Giuliani has made. During that same time, I count three emails the Giuliani campaign has released that attack or counterattack statements Mitt Romney has made. Absent from…

U.S. Marines and Bangladeshi soldier Nov. 23, 2007.

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As the 2008 Republican primary campaign turns ugly, have you noticed that each pair of combatants - Romney and Giuliani in one ring, Huckabee and Thompson in the other - comes from the same region? Romney and Giuliani are squabbling for the opportunity to represent the GOP's (steadily shrinking)…

China's lunar probe, Chang'e-1, has sent its first image back to earth: During the celebration work staff at a hall in the BACC where the picture was unveiled, played greetings and music decoded from the data transmitted back to Earth via the satellite. "I come with greetings from China," said a…

From the New York Post: Beyond the Drop in Violence, by Amir Taheri. From Human Events: The Second Amendment Wedge, by Jed Babbin. From Michael Yon Online: Thanksgiving with Petraeus, by Michael Yon. From UPI: China seeks new Russian technology, by Andrei Chang. From the Sunday Times: Gordon's…

The internets have been buzzing about Fred Thompson's appearance on Fox News Sunday yesterday. The big news was Thompson lashing out at Chris Wallace for giving an anti-Fred! slant to his horserace analysis and then claiming that Fox News is against him. Generally speaking, politicians probably…

There are some new television ads today. Here's Mike Huckabee's appeal to Iowa values voters:

After a month of overt Taliban control over the settled district of Swat in Pakistan's turbulent Northwest frontier Province, the Pakistani military announced that it has begun the ground assault to retake the district. The Daily Times reports: Security forces backed by gunship helicopters and…

Historically, when nations shift from a peacetime to a wartime footing, defense spending and force size increase. But in the United Kingdom, forces and spending have actually shrunk since 9/11. The Telegraph reports British Forces Underfunded and Overstreched: General Lord Guthrie, Admiral Lord…

From this weekend's Wall Street Journal story on Venezuela's anti-Chavez student left: Ivan Stalin Gonzalez, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela's biggest public university. During the past few weeks,…

Andrew Sullivan has written a very interesting piece for the Atlantic in support of Barack Obama's candidacy. He also appeared on This Week yesterday to discuss it, an appearance I missed because I was watching Fred Thompson jump ugly on Chris Wallace on another network. (More on that incident in a…

Last Friday's David Brooks column on "The Real Rudy" contains some Giuliani quotes that are sure to make it into a Romney attack ad (if they haven't already!). But I think Brooks overstates the extent to which Giuliani has tacked right on the immigration issue. Here's Brooks: At the moment,…

The Washington Times reports on Michael Franc's "New Political Demography" research. Franc used IRS data to find the congressional districts in which the richest Americans live. And what do you know? As he wrote in the Financial Times in early November: "Democrats now control the majority of the…

As the candidates prepare to enter the final month of pre-election campaigning, today's Michael Barone column provides a noteworthy summary of the current state of the presidential race . Here's Barone: Six weeks out from the Iowa caucuses, the presidential race looks more uncertain than ever. Only…

At this point in the war on terror, even people who think David Galula is a trendy new chef are quick to point to the need for cultural understanding in successful counterinsurgency. Often, they are quicker still to beat up on our military for supposedly ignoring this. They are quite sure that if…

The Norman Invasion was the talk of New York in the late 1950s and early '60s. Norman Podhoretz gave the definitive brief account of his co-Norman's character and personality in Ex-Friends; and it wasn't pretty. But it's fair to point out, nonetheless, that Mailer transformed himself by sheer force…

Iraq Violence Down--This Is Bad News?

Blacklisted by History

Beowulf

Q: If the World War II generation was the "greatest generation," what is the Vietnam War generation?

The Blue Angels--the Navy's demonstration team, the guys behind those six shiny blue fighter jets that fly in formation at air shows and do heart-stopping loop-de-loops at 500 miles an hour--have a peculiar shape to their year.

London

Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and frontrunner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, worked in the Reagan administration as associate attorney general, the number three position in the Justice Department. At the time, Giuliani was the youngest associate attorney general…

Charlottesville, Virginia

Look Me in the Eye

On November 7 Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili's carefully crafted image as a Western-style democrat was shattered when he twice used massive force to disband peaceful protests, injuring over 500 people.

On October 31, a Spanish court handed down verdicts in the trial of suspects in the March 11, 2004, terror attack on Madrid's Atocha train station that left 191 people dead. The Madrid bombings stand alongside the 2005 London bombings as the deadliest terrorist attacks in large Western cities since…

Albert Camus the Algerian

To celebrate Veterans Day, the Los Angeles Times ran a two-part story on James Blake Miller, the battle-exhausted soldier in the iconic picture of the Battle of Falluja in November 2004. The photograph caught the 20-year-old Blake caked with blood and soot as a cigarette dangled from his mouth. He…

MITT.ByMejia.1.jpg Sculpture by Herman Mejia

The Hollywood writers' strike has placed the Democratic frontrunners in something of a bind, forcing them to choose between unions and the entertainment industry executives who are some of their most important big-money contributors. The responses of Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards have been…

Externalities. Information asymmetry. Moral hazard. Understand those three bits of economists' jargon, and you can be a do-it-yourself housing- and mortgage-market policymaker. Or at least you can thread your way through the competing proposals of conservatives--who want the government to keep…

ON MAY 17, 2006, outspoken Bush critic and erstwhile Iraq war opponent John Murtha (D-Pa.) shocked the world with a dramatic revelation.

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Chris Hedges of the Nation seems to fancy himself a reincarnation of Henry David Thoreau. Only Thoreau was protesting a war that actually existed. From his latest, "Hands Off Iran": I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran. I realize this is a desperate and perhaps futile gesture. But…

Austin Bay has an interesting article on UAVs at Townhall.com, but his conclusion may be a little off base: UAVs also present the United States with potential strategic problems. Since the end of World War II American military planners -- and for that matter, most of the planners in the rest of the…

From the AP, Hailstorm Sets Off Bomblets: BEIRUT - The season's first hailstorm Tuesday was a blessing in disguise for cluster bomb-infested parts of southern Lebanon, triggering blasts from previously unexploded bomblets. No injuries were reported. After a long dry spell across Lebanon, hailstones…

AFTER THE FIRST harvest of Plymouth colony in 1621, Governor Bradford established a special day of Thanksgiving for prayer and celebration. Other colonies later adopted this feast day. Today it's a national holiday; a day unique to the American experience and perhaps the richest part of our…

AMERICANS HAVE BEEN feeling the pinch of more than $100 oil. Food prices have also been soaring. That will become really up close and personal when the 88 percent of Americans who eat turkey on Thanksgiving descend on their supermarkets and butcher shops to pick up their holiday gobblers.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems like we have our 2008 primary calendar falling into place. The New Hampshire primary will be held on January 8, 2008, as many expected. That's five days after the January 3, 2008, Iowa caucuses. In between the two will be the Wyoming GOP convention on January 5,…

This Time magazine package on "One Day in America" features less interesting statistics than you may expect. One factoid in the piece is that Washington, D.C., has the second-worst traffic in America (the first is L.A.). No surprise there. However, did you know that "the average U.S. household has…

If Iraq recedes as an issue over the next year, voters' perceptions of "the economy" will likely become more important. Which means you should probably read this Martin Wolf column in the Financial Times on the increasing likelihood that the United States is already experiencing a "growth…

First Read's Domenico Montanaro has a timely list of what each top-tier presidential candidate ought to be thankful for. But his list of things for which Giuliani ought to give thanks is slightly puzzling. "For Giuliani," writes Montanaro, "it's giving thanks for the image many Americans still have…

In this post, John Podhoretz sides with Fred Barnes on the question of whether the GOP primary contest is a fight between two men - Giuliani and Romney - or five - Giuliani, McCain, Romney, Thompson, and Huckabee. (Bill Kristol argues that the race is wide-open for all here.) Here's Podhoretz:…

Fred Barnes's post "Herd Journalism, Iraq Edition" has sparked a lot of great letters to the editor. One letter writer, a State Department type in Baghdad, tells this story: A high civil servant I know, a very, cultured and well respected man, who is also a lecturing professor at Baghdad…

A reader offers this take on the latest Iowa polling: To the extent that he can re-ignite, isn't Thompson's best route to try to push Romney down to third in Iowa (which would really damage him) rather than taking down Huckabee now? Thompson can worry about Huck later, when having money and seeming…

Jeffrey Feldman over at the Daily Kos, one of the site's most prominent and astute "diarists," published an interesting essay over the weekend. In it, he suggested that the Kossacks revisit the way they "frame" the Iraq issue. Feldman looked to Basra and came up with four magic words that would…

Germany's demographic time bomb is compounded by the fact that those children who are born increasingly grow up in impoverished families hampered by a lack of education, bad nutrition, and poor health. According to advance excerpts from the Kinderreport 2007, which will be officially released by…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: The Pakistan Problem, by Bill Roggio. From Washington Quarterly: Strengthening U.S. Strategic Planning, by Aaron L. Friedberg. From the New York Post: Iraq: What Went Right, by Ralph Peters. From the Wall Street Journal: Petraeus's Iraq, by Robert H. Scales. From the…

Today's New York Times has an informative primer on Giuliani and Romney's latest fight over immigration. Michael Luo reports: Mr. Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, has in particular sought to wield the issue against his Republican rivals, focusing on Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of…

I see John Noonan beat me to the punch on this one. I was going to leave aside the technology issues and focus instead on a range of institutional and social issues that make such a reform of the Russian military problematic: 1. Culture of corruption and distrust: Modern warfare requires absolute…

Over the last few weeks, I've written several times on the political games Congressional Democrats are playing with Iraq funding. They quietly worked to ensure that the Department of Defense would be able to continue the Iraq effort for several months, so that they could flaunt their defiance of…

As predicted here, two new Iowa polls show Mike Huckabee in position to upset Mitt Romney. Talk about standing on Superman's cape. Huckabee is doing it partially by taking votes Fred Thompson needs to have any hope of getting out of Iowa with a viable campaign. So Fred has a problem too. I'm sure…

