June 2008

In spite of the late posting, all of this will be on tomorrow's quiz: From The New York Times, "The Choice They Made" by William Kristol. The Founding Fathrs are not only still relevant today - we need them more than ever. From the Wall Street Journal, "The Tragic End of Bush's North Korea Policy"…

Ben Smith reports that Medal of Honor recipient Col. Bud Day, one of the veterans defending McCain's service, was a member of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Smith notes the apparent irony that "The Arizona Republican was among the first to condemn the Swift Boat ads, calling one 'dishonest and…

Barack Obama is going to solve the economic problems of hardworking Americans, according to his new ad "Dignity": The ad claims that Obama "helped lift neighborhoods stung by job loss." By "lift" does Obama mean consigned to hell on earth? The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense…

This marks the eighth Democrat to denigrate McCain's military service: a former Obama adviser and top Democratic voice on foreign policy argued Monday that the former POW's isolation during the Vietnam War has hobbled the Arizona senator's capacity as a war-time leader. "Sadly, Sen. McCain was not…

This morning, the McCain campaign held a conference call to rebut Wesley Clark's statement that John McCain's getting "getting shot down" isn't a qualification to become president. Sen. John Warner said that Obama displayed an "exercise of poor judgment to allow an individual like Clark ... to come…

The words "children's rights" and "discrimination" take on new meaning: An eight-year-old boy has sparked an unlikely outcry in Sweden after failing to invite two of his classmates to his birthday party. The boy's school says he has violated the children's rights and has complained to the Swedish…

Gallup posts new data this morning on the congressional generic ballot that deserves a look. If anything, I'm a little surprised the numbers aren't worse for the Republicans, given shifts in party identification in the past several years toward Democrats and President Bush's approval level. A few…

Using grown-up words on standardized tests in Britain get kids extra-credit, not detention. Peter Buckroyd, chief examiner of English for the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), an examination board, said swear words should gain positive marks if the spelling and punctuation is correct.…

In place of a comprehensive energy plan, Barack Obama blames the oil companies for rising prices, alleging that they have the means to increase our supply of oil if only they would drill on the federal lands they've already leased. "I want you to think about this," Barack Obama said in Las Vegas…

Seymour Hersh's latest opus focuses on the threat posed by Iran. He cites no reason to doubt that Iran's nuclear enrichment program is strictly for civilian use, and he fails to ask what conceivable reason a country with Iran's oil reserves could have for nuclear power other than to build a weapon.…

Last week Chinese authorities released Zha Jianguo, vice chairman of the Beijing-Tianjin branch of the outlawed China Democracy Party (CDP). Zha had served out a nine-year prison sentence for "subverting state power." Last week also marked the 10th anniversary of the founding of Zha's party. During…

Last week, German defense minister Franz-Josef Jung announced that Berlin plans to send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan this fall to support the NATO-led military effort there. This deployment will bring the number of Bundeswehr ISAF soldiers to 4,500, bolstering Germany's position as the…

Joseph Lieberman was on Face the Nation, and the one-time Democrat explained just why he is so disillusioned with his former party and their presidential nominee. "My problem is with the party overall, for sure. In other words, this is a separation that has occurred mostly on matters of foreign and…

John McCain's June 3 speech in New Orleans was widely panned by his fellow Republicans, who criticized both his delivery and his timing, as it was a day dominated by Barack Obama's finally clinching the Democratic nomination. But some Republicans were heartened by the content of the speech, because…

Moving to the Center

Are we safer now than we were before 9/11? Safer than before we invaded Iraq and toppled Saddam Hussein? Barack Obama insists we are not. Seeing Iraq as the crucible of our growing weakness, the Democratic nominee for president asserts that "we have now spent over $600 billion, thousands of lives…

If you were forced to name the high-water mark of television, the 1981 Granada production of Brideshead Revisited would be a fine choice. Starring Jeremy Irons, Anthony Andrews, Claire Bloom, John Gielgud, and Laurence Olivier, Brideshead ran a luxurious 659 minutes, gliding smoothly along the…

Israel has just carried out a major aerial exercise, putting a hundred or so F-15s and F-16s into the skies over the eastern Mediterranean, evidently a rehearsal for a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. The move follows the statement earlier this month by Shaul Mofaz, Israel's deputy prime…

Legacy

I recently went to a new physician, a dermatologist, for a minor problem, but before seeing her, I had to fill out a longish form setting out my and my parents' medical history. All went smoothly enough until the very last question, which asked about my hobbies. I was frankly stumped. I have no…

Causes Won, Lost & Forgotten

Over a million South Koreans poured into the streets in recent weeks to protest the return of American beef to the Korean dinner table. Fears of Mad-Cow Disease have sparked the largest demonstrations since Korea democratized two decades ago. Given that not a single American has contracted the…

Every day that passes makes one thing clearer and clearer: Barack Obama knows precisely what he wants to do to the U.S. economy, and John McCain is intent on proving his self-confessed lack of knowledge with a charming set of homilies.

OBAMA'S NEIGHBORS

"Winnie-the-Pooh seems to me to be a fundamental text on national security."

Babies by Design

Mongol

Tradition

In 1966 Germaine Tillion, a 59-year-old French structural anthropologist, published a slim volume entitled Le harem et les cousins (English title: The Republic of Cousins). This book, and Tillion herself, are largely unknown in the United States outside academic circles. Yet 40 years after its…

Bob Corker's introduction to the nation and to politicians in Washington was not auspicious. In his race against Democratic representative Harold Ford for an open Senate seat in Tennessee in 2006, the Republican National Committee aired a TV ad featuring a white woman who says she "met Harold at…

Roanoke

On CBS's Face the Nation this morning, Obama surrogate Gen. Wesley Clark said of John McCain: "I don't think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president." The McCain campaign responded with a statement from Admiral Leighton "Snuffy" Smith: If Barack Obama…

A Quinnipiac poll shows that majorities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and Colorado oppose withdrawing all troops within 18 months. Obama plans to withdraw all combat troops in 16 months. quinn.jpg Earlier this week, an AP poll found that voters think McCain would handle the war better than…

If Representative William Delahunt from Massachusetts had to choose sides in that fight, it seems he would choose al Qaeda over Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff. At the end of a televised House Judiciary Committee hearing yesterday, where Addington appeared under subpoena, Delahunt said…

Those who are crammed in under the Obama campaign bus better make room for one more guest. Philadelphia's subtly named The Bulletin (I've never heard of it either) reports: Gen. Merrill A. McPeak, the most senior retired general advisor the Obama campaign, raised a few eyebrows when he suggested…

Yesterday, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff David Addington refused to discuss particular interrogation techniques during a meeting on Capitol Hill because al Qaeda could benefit from such communications being broadcast on television. Democratic Congressman Delahunt replied: "I'm sure they…

Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Democratic National Convention issued the following mandates: No fried food. And, on the theory that nutritious food is more vibrant, each meal should include "at least three of the following colors: red, green, yellow, blue/purple, and…

Why does the UN need to blame Israel for supposedly violating a truce? As Ace noted a couple days ago, MSNBC had effectively declared Israel Violates Hamas Ceasefire By Allowing Itself to Be Attacked By Rockets. Isn't it a bit redundant for the UN to speak out after House of Olbermann has already…

A new Pew Research study on trends in online political news consumption shows that only 40 percent of all adults report getting news or information about the election via the Internet. Forty percent? Imagine that. Some Americans aren't hunched over a computer screen waiting for the next polling…

While Congressmen and presidential candidates argue over whether or not the United States should tap into its own domestic supply to meet our future energy needs, at least one foreign producer is stepping up to the plate. If the United States doesn't expand domestic production, we can count on…

Saying the British are wussy is like calling the Italians romantic, the Germans belligerent, the French arrogant. Still, this seems particularly wussy even for them: Children under the age of eight have been banned from playing in football leagues and cups amid fears they are under too much…

If only the Taliban had respect for evolving community standards: Militants in Pakistan have carried out what officials have called a "public execution" of two Afghans before thousands of cheering supporters. The pair were alleged to have helped an American missile strike that killed 14 people in a…

Never mind those pesky missiles being fired into Israel. Never mind that Hamas refuses to do anything to stop Fatah from firing them. The UN says Israel has violated the truce: UN records 7 incidents of IDF soldiers attempting to drive Palestinian farmers away from border fence by shooting at them.…

Terrorists in Al Qaeda's "last urban stronghold" in Iraq are without a leader: The US military in Iraq says a militant killed on Tuesday has been positively identified as the leader of al-Qaeda in the city of Mosul. It said the man - identified by a pseudonym, Abu Khalaf -- had co-ordinated and…

Via HotAir, a new Time poll shows Obama leading McCain by five points--which is almost exactly where an average of polls at Pollster.com and Real Clear Politics show the race. Obama's bounce is real, and he may not be done bouncing, but the Newsweek and LA Times polls showing Obama up 15 points and…

When it comes to endorsing pols, Will Smith is very particular. "Nelson Mandela is kind of the one person I've said yes to," says Smith. "And Barack Obama was probably only the second person that I've really to this level said yes to." Note that world leaders come to Smith-not the other way around.…

ABOUT A DECADE ago, Matt Groening--the genius behind The Simpsons--pitched a second animated series to the honchos at Fox. It was a no-brainer for the suits--"Another animated show from the guy who basically created this network?"--who quickly got behind the program.

