December 2007

An open letter to the Iowa GOP from Alexander J. Madison and sent out by the Hunter campaign. As one friend describes it, it's "the most conservative statement ever." Enjoy... Dear Iowegians, Every presidential election season, your state has the opportunity to help shape the election going…

Kim-Albright-thumb.jpg Because it worked out so well the last time...

Mike Huckabee announced this afternoon that he will not be airing negative ads on Mitt Romney in the closing days of the Republican battle in Iowa. Then, he showed one of those ads to reporters and explained his decision not to air it. (As he spoke, Huckabee was surrounded by placards highlighting…

On Friday I covered the interim population estimates recently issued by the Census Bureau, and their implications for the elections of 2012 and beyond. Political consultant Soren Dayton wrote a response at his excellent blog eyeon08, where he threw a dash of cold water on my optimistic assessment.…

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From the New York Post: Interview with Petraeus, by Ralph Peters. From Townhall: Lessons from the Surge, by Michael Barone. From the New York Post: Reality Chech, by Stephen Schwartz. From the New York Daily News: Well done, soldiers, by General George W. Casey Jr. From THE DAILY STANDARD: State of…

Marine milblogger "Slab" reports from western Iraq: As for my personal end of this little fracas, it's been distressingly quiet. I'm certainly pleased about our progress in this little slice of the province, but ANGLICO is an organization that specializes in delivering large quantities of…

National Defense reports: The Marine Corps and the Army have decided to curtail their orders for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles, ostensibly because they foresee fewer roadside bomb attacks in Iraq. But there are other reasons, such as the impracticality of operating these vehicles…

Remember Black Sunday? You can check out the Ron Paul Blimp here. What will they think of next, you ask? Watch Ron Paul's Time Machine Mega Money Mania!

You can read it at the Campaign Standard. The key quote: The last DMR poll appeared a month ago, and had Huckabee at 29 and Romney at 24, followed by Giuliani at 13, Thompson at 9, and McCain and Paul at 7. What poll results tomorrow morning could affect the outcome Thursday night? Two results in…

Polls are supposed to predict election outcomes. But, as everyone knows, they can also affect the outcome. This is especially the case in multi-candidate primaries or caucuses. For one thing, some voters don't want to "waste" their votes on laggards. For another, some voters who are more-or-less…

r185847_692129.jpg Japanese prime minister Yasuo Fukuda.

THE SUNDAY RASMUSSEN tracking poll showed some interesting results. John McCain was in the lead with 17 percent of the vote. It was the first time all year that McCain led the poll. Careful observers will note that on Sunday, the year 2007 was 364 days old. Years don't get much older than that.…

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On December 19, President Bush signed an energy bill that will, among many, many other things, force you to buy a new kind of light bulb. He did this because environmental enthusiasts don't like the light bulbs you're using now. He and they reason, therefore, that you shouldn't be allowed to have…

AN APOLOGY

Journals

Detroit

For Christians--and many Muslims--the main reason to celebrate this Christmas is, of course, Jesus' birth. But there are also trends in the church worldwide that make this Advent season at once a time of especial hope and a time of great suffering and darkness.

The Careful Use of Compliments

I remember the excitement. It was the week before Christmas a year ago, and I had lazily picked up my copy of Time magazine. And there it was: Time's Person of the Year for 2006 is "You."

Ottumwa, Iowa

The first time I heard them was in the late 1990s at Zinno's, a now-departed New York piano room/Italian restaurant that was my Friday night haunt--and it was a shock. It wasn't just the speed: Lots of jazz musicians can spit out the notes with the facility (and imagination) of a machine gun. It…

Not So Little Sister

I arrived in Hangzhou on a plane from Beijing one Saturday in August. Wen picked me up at the airport. We had met once, years before, at an international gathering in Jakarta. Back then, at dinner one night, the Americans around the table had argued over China policy. Afterward, I'd given Wen my…

Tamburlaine

Salem, New Hampshire

Every four years, I use the period of quiet contemplation that precedes the mad swirl of caucuses and primaries to make myself a better citizen/journalist. I do so by abandoning my usual political position of completely disengaged nihilism, upgrading to a more civically conscious indifferent…

Jonathan Kozol is back. The leftist education expert has been promoting his latest book--Letters to a Young Teacher--preaching his gospel on NPR stations, at radical churches, and at book stores across the country. He is a seductive figure in the pulpit, spreading a message of antagonism to every…

Waterloo, Iowa

Sweeney Todd

Aboard the Huckabus

Lawrence Weiner: AS FAR AS THE EYE CAN SEE

Reason has posted an interview with Roger Stone, whom Matt Labash profiled for THE WEEKLY STANDARD a few weeks ago. You can read the excellent Labash piece here, and below is the video from reason.tv.

On Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace asked the Roundtable for their predictions for the Iowa caucuses: WALLACE: All right. Enough talk. Yepsen ducked it, but I'm not going to let you guys duck it, except for Brit Hume, who will do what he chooses to do. So starting with you, Juan, top three finishers,…

The Sunday Telegraph carries this story today: The critics said it couldn't be done, but the vision and determination of General David Petraeus have brought greater security and cause for optimism to the people of Iraq. He is The Sunday Telegraph's Person of the Year. The piece is worth reading,…

Back in July, when Iran first launched Press TV, a state-subsidized, 24 hour, English-language news network, Louis Wittig wrote a piece for THE DAILY STANDARD analyzing some of the station's early reporting. His conclusion: "Press TV broadcasts a guy in a collarless shirt telling the story the…

Surely one of the most important thing Republican primary voters are evaluating in these final days before they begin casting votes is a candidate's views on the size and scope of government. And on that subject, these voters will want to pay careful attention to the words of Mike Huckabee from…

We are down to the last 100 hours in Iowa. On the Democratic side the big factor to watch is support for John Edwards in the stretch. If he stays in the hunt, he could either win by an inch or simply pull enough anti-Hillary vote away from Obama to give the former First Lady an comeback win. If he…

Here at the Weekly Standard, we honor excellence. Thus, I am sure that all my colleagues, even the Image

On the one hand you have the Feiler Faster Thesis, which holds that in our era of rapidly churning news cycles, seemingly major stories vanish quickly and alter the political landscape for a shorter period than one would think. The Feiler Faster thesis suggests that by the time Iowans fill their…

A Reuters report on Iraq today carries the ridiculous yet entirely accurate headline "Iraq gains are "reversible": Petraeus." Of course the gains are reversible, but that was hardly the key message Petraeus was delivering in his letter to the troops. But more interesting is that after reporting…

Liz Cheney that is, and the one-two punch comes from the Washington Post's top ten opinion stories of 2007 by pageviews: 2. Why Bush Will Be a Winner by William Kristol, published July 15. A rousing (and controversial) defense of the president's legacy. The rebuttal, Why Bush is a Loser by David…

Editor's Note: On December 28, General David Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Force Iraq, sent the following letter to his troops.

From North Shore Journal: Sometime on December 27, 2007, in a fierce gun battle in Al Kut, a milestone was reached. The 20,000 AIF [Anti Iraqi Forces] terrorist was killed by our troops. Says Ace: "Cowards, Murderers Hardest Hit."

With a new ad in New Hampshire, Romney's gone after McCain for his failure to support the Bush tax cuts and his support of the failed immigration reform/amnesty. But as Slate's John Dickerson reports, the McCain campaign is apparently toying with a response that comes from...Mitt's own people.…

While I believe in the infallibility of divine insight, your Cardinal is only human, not to mention French and reactionary, so I, um, could be wrong on many of the opinions I've been expressing about the primary race. I doubt it. Still, I thought I'd show a little humility in this Holiday season…

Within one day of the Bhutto assassination in the military garrison city of Rawalpindi, there are multiple contradictory reports on how Benazir Bhutto was killed. The Pakistani government has changed its portrayal of her death three times in the 24 hours since her death. First she was reported to…

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The Pakistani government has directly implicated the commander of the newly created Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, or Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema claimed the government intercepted a phone conversation…

So Glenn Greenwald got his knickers twisted over Peggy Noonan's column today, which attempted to distinguish the "reasonable" candidates from their "unreasonable" competition: John Edwards is not reasonable. . . . .[W]e can't have a president who spent two minutes on YouTube staring in a mirror and…

Andrew Roth points to Business Week's expert projection of key economic indicators for 2008. The consensus is for 2.1 percent growth on the year, with growth of 2 percent and 2.4 percent in the second and third quarters. To the extent that voters' perceptions of the economy affect their votes in…

This week the Census Bureau released new data on population shifts from the 2000 census through today. The New York Times reports that while the subprime mortgage crisis has slowed the population shift away from states such as California, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, the trend for the…

A letter from General David Petraeus to American troops in Iraq: 28 December 2007 Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and Civilians of Multi-National Force-Iraq: As 2007 draws to a close, you should look back with pride on what you, your fellow troopers, our Iraqi partners, and…

Dean Barnett has some interesting analysis on the WWS of the latest poll from the Los Angeles Times: There's another interesting aspect of the poll. It appears the LAT labeled 90% of the polled Republicans as likely voters. Given that adding the 10% of unlikely voters to the pool swelled Huckabee's…

Gertz reports that the Dems are "hurting morale" in Iraq: Marine Corps Cpl. David Goldich, a University of Virginia graduate who spent two tours of duty in Iraq, says Democratic attacks on the war undermined troop morale. Cpl. Goldich, who returned from Anbar province in November after about 300…

The headline from the AP, "Troops Seeing Victories Over Militants": U.S. forces said they waged successful battles against both Sunni and Shiite extremists in the north and south of Baghdad, and announced Dec. 27 they had seized two men possibly linked to the capture of three American Soldiers…

From Slate: Iraq Starting to Feel Like Home, by Lawrence Kaplan. From the New York Post: Surge & Denial, by Michelle Malkin. From the Washington Times: Gordon England's War, by Frank Gaffney Jr. From the Wall Street Journal: When Principle Trumped Partisanship, by John Fund. From the Washington…

Arianna Huffington has posted a rather moving elegy for her late and long-time friend Benazir Bhutto: The world is debating the political fallout from Benazir Bhutto's assassination -- from fear of chaos in Pakistan to the impact of her death in Iowa. There is already no shortage of analysis about…

James Kirchick had a piece in yesterday's New York Daily News that noted this interesting result from a recent poll: According to a Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll released last week, Lieberman's endorsement makes only 15% of independents more likely to vote for McCain, yet it persuades 25% of…

THERE ARE A LOT of words one could use to describe former congressman Charles Wilson--drunkard, sleazy, womanizer, patriot--but the one that most comes to mind in my dealings with him was simply "persistent."

The L.A. Times conducted a widely discussed poll of Iowa and New Hampshire voters. In Iowa, the Times had Huckabee leading Romney 37%-23%. In her write-up of the poll results, Times staff writer Janet Hook oddly neglected to mention that the results among likely voters are much closer. Counting…

Judicial Watch has named its ten most corrupt political figures of 2007, and the list may surprise. It includes a number of very well-known politicians who have received little attention for their questionable business deals. Among them are: Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA): ...Feinstein reviewed…

For those of you who were wondering how long it would take ranking Democrats to blame the Bhutto assassination on the Bush administration and the Iraq war, wonder no more. Russ Feingold has done the honors: The focus on Iraq has been a real disservice to focusing on this part of the world where a…

The Iraqi Army claimed to have captured the minister of defense of the Islamic State of Iraq, al Qaeda's political front organization. Ahmed Turki Abbas was captured after being wounded in a skirmish near Mahmudiyah and "claimed the rank of defense minister," Qassim al Moussawi, Iraq's military…

Flash Presentation on the Ramazan Corps and the Iranian Ratlines into Iraq. Click the map to view. A Flash Player is required to view, click to download.