I used to think that Tom Friedman served a strange but invaluable role in foreign policy: namely, as the canary in the mine, sniffing out the conventional wisdom about whatever is happening in the world and then telegraphing it to the rest of us through his twice-weekly column in the Times.…

Roger L. Simon, last seen cavorting with Pajama clad babes on the floor of the BlogWorld convention like a latter day Hugh Hefner, sat down with Fred Thompson to discuss the Global War on Terror. Bob Owens, proprietor of the excellent Confederate Yankee blog, joined Roger in conducting the…

"It is unpleasant when the state resorts to a force against one part of its population. It was the most difficult decision. Each baton hit on our citizens was also hit on me But chaos and civil confrontation would have been an alternative to this. Georgia has already experienced that and my goal is…

AS CONCERN BUILDS within Washington's political, military, and intelligence circles over the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda in northwestern Pakistan, the search for a proper policy to deal with the threat has come to the forefront. Earlier this week the New York Times leaked details of a…

Are the Ruskies reading from the book of Rumsfeld? Russian Army Chief of Staff Yuri Baluyevsky says da. In a press conference last week, Baluyevsky said that: Russia's Armed Forces, like all militaries in the world, would be putting an emphasis on quality, not quantity. "It will be a leaner but…

Fred Barnes has an excellent item over at the Campaign Standard on the herd mentality that has taken over the mainstream press as they rush to cover the story they've ignored for months--things are getting better in Iraq: I think it was that great Democratic wit Gene McCarthy who described…

A Taliban fighter stands outside a police station in Matta. The sign states the police station is under Taliban control. AFP photo via Dawn.

What do Daft Punk and congressman Ron Paul have in common? According to this press release, all three are among GQ's "men of the year." GQ calls Paul the "dark horse of the year." That title probably should go to Mike Huckabee, but who's checking? Probably not Paul. In this Christopher Caldwell New…

What's this I hear about push polling regarding Mitt Romney being a Mormon?

Now that Ric Flair has endorsed Mike Huckabee, over at Galley Slaves our own Jonathan V. Last is speculating on what other endorsements may yet emerge from the world of professional wrestling: * Brooklyn Brawler endorses Giuliani * Mr. Perfect (may he rest in peace) endorses Obama * Hacksaw Jim…

An important thought from a friend of THE WEEKLY STANDARD with very good connections in Pakistan: Pakistanis are worried that we will broker a deal in which Musharraf or a successor will hold nominally free elections but without reinstating the deposed judges. We and the rest of the world aren't…

The Daily Kos's first Newsweek column dropped this week, and it's about as predictable as you might expect. Kos urges the Democrats to campaign solely on Bush's record in 2008 - a year in which Bush will not be on the ballot and all of the possible Republican presidential candidates are…

Democrats in Congress and their backers in the blogosphere look forward to another year of pointless debates about the Iraq war, with Congress unable or unwilling to influence the course of events. Liberals argue that Democrats can only benefit; that voters won't view the outcome in Iraq positively…

From the Wall Street Journal: Deep-Six the Law of the Sea Treaty, by Thomas A. Bowden. From the New York Post: The Tribal Option, by Peter Brookes. From USA Today: Iranian Bomb 'Intolerable', by Joshua Muravchik. From Real Clear Politics: The Miracle of Plenty, by Rich Lowry. From Middle East…

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A reader writes: I agree with you that Rudy doesn't get much love from left leaning press sources. But I think he has largely gotten a pass from many trusted reporters on the right as stated in the article by Ramesh Ponnuru, 'Rudy Wins the Pundit Primary, Conservative journalists choose up.' It may…

Today's Quote of the Day (So Far!) comes from Ross Douthat's rejoinder to Jonathan Chait's column on "faith-based politics." Here's Douthat: It's so kind of [Chait] to grant the civil rights movement permission to talk about Moses and the Promised Land, so gracious of him to let them appeal to…

As expected, today's extraordinary front page article in the New York Times on progress in Iraq is causing aneurysms across wide swathes of the left-wing blogosphere. You might think the news that "the security improvements in most neighborhoods are real" might be cause for bipartisan celebration,…

David Brooks scores the coolest interview of the day. It's with Steven Van Zandt, aka "Little Steven" of E Street Band fame and Silvio Dante of the greatest television series of the twenty-first century (so far!). Here's Brooks: [Van Zandt] argues that if the Rolling Stones came along now, they…

Just for fun...this is how the AP describes Brazil's new oil find: Last week, Brazil confirmed a monster offshore oil discovery and promising fields near the find, although full-scale extraction is unlikely until 2013 and will be very expensive because it is so far below the surface of the earth.…

I think it was that great Democratic wit Gene McCarthy who described journalists and reporters as blackbirds on a telephone wire. When one flies to the telephone wire across the street, they all do. There's also a non-bird name for this phenomenon. It's called herd journalism. And just this week…

While his eminence and Bill Kristol debate whether or not John McCain should make a serious play in the Iowa Republican caucus, the media already seem to have decided the issue for the Arizona senator. Here's the Times's Adam Nagourney: [McCain's] problems in Iowa do not stem from a lack of effort.…

It's really unbelievable how much different the Iraq narrative has become over the last few months. Here's the report from the New York Times titled "Baghdad Starts to Exhale as Security Improves": The security improvements in most neighborhoods are real. Days now pass without a car bomb, after a…

Blasphemy! A nimble and clever argument is now advanced by Monsieur Kristol, an obvious troublemaker. In the good old days you could just throw a heretic into a cell, or better yet boiling oil, but in this godless modern age I am forced to respond with mere words. Damn you Robespierre! Either you…

Petraeus is helping pick new Generals: The Army has summoned the top U.S. commander in Iraq back to Washington to preside over a board that will pick some of the next generation of Army leaders, an unusual decision that officials say represents a vote of confidence in Gen. David H. Petraeus's…

WHEN ANYONE FROM the Bush administration reiterates the government's belief in a strong dollar he is now greeted with derisive laughter, rather than a mere behind-the-hand titter. The actual White House position is best summarized as favoring a dollar as strong as market forces permit. And that is…

Paris I shudder to differ with the esteemed Cardinal Richelieu. But, emboldened by writing from France, where I see how fleeting are all the achievements of glory, I raise this question: Could Richelieu be wrong in arguing that McCain should compete, at least for third place, in Iowa? The Cardinal…

Marc Ambinder reports on the findings of the latest WMUR / CNN poll of likely New Hampshire Republican primary voters. Romney stands at 33 percent in this poll, an 8 point increase since the September survey. Romney appears to wear well, but the key number here is still the 56 percent of…

A piece in today's Los Angeles Times comes pretty close to saying just that under the headline "Sects unite to battle Al Qaeda in Iraq:" QARGHULIA, Iraq - Despite persistent sectarian tensions in the Iraqi government, war-weary Sunnis and Shiites are joining hands at the local level to protect…

Now that the Reaper has, for the first time, demonstrated the ability for unmanned aerial vehicles to drop precision-guided munitions in combat, it's worth taking a step back to analyze what this means for the Air Force, and for the future of air warfare. The advent of armed UAVs represents a…

This Reuters dispatch is easily the silliest thing I've read in a while. It's headlined "Giuliani Style Evokes Concern Among Critics." Um, wouldn't the story be worth reporting if Giuliani's style didn't provoke concern among critics? Aren't critics supposed to be concerned with those whom they are…

With the unmistakable success of the surge in disrupting al Qaeda in Iraq's operations and significantly reducing violence throughout the country, the Iraqi Security Forces have turned their attention to the Mahdi Army in Diwaniyah. On November 17, Iraqi Army and police, backed by a U.S. brigade,…

I've written about the effort by Congressional Democrats to unobtrusively ensure that the military effort in Iraq receives the funding it needs, so that they can continue to flout their defiance of the president when it comes to the Iraq appropriations legislation. Now Democrats are crying foul,…

The New York Times offers a fiction this morning: "Democrats Say They Won't Back Down on War." All signs indicate that Democrats will continue proposing such measures as long as Mr. Bush remains in office and troops remain in Iraq. "We are going to keep plugging away," said Senator Carl Levin of…

From Slate: Something To Give Thanks For, by Christopher Hitchens. From Foreign Affairs: A Disciplined Defense, by Richard Betts. From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Iraq is a Quagmire, by Jack Kelly. From the Wall Street Journal: The Nuclear Disarmament Fantasy, by Harold Brown and John Deutch. From…

A friend points me to this Paul Mirengoff post on electability versus ideology: It's also possible to outsmart oneself by selecting a candidate based on ideology. That's because perceived ideological differences among candidates may be more apparent than real. This risk seems particularly…

Definitely the most entertaining ad yet to emerge from the 2008 cycle...

Over at Contentions, Norman Podhoretz has responded to Andrew Sullivan's charge of intellectual dishonesty--the matter of contention being the accuracy of a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini, via Amir Taheri, which NPod has frequently repeated to demonstrate the threat from Iran. The quote in question:…

That title's going to get real old, real fast, but I think we can still get away with it. Defense Tech's Christian Lowe links to this public affairs story from the Air Force: The MQ-9A Reaper demonstrated it's unique precision strike capability as a hunter-killer attack platform by dropping its…

A new piece in TIME magazine has but one thesis, although it is as irritating to me as the original 95. You can read it here. The hopelessly uninformed story, by Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette/DC sex gossip fame, argues that McCain is a fool to campaign in Iowa. Using selective poll numbers and the…

Last Friday's vote by Russia's upper house of parliament to suspend compliance with the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty was characterized by official Chinese media as bringing "the Russo-American wrestle over strategic security to a critical phase." Chinese media have followed the…

The presidential contenders were making the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows this week. John Edwards popped up on Face the Nation, repeating his ridiculous threat to take away Congress's health care if the body doesn't pass universal health care coverage in the opening days of his…

Qayis and Layith Qazali. Click to view.