Umm, no. In a post yesterday, I declined to weigh in on Joe Klein's regrettable smear about the supposed "divided loyalties" of Jewish neoconservatives in order to challenge his claim that Iran is not a threat to the U.S. I wrote, in passing, "Klein is usually more sensible than most of the liberal…

Classy: The Washington state Democratic Party says it will change a video ad that pictures Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi accompanied by the theme song from "The Sopranos," after a Seattle group said the ad was offensive to Italian-Americans. The Italian Club of Seattle sent a letter…

Today's handgun ruling from the Supreme Court is good news for women. As Megan McArdle says, the gun issue is a feminist issue because "guns are the only weapon that equalizes strength between attacker and attacked. It's the only time when men's greater speed, strength, and longer reach make no…

In his response to a letter from ADL's Abe Foxman, Joe Klein doubles down on his claim that "Jewish neoconservatives" are pushing for a "a pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering ... is nauseating." Foxman responds here.

On June 20, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) released a video promoting its attacks throughout the country. In one segment, AQI promotes attacks by two Kuwaitis, one of whom was a former detainee at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The former Guantanamo detainee was responsible for a…

From the Rosett Report: Condi Rice Wants Us to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Kim Jong-Il, by Claudia Rosett. From the Chicago Sun Times: Reporters banned from Obama-Clinton meeting with Clinton backers on Thursday., by Lynn Sweet. From Confederate Yankee: Obama: The Bus List. From Middle East…

John Steele Gordon on Walter Nugent's Habits of Empire: "In all, 'Habits of Empire' is an excellent book as long as one ignores the historical claptrap of the postscript, which is an embarrassment to the author and publisher and an insult to the reader."

Despite reports that the necktie is dead, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is doing his part to ensure the survival of those "lovely silken things" that hang around men's necks. In fact, some female MPs say he is taking his one-man mission to an extreme. Nicolas Sarkozy's office sent a sleek black…

amywinehouse.jpg Amy Winehouse

McCain hits Obama hard: I applaud this decision as well as the overturning of the District of Columbia's ban on handguns and limitations on the ability to use firearms for self-defense. Unlike Senator Obama, who refused to join me in signing a bipartisan amicus brief, I was pleased to express my…

The Supreme Court made a good, constitutional decision today, say bloggers, but yesterday's Kennedy v. Louisiana was a different matter. The Court ruled that convicted child rapists cannot be executed. The case was brought by Patrick Kennedy, who brutally raped his 8-year-old stepdaughter and was…

The McCain campaign should be careful how they handle the Court's decision on handguns. While the Second Amendment in general is a winning GOP issue, the handgun aspects of it are more problematic with swing voters. In the end, this election will be decided by white females and ticket-splitting…

Lots of discussion today on what, exactly, Barack Obama's thoughts were on the Heller case and DC gun ban. Back in November, a staffer told the Chicago Tribune that Obama thought the ban was constitutional. The Obama campaign has backed away from that language as "inartful." This past spring, in an…

While consumer confidence continues to plummet, a new report from Pew Research shows that baby boomers appear most affected by the gathering economic gloom. America's baby boomers are in a collective funk. Members of the large generation born from 1946 to 1964 are more downbeat about their lives…

Looking at this chart of swing states, it becomes clear who John McCain's choice for VP should be. McCain should select Mitt Romney as his running mate. This move would put Nevada in the Republican category and, at the very least, make Michigan a "toss up" if not "leans Republican." To the extent…

The Supreme Court just ruled in favor of striking down Washington D.C.'s gun ban. The Court has released the opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller (07-290), on whether the District's firearms regulations - which bar the possession of handguns and require shotguns and rifles to be kept…

Earlier in the week, Russ Feingold said he wouldn't filibuster the FISA bill--but that was apparently before he got his marching orders from the netroots. His attempt to kill the bill last night failed on a vote to begin debate, 80 to 15. The Huffington/Kos crowd might not approve of the majority…

Most of the letters responding to William Kristol's New York Times column are sent directly to the Times, but occasionally correspondence ends up at THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Here's a letter about Monday's column "Someone Else's Alex" that we thought would be of interest to our readers. When I first saw…

Thomas Friedman writes in the New York Times on the progress of the Iraqi army and government: What seems to have happened in Iraq in the last few months is that the Iraqi mainstream has finally done some liberating of itself. With the help of the troop surge ordered by President Bush, the…

The Beltway conventional wisdom holds that to the extent that for Republicans to do well this year, they need to present themselves in the way John McCain always has: as a 'different kind of Republican.' To a large degree, that means associating yourself with McCain and boosting his campaign. But…

In this week's cover story, Matt Labash spends some time with Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, who argues that the Democrats' path to victory runs through the Appalachian Mountains: I decide to fly Mudcat's Webb Coalition idea by some skeptics. One afternoon at lunch, we are joined by his Republican friend…

As McCormack notes below, American Prospect wunderkind Ezra Klein made an astonishing assertion regarding the surge yesterday: The argument over the surge was never an argument positing that more troops couldn't lead to less violence. Folks forget this, but the surge was actually part of Howard…

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In the wake of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision earlier this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has now decided that the Bush administration was wrong to label Gitmo detainee Huzaifa Parhat an "enemy combatant." The Court of Appeals decided that…

Gary Hart in today's New York Times: "The Republican coalition -- composed of the religious right on social issues, the radical tax cutters or 'supply-siders' on economic issues, and the neoconservatives on foreign policy -- has produced only superficial religiosity, a failed war and record…

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Ezra Klein writes: "the argument over the surge was never an argument positing that more troops couldn't lead to less violence." Not true. On January 10, 2007, Barack Obama argued: "I am not persuaded that 20,000 additional troops in Iraq is going to solve the sectarian violence there. In fact, I…

From Pajamas Media: Supreme Court Flexes Its Muscles in Boumediene, by Kenneth Anderson. From the Rocky Mountain News: Nader: Obama 'Talking White', by M.E. Sprengelmeyer. From the Chicago Sun Times: Obama Hollywood fund-raiser. Pool reports, HT: Lynn Sweet. (The hors d'oeuvres: "endive spears of…

Ed Whelan on the Supreme Court's outrageous decision that the death penalty is an unconstitutional punishment for those who rape children: Justice Kennedy's opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana was entirely predictable, but that doesn't make it any less appalling as a matter of supposed constitutional…

For Obama, it's still a question of debate whether Iran is trying to build a nuclear weapon. His web site observes only that "Iran has sought nuclear weapons." Obama isn't even willing to go out a limb and say there is no peaceful reason the country with the second or third largest oil reserve in…

American declinists, who believe that the United States's ability to coerce or persuade other states is on the wane, often point to China's so-called "charm offensive" -- its financial and political support of developing countries regardless of ideology or political repression -- as an example of…

borisjohnson.jpg Boris Johnson

In a close election, even small changes in turnout compared to 2004 could tip the balance in several battleground states and determine the next occupant of the White House. The Los Angeles Times featured an insightful piece by Peter Walsten reporting how the Obama campaign and its outside allies…

"Why the rush now to bomb Iran, a country that poses some threat to Israel but none--for the moment--to the United States...unless we go ahead, attack it, and the mullahs unleash Hezbollah terrorists against us?" So writes Joe Klein over at Time's blog. (We'll leave unaddressed his intellectual…

The Obama campaign released a statement this week commemorating the 36th anniversary of Title IX. Goodness knows the 36th anniversary is a big one. Custom holds that people normally mark that important milestone by exchanging gifts made of heavy water. But the Obama campaign had something even…

IT'S EARLY IN THE presidential campaign to be getting all het up about outrageous ads that distort records or enflame passions. But a recent commercial sponsored by Moveon.org and AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) has lit a fuse with me, maybe in part because it…

IT'S UNLIKELY THAT I'll get to talk to Barack Obama during this presidential campaign. Since he keeps even friendlies in the media at a distance, I probably have no chance of getting an opportunity to bend his ear.

Here: The fact that a great many Jewish neoconservatives--people like Joe Lieberman and the crowd over at Commentary--plumped for this war, and now for an even more foolish assault on Iran, raised the question of divided loyalties: using U.S. military power, U.S. lives and money, to make the world…

The international community's "responsibility to protect" populations from failed or predatory states is set to become the most hotly debated concept in foreign policy, no matter who becomes president on January 20, 2009. Bret Stephens explains why: A solution for Zimbabwe's crisis isn't hard to…

David Axelrod tells Howard Kurtz what makes Barack Obama so extraordinarily normal: "The most extraordinary thing about him, maybe the most surprising, is how normal he is. ... He'll read Foreign Policy magazine, a treatise on economic policy and Sports Illustrated." Now, I'm pretty sure only one…

The effort by Democrats to crack down on oil "speculators" took a hit from an unlikely source today: Paul Krugman. The only way speculation can have a persistent effect on oil prices, then, is if it leads to physical hoarding - an increase in private inventories of black gunk. This actually…

Novelist Ian McEwan has rushed to the defense of his friend, Martin Amis, and offered his own critique of Islamism for its persecution of women and homosexuals. McEwan goes on to assail the intellectual environment in Britain and across Europe for allowing chilling accusations of racism to be…

Everyone who has seen question time since Tony Blair stepped down knows Gordon Brown is a cold fish, but he may also be a lame-duck. Brown foolishly confessed to friends he wouldn't remain Prime Minister even if Labor, by some miracle, managed to hold onto a majority in upcoming national elections.…

From City Journal: Gloucester Girls Gone Wild, by Kay S. Hymowitz. From the New York Times Book Review: Neuro-Liberalism, by William Saletan. From National Review Online: The Obama Code, by John J. Pitney Jr. From Encounter Books: Encounter Bids the New York Times Farewell, by Roger Kimball. From…

At a breakfast meeting sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor this morning, Nancy Pelosi said that a Senate filibuster of the FISA bill would be "healthy and wholesome" for public debate, but she's "not encouraging" it. "I don't think [the FISA bill] dishonors the Constitution," she said,…

Obamaseal.jpg Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press.