According to the US Census Bureau, approximately 35,000 New Yorkers (out of a total population of slightly more than 8 million) claimed Pakistani ancestry in the 2000 Census. That amounts to about 0.4 percent of the entire population of the city. So why is New York City Mayor Bloomberg so fast to…

In the wake of the tragic and disturbing news out of Pakistan, most of the presidential candidates rushed out pro forma statements of condolences and concern with varying skill. Only Bill Richardson had the temerity to go further. Richardson considered the immediate, chaotic aftermath of a…

The Bhutto assassination has already prompted reaction from most of the candidates. Not surprisingly, the statement by Mike Huckabee has drawn the most criticism. Here's CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes: He made a bad choice of words when saying the U.S. needs to consider "what impact does it…

In response to my earlier post, Matt Rhoades, communications director for the Romney campaign, has responded: "Often in this campaign the foreign policy debate has been dominated by Iraq. Events like today remind us that there are other dangerous places in the world, and they are connected to the…

One week to go and while almost anything can still happen, the GOP race seems to have settled into a 3-way battle. Romney vs. McCain vs. Huckabee. Some thoughts: Rudy is fading fast. He's channeling his GOP mayoral predecessor John Lindsey's ghost from the '72 Democratic primary and pinning his…

Most of Mitt Romney's statement on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto was the kind of rhetorical fluff one expects from politicians responding to a developing crisis. But then there is this bizarre line: "For those who think Iraq is the sole front in the War on Terror, one must look no further…

NRO has just posted a forum titled "After Bhutto" with some good analysis. Jonathan Foreman writes that Musharraf is likely to be "badly damaged at least in the short term," and that "this could easily grow into widespread civil unrest, especially in the wake of her funeral tomorrow." He holds out…

Al-Qaeda-Mustafa-Abu-al-Yazid.jpg Mustafa Abu al Yazid

Over at Hot Air, Bryan writes: What does "justice" mean in the context of jihad, if jihadists perpetrated this attack? When they're caught, tried and imprisoned in some countries, they remain unapologetic enemies of the rest of the world and they tend to get early parole. If they're not allowed to…

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THE IMPRESSIVE CONVENTIONAL military strength post-industrial states have procured in the past half-century has helped to determine the shape and nature of modern warfare. In a geostrategic environment where conflict continues to persist between advanced militaries and their substandard…

THE HOUSE AND SENATE squeezed through last-minute bills in a marathon session last week akin to the final exams period some members' college-aged children just muddled through. A bleary-eyed, sleep deprived House and Senate finally emerged with the passage of some key pieces of legislation on…

If you haven't already checked out the Holiday Reading suggestions from the staff at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, take a look. The boss, sticking with his selection from 2004, wrote: Anything by P. G. Wodehouse. Anything by Leo Strauss. Anything by Donald Westlake. Then we see this over at the Corner: It…

miniature-UAV-Iraq.jpg Iraqi soldier with captured UAV. (AFP)

Multinational Forces Iraq has confirmed it killed a senior al Qaeda in Iraq commander during a raid near Samarra on November 8. The remains of Abu Abdullah, also known as Muhammad Sulayman Shunaythir al-Zuba'i, have been positively identified by Multinational Forces Iraq. Just prior to his death,…

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Perhaps others have called attention to this item from the Des Moines Register's David Yepsen. Bob Dole copied the Register on a letter he wrote to Mike Huckabee criticizing the governor's recent article in Foreign Affairs. The nugget from Dole: "As a veteran, I worry about the future security of…

I got this email from the Huckabee campaign late in the morning of Chirstmas Eve. The text reads: Today and tomorrow, as we celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with friends and family, let us bow our heads and also give thanks for the brave men and women serving overseas in Afghanistan, Iraq…

Not content to pull out of Basrah before the security situation there could be settled, it seems the British have again sought to conduct negotiations with the Taliban, the group that sheltered al Qaeda prior to and after September 11. On December 11, This is London reported that Prime Minister…

Michelle has a must-read post up looking back at the story that defined 2007--the surge: For me, what happened in January defined the rest of the year. We rang in 2007 with vehement Democrat opposition to the "surge" in Baghdad. In the ensuing 12 months, Democrats tried and failed repeatedly to…

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The current issue of Vanity Fair carries a very fine piece by Sebastian Junger chronicling the efforts of the 503rd Infantry Regiment (airborne) to get some sort of control over the Korengal Valley in eastern Afghanistan. The story has some finely observed moments of infantry life: Sure enough,…

THE POPULAR NOTION about Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee is that they're soaring in the 2008 presidential race because they're candidates of change. And indeed that's true. But it's a particular kind of change that is key to their appeal. They might be called the "take it easy" candidates.

WHEN WE PAID pundits try to provide campaign analysis, we often strain to find historical analogies. Although I'm not asking for sympathy, please understand that it's not easy. There have been only fifty-something presidential campaigns, and obviously those conducted in the horse-and-buggy era…

J'Accuse! Talented Super Blogger and sharp observer of all things political Mickey Kaus smells a conspiracy of former McCain aides to create a phony spin-driven sense of momentum on behalf of Sen. John McCain. Your Cardinal is suspected by the perspicacious Mr. Kaus of being in cahoots with this…

"Character matters most": I could see how someone down in, say, Little Rock, who clicked on those words might ask for equal treatment. Here are the pages that someone might insist on. And this page, too. Doesn't it take some will power to put down that fork?

Be sure to check out Joel Achenbach's more-serious-than-not thoughts on robot love in the Washington Post.

From Christopher Caldwell's recent column on religion in American politics: Thanks to constitutional limits on government's right to meddle in religion, churches are the surest refuge from overweening government. Mr Smith's church is safer from regulation than Mr Smith's hardware store.…

The staff of the WEEKLY STANDARD's recommended Christmas reading can be found here. For what it's worth, here are the best books I read in 2007: Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Stephen King's Misery. Tom Wolfe's Hooking Up. Harvey Mansfield's A Student's Guide to Political Philosophy.…

According to the Real Clear Politics average, John McCain has moved into third position in the Iowa GOP caucus. While a lot of attention has been paid to McCain's New Hampshire surge, less notice has gone to the Arizona senator's Iowa rebound. But McCain's campaign seems to have noticed - the…

As recently as a month or two ago, political analysts were drafting obituaries for social conservatism in America. They reasoned that for the first time in several decades, no viable, credentialed social conservative was seeking the Republican presidential nomination. They noted that in the absence…

How's Your Drink?

Jews and Power

A Contract with the Earth

Union City, California

THE ARCTIC FREEZES OVER

With security improving in Iraq, it's possible for the first time in a long time to think about the role a sovereign Iraq will play in the Middle East.

Pristina, Kosovo

The Most Noble Adventure

Inman, South Carolina

Some personal declarations: Mitt Romney is not my candidate. He is (in my humble opinion) a man of principles so pragmatic that he lacks any unshakeable political foundation, save that he ought to be president of the United States. He is a politician of the moderate center who has sat down with his…

THE VALUE OF NONPROFITS

The Christmas Almanac and The Little Big Book of Christmas. Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Christmas Collection and The Kingfisher Book of Classic Christmas Stories. A Child's Christmas in Wales and Christmas Stories by Charles Dickens, for that matter: I've never quite understood why people give…

Okay, if he won't mention it, I will: The year just ending marks the 25th anniversary of The McLaughlin Group, the landmark public affairs TV show founded by John McLaughlin. It's odd that McLaughlin himself hasn't made a bigger deal of it. A shameless showman, he's celebrated his earlier…

Just moments into the third Republican presidential debate, last June 5, CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee about Iraq. "Governor Huckabee, do you have confidence in the government of Iraq, the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, that he's going to do what…

Soldier's Heart

The defining moment of the Democratic presidential campaign so far came during the Des Moines Register debate, December 13, at 2:10 P.M. Central time.

American capitalism as we know it is dead; America is now the Argentina of the north, a place where no contract is sacred. So go the more apocalyptic reactions to the Bush administration's proposed intervention in the home mortgage market. "Who would invest in U.S. bonds or mortgages if the…

Atonement

The Backwash Squeeze and Other Improbable Feats

I don't read many novels, but I picked up Middlemarch recently after reading an essay about George Eliot by Gertrude Himmelfarb. It struck me as kind of a woman's book, but I loved it, all 800-plus pages of it. (Yes, I know the author was a woman.) Middlemarch is so good that I bought copies for…

There's an amusing front-page story in Sunday's Washington Post, by Michael Shear and David Broder. The headline and first two sentences say it all. The headline: "Splintered GOP Seeks Unifying Presence; Dispirited Party's Harmony Elusive." The lede: "For three decades, the Republican presidential…

In this week's issue of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Bill Kristol writes: One additional point: Petraeus's counterinsurgency stands out not just for its conceptual ambition and the skill of its execution but for its humanity. There were those who argued that the U.S. military could not succeed in…

At THE DAILY STANDARD we've posted the English translation of an interview with General Petraeus by Urs Gehriger and Matthias Rub that first appeared in the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche. Some highlights: Gen. Petraeus: "[W]e have seen progress in about every different respect and in almost every area…

A few weeks ago, Entertainment Weekly compiled a list of the "50 Smartest People in Hollywood." Checking in at number five was Will Smith, the star of the current hit "I Am Legend." Smith was the highest ranked performer on the list, edging out the sixth ranked Meryl Streep. After Streep, you had…

A well informed (and in the proverbial loop) friend of the WWS emails regarding Condi Rice's recent criticism of Mike Huckabee: Ok, so I'll be the first to admit that I really don't like Huck. Frankly he annoys me more than Ron Paul. Nevertheless, what Condi just did annoys me even more. She has…

Editor's Note: This interview took place on December 17, 2007, and was a joint venture of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche and Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

For America's social conservative movement, 1988 was a milestone year. It was the first election cycle in which conservative social issues (led by the Willie Horton prison furlough issue) clearly turned a general presidential election from one party to the other, with minimal help from economic and…

Courtesy of K-Lo at the Corner, above is a clip of Ronald Reagan's seminal "Time for Choosing" speech. What I find most remarkable about the speech beyond its extraordinary content is the simple, straight forward language and the appropriately spare delivery. There were no clumsy applause lines, no…

Jonah Goldberg has penned a fantastic column on Hillary Clinton's Christmas advertisement. Here's the ad, provided by Campaign Circus:

In entertainment news, Sacha Baron Cohen has decided to retire his most famous creation, Kazakh "journalist" Borat Sagdiyev. Sagdiyev was of course the eponymous star of Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, in which he tried, among other things, to…

Approaching the end of the year, there have been a number of stories about the edge Democrats have had in fundraising for 2007. There's no question that they have had the advantage of a base motivated to end the war, and of lobbyists eager to curry favor with new leaders they had ignored for years.…

The Pakistani Taliban continues their terror campaign in the Northwest Frontier province. The latest suicide attack targeted former Interior Minister Aftab Sherpao while he conducted Eid prayers at a mosque in the town of Aftab Sherpao in the settled district of Charsadda in the Northwest Frontier…

A reader sends along this link to a blog that has found four books that say George Romney supported and/or "marched" with Martin Luther King Jr. No question George Romney advocated civil rights. I guess it all comes down to what the meaning of "march" is.

A new study commissioned by the German interior ministry about the increasingly radicalized religious and political beliefs of the country's more than three million Muslims has triggered a political earthquake and much soul-searching about how to confront the rising security threat posed by…

Roll Call reports that the House Ethics Committee has quietly issued a new interpretation of the house gift "ban" which allows lobbyists to throw lavish parties for Members of Congress at national party conventions: The ethics committee's guidance last week said that while lobbyists or lobbying…

PERHAPS THE ONLY THING more disappointing than Moscow's shipment this week of lightly enriched uranium to fuel the power reactor at Bushehr in Iran was President Bush's endorsement of it. "If the Russians are willing to do that [supply the uranium], which I support, then the Iranians do not need to…

The New York Times has looked into the accusations that Rudy Giuliani's office paid for travel to the Hamptons to see then-mistress Judith Nathan through "burying" the expenses into reimbursements paid by obscure city agencies. The Times found that "all eight of Mr. Giuliani's trips to the Hamptons…

The latest Strategic Vision poll has Thompson placing third in Iowa. Meanwhile, in addition to Rep. Steve King's endorsement, Thompson has the support of Bill Salier, who used to support Tancredo. Timothy Carney of the Evans-Novak Political Report recently wrote a dispatch from Iowa in which he…

The Politico reports that rank and file Congressional Democrats recognize that a relentless focus on retreat in Iraq hasn't helped the party in 2007, and would hurt them more if it continues in 2008: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, despite their pledges to continue…

Noonan posted earlier on the "superb memo from retired General Barry McCaffrey." It's worth reading in full, but it's also worth noting that the recommendations made by McCaffrey are nearly exactly in line with those made by Fred Thompson, and for many of the same reasons. You can read Thompson's…

WHEN SENATOR GEORGE Mitchell appeared on Fox News Sunday to discuss his eponymous report that had rocked the baseball world, he bristled when Chris Wallace mentioned that some of Mitchell's conclusions were based on hearsay. Wallace cited the case where Baltimore Oriole Larry Bigbie ratted out his…

As he mentioned the other day, Mitt Romney graduated at the top of his class at BYU with a degree in English. Yet his favorite novel is the L. Ron Hubbard potboiler Battlefield Earth. Hmm. Romney spent at least two years studying the vast canon of Western literature and his favorite book is…

Image Michael Corleone, Mike Huckabee, Uncle Remus (Not pictured: Tom Friedman) My parents were enormous admirers of the child-raising techniques of B.F. Skinner. Stuck as I was in a Skinnerian box until the age of 30, beloved childhood figures like Uncle Remus are therefore unfamiliar to me. I…

No one set to replace the 1600 man contingent yet, either. From the AFP: The Netherlands announced that Dutch troops would leave Afghanistan from July 2010, though it remained uncertain whether other nations would send enough soldiers to replace them. "I do not have assurances that other countries…

Just posted at Michael Yon's website is a superb memo from retired General Barry McCaffrey on the state of affairs in Iraq. You won't find a more honest assessment that better summarizes what went right and what went wrong in 2007. Read the whole thing here. While the focus of the memo is justly…

To the Men and Women of the United States Armed Forces On behalf of a grateful Nation, Laura and I send our best wishes for the holidays. In this season of giving, we remember our duty to others, and we see that sense of duty fulfilled in the men and women who wear our Nation's uniform. Our country…

PORKBUSTING BLOGGERS AND muckraking journalists received an early Christmas present on December 13, when the White House Office of Management and Budget launched USAspending.gov, an Internet search engine that makes information about federal contracts, grants, earmarks, and loans exceeding $25,000…

Des Moines, Iowa This New York Times story is getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere. It's a good look at Huckabee in Iowa. A couple of additional details suggest Huckabee's use of Christmas has been even more effective than the article implies. At his speech in Des Moines on Wednesday,…

Soren Dayton: The whole Mitt Romney/Martin Luther King thing just gets weirder and weirder. He told the Detroit Free Press: 'You know, I'm an English literature major as well. When we say, "I saw the Patriots win the World Series," it doesn't necessarily mean you were there - excuse me, the Super…

THE NEW NATIONAL Intelligence Estimate has led many to call for a new policy towards Iran. Sen. Hillary Clinton "vehemently disagree[s]" that "nothing in American policy has to change." Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said the report confirmed the Russian view that "there is no military…

Des Moines, Iowa Is Huckabee boxing himself in? Last night, Mike Huckabee accused Mitt Romney of putting his political interests before the interests of his constituents by refusing to grant any pardons during his time as governor. "My opponent says there's something about judgment," he said. "I'll…

Does President Bush intend to stick the knife in with a smile? He complimented Congress today on passage of an end-of-year spending bill with some funding for U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as an energy bill and legislation to address the subprime mortgage problem. Regarding the omnibus spending…