Today's quote comes from this excellent culinary essay in Doublethink by Katherine Mangu-Ward: "Bird watchers keep a life list of every species they have ever spotted. My life list is of species I have consumed." The whole thing is worth your time.

Here's a link to Mike Huckabee's first television spot. It's playing in Iowa, though the ad buy was relatively small. The ad is clever, funny, and features a special guest:

Larry Flynt has endorsed the former Cleveland mayor's presidential candidacy.

The Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" blog reports that the presidential campaign has turned negative. Finally! Here's the Journal: With 45 days to go before the Iowa Caucuses, presidential campaigning has turned increasingly negative, with Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama trading…

I know nothing specific about the "Mitt Romney Hearts Satan" push-polling kerfuffle. But your Cardinal does have a theory about what really happened, along the lines of the Sacred and the Profane. "Push polling" has a murky definition, and means different things to different people. The media, and…

In the old westerns, it was not uncommon to see a final showdown in which the white hats confront the black hats with an accusation of perfidy: "So it's you that's been sellin' rifles to those Injuns." Something like these recriminations is taking place on an international scale now, although there…

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Organized labor did well in the new Democratic Congress, winning a hike in the minimum wage and impeding the free trade treaties backed by President Bush. (The Peru trade deal passed this week, but it was held up for months by Democrats, as the South Korea, Columbia, and Panama deals continue to…

Lions for Lambs

Last week, we editorialized on the well-publicized caterwauling of a senior foreign service officer, Jack Croddy, who is deeply unhappy that the State Department might assign some of its career diplomats against their wishes to serve in Iraq. Croddy (whom we, following other news organizations,…

Two and a half years ago--in the wake of elections in Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, and especially Iraq (as well as the fall of Lebanon's pro-Syrian government)--we were witness to what became known as the "Arab Spring." Commentators were declaring President Bush's "freedom agenda" a…

The war on terror is being fought almost entirely on land, and the public neither knows about nor appreciates the U.S. Navy's contribution to these conflicts. No terrorists have struck from the sea, and although China is seeking to transform its economic success into naval power the threat does not…

The House That George Built

The surge of operations that American and Iraqi forces began on June 15 has dramatically improved security in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. U.S. commanders and soldiers have reversed the negative trends of 2006, some of which date back to 2005. The total number of enemy attacks has fallen for four…

I have a thing for obituaries. At my age, it's not yet a matter of keeping score against my contemporaries. It's more a taste for the appreciative and anecdotal. Newspapers don't present much sweetness or humor, even on the review and feature pages. The obit, though, remains a sort of sociocultural…

Republicans lost the governorship of Kentucky and the state senate in Virginia last week. But the elections were not as bad as they looked for Republicans. Knocked down and trampled on by Democrats in 2006, Republicans are at least back on their feet in 2007.

Pakistan is the swing state in the worldwide struggle against Islamic terrorists. Its decisive position makes Pervez Musharraf's imposition of martial law on November 3 a hard test for American foreign policy.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

SAVING ANTIOCH COLLEGE

Men of goodwill dread the moment when an autocrat morphs into a tyrant, when a power-hungry dictator descends into outright madness.

If a senator gives a speech, and no major newspaper reports it, does it matter? Joe Lieberman spoke in Washington Thursday on "the politics of national security." The next day, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and USA Today ignored his talk. Most Democrats will…

Almost a Miracle

One Perfect Day

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SHOPPERS HAVE STARTED to kick their holiday spending into high gear, but they shouldn't splurge on anything they were expecting to pay back in six months with their tax refund checks.

Fridays in THE WEEKLY STANDARD office are always a flurry of activity--especially this week with the boss in Paris for some hush-hush meetings, sending his editorial via BlackBerry. There isn't much time for coffee-room chatter, but we can't ignore the hype from last night's Democratic debate. The…

Here's Andrew Sullivan writing today on the devastating revelation that the American military did not give the Red Cross prompt access to detainees at Gitmo (heavens, no!): Why were some prisoners withheld from Red Cross access - and in writing, a sign of the confidence some had that the Bush…

This Ramesh Ponnuru article on Rudy's fans in the conservative press is an interesting read, but it contains a factual mistake. Fred Barnes tells me he's never endorsed John McCain for president, as is reported in the piece, and doesn't plan to endorse any candidate. "That's not my business," he…

The Strategic Security blog run by the Federation of America's Scientists posted an interesting item this week about arms sales, and transfers, to Pakistan over the last few years. Summarizing a report from the Congressional Research Service, Matt Schroeder writes: arms transfer agreements with…

Peter Wehner and Yuval Levin's new Commentary essay on America's improving social indicators is well worth your time. Wehner and Levin cite declines in crime rates, abortion rates, drug use, teenage births, and welfare rolls since 1993. Meanwhile, education scores are up: Educational scores are up.…

Here, courtesy of Jonathan Garthwaite at Townhall, is the text of Barack Obama finally admitting that he supported drivers' licenses. Revisionist Obama supporters will probably try to transform his epic faux pas into a moment of supreme political courage. What actually happened will belie that…

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has taken a lot of abuse in recent weeks--for his hastily-dropped plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens, his quickly-withdrawn plan to tax internet purchases, and his move to speed-up release for violent criminals. But if Spitzer is to have any prayer of…

The debate over the administration request for funding for the Iraq war in 2008 is growing increasingly complex. As we've covered here, Democrats wrote a Department of Defense funding bill which specifically authorized the Bush administration to borrow funds from regular accounts to conduct the…

From the Philadelphia Inquirer: U.S., Sheikh Efforts Bear Fruit, by Kevin Ferris. From the Washington Times: Note on a Bomb, by Austin Bay. From the New York Times: Iran Blocked From Buying Nuclear Materials at Least 75 Times, by Warren Hoge. From the National Post: France to Step Up Afghan…

John Harwood explores the phenomenon of country club Democrats in today's Wall Street Journal. Here's the main idea: In the 2004 election, exit surveys showed President Bush defeated John Kerry by 58 percent to 41 percent among those earning more than $100,000. In 2006, Republican House candidates…

So, the good folks over at FP Passport are unhappy with my recent post on the gullibility of the IAEA and its defenders. I should preface this by saying that I'm a huge fan of the FP Passport, it's a must-read every day, but I'm compelled to defend myself here. It seems that Blake Hounsnell is…

America Supports You is running a campaign to show the troops some love this Thanksgiving by having folks text their support to 89279. I understand that the widget above will be scrolling those messages throughout the holiday, so I'll bump it back up over the weekend. And if you're wondering,…

I just want to go on record here that Barack Obama did more than just shoot himself in the foot at last night's debate when he supported drivers' licenses for illegal immigrants. If he should somehow get the Democratic nomination, that one ill-considered position could well make him unelectable.…

Jay Cost takes on those endless, tiresome Democratic debates: This is a narrow view of politics: the press collects seven people on a stage, knowing that one of them will be the next Democratic nominee and could very well be the next President of the United States, and really has no interest except…

This new Clinton video aimed at likely Iowa caucus-goers is superbly produced. But it's also important for another reason: It gives us a clue as to how the Clinton campaign plans to deploy its candidate's husband, the former president of the United States. Bill Clinton shows up here as a cheerful,…

A couple of new polls show Mike Huckabee closing in fast on Romney in Iowa. This is actually a relatively "good" piece of bad news for the always nervous Romney campaign. Two reasons: First, something finally has happened to lower Romney's dangerously high Iowa expectations. The great oddsmakers in…

Osama bin Laden escorted by the Black Guard. Click image to view.

AS THE DEMOCRATS brought their weary road show to Vegas tonight, most analysts suspected that Hillary Clinton would get a mulligan on the illegal immigration question that she botched so badly at their last tussle. It played out as expected. Right out of the box, Campbell Brown asked the candidates…

Newsweek has announced Markos Moulitsas's dance partner for the hyper-partisan mud slinging that the magazine promises will be both "energetic and enlightening." Kos will be going toe-to-toe with none other than the Genius, the man hailed/slandered as Bush's Brain, the one and only Karl Rove. And I…

Just posted at Reason magazine's new reason.tv is a segment with Kurt Loder, who was once the editor of Rolling Stone and has been a news anchor at MTV for as long as I can remember. He is also a veteran of the Army. In the course of a discussion with Reason editor Nick Gillespie on "technology and…

Was it really less than a month ago that House leaders tried to pass a deeply flawed rewrite of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by running roughshod over the opposition? As we covered at the time, the House leadership version of FISA actually makes it harder to conduct surveillance of…

Map of the northern regions of the NWFP, including Swat.