In the Wall Street Journal, an article on Planned Parenthood's push for upscale abortion clinics reports that the organization turned a profit of $115 million last year while holding nearly $1 billion in net assets: Experts in nonprofit management said it's fiscally responsible to end the year with…

Here's Sam Anderson in New York magazine on Obama's speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention: "In ten minutes, America watched him rip off the rumpled suit of anonymous, mild-mannered state-senatorhood and squeeze into the gaudy cape and tights of our national oratorical superhero -- a…

Jon Stewart on Obama: "You're allowed to laugh at him." Which is what you will do during this video:

The Barack Obama presidential seal now belongs to history. But fret not - Team Obama has not lost any of its grandiose ambitions. Below is their mark-up for a potential overhaul of an American landmark. I think you'll agree it's a tremendous improvement. rushmore.JPG

On the heels of a successful mission in Kandahar, which cleared the area of hundreds of Taliban fighters, U.S. and Afghan forces dealt a second major blow to insurgents in the past week: U.S.-led forces rained fire for two days on militants near Afghanistan's border with Pakistan, officials said…

Alaska governor Sarah Palin has sent a letter to Harry Reid demanding that the government open up ANWR for drilling. As Allahpundit notes, "if you're a charismatic young governor looking to use a hot button to raise your profile, there are worse moves you can make than this."

TO MANY COMMENTATORS and politicians, $4 a gallon gas is a mere abstraction. Let me explain, using my own sad life as an example.

"THIS TOO SHALL PASS," King Solomon's advisers told him to engrave on a ring, and refer to it whenever he felt depressed. Or so the legend goes. Not a bad idea for bankers beset by still more dodgy paper to write off, for shareholders at loss-making Lehman Bros. and ailing Morgan Stanley (first…

In no uncertain terms, McCain should reject the endorsement of Tran Trong Duyet, the one time manager of the Hanoi Hilton and now an amateur ballroom dancer. Although twinkle-toes tells reporters, "If I was American, I would vote for him," he makes a number of despicable assertions that McCain…

The Obama campaign has done away with the Great Seal of Barack. Marc Ambinder offers an insightful analysis of how the Great Seal came in to being: Some Obama aides are enraptured by the idea of an Obama brand that transcends politics; others, including most of those who are actually close to the…

Not only are the Obamas fashionable, but they actually inspire fashion. Last week, many high-end fashion designers attended a fundraiser in honor of Michelle Obama. New York magazine reports that tickets for the event cost as much as $10,000, and even designers-to-the-stars like Zac Posen, Isaac…

Julia Latynina's acid commentary on the reign of President (and now prime minister) Vladimir Putin has been one of the glories of the Russian press in recent years. She finally got a piece in the Washington Post on Sunday and it is a blistering indictment of how Russia has become a criminal state.…

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is one eccentric terrorist. First, he objects to a court-artist's rendition of his schnoz. Now we learn he wrote poetry for his CIA interrogator's wife. Mr. Martinez came in after the rough stuff, the ultimate good cop with the classic skills: an unimposing presence,…

The photo of ANWR published here Friday looked familiar, and then it dawned upon me: the Alaskan nature preserve is about as beautiful as Mars. Can you tell which is which? anwr.jpg Mars.jpg

The Washington Post looks at the fiscal challenges facing the next President, and suggests that John McCain's fiscal bona fides are more credible than those of Barack Obama: Obama has not made balanced budgets a priority. Instead, he promises numerous tax cuts likely to make the situation worse,…

Over the weekend, bloggers were buzzing about yet another flip flop from Barack Obama: He now will support the House FISA compromise bill, even though he didn't back in February. Obama said he will support the FISA compromise, which Politico's Ben Smith explains "offers retroactive immunity to…

Many have already expressed appropriate outrage at the New York Times for printing the name of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad's CIA interrogator, Deuce Martinez. Surely Martinez--who interrogated leaders of an organization with a penchant for sawing off heads--was put in much greater danger than, say,…

This new Rasmussen poll underscores the public's skepticism and ambivalence about free trade in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement. The Rasmussen report on free trade also includes numbers from another recent poll that tell the same story: Voters--in a separate Rasmussen Reports…

The Hill reports on allegations of infiltrations of Congressional computers by hackers operating from China: More Members of Congress have had their computers infiltrated by hackers within China than initially suspected, a lawmaker has revealed. Reps. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), and…

For my day job, I live and breathe China. When it comes to my annual vacation, however, I need to get away. Last year, I thought Ireland would be a good escape--only to discover after getting there that Mandarin is the second most spoken language in Dublin. Buying a Chinese-made stuffed leprechaun…

"Appeasement that ends in war is a familiar theme of history." A sobering editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

From the New York Post: Anti-Terror Oops, by Scott W. Johnson. From the New York Times: Someone Else's Alex, by William Kristol. From Pajamas Media: Help the Zimbabwe Opposition Now!, by Bridget Johnson. From Der Spiegel: Assad's Risky Nuclear Game. From the Spectator: EU Leaders Will Never Consult…

First up on This Week was the issue most pressing for the average American: the skyrocketing price of energy. After some idiotic comments from Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey about Republicans' attempts to stymie energy production, Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson explained just why gas costs $4 a…

On the night after John Kerry won the 2004 New Hampshire primary and became the Democratic party's presumptive nominee, the dour senator trailed George W. Bush in a Rasmussen Reports poll by three points. Roughly nine months later on Election Day, in the only poll that mattered, Kerry still lagged…

Donald Rumsfeld's primary mission when he returned to the Pentagon as secretary of defense in 2001 was to transform the U.S. military to meet the missions of the new century. Today it seems more likely that it is his successor, Robert Gates, who will leave the lasting legacy.

I want to go on living even after my death.

When Did You Last See Your Father?

Media Madness

On the way to his rendezvous with destiny, Barack Obama consistently lost white voters, especially of the middle and working classes, to Hillary Clinton--voters variously known as Appalachians or Reagan Democrats, rural voters and white ethnics in the industrial states. Because of this, he lost…

The Invisible Cure

Overcoming Barriers to Entrepreneurship in the United States

RICE'S LEADERSHIP

A former colleague dropped into my Washington office to talk shop, which in our case is the exciting subject of regulatory policy. He had just come back from a visit to New York, and reported that the city is now so clean, so crime-free, so graffiti-free, its residents so full of "Hello, can I help…

Seeing Europe for the first time, a young Somali woman was dazzled by its order and cleanliness and its ingenious efficiency. It was "like a movie." Düsseldorf "looked like geometry class, or physics, where everything was in straight lines and had to be perfect and precise."

Ezra Pound: Poet

Tim Russert, 1950-2008

It's hard to summarize a decision as long and complicated as the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling last week in Boumediene v. Bush. But we can try. Unprecedented. Reckless. Harmful. Breathtakingly condescending.

Summits

For years now, John McCain has warned of the peril to America in sending $400 billion a year to foreign countries in return for oil. He's been loud and relentless on the subject--and wise. "It's a national security issue," he declared last week at a town hall meeting in New York City. Much of the…

Matt Lauer was in the middle of paying John McCain a tremendous compliment last Wednesday when the Republican nominee interrupted him.

BARACK OBAMA PUNCTUATED his opposition last week to offshore drilling for oil and natural gas with a clever jab at John McCain. "The politics may have changed, but the facts have not," he quipped. A few days earlier, McCain had called for lifting the moratorium on exploration and drilling off the…

France's reunification into the NATO command hierarchy seems to be just a small part of an ambitious new defense plan. Last week Sarkozy announced a radical restructuring of the French armed forces, and at the beginning of July, France will take over the rotating presidency of the European Union…

Over a million South Koreans poured into the streets in recent weeks to protest the return of American beef to the Korean dinner table. Fears of Mad-Cow Disease have sparked the largest demonstrations since Korea democratized two decades ago. Given that not a single American has contracted the…

This week the GAO decided to sustain Boeing's protest of the Pentagon's recent award of a $35 billion refueling tanker contract to a transatlantic consortium led by Northrop Grumman. This decision has caused much surprise and unease among European political observers and aerospace and defense…

Obama warns of the Republican race-baiting to come: "It is going to be very difficult for Republicans to run on their stewardship of the economy or their outstanding foreign policy," Obama told a fundraiser in Jacksonville, Florida. "We know what kind of campaign they're going to run. They're going…

Not many polls bring good news to Republicans, but a new survey by John Zogby certainly has. Zogby found that 74 percent of likely voters favor drilling for oil and gas offshore in coastal waters. Here's the breakdown of those who support drilling: 90 percent of Republicans, 58 percent of…

Did Obama break the law? Seals.jpg 18 USC Sec. 713 ... (a) Whoever knowingly displays any printed or other likeness of the great seal of the United States, or of the seals of the President or the Vice President of the United States, or the seal of the United States Senate, or the seal of the United…

Over the last year, operations by Coalition and Iraqi forces have made signifi cant gains against al-Qaeda in Iraq and other Sunni insurgents. As the threat from these groups has decreased, Coalition Forces and the Iraqi government have focused their attention on the problem of Shi'a militias in…

Via John M. Broder of the Times Caucus blog, behold the Great Seal of the United States of Obamaland: Obamaseal.jpg Photo: Alex Brandon/Associated Press.

anwr.jpg The Congressional leadership is working hard to convince Americans that drilling in the pristine national treasure known as the Coastal Plain of AWNR (pictured above) is a waste of time because the impact on gas prices won't be seen for decades. At the same time, they insist that we must…

