February 2008

This video in response to Hillary's ad from earlier today:

Northrop Grumman and EADS have somehow managed to defeat heavy-favorite Boeing in the battle to replace the Air Force's aging fleet of aerial refueling tankers. The initial contract for 80 aircraft is valued at $40 billion, and the service has plans to purchase as many as 100 more at an as yet…

Another classic from the Tierney Lab: If only the masses could understand the science of global warming, they'd be alarmed, right? Wrong, according to the surprising results of a survey of Americans published in the journal Risk Analysis by researchers at Texas A&M University. After asking a…

I have always thought that Dick Morris was hit or miss -- that half his writing was quite insightful, but the other half was very weak. His latest column falls into that latter category -- and it makes me think he's looking for work with the Obama campaign: The best evidence of Obama's readiness to…

There's a great story about General George C. Marshall, who--while posturing the nation for war--took a few minutes out of his busy schedule to hear out some gentleman from the automotive industry. After listening to them for about 5 minutes, Marshall nodded and said "Ok, do it." And so the Army…

The whole debate is absurd, but since they're still going at it over at the Corner, it's worth throwing up this gem from a Slate column earlier this month: The Constitution's rule that the president be "a natural born citizen" focuses not on where a person became a citizen, but when. To be…

Several head-to-head polls of likely voters now show McCain beating Obama, and McCain's favorable/unfavorable ratings are each a couple points stronger to boot. There is also evidence that Obama might be incredibly vulnerable in several key battleground states. In spite of a dozen straight losses…

Yesterday the Senate unanimously approved legislation to extend favorable tariff treatment to 4 Andean nations: The Senate cleared legislation Thursday that would renew trade preferences for four South American countries, just a day before their scheduled expiration. The measure (HR 5264), which…

The House of Representatives is likely to vote next week on a FISA extension, but not the bipartisan bill which passed the Senate by a wide margin: "We don't have agreement but ... I am very hopeful that we will have legislation on the floor next week, " House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer ,…

From the Washington Post: Walking on Eggshells, by Howard Kurtz. From the Chicago Sun-Times: Hope Isn't a Foreign Policy, by Steve Huntley. From the Long War Journal: Egyptian al Qaeda Leader Killed?, by Bill Roggio. From Contentions: An Anti-War "Teach-In" at the CIA? by Gabriel Schoenfeld. From…

Blogosphere consensus: nice of Hillary to be making commercials on behalf of McCain... Still, there's another problem with this ad, mainly that Hillary seems to be just the kind of person who would want to micromanage a military situation. That's how she's run her campaign, and there's little doubt…

Traveling the world in search of Condi's legacy: U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill said on Friday he may go to Beijing at the weekend to meet his North Korean counterpart for talks on ending Pyongyang's nuclear programs. "I think we will have an announcement on that at some point,"…

A wonderful story: After completing two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Wayne Leyde won $1 million from a scratch-and-win lotto ticket on Tuesday. Now that he's won, Leyde, a 26-year-old member of the Washington National Guard, says he's still going to volunteer to go back to Iraq for a third tour and won't…

Although proponents of campaign finance reform often proclaim too much money is being spent on politics, New York City's new matching system might actually increase the total amount expended. For complying with certain caps, participant-candidates can receive $6 in matching funds for every $1…

Jay Cost has some very interesting thoughts on the Democratic party's superdelegate problem, which he believes is indicative of the larger trend in American politics of neglecting the role of the political party: It seems to me that the Democrats are in the midst of a robust, valuable debate about…

Cat's out of the bag: Prince Harry has been serving on the front line with his British army unit in one of Afghanistan's most lawless and barren provinces. Harry is the first royal to serve in a combat zone since his uncle Prince Andrew flew helicopters during Britain's war with Argentina over the…

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THE HEADLINES MAKE THE faint-of-heart yearn for the good old days, when things were stable and simple. The bad news is literally everywhere:

BY HAPPENSTANCE, I bought a paperback copy of Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point the day before picking up the DVD of Wes Anderson's latest film, The Darjeeling Limited. The idea behind Gladwell's book is that cultural phenomena--books that turn into bestsellers, fashions that sweep across the…

Angelina Jolie writes in today's Washington Post: As for the question of whether the surge is working, I can only state what I witnessed: U.N. staff and those of non-governmental organizations seem to feel they have the right set of circumstances to attempt to scale up their programs. And when I…

The Pew Research Center issued a new poll today highlighting some of Senator Obama and Senator McCain's strengths and vulnerabilities as they both try to nail down their party nominations. The survey gives the Illinois Senator a nine-point lead (49-40) nation-wide over Hillary Clinton among all…

Washington

McCain opened today's call by expressing some satisfaction with recent polls giving him a lead in a head to head match-up against Obama. He also took the opportunity to hit Obama again over his comments in the most recent Democratic debate that he would consider moving troops back into Iraq if al…

Think Progress reports "McCain Rated As America's Worst Senator For Children": Today, the Children's Defense Fund Action Council released its 2007 Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard. CDF reports some positive news, particularly that average scores for members of Congress "improved from the…

I always felt some of Bill Buckley's best columns were his obituaries. When a friend or someone he admired died, Bill's essay would evoke the person's good nature and distinctiveness. He also managed to capture a person's eccentricities. Consider his obit this past fall for Norman Mailer: "This…

From the New York Post: WFB, Transcendent, by John Podhoretz. From NRO: A Neighborhood Reborn, by Pete Hegseth. From the Long War Journal: Sunnis and States' Rights, by Bill Ardolino. From Junge Freiheit: An Interview with Victor Davis Hanson. From Time: African Journeys with George, by Bob Geldof.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jim Ogonoswki, a Republican candidate who's seeking to face off against John Kerry in his Senate re-election bid this year. Last year Ogonowski waged a surprisingly strong special election campaign in Massachusetts' 5th Congressional district -- strong…

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According to Military.com, the Iraqi army will be trading in its AK-47 for new M16A2 assault rifle. Says one U.S. official, "We in the U.S. know that the M-16 is superior to the AK ... it's more durable," said Army Col. Stephen Scott, who's in charge of helping the Iraqi army get all the equipment…

The Democratic contenders are stumbling all over themselves to show how disappointed they are with NAFTA, and how committed they are to changing it. Fact is, there's no reason to think that withdrawing from NAFTA -- if possible -- would help create jobs in the United States. That's because the…

In response to the ridiculous piece from the Times today about McCain's eligibility for the presidency, a friend writes in: Of course, the argument is preposterous. A citizen is "natural born" in either of two ways: first, by being born of American parents; second, by being born on American soil.…

Ron Paul's presidential campaign exceeded expectations--at least in the fundraising department. Now he's using his cash and donor lists to elect other Republicans who back a withdrawal from Iraq: Murray Sabrin, a New Jersey Senate candidate who has been endorsed by Paul, is expecting a "moneybomb"…

Over at CSIS, Anthony Cordesman has published his latest report on violence in Iraq. His assessment of Anbar:

EUROPEANS, LIKE MUCH of the rest of the world for that matter, are following the U.S. presidential election campaign very closely. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and even Mike Huckabee have all pretty much become household names across Europe. Newspapers, magazines, blogs, and TV and…

My colleagues and I at the THE WEEKLY STANDARD wanted to express our condolences to our friends--and Bill's colleagues--at National Review, and above all to Christopher and the rest of the Buckley family. We'll all be publishing well-deserved tributes and appreciations. For now, I'd say just this:…

I met Bill Buckley while interning at National Review during the summer of 2001. When he later invited me to join him in Gstaad, Switzerland, to serve as his research assistant on Last Call for Blackford Oakes, I instantly agreed. I left a well-paying full-time job in Washington, D.C., to avail…

The Air Force, which needs all the help it can get on the public relations front, has banned access to blogs: The Air Force is tightening restrictions on which blogs its troops can read, cutting off access to just about any independent site with the word "blog" in its web address. It's the latest…

Stolen directly from Geraghty, the latest Rasmussen numbers: McCain now leads Obama 46% to 43% and Clinton 48% to 43%. Obama is viewed favorably by 51% and unfavorably by 46%. McCain’s numbers are 55% favorable, 42% unfavorable. Clinton earns positive reviews from 47% of Likely Voters nationwide…

Military.com has the details: One of the pilots of the B-2 stealth bomber, Spirit of Kansas, reported a fire at takeoff from Andersen AFB, Guam which was followed quickly by loss of control of the bomber, according to a senior Air Combat Command official. The stealth bomber rolled uncontrollably to…

A statement from McCain on the passing of Bill Buckley: "I am profoundly saddened to hear of the passing of William F. Buckley Jr., and offer my deepest condolences to the Buckley family. Bill had many friends, including my parents, who he visited when they were stationed at the U.S. Pacific…

I've written before that House Democrats seem headed for a painful immigration debate that exposes the fault lines between the moderates elected in 2006 -- who want to protect their seats by passing legislation to get tough on illegal immigration -- and the lliberals and latinos who favor 'earned…

Texas law allows early voting in its primaries. And counties in Texas experiencing the largest increases in pre-election day balloting compared to four years ago are also those with demographic characteristics most likely to support Barack Obama. Polling shows the Illinois Senator does well among…

On Tuesday morning, a fierce Hillary Clinton was ready to throw the "kitchen sink" at Barack Obama. But by Tuesday night's debate, Hillary was again whiney and defensive. Bloggers say Obama won the debate--not due to the substance of his arguments, but because Hillary just plain blew it. Susan…

The Democrats aren't eager for the Denver convention to look like the Chicago convention of 1968: Organizers acknowledge that their "Re-create '68" moniker has been met with skepticism as they've toured the country to gin up support among fellow activists. "A lot of people of course associate it…

From National Review: William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P., by the editors. From Military.com: Obama and His Captain, by Christian Lowe. From WEEKLY STANDARD Online: Al Qaeda's Resurgence, by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross & Kyle Dabruzzi. From the New York Post: Mullah's in Space, by Peter Brookes. From the…

I covered yesterday the reluctance of Senate Democrats to begin debate on an Iraq withdrawal resolution. The irony of the situation is that the withdrawal bill is cosponsored by Majority Leader Harry Reid, who promised last year to bring it up. Democrats became even more angry when Senate…

Obama at last night's debate: "As commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad." McCain today…

William F. Buckley, Jr, died this morning at his home in Connecticut. Our friends at National Review already have posted some poignant reflections. There will be many, many more. I didn't know him at all before I came to Washington, but I read everything he wrote. And he is one of the chief reasons…

Based on turnout, Democrats are blowing the doors off Republicans this presidential cycle. For example, on Super Tuesday, 14.6 million Democrats cast ballots compared to only 9 million Republicans. But is a particular candidate causing the surge? Many believe the boost is due to Hillary Clinton…

A friend tells me that I'm way behind the times, and everyone has already heard about the site Barack Obama is Your New Bicycle. Ben Smith mentioned it at Politico on February 14, so in Internet years (which are like dog years, except much shorter), it's already ancient. Still, I thought I'd call…

It's clear that a McCain/Obama presidential race would call into question some of the principles that we normally take for granted. One is that groups like Public Citizen would line up in lock step behind the Democratic candidate. Not true this year: "Regardless of how many lobbyists are working on…

John Podhoretz says the Kaddish for Hillary. It was a bad night for her. The Contentions gang liveblogged the debate, so plenty more over there. It has gotten harder to watch these things, though, and it doesn't help that the Dems invariably open with 20 minutes of debate on the minute difference…

From the latest USA Today/Gallup poll: In a poll taken Thursday through Sunday, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say by 2-1 that Obama has the better chance of beating the Republican in November. Republicans agree: By more than 3-1, they say likely GOP nominee John McCain has a better…

FOUR YEARS AGO, HIS WORDS WOULD have represented an almost unquestioned consensus view. In late January, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, Dell Dailey, described al Qaeda's top leadership as isolated, saying that they have "much, much less central authority and much, much less…

THE VALENTINE'S DAY SHOOTING at Northern Illinois University, following last year's Virginia Tech Massacre, makes college shootings seem like an emerging fad among suicidal lunatics. There were no such shootings in the 2005-2006 academic year, one last academic year, and three this academic…

Barack Obama opposed the war in Iraq. Although he later said he was not sure how he would have voted had he been in the Senate, he made this comment as he prepared to keynote the Democratic National Convention in 2004, the purpose of which was to nominate John Kerry, who had voted for the war. It's…

Segment #9 on the Rush Limbaugh Echo today: Will John McCain choose Gov Sarah Palin as his VP? Alaska Governor Sarah Palin is the youngest to take that office, suggested as a VP for McCain. Mother of four, she is a 'babe', you have to notice. Her website is jammed up now; thanks to Rush. Let us…

Sounds like the rumors of French forces bolstering NATO lines in Afghanistan were true: France may send hundreds of ground troops to east Afghanistan where NATO-led forces are fighting al Qaeda-backed insurgents, Le Monde newspaper reported on Tuesday. It said the move would be part of a new Afghan…

From Daily Tech: But now, that evidence [of global cooling] has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.…

Arms Control Wonk reports from Oslo, where he is attending a conference titled "Achieving the Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons," organized by the Norwegian Foreign Ministry and the Nuclear Threat Initiative: I heard two new ideas today that I found interesting, not least because they were,…

As regular readers know, the Senate has passed an extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by a bipartisan vote of 68-29. The legislation is critical to ensuring that our intelligence agencies can listen to foreign terrorists abroad as they communicate with other foreign terrorists…

Above the Law figures just how much an Obama presidency will cost you (that is, if you are making over $164,000): The effect is enormous. Betsy's marginal tax rate goes up from an already ridiculous 42.5% to 51.4%-not including the new 6.2% marginal tax on your employer. Subject to how she…