Maybe that's a bit much, but this report from the Dallas Morning News seems to indicate that the city's municipal officials may have lost sight of the big picture: The U.S. Army combats war-mongering regimes and vile dictatorships per course. But even the world's mightiest force can't fight Dallas…

It happens, on rare occasion. When the USS Porter came to the rescue of a hijacked North Korean ship off the coast of Somalia, I speculated that the North Korean public would never hear about the encounter, remaining blissfully ignorant of the fact that the United States fleet includes a single…

The AP headline: "IAEA: Iran Generally Truthful on Nukes." I feel better already. A report from the U.N nuclear watchdog agency on Thursday found Iran to be generally truthful about key aspects of its nuclear history, but it warned that its knowledge of Tehran's present atomic work was shrinking.…

Advertising Age columnist Ken Wheaton reviews Rudy Giuliani's first television spot. The review is positive! Here's Wheaton: Solid effort. [Giuliani] does a number of key things: He embraces the fact he's from New York while pointing out the common perception held by many Red Staters - it was,…

Mary Katherine Ham has finally gotten around to posting her video from the Blog World convention in Vegas. Among the notables interviewed by the lovely Ms. Ham are Dean Barnett, seen shamelessly plugging his new pamphlet, The Plucky Smart Kid with the Fatal Disease, Eric Egland, who is mounting a…

Ryan Lizza's latest New Yorker story on Barack Obama's campaign contains this amusing back-and-forth between a top contender for the presidency of the United States and ... the New York Times's chief political correspondent: I asked Obama whether he thought that journalists 'respect' Clinton for…

A press release from Senator Brownback, including comments he made on the floor of the Senate today: "The numbers coming out of Iraq indicate that the United States military surge is successfully working," said Brownback. "Admittedly, I had reservations about the surge at the outset, but my…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Coping with Victory, by James W. Ceaser. From the Wall Street Journal: Kosovo Wants Independence, by Agim Ceku. From DoubleThink: A Freezer Menagerie, by Katherine Mangu-Ward. From Ares: The Air Force is Gonna Get Ya! (Send Money Please), by Bettina Chavanne. From Townhall:…

According to CNN's Political Ticker, Janet Huckabee revealed her history of violence during a tea party at the South Carolina governor's mansion: "I have fired a grenade launcher and hit the target two out of three times, so I think that's pretty good odds for me," she said, noting that she had a…

Today's Times front-page story on Mitt Romney's mission years is a fascinating read, and reminds you of how Romney is truly an impressive individual. This paragraph struck me in particular, however: Mr. Romney quickly threw himself into firing [the missionaries he supervised] up. During their…

News of the day: The House Democrats passed a bill last night. From the Associated Press: House Democrats pushed through a $50 billion bill for the Iraq war Wednesday night that would require President Bush to start bringing troops home in coming weeks with a goal of ending combat by December 2008.…

First Read's Matthew Berger files this entertaining dispatch: ROCK RAPIDS, Iowa - After speaking briefly at a restaurant, Giuliani walked outside and decided to see the neighborhood. So he took a peek next door at a local business and decided to poke his head in, as he does sometimes on the trail.…

For those wondering why Democrats in Congress get such terrible grades in Gallup's latest polling, it might be because of moves like this one: House and Senate Democrats have inserted at least 18 previously undisclosed earmarks into the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and related…

This Slate essay on the death of email is worth your time. Here's the main idea: Those of us older than 25 can't imagine a life without e-mail. For the Facebook generation, it's hard to imagine a life of only e-mail, much less a life before it. I can still remember the proud moment in 1996 when I…

Soren Dayton's interesting analysis of the latest CBS News / New York Times poll concludes thusly: The numbers suggest something more. Huckabee is way out ahead of Mitt Romney on 'is a conservative', abortion, and 'shares my values.' But on 'agree on issues', immigration, and 'right experience',…

Gallup releases a poll today showing widespread dissatisfaction with how Democrats in Congress are handling important issues--such as terrorism, the economy, immigration, and the budget deficit: The latest Gallup Panel survey, conducted Oct. 25-28, 2007, asked Americans to say whether they are…

I've written before on the legislation introduced in Congress to deter internet providers from sharing data with governments that may use it to prosecute dissidents. The House Foreign Affairs Committee--which has approved that legislation--also held a hearing on November 6, to grill Yahoo for its…

Even though Continetti only writes at a high school level, his deep analysis at the Campaign Standard has landed him a shot at real fame and fortune--a segment on Blogging Heads TV. Continetti squares off against Paul Glastris of the Washington Monthly, debating a number of issues, including…

Today's George Will column contains this thought-provoking paragraph: Large undertakings in domestic policy --e.g., the enactments of Social Security in 1935 and of Medicare in 1965 - often follow landslide elections. In the 15 presidential elections since the Second World War, only twice has the…

It turns out it's not really so mysterious after all. The Danger Room interviewed General Montgomery Meigs, who heads up the Pentagon's Joint IED Defeat Organization (JIEDDO). General Meigs admirably--and honestly--refuses credit for the decline: "I would love to be able to say to the American…

This Reuters dispatch on Barack Obama's visit to the Googleplex contains a slightly charming / slightly weird moment: Obama was prepared when Google CEO Eric Schmidt, the event moderator, asked him the most efficient way to sort a million 32-bit integers. Obama said he did not favor the bubble sort…

WILL ANY OF the Democratic candidates be able to summon the courage to concede an American victory in Iraq?

There has been much discussion regarding the threat to security from the sale of American technology companies to Chinese owners. Most recently it was the announcement that China's Huawei Technologies would attempt to purchase a stake in 3COM, which provides the Pentagon with technology to prevent…

WHEN YOU'RE TEN points behind in the polls, less than two months away from the first presidential primaries, and African American Democrats are divided between you and the front-runner, what is the easiest way to narrow that gap?

The same day Multinational Forces Iraq reported it had killed Tha'ir Malik, the emir of Tarmiyah, Coalition forces fought a major battle against the terror network in the city. Twenty-five al Qaeda in Iraq operatives were killed and 21 captured after Coalition forces conducted a series of raids…

That's the question from John Derbyshire, and it's asked rhetorically. Derbyshire seems to think that no serious person would believe Ron Paul is anti-Semitic, and he's probably right. Ron Paul's antipathy toward this country's alliance with Israel and his groundswell support among the right's own…

Yesterday I joined several other conservative bloggers in a session with former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton at the Heritage Foundation. (Check out Tech Republican, Soren Dayton, and Quin Hillyer for more coverage of the event, as well as the American Spectator for video of his appearance there.)…

The Wall Street Journal reports that it is becoming more and more likely that millions of taxpayers will see processing of their 2007 returns delayed due to Congress' inability to pass a fix for the Alternative Minimum Tax: Some lawmakers predict Congress probably won't take action until next…

Task Force 88, the special operations hunter-killer teams assigned to dismantle al Qaeda in Iraq's leadership, took out a major link in the terror network earlier this month. Today, Multinational Forces Iraq reported "Coalition forces"--which is the code used for the Task Force-- killed Tha'ir…

Do Democrats in Congress realize that consistent with the plans of General Petraeus and the Pentagon, the United States has begun to draw down our troops levels in Iraq? The U.S. military is sending 3,000 soldiers home from Diyala province, the second large unit to leave Iraq as troop levels are…

McCain did another in his series of blogger calls today (he missed last week's and blamed it on "incompetent staffers"). He opened with a brief discussion of Pakistan, where he said he would "make no excuses" for the actions of Pervez Musharraf, but also noted--lamented--that there was "a lot of…

The Quote of the Day (So Far!) is from Peter Berkowitz's Wall Street Journal essay on Bush-hatred: Lord knows the Bush administration has blundered in its handling of legal issues that have arisen in the war on terror. But from the common progressive denunciations you would never know that the Bush…

Goldfarb points out that a computer algorithm has determined that the Campaign Standard is written at a high-school reading level. But that's simply because I want to make sure that he can understand it.

From the New York Times: Sent the State Department to War, by Max Boot. From the Washington Post: The War over the War, with Dave Dilegge and Bill Nagle. From the Washington Times: Victory in Iraq, by Tony Blankley. From the AP: Iran looking to Russia, China to Help Modernize Air Force, by Ali…

And you thought Giuliani didn't have a lot in common with God's Son. Well, think again. I have to quibble with the comparison between Hillary Clinton and Jay-Z, however. Jay-Z is a comeback artist, but when has Clinton faced political adversity? For a long time her power was a function of her…

As I wrote yesterday, Speaker Pelosi and her fellow Democrats are having a tough time with Iraq (and most legislation). On the one hand, their loud, left-wing supporters are calling for congressional action and a withdrawal date. The Politico reported yesterday that congressional Democrats have…

John Edwards has a chest-thumping new ad, in which he threatens Congress and his own putative future cabinet with the loss of their health care, if they don't do his bidding and pass universal health care: When I'm president, I'm going to say to members of Congress and members of my administration…

Or at least it looked like they died, by their own hand. Here's the CBS story. According to the network: Dr. Steve Rathbun is the acting head of the Epidemiology and Biostatistics Department at the University of Georgia. CBS News asked him to run a detailed analysis of the raw numbers that we…

Newsweek announced yesterday that it has inked Markos Moulitsas to a contract to contribute to its campaign coverage for the 2008 season. "We have always sought to represent a diversity of views in Newsweek, and we think Markos will be a great part of that tradition," said Newsweek editor Jon…

From the AP: Rocket and mortar attacks have fallen to their lowest level in nearly two years. Civilian deaths have dropped sharply since summer. Shoppers are venturing out, even in Baghdad's most dangerous neighborhoods. Iraq's capital is by no means yet safe. But the trend toward better security…

Speaking at the Citadel yesterday, Fred Thompson staked out a Reaganesque position on defense spending and the need to increase the size of the military: First, we must spend more on defense, and we must do so carefully and wisely. Spending today as a percent of GDP is estimated at 4.1 percent -…

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

From Adam Nagourney's report on the latest CBS News / New York Times poll: Two-thirds of New Hampshire Republicans and one-half of Iowa Republicans said they were open to voting for candidates who did not share their view on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage, which augurs well for Mr.…

Tomorrow the Giuliani campaign launches its first television ad, a 60-second spot airing in New Hampshire. The spot is called "Tested." Here it is:

At the end of October, Mohammed ElBaradei, chairman of the IAEA, told CNN: I have not received any information that there is a concrete, active nuclear weapon program going on right now. … We have information that there have been maybe some studies about possible weaponization. But we are looking…

The WWS:

The AP reports: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that Democrats won't approve more money for the Iraq war this year unless President Bush agrees to begin bringing troops home. By the end of the week, the House and Senate planned to vote on a $50 billion measure for operations in Iraq…

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U.S. and Iraqi Security Forces are maintaining the pressure on al Qaeda in Iraq's network nationwide and October netted the highest number of senior terror leaders since the surge went into full effect in June. While Coalition forces have degraded al Qaeda's network inside Baghdad and in the Belts,…

From the New York Times: McCain and the Character Factor, by David Brooks. From the Crimson: Harvard's Untenable Stance on ROTC, by Harry R. Lewis. From the New York Post: A 'Forgotten' War, by Ralph Peters. From Michael Yon Online: The Old New Way, by Michael Yon. From the World Tribune: Do…

It's no secret that this Democratic-led Congress has accomplished little since January--especially in terms of their campaign promises to withdraw from Iraq as quickly as possible. Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris report just how dismal things look for the Congressional Democrats today in the…