Des Moines, Iowa Tom Tancredo endorsed Mitt Romney at a press conference at the Mariott Hotel in downtown Des Moines, Iowa, today. Tancredo said that he met with Romney this morning and that he is convinced the former Massachusetts governor is committed to securing the borders and ending sanctuary…

I missed this, but Democratic consultant and Fox News contributor Bob Beckel made an excellent point regarding Joe Lieberman's recent endorsement of John McCain: It's hard to imagine that Joe Lieberman would have endorsed a Republican for president if he remained a Democrat in good standing in the…

Here's some evidence to back up Richelieu's insight that "John McCain could indeed win the nomination." (We Americans occasionally try to provide evidence to support assertions, something foreign to the Gallic mind of Richelieu.) 1. Look at the new Fox national poll: McCain continues to trend up…

From John Harwoord's Republican-race-is-wide-open piece in today's Wall Street Journal: Indeed, the serial erosion of support for Messrs. McCain, Romney and Giuliani has alarmed some longtime Republicans about the prospect of disarray persisting until next summer's Republican National Convention in…

Reading Steve Hayes's post on Romney and ordinary Americans, I'm surprised that this hasn't yet caught up with the former Massachusetts governor. Particularly with moments like this from a couple weeks ago: At times, the wealth of the Romney family clashes with voters' more modest circumstances.…

Beware the false Gospel ... of heathens and worse yet ... bad polls. The new ARG polling out today on Iowa and N.H. looks off because it near-certainly is. How can polls be wrong? It's easy, and more likely in a crazy environment like the present. First, some polls - rarely - hit a bad sample.…

Bill Kristol notes the oddness of Hillary Clinton speaking as if she had been co-president during the 1990s, but it's actually odder than the boss knows. I spent the early part of the week following Clinton around Iowa and was struck by two formulations she used to talk about her role as first…

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"People talk about poverty in this campaign. Well, we lifted more people out of poverty in the 1990s than during any time in our history." That was Hillary Clinton yesterday, in Iowa, taking a shot at big-talker John Edwards - but more important, raising two fundamental questions about her…

Indianola, Iowa For ten minutes Thursday morning, Lanae Price was a media star. Moments earlier, the homemaker from Winterset, Iowa - a forty-minute drive from the Indianola Country Club - told former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney that she worried about how "so many American politicians cannot…

Unable to enact any meaningful legislative accomplishments, Congressional Democrats are eschewing substance in favor of a new slogan: ...the majority party signaled that they would shift their top focus from trying to cut off funding for the Iraq War to the economy and health care in the new year,…

WWS pal and frequent DAILY STANDARD contributor Christian Lowe had an excellent piece on the M4 Carbine at Military.com on Wednesday. The crux of it: The primary weapon carried by most soldiers into battle in Iraq andAfghanistan performed the worst in a recent series of tests designed to see how it…

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With a sharp reduction in the deadly landmine attacks used by the Iranian-backed Shia terrorists known as the Special Groups, a debate has raged over whether Iran has worked to reduce the number of attacks inside Iraq. The newly released report "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq" refutes the…

West Des Moines, Iowa In a speech he gave at the Center for Strategic and International Studies back in late September, Mike Huckabee briefly described his plan to improve U.S. intelligence. "As president," Huckabee said, "I'd like to beef up our human intelligence capacity, both the operatives who…

At a Mike Huckabee event yesterday afternoon, three sixty-something women, all of them undecided, were discussing the Republican candidates and their possible preferences. The discussion turned to John McCain, torture, and interrogations. Here is a rough transcript of their conversation: Woman…

John McCain could indeed win the nomination. First, he upsets Rudy and Thompson to win third in Iowa and bounces into McCain-fertile New Hampshire as the big surprise of the Iowa caucus. While McCain is still campaigning in Iowa, that means little unless he invests some money in real Iowa TV. We'll…

Des Moines, Iowa Kevin Madden, spokesman for Mitt Romney's campaign, has responded to this post on Fred Thompson and campaign finance reform. Thompson accused Romney of flip-flopping on campaign finance reform. "Governor Romney supported McCain-Feingold," Thompson said at a press availability after…

WRITING AT THE Christianity Today website, Mark Moyar of the Marine Corps University reviews Lyle J. Goldstein's Preventive Attack and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Comparative Historical Analysis. He begins by citing from the latest iteration of the National Security Strategy of the United States…

West Des Moines, Iowa

SINCE MIKE HUCKABEE's meteoric rise in the polls, questions regarding his gravitas have dogged the latest Man from Hope. Oh sure, he can toss out witticisms with the best of them and he's as likable a politician as we've seen in decades, but many wondered whether he had the policy chops to be a…

Baghdad's Rashid district has long been one of the city's most violent quarters (see Jeff Emanuel's report for THE DAILY STANDARD in May of this year for more background), but from my conversation this morning with Col. Ricky Gibbs, Commander, 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry…

The New York Times paints a disturbing picture of Senator Harry Reid's view of President Bush: In private conversations about Mr. Bush with friends and Senate colleagues, Mr. Reid has even used the word "hate," though he clarifies that it is political not personal hatred that he feels... "I fear…

Last night the Senate approved $70 billion in funding for the war in Iraq. As the Standard's Fred Barnes notes, the move represents an astonishing turnaround: An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings…

Scott Rasmussen has pulled a fresh batch of steaming hot polls from the oven, and don't look now but the race has changed yet again. In Iowa, Mitt Romney has pulled within one point of Mike Huckabee, Image

Gallup editor in chief Frank Newport asks: "Just how dissatisfied are Americans?" Newport's answer: It depends on what you are talking about. If you are talking about how satisfied Americans are with the state of the nation, the answer is: not much. Only 27 percent of respondents report being…

This much: A Chinese government website set up for the public to complain about corruption crashed within a day of launching under the volume of cases reported. McClatchy's Tim Johnson reported on another element of China's pervasive corruption a few weeks ago: a law professor in Beijing is…

Interesting new numbers from Scott Rasmussen on the Republican race in Iowa. In a poll of likely caucus participants taken earlier this week, Mike Huckabee is at 28 percent, Mitt Romney is at 27 percent, and John McCain is at 14 percent. Fred Thompson and Rudy Giuliani remain in single digits, tied…

The Edwards campaign is trying hard to generate a sense of momentum in Iowa. I recognize a few trusty old dodges, mirrors, and other tricks from the spinmeister's toolbag in their spiel; they are pulling record (even Goldwater-esque) crowds, internal metrics like web visits, sign-ups, bumpersticker…

Today McCain conducted another in his series of blogger calls. More to come later, but in response to Time snub of General Petraeus in favor of Vladimir Putin as Man of the Year, McCain had this to say: Time has named Vladimir Putin as their Man of the Year and of course you know he has named his…

From Newsmax: Santa Claus has been brought down somewhere over the South China Sea in an apparent collision with a Chinese fighter jet. The collision occurred while St. Nick was flying his sleigh on a return trip from Hong Kong to the North Pole. "Our pilots were flying within a reasonable distance…

Israeli Air Force to Lockheed: Hurry it up: Israel plans to keep its aerial domination of the Middle East intact, and that includes buying Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, accelerating its first deliveries, and deciding whose advanced equipment will be packed into the stealthy strike…

From Defense News: Roosevelt's Navy, 100 Years On, by Donald C. Winter. From the New York Post: The Sergeant's War, by Ralph Peters. From the National Review: Free Steyn! by the editors. From the Wall Street Journal: Bali Who?, by Pete Du Pont. From the Financial Times: The Atlantic Becomes a…

USA Today reports on the latest Gallup poll: As President Bush and Congress battle on the budget, homeland security and the war in Iraq, Americans blame both Republicans and Democrats for the impasse. By more than 2-to-1 margins, they give the president, congressional Democrats and congressional…

After much blogosphere speculation, Time has unveiled the 2007 Man (Person?) of the Year, Russian president Vladimir Putin. The article is long, but if you can get past the first page (detailing Putin's blue eyes, how he drinks his wine, and his love of classical music), it might be worth reading.…

The Democrats continue their march toward complete surrender...to President Bush. Last night, the Senate passed a $70 billion Iraq and Afghanistan funding package--without any restrictions or timetables. The package is expected to pass in the House on Wednesday. Fred Barnes analyzes the vote at the…

Cedar Rapids, Iowa In an appearance in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, that just concluded, Fred Thompson defended his vote in favor of campaign finance reform and took a direct shot at Mitt Romney for flip-flopping on that issue and others: "Governor Romney supported McCain-Feingold. He's changed his position…

I had thought that George Allen's Senate loss to Jim Webb would spare the American electorate from endless, hokey football metaphors. Little did I know, however, that Allen would wind up advising Fred Thompson. And now Thompson's caught the bug! He makes a fourth-quarter reference at around the…

PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE stopped caring about Time magazine's Man of the Year contest some time ago. On a periodic basis, the magazine signaled its chronic frivolity and opted for idiotic gimmicks. You might remember that last year we all won the prize. In an earlier year, the planet Earth won. Even…

Iran Kicks off War Games in 7,000-Mile Persian Gulf Area: TEHRAN (Fars News Agency)- Iran began four-days of war games in the Persian Gulf Monday, designed to ensure it can protect the nation's territorial waters, islands and coastlines, as well as neighboring countries, from foreign threats.…

Democratic leaders in the House have decided to take a vote today on a one-year fix for the alternative minimum tax. In a nod to reality, they have at last decided not to use this legislation as a pretext for raising taxes, instead electing to take up the legislation that passed the Senate by a…

Rudy Giuliani may be stalling in New Hampshire and peeking over his shoulder at Mike Huckabee, who is gaining ground nationally. His campaign may have lost some momentum, and he may be hounded by questions regarding his personal judgment. However: Santa Claus appears with Giuliani in new web-only…

An astonishing turnaround occurred in the Senate on Tuesday: 70 senators voted to fund the Iraq war with a fresh $70 billion and no strings attached. Think about this a moment. Last winter, after Democrats captured the Senate and House, it seemed likely they'd succeed in limiting or ending the Iraq…

Ad Age blogger Ken Wheaton isn't impressed with the new Romney attack ad on Huckabee: "The spot itself seems lacking in focus. It starts with a pro-life, anti-gay-marriage message (to establish his religious bonafides, no doubt and possibly to give the appearance that this isn't an attack ad)…

Tony Blankley joins those who are predicting a possible brokered GOP convention in 2008. Best line: "It is as if each faction of the Grand Old Party feels a stronger passion to defeat its intraparty rival factions than to defeat the Democrats in November."

Bill Kristol just called from the road to tell me the news that Time magazine has selected ... um, Vladimir Putin as 2007's person of the year. "Time's man of the year may be Vladimir Putin," Bill said, "but America's man of the year is General David Petraeus."

LAST MONTH, Sequoia Voting Systems, the nation's third-largest electronic voting machine maker, announced that the company had been sold to private U.S. investors. This would be an unremarkable transaction except that the seller, Smartmatic Corporation, is a Venezuelan-owned company close to the…

Waterloo, Iowa

AN ARTICLE OF FAITH among many liberals is that religion and tolerance don't go well together. In a recent editorial, for example, the New York Times matter-of-factly derided conservative Christians as "the most religiously intolerant sector of American political life." That's quite a sector. It…

Over at the Foreign Policy blog, Joshua Keating has a fascinating brief on the Bolivian provincial autonomy crisis. (Never thought you'd read the words "fascinating" and "Bolivian provincial autonomy crisis" in the same sentence, did you?) Earlier this week four Bolivian provinces declared their…

The Taliban and al Qaeda continue their relentless attacks against the Pakistani security forces. Since December 13, Taliban and al Qaeda suicide bombings and conventional attacks have claimed the lives of 43 soldiers, paramilitary soldiers, and policemen. The numbers obtained are from open source…

The Hill reports: House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) hinted Tuesday that Congress may not be able to stop a big tax increase from hitting 23 million Americans. Hoyer, pressed on whether Congress would resolve disputes over the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), said, "Maybe." His remark came as…

Legend holds that Hernan Cortes burned his ships after landing near Veracruz in 1518, eliminating retreat as an option for his troops. While Ron Paul may want to do the federal bureaucracy what Cortes did to the Aztecs, he apparently wants to ensure that even if he doesn't win the GOP nomination,…

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Des Moines Register political columnist David Yepsen writes that folks shouldn't rule out late surges by Fred Thompson and John Edwards. Here's Yepsen on Thompson: [A]fter a sluggish start, Thompson has sensed an opening in Iowa, and he's moving decisively to exploit it. The opening arises from a…

Not really. But this seems like a good time to introduce WWS readers to a new blog put together by our own Steve Hayes, staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, author of Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President, and a cheesehead wearing, Pabst drinking,…

I'd like to thank all the readers who have written letters helping me learn the meaning of "eisegesis." My ignorance of the term, one wrote, is "probably just from hanging around in different crowds." True! Here's one helpful definition I received: Eisegesis is reading into a text your own prior…

Are the Democrats seeking a scapegoat for the failures of this Congress? Bloggers are buzzing about a report in today's Politico: A group of Senate Democrats has begun quietly exploring ways to replace the venerable Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations…

Republicans always accuse Democrats of waging "class warfare" when the Democrats say they want to raise taxes (they say this a lot). But now we have Republicans waging class warfare ... against other Republicans. That, at least, is the message one takes from this new Huckabee online ad:

From the Wall Street Journal: This Is Not Your Land Anymore, by Jonathan V. Last. From the Wall Street Journal: Why TR Claimed the Seas, by Bret Stephens. From the Washington Times: NIE in the sky?, by James G. Zumwalt. From the Tennessean: This is not a time to backslide in Iraq, by Rep. Marsha…