Senator Lieberman on the floor of the Senate today: Mr. President, it's been only a year since General David Petraeus arrived in Baghdad and took command of American forces in Iraq. But in these brief 12 months, he and the American Coalition troops under his command have brought about a tectonic…

More moderate Democrats are increasingly adjusting to the reality that the Iraq surge has been a military success, and that it is starting to create conditions for workable political compromise in Baghdad as well as Iraq's provinces--see, for example, the air of desperation that has seized the…

She says 'yes,' she would consider running for national office, though she calls it an "impossibility this go around." Of course, that's precisely what Obama said in 2004. And with all due respect to Chris Cillizza, isn't the case for Palin stronger if Obama wins the nomination? HT: Captain Ed

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From National Review: Lessons on the Long War, by Pete Hegseth. From Time: Obama on Israel. From the Middle East Journal: Guns in the Desert, by Michael J. Totten. From the Wall Street Journal: Obama and the Power of Words, by Stephen F. Hayes. From the New York Times: The Real McCain, by David…

A letter from Major General Robert H. Scales (Ret.): Stuart Koehl's piece "Fighting for the Army's Soul" if left unanswered may cause harm to those of us who can claim to have an Army soul and who are deeply offended by his ill informed and cruel indictment of the Army officer corps. Readers of…

But they still can't have it: Australia could be trusted with the United States' Lockheed F-22 Raptor fighter, US defence secretary Robert Gates says. Currently an Act of the US Congress bars any foreign sales of the Raptor. The aircraft is the US Air Force's most advanced fighter and its sale is…

The Senate is preparing to begin a debate on several Democratic proposals to force a withdrawal from Iraq, but in contrast to last year -- when Democrats were eager to vote on Iraq over and over -- there is little enthusiasm for a fight: Democrats privately said Reid was not enthusiastic about…

In a very smart piece in today's New York Observer on Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, Steve Kornacki writes: In the '76 primaries, Carter's Democratic foes at first ignored his trust theme and then-when it was too late-brayed against it, warning that he'd been maddeningly vague about what he'd…

The conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Lorin Maazel, defended his orchestra's commie concerto in the Wall Street Journal last week: I have always believed that the arts, per se, and their exponents, artists, have a broader role to play in the public arena. But it must be totally apolitical,…

JUST WHEN THINGS couldn't get any worse, they did. The Federal Reserve Board's economists revised their growth estimate down, and their inflation forecast up. The dreaded word "stagflation" has begun to make its appearance, reminding those Wall Street analysts old enough to remember that in the…

IN A VERY SMART piece in today's New York Observer on Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter, Steve Kornacki writes:

BY NOW YOU SURELY know the facts of what happened after MSNBC host David Shuster said Chelsea Clinton was "pimped out" in her mother's hunt for superdelegates. Hillary Clinton's campaign complained, MSNBC apologized, Shuster was suspended, Shuster was allowed to return.

FIDEL CASTRO HAS BEEN known as a man of many of many faces--dictator, autocrat, tyrant, despot--but long forgotten is his brief position as artistic muse. And considering that Castro's admirers consider him a modern-day Robin Hood, it's quite appropriate that the artist he inspired was none other…

Mike Goldfarb is right that Tom Ridge will be among those John McCain's seriously considers as his runningmate. As Goldfarb notes, Ridge is from the electorally important state of Pennsylvania. McCain not only respects him, but he considers him a friend, and he was happy to have Ridge with him for…

A good way to measure how far apart the Americans (particularly the current administration) and the Europeans are these days is by reading Helmut Schmidt's "twelve questions for the candidates" in the current Atlantic Times. The former German chancellor simply wants to know where the contenders…

I listened to this bit on NPR yesterday about the New York Philharmonic's trip to North Korea. It featured Zarin Mehta, the orchestra's president and executive director. He says: I think it's going to mean a lot...our board has supported it, our musicians have supported it, I would say that 95…

I've heard from two different sources that Tom Ridge is at or near the top of the list to be VP. This would not come entirely out of the blue, if it's true. McCain mentions Ridge frequently on the trail, and tactically it makes a lot of sense. Ridge was an extremely popular governor in…

In recent years, interest in religion and politics has spread like converts at a revival. Electoral analysts have long dissected the voting patterns of various belief groups, such as Protestants, Catholics and Jews. And at the end of the 20th century, the growing mobilization of the Christian…

Who would have thought this, based on the current political debate? Thirty-four percent (34%) of all voters say they will definitely vote for John McCain if he is on the ballot this November. Thirty-three percent (33%) will definitely vote against him while 29% say their support hinges on who his…

From the New York Times: It's All About Him, by the boss. From the Wall Street Journal: ElBaradei's Real Agenda, by Danielle Pletka and Michael Rubin. From Powerline: Kissinger on Islamic Terrorism, by John Hinderaker. From National Review: McCain's Veep Problem, by Byron York. From the Long War…

Andy McCarthy has an outstanding deconstruction of the political grandstanding that resulted in this piece from top Democrats involved in intelligence and judiciary oversight. McCarthy points out that Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, not long ago had the…

Lorne Gunter of Canada's National Post says we should 'forget about global warming.' He compiles some interesting data, and suggests that the world may be headed for a new ice age: Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966. The U.S.…

This weekend, Ralph Nader announced on Meet the Press that he will run for president for the fifth time, as the Green party candidate. Nader was never much of a threat to candidates in past elections, and while bloggers agree that he has no chance of winning, they disagree about how his run will…

The conventional wisdom is that the Democratic race is largely over. And indeed, it may be. But it's stunning to see the attempts among the Hillary faithful to tear down the Democratic frontrunner before the critical votes in Texas and Ohio. Interestingly, it seems that the Clinton team essentially…

Does Afghanistan have enough combat troops to secure the country? Can Afghanistan be fixed merely by adding troops to conduct humanitarian missions? The Washington Post's William M. Arkin says yes to both questions. In an article titled "Afghanistan: America Wrong, Europe Right," he argues the…

In a conference call with reporters this morning, Barack Obama foreign policy adviser Richard Danzig admitted that the campaign did not know the backstory of the Obama photo allegedly circulated by Hillary Clinton's campaign. That lack of knowledge did not keep the campaign from denouncing it as…

I wrote a few weeks ago that Mike Huckabee ought to strongly consider a Senate bid in Arkansas. The idea is gathering steam. David Freddoso wrote in support of the idea yesterday (noting -- correctly -- that 'there is no clearer path for him' to be elected president). Phil Kerpen plugs the idea…

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Last week China's ministry of education announced a pilot program that makes Peking opera a component of the music curriculum for grades one through nine. Scheduled to begin in March this year and to last until July 2009, each of the three cities and seven provinces selected for the program will…

Late Tuesday night in Damascus, Imad Mugniyah, senior terrorist of Hezbollah, was killed in a car bomb explosion. It was a fitting death for a founding father of Islamic terrorism, a man who himself had built many bombs. If you had not heard of Mugniyah before, there is a good reason. Terror…

In his State of the Union address President Bush spoke briefly on matters of life and science. He stated his intention to expand funding for new possibilities in medical research, to take full advantage of recent breakthroughs in stem cell research that provide pluripotent stem cells without…

The Siege of Mecca

LETTERS OF STATE

Last week, the House Republican leadership chose Alabama representative Jo Bonner to fill an empty seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. The seat opened up when Roger Wicker of Mississippi was appointed to the Senate in December to replace Trent Lott. Bonner was a favorite to win the slot:…

Can you imagine spending $29,385 on a football game? That sum, nearly as much as the average Mississippi household earns in a year, is what Massachusetts native Marcel Nadeau paid to take his two sons to the Super Bowl.

Lately we've been hearing that California has been restored to its historic position as harbinger of America's political future. Let's hope not.

The Pythagorean Theorem

They're Sorry, So Sorry

A year ago, when neither the war nor political reconciliation was going well, the Bush administration reluctantly agreed to 18 benchmarks for judging progress in Iraq. And the Democratic Congress eagerly wrote the benchmarks into law, also requiring the administration to report back in July and…

"I  do not know what makes a writer, but it is probably not happiness," wrote the Fresno-born Armenian-American author and playwright William Saroyan, who died in 1981.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, head of the Anglican Communion, doubtless thought he was making a positive contribution to interfaith relations when he gave a speech on February 7 suggesting that some form of official recognition in Britain for elements of sharia--Islamic religious law--is…

The State Department is engaged in heavy-duty spin to keep alive the clearly failing Six Party Talks on North Korean disarmament. But no amount of spin can hide the fact that whoever becomes president in 2009 will face a North Korean problem worse than that which Bill Clinton bequeathed to George…

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Along with ballroom dancers and Civil War re-enactors, dog show aficionados constitute an interesting subculture in American life. Beyond that brief description, I am disinclined to go--except, perhaps, to recommend the exceedingly amusing Best in Show (2000), the Christopher Guest "mockumentary"…

How Jews Became Germans

To understand Barack Obama's campaign, it's instructive to look back at the last contender to enrapture the left's grassroots, Howard Dean. In a December 2003 report, the New York Times Magazine explored the personal dimension of the Dean-mania sweeping the Democratic party.

You probably have your own favorite, which is fine, but for my money the most revealing moment of the presidential campaign (so far!) came during the last debate among the Republican candidates, on January 24. Ron Paul briefly alighted on our fragile planet and challenged John McCain, if elected,…

The World Is a Text

During his February 5 testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell backpedaled from the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and its claim that, "in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."

The biggest news of the week was undoubtedly John McCain's smearing by the New York Times. While the senator may have gotten the best of it so far--even the Times's public editor, Clark Hoyt, felt the newspaper shouldn't have published the piece's most scintillating passages--E.J. Dionne pointed…

Anthony Cordesman opens his op-ed in today's Washington Post: No one can return from the battlefields in Iraq and Afghanistan, as I recently did, without believing that these are wars that can still be won. They are also clearly wars that can still be lost, but visits to the battlefield show that…

The truth about Castro: Cuba features a universal health care system, a minuscule 1.9 percent unemployment rate, near-total literacy, complete political "unity" - and hundreds of thousands of people ready to risk their lives to get the hell out.

A B-2 bomber crashed out at Guam yesterday. Both pilots ejected safely. David Axe puts things into perspective: [T]here were 21 B-2s. Now there are 20--a roughly 5-percent reduction in an instant. In terms of airframes, that's the equivalent of 30 F-15s crashing at the same time, or 60 F-16s, or 6…

In Thusday night's debate, Barack Obama said: You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a consequence, they didn't…

David Kirkpatrick covers conservatives for the New York Times and generally does a good job. He was one of four reporters bylined on the John McCain story Thursday. Late yesterday, on the Times website, he offered his own thoughts on the timing of the story issue we explored here. As far as the…

The captain to whom Obama was referring presumably belongs to a battalion of the 10th Mountain Division, which is stationed at Ft. Drum, and as one of the Army's few truly light infantry units, has been deployed more than almost any other formation outside of Special Operations Command. As Jake…

Senator John Warner sent a letter to Barack Obama this afternoon regarding his comments during last night's debate alleging ammunition and other equipment shortages in Afghanistan. Warner refers to Obama's comments as "a disturbing framework of factual allegations." According to Jake Tapper's…

Matthew Levitt and Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute recently visited Bahrain, where the government has recently convicted five men on terrorism charges including "receiving explosives and weapons training, engaging in terrorism overseas, and terrorism financing targeting 'friendly…

The AP reports: The Obama campaign offered no details to support the captain's story, making it impossible to verify. A spokesman did not immediately respond to questions about who the captain was and when and how the candidate learned about the allegation. ABC News said it talked to the…

Reuters reports: The Pentagon on Friday cast doubt on an account of military equipment shortages mentioned by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama during a debate with rival Hillary Clinton. During the face-to-face encounter on Thursday evening, Obama said he had heard from an Army…

The Obama campaign put ABC reporter Jake Tapper in touch with the army captain Obama referred to in last night's debate. Go read Tapper's report of what the captain says. Unfortunately, his statements don't justify the charges Obama made last night. Once again, Obama said half the platoon had been…

Ray Robison has an excellent piece on the media's disinterest in a major case of conflict of interest centering on Nancy Pelosi. Specifically, she has interceded on behalf of pharmaceutical company Amgen in an attempt to encourage expanded government purchasing of an HIV drug. Without her…

Surely I'm not the only curmudgeon out there -- the only one who found Hillary's last answer at last night's debate... fulsome. I mean, just because conservative cynics like John Podhoretz and Jim Geraghty compliment Hillary for grace, gratitude, and perspective, doesn't mean that they're right and…

The global warming scaremongers have hit rock bottom: As climate change warms the nation, giant Burmese pythons could colonize one-third of the USA, from San Francisco across the Southwest, Texas and the South and up north along the Virginia coast, according to U.S. Geological Survey maps released…

From the Washington Post: Democrats Dug In for Retreat, by Charles Krauthammer. From the New York Times: Editors Defend the McCain Article. From TWS Online: Carrier Cold War, by Reuben F. Johnson. From the Times: Obama's a Dangerous Leftwinger, by Gerard Baker. From Commentary: Reuters Disappears…

The report from Der Spiegel: New simulations carried out by European Union experts come to an alarming conclusion: Iran could have enough highly enriched uranium to build an atomic bomb by the end of this year.... For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating…

This is a surprise: The National Republican Congressional Committee narrowly outraised its House Democratic counterpart in January, ending a lengthy trend of losing the monthly money battles against the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In FEC reports filed last night, the NRCC reported…

There is a lot about Obama's story that makes no sense. Let us start with the opening line: "You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been…

A few weeks ago, House Republicans announced the establishment of a new website: earmarkreform.house.gov, to promote their idea of a moratorium on new pork-barrel projects. Now that the effort has attracted some attention and put Democrats in a difficult position politically, they have told House…

Barbara Ehrenreich became a celebrity based on her book Nickel and Dimed, a personal memoir about how difficult and frustrating it can be to get by in America as a minimum wage worker. She later wrote about the 'futile pursuit' of the American Dream. Her writing led Adam Shepard to simulate…

From the National Hurricane Center (via Anthony Watts): A team of scientists have found that the economic damages from hurricanes have increased in the U.S. over time due to greater population, infrastructure, and wealth on the U.S. coastlines, and not to any spike in the number or intensity of…

During tonight's debate, Barack Obama related this stunning anecdote: You know, I've heard from an Army captain who was the head of a rifle platoon--supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24 because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq. And as a…

A friend sends this in and asks if this is the best YouTube of the campaign so far. It's definitely in the running. Other contenders...Hillary as Tracy Flick and Swift Kids for Truth. I have no idea where this video comes from, but it is, as our reader describes it, "priceless."