Further developments on the counting your chickens front: Director Spike Lee, whose movies often cast a sharp eye on U.S. racial politics, predicted a presidential victory for black Democrat Barack Obama that would mark a "new day" for the United States. "It's going to be before Obama, 'B.B.,' and…

Despite yesterday's successful mission in Southern Afghanistan, which resulted in the deaths of several hundred terrorists, the New York Times continues to assert that Afghanistan is an utter disaster and the U.S. lacks a coherent strategy. In an editorial today, the Times claims most of the 50,000…

Writing at the Atlantic.com, Matthew Yglesias draws a fine distinction: French television asked Ahmadenijad what he meant about how Israel should be wiped from the map, and he replied: "Why are you worried? Where is the Soviet Union? It has disappeared, has it not?" Now I think it's actually clear…

alg_obamabike.jpg David Brooks has a provocative piece today in which he suggests that Barack Obama perfectly combines egghead idealism with Machiavellianism: But as recent weeks have made clear, Barack Obama is the most split-personality politician in the country today. On the one hand, there is…

Andy McCarthy praises the FISA compromise that Congress has worked out: Here is the bottom line: Our intelligence agencies will once again have authority to conduct aggressive monitoring of foreign powers, including terrorist organizations, which threaten the United States. In particular, this will…

From the Ashbrook Center: Haditha Again, by Mackubin T. Owens. From the Washington Post: Iran on Its Heels, by Vali Nasr. From The American Scene: The Secret Muslim Smear, by Reihan Salam. From National Review Online: A Good Deal on Surveillance Reform, by Andrew C. McCarthy. From Gawker: Al…

So Obama's new ad, the first of the general election, "cites Public Law 110-181 when he talks about his efforts to extend 'health care for wounded troops who'd been neglected.'" The problem? Obama never showed up to the vote. He was actually too busy campaigning to make it back to Washington to…

Many pundits believe that Barack Obama could get a much needed boost with working class white voters by selecting Jim Webb as his running mate. But American University political scientist Brian Schaffner produces an interesting graph comparing how the Virginia Senator performed compared to other…

Just one week has passed since the Maoist controlled Parliament deposed King Gyanendra, the Etonian head-of-state, and Nepal is already in the crapper. Thousands of local government workers have gone on strike in protest of a Maoist minister, who "locked up an 'errant official' in a toilet" for an…

Above is Barack Obama's first television ad of the general election season. Even by the lenient standards by which such things are judged, it's a real snooze. It also seems like an odd sort of retreat. The sum total of the message is that Obama is a humble son of the heartland, imbued with the good…

Remember when Barack Obama claimed he would "aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election?" Once again, never mind. The Politico reports: Obama said he'd pursue public financing "aggressively." He committed to it in a written…

A STRING OF BLUE COLLAR comedies have hit the big screen in recent years.

John McCain's campaign sent out this statement from the candidate this afternoon. "Senator Obama is obviously confused about what the United States Supreme Court decided and what he is calling for. After enthusiastically embracing the Supreme Court decision granting habeas in U.S. civilian courts…

THERE IS A SURE-FIRE WAY to make the news these days: Just issue a press release beginning with the words, "New scientific study shows," and have it assert a conclusion that the MSM fervently want to believe--especially if the resulting story would serve to debunk or refute a Bush administration…

A new biography of Boris Johnson reveals how David Cameron stifled Johnson's rise in Parliament, and might have inadvertently created a challenger to head the Conservative Party of Britain. Many assume the two are friends, because they attended both Eton and Oxford together. At the party conference…

That's the claim of an email I just received from the misnamed Institute for Public Accuracy. The email attacks many of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisers for their alleged militarism and service in the Clinton administration. It's mostly worth ignoring, but a couple of the entries stood out.…

From Political Punch: Obama to Break Promise, Opt Out of Public Financing for General Election, by Jake Tapper. From National Review Online: Hothouse Flower, by Jim Geraghty. From the New York Post: Subpoena Blitz Puts Heat on Al Sharpton, by Chuck Bennett. From Roger's Rules: A passing thought…

Chavez-oil_2.jpg Coming to the United States?

More historical illiteracy from the Democrats: Barack Obama said yesterday he would bring Osama bin Laden to justice in a way that wouldn't allow the Sept. 11 mastermind to become a martyr. At a Washington news conference after huddling for the first time with a newly formed group of national…

Above is footage of Barack Obama rejecting public financing for the general election. It has to be watched to be believed - please check it out. Note the angry sense of victimization he uses to justify his flip/flop. Now courtesy of the wayback machine, here's Obama's position on the same matter…

A wonderful editorial in today's Dallas Morning News urges Obama to reconsider his girlish retreat on town halls: Our excitement grew this month when Mr. McCain challenged his fellow senator to 10 town-hall-style appearances, with the candidates effectively shedding their protective wrapping and…

On the Wall Street Journal editorial page this morning, Michael Oren, whose analysis of the Middle East is unfailingly superior, argues that the Israeli truce with Hamas is a dangerous delusion. Weakness, he argues, begets weakness. The roots of this tragedy go back to the summer of 2005 and the…

celeb11.jpg Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE/Getty Images Like a lot of Celtics fans of a certain vintage, I'm stuck in permanent Larry Bird nostalgia mode. That means I tend to bore younger Celtic fans with my tedious memories. As is the case with many wizened Celtics fans, this reflex is involuntary.…

In the past week, several disturbing stories out of Afghanistan suggested the Taliban was gaining traction, especially in Kandahar, where an elaborate jail-break freed hundreds of terrorists. Afghan and NATO troops though have already taken action to curb this disturbing trend, and it sounds like…

ARE SOUTHERN BAPTISTS "dwindling"? Recent headlines about the annual meeting of the 16.27 million member Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) refer to its ostensible struggles with membership decline. Having lost 40,000 members last year, America's second biggest religious body was described as…

Yesterday's Washington Post polling article included some comparisons between Washington Post surveys on the Bush/Kerry race in June 2004 and the paper's most recent survey on the McCain/Obama contest. For example, the 2004 survey found Democratic Senator John Kerry leading President Bush in June…

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that North Korea would be taken off of the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror and will no longer be sanctioned under the Trading with Enemies Act. And what does North Korea have to do to get these long-sought rewards? Basically, do what it had…

Congressional Democrats are attacking McCain for flip-flopping on offshore drilling: "This week's flip-flop on offshore oil drilling by President Bush and Senator John McCain is nothing more than a cynical campaign ploy that will do nothing to lower energy prices and represents another big giveaway…

John Feehery, a GOP consultant and former communications director for Speaker Dennis Hastert, says that the sleeper issue of 2008 may be violent crime. More precisely, it may be a sleeper issue in GOP-leaning districts. Feehery points out that while crime is down nationwide, it's up in smaller…

The most taxed, regulated product in the country is about to become even more regulated. Congress is weighing a ban on flavored cigarettes that are popular among today's youth. The tobacco companies are even supporting the legislation, and with good reason. It contains one big exception--it exempts…

Another mag in the tank for Obama: US Weekly Obamas.jpg This kind of fawning cover photo is to be expected from from Newsweek, but US Weekly? Newsweek Covers2.jpg From the McCain Report.

Domestic drilling has been the buzz all week. Most Americans (67 percent per Rasmussen) support offshore drilling. And now John McCain, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, and President Bush are calling for an end to the moratorium on offshore drilling, while Barack Obama is taking the 33 percent side…

The Obama campaign has released the roster of its National Security Working Group. You'll want to take your No-Doz before reading the full list: Secretary of State Madeleine Albright Senator David Boren, former Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Secretary of State Warren…

A few weeks back, I wrote a longer article on why presidents don't use email. A not entirely unrelated issue is email retention under the Presidential Records Act, which requires all email to be archived and eventually disclosed years after the president has left office. Democratic congressmen are…

The Hotline reports that the DNC continues to slam John McCain for his fundraiser Clayton Williams' 1990 rape joke: "On Day Five of the back-to-the-future Clayton Williams controversy," the DNC "held a conference call" with TX state Sen. Leticia Van de Putte and ex-TX Dem chair Molly Beth Malcolm.…

From Politico: Muslims Barred from Picture at Obama Event, by Ben Smith. From the Wall Street Journal: Governor Backs Florida Drilling, by Stephen Power, Laura Meckler and Russell Gold. From The Hill: Downturn Hits House, by Alexander Bolton. From New York: Hillary Clinton: Patron Saint of Lowbrow…

New York's accidental governor David Paterson is likely to face stiff competition for re-election in 2010. Andrew Cuomo and other Democrats are regarded as potential primary challengers and there's speculation that Rudy Giuliani will run on the Republican line. But perhaps his biggest re-election…

There are only five months before the election, and Obama is only now convening the inaugural meeting of his Senior Working Group on National Security and disclosing (at least partially) who he solicits advice from when it comes to foreign affairs. Obama apparently runs his campaign like he does…

Hillary Clinton is hosting her first fundraiser for Obama, and it will be next week at the Mayflower Hotel. Has anyone yet forgotten the Mayflower was Eliot Spitzer's hooker hang-out? If Democratic big-wigs go through with this affair, I encourage them to consult my handy drink guide. Alas, the…

Tom Wolfe brands television news reporters a gang of intellectually handicapped misfits. "As newspapers are declining rapidly . . . I would just point out, all news today comes from newspapers. All of it. Television has never initiated a successful story in its life. When they have a big story,…

It's generally agreed that the political climate for Republicans will be toxic this year, so it's not surprising that there are painfully few Democrats who seem to face uphill climbs for re-election. It looks there may be one, however, Pennsylvania's Paul Kanjorski, who's being challenged again by…

Which is more obscene, this or that, I don't know.