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I missed it, but apparently Bill O'Reilly offered his pick for Time's "man of the year" last night: General David Petraeus. And it's hard to argue with the pick. NRO laid out the case in an editorial last week, and Hugh Hewitt added his voice to the chorus this morning. Looking down the list of…

It seems like you need a graduate degree to read Huckabee rapid response impresario Joe Carter's email to NRO. Carter uses the word "eisegesis" (your guess is as good as mine!) and references the Whit Stillman classic Barcelona. Team Huckabee should put Carter out in the spotlight more often. It's…

The Shrine of the Bab, this Israeli port city's most distinctive architectural feature, is the final resting place of Siyyid Ali Muhammad, born in Shiraz, Persia, in 1819, one of the two founders of the Baha'i faith, and best known as the Bab, Arabic for "gate." He was the forerunner of the other…

Buried in this AP report on U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's surprise visit to Iraq is the fact that this is Rice's first trip there since ... "September." Granted, the world is a big place, and General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker seem to have things moving in a generally positive…

Bloomberg reports on another case of hypocrisy from the Clintons: Securities and Exchange Commission documents and financial disclosure forms filed by Hillary Clinton show that Bill Clinton, 61, has a financial stake in three investment entities registered in the Cayman Islands by Burkle's Yucaipa…

The blogosphere seems to be filled today with reports on the omnibus spending bill passed last night by the House of Representatives. The Politico writes on the liberal defeat, while the Hill celebrates 'an earmark Christmas.' Along those lines, the Heritage Foundation reports that the omnibus…

One reason that latest Huckabee ad - "What Really Matters" - will prove effective: Exiting from the elevator this morning, a woman said: "Happy Holidays." I didn't know her, but the words she spoke registered with me, and negatively so, since I don't like the pluralizing of Christmas that has…

New York Times reporter Alissa J. Rubin visited Najaf last week, and found strong signs of economic growth and development. According to Rubin, the city is set to become a "hub of Shi'ite political and economic power," a process which will "further weaken the Iraqi central government." Rubin…

After Mitt Romney's much-anticipated speech on religion, I wrote that the speech worked not so much because of what Romney said but how he said it: The speech was effective for an altogether unpredictable reason. Romney became emotional as he delivered it. One problem many conservatives have had…

David Brooks: The presidency is a bacterium. It finds the open wounds in the people who hold it. It infects them, and the resulting scandals infect the presidency and the country. The person with the fewest wounds usually does best in the White House, and is best for the country. Yuck! If the…

Gideon Rachman lists here his top five most important events in 2007. Why? Because "I like making lists." At least he's honest! Here are Rachman's choices: The surge; Putin's Munich speech in which the Russian strongman accused the United States of "plunging the world into an abyss of conflicts";…

Fareed Zakaria: "I've spent my life acquiring formal expertise on foreign policy. I've got fancy degrees, have run research projects, taught in colleges and graduate schools, edited a foreign-affairs journal, advised politicians and businessmen, written columns and cover stories, and traveled…

A friend writes: "This story puts everything in perspective, no?"

A loyal and erudite Campaign Standard reader has figured out what's going on with the Clinton campaign. He writes: "I know you're a big fan of words - if you don't have this one on your list, you should: 'paralipsis,' alternately spelled 'paraleipsis.' It means raising an issue by saying you're not…

I just received from the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life an email recommending "our new and improved Religion & Politics '08." The site's worth checking out, especially since the presidential race already is knee-deep in religion. There's lots of religion-and-politics info here, including…

WHEN BOB HOPE, Bing Crosby and Dorothy Lamour took "The Road to Bali," they left from Australia. Over 50 years later Kevin Rudd, Australia's newly elected prime minister, headed to Bali for a more serious purpose: to sign the Kyoto protocol, to the cheers of the assembled 15,000--or is it…

John Podhoretz writes that Huckabee swallows campaigns whole: Huckabee's path is evident - with surprising victories in early states, he steamrolls faltering campaigns and pushes them aside until he is the only guy left standing. This is precisely the Mitt Romney strategy, only instead of being…

Count Code Pink among the former Democratic supporters who seem disillusioned enough with the new Congress to call for 'regime change.' According to a recent piece in the Washington Times: "We see that the people who advise the leadership of the Democratic Party have been saying to them, 'Let this…

From an excellent Washington Post piece on the durability of F-16, Loren Thompson says: "Lockheed's most potent competitor in the fighter business is Lockheed." The piece is worth reading, and I certainly don't discount the argument that F-16 might, in the long-run, offer more bang for the buck…

Sadr returns to Iraq, delivers sermon in Kufa. [AP Photo] Click to view.

Roll Call reports that one year after they took office promising to curb the corrupting influence of special interests in Washington, Congressional Democrats are seen by some lobbyists as more pliable than their Republican counterparts: But after 12 months of Democratic rule, lobbyists for business…

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This new Huckabee spot will run in the three key early states over the next week. It's nice that Huckabee doesn't wear his Christianity on his sleeve or anything, isn't -- Oh, wait.

If you look at the graphs posted by Roggio below, it's obvious that the every metric for gaging progress in Iraq is going in the right direction--attacks are down, American and Iraqi casualties are down, car bombs are down, and IEDs have become nonexistent in some parts of the country. General…

Democratic Leadership Council founder Al From has this reaction (see top of page) to Joe Lieberman's endorsement of John McCain: "I am very saddened by Senator Lieberman's choice, and profoundly disagree with it. We need to elect a Democratic president in 2008." Hmm. Whenever you hear a Beltway…

From Foreign Affairs: America's Priorities in the War on Terror, by Mike Huckabee. From the Times: Iraq--the best story of the year, by Tim Hames. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: How Petraeus Turned Around Iraq, by Trudy Rubin. From USA Today: MRAPs in Demand, by Tom Vanden Brook. From the New York…

At Columbia University, political debate involving the Middle East has a predictable loopiness. I can remember visiting its Morningside Heights campus earlier in the decade and, being at that time something of an innocent in West Asian affairs, growing astonished that there were not two, but three…

Thomas B. Edsall reports: Neither staff firings nor tough attacks on Obama fit the image the Clinton campaign now wants to present of the candidate as a family-oriented, caring and empathetic candidate determined to address social problems. Clinton earlier this month began attacking Obama's record…

Over the weekend the Des Moines Register endorsed Hillary Clinton and John McCain for president. After reading this New York Times article on the Register's editorial board, however, and getting more than my fill of Carolyn Washburn last week when she "moderated" the two final Iowa "debates," I'm…

Multinational Forces Iraq has released the data of he effects of the "surge." The reduction in deaths, attack trends, sectarian violence, IED, suicide and car bomb attacks is dramatic. The number of weapons caches found per year has well over doubled. The graphs below have been provided by…

From the Associated Press write up of Joe Lieberman's endorsement of John McCain: "'Political party is important, but it's not more important than what's good for the country and it's not more important than friendship,' Lieberman said." Lieberman's endorsement of McCain adds to the emerging…

They are panicked enough to do this.

Dmitry Medvedev is being officially nominated today by the congress of United Russia as the ruling party's candidate for the March 2008 Russian presidential election. His candidacy, first announced a week ago, has been well received in Beijing, and he was referred to by a spokesman for the Chinese…

Fighting between the U.S. and Iraqi government-backed Awakening movements and al Qaeda in Iraq spiked over the weekend. At least four high profile engagements and bombings occurred in Baghdad, Anbar, Ninewa, and Diyala provinces. The largest clash occurred on Sunday in the eastern region of Diyala…

Mitt Romney showed up on Meet the Press for the full hour, and the blogosphere focused on the former Massachusetts governor's mistaken claim that he was endorsed by the NRA in 2002. What was more interesting to me, however, was the fact that the following quote contains the entirety of the…

Hillary Clinton in Iowa: "I know you're going to inspect me. You can look inside my mouth if you want."

The French president may be dating Carla Bruni.

What better way to start a huge political week than with a dollop of holiday cheer courtesy of the erstwhile Democratic frontrunner from this morning's "Fox and Friends." Say this for Hillary - she obviously hasn't let her declining fortunes adversely affect her high spirits and effervescent charm.…

In New Hampshire news, Rudy Giuliani is reportedly reducing his Granite State television ad buy. To some, this (along with his Florida-delivered relaunch speech this weekend) is confirmation that, after flirting with stealth-campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire, Giuliani has finally decided to…

From Sally Satel's gripping New York Times Magazine piece on organ donation: In the fall of 2005, I started my first online relationship. He was a 62-year-old retiree from Canada; I was a 49-year-old psychiatrist living in Washington. Beginning in early October of that year, we talked or e-mailed…

You can read Mike Huckabee's Foreign Affairs essay here. The reviews are coming in, and they aren't good. Peter Wehner: "Where ought one to begin untangling this unholy mess?" Byron York: "Dreadful." Stephen F. Hayes: "Huckabee often sounded confused and naive." Daniel Drezner: "A grab-bag of…

You can read the transcript of Mitt Romney's appearance yesterday on Meet the Press here. Romney did well, considering the circumstances. Byron York is on to something when he suggests the "Mormon racism" question will be asked again and again if Romney ends up the Republican nominee. What was most…

Blogger Tom Maguire asks an intriguing question: Is death penalty abolition the sleeper issue of 2008? Maguire thinks so.

The Kite Runner

Since we moved into our home last year, a secret has resided in our basement. It is a blue and black steamer trunk, and I'd never gotten around to opening it, for two reasons. One, there's a lock and no key. I've picked a few locks in my time (two, to be precise, and they were on luggage), but this…

"Isn't the main issue," Justice John Paul Stevens plaintively asked, "the fact that it has taken six years" to resolve the question whether alien enemy combatants "have been unlawfully detained" at Guantánamo Bay?

Civil War Leadership and Mexican War Experience by Kevin Dougherty (Mississippi, 207 pp., $50). When General Grant met General Lee at Appomattox, they broke the ice by reminiscing about their mutual experience in the Mexican War. Grant's attitude toward that conflict, expressed in his memoirs, is…

A middle school in Portland, Maine, decided recently that it would hand out birth-control pills to girls as young as 11; no parental consent required. Strippers were invited to participate (fully clothed) in this year's "Haunted Halloween Carnival Benefit" at a New York City middle school.…

The Stillborn God

The question that has preoccupied the Mitt Romney campaign since its outset is whether voters will hold his Mormon faith against him.

A Shattered Peace

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The 20th anniversary of the publication of The Closing of the American Mind is a good time to ask whether Allan Bloom's bestseller was a book of its moment, or a work of permanent significance.

EDITOR'S NOTE:

Des Moines, Iowa

Breathing Space

When Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona learned on the Sunday after Thanksgiving that Senate Republican whip Trent Lott would announce his retirement the next day, he moved swiftly. It was mid-afternoon. By the end of the evening, he had 20 of the 25 votes needed to succeed Lott as the number two…

It wasn't so long ago that politicians assured voters that they would "raise taxes only as a last resort," as Michael Dukakis put it in 1988. When lawmakers did increase taxes, they would wring their hands and somberly declare how painful and distasteful this decision was. But nowadays in the…

What highly significant word is nowhere to be found in the declassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities? Iraq.

"Shiites are mostly always loyal to Iran and not the countries where they live." So said Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in a televised interview in April 2006. In December 2004, Jordan's King Abdullah warned that a new, Shia-dominated Iraq would become part of a "Shiite crescent," extending from…

The boss reports at the Campaign Standard: THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, will endorse Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for president tomorrow. The two will appear together at a press conference Monday morning in New Hampshire, weather…

NEWS FLASH: THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential nominee, will endorse Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) for president tomorrow. The two will appear together at a press conference Monday morning in New Hampshire, weather permitting.

Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! No. Sadly and disappointingly, it's just the Ron Paul Blimp. Many of us feel that the Ron Paul candidacy will wind up merely a sour footnote to an often dispiriting primary season. The candidate himself barely operates on the fringes of normal,…

Earlier this week, Germany's Bertelsmann Foundation released the results of a new international public opinion survey assessing the current and future global leadership roles of nine key countries. Based on interviews with 9,000 people conducted in the United States, Russia, Brazil, China, India,…

Senator McCain sent out this statement in response to reports of a new communique from al Qaeda number-two Ayman Al Zawahiri: "The purported release of another propaganda audio tape from Osama bin Ladin's lieutenant, Ayman al-Zawahiri, should remind us that this is no time for retreat in the face…

A friend sends along this link to Pollster.com's "Disclosure Project." Mark Blumenthal sorts through the voter screens for various Iowa polls. It's long, technical, and fascinating reading for polling junkies; everything you wanted to know - and then some - about how Iowa polls are made.