ONE OF THE OLDEST Religious Left groups in America is targeting Israel for divestment. The Methodist Federation for Social Action (MFSA) was founded in 1907 after its leaders met with President Teddy Roosevelt. It was one of the Social Gospel's chief proponents in the early 20th century, when much…

A SENSE OF JOY infects Michel Gondry's work. Getting his start in the spiritual abattoir that is the music video industry, Gondry elevated the medium, joining Spike Jonze as one of the few auteurs on MTV. His videos for the White Stripes (the Lego-themed "Fell in Love with a Girl") and the Foo…

YESTERDAY EVENING, Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica boasted to a crowd opposed to Kosovar independence that, "We're not alone in our fight. President Putin is with us."

kittyhawk-flightops0629.jpg The USS Kitty Hawk is expected to be decommissioned in 2008.

A new Fox News Poll asked Americans . . . Who does Usama bin Laden want to be the next president? More people think the terrorist leader wants Obama to win (30 percent) than think he wants Clinton (22 percent) or McCain (10 percent). Another 18 percent says it doesn't matter to bin Laden and 20…

As if the New York Times story wasn't enough to drive conservatives into the arms of John McCain, Think Progress reports that the League of Conservation Voters today awarded the presumptive Republican nominee the lowest possible score for his environmental record in 2007--a big fat zero. Quoting…

China Matters catalogues Chinese concerns regarding last night's satellite shoot-down: 1. Asserting China's qualifications as a space power on par with Russia and the United States. 2. Imputing hidden motives to the US for conducting the operation 3. Expressing resentment that the US did a better…

The "habit" being the Indian Armed Forces' addiction to Russian military gear. I'd love to see the West drive a wedge between India and the Russia-China defense partnership, this seems to be a start: India is likely to make a formal announcement on the awarding of a one-billion dollar contract to…

Is it possible that Obama -- and to a lesser extent Clinton -- are sucking up the money available for other Democratic candidates? That's one explanation for this surprising deficit: The Republican National Committee (RNC) raised more than twice as much money as the Democratic National Committee…

The other day I expressed surprise that Hugo Chavez had not spoken with Castro since he decided to leave public life. A friend who monitors Latin American politics suggested that the reason Chavez and Castro had not spoken might be that the two leaders are not as close as they once appeared. Cue…

When true rumors of Bill Clinton's affair circulate, Newsweek quashes the story. When unsubstantiated rumors circulate about John Kerry having an affair, they get picked up by the Drudge Report, NY Post, and British tabloids. When unsubstantiated rumors circulate about John Edwards having an…

On February 7, I noted that Muqtada al Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, was likely to extend the cease-fire rather than be blamed for rolling back the security progress and exposing his militia to the full weight of Iraqi and U.S. forces. Today, Reuters reported Sadr will extend the six-month…

Let this be a lesson to potentially hostile North Korean and Chinese fishermen: Experts sounded alarm on Feb. 20 over the Japanese military's ability to defend the country after one of its most advanced naval destroyers crashed into a fishing boat, leaving two missing. The collision on Feb. 19 came…

Today, the New York Times unloaded this story about John McCain's supposed ethics issues and insinuates that he had a "romantic relationship" with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The ethical issues are very old news, both McCain and Iseman have denied the allegations of an affair, and the McCain campaign…

From the Politico: Right Rallies to McCain's Side, by Mike Allen and Jonathan Martin. From the Wall Street Journal: Obama's New Vulnerability, by Karl Rove. From Newsweek: The Eagle Still Soars, by Daniel Drezner. From the Wall Street Journal: Islam at the Ballot Box, by Amir Taheri. From the New…

But of course it does! Almost every engineer who looked at the problem knew it was eminently possible to design an anti-ballistic missile system, once high-speed computers and miniaturized seekers were developed (not to brag, but I wrote something to that effect back in 1986). A ballistic missile…

Over the last week Mrs. Obama has twice stated that she was never proud of America until her husband's recent surge in the polls. Her husband has said these comments were taken out of context, but in what context could her comments possibly be justified? Though we would never question anybody's…

It's attracted a lot of attention that as of the end of January, John McCain's presidential campaign was essentially broke. That may be true, but the good news for McCain is that having secured his party's nomination, he doesn't need to spend at the same rate as his Democratic rivals. Obama spent…

Headline: US: Bombers didn't have Down syndrome Read further into the article and you learn: "Both had recently received psychiatric treatment for depression and/or schizophrenia. From what we know now there's no indication that they had Down syndrome," Smith said, citing records obtained by the…

A few thoughts from your Cardinal on Le Affair McCain. . . 1.) A 71 year old man . . . A 40 year old slinky blonde. I'm French. What's the big deal? 2.) McCain should thank the New York Times. The age issue is now gone. 3.) No allegation of corruption, no favors, both sides deny an affair. Why is…

What cult of personality? And about a half-hour into a speech here, the Illinois Democrat announced that he had to take a quick break. "Gotta blow my nose here for a second," Obama said. Out came a Kleenex (or perhaps it was a hankie), and he wiped his nose. The near-capacity audience at the…

Russia: NATO expansion is such a grave threat to us, we're selling arms to its member states: Russia is eyeing a major arms sale to Greece, which would become the biggest sale to a NATO member country. In December, several Russian media outlets, including the government RIA-Novosti news agency,…

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BARACK OBAMA IS GUILTY as charged by the Clinton campaign--of using without attribution words uttered by Deval Patrick during his successful run last year for the governorship of Massachusetts. Patrick, a friend of Obama's and one of his campaign chairmen, is hardly aggrieved about this, nor do…

THOUGH IT GARNERS RELATIVELY little attention, military bureaucracy poses a very serious threat to the long-term security of the United States, and its pernicious effect extends well down into the chain of command. I have a friend whose son, now back from his fourth deployment to Afghanistan with…

THREE YEARS AGO, I found myself eating lunch at a Las Vegas restaurant far from the glamour of the Strip with a man who was a legend in the American Army, George Dunaway. Dunaway served as the Sergeant Major of the Army, the highest non-commissioned rank in the Army--only one man has the job at a…

WHATEVER THE GAME and whatever your age, everybody knows that there are rules. My four-"no daddy, I'm four and half--almost five!"-year-old daughter knows that board games and card games have rules. How else, she explained to me earnestly, are we supposed to know whose turn it is and who wins?

By now, everyone has seen the footage of that Obama-supporting Texas state senator freezing before Chris Matthews' demand that he name a single Obama legislative accomplishment. The left has chosen two reactions to deal with this latest embarrassment. The first has been to dismiss Mathews as a…

There's a lot of interesting debate in the blogosphere about the future of the Air Force. In particular, my lefty friend Robert Farley has inspired a number of exchanges on the direction the service should take. I don't agree with hardly anything he says, but he always makes an interesting case.…

Okay, I'm stealing the headline from John Podhoretz's post earlier this week. Way back on Monday, Michelle Obama revealed that she felt no pride in her country prior to her husband becoming the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. Today she's gone and done it again. Dean just posted the…

There are increasing signs that the Democrats are getting ready to wage a good-old fashioned, big-government, tax-and-spend, centralized control, liberal campaign for president this year. The latest evidence comes in the form of a memo from Clinton friends James Carville and Stan Greenberg, arguing…

Michelle Obama + Microphone = Train Wreck: "Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you…

John Noonan is quite right about the threat that the military bureaucracy poses to the long-term security of the United States. The situation he describe with regard to the 5th SFG in 2001 still pertains today, only the problem is more pernicious and extends well down into the chain of command. I…

Over at HotAir, Allah has ended a post wondering whether Hillary will run again in 2012 or 2016. In case you're keeping score at home, Hillary will be 68 years old when Campaign 2016 rolls around. My sense is assuming Hilary fails to draw the inside straight necessary to derail the Runaway Obama…

Slate explains "why the Air Force doesn't need more F-22s": On Feb. 13, according to today's issue of Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, Gen. Bruce Carlson, chief of the Air Force's materiel command, told a group of reporters, "We think that [187 planes] is the wrong number" and that the Air Force…

During his speech last night, Obama said: "We are going to lead by example, by maintaining the highest standards of civil liberties and human rights, which is why I will close Guantanamo and restore habeas corpus…." Sounds great...but, like everything else about the Obama campaign, it's not clear…

In a little more than a month from now, President Bush will head to Bucharest, Romania for a major NATO summit. The gathering is being billed as a potential "make-or-break" moment for the future of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, whose lackluster performance in southern Afghanistan has been…

Normally I wouldn't throw such an enormous block quote out at the masses, but today I'm firing for effect. Dear Ministry of Defense Bureaucrats, It is worth remembering that on 6th June 1940 the evacuation from Dunkirk of the BEF had finished two days earlier, with the bulk of their equipment being…

It sometimes seems that Harry Reid's mouth runs far ahead of his brain: "There are more jobs to be created in the green field than in the old standard fields," said Reid, adding that the coal industry passes out fliers wherever he goes pointing out the senator's opposition to coal and accusing him…

From the New York Times: Attack Iran, With Words, by Reuel Marc Gerecht. From the Washington Post: A Card to Play for Cuba's Freedom, by Robert Kagan. From NRO: Eternal Hero's Return, by Jim Geraghty. From ABC News: Petraeus 'Cautiously Optimistic' About Iraq, by Clarissa Ward. From USA Today: Both…

Her husband attempts to "clarify" her earlier remarks: Statements like this are made and people try to take it out of context and make a great big deal out of it, and that isn't at all what she meant. What she meant was, this is the first time that she's been proud of the politics of America.…

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One of my pet theories about acting is that at least half of the work an actor does is with his voice. That's why the ranks of great leading men are filled with exceptionally powerful and wonderful voices (think George Clooney and Paul Newman and Russell Crowe and Alec Baldwin). British actors tend…

Picking on Hillary Clinton while she's down may seem cruel and unnecessary. But it will also be fun, so let's do it anyway! On Monday's episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien, fashion maven Tim Gunn appeared. Most women know Tim Gunn as the amiable presence at the center of "Project Runway;" most…

Hugo Chavez seems to be Fidel Castro's biggest fan, and proudest disciple. Press accounts suggest the two talk regularly. Therefore, I was surprised not to see a reaction from Chavez early yesterday to the news that Castro was retiring from public life. Yesterday evening, he made a statement: In…

Shouldn't Obama's flak be joking about this instead of lodging an official complaint and getting some peon at MSNBC in trouble? "It happened during the opening of ‘Hardball' Monday evening. Matthews was previewing a story on the controversy over Obama's use of another politician's words, and a…

Picking Secretary Rice for Vice President sounds good on paper, but it would be a catastrophic mistake for the McCain campaign. Secretary Rice cannot deliver any battleground state or region, and it is not as though Senator McCain lacks credibility on foreign policy. Moreover, picking Rice would…

Wow. A tough and iron-fisted Generalissimo of the totalitarian Left left the world stage yesterday . . . but enough about Hillary Clinton. Sorry, couldn't resist an obvious Castro/HRC joke. Back in Wisconsin, though, Hillary's problem is as serious as Fidel's. This Wisconsin loss means that Obama's…

Paul Waldman has a very interesting piece on Obama's use of narrative. It includes this striking passage: [I]f he should find himself facing Obama, McCain will discover that his own weaknesses fit in neatly with the story Obama tells. Where Obama is young, dynamic and optimistic, McCain is old,…

EGYPTIAN TROOPS RECENTLY sealed the border with the Gaza Strip, ending 12 days of freedom of movement for Palestinians. The Egyptian troops are still allowing Palestinians and Egyptians to return home, but have stopped--according to recent reports--the free flow of cross-border movement.

PRESIDENT BUSH AND THE First Lady are in Africa this week, visiting five countries--Benin, Ghana, Liberia, Rwanda, and Tanzania--that have benefited from his $15 billion initiative to combat HIV/AIDS. There is something to be said for a program that confounds liberals, libertarians, and radical…

HERE'S A LITTLE GAME to occupy your time when you're stuck in traffic. It's called "TV Writers Or . . . ?" Think of a profession whose work stoppage would have a more direct effect on your life. TV writers or . . . garbage men? TV writers or . . . cops? TV writers or . . . firemen? TV writers or .…

Maybe it was his CPAC speech? For the first time in the Republican primary, McCain has the support of a majority of his party nationwide. Indeed, nearly every poll in the last two weeks shows McCain at a point or two over 50 percent. Perhaps more remarkable is that 13 percent of Republicans are…

As Continetti noted here earlier, the decision by Fidel Castro to step down has occasioned lots of commentary about how many U.S. presidents and other world leaders he outlasted. Credit where it's due: there's at least one American politician (and as far as I can tell, only one) who has lasted in…

Madison, Wisconsin Last night a whole bunch of Clinton supporters gathered in the Monona Terrace convention hall. The campaign claims there were "more than 5,000" on hand. I'm not sure there were that many, but there were certainly more than a few thousand. It was a packed, super-energized crowd…

Milwaukee, Wisconsin One of the additional weirdnesses of yesterday's Michelle Obama event was that before the program began, they played the now famous Dipdive music video on a giant screen behind the podium:

When I was six, my life's ambition was to be this guy. Most amazing detail in the post above: The man with the world's largest Star Wars figurine collection ... also has a girlfriend.