Barack Obama spoke earlier this past week with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari. Their accounts of the conversation differ in politically convenient ways for the junior senator. Obama's version: At a press availability in Michigan, I asked Obama if Zebari had expressed any concern to him that…

John McCain has set things up brilliantly: He proposed a gas tax holiday and now supports offshore drilling, both very popular ideas with the American public and bound to lower gas prices at least temporarily. Compare that with Obama, who says he is favor of higher gas prices. Sure, Democrats can…

AMERICANS HAVEN'T PAID much attention to El Salvador since the 1980s, when the country was being torn apart by a civil war and the Reagan administration was trying to balance its support for the anti-Communist military regime with a push for free elections. In those days, the leftist Farabundo…

I noted earlier that John Kerry seemed to say that Osama bin Laden has the constitutional right of habeas corpus. ABC News reports (something that I missed) that Richard Clarke directly said that bin Laden would have habeas rights: While Clarke said that the U.S. has authority to kill Bin Laden,…

Tomorrow the House Appropriations Committee will consider an amendment that lets states decide whether to allow energy exploration off their coasts. Some states would allow drilling if given the option, others might not. But if this measure became law, it could reduce gasoline prices and boost…

In a post titled "The 'White' House," Andrew Sullivan links to a photo of a racist anti-Obama pin sold by a vendor at the Texas GOP convention and writes: "The Texas GOP goes there." Is it fair to attribute this racism to the Texas GOP? Hardly. Is the Obama campaign sexist because this playing card…

I have quietly observed the joy with which giant swaths of the media have greeted the Supreme Court's discovery of habeas corpus rights for enemy combatants. "The system works!" they brayed as they celebrated the restoration of the rule of law. In fact, just the opposite has occurred. The issue of…

The British Ministry of Justice just released known terrorist Abu Qatada from prison even though he is suspected of being involved with the September 11 attacks and has already been convicted for several bombings in Jordan. No, today isn't opposite day; the British are just that stupid. The Special…

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Craig Gilbert reports that MoveOn and AFSCME have teamed up to attack John McCain for supporting a long-term troop presence in Iraq. The ad, which features an actress portraying a mother telling McCain that he "can't have" her son Alex for Iraq, is also airing in…

On a conference call with John Kerry and Richard Clarke, Bill Sammon of the Washington Examiner asked: "They've said if UBL were captured and detained at Gitmo, Obama would want to give him habeas corpus rights. They [the McCain campaign] said that this morning. Would he? In other words should UBL…

Winnie-the-Pooh---Group-Rainbow-Poster-C10315413.jpeg Obama's National Security Council?

Abu Qatada, a top al Qaeda operative in Europe, is set to be released tomorrow. Among his other offenses, he was convicted in absentia in Jordan for his role in the Millenium bombing plot in Amman, where his co-conspirators were Aby Zubaydah, al Qaeda's #3, and Abu Musab Zarqawi, the longtime…

From the Guardian: Bush Made the World a Safer Place, by Oliver Kamm. From Bench Memos: Will-ful Disregard, by Ed Whelan. From Politico: Are Dems Talking About McCain's Age in 'Code', by Carrie Budoff Brown. From National Review Online: Redefinition Revolution, by Maggie Gallagher. From the Wall…

Gordon Brown wasn't the only recipient of recent presidential radness. One bold Air Force Academy cadet, during the USAFA's commencement ceremonies, decided that he'd join his Command-in-Chief in a celebratory gesture normally reserved for the end zone. Behold the mighty chest bump. chest bump.jpg…

An astute reader notes that President Bush used the "urban" handshake in meeting with Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi at an earlier date in his European tour. Bush buddy Berlusconi does not appear fazed. bush berlusconi.jpg

It's a tradition nearly as old as modern politics itself - disaster strikes, and a politician rushes in to "help" with the relief effort while a bunch of cameras conveniently roll nearby to record the politician's noble efforts. Above, you can see footage of Barack Obama continuing this noble…

Rasmussen reports that 67 percent of Americans favor offshore drilling, while 18 percent oppose. McCain is now calling for an end to the federal ban on offshore drilling, but he still thinks the decision to drill should be up to coastal states. Fred Barnes writes that McCain's position doesn't make…

Above is footage of Al Gore belatedly throwing his weight behind Barack Obama's campaign. Talk about your profiles in political courage! Then again, maybe the erstwhile veep was worried that he would do to Obama what he did to Howard Dean in 2004. I know you're not going to watch the whole thing…

In a conference call this morning, John McCain's presidential campaign denounced Barack Obama as "naive" and suggested his election would mean an America far more vulnerable to terrorist attacks after comments the Democratic nominee made yesterday to ABC News. Obama said the response to the 1993…

No timetables, no nothing. Democrats are in full retreat. Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who came to power last year on a call to end the combat in Iraq, will soon give President George W. Bush the last war-funding bill of his presidency without any of the conditions they sought for withdrawing…

It was an extraordinary weekend for Tiger Woods as he won his 14th major championship at Torrey Pines. A few random thoughts for the tiny subset of Standard readers who have been dying for some golf-blogging: 1) Tiger is the best golfer ever. Period. Jack Nicklaus, the previous holder of that…

A characteristically strong column from Andy McCarthy, author of Willful Blindness, on Barack Obama's comments yesterday. This is June 2008. That means it marks the ten-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden's indictment. He was first charged by my old office, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the…

President Sarkozy is ushering in a new era of military policy in France. In its first new national defense policy in 14 years, France has decided that its security lies within Europe and NATO, establishing a significant shift from the country's longstanding notions of moral and military…

A smart reader writes about Barack Obama's comments on terrorism yesterday. The worst thing about Obama's comment is that he misses the point that even though we put the mastermind of WTC '93 in jail, his uncle was able to pull off a second attack. That's what's wrong with an approach that focuses…

Winking at the Queen of England may not comport with proper etiquette, but President Bush deserves the support of his countrymen in employing the hip-hop style handshake in greeting Gordon Brown this past week. Bush Brown.jpg For his part, the Prime Minister seemed startled and confused-a look I…

IT'S ONE THING when consumers grumble about inflation--gasoline prices that are at previously unheard-of levels, food prices that have homemakers spiking their hamburgers with bread crumb. It's quite another when a troika of central bankers says it worries that inflation might be getting out of…

John McCain's spokesman, Tucker Bounds, had this to say after Al Gore's endorsement of Barack Obama today. "At an event meant to show unity, Barack Obama couldn't unify his lofty rhetoric with the inconvenient truth that he voted for the Bush-Cheney energy bill he condemns, has proposed punishing…

Barack Obama said this today about prosecuting terrorists in an interview with ABC News. "And, you know, let's take the example of Guantanamo. What we know is that, in previous terrorist attacks -- for example, the first attack against the World Trade Center, we were able to arrest those…

Barack Obama has been insistent that a central part of his economic plan is a middle class tax cut. According to Obama's website, his plan for tax relief includes a tax cut for working families, the 'American opportunity' tax credit, an expansion of the dependent care tax credit, and the…

According to Politico, Senator Barack Obama will mention "Google" three times in a speech in Michigan today. Why? Writes Jonathan Martin, "Last week, discussing how easy it is to find information on people these days, [Senator John] McCain said, ‘You know, basically it's a Google.' He meant to…

This morning, Barack Obama's spokesman Bill Burton attacked John McCain for not returning campaign contributions from Clayton Williams, a man who once joked about rape during his 1990 Texas gubernatorial race against Ann Richards. Was Burton aware that Obama's buddy Al Franken, the Democratic…

On Saturday, Barack Obama said he's itching for a fight on the Boumediene case. "I think we should make it an issue," said Obama. "John McCain thinks the Supreme Court was wrong ... I think the Supreme Court was right." ABC's Jake Tapper reported that Obama went on to incorrectly imply that the…

Last week's fighting between the U.S. military and the Taliban, which spilled over from Afghanistan's Kunar province into Pakistan's Mohmand tribal agency, has sparked a diplomatic mess. Pakistan maintains the United States targeted an outpost of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, killing 11. The…

Democratic senator James Webb of Virginia pursued an undeniably distinguished military career. But a fine record of service in arms doesn't preclude becoming a demagogue as a politician. Last Thursday, Webb assailed Republican Sen. John McCain for comments on the Today Show, namely, McCain's…

At a Philadelphia fundraiser on Friday, Obama explained his new tactic for dealing with Republicans' attacks. "If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun," he told the audience. And bloggers, of course, are all over this latest Obama line. At Pajamas Media, Bob Owens explains that this is…

Since the Huffington Post premiered, it has been home to plenty of ludicrous speculation. Today Steven Rosenbaum earns a place in the Huffington Hall of Fame for claiming John McCain will drop out at the convention as part of a September Surprise by the Republicans. The creator of MTV UNfiltered,…

From National Review Online: A Quick Way Forward After 'Boumediene', by Andrew C. McCarthy. From the Wall Street Journal: Democracies Can't Compromise on Core Values, by Natan Sharansky. From the Daily Mail: The Curious Case of the Waterloo Files, by Melanie Phillips. From the New York Times: Big…

Both the McCain and Obama camps know Hispanic voters represent a key swing constituency in 2008. And the two presidential campaigns will pull out all the stops to persuade these voters. R. Michael Alvarez and Jonathan Nagler recently offered a thoughtful analysis--from the Democratic…

Gore Vidal is a bitter, washed up has-been of American letters. His increasingly loopy commentary on current events would invite sympathy for a senile old man if he weren't such a loathsome figure. Just consider his take on the presidential race: [W]hat about Mr. McCain? Disaster. Who started this…

Andrew McCarthy writes that Congress must act now: The most reprehensible aspect of the Boumediene ruling is thus Justice Kennedy's diktat that all "questions regarding the legality of the detention [of combatants] are to be resolved in the first instance by the District Court" - as if Congress,…

Obama will tour Europe, not Iraq, in his first overseas trip as his party's nominee. The Guardian reports, Barack Obama is planning his first overseas trip since he launched his US presidential bid in February last year - and Britain is pencilled in as part of a possible European tour next month.…

The overarching theme of this week's Sunday morning talk shows was the untimely death of Tim Russert. Each program's host had kind words, and Meet the Press dedicated the entire show to their show's fallen leader. If you have five minutes or so, check out this video celebration of the man's life,…

Chongqing

Republicans finally have a winning argument on a big issue, and they'd better make the most of it. It starts with high gasoline prices--the single most infuriating issue to voters these days--but doesn't end there.