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The AP reports: South Korea brought home 195 army medics and engineers Dec. 14 from Afghanistan, ending a five-year deployment made at Washington's request to help rebuild the war-ravaged country. South Korea had previously planned to withdraw the troops, but reconfirmed that pledge to the Taliban…

Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid took office with high hopes and plans, but their overreaching agenda has run aground. Today even the New York Times is airing its disappointment with Democratic leaders in Congress and their inability to deliver on even small promises. Resolving these issues…

From the Washington Times: Arbitrary Politics, by John Cornyn. From Policy Review: A Moral Core for U.S. Foreign Policy, by Derek Chollet and Tod Lindberg. From Pajamas Media: Fear, by Ron Silver. From the Spectator: Disgrace in London, by Boris Johnson. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: A tentative…

Not much happened at yesterday's Democratic debate. The Des Moines Register's beloved Nurse Ratched (a.k.a. Carolyn Washburn) made a return engagement. fresh off her harshly reviewed effort with the Republican contenders on Wednesday. Ratched seemed stung by the criticism hurled at her because of…

Matt Stoller of OpenLeft is one of the bright online analysts and activists on the Democratic side of the aisle. He wrote recently about the move by Democrats to take Iraq 'off the table,' arguing that war opponents should not look past Iraq as a political issue. He says that while Iraq itself may…

Rudy Giuliani is fast heading toward Toast City. A new Florida poll - admittedly done by robots - has him sinking faster than a corpse dumped out of a Coup DeVille at midnight in the Meadowlands swamp. And Florida is Rudy's self-proclaimed "firewall." (My guess is reality for Rudy is somewhat…

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Cliff May catches the New York Times again quoting from the "prominent Sunni extremist, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi." As Aaron MacLean wrote here in September: As has been documented by Michael Gordon in the New York Times and covered by Frederick W. Kagan in THE WEEKLY STANDARD, U.S. intelligence is…

Over at FP Passport, David Bosco notes an interview with Major Gen. Bruno Kasdorf, the highest-ranking German officer in Afghanistan, at Spiegel online. The European media has long been critical of what it perceives as an unnecessarily violent American campaign against the Taliban there, but…

Advertising Age's "Campaign Trail" blog reports that the 2008 presidential primary campaign had its first million-dollar television advertising day on December 10. Evan Tracey has the details: The spending is largely aimed at voters in just two states and the ads are, for the most part, positive.…

U.S. forces in eastern Afghanistan have killed the second senior member of Taliban commander Siraj Haqqani's powerful network. Combined Joint Task Force-82 (CJTF-82) has confirmed that Mullah Sangeen, Siraj's deputy, was killed in an unspecified raid on December 11. "Sangeen was responsible for…

You will definitely want to read Charles Krauthammer's column today on religion in public life: In this country, there is no special political standing that one derives from being a Christian leader like Mike Huckabee or a fervent believer like Mitt Romney. Just as there should be no disability or…

Al Qaeda's number two has released a new video message, reminding Americans that while they may be ready to move beyond the war on terror, the terrorists don't exactly feel the same way. This is something that the mayor may want to mention in his big speech tomorrow.

Newsflash: "All-nighters May Not Improve Grades", AP reports.

Politico's Jonathan Martin reports that Iowa GOP officials are contemplating whether to hold another pre-caucus debate among the Republican contenders. My guess is Alan Keyes won't be invited.

A few readers have challenged the calculations that led me to conclude that it would be "highly unlikely" for Giuliani to lose every race leading up to Florida and still emerge from that primary with a delegate lead. Now, I confess to dropping out of calculus three weeks into my senior year of high…

Robert D. Kaplan has an excellent piece in the current issue of the American Interest examining what is necessary to maintain a "first-class, professional military"--and why it is that Europe's armies are in such a wretched state: European civilians take little pride in their standing armies; in…

Stars and Stripes reports: "VBIEDs are not a major threat against coalition forces in Baghdad right now," RisCassi said in a recent interview. Indeed, according to figures released by the military in October, car bomb attacks throughout the country have gone down 65 percent since the "surge" in…

Stephen Trimble flags an Army solicitation for an "NFL Tour Package" to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. The tour would coincide with the Super Bowl in the first week of February. Trimble reports: The contract requires the vendor to deliver three active or recently retired NFL…

If there ever has been a sure sign that I am out of step with mainstream Democratic voters, it might have come today. As I watched John Edwards look into the camera and point with that weird thumb-on-the-folded-pointer-finger gesture that only politicians do, I wondered if there has ever been a…

If you watched it (and there wasn't much reason to do so), you may have felt, as I did, that moderator Carolyn Washburn, editor of the Des Moines Register, felt much more ... at home during today's Democratic debate than she did during yesterday's Republican confab. Today Washburn laughed at the…

David All of TechRepublican.com writes about Freedom's Watch--the organization that many are familiar with largely because of their ads in support of the war in Iraq. He notes that while it went largely unnoticed in Washington, Freedom's Watch aired an ad in the recently concluded special election…

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Here's more Clinton campaign Kremlinology because, well, it's just so much fun. The following is total speculation, based not on any secret info I have but instead on simple pattern recognition from campaigns past. Here is what is going on inside the campaign: 1.) Kill the Idiot Who Came Up With…

The headlines today indicate that Congressional Democrats caved to the president's position on spending for 2008. The Washington Post says 'Democrats Bow to Bush's Demands.' The Hill reads 'Dems Cave on Spending.' And the headline from the Los Angeles Times declares 'Democrats Bow to Bush Spending…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Fred Wins, Iowa Loses, by Dean Barnett. From the Washington Post: Misreading the Iran Report, by Henry Kissinger. From the Hill: When Waterboarding Works, by Byron York. From the Christian Science Monitor: The Surge Iraq Needs, by Christopher Kojm. From the New York Post:…

Amidst the many reasons that Republicans lost control of the House and Senate last year was a concern about the House page program. Congressman Mark Foley behaved reprehensibly toward the pages, and House leaders were unable to convince voters that they had responded to Foley's transgressions…

MF1_1.jpg The Dassault Mirage F.1.

Newsday has the goods: For months, tension has been building between the 'Hillary' and 'Bill' parts of the team, say several people familiar with the situation. Bill Clinton - along with former White House hands - have counseled her to adopt a far more aggressive approach with Obama. [Chief…

ABC World News With Charles Gibson ran an ill-considered story last night trumpeting the quality of the health care provided to our nation's veterans. The opening was provocative and the agenda was clear: "Socialized medicine may sound un-American, but in fact, it's exactly what we provide to our…

In holiday news, the government of Kyrgyzstan has launched a nation-wide manhunt for Santa Claus: Authorities in Kyrgyzstan launched a contest to track down Father Christmas somewhere inside the mountainous Central Asian state - a week after Swedish experts reported that he must be there. 'The…

NBC's "First Read" has a fascinating report on a Mitt Romney post-debate rally yesterday in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: Funny enough, when Romney was wrapping up his remarks, he said the following: 'You're going to do something which people don't expect, which is give me a victory. And then I'm going to…

The Pakistani military continues to underreport its casualties in the tribal areas and the settled districts of the Northwest Frontier Province. The latest misrepresentation occurred in the Taliban-controlled tribal agency of North Waziristan, which, along with other tribal agencies, the government…

Listen closely to what Mitt Romney says after Fred Thompson tells him he's getting to be "a pretty good actor":

A few divine thoughts on where the race now stands in both parties. As bad as the Des Moines Register debate was, complete with a wild-eyed Alan Keyes and the hopelessly smug School Marm moderator, it is still a big thing in Iowa. My guess is the biggest impact will be negative and it will be on…

'Tis the holiday season, when we spend time considering those things for which we are most grateful. Here's my nominee: We have only to suffer through one more year of the White House's Christmastime "Barney Cam".

IT ALL SEEMS so familiar. Whenever the West expresses optimism about the advent of a Europeanized Russian "liberal" as the head of state, there's a good chance reference will be made to Peter the Great, the man credited with dragging Russia out of the dark ages and founding the pre-Soviet empire.…

Three brief thoughts to add to my colleagues' trenchant analyses: 1. No Show Of Hands. My strong sense, from several visits to Iowa, is that Iowa Republicans really dislike the Des Moines Register. So, more perhaps than some national commentators appreciate, the Fred Thompson takedown of Carolyn…

There seem to be two schools of thought about today's silly Des Moines Register debate (on FOX just now, Charles Krauthammer called it "the worst debate in Western history"). One school of thought says Romney won. (For what it's worth - not much! - I agree.) Another school of thought, including THE…

The results are in, and there seems to be a consensus: Carolyn Washburn did a lousy job. Fred files at the Campaign Standard: Debates normally don't amount to much in presidential primaries, but this year they've been important. Without debates, Mike Huckabee would still be a no-name and John…

Debates normally don't amount to much in presidential primaries, but this year they've been important. Without debates, Mike Huckabee would still be a no-name and John McCain wouldn't be rallying from his low point last summer. Even so, the moderator of today's Des Moines Register debate in Iowa…

"Huckabee surprised me with a question of his own: 'Don't Mormons,' he asked in an innocent voice, 'believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?'" Huckabee asked that question in an interview with Zev Chafetz, and Chafetz reported it in "The Huckabee Factor", which will appear in the next issue…

Fred Thompson scored a clean win in this debate. He was funny (joking with Mitt Romney about taxes and acting); he was stern (rebuking the lame narrator for her show-of-hands question); he was serious (talking about entitlements); and he was presidential (this race is about national security). He…

Michael brings up some excellent points about the problems with the Afghanistan campaign. The lack of unity in the military command and the absence of a central political force to direct a coherent counterinsurgency campaign harm our efforts. These problems are compounded by a major shortage of…

HERE WE WERE on Wednesday, a nation of political junkies gathered around our televisions to watch the candidates debate each other one last time, and we had as a moderator one Carolyn Washburn, the editor of the Des Moines Register. I don't mean to go all East-coast-elitist on you; I'm sure there…

Christian Lowe has an excellent piece on THE DAILY STANDARD today about the MRAP's rapid fall from grace. Under the title "Another Casualty of the Surge," Christian writes: Finally sober minds are beginning to prevail and the services are finding the courage to push back. Let's say the surge gave…

You know the debate is in trouble when the moderator says she's not going to discuss the top two issues for Republican voters (the war and immigration). And indeed the bulk of the questions dealt with how the GOP candidates would ask the American people to "sacrifice" (in other words, raise taxes).…

For weeks we've been wondering whether the clear improvement in the public view of the war in Iraq might lead to improvement in the president's job approval rating. According to Gallup's latest poll, the view of the president improved consistently throughout November, and is now closing in on 40…

Thoughts on the first few moments of the debate ... 1) This Des Moines Register moderator is very scary. Like the meanest 5th grade teacher in America. ... She makes Hillary look like Mother Goose. Even Rudy looks afraid of her. 2) Bad lighting and set up. 3) Wake up Fred. 4) Huck is smooth as…

An Iraqi National Policeman walks past one of the cars damaged in the triple bombing attack in Amarah. Reuters photo.

Less than two weeks before Christmas, Congressional Democrats have no idea how they're going to finish up this legislative session. The new fiscal year began on October 1, and the current temporary funding measure that keeps the government running expires on Friday. If additional funding is not…

Defenders of harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding have generally been nonplussed by the recent news that the CIA destroyed videotapes of several interrogations. For waterboarding's harsh critics however, the news has caused some heartburn. In particular, a columnist for the San…

With attention focused on Iowa today, we find these new polls on Republicans in New Hampshire. If there was any question the GOP race was wide open, this should answer it, not because of who is leading, but because of who is in second place. The new poll from Suffolk University shows a "surging"…

It's no secret that I like lefty blogger Glenn Greenwald. I consider him a worthy adversary and a gentleman, albeit a gentleman with occasional pit-bull tendencies. Thus, I was disappointed to read his neocon bashing commentary today. Pointing to a new poll, Greenwald clucked, "Right-wing neocons…

From the Los Angeles Times: A FISA Fix, by Michael B. Mukasey. From the Washington Times: Iran Still a Threat, by Claude Salhani. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: A Powerful Awakening Shakes Up Iraqi Politics, by Trudy Rubin. From Contentions: Is Jose Rodriguez a Hero? by John Podhoretz. From the…

Secretary of Defense Bob Gates testified before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday on the status of the Coalition mission in Afghanistan, and though his statement might best be characterized as one of cautious optimism, there is clearly cause for concern as to the overall direction of…

Lately, pundits have said that Virginia is "bluing." In last month's state legislature elections, Democrats won the state senate by picking up key seats in increasingly liberal Northern Virginia. A Democrat unseated incumbent Republican state senator Jeannemarie Devolites Davis in her D.C.-suburb…

At Arms Control Wonk: Greetings Arms Control Wonk readers. I am yet another pasty, dark-haired contributor. I normally wear glasses too, but Jeffrey asked for a picture sans spectacles so that you could better tell us apart. I said, "Dude, your readers can look at satellite photos and tell the…

Marc Ambinder reports: In a variety of conference calls over the next few days, in surrogate appearances, and in memos distributed to reporters, the [Clinton] campaign will directly challenge Obama on points of his resume, on past statements of his, on the details of his current policy plans, and…

I missed this yesterday. USA Today reported: Attacks from armor-piercing roadside bombs that the U.S. military has linked to Iran have fallen roughly by half since June to fewer than 40 last month, the U.S. military reports. The decline likely stems from a cease-fire called by radical Shiite cleric…

Mitt Romney is in strong contention to emerge as the Republican nominee for president. He's in a two-way battle with Mike Huckabee in Iowa, and his lead in New Hampshire remains stable (although many likely New Hampshire GOP primary voters still haven't made up their minds). Meanwhile, his…

Domenico Montanaro has some noteworthy pre-debate questions: Romney gave a pretty good preview of how he plans to go after Huckabee in interviews on TODAY and Morning Joe, but who else will go after Huckabee? Thompson? Will Giuliani and McCain, the two candidates who stand to benefit the most from…

army.mil-2007-08-21-092020.jpg A Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicle is loaded onto a

Just as Afghan and NATO forces fought to liberate the southern Afghan district of Musa Qala from nearly a year of brutal Taliban rule, Britain's Prime Minister signaled he is willing to negotiate with the Taliban. This is London reports Gordon Brown will address the Commons that "negotiation is the…

Kudos to the Pentagon for producing professional-looking news summaries for their own and other websites. Below is a piece on the plans of the Pentagon to issue 100,000 furlough notices next week unless Congress can get its act together and fund the troops:

In today's OpinionJournal Political Diary, John Fund notes that Ron Paul's presidential campaign has far-flung support: Al Gore pocketed his Nobel Peace Prize yesterday at an elegant ceremony in Oslo, Norway ... But some dissident elements appeared in Oslo to protest Mr. Gore's plan for…

I've not blogged about the controversy before, but it's worth noting NBC's rejection of several non-controversial ads from the group Freedom's Watch, and their subsequent backpedaling and decision to air them. First, here's one of the ads that NBC apparently found so provocative:

The Toronto Star reports today on the tragic story of a young Canadian girl who was killed by her own father because she refused to wear a hijab to school: A 16-year-old girl is dead and her father has been charged with murder after an attack in a Mississauga home.... Friends at the victim's school…

Pakistani Air Force bases, including the nuclear sites of Kamra and Sargodha.