Readers of the 2008 Almanac of American Politics encounter fascinating paragraphs such as these: Almost none of today's voters remember the 1930s and fewer than half of them remember the 1970s. In the quarter-century since 1983, Americans have lived in a country that has enjoyed non-inflationary…

You can read David Brooks's encomium to John McCain here. Here's the key paragraph: Telling the truth is a skill. Those who don't do it habitually lose the ability, but McCain is well-practiced and has the capacity to face unpleasant truths. While other conservatives failed to see how corporations…

Since late 2003, the IED has been the most pressing tactical threat to American forces in Iraq. Now, via the Danger Room, we're seeing two positive signs that the IED threat has been mitigated--though certainly not yet neutralized. First, Noah Shachtman reports on the decision to cut the budget for…

The Netroots have not been all that happy with Congressional Democrats this year. Congress has challenged the president on Iraq, and considered 40 bills to force a course change. But ultimately Democratic leaders have backed down and given the president the funding needed to continue the Iraq…

Over at Contentions, Max Boot scolds Admiral Fallon for sending "mixed messages" to Iran: Whatever you think about the desirability of a preemptive strike, one thing is clear: it would be the height of foolishness for the United States to take that option off the table. Only if the mullahs think…

The Giuliani campaign is playing a beautiful game of three card monte with the national media regarding the expectations game in Iowa and New Hampshire - not that I've ventured out of the Cathedral to actually witness such a sinful game of tricks and deceit. ... I hear the Rudy expectations grift…

Politics, like life, is characterized by change, contingency, unpredictability, and indeterminancy. Jay Cost makes this point well with regard to the Iowa Democratic caucus: A poll of Iowa Democratic caucus goers does not really mimic the process in which they participate. In a general election -…

U.S. Ambassador to Cambodia Joseph A. Mussomeli and

It's the moment you've all been waiting for: Oxford University Press has announced the 2007 "word of the year." The word is locavore. What does "locavore" mean, you ask? Good question! Give me a second to look it up. ... Okay: Locavore is the practice of subsisting on organic foods made from local…

Via Marc Ambinder, here is Charles Franklin's analysis of Hillary Clinton's polling trends: So on the basis of these three polls, and 'apples-to-apples' comparisons of polls done by the same polling organization, there is pretty good reason to think Clinton has dropped a few points in New…

Fareed Zakaria notes here that, in the latest Newsweek poll, the economy has replaced Iraq as voters' top priority. Soren Dayton has some interesting thoughts: Now, it is not clear to me that this is a huge win for Republicans, given the housing problems. But Iraq is clearly coming out of the…

For those of you out there who have trouble understanding hip-hop lyrics, this link is filled with handy charts. It probably would be wise to print them out the next time you turn on the radio or try to have a conversation with a young person.

ADD $100 OIL to billions in bank write-offs and it should come as no surprise that the word "recession" is being heard with increased frequency. As is the view that circumstances have combined to neuter the Fed, making it powerless to use its monetary policy weapon to prevent a downturn.

A NEW DISCOVERY in the archives at the United Nations has drastically altered the historical narrative of the exile of Jews from Arab countries.

I see I'm not the only one who thought this, from a Daniel Sieradski post at the new Jewcy blog, was a devastating line: Ron Paul will take money from Nazis. But he won't take telephone calls from Jews. Interesting though, that Paul's strange ability to attract the dregs of America's right-wing…

Here's the story from the AP: Republican White House hopeful John McCain told supporters Monday that the U.S. is winning the war in Iraq and vowed to always back the men and women who have served in the armed forces. "Our best days are ahead of us," the Arizona senator told a crowd of about 200…

Here's a thought-provoking paragraph from Arthur Krystal's profile of historian Jacques Barzun, who is about to celebrate his centennial: Barzun's declinist views about Western civilization are no secret. One reason that 'From Dawn to Decadence,' a eight-hundred-page history of Western civilization…

How do you define "thrill-seeking"? Well, probably you don't define it in the same terms as the AP: Two thrill-seeking teenagers stabbed an adult acquaintance, took a blowtorch to his corpse and threw his severed head into a river, prosecutors said Monday as they charged the pair. Canton High…

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The buzz on the blogs today is the flop that is Robert Redford's anti-war movie, Lions for Lambs, starring everyone's favorite Scientologist, Tom Cruise. The basic plotline is that a presidential-hopeful/Republican senator (Cruise) pushes a policy in Afghanistan that results in putting American…

Jay Cost has a noteworthy post on the decision by the Romney campaign to forgo, at least for now, a major speech by the candidate on his Mormon faith. Romney himself addressed the matter before an audience in Holderness, New Hampshire, revealing that he is game for such a speech but that his aides…

For how long will our mainstream understanding of "parenthood" remain a legal norm? Traditional understandings of the nuclear family already have been transformed by socioeconomic change and political-judicial decision-making. Now this report out of the U.K. gives us a clue of what may be next: Ask…

Sen. Clinton's new campaign slogan reportedly is "Turn up the heat; turn America around." Wow. You put dozens of the best Democratic consultants in a room, pay them millions of dollars, and this is what they come up with? It makes no sense. How exactly does turning up the heat turn America around?…

Last week Stuart Koehl shared his thoughts here on the Air Force's decision to ground its entire fleet of F-15s. We got some interesting feedback from the piece, and I thought I'd post one exchange here for those who find the technical details of these matters as interesting as I do. From one…

From THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Ahmadine-Jets, by Reuben F. Johnson. From National Review: Slandering the Troops, by Mack Owens. From the BBC: Is Iraq Getting Better? by Jim Muir. From the Washington Post: Space Defense Gets Extra Funding, by Walter Pincus. From the Telegraph: Ignore Al Gore, by Bjorn…

The big story in the world this weekend remained the crisis in Pakistan. Responding to reports that Musharraf is making a number of concessions in the face of international pressure, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was on This Week to discuss what remained to be done. "President Musharraf still…

It was a reasonable position (though a mistaken one) to oppose the war in Iraq. It was a reasonable position (though a mistaken one) to oppose the surge of troops at the beginning of 2007, on the grounds that it seemed unlikely the surge could succeed, and that some kind of…

If you listen to some election prognosticators, you get the sense that the 2008 election is already over. It sometimes seems as if the only questions left are whether the Democrats will have 60 Senate seats and if so, how long it will take to approve single-payer health care. Political analyst Stu…

Mullah Obaidullah Akhund.

It turns out that Chuck Norris isn't the only guy with a website devoted to interesting facts about him. This "Fred Thompson Facts" archive, while tasteless, is almost as funny as Norris's. My favorite: "Fred Thompson is not your 'bro' and he is going to tase you." Maybe Norris endorsed Mike…

A while back Mitt Romney found himself in some hot water when he said he would check with lawyers before approving without congressional authorization a preemptive attack against America's enemies. The Giuliani campaign quickly called this Romney's "attorney test," much like John Kerry's "global…

Interesting comments from Rudy Giuliani to ABC News. In an interview with ABC's Jake Tapper, who has a knack of getting people to say things that are more revealing than his subjects probably intend, Giuliani defended the performance of former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik. "You know, people are…

Today's sermon is about hatred. Specifically that wonderful, molten, candidate-upon-candidate intra-party hatred that makes a presidential primary go and go. Most candidates, by nature, hate each other. But over time, each candidate develops two special hatreds, each boiling at an intensity far…

"Who is .  .  . Albert Schweitzer?"

Wellesley, Massachusetts

Yellow Springs, Ohio

Lamb Among Wolves

After the Reich

GIULIANI ON ABORTION

At a concert in Kansas City in June, a singer from the popular Los Angeles-based multicultural band Ozomatli fired up the crowd the way he knew best. The band was created at a pro-labor rally in the 1990s, and one band member is fond of wearing a "Dumb and Dumber" T-shirt featuring pictures of…

Coercion as Cure

Ana's Story

In its latest response to complaints about the politicization of higher education, the American Association of University Professors has embraced a novel view: "It is not indoctrination for professors to expect students to comprehend ideas and apply knowledge that is accepted as true within a…

David's Hammer

On August 26, Al Qaeda in Iraq tried to abduct four American paratroopers on rooftop surveillance in Samarra. The plan seems to have been to hold the soldiers hostage and then behead them just as General David Petraeus was testifying before Congress. Showing an awareness of the American media that…

Dan in Real Life

Citrus

How much does it matter that the Iraqi parliament has not yet passed an oil law? According to war critics, it is the only thing that matters: Iraqis' failure to complete "reconciliation" by passing "benchmark" legislation as required by Washington is evidence not only that the current strategy has…

Connie Mack and the Early Years of Baseball

Russians will go to the polls to elect a new president in March 2008, Americans in November, and in both countries the media frenzy is in full swing. But there the similarity ends. In today's polarized America, the election is about policy--Iraq, health care, the culture wars. In Russia, it's about…

Republicans, though still traumatized by their resounding defeat in the 2006 election, are growing convinced they can win the White House again in 2008. They believe things are beginning to turn their way. The war in Iraq is being won. The Democratic Congress is so unpopular that even House Speaker…

IT WAS A REASONABLE position (though a mistaken one) to oppose the war in Iraq. It was a reasonable position (though a mistaken one) to oppose the surge of troops at the beginning of 2007, on the grounds that it seemed unlikely the surge could succeed, and that some kind of…

Earlier today John McCain said that former NYPD commissioner Bernard Kerik's indictment calls into question Rudy Giuliani's judgment. The Giuliani campaign has responded, in force, issuing a document noting that John McCain had complimentary things to say about Giuliani even while Kerik's legal…

The line of the day comes from Kay Hymowitz's perceptive, comprehensive, and sure to be controversial new essay in City Journal on the "New Girl Order": "There's much to admire in the New Girl Order - and not just the previously hidden cleavage." In the piece, Hymowitz traces the globalization of…