Hyde Park, Chicago

American political methodology is an ontological construct. No, I don't know what I'm talking about, but it's true anyway. Political "science"--like that puppy from the same litter, the dismal science of economics--is not science; it's a branch of moral philosophy. Yet try talking moral philosophy…

You Don't Mess with the Zohan

We're Frosted

Every 20 years or so dance appears on television in a big way. In the 1980s we had Solid Gold, Dance Fever, and Soul Train. In the 1960s there were Shindig and Hullabaloo. When I was a kid my mother let me watch some of these shows after she brought me home from ballet. The Solid Gold dancers in…

Barack Obama's elitism runs even deeper than previously thought. Not only does the man from Hawaii, Morningside Heights, Cambridge, and Hyde Park look down on the grubby rubes in Altoona who go hunting after church. Not only does he bowl like a (10-year-old) girl. But it turns out that even his…

Cambridge, Mass.

The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race, and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the…

Social Security reform plans are a dime a dozen, but credible Medicare reform proposals are scarce. Why? Because Medicare's financial problems are so immense as to seem beyond resolution, and the policy environment is complex. Would-be entitlement reformers decry the lack of courageous leadership…

Bristow, Va.

Sovereignty

It would be hard to design a better test for the job of commander in chief than the real-life test senators John McCain and Barack Obama have undergone in the last two years. As the situation in Iraq deteriorated during 2006 and the war reached its most critical moment, both senators served on…

Churchill and the Jews

Washington from the Ground Up

The Savior

CENTCOM reports In an effort to revive the local economy, the Baghdad-7 ePRT worked in conjunction with 2nd BCT Civil Affairs, using money as their main tool. Armed with U.S. Department of State and U.S. Agency for International Development funds, Soldiers and civilians on the Baghdad-7 ePRT looked…

The DNC is worse than broke. It's $15 million in the red, and Denver city auditors are worried taxpayers are going to end up footing the bill for the Democratic Convention. So much for the Republicans being outspent in the upcoming elections. As it were, Howard Dean will be lucky if the donkey he…

I was too shocked and too sad yesterday to post anything about my friend Tim Russert's sad passing, but I'll try today. One thing that made Tim so special was that, while he was tough and knowing about politics, he was never cynical. He had heroes in his political life and saw politics as an…

The Washington pundit world divides into roughly two kinds of people: those interested in themselves first, issues second, and other people, if at all, a distant third. The second, much smaller group is made up of people like Tim Russert, who reversed that order.

I knew Tim Russert for over three decades. I liked and admired him very much.

The Washington pundit world divides into roughly two kinds of people: those interested in themselves first, issues second, and other people, if at all, a distant third. The second, much smaller group is made up of people like Tim Russert, who reversed that order. I don't typically get nervous…

I knew Tim Russert for over three decades. I liked and admired him very much. I first met Tim when Pat Moynihan was running for the Senate in 1976, in New York's Democratic primary. I was 23 years old, working for the campaign as deputy issues director. (This sounds more important than it was.…

Not all the bias directed at Hillary Clinton stems from misogyny. There were plenty of liberal journalists who were simply willing to say anything in their quest to see Obama win the Democratic Party nomination. The comments perversely continue even now that she is out of the race. Just take this…

His take on the SCOTUS disaster here.

From Defense Tech With his decision to tap Gen. Norton Schwartz to be the next Air Force chief of staff, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has done two things. First, he has smashed an Air Force culture ceiling by putting into the top job a pilot who does not come out of the fighter or bomber…

Remember when Obama agreed in theory to a "series" of town halls across the country? Then he wanted it to be Lincoln-Douglas style, so he could take advantage of a teleprompter and his less than fastidious command of public policy? Well, now Obama is proposing only a single town hall. So much for…

U.S. intelligence may question whether Iran has an active nuclear weapons program, but Iranian funded terrorist organization Hamas appears to concede the point. In an interview with the BBC, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal had this to say: Another key question for Mr Meshaal-does he think Iran should…

The National Resources Defense Council calls itself "the nation's most effective environmental action organization." Presumably the nation they refer to is the United States, but that has not stopped them from lending support to efforts to deter oil discovery in Canada: It is not news that these…

Ron Paul has finally abandoned his insurgent candidacy for president. Questions still linger: Why no siren on the Drudge Report? Will Paul join Dennis Kucinich in forming the greatest third-party ticket in history? They'd have a lock on voters who support the gold-standard, believe in aliens.

Three weeks ago, Moktada al-Sadr called for demonstrations to protest the talks over a status of forces agreement between the Iraqi government and the U.S. government. Sadr called for demonstrations to take place on Fridays after Muslims attend services at the mosque (note: This is an excellent…

From the Times (of London): Europe Will Miss George Bush When He's Not Around, by Gerard Baker. From FoxNews.com: UNICEF Partners with Islamic Charity Linked to Terror Groups, by Joseph Abrams. From Portfolio.com: Countrywide's Many 'Friends', by Daniel Golden. From Lessig.org: The Kozinski Mess,…

The emergence of Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee has changed the most important criterion in selecting a vice presidential running mate, notably for John McCain. This has given two Republicans in particular a serious shot at being picked: deputy House Republican whip Eric Cantor…

Having rescued the world's people from genocide and tyranny, the UN Human Rights Council is taking on the British monarchy. Oh, Cuba and Saudi Arabia are part of the committee. The resulting report said Britain should have a referendum on the monarchy and the need for a written constitution with a…

Although many legal scholars are celebrating yesterday's ruling as a return to the rule of law, the rule of law was never in question. President Bush has adhered to every one of the Supreme Court's War on Terror decisions, requesting and receiving congressional authorization when the Court ruled in…

Iraqpatton.jpg

THE EMERGENCE OF Barack Obama as the Democratic presidential nominee has changed the most important criterion in selecting a vice presidential running mate, notably for John McCain. This has given two Republicans in particular a serious shot at being picked: deputy House Republican whip Eric Cantor…

THE RISE AND FALL of M. Night Shyamalan has been almost Wellesian.

When you are Jennifer Loven of the Associated Press. George W. Bush yesterday went out of his way yesterday to emphasize his preference for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. But in this hilarious dispatch Loven explains that when Bush says "diplomacy" he's using code words for…

Looking for someone to support in this weekend's U.S. Open? Rory Sabbatini is your man. Sabbatini teed off today wearing a camouflage golf shirt to honor The Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund. Sabbatini, who is from South Africa, has raised more than $1 million for charities benefitting U.S. troops and…

As Samantha noted earlier today, Barack Obama doesn't seem too concerned about the rise in the price of gasoline. Apparently the presumptive nominee's brethren in Congress don't either. After nearly two years in power, the House majority appears more interested in toeing the line of environmental…

Lindsey Graham says he'll seek measures to "blunt the effect" of the Supreme Court's "dangerous an irresponsible" decision that gives enemy combatants access to U.S. civilian courts: The Court's decision is bad on many levels and I will continue to review the decision and determine its sweeping…

It looks like some British government officials can't keep a secret, or at least can't hold onto secret documents. An embarrassing new story has emerged out of the UK. A "senior intelligence official in the Cabinet office," who has since been suspended, apparently left copies of top secret…

capt.cps.mrv67.120608105550.photo00.photo.default-512x335.jpg Dustin the Turkey, via Yahoo News

From the Wall Street Journal: $4 Gasbags. From the New York Times: Unlike Others, U.S. Defends Freedom to Offend in Speech, by Adam Liptak. From National Review: Treachery: The Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar statements is a disgrace, by Andrew C. McCarthy. From First Things:…

Throughout the Democratic primary campaign, Hillary Clinton bested Senator Obama among women, latinos, and middle and lower income white voters. With Clinton out of the way, you would think that the push was on to shore up support among those groups. At least when it comes to women and latinos, it…

Gordon Brown won a much-needed victory yesterday with Parliament approving his plan to permit the detention of terrorist suspects for up to 42-days without charges. An odd postscript to the story is the abrupt resignation of Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, who was outspoken in his opposition to…

Yuval Levin explains why awarding Donna Shalala the Medal of Freedom is such an outrage: The Medal of Freedom for Donna Shalala - one of the Clinton administration's foremost abortion advocates and welfare reform opponents - really is baffling. The Medal of Freedom is not just a pat on the back; it…

Remember Jim Johnson? The former head of Fannie Mae was on Obama's VP-vetting team until the media highlighted his shady Countrywide loan deals--a bit of a problem since Obama has criticized Countrywide for such deals. As expected, Johnson resigned because he "would not dream of being a party to…

A Kuwaiti man, educated in the United States, has given the Middle East its first comic books: Mutawa's superheroes are modern, secular and spiritual, moving seamlessly between East and West. They come from 99 countries and are split between males and females. The heroes include Darr the Afflicter,…