IMG_0011low.jpg Friends of a feather...

After Monday's elections, it looks like the writing's on the wall for the Pakistani strongman: Two politicians close to Mr. Musharraf have said in the past week that the president was well aware of the drift in the country against him and they suggested that he would not remain in office if the new…

Of the head to head polls that have come out in the last week, none should be more startling to the McCain campaign than this one from New Hampshire: Rasmussen has McCain trailing Obama by 13 points (36 to 49) in the Granite State. McCain is behind Clinton too, but the gap is much smaller (41 to…

ACCORDING TO BOTH Reuters and AFP, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz resigned Tuesday as president and commander in chief of Cuba. His message was published in the online version of the official daily Cuban news outlet Granma.

David Brooks: "His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we've been here all along?" Maybe we are the change we have been waiting for that now we can believe in?

One YouTube commenter captures my feelings pretty well: "The words 'nail in the coffin' spring to mind."

ALBANIANS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS euphorically celebrated Sunday's declaration of independence by the republic of Kosovo. The sensation of liberty from Serbian domination was intoxicating. But Kosovo's future is less than crystal-clear.

Madison, Wisconsin

"PLEASE SIR, CAN I have some more," whine the Oliver Twists on Wall Street. More interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve Board's monetary policy committee, a bigger portion of stimulus from the president and Congress, more direct relief for the housing market, a bail-out of bond insurers--you…

Is the surge working and how long should American troops stay in Iraq? These are the questions Americans want answered. But according to Damien Cave, who spent most of the last year covering the war in Iraq as a reporter for the New York Times, they are not the only questions to ask. Home for a…

Kosovo declared its independence yesterday and today the United States, Britain, and France all recognized the new government, despite the protestations of Serbia and Russia. Senator Lieberman just put out the following statement: The declaration of independence on Sunday by the…

How cold? Anthony Watts reports that the drop from January 2007 to January 2008 "appears to be the largest single year to year January drop for the entire GISS data set." Of course, we're not likely to hear much about record breaking cold, but Watts goes on: This is yet one more indication of the…

From the New York Times: Democrats Should Read Kipling, by the boss. From the Middle East Journal: The Dungeon of Fallujah, by Michael J. Totten. From the Washington Post: Why Torts Trumped Terrorism, by Robert Novak. From Contentions: Winning Hybrid Wars, by Max Boot. From Der Spiegel: Interview…

Jonathan V. Last reports from Wisconsin: [T]he Founders Day event also featured a new addition meant to counter the Clinton charge that it takes more than just words to be president. As rebuttal, Obama thundered, "'I have a dream.' Just words. 'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men…

John Noonan makes some very interesting and important points in his recent piece, "An Irregular Challenge." The Air Force does need to evaluate its role in low intensity conflict and must make the necessary investments to support that mission. John is also right in stating that the Air Force has…

The Jerusalem Post reports: In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as "great national leaders." The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, the Associated Press's…

Chinese media have given minimal coverage to president Bush‘s week-long visit to Africa. While Xinhua ascribes the motivation for the five-nation trip to "strategic interests" that include military and energy security, it also acknowledges that the U.S. troop presence in Africa has been "tiny."…

Hillary Clinton's continued troubles, and what she might do to right the ship, dominated the Sunday morning talk shows. George Will pointed out that Wisconsin could be rough sailing for the New York senator on This Week: "The way you stop losing is you start winning. And she has to start in…

George W. Bush staked his presidency on his response to 9/11: on the proposition that the United States had to defeat the virulent forces loose in the Muslim world directly and militarily. In his last State of the Union address, delivered shortly after his first and only grand tour of the Middle…

The Perils of Peace

The Power of Body Language

Less than 12 hours after polls closed on Super Tuesday, the press corps covering John McCain gathered in a hangar at Swift Aviation in Phoenix, Arizona, for another press conference. The focus, as it had been for more than a week, was on one question: How will John McCain repair the breach with the…

Maharishi, What Have You Done?

What's So Great About Christianity

What a moment! Having learned nothing from the left's Bush Derangement Syndrome, the conservative movement's big talkers spent the days before Super Tuesday indulging in a fiery display of McCain Derangement Syndrome. For some of these folks, this is what medical insurance providers might call a…

It was High Noon on television, and the camera kept cutting away to those narrow shots of wall clocks and grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks and pocket watches: that annoying clonk, clonk, clonk as the seconds ticked by and the train barreled closer. You remember the film. Everybody in town knew…

Memoirs: 1939-1993

One night in early 1994, I found myself in a Republican ward committee meeting in Newton, Massachusetts. It promised to be a relatively eventful evening. Beyond our usual festivities--chattering about lost school committee races and eating cupcakes and cookies--Senate candidate Mitt Romney was…

Bernard Malamud

Investigations of national-security leaks in Washington are not all that rare. But until Judith Miller of the New York Times was sent to jail for 85 days by a special prosecutor digging into the Valerie Plame imbroglio, investigations of such leaks in which journalists are subpoenaed were about as…

Growing up among the striving bourgeoisie (teachers, cops, tradesmen), I learned to be suspicious of anyone who was selling something. I remember being told that restaurants served you bread in order to make you thirsty for more drinks, on which their profit margin was high. This was very tricky of…

Republicans and Barack Obama are far apart ideologically, but they have a common enemy: Hillary Clinton. This explains why many Republicans look kindly on Obama's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. Republicans have two goals in the 2008 race. One is to retain the presidency. The other…

The Greatest Battle

Each party's base has two inconvenient truths it doesn't want to hear. For Republicans, those truths concern immigration and the culture war. Most of today's illegal immigrant population is here to stay (along with their descendants) and will pay no significant price for getting here outside the…

Sometime before Barack Obama's strong showing on Super Tuesday, the Washington Post observed that the senator had been campaigning across this great land on a "platform of hope and change." Whether or not the Post was being arch, they had it about right.

Milwaukee

Since this has been such a big year for political surprises and Crazy Ivan style last minute twists and turns, your Cardinal would be remiss in not noting the significant possibility of a Hillary Clinton upset win in Tuesday's Wisconsin primary. Now don't get me wrong. I've been predicting Obama…

I've long felt that--after several decades of maintaining a peacetime military--Pentagon bureaucracy has become as great of a threat to our Armed Forces as terrorists or insurgents. Looking for a related reference, I stumbled upon a section of Robert Kaplan's Imperial Grunts that I think most…

There's a lot of this going around these days. Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones has the best distillation of the growing uneasiness with the High Church of Obama: This is our moment to do what? To march? To organize? No. To vote for Obama. As if simply by voting for one man, we make a mark upon this…

(1) Hillary Clinton was in Ohio Thursday, she won't get to Wisconsin until Saturday. Bill Clinton was in Texas on Friday. So who did the campaign roll out to carry the banner in Wisconsin? Ann Lewis. Just in case there was any doubt that Clinton was going to tank the Badger State. (2) On Friday we…

I suppose they may be waiting for a more politically-opportune time. Once Senator McCain clarifies his stance -- specifically, would he oppose any 'comprehensive' bill that may pass the House as a result of this debate -- they will better understand the political calculus: Rumors to the contrary,…

Bob Kerrey is making sense: "You don't change the rules in the middle of the game. Period," he said in response to a question about whether or not Michigan and Florida's delegates ought to be seated at the Democratic National Convention.

Funny stuff: Martin Short explaining his paparazzi rage to David Letterman. And no, I am not a regular reader of "Jezebel." I got this link from Defamer. I swear.

James Taranto collects reports on the apparently widespread phenomenon of people requiring medical attention after they faint at Obama rallies. Maybe it's time for the FDA to consider requiring a Surgeon General's warning for Obama events.

Read. Krauthammer. Now. (Or as soon as it's convenient.)

From McCain's appearance last night on Larry King: "I'm very serious when I say, I think it's disgraceful that the House of Representatives didn't act and this is going to lapse. We're fighting an implacable enemy here. I cannot imagine the House of Representatives not moving forward, and letting…

Regular readers will recall the dustup caused by the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed in the New York Times last July. Eager to cast doubt on the optimistic findings and views expressed by O'Hanlon and Pollack, many liberals pointed to the less-positive view expressed by Anthony Cordesman of the Center for…

Reading this report on a new piece of legislation proposed by Rep. Mike Ross (D-Ark.), it strikes me that there's far more room for compromise on environmental/energy issues than it might seem. Ross has proposed a massive investment in renewable and clean energy financed by the extraction of oil…

House Democrats had a busy day yesterday: they voted to hold in contempt two administration officials, and allowed the expiration of legislation authorizing terrorist surveillance. It was clear from the start of the day that there would be major fireworks, and bitter partisan warfare. So was it…

Looks like the 2008 issue matrix is shaping up to be ... rather similar to the 2004 issue matrix. If this speech and this statement are any indication, John McCain plans a general election campaign highlighting the contrasts between him and the Democratic nominee on national security and the…

Count me among those who are very skeptical about Hillary's chances of winning the nomination through superdelegates. Handed the nomination on a silver platter, Ms. Clinton seems poised to blow it, and Barack Obama outperforms her in polls against Senator McCain. Add to that the fact that Barack…

CRITICS WHO REFER to George Romero's zombie films as great social commentary are like first year college students with a semester of Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn under their belts. Having found someone who is willing to stick a finger in the eye of the establishment--however nonsensical the…

IN THE LAST several weeks I have learned a great deal about myself, thanks to all the wonderful media reports about serving and returning war veterans. For example, I have learned that I might want to kill my wife because of the trauma of war. Or, if I have no beef with my family, that I might go…

IT HAS BEEN WIDELY reported since Super Tuesday that John McCain has effectively sewn up the Republican nomination for president but must still convince enough American conservatives that he stands as heir to Ronald Reagan. This poses an obstacle to his election in November. McCain might be more…

ACCORDING TO TWO STUDIES cited by Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom in their 1997 book, America in Black and White, the percentage of African Americans with incomes below the poverty line in 1940 was "no fewer than 71 percent" and perhaps as high as 87 percent. By 1966, according to the Census Bureau,…

Romney signs on. It would be a helluva ticket.

For the moment, pretty well. According to last week's Quinnipiac poll cited here, Clinton leads Obama in Ohio 55 percent to 34 percent and in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary on April 22, 52 percent to 36 percent. Rasmussen's latest Ohio tracking poll has Clinton up 51 percent to 37 percent.…

He gets to that point at the end of his column, titled "Getting the Military Out of the Nuclear Business." The bulk of the piece isn't so much dedicated to defending the title as it is Arkin clumsily fumbling around the findings of an Air Force Blue Ribbon commission. An example: While all the…

I've been remiss in linking to one of my favorite gee-whiz websites, Maps of War. What makes the site so absorbing is their evolutionary approach to cartography. Instead of focusing on a single map of a single battle, MoW tracks ideologies and political movements as they rise and fall over the…

From the New York Times: Making (Some) Progress in Iraq, by the editors...no joke. From the Wall Street Journal: Obama as Diplomat in Chief, by Michael O'Hanlon. From the Financial Times: Pentagon Faces a Battle on Climate Change, by John Podesta and Peter Ogden. From the Miami Herald: Our Allies…

Josh Patashnik writes at TNR: Marty Lederman is right that it would be nice if McCain would spell out which techniques he thinks are appropriate for the CIA to use--because his anti-torture credibility is sinking pretty rapidly. And thus a 23 year-old reporter-researcher at the New Republic…

Cover at the Corner Peter Wehner takes Mark Helprin to task for a piece in the Wall Street Journal that, while dealing mainly with the manifold sins of talk radio, also includes the following bit on the conduct of the Iraq war: To begin with, American columns should have cut through Baghdad after…

Joel Surnow's decision to walk away from 24 has prompted an outstanding requiem, of sorts, from conservative writer/director Jason Apuzzo: Before Hollywood started working for al-Queda [sic] my biggest complaint with them was how left-wing cliches were killing films and television. Once you know…

Dragons.jpg

The fictitious leader of al Qaeda's Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Omar al Baghdadi, has issued a new audiotape. Instead of addressing the very real problems his organization faces in Iraq--dwindling membership, defections, the Sunnis turning against them, a shrinking base of operation--"Baghdadi" (who…

The AP reports: The chief of Hezbollah vowed Thursday to retaliate against Israeli targets anywhere in the world after accusing the Jewish state of killing the militant Imad Mughniyeh in Syria. Israel ordered its military, embassies and Jewish institutions overseas to go on alert Thursday, fearing…

The Hill reports that the leading recipients of pork-barrel projects under the new Democratic leadership in Congress are freshmen Democrats in swing districts: A new study of December's omnibus spending package shows that the party in power has resisted pressure to abandon earmarking, at least to…

According to multiple sources, House Democrats have decided to discontinue the authority of the administration to tap the communications of foreign terrorists operating overseas. They've decided to block a bill with majority support, effectively shutting down much of our intelligence collection on…

From today's Wall Street Journal story on turmoil inside the Clinton campaign: [T]he campaign has something of a shellshocked feel, as staffers privately chew over a blowup last week where internal frictions flared into the open. Clinton campaign operatives say it happened as top Clinton advisers…

Kevin Stach argues that John McCain's record on fiscal issues shows that he is a mainline, low-tax conservative. He points out that McCain: Voted in 1983 to expand the Reagan tax cuts Voted in 1984 against $300 billion in tax increases Voted in 1989 to cut the capital gains tax and expand IRAs…

The crazy kids at the Daily Kos are running a poll to see which potential vice-presidential nominee would combine with John McCain to form "the most easily beaten GOP ticket." The choices are all politicians except for David Petraeus and our own in-house philosophical lodestar, Bill Kristol. The…

Democrats are having a harder and harder time arguing that the United States must withdraw from Iraq because of a failure to make progress toward benchmarks and reconciliation: Iraq's parliament on Wednesday passed three key pieces of legislation that set a date for provincial elections, allot $48…

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As the Democratic presidential race careens towards what may be an ugly finish, liberals are increasingly outraged that superdelegates could frustrate the will of a majority of Democratic primary voters. To this I say: what's the big deal? Liberals in the House of Representatives are doing it right…

WWS pal Adam White responds to this post from yesterday: Scalia's comment -- i.e., that torture isn't "cruel and unusual punishment" under the Eighth Amendment -- is entirely consistent with mainstream constitutional law. Generally speaking, the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual…

4_61_NIMITZ_Bear.jpg An F-18 escorts a Russian bomber near the Nimitz.