IN THE FASHIONABLE salons of the East, illegal immigration is not much discussed. The gathered denizens may chat about the deplorable scandal that engulfed the Knickerbocker basketball club or the dominance of the New England football outfit or even the soul-crushing traffic on the Beltway, but…

John McCain is lacking in funds because his previous campaign manager overspent, and because his signature campaign finance reform legislation, McCain-Feingold, caps the amount of money an individual may donate to McCain's campaign. Ironically, campaign finance loopholes allow individuals to…

According to a fundraising pitch that I received in my email this morning, I am Hillary Clinton's "secret weapon": Dear Matthew, You're my secret weapon. All the other campaigns are busy talking about me. But with your support, I'm staying focused on what's important in this race. I never forget…

It's safe again for college students in California to protest terrorism. This week, a federal judge ordered San Francisco State University (SFSU) and the California State University system to abolish several speech codes that had been used to drag two SFSU College Republicans before a college…

There's been a lot of back and forth in the blogosphere and in the media over how cutting a political issue immigration is. Mickey Kaus seems to have focused on almost nothing but immigration lately, and the question of how it's impacting races. Jim Geraghty has looked at polling showing that for…

Reading New York Sen. Charles Schumer's Times op-ed on his support for Judge Mukasey for U.S. attorney general got me thinking. (It doesn't happen too often!) On the one hand, you have today's news that a New York grand jury has indicted former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik on…

Jan Bittner, senior foreign policy advisor to conservative CDU/CSU Bundestag Leader Volker Kauder, has written a compelling post at the Atlantic Community blog on the plight of the more than 2.2 million Iraqi Refugees who have fled to neighboring countries to escape sectarian violence and ethic…

At a breakfast with reporters yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland discussed Congress and its plans up until the Thanksgiving recess. In his opening statement, he noted the successes of the Democratic-led Congress. What are these successes? Hoyer specifically mentioned the "very…

Last night I caught Rudy Giuliani's speech before the Keystone Corporation annual dinner at the Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. Giuliani spoke briefly about why he's running for president - the standard stump material about terrorism, the economy, and judges - dropped Pat Robertson's name, and took…

Fausta Wertz pulls together some interesting stories about Venezuela. Indebted to Russia, expecting oil revenue that probably won't be realized, and now potentially dealing with a rival with deep oil reserves of its own. It could not happen to a nicer fella than Hugo Chavez.

This Bruce Reed post contains an interesting observation: A recent presidential campaign Web site traffic chart compiled by the Internet tracking service Hitwise shows the Democratic side running true to form: HillaryClinton.com the front-runner with 20 percent of the total hits, BarackObama.com in…

We covered yesterday the range of complaints against the plans of House Democrats to raise taxes while paying for a short-term patch in the Alternative Minimum Tax. Today the Hill reports that the House might even delay a vote on the legislation until they are sure they have the votes to pass it:…

Turin

AS REPORTED AT LENGTH in THE WEEKLY STANDARD--the latest commentary appeared here on September 16, 2007--federal, state, county, and city prison officials have wrestled since the horror of 9/11 with the presence of radical Muslim chaplains in our country's correctional systems. To the shock of most…

New polls are out. In Iowa, Zogby has it 28 percent Clinton, 25 percent Obama, 21 percent Edwards. Hillary, call your office: This is the second Iowa poll in two weeks showing Clinton and Obama in a statistical tie. A third poll, from ARG in late October, shows a wider Clinton lead at 32 HRC, 22…

Today U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman delivered a forceful and compelling speech on the politics of national security. The Independent Democrat from Connecticut had this to say about the Democratic party: The Bush administration's post-9/11 ideological conversion confronted Democrats with an awkward…

Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in 1932 that "a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country." On Tuesday, citizens in left-leaning Oregon blew up the state's progressive…

A friend sends along this funny video:

We note with interest the "little magazine" started at Jewcy.com, and dotted with contributors to THE WEEKLY STANDARD and DAILY STANDARD. We'll be bookmarking The Cabal for frequent reading. Among the bloggers at the Cabal are Stephen Schwartz, Jamie Kirchick, and "chef d'blog" Michael Weiss.

The New York Times reports today that Iraq is looking more and more hopeful: "The Iraqi people have just decided that they've had it up to here with violence," he said, while noting that their demands for electricity, water and jobs have intensified. Hundreds, if not thousands, of displaced…

Radio Farda--the Farsi language service at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty--is increasingly proving a critical source for information about what's happening inside Iran. Radio Farda's job is "surrogate broadcasting"--telling the stories that the Iranian press would report, if only they were free to…

Solid first spot from Big Fred Thompson. The spot that counts is the :60, which is a smart but expensive move. Conventional wisdom is to always use :30's to deliver the same number of spots to the voter audience for half the money. But doing a :60 gives Fred plenty of time to roll along in his…

From First Read's analysis of the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll: Looking more closely at Clinton's numbers in the new NBC/WSJ, [Democratic focus-group guru Peter] Hart says: 'Hillary Clinton is really Richard Nixon, circa 1968' - which is something we've also alluded to in the past. Of…

We've been covering the debate in Congress over how to "fix" the AMT. Ways and Means Chair Charlie Rangel has proposed a repeal that includes a tax increase of $3.5 trillion. We've also discussed how Democrats are claiming that their move to block a tax increase that was never supposed to happen…

Nine months after Hurricane Katrina hit, Howard Dean surveyed a flood-damaged home in the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and said : "I don't want to be partisan at a time like this, but this is why the Republicans are going to be out of business." Or so Dean hoped. While the government's response…

Is impeachment dead or alive? With the referral of Congressman Kucinich's impeachment resolution to committee, Speaker Pelosi says the issue is "disposed of." Majority Leader Hoyer says, "Congress is not going to proceed with impeachment." And Judiciary Chairman Conyers says: "The committee has a…

The results of Virginia's statewide elections are in, and nobody is really surprised. Democrats gained control of the State Senate and minimized the Republicans lead in the House of Delegates. They defeated two of the three targeted incumbent Republican senators in Northern Virginia: Former…

Is it just me or does the Bush and Sarkozy act now thrilling audiences in Washington bear an eerily resemblance to Sandler & Young? Sarkozy does offer a great lesson for the next Republican nominee. In the French election earlier this year, Sarko was the candidate of the weaker party voters were…

PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES, who say everything in just the perfect way and actually do nothing, know in their bones how vacant their words are and cling to the one poll-tested and focus-group ratified act that cannot be reasonably challenged: they profess faith.

ONE OF THE MOST common complaints made against the Bush administration's war policies is it's alleged "unilateralism," an unwillingness to bring in our allies or fight as a coalition. This view overlooks the participation of many countries alongside U.S. forces in both Iraq and Afghanistan.…

When you write about Ron Paul as I did this morning, you have to expect a tidal wave of Paulnuts to flood your Inbox unless you share his followers' unshakable belief in the Texas congressman's messianic characteristics. Over at National Review Online, David Frum took note of this phenomenon and…

Hot Air has the story and the audio: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said on Tuesday that the troop surge, which began in June, has had a significant impact on the situation in Iraq and noted that he had always been critical of the Bush administration for deploying an insufficient number…

This Rasumussen Reports poll shows Clinton's New Hampshire lead shrinking to 10 points. Meanwhile, the Democratic race also is close in Iowa. What's more likely? That Clinton's lead expands in the next two months, or that the race grows tighter? I'd say the latter, if only because most people are…

New copies of the 2008 Almanac of American Politics arrived yesterday, and Michael Barone's opening essay is chock full of interesting facts and analysis. The thing that struck me the most was Barone's theory that the United States has moved from the era of being, politically speaking, a "49…

Gateway Pundit says it best: "The Republicans outmaneuver the Pelosi Congress." Yesterday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich took his resolution to impeach Cheney to the House floor. Rep. Steny Hoyer attempted to table the resolution, which, if passed, would have killed it. But the tables turned on the…

Bill Kristol writes from the road with this reaction to Pat Robertson's endorsement of Rudy Giuliani and Sam Brownback's endorsement of John McCain: McCain got the better of this one. Brownback is a human-rights-supporting representative of much that is admirable about religious conservatism.…

Yesterday, Romney campaign adviser Barbara Comstock told a majority-women group that, although we have the first viable female presidential candidate ever, "The best man for the job is going to be a man." (No, that's not a typo.) Comstock spoke at a National Review panel at the National Press Club…

Some years ago at the beginning of the Putin era, the consensus among several foreign policy experts was that Russia was about to re-assert itself in a manner that it had practiced so well during the Cold War. That is, attacking the United States by proxy. The proxy for the United States was to be…

Democrats have been making the case for some time that many Americans are hurting economically, no matter what the national data may show about overall economic growth and the low unemployment rate. Many point to trouble in the housing sector as a cause of worry for ordinary Americans. Political…

Big day for endorsements. Pat Robertson has taken some time off from claiming to set astounding weight-lifting records and decided to shoulder what could become an even heavier burden: convincing Christian conservatives that Rudy Giuliani shares their values on social issues. Conventional wisdom on…

IN AN ATTEMPT to overhaul an 1872 mining law, the House quietly passed the Hardrock Mining and Reclamation Act last Thursday, imposing royalty taxes on the mineral mining industry. Rep. Nick Rahall, chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and a sponsor of the bill, says it will protect the…

TUESDAY NIGHT MARKED the eleventh Intelligence Squared U.S. debate hosted at the Asia Society and Museum on Park Avenue. Generously endowed by the conservative philanthropist Robert Rosenkranz, IQ2US underwrites a series of intellectual exchanges modeled on the full-blooded forensic style of the…

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I like this new Fred Thompson ad and believe it may resonate among likely Iowa GOP caucus-goers:

This afternoon Dennis Kucinich took to the House floor to press his case for the impeachment of Vice President Cheney. A little while later, and as expected, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer moved to table the resolution without a debate. At 2:53 (according to C-SPAN) the House began a 15 minute vote on…

A friend sends along this press release from Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The press release marks the news that 2007 has been the deadliest year for American troops since the start of the war. One thing to note about this press release, however. Unlike, say, this New York Times story on the…