Obama doesn't seem to have a problem with high gas prices if they hit Americans' wallets gradually: CNBC: So can these high [gas] prices help us? OBAMA: I think that I would have preferred a gradual adjustment. Talk about out of touch. NRO's Jim Geraghty has more. Watch the RNC's video:

CNN's Michael Ware has a must-read piece on Al Qaeda in Iraq and its organization. Ware obtained captured documents from the Anbar Awakening that outline Al Qaeda in Iraq's organization, planning, operations, recruiting, shadow legal system, and targeted propaganda campaign, as well as the outright…

YESTERDAY MORNING AT the Christian Science Monitor breakfast meeting, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was asked whether the Democratic platform on abortion should be amended. That will be up to Barack Obama and his delegates, Dean said, adding that the Democratic party believes…

AFTER POWERFUL POLITICAL and media voices in America began expressing doubts about the war on terror, disaffection with U.S. intervention soon came to seem as if it were a permanent feature of our political landscape. Even as it is widely admitted that "the surge" has worked in Iraq, commentators…

Goldfarb gives John Kerry a lesson on Islamic history: Among the accusations he leveled this morning, Senator Kerry said Senator McCain "confuses the history going back to 682 of what has happened to Sunni and Shia." Now, we at the McCain Report have been receiving a great number of panicked emails…

As you'll see from the Tonight Show transcript below, our once and future colleague is scaling new heights of fame: LENO: Over the weekend, Barack Obama spoke with John McCain on the phone. I don't want to say McCain is getting old, but halfway through the conversation, McCain said to Barack, "Can…

This morning at the Christian Science Monitor breakfast meeting, Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean was asked whether the Democratic platform on abortion should be amended. That will be up to Barack Obama and his delegates, Dean said, adding that the Democratic party believes…

The latest Rasmussen tracking poll shows good news for John McCain. The Arizona maverick has chewed into Barack Obama's eight point lead, taking out a three point chunk. Unless you failed several math classes, you've probably been able to deduce that Obama now has a five point lead over McCain. For…

A bunch of publications are naming Rep. Eric Cantor, the only Jewish Republican in Congress, as a potential running-mate for McCain: The National Journal, The Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and a flurry of bloggers all have made recent mentions of Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Henrico, as a…

alg_obamabike.jpg Barack Obama getting in touch with his inner Dukakis As the above picture illustrates, even the coolest of Democrats have more than a little Michael Dukakis in them. In conservative circles, we often lament how Democrats have forgotten the foreign policy legacy of John F. Kennedy.…

Gallup's Frank Newport wrote yesterday about John McCain's support among religious voters. Newport argues that Bob Novak's article in Monday's Washington Post and recent New York Times reporting are based largely on anecdotes. He begins with this observation: News reports in recent days have probed…

Jim Johnson, the author of the Fannie Mae debacle and seemingly a lifetime magnet for the appearance of impropriety, has stepped down as Barack Obama's chief running-mate vetter. Personally, I find this devastating news. If Johnson had done for Obama what he did for Fannie, Obama probably would…

Speaking on an Obama campaign conference call this morning, John Kerry said: "Our generals have made it crystal clear that we cannot sustain American forces deployed in Iraq at this level. The fact is that our own military is overstretched. It has reduced American ability to be able to respond to…

How long can Obama lead in the polls when the voters show such little faith in his leadership ability: Forty-five percent (45%) trust McCain most when it comes to economic issues and managing the economy while 42% prefer Obama. Those figures have changed little over the past week. On national…

There has been some grumbling among Bush administration officials about the reluctance -- and at times the refusal -- of Defense Secretary Robert Gates to advocate administration positions in public. Gates gave a rare interview to CNN this week and John McCain must hope that he goes back into…

Barack Obama's real estate partner Tony Rezko was recently convicted in his trial. As a result, another beneficiary of Rezko's largesse may now face impeachment: House Speaker Michael Madigan is circulating a memo to legislative candidates spelling out how they can call for impeachment hearings for…

To mask his own liberal-Democratic views, Obama must brand John McCain more of the same. Hence why he's repeatedly said McCain is running for Bush's third-term. In responding, McCain typically asserts that Obama is running for Jimmy Carter's second-term. That is fine and good when it comes to…

From the Times (London): President George Bush Starts Talking Language of a Dove, by Gerard Baker and Tom Baldwin (on board Air Force One). From the Yorkshire Post: Charles Repays Royal Debt, (sub-prime lending, 17th-century style). From Hudson Institute: The Politicization of American Islam, by…

Although conservative Democrats like Jim Webb have handed Congress to the Democrats, many of them want nothing to do with Obama and think he is likely to lose in November. When NPR asked Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland if he was auditioning to be Obama's VP, the Hillary supporter remarked, "Absolutely…

Appearing before reporters at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor this morning, Howard Dean was asked about the Barack Obama flag pin flap. Dean said he thought the topic was silly and wouldn't discuss Obama's decisions on the matter, but he did volunteer his own rationale for…

Not only will the Obamas right our wrongdoings, slow the rise of the oceans, and save all mankind, but they also apparently have fantastic fashion sense. First, Vogue's April It Girl Michelle has been heralded for her "potential to bring a more fashion-forward aesthetic into the White House,"…

The AP has an interesting look at Barack Obama's vice presidential possibilities. One name is missing: Chuck Hagel. Hagel has to be considered at least a possibility. Although he was an active supporter of John McCain in 2000, Hagel has not yet endorsed in the current two-man race. Last week, he…

DON'T LET HUGO Chavez fool you: The past few years have actually been a golden era for economic management in Latin America. Though a small cluster of countries (led by Chavez's Venezuela) have, to varying degrees, embraced destructive populism and done real harm to their business climate, the…

FIRST IT WAS Chris Matthews getting a thrill up his leg when he thought of Barack Obama; then it was Newsweek giving Obama a free pass on everything; now it is Mark Halperin over at Time warning that the Charisma Machine is going to roll right over McCain in November, with the media's hand on the…

Congressional Republicans will unveil a new economic agenda tomorrow. The plan promises to lower gas prices, put an immediate moratorium on earmarks, fix a broken tort system, stop taxes from spiking once the current tax cuts expire in 2010 and more. Republican Leader John Boehner previewed the…

The Jim Johnson-led search for a suitable running mate for Barack Obama has narrowed the potential list to three categories. According to Time Magazine, Obama's personal Team Fannie Mae is focusing on "current top elected officials, former top elected officials, and former top military leaders."…

Pete Wehner deflates E.J. Dionne's hope that Barack Obama will consider choosing Joe Biden as his running mate: The problem is that the two most important policy decisions related to Iraq were the decision to go to war in the first place and the President's embrace of the so-called surge. On the…

Jeffrey Ressner of the Politico reports that actress Scarlett Johansson has a crush on Senator Barack Obama. "My heart belongs to Barack," she is quoted as saying. After the last ABC debate, the star of Lost in Translation emailed the candidate, praising him for his performance. Believe it or not,…

Chuck Todd reports that Jim Johnson and Eric Holder are asking Hill Democrats their views about General Jim Jones as a possible vice presidential nominee. Todd probably reads too much into the significance of this, given that Johnson and Holder are only tangentially related to the Obama campaign --…

While Newsweek has certainly produced some penetrating reportage and incisive analysis, the opposite has more often been true in this presidential race, as Jim Geraghty reminds us. Newsweek's latest pro-Obama work is this hit job on Joe Lieberman. The writers report that during a confrontation…

A note from a recently retired Air Force reader: Believe it or not, the recent SNAFU with the Air Force's strategic assets can be traced directly back to Barack Obama's military advisor General Merrill McPeak. The changes that McPeak set in motion 15 years ago eventually came back to bite the USAF…

Sure, Hamas has proved itself relatively resilient, but it is now battling a foe more formidable than the IDF: Internet Porn. "A couple of weeks ago Hamas installed a filter to prevent people from accessing such pages on the net," said Ali Sarayfi who runs an Internet cafe in the university area of…

Readers of THE WEEKLY STANDARD might assume that Sex and the City: The Movie was just terrible. But finally, we have a man's man who recognizes the wit and charm of this wildly entertaining, if unrealistic, TV series and film: None other than Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. New York's…

Have you heard of Jim Johnson? The former head Fannie Mae is one of Obama's "VP vetters." And as the New York Sun reports, Johnson took at least five real estate loans totaling more than $7 million from Countrywide Financial Corp. through an informal program for friends of the company's CEO, Angelo…

We've chronicled here how the Congress has refused to fund the war on terror. Congress is approaching a critical deadline, as Secretary Gates recently testified before the Senate that the Pentagon will not have the funds necessary to pay troops as of June 15, unless the Congress approves a…

From Newsweek: As the Oceans Rise, by George F. Will. From the New York Post: Gagged in Canada: Speech Police Run Amok, by Rich Lowry. From the New York Sun: Substance Over Style, by Seth Gitell. From Michael J. Totten's Middle East Journal: A Dark Corner of Europe, Part II, by Michael J. Totten.…

crown.jpg

Andrew Romano of Newsweek's Stumper blog has a great post comparing McCain's official blog, written by our former colleague Michael Goldfarb, and Obama's blog "that might as well be produced by a bunch of robots." "If there's one word to describe Obama's blog--and, in fact, his entire Internet…

Mayor Bloomberg is oft mentioned as a possible running-mate to either candidate, but it seems more likely that Obama would select him than McCain. After all, a moderate Republican like McCain has less to gain than liberal-Democrat Obama in nominating an ostensibly independent candidate. Yesterday,…