MONDAY SAW THE endorsement of a presidential candidate that has ended months of handicapping the chances for various rivals, maneuverings, and back-room politicking. It is a choice that is likely to have far-reaching consequences for most of the world, and its implications may have the current…

Monday saw the endorsement of a presidential candidate that has ended months of handicapping the chances for various rivals, maneuverings, and back-room politicking. It is a choice that is likely to have far-reaching consequences for most of the world, and its implications may have the current…

From Aviation Week, Dutch airpower fighting the good fight in Afghanistan: The Netherlands defense ministry has released photos showing the preparations for the large airmobile operation conducted Dec. 7 in Helmand province, Afghanistan, by mainly Afghan, American and British troops of the NATO-led…

The blogosphere loves Jeanne Assam, a brave woman who gives new meaning to the phrase, "You shoot like a girl!" Assam saved countless people at New Life Church in Colorado Springs on Sunday when she shot and killed gunman Matthew Murray--with her own concealed pistol. Murray had killed two people…

From Investor's Business Daily: Five Reasons to Doubt the NIE, by Thomas Joscelyn. From Ares: Northrop Grumman's Bomber from HEL, by Bill Sweetman. From Pajamas Media: Paul Haggis, Sean Penn, and the Kucinich Factor, by Roger L. Simon. From the New York Times: The Postwar Election, by David Brooks.…

Google sets its sights on the moon: It has been many decades since we explored the Moon from the lunar surface, and it could be another 6 - 8 years before any government returns. Even then, it will be at a large expense, and probably with little public involvement. The Google Lunar X PRIZE seeks to…

A friend sends along this one: I was depressed last night so I rang Lifeline. I was transferred to a call center in Pakistan. I told them I was suicidal. They got all excited and asked if I could drive a truck.

Poor Mitt Romney. He's a serious guy, with an impressive grasp of complicated issues. He wants to be president, presumably, to accomplish big things. And now he's reduced to trying to fend off Mike Huckabee in Iowa with an ad highlighting a trivial pseudo-difference on a tiny aspect of their…

Hugh Hewitt had Larry O'Donnell to explain his recent attack on Mormonism, which included his characterization of the religion as a "racist faith" and of Joseph Smith as a "lying, fraudulent, criminal." Hewitt asked O'Donnell whether he would be so bold as to criticize Islam with that kind of…

According to the latest New York Times / CBS News poll, 59 percent of respondents say that it is still too early to make up their minds and choose for whom they will vote in the Republican primary. Forty percent say their minds are made up. Now consider these trend-charts. If we project the upward…

Positive Trends in Anbar Permanent, Coalition Commander Says: Positive trends in Iraq's Anbar province are permanent, the commander of coalition forces in western Iraq said today. Iraqi security forces in the province are shouldering the security burden, and they are 19 months away from assuming…

Pete Hegseth has a must-read in today's Washington Times, which includes this bit about the much-hyped "Iraq Summer" planned by antiwar groups and the Democrats in Congress: At the same time, members of Congress were already declaring the "surge" a failure and stepping up their "timeline for…

Here's another angle from which to see the presidential race: Where your sports heroes are putting their money - should they happen to be campaign donors. Few are, but I noticed last night that John Smoltz has contributed the max to Mitt Romney. Yep, I'm a Braves fan, from way back (even have a…

As Huckabee rises, Patrick Ruffini speaks truth to two presidential campaigns: For Rudy to survive, his campaign mantra for the next 29 days must be: national security, national security, national security. Is the national security party really going to nominate a former governor with zero national…

A pair of car bombs in the Algerian capital of Algiers has killed at least 47 and wounded an unknown number of people. The death toll is feared to be over 60. The bombings occurred in front of the Constitutional Court and the UN refugee agency and a police station in different neighborhoods in…

The Joint Cargo Aircraft plot thickens: The Senate has made a case that the Air Force and Army, which have been sharing the C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft program, should begin to part company on the project. The Army sought $157 million in Fiscal 2008 for JCA work. Senators, in their 2008 defense…

Over at NRO, David Freddoso explores the possibility that none of the Republican presidential candidates will lock up a majority of delegates needed for the nomination, thus dragging the race out until the convention in September: For a clean nominating process, one candidate must enter next year's…

YESTERDAY WAS INTERNATIONAL Human Rights Day, the date marking the adoption by the United Nations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, December 10, 1948. Not even the most devoted U.N. apologists, however, could be in a festive mood. Even by their own Orwellian standards--in which the…

FOR SOME REASON, people, and not only in America, think that their fate--the prices of their homes, what they will have to pay when using their credit cards, the growth rate of the economy--is determined by the central bankers whose periodic decisions are awaited with baited breath by the 24-hour…

As the Pakistani military continues the slow push to regain control of the settled district of Swat, suicide bombers struck in two locations, one of which was a sensitive weapons facility near Islamabad. The most deadly attack occurred in Swat in the Northwest Frontier Province after a suicide…

Sean Penn delivered a speech for a Kucinich rally at San Francisco State University last week, the text of which was made available by the Huffington Post here, and there's a video of the lone Republican protester also at the Huffington Post here. In the video, the protester, who is identified as…

Jonathan Meyer is a former counsel to Joe Biden and was a deputy assistant attorney general in the Clinton administration. In today's Roll Call, he leaps out ahead of his fellow Democrats, and tries to map out a path to political success in a world where the surge has succeeded. In short, it…

From Ryan Lizza's latest article in The New Yorker: Anti-immigrant passion also owes much to the disproportionate influence of a few small states in the nominating process. National polls show that, as an issue, immigration is far behind the Iraq war, terrorism, the economy, and health care as a…

There was a time when C-130s had to deploy countermeasures just to land at Baghdad International Airport. CENTCOM: For the first time in 14 years, a commercial airlines flight departed the Mosul Airport Dec. 2, carrying Muslim religious pilgrims on their annual trek to Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The…

Last Friday, U.S., British, and Afghani forces started chipping away at the new Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala (see Bill Roggio's coverage here). The battle has turned into a real bar fight, though--after a three days of intense combat--it's looking like the bad guys are starting to knuckle under.…

MoveOn supports our troops, they just want to make sure they don't get any funding: "Americans elected a Democratic Congress in 2006 to end the war in Iraq. A blank check for billions in war funding moves us in the wrong direction," said Nita Chaudhary, Campaign Director on Iraq for MoveOn.…

We've all been wondering who would be the first Republican presidential candidate to go up with negative television advertising against a rival. Well: From what I understand, Mitt Romney will go up in Iowa with a somewhat tongue-in-cheek negative ad directed at Mike Huckabee. The real campaign is…

Speaker Pelosi, did you really think you'd get away with this one? The Washington Post reported yesterday: In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For…

The Los Angeles Times reports today on their own polling under the headline "Bush Loses Ground by Military Families": Families with ties to the military, long a reliable source of support for wartime presidents, disapprove of President Bush and his handling of the war in Iraq, with a majority…

From the Middle East Journal: After the Battle of Al-Fajr, by Michael J. Totten. From the Guardian: The Threat Has Not Diminished, by Jonathan Schell. From the Wall Street Journal: The Gulf States and Iran, by Max Boot. From the Honolulu Advertiser: Looking Beyond the Kitty Hawk Incident, by…

Voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina will soon be seeing this 30-second ad from Mike Huckabee:

From Christopher Hitchens's broadside against the oxymoronic U.S. "intelligence community": It is completely false for anybody to claim, on the basis of this admitted 'estimate,' that Iran has ceased to be a candidate member of the fatuously named nuclear 'club.' It has the desire to acquire the…

The Taliban have abandoned their former stronghold of Musa Qala in northern Helmand province. Despite boasts of over 2,000 fighters in the ranks and claims the "it will be very easy for us to resist the attack," the Taliban chose to bug out. A Taliban spokesman claimed they fled to protect the…

Ramesh Ponnuru writes here that Giuliani is down but not out: His polls may have dropped, but I think he's in better shape to win the nomination than he was when the polls were better for him. The best chance to beat him was for one other candidate to win a bunch of early states before the Jan. 29…

Yesterday, one of the new "contributing editors" to the Daily Kos managed an impressive feat--wrapping just about every left-wing talking point into a holiday post. The author, blogging under the pretentious moniker Scout Finch, writes: We don't seem to have very many snowy white Christmas' in my…

Today's Al Hunt column ends like this: "If [Clinton] can't adjust and rise to this challenge, however, she may well finish third in the Iowa caucuses and lose to Obama in New Hampshire. In the past 30 years, no candidate has lost both these tests and won the nomination." A friend writes: "Al Hunt…

From today's Roger Cohen column: Al Qaeda attacked the West in Kenya, Bali and New York. Obama's father was Kenyan. The senator was schooled partly in Indonesia. He attended college in New York. The parallels are strange. They can also be a source of the toughness married to intuition for which he…

From Al Hunt's column today on the Democratic primary race: It was revealing, too, when [Democratic focus group guru Peter] Hart pushed [a Democratic focus group] to envision these senators as leaders of the country or, as he put it, their 'boss.' Obama, they say, would be inspirational,…

Bob Novak has the final word on Mitt Romney's speech last week: Even Romney advisers who doubted the wisdom of Thursday's speech hoped his speech would make their candidate appear presidential after his slugging match with Rudy Giuliani in the last presidential [debate]. He succeeded there. But he…

In what may be the least surprising story of the year, Newsweek reports that Chavez might not have been so gracious in defeat after all: [B]y midweek enough information had emerged to conclude that Chávez did, in fact, try to overturn the results. As reported in El Nacional, and confirmed to me by…

The World Tribune reports: Ecuador's president has offered the Chinese government an airbase currently serving as one of the last U.S. military outposts in South America. An Air Force E-3 Sentry lands at the U.S. base airport in Manta, Ecuador, one of the U.S. military's last outposts in South…

The Chinese have not taken kindly to Washington's call for a probe into alleged voting irregularities in the December 2 Russian parliamentary elections, which the Putin-led United Russia party won by a landslide. The Chinese press attributed United Russia's victory to the potent combination of…

A confident and gregarious Rudy Giuliani yesterday on Meet the Press. He's near-bulletproof in the chair, a testament to his many years spent learning to survive New York's Darwinian media pit. Still, it was mostly an hour of tough sledding. Rudy didn't get much chance to sell his wares. Instead he…

The Sunday morning talk shows were dominated by two intelligence-based stories this weekend: the CIA tapes and their destruction, and the NIE's take on Iran's nuclear capabilities. On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol gave one theory of the CIA's reasoning for destroying the tapes, and the mainstream…

A Very Carter Christmas

James Fenimore Cooper

A taxi ride in Washington, D.C., can be at least as thought provoking as a panel discussion at one of our local think tanks. Several weeks ago, I took a cab to a movie theater. When I told the driver I was going to see a documentary film about art stolen by the Nazis, he replied: "The Russians took…

During television's early years, jazz was infrequently seen, except when its few popular "names," such as Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong, appeared on variety shows like Ed Sullivan's. But on December 8, 1957, live on Sunday afternoon, many members of the jazz pantheon appeared on CBS-TV's The…

In 1998 Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded a company called Google, about which you likely know quite a bit. The outgrowth of work Page and Brin began in 1996 on hypertextual search engines, Google has moved from darling little high-concept innovator to Microsoft-like behemoth in record time.…

The Peloponnesian War

Surrender Is Not an Option

Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents

When my wife and I began courting some ten years ago, she knew I loved the movies. I loved every bit of the cinema experience. I had favorite seats (fourth row, dead center), a favorite snack (Twizzlers), and even a favorite suburban googaplex located several miles from our urban homes. I insisted…

Jesus, they preach, not only wants you to love the poor--Jesus wants you to get rich, or at least to live debt free! "They" are the Christian televangelists atop the multimillion-dollar media ministries being scrutinized by Senator Charles Grassley. The Iowa Republican has given them until December…

Has Bill Clinton lost his touch? In the old days, when he didn't want to take a clear position, he was the master of the straddle. Two days after Congress authorized the first Gulf War, in January 1991, he remarked, "I guess I would have voted for the majority if it was a close vote. But I agree…

DON'T RIDICULE ROMNEY

"If a thing isn't worth saying, you sing it," the French playwright Beaumarchais once noted. But his heedless naïveté can be forgiven. Beaumarchais expired in 1799, well before the advent of today's endless presidential campaigns. Here, if everything that was not worth saying were sung, the…

Singer-songwriter Imran Raza and guitarist Faraz Anwar hope to bring an unlikely revolution to Pakistan--one guided by Sufi-oriented music inspired by Led Zeppelin and Metallica. The country's music-averse extremists were quick to take notice.

The first time I spoke to a pro-life group--it was the summer of 1993--I expected Illinois congressman Henry Hyde to be there. I was speaking in Milwaukee at National Right to Life's annual convention and my assumption was that when a major anti-abortion group gathered, Hyde's presence was…

No Country for Old Men

Medellín, Colombia

Traveling to the Middle East can be a disconcerting experience. One day you feel as if you're journeying into the future, the next day into the past.