While reporting on the emergence of conspiracy theories related to 9/11, I've noticed that there is a ton of support for Ron Paul within the 9/11 Truth Movement. To be fair to Rep. Paul, he has disavowed any association with the Truthers and, unlike his former colleague Cynthia McKinney, does not…

As part of the new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, General David Petraeus directed Coalition and Iraqi Security Forces to target Iranian-backed extremists with the same intensity as they were showing in their campaign against al Qaeda in Iraq. In the process, Multinational Forces Iraq has…

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From NRO's Tank blog, a great story about a fellow member of the tribe from my hometown, who now commands the USS Harry S Truman: ... Though decades of flying and sea duty have given [Capt. Herman "Herm" Shelanski] the experience of command, he makes no secret of the fact that a big part of who he…

The Iraq war is clearly confusing Democrats. They declared it lost, pushed for the U.S. to withdraw, denied progress, and now have turned to trying to explain the progress. And the one possibility that seems to have been ruled out is that U.S. troops may have played some part. Why is that notion so…

Late last week, right-wing bloggers were in an uproar (and laughing) about Kooky Congressman Kucinich's forthcoming proposal to impeach Vice President Cheney. Michelle Malkin has the scoop on Kucinich's announcement from last Friday: "The momentum is building for impeachment...Millions of citizens…

In September, I embedded with US forces in Baghdad and southern Baghdad province along with David Tate. We were in Iraq as General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker updated Congress on the state of the surge. David took a slew of photos and video, and when we returned, we linked up with Matt Burden…

Yesterday John McCain delivered a strong anti-ethanol subsidy speech in Iowa: Many Iowans have heard that I oppose federal subsidies for ethanol production. Some of you will have heard that I oppose a protective tariff against sugar-based ethanol imports from places like Brazil. Some of my…

From Slate: Isolationism Isn't the Answer, by Christopher Hitchens. From Commentary: The Global War on Testosterone, by Gabriel Schoenfeld. From the Washington Times: Bush doctrine 2.0? by Frank Gaffney Jr. From the New York Times: A Vote for Justice, by Sen. Charles Schumer. From the Wall Street…

Seinfeld on Larry King Live: "Can we get a resume in here?"

John Podhoretz points out that Ron Paul is in a perfect position to play spoiler in 2008: At the same time, it seems to surprise many that Paul's undeniable grassroots effectiveness hasn't translated to a showing either in national or state polls. That's surely due to the fact that many if not most…

Afghanistan UN Security Accessability Map.Click to view map.

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

YOU'VE PROBABLY SPENT the past weeks sorting through the hourly fluctuations in share prices and interest rates, expert guesses on what the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy committee would do to short-term interest rates, who's in and who's out at Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, and other troubled…

IN MY PREVIOUS PROFESSIONAL life, I had reason to be in contact with dozens of Barack Obama's classmates at Harvard Law School. When he entered the presidential race, I dusted off my Rolodex and began making some calls to get the off-the-record skinny on the Democrats' potential savior.

Marc Ambinder has a noteworthy post on a possible GOP primary scenario that may result in the race continuing through March: Mitt Romney wins Iowa; Mike Huckabee is second; Rudy Giuliani is third; Fred Thompson is fourth. Giuliani wins New Hampshire, followed by Romney or Huckabee or McCain. Romney…

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For a good laugh, read Mark Penn's latest, hilariously defensive "Ignore the Churchill Lies on the Radio, We Are Winning in Zee East" memo to Clinton supporters here. It is a certain early tell that the more trouble a front-running campaign faces, the more they will find themselves fiercely quoting…

Despite the steady decline in U.S. casualties in Iraq, it seem the AP has found away to spin the story into bad news--they've started doing their year-end retrospectives two months early: With just under two months left in the year, 2007 is on course to be the deadliest year on record for American…

Today conservative activist Paul Weyrich endorsed Mitt Romney for president. A friend points out that Weyrich doesn't have, um, the best record of predicting the eventual Republican nominee. In 2000, Weyrich was for Steve Forbes (who now backs this guy). I'm not sure whom Weyrich endorsed in 1996,…

The left is looking for any explanation for the progress in Iraq that would obviate the need to credit the Bush administration and its new strategy (see the latest from the Daily Kos: "As U.S. casualties have continued to drop, many people on the anti-Bush side of the aisle have begun to quietly…

House Subcommitee Chairman Danny Davis (D-IL) believes it's not sufficient that federal employment be open to felons. He's pushing for job set asides for felons as well: Davis said agencies should work with federally and locally funded rehabilitation programs to hire recently released felons as a…

John Podhoretz, in only his second post at Commentary's Contentions blog, has catalogued some of the "feminist" responses to the recent attacks on Hillary Clinton, but one in particular stands out as worthy of endless ridicule. At the end of a semi-incoherent post explaining why Tim Russert is…

New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg has done an okay job of not undoing any of Rudy Giuliani's signature reforms. But this excerpt from Jon Meacham's more-than-6,000-word-long cover story in Newsweek is absolute hyperbole: Note what else he remembers, too: The raised platform. The assembled…

In a telephone interview this afternoon, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani praised retired Judge Michael Mukasey, President Bush's nominee for Attorney General, as someone who "showed a lot of courage" during a controversial confirmation process. Mukasey is a close associate of Giuliani's,…

Stop the presses! Today comes word that Paul Weyrich has endorsed Mitt "Agent of Change" Romney. Says Hot Air: "This one strikes me as a big deal." Me too. As His Eminence noted last week, the Romney campaign appeared to have found its footing by abandoning its quest to be seen as the Authentic…

mr_103107_01.jpg Sri Lanka President Mahinda Rajapaksa meets with Chinese workers at

From THE DAILY STANDARD: The Second Coup, by Bill Roggio. From the Washington Post: All Still Quiet on the Syria Bombing, by Jackson Diehl. From the Honolulu Advertiser: Time to Clarify Our Taiwan Policy? by Richard Halloran. From Asia Times: China's Balancing Act: Guns vs. Rice, by Michael S.…

Earlier this month, Hillary Clinton published her foreign policy manifesto in Foreign Affairs. This week, writing in the Jerusalem Post, Martin Kramer draws some disturbing conclusions from that piece as to Hillary's likely approach to the restarting the Middle East Peace process. Kramer quotes the…

Giuliani adviser Martin Kramer has a noteworthy op-ed on Hillary Clinton's Midde East policy in the Jerusalem Post. The piece takes off from Clinton's Foreign Affairs essay. Kramer says Clinton is triangulating on Israel, and he doesn't like what he sees: The message is this: a Hillary…

Matthew E. Miller discusses the fundamental difference, in his view, between Democrats and Republicans: I think modern day Democrats are deeply disconnected from the sort of patriotism that was universal in American politicians of the early 20th century, and continued until well past World War II…

As Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf deploys tens of thousands of troops to the capital to put down protests, the government continues to cave into the demands of the Taliban in the Northwest Frontier Province. Over the weekend, the military released 25 Taliban fighters from custody in exchange…

On the floor of the House of Representatives tomorrow, Dennis Kucinich will offer a privileged resolution to impeach the vice president. In all likelihood, the measure will be rejected, but it will probably lead to a recorded vote that forces all Members of the House to take a stand for or against…

Congress has yet to act on the president's request for roughly $200 billion in supplemental funding for the war on terror, including the war in Iraq. Given Speaker Pelosi's recent promise that Democrats would offer 'more of the same' in an effort to get President Bush to 'change course' (again?),…

Fred Thompson showed upon Meet the Press this Sunday, sharing, among other things, his thoughts on the problem posed by Iran: "Well, sometimes you're faced with two very bad decisions, and those are two very bad decisions. But what happens if, if a country like this, who talks in terms of the 12th…

On October 19, only months after being nearly dehydrated to death when his feeding tube was removed, Jesse Ramirez walked out of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix on his own two legs. Ramirez is lucky to be alive. Early last June, a mere one week after a serious auto accident left him…

For one who recently returned from Europe, where a colleague and I interviewed an array of domestic security officials in key European democracies, it is a bit of an out-of-body experience to examine the various bills now pending on Capitol Hill that aim to govern how the U.S. government conducts…

American Gangster

Dead Certain

While the average political scientist is lucky to make a name for himself in one area of the field, Samuel Huntington has made major contributions to three: civil-military relations, democratic theory, and international relations. And while most people think of The Clash of Civilizations when they…

A Natural History of Time

Thus reported the Associated Press on Tuesday, October 16, 2007:

UNIVERSITY DIVERSITY

Johnny Cash

The Iranian government is currently intensifying its persecution of its largest religious minority, the Baha'is. This reveals something of the government's nature, and also sheds light on the hotly debated question: Does the regime remain a revolutionary one, or has it become instead a "normal…

October 22-26 was designated "Islamofascism Awareness Week" in a series of events held at college campuses around the United States. The effort was organized by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Predictably, the program elicited a bad reaction from Islamists. The Saudi daily Shams announced on…

The Persistence of Poverty

New York/Miami

He's Not the Boss of Us

Ron Paul has been a striking presence in the Republican presidential debates. One result is he's raised an unimaginable amount of money--$5.1 million in the third quarter--for an obscure congressman from Texas. Another is he's jumped to fourth place (7.4 percent) in a New Hampshire primary poll.…

New York is dead--that's what they said back in 1975. And 1929. And 1860. The city has died more times than you can count, and, like Nosferatu, it always manages to rise from its coffin. Not even the current mayor has been able to put a stake through its smoking heart.

America has won an important battle in the war on terror. We turned an imminent victory for Al Qaeda In Iraq into a humiliating defeat for them and thereby created an opportunity for further progress not only in Iraq, but also in the global struggle. In the past five months, terrorist operations in…

A week ago I suggested the Republican presidential contest could legitimately be considered a five-way race. Now a new Washington Post/ABC national poll has Giuliani at 33 percent (down 1 point from a month ago), McCain at 19 percent (up 7), Thompson at 16 percent (down 1), Romney at 11 percent…

Fred Thompson took his acid bath this morning on Meet the Press. Measured by the traditional standards of Sunday morning political theater, it was an uneven performance. Fred did well on international affairs and "stumbled" on domestic policy. His answer on abortion in particular will come as an…

PAKISTAN'S TENUOUS POLITICAL and security situation just got a whole lot worse. After days of rumors that President Pervez Musharraf would impose a state of emergency in the violence-wracked country, Musharraf followed through on Saturday in a move that is likely to plunge the county into further…

Pervez Musharraf.