Dick Morris on February 6: "The California result likely means that Hillary will be the Democratic nominee." Morris today: "Hillary Clinton has blown an almost sure shot at the Democratic presidential nomination."

After victories in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., John McCain's frontrunner status is more clearly established than ever before. His unwavering support for the war in Iraq, and for the surge, is the primary reason his once-flatlining campaign revived and prevailed. But McCain's campaign…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Q&A with Asif Ali Zardari, by Urs Gehriger. From the Wall Street Journal: Assessing the GOP's Chances, by Fred Barnes. From the Washington Post: What We Need Next in Iraq, by Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates. From the New York Post: Greens vs. National Defense, by Peter…

For some reason, this David Leondhardt item was buried in today's Times business section: "There have been six recessions since 1968, the year that the quarterly survey of economists began. At the start of each one, economists put the odds that the economy would shrink in the current quarter at 40…

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I thought John McCain seemed like a different man when he spoke at CPAC. He came across as humbler and less 'in-your-face' than normal. It seems he made the same impression when he greeted his Republican Senate colleagues yesterday: ...Arizona Sen. John McCain faced a friendlier crowd than some may…

There is one small but influential group of GOP political insiders who are praying for Mike Huckabee to continue his increasingly Quixotic campaign for the Republican nomination: voter mail and list consultants. Huckabee is doing a great job of showing state-by-state exactly where the evangelical…

The emerging buzz today is that Hezbollah leader and co-founder Imad Mughniyeh was killed early this morning by a carbomb in Syria. CNN describes him as "suspected in some of the deadliest terrorist attacks of the last 25 years and a reputed role model for Osama bin Laden." Mughniyeh is said to be…

McCain held another call with bloggers this morning, which was a bit of a surprise since I think most of us had assumed these calls would stop once he locked up the nomination. McCain jokingly put our fears to rest, "I'll never forget you were the only guys who would ever listen to me for a period…

Both McCain and Obama are adjusting fire as they look ahead to the general election, and as they try and look the part of presumptive nominee. Obama hit McCain again last night, as he did over the weekend, for his support of the war and his flip-flopping on the Bush tax cuts. Steve Hayes writes of…

In my piece yesterday, I noted the many ways that Barack Obama's ad-libbed comments at his Jefferson-Jackson address deviated in tone and substance from his prepared text. I also should have noted that many of the comments Obama made that weren't in the text, like the crack about Dick Cheney not…

May I recommend Stanley Kurtz's Claremont Review of Books essay on Akbar Ahmed and Waziristan. There's more information here concerning the challenges American policymakers face in Pakistan's tribal areas than I have seen anywhere else.

From "I Love You, But You Love Meat," in today's New York Times: "June Deadrick, 40, a lobbyist in Houston, said she would have a hard time loving a man who did not share her fondness for multicourse meals including wild game and artisanal cheeses. 'And I'm talking cheese from a cow, not that awful…

No, I don't mean Obama, who also has been on a hot streak lately. I mean New York magazine, the last two issues of which have been fantastic. May I recommend this Po Bronson piece on why kids lie; this Stephen Rodrick piece on the strange life (and death) of hedge fund impresario Seth Tobias; and…

If Congress has been frustrated with communities that declare themselves 'sanctuary cities,' then how can they ignore the decision of the City of Berkeley's interference with Marine Corps recruiting? As discussed here yesterday, the City Council engaged in a bit of misdirection last night. They…

It'll never be the same again for the Hillary Clinton campaign. She is unlikely to recover. Everything has a tipping point, and in the Democratic race for president the ten day sweep that Barack Obama started on Saturday and is very likely to finish next Tuesday in Wisconsin is the final body blow…

LAST WEEK THE ARCHBISHOP of Canterbury, the spiritual leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion, generated a tsunami of criticism by welcoming the partial adoption of Islamic Sharia law in the United Kingdom. "If what we want socially," said Rowan Williams, "is a pattern of relations in which a…

Editor's Note: The following is a question and answer with Asif Ali Zardari, the controversial widower of Benazir Bhutto and Co-Chairman of the Pakistan People's Party. He is widely described as a kingmaker and a potential leader of Pakistan. In this exclusive interview with Urs Gehriger from the…

LAST MONTH, Syria's leading dissident went to jail again. Riad Seif's arrest didn't come as much of a surprise; the former member of parliament and longtime human rights advocate had devoted much of the past two decades to criticizing the authoritarian Assad regime. He was released only two years…

JOHN MCCAIN AND Barack Obama swept the Chesapeake Primaries, as expected. With his victories last night, McCain further solidified his status as the almost-certain nominee of his party. Obama, meanwhile, has taken a lead among delegates to the Democratic convention and is now arguably the…

With 96 percent of the District of Columbia's precints reporting, Huckabee has collected fewer than 1,000 votes (which is some 17 percent of the total number of ballots cast). This is hardly surprising. John Kerry beat Bush 10 to 1 in DC, and the tiny of number of Republicans that live in the…

It's interesting that in Virginia, Huckabee beat McCain among voters who "strongly approve" of the war by a margin of 48 to 46. Of those who "strongly disapprove," McCain wins by a margin of 40 to 30. (Given only the choice between "approve" and "disapprove," McCain wins both groups by 50 to 44 and…

Anne-Marie Slaughter is the dean of Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School and her name has been tossed around as a possible secretary of state in the next Democratic administration. I think we can now assume that she won't be working for Obama in 2009. Today she writes at the Huffington Post: In other…

Congressional Democrats are getting off easy. With attention focused on the presidential campaign, there's been little coverage of their handling of FISA, which has been characterized by short-term extensions to the bill and behind the scenes efforts to gut the program. The central point of the…

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's recent four-day trip to Germany--during which he not only demanded that Berlin fund the launch of new Turkish-language schools and universities but also dared to call on the 2.5 million Turks living there to reject assimilation into German society--has…

Bloggers are all over the Berkeley City Council, which is now facing a serious backlash to its disgusting comments and policies toward the United States Marine Corps. Check out Michelle Malkin and Ace of Spades in particular. One Code Pink organizer who complains to the Los Angeles Times that "the…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Obama Unplugged, by Dean Barnett. From the Wall Street Journal: Can McCain Win in November, by John Fund. From the Los Angeles Times: Go With the Tough Guy, by Max Boot. From USA Today: Should Conservatives Back McCain? by Jonah Goldberg. From the New York Post: NATO…

Anyone who can inspire this sort of dreamy-eyed devotion in the eyes of America's liberal musicians and actors, is not likely to fare well on the national stage. Democrats regularly complain about their nominees getting lampooned by Republicans as leftists adored in Hollywood and Berkeley. If they…

We know Justice Scalia is a fan of Jack Bauer. As the Wall Street Journal quoted him last summer: "Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles . . . . He saved hundreds of thousands of lives," Judge Scalia reportedly said. "Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?" He then posed a series of questions to his fellow…

Mike Huckabee made it clear to a group of reporters this morning that he will not concede until John McCain secures the 1,191 delegates needed to become the Republican presidential nominee. "It could be that nobody ends up with 1,191 delegates prior to the convention," Huckabee said at a breakfast…

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates laid out the case for a continued NATO role in Afghanistan during a speech in Germany this past Sunday. Highlighting the gravity of the terrorist threat against Europe, Gates listed a number of terrorist plots that have been foiled in recent years and asked the…

There's been much hand-wringing in the Pentagon over the Air Force's role in this new war. As I've said before, the Air Force has about a dozen secondary (and no primary) missions, and is still struggling to find its niche in the military's new small wars and soft power movements. Writing in the…

"Mr. Bush never sounds surer of himself than when the subject is Sept. 11, even when his critics argue that he has squandered the country's moral authority, violated American and international law, and led the United States into the foolhardy distraction of Iraq." -- "Trial's Focus to Suit Bush,"…

"A widening array of financial-market problems threatens to trigger a new phase in the global credit crunch, extending it beyond the risky mortgages that have cost banks and investors more than $100 billion in losses and helped push the U.S. economy toward recession" --"New Hitches in Markets May…

... Place your hopes in contests that are three weeks away.

Senator Joe Lieberman is keeping his feet planted firmly in both parties: campaigning for John McCain while donating to his Democratic Senate colleagues: In his incarnation as a lone wolf, Lieberman has crisscrossed the nation to support the Arizona Republican's resuscitated and now-thriving bid…

Every four years, between the time the major party candidates are known and the political conventions, a cottage industry develops in vice presidential speculation. Some politicians aspire to the job (since it can put you in line for the next nomination); more aspire to get mentioned (since the…

That according to Taiwanese Vice Defense Minister Ko Chen-heng as reported by Defense News. Ko made the statement while offering what is described as a rare public comment on a new land-attack cruise missile. The missile, he said, was developed by the Taiwanese for the express purpose of…

POLITICS MATTER. Not whether Hillary Clinton really teared up before key primaries. Not whether John McCain's famous temper will erupt, scuppering his chances of getting into the White House. And not whether Barack Obama can revive Camelot and find a place in America's future for the ageing Kennedy…

FLUSHED AND AGLOW the thrill of defeat, some movement conservatives have their crystal balls out and are busily whipping off comeback scenarios in which all will be well. They will lose now to win later on; they will give the White House to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton, and get Congress back two…

USUALLY WHEN BARACK OBAMA gives a major speech, the overdone hosannas from the liberal commentariat follow as surely as night follows day. The American Prospect's Ezra Klein wrote of Obama's post-Iowa victory speech, "I've been blessed to hear many great orations. I was in the audience when Howard…

LAST WEEK BROUGHT another set of crises in Pakistan. Consider what happened in just the last three days:

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I just got through my first call-in radio show for the BBC, where I was invited on to 5 Live to discuss the "fairness" of the military tribunals at Gitmo. The program's other guest was Andy Worthington, who's apparently written a book on the culture of torture at the military prison. Before running…

John Podhoretz: It is a great irony that the best political news for Republicans in a notably unfavorable election year - with the public telling pollsters that it is desirous of change and prefers Democratic stands on most issues by margins ranging from ten to twenty points - may come out of Iraq.…

In Sunday's 60 Minutes interview with the inestimable Katie Couric, Hillary Clinton explained one of the keys to staying healthy on the campaign trail: "Wash your hands all the time." It's probably not bad advice, but still, you'd think the echos would have stopped her saying it: Out, damned spot!…

Clinton's very able press-meister Howard Wolfson and her rather-less-able chief strategist Mark Penn held a media conference call today to explain why Hillary Clinton is best able to beat John McCain in November. You can listen to this interesting call here. Penn's basic pitch is: McCain will run…

The Washington Times reports: According to the poll results, only 24 percent of Pakistanis approved of bin Laden when the survey was conducted last month, compared with 46 percent during a similar survey in August. Backing for al Qaeda, whose senior leaders are thought to be hiding along the…

The New York Times thinks it may have figured out why the Catholic vote is going for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries: "Mrs. Clinton owes some of her success to the nuns who were once a potent presence in American Catholicism." Well, now, that's an idea. I admit there's some resemblance…

The Democratic party did lots of things differently in 2006 to help them win a majority in the House of Representatives. Among those changes was the decision to run Iraq war veterans in a number of competitive races. Most of them lost, and among the few who did win, it doesn't seem as if their…

From Roll Call: "There is the formation of a consensus," said Rep. Joe Baca (D-Calif.), chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, who said he's seen a draft bill. "We're looking at some kind of a compromise. It's still comprehensive in nature but not to the extent we would like..." But Baca…

From the New York Times: Obama's Path to Victory, by the boss. From Commentary: The Election, the GOP, and Iraq, by John Podhoretz. From the New York Times: Hate Springs Eternal, by Paul Krugman. From the Los Angeles Times: NATO at Twilight, by Andrew Bacevich. From Armed Forces Journal: Israel vs.…

A McCain adviser sends in this response to Obama's statement on 60 Minutes that timetables for withdrawal from Iraq would be dependent on his right, as commander in chief, "to assess the situation" on the ground: Would this be the same Obama who has spent many months trying to strip away our…

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This weekend, Senator Lieberman spoke at the Wehrkunde Security Conference in Munich--otherwise known as Davos for hawks--and delivered a tough speech on Iran, criticizing the confusion caused by the NIE and challenging the world to adopt a set of bold new sanctions against the Islamic Republic.…

Last week World Bank president Robert Zoellick announced the appointment of Peking University professor Justin Yifu Lin as the organization's chief economist and senior vice president for development economics. Lin is the first person from a developing country to hold the Bank's top economist…

From his appearance on 60 Minutes last night: "At a time when American casualties are down, at a time when the violence is down, particularly affecting the Iraqi population, is that the right time to try and set time tables for withdrawing all American troops? I mean you talked about…the end of…

Mickey Kaus: "All of this discussion is irrelevant because John McCain is going to be elected president with 70 percent of the vote. So why do we even worry about what the Democrats are going to do for 2008. Half the Democrats are going to vote for McCain, and I'm going to be one of them." Kaus and…

This is how al Qaeda in Iraq views its situation: Al-Qaeda in Iraq faces an "extraordinary crisis". Last year's mass defection of ordinary Sunnis from al-Qaeda to the US military "created panic, fear and the unwillingness to fight". The terrorist group's security structure suffered "total…

You might have missed it, but bloggers didn't: Last week, the Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Rowan Williams made a case for acceptance of sharia law, and is now facing fierce criticism and calls to resign. The BBC reported: Dr. Rowan Williams told Radio 4's World at One that the UK has to "face up to…

Yesterday President Bush sat down for an exclusive interview with Fox News Sunday's Chris Wallace, talking about everything from the war on terror to his legacy. His philosophy on the 2008 election: "What really matters in a campaign is, what are the basic beliefs? What does one view as the role of…

From Matt Bai's review of former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown's new book: "Brown devotes an entire chapter to his philosophy of womanizing. Just after he was elected mayor, he relates, a friend of his wife, Blanche, asked her about his latest paramour. 'Listen, she may have him at the moment,'…

Michael Tomasky: "Whether Obama can cut, even modestly, into Clinton's white working-class margin is, in my view, the single most important factor that will decide who wins this nomination. If he can, he has a strong shot at Ohio (March 4) and Pennsylvania (April 22). If he can't, Clinton will…

It's going to be a long week for Das Clinton Apparat. Obama wins LA, NE, and WA state on Saturday and Maine on Sunday. And he's favored to do well on Tuesday in DC, MD, and VA. He'll end the week with a solid delegate lead, at least in pledged delegates. This likely Obama sweep, plus a fundraising…

New York Times: "Clinton Replaces Her Campaign Manager".