Tom Bedlam

In today's Washington Post, Pete Hegseth, executive director of Vets for Freedom, has coauthored an op-ed with...wait for it...Major General John Batiste. Batiste, you will remember, is the formerly "antiwar" general who spoke out against Donald Rumsfeld, and who, until recently, was a Board Member…

Roger Kimball has an excellent piece today on the growing threat from "libel tourism." Kimball leads with the story of a libel case brought in Britain against the book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World, by Robert O. Collins. The plaintiff, Khalid bin Mahfouz, a Saudi…

Stephen Hayes has just posted his latest from the campaign trail at THE DAILY STANDARD. Thompson goes all in: Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson has decided to take his campaign and virtually all of its resources to Iowa in an all-or-nothing attempt to register a strong showing in the caucuses…

Des Moines, Iowa

RAFAEL.gif

The assault on the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala in the southern Afghan province of Helmand is officially underway. After a month of rumors and a feint by a British armored column to the outskirts of the town in mid-November, Afghan National Army and international troops pushed to the edge of…

Earlier this week, public opinion and mainly left-wing media circles in Europe breathed a big sigh of relief mixed with Schadenfreude after learning that the U.S. intelligence community now believes that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. "Relief" because 1) no one in Europe…

From the Los Angeles Times: Pearl Harbor lives in hearts of its vets, by H.G. Reza. From the Wall Street Journal: Not According to Script, by Brendan Miniter. From the Washington Post: The Army's $20 Billion Makeover, by Alec Klein. From the New Republic: An Insult to Intelligence, by Yossi Klein…

Kimberly Kagan's latest Iraq Report is now available at THE DAILY STANDARD. Kagan discusses the military attempt to secure Diyala by clearing out the al Qaeda, reconciling the reconcilables, and restoring basic government services. There's a lot of information there, and, as always, Kagan presents…

The Los Angeles Times reports "Top U.S. military brass in Iraq resist quick drawdown": The U.S. military's internal debate over how fast to reduce its force in Iraq has intensified in recent weeks as commanders in Baghdad resist suggestions from Pentagon officials for a quicker drawdown. Army Lt.…

"'Almost all enemies' of U.S. 'are China's friends'" says the report from East-Asia-Intel.com: An official of the Chinese government last week confirmed that Beijing is supporting U.S. enemies around the world. Yuan Peng, director of the Institute of American Studies, part of the China Institutes…

Qods Force logo, click to view.

Rudy Giuliani seems to have receded in recent weeks, seeing his national lead shrink and his push in New Hampshire stall. (Giuliani remains competitive in New Hampshire, however, where he is tied for second; in Michigan; and in Florida, where his lead seems just as durable as Romney's lead in New…

Despite narrowing poll numbers nationally and in the three early primary and caucus states, Hillary Clinton's chances to win the Democratic presidential nomination remain formidable. So says Matthew Mosk in this noteworthy post: The American Federation Of Teachers AFL-CIO Committee On Political…

It's possible former White House counselor Dan Bartlett may suffer from it. Here's Bartlett on conservative blogs: I mean, talk about a direct IV into the vein of your support. It's a very efficient way to communicate. They regurgitate exactly and put up on their blogs what you said to them. It is…

You can read about the new AP / IPSOS poll here. Here are the national numbers: Giuliani 26 Huckabee 18 McCain 13 Romney 12 Thompson 11 Note that the frontrunner is ahead by eight points, while only seven points separate the second-place candidate from the fifth-place candidate. Huckabee's rise in…

The Pakistani military's slow grind through the Taliban controlled district of Swat in the Northwest Frontier Province has finally reached Maulana Fazlullah's stronghold in the town of Imam Dheri. After Fazlullah's compound was overrun, troops found liquor and a prison. The Daily Times reports: The…

WHEN I HEARD KARL Rove was visiting Duke--where I'd spent the last four years as a student battling the hard left--it was only a matter of seconds before I was browsing expedia for a flight.

The US Air Force isn't the only one with planes falling out of the sky. British MoD officials report that the September Nimrod crash that killed 14 RAF members was caused by a leaky fuel line. Both the Royal and US Air Forces operate archaic fleets of aircraft, both are trying to modernize, and…

MSNBC reports: Rumors are flying that filmmaker Morgan Spurlock of "Super Size Me" fame may have done what the United States government has failed to do for the last six years - find Osama bin Laden. The speculation first began at the Berlin International Film Festival in February, where Spurlock…

CNN reports: The Coast Guard has reeled in a record 355,000 pounds of cocaine over the past year, results that officials say have forced smugglers to transport their drugs through costlier methods like semisubmersible vessels and liquefied drugs. Coast Guard officials are set to announce Thursday…

The speech will help Romney. He built up the stakes in the media and then delivered a performance the media and party insiders will praise. The Mormon issue is openly confronted, and more importantly Romney gave a performance that was the most human so far in his campaign. That was badly needed.…

Another reaction to the Romney speech this morning. Katon Dawson, the charismatic chairman of the South Carolina Republican party, welcomed Romney's thoughts on religion and urged others to continue talking about their faith: The Republican Party has a proud tradition of being inclusive, and our…

Among the more quoted passages from Mitt Romney's speech today is found seven paragraphs into it. It's a chiasmus: "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom." Now, the first half of that was another way of saying what John Adams did in the passage Romney had just quoted - saying…

There's a good wrap-up of the big Romney speech over at the Campaign Standard, including this reaction from "a friend" that was forwarded to the boss: In an often impressive and probably effective speech, there is one paragraph that may (and perhaps should) cause Romney some trouble: 'I believe…

The Pakistani military continues its slow push through the Taliban controlled regions of Swat. While the government has claimed much of the settled district is under control, press reports indicate only half of Swat has been clear of Taliban fighters of Maulana Fazlullah's…

From the Washington Post: The Flaws In the Iran Report, by John Bolton. From Foreign Affairs: The Costs of Containing Iran, by Vali Nasr and Ray Takeyh. From the Wall Street Journal: Gitmo Goes to Court, by David B. Rivkin Jr. and Lee A. Casey. From the Times: MI5 alert on China's cyberspace spy…

In other news, this Washington Post / ABC News poll has Hillary Clinton's lead over Barack Obama in New Hampshire shrinking to six points. People must not have been turned off by those essays Obama wrote while he was in kindergarten in which he said he wanted to be president when he grew up.…

Check aim before you fire, Stanford: Nearly the entire faculty of Stanford Law School has signed an e-mail to students encouraging those interested in a career in the military to meet recruiters off campus, a move that one Stanford alum argues puts the school at risk of violating the Solomon…

Jane's reports that Pakistan is considering hybrid weapons package for ugliest fighter ever. JF17.jpg Photo courtesy of Defence Talk. I don't toss around "worse than the Saegeh" lightly, folks.

Bill Kristol forwards a friend's response to Romney's speech today: In an often impressive and probably effective speech, there is one paragraph that may (and perhaps should) cause Romney some trouble: 'I believe that every faith I have encountered draws its adherents closer to God. And in every…

Are congressional Democrats starting to wise up? After the Democrats' 41 useless Iraq bills, the Politico reports: Each day lately, Democrats inch closer to giving President Bush more money for the war in Iraq without any serious mandates for withdrawing U.S. troops. Democratic leaders are loath to…

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mitt Romney didn't take a huge risk in giving a speech about his Mormon faith today. The flip side is that he doesn't have a lot to gain from it. But there should be no mistake about this: He made the most of the opportunity the speech gave him. It was a very…

Des Moines, Iowa There had been a lot of talk about the major risk Mitt Romney was taking by delivering this morning's speech on religion. The front page of the Des Moines Register features an article - above the fold, top right - with this headline: "Romney takes risk with talk on faith." The…

On MSNBC after the Romney's "Faith in America" address, Joe Scarborough, lauding Romney, said that Romney said Christ was his "personal savior." That isn't quite what Romney said, however. Here's Romney: There is one fundamental question about which I often am asked. What do I believe about Jesus…

No, not really. From the Air & Space Power Journal: First, the USAF has operated with some success in COIN environments before but has lost the peculiar capacities associated with COIN following drawdowns or conversions after each conflict. This is an unsurprising result, given the fact that…

Funny, isn't it, that a speech arguing against a "religious test" for presidential candidates should end this way: Any believer in religious freedom, any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty, has a friend and ally in me. And so it is for hundreds of millions of our countrymen: we do not…

Before Mitt Romney delivers his address on "Faith in America" at 10:30 this morning, it's worth reading Robert Novak's table-setter. Here's the part of Novak's column that struck me as the most interesting: These advisers still think [a "Mormon speech" is] a bad idea, recommending that any speech…

U.S. forces drove al Qaeda in Iraq from its sanctuaries in Diyala in 2007 and dramatically reduced violence in that province. Defeating al Qaeda in Diyala was especially important because the province had political, as well as military signifi cance for al Qaeda. The organization attempted to…

THER WAS A BIT of contention recently over a "quiz" given to some sixth-graders in New York. In conjunction with their study of the 2008 election, the kids were asked if they agreed with the Iraq war, abortion, gay marriage, gun rights, and the death penalty. Many conservatives smelled a liberal…

While the Pakistani military still struggles to roll up the Taliban in Northwest Frontier Province's settled district of Swat, the Taliban continues its campaign elsewhere in the troubled province. With much of the province under Taliban influence or outright control, the Taliban is flexing its…

The statement from Fred Thompson: "The accuracy of the latest NIE on Iran should be received with a good deal of skepticism. Our intelligence community has often underestimated the intentions of adversaries, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq and North Korea. And are all of the CIA detractors now…

Today's New York Times editorial, titled "Good and Bad News About Iran": There is a lot of good news in the latest intelligence assessment about Iran. Tehran, we are now told, halted its secret nuclear weapons program in 2003, which means that President Bush has absolutely no excuse for going to…

Evan Tracey at the Ad Age "Campaign Trail" blog has some fascinating numbers: Every day now there are an average of 880 political and issue ads directly or indirectly related to the 2008 presidential race airing on TV. The majority of these are in and around Iowa (354 a day) and New Hampshire (324…

Despite promises to remove "some" troops from Iraq, new Aussie PM Kevin Rudd says that defense procurement plans will remain on track. Few major defense-policy changes are expected in the wake of the Nov. 24 general election that brought to power Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd. Rudd…

The issue of Iranian complicity in the Iraqi insurgency has been the focus of much discussion since U.S. and Iraqi forces began heavily targeting the Iranian networks in late 2006. While news reports have touted Iran's role in reducing the violence, U.S. military officers believe Iran still serves…

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Israel enters the NIE fray: Israeli officials, who've been warning that Iran would soon pose a nuclear threat to the world, reacted angrily Tuesday to a new U.S. intelligence finding that Iran stopped its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 and to date hasn't resumed trying to produce…

In what should be the last time Code Pink visits Pakistan: Pakistan authorities today ordered the deportation of the leader of the feminist U.S. antiwar group Code Pink, who was in Lahore to join protests against the emergency rule imposed by President Pervez Musharraf, according to a spokeswoman…

It seems to be pretty consistent across a range of polls at this point: Americans believe the troop surge is working: Four in 10 Americans now say the U.S. troop surge in Iraq that began earlier this year is making the situation there better. This is up from 34% four weeks ago and from 22% when…

From New York Post: NY's '08 Hopes, by the boss. From the Washington Post: Time to Talk to Iran, by Robert Kagan. From Ares: The End of Stealth? by Bill Sweetman. From U.S. News: China Aims High, by Kevin Whitelaw. From National Review: The War on Funding, by David Freddoso. From the Boston Herald:…

Immigration is a tricky issue. The influx of immigrants into the United States, legal and otherwise, excites many people, but politicians who try to exploit the issue often find their efforts unrewarded. The Republican candidate most closely identified with the restrictionist position on…

Steve Hayes's recent reporting from Iowa confirms a suspicion I've long held. I've thought that as Obama rises in Iowa, Hillary would lose it, go on the attack, and fall right into Obama's spider web. It appears to be happening. Obama's (smart) bet is that in this election people want to change the…

As many recognize, the latest NIE on Iran's nuclear weapons program directly contradicts what the U.S. Intelligence Community was saying just two years previously. And it appears that this about-face was very recent. How recent? Consider that on July 11, 2007, roughly four or so months prior to the…

Perhaps in an attempt to balance out their criticisms of the war in Iraq and seem 'strong on defense,' Congressional Democrats have spoken a lot about military readiness. Two subcommittee chairs on the House Armed Services Committee recently introduced a resolution to address the impending…

BBC took terror trainers....paintballing? The BBC funded a paintballing trip for men later accused of Islamic terrorism and failed to pass on information about the 21/7 bombers to police, a court was told yesterday. Mohammed Hamid, who is charged with overseeing a two-year radicalisation programme…

Inside Higher Ed reports that a feminist professor is suing the University of Iowa for painting the opposing football team's locker room pink: More than a quarter century ago at the University of Iowa, the legendary football coach Hayden Fry decided to paint the visiting locker room pink as a…

You can watch Giuliani's new ad here. It's the first of Giuliani's television advertisements to deal with the national security issue. September 11, 2001, is not mentioned in the ad. September 11, 2001, has not been mentioned in any of Giuliani's ads, in fact. And yet plenty of people still say…

Bill Kristol has an op-ed in today's New York Post on the state of the presidential race. Here's his take on the Republican race: Giuliani's been stalled in the national polls for a while now. He's still ahead, though by a diminishing margin. But he's running a distant third in Iowa and third in…

Yesterday evening the Romney campaign announced that its candidate had fired, just now, the lawn services company which had been in his employ for some time and which, it seems, employs illegal immigrants. (Interestingly, I can't seem to find the letter announcing Romney's firing of the company on…

This isn't good: France renewed its call for lifting the EU arms embargo against China on Tuesday, saying the punitive measure has long become obsolete and unable to reflect the current relationship between the European bloc and China.... In response to a question on French President Nicolas…

THE ONLY MAJOR surprise of Russia's parliamentary "election," which could not have been choreographed better by Diaghilev, is that it had even the Communists lamenting the death of democracy. Gennady Zyuganov, chairman of the party, said on Sunday, "We do not trust these figures unveiled by the…

THE ARREST OF a British school teacher in Sudan last week--amid demands for her execution--had all the earmarks of a Samuel Beckett play, a theatre of the absurd that is attracting sell-out crowds in many parts of the Islamic world. The latest source of Muslim rage: a teddy bear.