The above video is a campaign commercial for Democratic congressional candidate Dan Grant, who's running for the house seat in Texas-10. Although 2008 is still a bouncing baby of a campaign season, Mr. Grant has seized an almost insurmountable lead in the competition to see which candidate can run…

Daniel Gross makes an interesting point in this column on the American gaming industry: The Las Vegas economy is looking more like that of America as a whole - driven by discretionary consumer spending on clothes, entertainment, and food. And as a result, this city that has defined itself as being…

Max Boot has just published an interesting item at the Commentary blog highlighting a new paper by two of our favorite neocons, Reuel Gerecht and Gary Schmitt, titled "France: Europe's Counterterrorist Powerhouse." Schmitt and Gerecht write that "of the things the French do well--and perhaps the…

Mitt Romney's campaign is finding it's message footing, and just in the nick of time. Romney got off track early in his campaign, when he tried to exploit the "pure conservative" space left open when former Beltway-buzz-king George Allen's presidential aspirations collapsed. The purist position…

Via Daily Kos, here's the attempt by the Edward's camp to make hay out of Hillary's lousy debate performance the other night:

This exchange between the DailyKos community and Democrat Jane Harman--one of her party's more serious national security advocates--is pretty funny. The exchange started with some allegations by a Kos 'diarist' against Harman and others: Select members of Congress have been briefed, at least in…

Jay Cost writes about the policy differences among the top three GOP presidential candidates. What's important about this post is that Cost reminds us that most most voters are nonideological: One of my biggest problems with popular analysis of politics - the kind that takes the primary/general…

I don't normally plug DAILY STANDARD articles on the blog, but there are two excellent pieces today that I think merit some special attention. The first is by Christian Lowe, who runs Defense Tech, one of our favorite blogs, in addition to serving as managing editor at Military.com. Christian…

In this episode of the Hoover Institution's "Uncommon Knowledge" hosted by Peter Robinson, Jeb Bush discourses on his time governing Florida, domestic policy issues, and politics in general. The whole thing is worth watching:

Here's an excerpt from David Brooks's very funny column today parodying this week's Democratic debate: WILLIAMS: Senator Clinton, at the end of your husband's administration, you placed your authentic self in a cryogenic vault in the National Archives. Will you allow the archives to release your…

From Investor's Business Daily: Even Harvard Finds the Media Biased, by the editors. From the Daily Mail: Did Israeli Jets Prevent World War III, by Don Surber. From the New York Times: The Fragility of Russian Power, by Stephen Kotkin. From MSNBC: China's Space Effort Undergoing a Sea Change, by…

During this morning's press availability to announce the endorsement of Sens. Coleman and Bond, Mayor Giuliani had some strong words for Senator Barack Obama's proposal to engage uncoditionally in personal diplomacy with the leaders of the Iranian regime. NBC's Matthew Berger reports: Giuliani said…

Last week, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the House of Representatives approved legislation to make it illegal for U.S. Internet hosting companies to give users' personal information to governments that restrict Internet access. The legislation is aimed at China, as well as companies like…

WWS pal Robert Farley (yes, the WWS does have some lefty pals) recently made his case in the American Prospect for abolishing the United States Air Force. The problem, he says, is that "what it does on its own--strategic bombing--isn't suited to modern warfare. What it does well--its tactical…

Near the end of this morning's Today's Show interview, Matt Lauer asks Barack Obama whether or not he believes the U.S. economy is headed for a recession. I'm not sure why Lauer would ask this question in the first place, considering recent economic news, but he did. There's always the danger of…

According to Scott Lehigh's piece in today's Boston Globe, it may as well read: "Thou shalt not criticize Hillary Clinton." Lehigh makes an interesting observation: Accusing one's opponent's of "piling on" is not, in the end, an effective counterattack. It fails to re-draw distinctions in your…

From ABC News: CHARLES GIBSON, ABC NEWS: "At the Pentagon today, military officials gave one of the most upbeat assessments of the security situation in Iraq that we have heard since the opening months of the war. Jonathan Karl is at the Pentagon tonight. Jon?" JONATHAN KARL, ABC NEWS: "Charlie,…

Jim Geraghty suggests that Barack Obama's plan for Iraq doesn't live up to its author's reputation as an intellectual. Specifically, he points to Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops within 16 months, and then return them to Iraq to prevent a genocide, if it appears that one is likely to occur.…

Captured Pakistani soldiers. BBC photo. Click to here to view more images.

Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Barack Obama recently articulated his strategy towards Iran. In an interview with the New York Times, Senator Obama said he would "engage in aggressive personal diplomacy" with the Islamic Republic, and he excused Iranian aggression towards U.S. forces inside…

The coronation of Hillary Clinton was interrupted this week. Her shaky debate performance and her campaign's foolish overreaction are now being followed by the mainstream media's (partial) turn on her. Frontrunner/inevitability campaigns are seductive but dangerous. The fickle and herd-like media…

IT'S TRUE THAT INSURGENT violence is on the rise in Afghanistan, with a surging Taliban taking up tactics first used against U.S. forces in Iraq, including suicide bombs, improvised explosive devices, and vehicle-borne IEDs. Afghan civilians and national security forces are being killed in greater…

WAS THE MARCH 11, 2004, attack on Madrid's commuter trains an al Qaeda operation? More than three years after 191 civilians were killed and almost two thousand more injured by ten backpack bombs planted by Islamic radicals, the answer to such a simple question remains clouded. Just this past…

John Edwards has launched his first major television advertisement in Iowa:

From Arthur Lubow's excellent piece on Lorenzo Ghiberti's 'Gates of Paradise': Then there is the fascinating 'Joshua' panel, which remains in Florence. To portray the crumbling of Jericho's walls before Joshua's army, Ghiberti incised deep cracks in the fortifications. Cracks! Along with holes,…

"Simply put, we have rarely seen this level of frustration, for this extended period of time, in the history of public opinion polling." So says the latest Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research memo, titled "A New America: Unmarrieds Drive Political and Social Change." The memo's authors write:…

Earlier this week, THE WORLDWIDE STANDARD exposed the numerous factual errors in an article by Barry Sanders at the Huffington Post titled "The Military's Addiction to Oil." The author was clearly out of his depth--he knows nothing about the military, and even less about global warming. But that…

Turkey's threat to launch a large-scale military invasion against PKK fighters in Northern Iraq is not only of great concern to policymakers in Washington, where President Bush will meet with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to make a last-ditch plea for Turkish restraint next Monday. Germany,…

Yesterday, we took note of how assignments in Iraq don't interest the American diplomatic corps. Understandably enough. Why would a professional diplomat care to engage the most urgent diplomatic challenge of the 21st century when he could instead be inflating the ego of some third world potentate…

It seems most everyone in Congress agrees that the Alternative Minimum Tax must be 'corrected.' Because the tax was not indexed for inflation when created in 1969, it will ensnare more than 20 million taxpayers in 2008. Congress never intended it to affect that many, and no one wants to pay the…

From General Odierno's briefing today. The graphs speak for themselves about the dramatic changes in Iraq since the full implementation of the surge: ODIERNO: "…Due to Phantom Thunder and Phantom Strike, we have been able to eliminate key safe havens, liberate portions of the population and…

There's more than a hint of a double standard in the response of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to the criticism of her at the MSNBC debate on Tuesday night. The campaign quickly put together a video called 'the politics of piling on' that shows the male candidates focusing ominously on…

Hillary Clinton fumbles a debate and I'm shocked, shocked to hear the tiresome howls of a gender excuse. It's amazing, really. In the special reality of Hillary-world, First Lady experience = Presidential experience; being the Democratic frontrunner = rightful Place in History; and yet suffering…

David Ignatius argues that continuing resolutions - laws that "continue" to fund government agencies at previous-fiscal-year levels - play "havoc with normal management functions such as planning and contracting." The use of continuing resolutions, Ignatius further argues, is a sign of Congress's…

Believe it or not, the AP has corrected its erroneous report that Giuliani had said the leading Democratic presidential candidates wanted to invite Osama bin Laden to the White House. We have the American Spectator's Philip Klein to thank for fact-checking the AP.

Time correspondent Bill Powell reports on how reality sometimes intrudes on an otherwise pleasant weekend in the Shanghai suburbs: After our tennis game on Sunday, my playing partner invited my wife and I over for a post-match cup of coffee. On the way to his apartment, my friend - a westerner who…

Bill Gates made a billion dollars yesterday: So here's another way to look at the amazing rise in Microsoft (MSFT) over the last few weeks. Today, the stock rose $1.24, to $36.81. That made it a nice day indeed for noneother than Chairman of the Geeks Bill Gates. Gates owns 877.5 million shares of…

RedState.com's Jeff Emanuel has an amazing story in the American Spectator about an al Qaeda attempt to kidnap four American paratroopers that coincided with David Petraeus's congressional testimony. As Bryan at HotAir notes, the effect (at least in the mainstream media) would have been like Tet.…

Goldfarb is away this morning, intrepidly covering a Hillary Clinton event at Wellesley College. I was invited to tag along, but found the offer eminently resistible. Besides, I vowed never to return to the Wellesley campus after one of Wellesley's fetching co-eds rejected me some twenty years ago.…

Pakistani soldier mans a checkpoint. Click to Enlarge.

The Danger Room's Noah Shachtman has the story under the entirely appropriate title "Diplos Cry in Their Milk Over Iraq Assignments." Apparently the State Department hosted a "town hall meeting" for employees upset over the prospect of being sent to work in Baghdad's Green Zone. Let's go to the…

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