Late last year, two recently elected southern Republican governors, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and Florida's Charlie Crist, vowed to work together for a "national catastrophe fund" to reduce the soaring insurance premiums for owners of homes in disaster-prone areas. With the endorsement of the…

Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons

"I do believe that this primary will not settle our nominee," Democratic congressman Jim Clyburn said on January 25. "I think our nominee will be settled at our convention."

JENA REVISED

The story from California last week was bound to alarm conservatives. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger endorsed John McCain for president at a solar technology plant. Rudy Giuliani, who's also backing McCain, joined the lovefest as an uninvited but very welcome guest. And McCain talked about the…

On an unseasonably warm winter day in 1974, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., California governor Ronald Reagan delivered a speech that is often cited today as a founding document of Reagan-style optimism.

Barack Obama is promising change, and in an important respect he is delivering it. Obama, the son of a Kenyan, is African American, yet he isn't offering himself as "an African-American candidate" but as a candidate who happens to be African American. That's a big change. He has made transcending…

El Anti-Americanismo Español

According to A.J. Liebling, "the primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down. Each day brings only two opportunities for field work, and they…

The Long Arm of Karl Rove

The English-speaking peoples are justifiably proud of their tradition of free speech. When Thomas Macaulay reviewed the achievements of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, he observed that the victorious English Whigs had shown how "the authority of law and the security of property" could be…

Most leading conservative writers, radio hosts, and activists would probably concur that their liberal counterparts have never really connected with average Americans. Personalities on the right sell more books and get higher radio and television ratings. And until recently, conservatives seemed to…

"Agile brain," "shone in the public sector," a "reputation for odds-defying leadership," "bright and arrogant." The financial press's description of the rogue trader who cost Société Général (SocGen), France's second largest bank, $7.1 billion? Actually, no. That's the reputation of Daniel Bouton,…

In terms of Islamic extremists in Canada [as] they regard the proximity of Canada to the U.S., it's making Canada a kind of Islamic extremist aircraft carrier for the launching of major assaults against the U.S. mainland.

The Billionaire Who Wasn't

Starting Out in the Evening

The Lion and the Unicorn

America by Air

In the 1990 Senate campaign in North Carolina, there was one ad and one moment that emerged as iconic. Run by Republican Jesse Helms against Harvey Gantt, a black Democrat, it showed a pair of white hands crumpling a piece of paper. "You needed that job," said the voice-over ominously, "but they…

Obama's speech last night was pretty much the same speech he's been giving all week. It's a good speech, and his delivery last night was flawless, even absent the Teleprompter, but it was also stunning for its lack of substance. About ten minutes in, after at once honoring McCain for his "half…

Via K-Lo: U.S. Senator John McCain's presidential campaign today announced that former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton has endorsed John McCain for president. Ambassador Bolton issued the following statement on his endorsement: "John McCain was very active and supportive during my…

Thursday CPAC was all about the Romney signs. Friday, it was all about the McCain signs. Today, it's all about 'I Like Mike' signs (and the only slightly less popular 'Stop McCain's Shamnesty' signs). Huck went over well here, with a dedicated audience of fans. His speech even earned him a fresh…

Is it really so crazy that David Shuster would draw a connection between politics and prostitution? The Clinton campaign is making hay out of this for their own reasons--and they may even get a nice sympathy bump out of the whole thing--but why would MSNBC suspend the guy? The only cause for…

MoveOn.org wants its supporters to know that when it comes to national security, John McCain backed the war in Iraq. Worse: he backed the surge! As the memo says: Senator John McCain presents himself as a maverick and a critic of the Iraq war. But a close read of his record indicates that his…

British photog Tim Hetherington wins the World Press Photo Award for 2007 with this:

The most off the wall suggestion yet: For a really out of the box pick, try former mayor and spaghetti western gunslinger Clint Eastwood. There is the little matter of Eastwood's skepticism on the Iraq war, which McCain has pledged his all to win. It's a very unlikely pick, but I'd love to see him…

Over at FP Passport, Lucy Moore wrote yesterday of the Obama/Clinton race: Identity politics distracts from the issues, but there's a reason. Identity matters-maybe not in terms of legislation or policy, but certainly in terms of image. And image can go a long way, especially when you're the leader…

The highlight of this afternoon at CPAC was the presentation of the Blogger of the Year award to the highly deserving Ace of Spades. I suspect that most of our readers are familiar with Ace's blog, but if you have not yet bookmarked it, by all means do so. Ace has a gift for cutting through…

Sitting on bloggers row, you get lots of free stuff. There are hundreds of booths here at CPAC, and many of the folks staffing the booths stroll down our way to show off their wares. The highlight so far: this cool hat from Ushanka.Us. Fausta shows it off to maximum advantage.

So General Petraeus appears to be reaping the sweet rewards of his successful pacification efforts:

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sarah-palin.jpg Better looking than Cheney.

I'd missed it earlier in the week, but over at Salon on Tuesday, Mike Madden noted that after the Georgetown-West Virginia game on January 26, John McCain called Mark Salter, his "longtime speechwriter/Senate chief of staff/intellectual alter ego," to describe the goaltend (er, block, I mean; yes,…

Last night the Obama campaign sent out an email boasting of having had more than 300,000 donors since January 1. As of 9:40 this morning the number was 331,241. They've set a new goal of 500,000 donors by March 4 and they say that people who contribute from here on in will have their donations…

I'm reluctant to say that Canada's "destroy NATO in order to save it" plan is working, but it doesn't seem to be failing either: A Canadian ultimatum on Afghanistan is forcing allies to take seriously the troubling question of why some countries are being forced to shed more blood than others in…

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Yesterday House Republicans forced a vote on their proposed earmark moratorium, which Speaker Pelosi had declined to implement. The measure was defeated, but the depth of support for it was stunning. There have been many earmark votes in the House and Senate in recent years -- on proposed…

The Huck should take a lesson from Mitt Romney's classy performance yesterday and fold up his medicine show. Romney did a lot today to show the country and the party the classy and principled Mitt Romney that his friends have known for years. (One tribute to the guy is that everybody who works for…

Now that John McCain is the presumptive - don't you hate that word! - Republican presidential nominee, the big question is who will be his vice presidential running mate. At the moment, that's unknowable, because McCain himself doesn't know whom he might pick. But here's what we do know: it won't…

The departure of Mitt Romney today from the presidential race, followed shortly by the announcement that Mike Huckabee is staying in, has led to lots of speculation that Huckabee is running to be John McCain's vice president. Indeed, people have been saying that same thing since McCain won New…

JOHN MCCAIN'S SPEECH at CPAC was surprisingly well-received. Aside from a couple small pockets of boos, McCain got a more than polite applause from the crowd. And one of the interesting things to watch, from my vantage point in the second row, was the handful of anti-McCain attendees who gradually…

In Bruges

Dan Balz, the Washington Post's veteran political reporter, must have been sitting in one of the small pockets of anti-McCain CPAC attendees. He writes: "But the reception McCain received at yesterday's annual Conservative Political Action Conference, where he was booed loudly when introduced,…

John McCain's speech at CPAC was surprisingly well-received. Aside from a couple small pockets of boos, McCain got a more than polite applause from the crowd. And one of the interesting things to watch, from my vantage point in the second row, was the handful of anti-McCain attendees who gradually…

The comparison between senators and governors as national candidates goes only so far. John Kennedy was a senator, but he was an executive type, who went into Congress instead of running for Lt. Governor because domestic issues bored him into a coma, and his real passion was foreign affairs. The…

The AP reports: A top Democrat said Thursday he is preparing legislation that would give President Bush the war funding he wants this year, but on the condition that troops leave Iraq by the end of the year. Rep. John Murtha, D-Pa., chairman of the House defense appropriations subcommittee, said…

Food for thought: We've all heard before that senators don't make good presidential candidates. Think Kerry, Dole, and McGovern (not to mention those who didn't make it past the primaries like Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, John Glenn). Governors tend to do much better (Bush, Clinton, Reagan). In fact, as…

John McCain's speech seems to be going over pretty well with the portion of the audience that's open to being swayed. There's at least one McCain opponent here at Blogger's Corner who confessed that the speech didn't matter; he just hates McCain. Among the rest, the response seems pretty positive.…

He just delivered his speech at CPAC...early consensus is that it was effective. McCain took great strides to emphasize his conservative record, including this bit where he highlighted his more controversial stands on issues that led some of his fellow candidates to pander: I campaigned in New…

Did Congressional Quarterly time this piece so that conservatives would be reading it the day that John McCain effectively became the nominee of the Republican party? They consider what President McCain's domestic agenda might look like next year, if there's a Democratic Congress: But when he is…

Via Instapundit, news of a lull in solar activity prompts some scientists to worry of an impending mini-ice age. But you shouldn't worry--the sun has nothing to do with climate: Just how much influence the sun has on global temperatures has been the subject of sometimes acrimonious debate. While an…

Senator McCain has arrived at CPAC, preceded by a wave of several hundred supporters. Like everything at CPAC, the McCain delegation seems to be more than half college students. Notwithstanding the well-coordinated flood of young people, there were a number of more recognizable faces mixed into the…

Hugh Hewitt: The campaign ahead is first and foremost about victory in the war. As Romney argued today, Senators Clinton and Obama are committed to retreat, and Senator McCain to victory in that war. That's all the reason any conservative should need to fully support Senator McCain now that his…

From the Wall Street Journal: From the Jaws of Victory, by Nadia Schadlow. From the Washington Post: New Europe, Old Russia, by Robert Kagan. From UPI: China's Weapons, by Martin Sieff. From the New York Times: Global Warming Jujitsu, by John Tierney. From the Atlantic: After Iraq, by Jeffrey…

Our friend John Hinderaker over at Powerline is no longer listening to his favorite radio talk show. He is not a McCainiac, but "I can no longer listen to her bash McCain day after day." Over at National Review Online, our friend Byron York talks to two pro-life conservatives who back McCain on the…

The U.S. military continues to "communicate" with the Mahdi Army. Today, the military conducted a major raid inside Sadr City. "The U.S. said it was targeting 'criminal elements' responsible for mortar and EFP attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops," the AP reported. Sixteen "criminals" were captured and…

And McCain won. How improbable that seems, when you look back and recall how pundits (including me!) opined on McCain's chances last summer. It just goes to show you the truth of one of Fred Barnes's political maxims: The future in politics is never a straight-line projection from the present.…

Mitt Romney withdrew from the race for the Republican nomination early this afternoon in an extraordinarily classy speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, DC. Romney hinted at the concession at the beginning of his speech and, to the chagrin of the strongly…

As Roger Clemens and his former trainer Brian McNamee head to Capitol Hill today, I recommend this New York magazine profile on the trainer and the steroids scandal.