In case you missed it, there was an excellent piece on the Russian elections at THE DAILY STANDARD today by Reuben Johnson, the thrust of which is that turnout in the Russian election has been wildly inflated by the Kremlin (various wire service reports peg turnout at about 63 percent). Reuben…

Robert Farley writes: For the last two years, we have justified putting a missile defense system in Eastern Europe explicitly around the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. In addition to the extraordinary financial costs, this project has resulted in increased Russian hostility to the United…

Grinnell, Iowa Interesting post on Hillary Clinton from Rich Lowry over at The Corner. He writes: Extraordinary. She's lost some altitude nationally, and a little ground in Iowa where it's always been a pretty close race, so nothing seems to suggest a need to break the glass - as in 'break the…

In the Democratic debate from Des Moines on NPR this afternoon, former Senator Mike Gravel said that Iran's support for terrorism was both justified and understandable. Gravel said that such support is appropriate because voters in the region have elected members of Hamas and Hezbollah and because…

From the Los Angeles Times, At 61, doctor joins Navy to honor his son: When Marines came to his door a year ago to tell him that his eldest son had been killed in Iraq, Bill Krissoff reacted like any father: with confusion, devastation, then numbness. Nathan Krissoff was so young, a lover of…

J. Bradford DeLong has a thought-provoking essay on Joseph Schumpeter in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Here's a key quote: It is important to stress that a Schumpeterian entrepreneur is not an inventor, but an innovator. The innovator shows that a product, a process, or a mode of organization…

The Danger Room had an interesting scoop yesterday on the Marine Corps' request for an airborne tactical laser that could, in the words of the formal request, create "instantaneous burst-combustion of insurgent clothing, a rapid death through violent trauma, and more probably a morbid combination…

The UK's internal war over defense spending is heating up: Proposals to slice up to £15bn from the defence budget over the next decade have been drawn up by the Treasury, provoking bitter rows within Whitehall and the cabinet at a time when the military are under enormous pressure to meet…

Just to add to Tom Joscelyn's excellent post on the National Intelligence Estimate, Cliff May offers this note from a former CIA insider: [While this NIE] does confirm Iran was pursuing nuclear weapons in 2002 and 2003, its conclusions that as to why it may have stopped the program and why this…

Bloggers are buzzing about the release of the NIE report on Iran and the White House's reaction to it. There's a lot of buzz out there, but here is the smartest, can't-miss commentary. Bloggers seem to agree with Thomas Joscelyn, who asked five questions about the NIE here yesterday. He wrote,…

From the Manchester Union Leader: Fund the Troops, by Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman. From Contentions: Dark Suspicions about the NIE, by Norman Podhoretz. From the Washington Post: New Republic Disavows Iraq Diarist's Reports, by Howard Kurtz. From the Wall Street Journal: The 'Sacred Relics'…

From the "Hey we're still relevant!" files comes the Air Force's airpower summary report. SOUTHWEST ASIA (AFPN) -- Coalition airpower integrated with coalition ground forces in Iraq and the International Security Assistance Force troops in Afghanistan during operations Dec. 1, according to Combined…

In a NIE just two years ago, the U.S. Intelligence Community ("IC") concluded: "[We] assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immovable." However, the…

Everyone knows Huckabee has been surging in Iowa. But some people seem to assume that Huckamania is confined to Iowa. Not so. I've seen two national polls of the Republican race since Thanksgiving. Here there are, with a comparison with the results from the same polling organization from the…

Tim Rutten, "a hack liberal advocate posing as a media critic."

Senator Lieberman just put out the following statement in response to yesterday's release of the NIE: "The National Intelligence Estimate reinforces the need for concern and caution, not complacency, on the part of the United States and the international community, about Iran's illegal nuclear…

Via The Corner, comes this video from the French version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

You can follow this link to watch a preview video of Katie Couric's semi-candid interviews with the leading candidates. It's worth watching the whole video, but the most interesting responses in the clip come from Sen. Clinton and Mayor Giuliani, who both answer that the two books they need by…

The region around Samarra in Salahadin province continues to be a flashpoint for raids against senior al Qaeda operatives and propaganda cells. U.S. forces have confirmed killing a senior Syrian al Qaeda leader near the city, and another media cell was dismantled in the city. As the U.S. targets al…

The House Appropriations Committee seems to be concerned that Democrats are losing the debate over whether to fund the war on terror. To bolster the Democrats' argument, they've decided to 'set the record straight' with this one-page document. It says (in part): Last week the House of…

A friend sends along this link to Comedy Central's "Indecision 2008" caption contest. The image, when you follow the link, is of Mitt Romney speaking to some nuns, one of whom is wearing a neck brace. Be sure to cc the Campaign Standard when you send in your entry.

The dynamic duo of Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman make the case for building on the surge's success in today's Manchester Union-Leader. Which newspaper, as you know, is based in a certain primary state where McCain is staking the future of his presidential campaign. Collaborations such as this…

Would you say that you are always in control or out of control? That you either get along with people very well or not at all? If so, then you may be a perfectionist. And according to the Times, you may also be something close to nuts: The more strongly participants in the study thought in this…

Moscow

I DON'T NORMALLY watch Lou Dobbs. I sometimes briefly peek in on his show's festivities, and that's enough to get a sense of things. Immigrants are bad. Illegal immigrants are really bad. Free trade is bad. Outsourcing is really bad. His is a timeless populist message pitting the little American…

THE HOUSING SITUATION is deteriorating, as inventories of unsold houses rise, and prices continue to fall. Credit markets are snarled, as lenders hoard cash to pay the bill for the shoes that are still to drop. Bank earnings are down some 25 percent, driven by mortgage and consumer credit card…

In case you missed it, the Scott Thomas Beauchamp saga finally came to an end over the weekend. Four and a half months after the WWS first raised questions about the New Republic's pseudonymous Baghdad Diarist, TNR editor Franklin Foer retracted the soldier's three pieces in a 7,000 word apologia…

The story dominating the news cycle right now is the public release of "Key Judgments" from an NIE on Iran's nuclear program. In particular, the first sentence of the NIE is drawing the press's intention: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons…

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Iraqi Army Col. Msfab Yousif reloads his AK-47 after using it to destroy a vehicle that was used in illegal checkpoint activities by insurgents in Ad Dawr near Tikrit; Iraq; Nov. 21.

It seems I've written on this plenty (here, here, and here, for example), but now it looks like Dingy Harry is starting to agree with me: it's silly for Democrats to not pass legislation to fund the Iraq war in 2008. Democrats have effectively conceded the fight already, and there are too many…

I think a strong case can be made for the Romney speech. Romney's faith is the big elephant in the room for a lot of primary voters. Ignoring it is no strategy for dealing with it, especially as Mike Huckabee puts personal faith in the center of the campaign with unabashed rhetoric and even…

When Democrats seized the majority in Congress, the world turned upside down. One of the big changes instituted was a requirement that the House actually work five days each week. As the Washington Post reported: Hoyer and other Democratic leaders say they are trying to repair the image of…

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is out, but I'll leave the serious analysis to Thomas Joscelyn, who should have something up in this space shortly. Still I think it's worth pointing out how ridiculous some of the claims being made about the NIE process are, almost all of which tie…

Political journalists love a pre-packaged narrative almost as much as they love artificial historical analogies, which is why Mitt Romney's speech Thursday on religion and public life will dominate the news this week. "The speech" not only figures heavily in the press's…

This kind of thing really brings out my inner libertarian--Dallas cops raid poker night at the VFW.

Well, we all knew campaign rhetoric was going to heat up as the primaries approach. But who knew candidates would resort to cannibalism? I just received a fundraising appeal from Joe Biden with the subject line: "I will eat Rudy Giuliani alive at a debate." Whoa! Let's hope he's speaking…

Peter Beinart, the New Republic's editor-at-large, has a piece in today's Washington Post titled "A Non-Story Remakes the Race." Beinart explains: Last month, Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times live-blogged the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. As the discussion bounced from…

As Kevin Rudd and his new cabinet are being sworn into office today, Chinese media have given unprecedented coverage to the Australian Labor Party's victory in the November 24 elections, and to the newly designated prime minister in particular. Names of Western leaders are typically transliterated…

In a superb piece from the Wall Street Journal, Michael M. Phillips illustrates just how profoundly the Army's new COIN evolution has transformed the force. A natural-born insurgent, Sgt. First Class Jacob Stockdill was brimming with malicious suggestions when a group of American soldiers and…

Mike Huckabee found out what it's like to lose the goodwill of the media this weekend. Up to this point, the Arkansas governor has enjoyed the image of the wily underdog, surmounting overwhelming odds and a lack of cash to mount an insurgent presidential campaign. But now polling reveals he's the…

From the American Spectator: Franklin Foer's Paranoia, by John Tabin. From the New York Daily News: In Iraq, Locals Turning Against the Insurgents, by Michael J. Totten. From Newsweek: Don't Give Up on Afghanistan, by Khaled Hosseini. From the Washington Post: Rigging Pakistan's Elections, by…

On Fox News Sunday yesterday, an ailing Mara Liasson suggested that Mike Huckabee lacks a realistic chance at the Republican nomination because of the cash-starved status of his campaign. I'm going to assume it was the Nyquil talking, and that the cogent Liasson offered moldy analysis due to her…

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I've heard rumblings in the defense community that the India was going to start self-manufacturing defense equipment, and buy up what they couldn't produce on their own from the West. I guess injecting your military with legions of cheap Russian goods is a tough habit to break: Despite Russia's…

Not to speak ill of the network that decided to make Dan Rather the face of its news operation, but HDNet didn't acquit itself well when it ran Saturday night's "Black and Brown" debate from Iowa. Fully half of the participants began the evening with defective microphones. Yes, it was delightful to…

I got an email the other day from Chris Dodd's campaign manager. A crafty one. It is designed to look like an internal text email from Sheryl Cohen, Dodd's campaign manager, to web guy Tim Tagaris, discussing a potential email appeal for money. Here's the text: Tim, I made a few small changes to…

Let's say you are Hillary Clinton (scary, I know!). You are faced with a possible plateau in support in Iowa and New Hampshire and a buzz-heavy challenger. So you decide to attack Barack Obama by saying he's a ... calculating careerist? Hmm. What's that saying about people in glass houses again?…

From the BBC: One of the most striking findings was the apparent unpopularity of the Taleban and their foreign supporters. Only 5% of respondents said they supported or strongly supported the Taleban (against 4% last year), with 14% of respondents saying they supported or strongly supported jihadi…

With the return of former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Pakistan, a dangerous new actor has now reentered Pakistani politics. ABC News's the Blotter reports that Sharif has accepted a bribe from none other than Osama bin Laden. The report is based on the interrogation of one Ali Mohamed,…

Remember when John McCain beat George W. Bush in New Hampshire by 16 points? Upsets happen in politics, just as they happen in life and, of course, in sports. That's the point of an email I just received from Bill Kristol: Last Saturday night, #1 Missouri and #2 West Virginia lost in college…

The major GOP campaign story of the weekend - indeed, one of the major stories of the GOP campaign so far - is Huckabee's rise in Iowa and nationally. It seems voters, now beginning to pay attention to the campaign, are asking themselves, "Hmm. I like this guy for vice president. So why shouldn't I…

It's always a pleasure to start the day off with some good news.

The other day, at the annual meeting of the Federalist Society in Washington, D.C., Rudy Giuliani observed that there are "200 reasons why the next election is really important." Which 200, you ask? "The 200 federal judges that the next President of the United States will likely appoint over four…

The Age of Lincoln

Classics for Pleasure

You Say Bravery, We Say Brokaw

A Romanov Fantasy

Houses of the Founding Fathers: The Men Who Made America and the Way They Lived by Hugh Howard, photographs by Roger Straus III (Artisan, 354 pp., $50). The world of late 18th-century America is intriguingly antique and endlessly diverting, and while the Founders were hardly representative of the…

Land of the High Flags

British conservatives have spent a decade clawing their way back to respectability, and they finally look like a government-in-waiting. This is thanks to their leader, David Cameron, a baby-faced Old Etonian who listens to indie rock, occasionally rides a bicycle to work, and loves windmills so…

This year for Christmas, get me nothing. A lot of it.

The Perfect Summer

Nureyev

Promises to Keep

TERRORISTS AT SEA

The safest of all assumptions in Washington is that year after year federal spending will rise. Over the past 25 years, spending increased 84 percent in real, inflation-adjusted terms as the population of the United States rose 30 percent. Spending per capita grew 41 percent. And though President…

The stem cell wars are over. Leading scientists are telling us that they can pursue the most promising stem cell research without using--much less killing--human embryos. This breakthrough enables researchers to create human embryonic stem cells directly from adult cells. In fact, the new method…

For Bob Vander Plaats, January 3--the day of the Iowa caucus--can't get here quickly enough. Vander Plaats, chairman of the Mike Huckabee campaign in Iowa, can read the polls, and in the latest surveys of likely Republican caucus-goers Mike Huckabee came in second, trailing Mitt Romney by only two…

A Matter of Justice

Of a Feather

Eagerly anticipating the defeat in Iraq to which they are so much attached, some on the left have also been preparing for another contingency: the assault that they think they see coming, a drive to pin the whole wretched failure on them. Apparently, this will be "stab in the back" redux, a new…