Downstairs, in the dungeon Exhibit Hall, there are three or four tables set with dozens and dozens of free conservative books. (I picked up this, this and this.) Curiously untouched: Ann Coulter books. There are plenty left if you need to complete your collection. Note to my family: you know what…

Classy exit from Romney, seems like he hit all the right conservative notes in his concession speech. Here, he hits one out of the park: And finally, let's consider the greatest challenge facing America-and facing the entire civilized world: the threat of violent, radical Jihad. In one wing of the…

Romney had the undivided attention of the conference as he spoke. The room was packed, folks were lined up outside trying to get in, and security blocked the doors. Each of the TVs scattered around the hotel was surrounded by a few waves of conference participants, hanging on each word. All I can…

As I type this, I've just returned from the ballroom where Laura Ingraham is introducing Mitt Romney. The room is shut down -- filled to capacity -- literally. People seem stunned to hear that Romney has pulled out... or will pull out. McCain's people here are eagerly spreading the word that Kevin…

Yesterday's post-Super-Tuesday blogging was a bit chaotic--and you really only need to read Richelieu anyways, right? With Mitt Romney now out of the race, McCain is the clear nominee. But what should his next move be? Yesterday morning, McCain said said, "Is there a lot of work to unite the entire…

The Independent reports: A "plastic soup" of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.... Charles Moore, an American oceanographer who discovered the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch"…

I'll be spending the next few days at Blogger's Corner at the Conservative Political Action Conference. The first thing that struck me upon entering today was the huge number of Mitt supporters. It seems you can't walk five feet without bumping into someone wearing a Mitt sticker. There's also a…

First I get an email from McCain's camp announcing a "major endorsement" at tonight's GOP dinner in Baltimore. Romney also plans to be at the dinner. Then there's this from Byron York: "I just talked to another source in the Romney camp about the possibility that Romney is preparing to pull out of…

The Wisconsin primary is February 19. Pay attention to the results, because it may be an indicator of where the Democratic race is headed. Why, you ask? Wisconsin is a primary. Clinton has outperformed Obama in primaries in the past. (His strength is in caucuses.) But the demographic factors which…

Michael Barone's piece today is "must" reading, and contains thought-provoking observations like: "Mr. McCain's talk-show critics call for the Huckabee and Romney constituencies to unite. But that's mixing oil and water. Mr. Romney was winning about 10 percent in south Georgia counties while Mr.…

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Goldfarb linked the this story from USA Today about a video showing young boys "training to kill, kidnap." This comes on the heels of last week's story that al Qaeda had duped two mentally retarded women into becoming suicide bombers. Al Qaeda's reliance on children, women, and the mentally…

Bloomberg News has the scoop: Obama strategists believe that the two Democratic candidates will enter the August convention in a draw. What might make the difference? The unpledged "super" delegates and whether or not the DNC awards delegates from the Michigan and Florida contests at the Clintons'…

Kate O'Beirne and Ramesh Ponnuru have what seems like sound advice for the GOP frontrunner: What McCain should do instead is to take the fight to the Democrats, explaining why he's against Harry Reid's defeatism, Hillary Clinton's health-care plan, Nancy Pelosi's obstructionism on intelligence…

According to CNN, McCain has 680 delegates, Romney has 270, and Huckabee has 176. But the results CNN reports from California - 116 delegates for McCain; 3 for Romney - are incomplete. Give or take a few, California's delegates will end up splitting 164 for McCain to 9 for Romney, which means…

Politico's Jonathan Martin, who has established himself as the go-to reporter on the Republican race for president, confirms that John McCain is skipping his annual trip to Munich. But then Martin reports: "He's sticking stateside this weekend -- likely in God's Country and in that other place…

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LAST WEEK GERMANY marked the 75th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's rise to power, on January 30, 1933. Within a decade the Nazi juggernaut had devoured much of Europe, and its death camps had incinerated millions. No nation in Europe bears the shame of Nazism and anti-Semitism more heavily, yet none…

The Navy's Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) is to be the cornerstone of a revitalized surface fleet (if the Navy can ever get the thing built at a reasonable price). The Navy's next generation destroyer, the DDG-1000, is also built to "dominate the littoral." This is because the Pentagon is betting that…

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Just watching Fox News. They have the Huck on to talk about the tornadoes that ravaged his state last night. When the conversation turns to yesterday's result, Huckabee accuses Romney of flip-flopping on...whining. Huckabee says Romney accused him of whining yesterday, but is himself whining today…

A dispute within NASA has emerged into public view over the last few weeks in advance of a meeting that will try to chart the organizations course after Bush. Four years ago Bush declared that NASA should return to the moon. Not everyone likes that idea: Some see a subtext here - a desire to avoid…

Senator Tom Coburn's spokesman tells me that the good doctor from Oklahoma will be introducing John McCain tomorrow before his CPAC speech. This is a smart move by McCain - much smarter than using a "video featuring President Ronald Reagan to make the introduction," as Jed Babbin reported today. Is…

The Chicago Auto Show is huge. Organizers say that it required about 10,340,000 pounds of freight, and enough carpeting to fill 571 average American homes. There are hundreds of cars on display. Among them are stunning beauties like the... let me look it up...

From THE DAILY STANDARD: About Last Night, by Dean Barnett. From National Review: The Morning After, by David Frum. From the Washington Times: The Longest Day One, by Edwin M. Yoder Jr. From Contentions: Why They Hate McCain, by John Podhoretz. From the Observer: Voters Reject Romney... and…

Bill Ardolino tries to make sense of the kaleidescope of political parties that make up the Iraqi government: The first and arguably most important area of political progress, the "ground-up" aspect, has been a linchpin of US military strategy and is significantly responsible for the large security…

I've written before about the effort by the Democratic Netroots to defeat elected Democrats who fail to toe the liberal line. Yesterday was an important day in that effort, as many liberal blogs and activists had targeted for defeat Democratic Congressman Dan Lipinski. The effort fell short…

The latest in global positioning technology. (HT: Marketplace.)

From Murdoc: When the US military begins accepting more men without high school diplomas than it did previously, it's reported as a sure sign that it's getting more difficult to convince educated men to join up. So when terrorists begin recruiting and training little boys, isn't it a sure sign that…

Drudge has the total votes cast in last night's Democratic contests as they now stand: TOTAL VOTES CAST Clinton: 50.2% (7,347,971) Obama: 49.8% (7,294,851) Yet Obama won more delegates, and more states. Still, I somehow doubt that all those liberals who whined (and still whine) about how Gore won…

There's a lot of speculation out there about who will get the nod for VP. In his Fox News debut last night, Karl Rove threw cold water on the idea of a McCain-Huckabee ticket. Considering the source, that's a big red flag. Huckabee does very well in the south, but surely McCain can win those states…

PICT0022.JPG The highlight of the Chicago Auto Show? It's hard to top this one: the M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicle. I'm going to ask about a test drive. If you can't get your hands on that one, the Dodge ZEO looks sweet as well.

I just finished reading Howard Dean's latest fundraising appeal (you can read it here), and it looks like the Democrats will have trouble against John McCain in the fall. Why? Dean's letter attempts to portray a McCain presidency as a third term for George W. Bush. But it doesn't hold up. Dean…

One of the main themes of the Chicago Auto Show -- and probably of a lot of auto shows nowadays -- is the effort by automakers to sell more fuel-efficient vehicles. More specifically, the challenge is not to produce them; it's to get consumers to buy them. The Big 3 already offer plenty. The big…

Over at the First Things website, Jonathan Last gives an initial breakdown of the Catholic vote in six of the important (and very Catholic) states that voted yesterday. Along the way, he mentions my old Weekly Standard essay, "The Myth of the Catholic Voter," published just before the 2004…

ODD THING ABOUT our political process--in the immediate aftermath of your most devastating defeat, the system demands that you trot out and give a speech with all the peppiness and ebullience of someone who just won the lottery. It's an odd custom, and it has produced some strange spectacles. When…

There is no question that Barack Obama did well yesterday, certainly better than a freshman senator of no great distinction had a right to expect. Obama may yet gain the Democratic presidential nomination; certainly the ingredients are there. But it should be noted that Super Tuesday was the…

His Excellency talks about the "dead-cat bounce", noting that cats will bounce on the street after falling from a ten-story window even though they have been killed by the fall. One of the many charming lessons of physics, however, is that cats often survive falls of more than seven stories, while…

I'm in the Windy City today to blog the 100th Chicago Auto Show at McCormick place. The weather is frigid, and we're expecting about a foot of snow later today. The kickoff is a breakfast address by Troy Clarke, President of General Motors North America. Clarke's address picks up on the 'Super…

Thomas B. Edsall previews a general election between Clinton and McCain or Obama and McCain: If the general election is between Obama and McCain, both candidates will be under pressure to lessen partisan tensions in order to keep the support they have among independents and voters of the opposite…

Obama ties Clinton in delegates and wins more states on the date when she had originally hoped to put the race away. That's an overall win for Obama. But Hillary's big victory in California made it no sweep, and Das Hillary Apparat lurches on to fight another day. The next wave of contests in DC,…

Here are numbers. Writes Gallup chief Frank Newport: "McCain wins over Romney as the second choice of Huckabee voters by more than a 2 to 1 margin, 64 percent to 28 percent." Joe Scarborough and crew may not want Huck to drop out after all. (HT: Joe Carter, whose "Voter-Based Reality" post is well…

Phoenix, Arizona -- The Charleston Gazette provides a good overview of the deal that sent John McCain's delegates to Mike Huckabee in West Virginia yesterday, a move that blocked Mitt Romney from winning the state. How did it happen? Buddy Roemer. Roemer, the former Governor of Louisiana and a…

The anti-McCainiacs are split between Romney and Huckabee, with neither challenger raising enough steam to stop McCain. Huckabee wins some impressive victories, but only in his home region and only in a three-way dynamic. Despite all the media excitement, the Happy Huck is having what Wall Street's…

You can track the returns here. Overall, a good night for John McCain. A split decision on the Democratic side. Seems to me Obama needs to expand his support among Latinos and downscale white voters if he's going to win the nomination. The landscape in February - including next week's Potomac…

Phoenix, Arizona -- Conservatives expecting a bouquet of roses from John McCain in the coming days will be disappointed. McCain is scheduled to speak Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC, but he is not likely to share with the activists there any major changes…

BARACK OBAMA won't soon be confused with Mitt Romney. But once you peel away their ideological differences, the two candidates have a similar message: Washington is broken, and I can fix it. Romney fancies exactly that language, touting his corporate background and success in righting the 2002 Salt…

Dean's post, and Mitt Romney's campaign, have been overtaken by events. McCain's the big winner tonight, if only because Romney failed to get off the mat. Huck also had an impressive showing. Tonight's results do not benefit Romney--no matter how his enthusiastic supporters in the blogosphere might…

According to the exit polls, Mitt Romney seems to be exceeding expectations. Let's start with a few states Romney is going to lose and we always knew he was going to lose. • In New York, Romney trailed in the Real Clear Politics average by 31 points. The exit polls show him losing by only 11. •…

After the Florida primary last week, I broke down how each Super Tuesday state awards its delegates and concluded that McCain could effectively wrap up the nomination tonight by amassing a commanding lead over Romney of 300 to 400 delegates. But Romney could keep the race close - and by close I…

I'm shocked, shocked to see Politics in West Virginia! Romney manager Beth Myers puts out this howler on Huckabee's win today in West VA: "Unfortunately, this is what Senator McCain's inside Washington ways look like: he cut a backroom deal with the tax-and-spend candidate he thought could best…

In advertising news, South Carolina will begin selling ad-space inside public school buses. The ads will be "age-appropriate," says a spokesman. Presumably the school board will decide what's appropriate. Meaning that the question of propriety in advertising in South Carolinian school buses has…

Mitt Romney began his Super Tuesday by appearing on Fox and Friends and speaking carelessly about Bob Dole's letter of support for John McCain. "(Dole's) probably the last person I would have wanted to have write a letter for me," said Romney. "I think there are a lot of folks who tend to think…

La Niña or Global Cooling?

Many have wondered about the state of the conservative movement leading up to today, Super Tuesday, February 5, 2008. The previous 24 hours gives us an answer. Meltdown. Yesterday afternoon, Rush Limbaugh argued that a President John McCain would not be any better on Iraq than a President Barack…

David Freddoso reports.

The AP just called West Virginia for Huckabee. It seems that after the first round of balloting, which put Romney first, Huck second, and Mccain third, Romney failed to win an outright majority. The McCain folks swung their support to Huckabee, stealing 18 delegates from Romney. As Marc Ambinder…

The invaluable Jay Cost has penned a characteristically invaluable essay that uses his usual combination of painstaking logic and statistical analysis to show that it's far from a foregone conclusion that Mitt Romney would beat John McCain is a head-to-head match-up if Mike Huckabee were to drop…

From Reuters: Police in Myanmar have given DVD hawkers strict orders not to stock the new Rambo movie, which features the Vietnam War veteran taking on the former Burma's ruling military junta, a Yangon resident told Reuters on Friday. Despite the prohibition, pirated copies of the movie are widely…

Everyone thinks Hillary Clinton is a lock in her home state of New York. The RealClearPolitics average of polls has her up by more than 17 percent. "Clinton will carry the state that has twice elected her to the Senate," the reliable Michael Barone flatly concludes. The only independent source I…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Conspiracy of What?, by Noemie Emery. From the New York Post: Republicans for Hillary, by Rich Lowry. From the Wall Street Journal: Our Politicized Intelligence Services, by John Bolton. From the Washington Times: Security Teaching Moment, by Frank Gaffney Jr. From the New…

Nothing ever happens during voting days, but campaigns always try to make news anyway. The Clinton campaign just put out the most bizarre press release I've ever seen. During the course of it they note that: 1) Polls are now open! 2) "HRC" called into the Steve Harvey show this morning. 3) "A Few…

Weekly Standard contributing editor and McCain adviser Robert Kagan writes in: "If recent success in the Iraq war is too closely associated with John McCain, will the anti-McCain conservatives now turn against the war itself? A trend in that direction does seem to be developing. Some of course…

Iran is back at making fantastic claims about its domestically built weapons. The latest announcement, via the Iranian regime-run Tehran Times, touts the beginning of the manufacture process of a newly developed "stealth" fighter--locally made, of course: Air Force Commander Brigadier General Ahmad…

Soon we'll be shifting into non-stop focus on Super Tuesday, but before we do so, we still have some detritus from Super Sunday left to sift through. A new BDS has swept the land - Belichick Derangement Syndrome. One would think the coach's super-comeuppance would at least momentarily mollify his…

Today is Super Duper (Fat) Tuesday, and hundreds of delegates are at stake. While Barack Obama was advertising during the Super Bowl and Hillary Clinton was crying in Connecticut, the Republicans were largely focused on California. Although John McCain is generally considered the frontrunner and…

When Republicans controlled Congress, the opposition Democrats regularly zinged them for failing to attend to their most basic duties: funding the federal government. When appropriations bills were late in enactment, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and others argued that it was because of some combination…

Senator Clinton doesn't seem overly concerned about the views of her supporters. The following clip is from This Week with George Stephanopolous: When Ann Coulter implied last year that John Edwards was gay, liberals excoriated Republicans who failed to disassociate themselves from her. Glenn…

Fred Barnes and Steven Hayes are among the luminaries scheduled to appear at CPAC later this week -- along with George Bush, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romney, John McCain, and some other interesting and bright people. I'll be blogging the meeting, as will Matt Continetti of the Campaign Standard. The…

You don't have to pay attention to every state on Super Tuesday. Some are more important than others. So concentrate on those and you'll get a pretty good understanding of what the results mean for the presidential races in both parties. On the Democratic side, three states stand out in my mind:…

Over the past few weeks, Rush Limbaugh has emerged as the conservative movement's most prominent casualty of McCain Derangement Syndrome. Yesterday his condition deteriorated further: On Mr. Limbaugh's program today, he said people should not be rushing to back Mr. McCain over issues of national…

Kiev

THERE IS A LEFT-WING conspiracy at loose in the world, dedicated to undoing conservative governance, only the people who see it aren't sure what it is. John McCain is in it, of course, in fact he is the cause of it, as making him president is the ultimate goal. He is blamed for running, (and…

BOTH BARRELS OF THE heavy policy guns--fiscal and monetary policy--are now aimed at the slowdown. The president and the congress have worked out a stimulus package that will pump some $150 billion into the U.S. economy. Bureaucracies being what they are, it will take the Treasury more time than it…

Today, we have "Gods" walking among us that seem to know how an infinite system will turn out in the future, because they are armed with the idols that are known as models. They are given credit for things that have not occurred and, in all likelihood, will not occur. Why? It is because what is…

A couple of things to note about the new defense budget, which comes in at $500 billion and change. The New York Times says: If it is approved in full, annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II. This is misleading--annual military…

Denver is blessed with the Democratic convention this year, and the city's already trying to figure out how to handle the economic surge that accompanies the big shindig: The sex and adult entertainment industries are expecting a boom in business when an estimated 35,000 visitors descend on the…

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM HAS it that, unlike in Vietnam, there is bipartisan support for "the troops" in Iraq despite the many arguments over the conduct of the war and whether U.S. forces should remain in Mesopotamia. This has been a mantra particularly for Democrats, who understand that they're…

eagles soar.jpg

Cuts "Likely" to UK defense equipment: The UK House of Commons Defence Select Committee has warned of impending defence cuts and is "deeply concerned" that continued operations in Iraq and Afghanistan are eroding the UK armed forces' ability to react to any new contingent operations. In a report…

There are signs that Congressional Republicans are likely to do better in 2008 than is typically expected. The most recent piece of news comes from the Hill, which points out that five of the most vulnerable House Democratic freshmen were outraised by their likely Republican opponents in the most…

From the New York Times: Dyspepsia on the Right, by the boss. From the Philadelphia Inquirer: Marine Hold Up His End of the Bargain, by Kevin Ferris. From the Middle East Journal: The Final Mission, by Michael Totten. From the Washington Post: At NATO, No Time For Cold Feet, by Bruce P. Jackson.…

The National Taxpayers' Union has researched the economic and budget proposals of eight candidates for president, both Republican and Democrat. They find that all of the five major candidates still standing would increase federal spending -- by a range of $7 billion to $287 billion annually.…

100_0367.JPG

Artist's conception of 2018 bomber by Erik Simonsen.

While the reports of fighting against the Iranian-backed Special Groups terror network have dried up, the intensity of the fighting hasn't. In January, Coalition and Iraqi forces encountered more of the deadly explosively-formed projectiles than at any time over the past year, Multinational Forces…

BOSTON SPORTS FANS HAVE definitely gotten spoiled. Thus, in the wake of last night's Super Bowl loss to the New York Football Giants, a lot of us are stumbling around this morning in a state of bewildered disappointment as we suffer barbs from fans of uncompetitive teams who are thrilled to see the…

Goldfarb already linked this article from General William Caldwell on "changing organizational culture," but it's worth revisiting: The technology of the Twenty-first Century - the "new media" - has made it possible for virtually anyone to have immediate access to an audience of millions around the…

A reader writes in to share his "Tipping Point" theory of elections: "For example, before the Civil War, once it became clear that the Republican party was going to be the major challenger to the Democrats, support for the Whig party didn't stay at 25 percent, it dropped to almost zero. There was a…

Glendale, Arizona

Some random thoughts, with apologies to Larry King and USA Today, on the eve of tomorrow's Ultimate Tuesday. ... Obama is moving up and up, ever since South Carolina and Teddy K. He is now tied in most national polls. If he wins New Jersey in Hillary's backyard, wins the popular vote in CA, and…

How livid? Well, mad enough to do something that I've never heard of the CIA doing before: publishing a book review on their government website. The offending title is Tim Weiner's Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, a Pulitzer Prize winning account of the 60+ year history of the Agency. From…

Last week Beijing pledged $1.39 billion in economic and technical aid to East Timor. The agreement was signed in Dili by visiting Chinese deputy foreign minister Wu Dawei and East Timorese prime minister Xanana Gusmao. China was the first country to establish diplomatic ties with East Timor after…

The Associated Press reported last week that a left-wing group, Americans United for Change, plans to spend $8.5 million to ensure that President Bush's public approval rating doesn't improve in his final year in office. The group points out that President Reagan recovered politically in 1988. "All…

During a recent visit to Shanghai I found myself strolling in Xujiahui park, a few blocks from one of the city's busiest shopping districts. It was a cold, clear day, and school had just let out.

Herzliya Pituach, Israel

West Palm Beach

Charles Enderlin is the France 2 Jerusalem correspondent who broadcast the incendiary account of the death of 12-year-old Muhammad al-Dura at the hands of Israeli troops operating in the Gaza Strip in September 2000. Based on film footage provided by a Palestinian cameraman, Enderlin's report has…

The date: December 13, 2006. The location: a windowless conference room in the Pentagon known as the Tank. It was an inauspicious place for President Bush to confront the last major obstacle to the most important decision of his second term, perhaps of his entire presidency. And the president chose…

Iran and the Bomb

America is in the midst of an all-important electoral campaign. But, talking to Europeans, I've discovered that there is puzzlement and misinformation on your continent about what's happening on ours. Europeans feel an understandable confusion when faced with a political system consisting of two…

For history buffs, there's something about banisters. I don't know what it is. But whenever I tour a historic house--Mount Vernon, Lincoln's home in Springfield, Madison's Montpelier--sooner or later there's a flight of stairs to climb and somebody always asks about the banister.

The Death of the Grown-up

The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether the Constitution allows the death penalty for the rape of a child.

Last Night at the Lobster

That the new World Health Organization-Iraqi government study of war-related Iraq deaths reached wildly different conclusions from two much-hyped reports in the British medical journal the Lancet is no surprise to anyone who has followed the issue. But the new study highlights the fanaticism of the…

Being Shelley

In his recent memoir, Alan Greenspan says he's been pushing a constitutional amendment of his own devising. It reads: "Anyone willing to do what is required to become president of the United States is thereby barred from taking that office." If the Greenspan amendment is ever enacted, it will at…

Hear Them Roar...Not!

Baghdad

Phoenix, Arizona -- About five minutes after the end of the Super Bowl here in Arizona, the television monitors in the press box high above the field shifted from the extraordinary football game that had just ended to politics. According to this Ben Smith item at Politico, this thirty second ad…

Although Mitt Romney yesterday accused John McCain of Nixon-style politics for McCain's criticism of his positions on Iraq, the issue seemed to fade a bit from the discussion today. Before we move on, one final observation. At least twice before the muddled comments Romney made in April 2007 that…

Weekly Standard contributing editor and McCain adviser Robert Kagan writes in: "Some conservatives, it seems to me, have lost a sense of proportion and historical context in the present debate. I have been somewhat stunned to watch the conservative attacks on McCain, especially when coming from…

Campaign Standard friend Jose sends along another example of politics by paraleipsis, the art of saying something by saying that you're not saying it. It comes from John McCain in this article about McCain and Barack Obama. McCain said a debate between the two would be a debate "between victory and…

Interesting. Both Charles Krauthammer and Mort Kondracke think Mitt Romney was talking about withdrawal in that interview with Robin Roberts of ABC last spring. (Brit Hume and Fred Barnes do not.) I post this not to provoke my friends supporting Romney. Rather, I'm throwing it up here because it's…

A strongly-worded letter by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates requesting the deployment of German combat troops and helicopters to southern Afghanistan has caused a major political backlash in Berlin. Both the content and timing of Gates's blunt letter to his German counterpart Franz-Josef Jung,…

From the New York Times report on a memorial to Maj. Douglas A. Zembiec, aka the Lion of Fallujah: The serviceman described hearing the Iraqi radio message crackle after Major Zembiec was hit. "What came over the radio was ‘five wounded and one martyred'; they didn't say whether it was Iraqi or…

If you believe in that sort of thing. People's Daily reports: The share price of China Coal Energy, the country's second largest coal producer, jumped more than 40 percent in a strong debut in Shanghai on Friday amid volatile trading.... The capital would be used for the construction of major coal…

No surprise, really: Several news stories have pointed out that much of CREW's [Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington] funding comes from liberal groups and big donors to Democratic candidates and causes. And all but a handful of its complaints against Members of Congress have…

MoveOn has endorsed Barack Obama. A couple of points. First, Obama has no trouble raising money--which seems to be the only thing that MoveOn is good at. Second, MoveOn is unbelievably divisive. The "Petraeus Betray Us" ad was spectacularly counterproductive and, as is so often the case with…

Here is an interesting exchange from Brit Hume's show last night on the spat between John McCain and Mitt Romney on the surge. Although they qualify their point (as I have), both Mort Kondracke and Charles Krauthammer agree that Mitt Romney was talking about withdrawal when he discussed timetables…

Because the coverup is worse than the actual crime. Is the NFL protecting its glamor team from the shame that goes with their cheating? That seems to be what Arlen Specter wants to know. He's asking why the NFL surreptitiously destroyed all the evidence associated with the Patriots' illicit taping…

If any doubt remained that the conservative establishment is fast making its peace with John McCain, in anticipation of his locking up the Republican nomination on Tuesday, today's lead Wall Street Journal editorial should further extinguish it. The Journal Editorial Board--which remains as…

Not because of his stridency regarding John McCain. And certainly not because of his righteous advocacy for the Romney campaign. No, Rush loses credibility because of the following nugget in his daily newsletter: Super Bowl Preview: Rush and NFL Great Ken "the Hutch" Hutcherson. The Hutch picks the…

From THE DAILY STANDARD: Two Candidates Enter, by Dean Barnett. From Time: Why the Surge Worked, by Michael Duffy. From the New York Post: Iran's Education of Moqtada al Sadr, by Amir Taheri. From the Washington Post: In North Korea, Process Over Progress, by Michael Gerson. From the New York…

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial today that hammers my preferred candidate, Mitt Romney. That's fair enough--this is certainly an appropriate time for implicitly choosing sides. Nevertheless, I must take issue with the worldview evidenced by the following passage:

If Democratic leaders like Robert Byrd and David Price speak for many of their colleagues, it may not matter much if a 'pro-amnesty' candidate wins the presidency this year: Nodding to public ferment over illegal immigration in a tough GOP election year, the administration announced Thursday -…

Our friends over at National Review clearly prefer Romney, but as Romney's prospects fade that support has begun to mutate in to what some are calling McCain Derangement Syndrome. Yesterday at the Corner, this post questioned McCain's competence based on the fact that he'd lost five aircraft during…

At a lunch yesterday sponsored by the Hoover Institution, bestselling author and Emmy winner Shelby Steele talked about his latest book, A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama and Why He Can't Win. When it comes to relations with whites, according to Steele, blacks can either be "bargainers"…

Indiana's 7th Congressional district will play host to a special election on March 11, as a result of the passing of Representative Julia Carson on December 15. Carson never ran up huge margins in her Congressional seat; she won her last three races with about 54% of the vote. The district's…

Yesterday, the nonpartisan National Journal released its 27th annual vote rankings and named Barack Obama as the #1 most liberal senator in 2007: "The insurgent presidential candidate shifted further to the left last year in the run-up to the primaries, after ranking as the 16th- and…

Bit of a nothing-burger at the Democrat debate. Your Cardinal is amazed at how skilled the Democrats are at pretending they like each other. The minute the red cue light on the camera goes dark both sides eagerly return to trying to murder the other. At least the Republicans, clumsier in style and…

Newsflash. Private non-candidate polling in CA shows tie race between Obama and Clinton in Tuesday's primary. Surge for Obama. The plot thickens...

Mullah Nazir, a senior Taliban leader in South Waziristan who shelters regional al Qaeda leaders and financiers, has long been portrayed by the Pakistani government as a pro-government tribal leader. The media has been eager to repeat these claims, as have some Western Pakistan watchers. But, as…

From Jim Glassman's testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations this week: Consider Muslim Americans. A Pew study in May found that foreign-born American Muslims, by a 70 to 3 percent majority, have an unfavorable view of Al Qaeda. By 78 to 18 percent, they are happy with their lives in America.…

IS THAT WHAT we were waiting for? A nearly two-hour debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama devoted to issues on which they basically agree. Well, that's what we got. The low point came when Clinton insisted they were having "such a great time" in the debate and Obama said, "Absolutely." If…

AFTER SEEING Persepolis in November at the Virginia Film Festival, I described the film as "the highlight of the festival" and wrote that "if there is justice in the world, Persepolis should have a decent shot at an Oscar either for animated feature or foreign language film. With any luck, both."…

IT PROMISED TO BE quite a night as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off mano-a-mano (so to speak) in Hollywood's Kodak center before a crowd stuffed with Hollywood heavyweights. Chances are, you didn't watch it because you're a conservative and you have a life. So, as a pubic service, I not…

This debate was unbelievably boring and anyone who says different don't believe them. The two were intolerably civil to each other, and neither said anything that struck me as remotely controversial. In fact, with each debate the orthodoxy of Obama's positions becomes more pronounced. We spent the…