TOSS A BARREL of $135 oil into the economy, and the ripples will swamp some of the boats trying to stay afloat in the current sea of economic troubles. And planes. Airlines are grounding their least fuel-efficient planes in an attempt to cut costs. So fewer budget-priced seats will be available to…

THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE has once again released a report claiming that the Bush administration hyped prewar intelligence. The so-called Phase Two report is supposed to investigate the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence. In reality, the report is little more than yet…

IN THE PAST MONTH, Iraqi and coalition forces have succeeded in their fight against the Mahdi Army's "special groups." On May 3, the U.S. military destroyed a special groups command center in Sadr City, killing a wanted leader in the attack. On May 25, Iraqi special operations forces captured a…

Per Rasmussen, Texas senator John Cornyn has opened up a 17 point lead over his Democratic challenger--an indication perhaps that Rasmussen's last poll showing Cornyn with only a 4 point lead was an outlier. Also, in New Jersey, Democratic incumbent Frank Lautenberg is in a virtual tie with his…

Many expect a big Obama bump in the polls now that he's the presumptive nominee. Rasmussen reports a mini-jump in its latest tracking poll released today, as Dean Barnett notes below. The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that Barack Obama attracts 48 percent of…

Back in the days of old, USAF fighter jocks served in a support capacity. Their primary mission was to keep the bad guys off our B-52 bombers and away from our nine ICBM fields. Vietnam changed all that. After the bomber community took horrendous losses during Operations Linebacker I & II and some…

According to the Associated Press, "McDonald's said Monday it has stopped serving sliced tomatoes in its U.S. restaurants over concerns about salmonella food poisoning linked to some uncooked varieties." Hold on a second. There were tomatoes at McDonald's? I think the last time I had a tomato at…

As the government of Pakistan continues to negotiate with the Taliban, it has ramped up its public relations effort to sell the talks to the West. In Sunday's Boston Globe, Nadeem H. Kiani, the Press Attaché for the Pakistani Embassy, assures us that there are no negotiations with terrorists or…

The above clip features George F. Will forecasting doom for John McCain in the fall. His point is that the current polls showing a close race are a mirage. Will elaborates that polls are only as reliable as the template they use to predict turnout. According to Will's reasoning, the polls showing a…

From the New York Times: A Campaign We Can Believe In?, by William Kristol. From the New York Post: In Afghanistan and Iraq, We're Looking for a Few Good Men, by Ann Marlowe. From Harvard Magazine: The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination, by J.K Rowling. From The Jawa…

I'm a little nervous about making fun of the latest bit of Obama-as-mesiah stuff from the San Francisco Chronicle because I'm not entirely sure whether or not it's satire. Here's Mark Morford explaining that Obama just might be a "Lightworker": I find I'm having this discussion, this weird little…

The weekend buzz was Hillary Clinton's speech suspending her campaign and endorsing Obama. But many of her supporters--particularly older, feminist women--are "devastated and angry," according to ABC News. Hillary thus "made gender a central theme of her concession speech": "I ran as a daughter who…

There's a lot of it going around and most of it seems, to me at least, a little unfair. For instance, Drudge is linking to this Daily News story mocking Clinton for spending $109,823 per delegate. The reporter goes on and on coming up with other things she could have done with all of that…

In the Rasmussen daily tracking poll, Barack Obama leads John McCain by eight points. This is the second consecutive day that Obama has held an eight point lead, and it marks an unhappy departure from the happy days of yore (like ten days ago) when McCain held a five point lead. First, the bad…

Ari Fleischer, now a media consultant working for the team, thinks so. "Remember when (Vice President Dick) Cheney was really unpopular in 2004? Bush was asked if he was going to dump him from the ticket. A head coach starts out 0-4; the questions become about firing the coach or benching the…

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is refusing to compromise on his proposal to permit a 42-day detention period for terrorists before charges must be filed, and the public is supporting him. What is so appalling about the Conservative Party's opposition is how apparent it is they merely wish to deny…

Last Thursday, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) hosted its first blogger briefing, which featured both liberal and conservative online media outlets. CNAS is a relatively new kid in Washington's crowded and competitive think tank market. The two key CNAS people, CEO Dr. Kurt Campbell…

Roll Call ($) reports that the Republican National Committee -- which has far outstripped Howard Dean's DNC in fundraising -- will lend support to the cash-poor National Republican Congressional Committee: Republican Congressional Committee are set to form a joint fundraising committee with the…

A 9/11 conspiracy theorist is on Day 15 of a hunger strike outside the Phoenix office of John McCain, and says he won't leave until the senator hears out his wacky views that the U.S. government planned the attacks. When asked how he thinks this will end, Blair Gadsby inadvertently reveals the…

Columbia University has more than its share of intellectual hacks, and high on the list is Joseph Massad. Professor Massad's controversial beliefs invite mockery. He believes the Iraq war stemmed from the sexual prowess of the American male ("In such a strategy, Iraqis are posited by American…

Fox News Sunday yesterday hosted two governors named Tim: Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) and Tim Kaine (D-VA). Both are mentioned as possible running mates for their party's presidential nominees. You can get a flavor of the discussion here. The highlight comes around the 8:55 mark, where Pawlenty begins to…

A fantastic New York Sun editorial, here. Guess who said this? "Our evidence suggests that Baghdad is strengthening a relationship with al-Qaeda that dates back to the mid-1990s, when senior Iraqi intelligence officers established contact with the network in several countries." "We have some…

Just because the Obama campaign doesn't pay for cabs from O'Hare and staffers are expected to double-up at hotels doesn't make it frugal. Indeed, Obama oversees a team of 700 people--more than twice as many as Bush in 2004--the biggest, most bloated campaign in the history of presidential…

The general election is (finally) upon us! Tim Pawlenty was on Fox News Sunday, making the case for John McCain as a leader for change. "Look at Senator McCain's record on the big issues of our time: changing of the war; being for climate change; cracking down on pork barrel spending; being against…

Willful Blindness

John McCain and Barack Obama are often seen sending emails between campaign rallies as they barnstorm the country. But whichever man is elected president will face a predicament: unholster his Blackberry or risk political suicide. As George W. Bush told a small group of friends just days before…

Luck and the Irish

The good news is that some politicians apparently do keep their promises. Immediately after being appointed Pakistan's prime minister earlier this year, Yousaf Raza Gilani promised negotiations with the Taliban, saying that his government was "ready to talk to all those who give up arms and adopt…

Allow me to begin with a slightly off-topic public service message: Do not clip your fingernails on airplanes.

Thirty years ago, this week, California voters started a taxpayer revolt that quickly spread to other states, helped set the stage for President Ronald Reagan's income tax cuts, and inspired an entire generation of diehard opponents of big government. While the rest of the country slept through the…

America has not had a nationwide housing crash since the 1930s. At one point during that calamity, an estimated 60 percent of all mortgages were in technical default. The rather primitive housing credit system of the time, which relied on five-year balloon mortgages, certainly exacerbated the…

NIXON'S A.G. REDUX

Sex and the City

Paris

The Upside of the Cultural Revolution

In America we are currently living in a Kindergarchy, under rule by children. People who are raising, or have recently raised, or have even been around children a fair amount in recent years will, I think, immediately sense what I have in mind. Children have gone from background to foreground…

Beet

The Ancient Americas

Don't look now, but evidence of progress in the war on terror is just about everywhere. Last week CIA director Michael Hayden noted some U.S. accomplishments for the Washington Post: "Near strategic defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks…

1) My friend Hugh Hewitt and I have something of a passion for belittling Pittsburgh sports fans. For instance, both Hugh and I felt that Barack Obama's comment about rural Pennsylvanians being bitter was perfectly understandable in the context that anyone who spent half his mental energy trying to…

Image (since removed) from Obama campaign website The internets became briefly aflutter today when Charles Johnson noticed some rather interesting stuff on Barack Obama's official website. In the site's "community blogs" section, a post slipped in with the charming title, "How the Jewish Lobby…

I urge you to run over to HotAir and enjoy some footage of Hillary Clinton endorsing Barack Obama. As you'll note, it was no occasion for cackling. Indeed, the First Lady couldn't even manage a grin. I've seen happier and more eager expressions in a colonoscopy waiting room. Meanwhile, Charles…

Such a gifted orator! He obviously has such a firm command of the facts! Lord knows I love mocking Obama's inarticulateness when unguided by a teleprompter as much as anyone what with personally having invented the meme and all, but there's a serious point here. In Richard Ben Cramer's seminal book…

Last Friday, David Axelrod said that Barack Obama "never disputed the fact that if you throw a surge of American soldiers in an area that you can make a difference." Yesterday, as the McCain campaign pointed out in an email, Obama's communications director Robert Gibbs said that "there's no doubt…

In his commencement address at Wesleyan University two Sundays ago, Barack Obama called on the graduates to spend some time in public service. While he listed numerous ways to serve the nation--as a teacher, in the Peace Corps., etc.--he never mentioned serving in the military. At his Thursday…

Filmmaker (or is it former filmmaker?) Spike Lee holds a special place in the darkest recesses of many Bostonians' hearts for the way he went after Larry Bird in the 1980's. The color of Bird's skin in Lee's eyes made him somehow illegitimate, a view that Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan among…

Oft-swooning Obama-phile Andrew Sullivan published a post yesterday that read in its entirety: "I cried all night. I'm going to be crying for the next four years. What Barack Obama has accomplished is the single most extraordinary event that has occurred in the 232 years of the nation's political…

As McCormack notes below, our esteemed once-and-future colleague Michael Goldfarb has now officially brought his pugnaciously eloquent (or eloquently pugnacious) blogging style to the McCain campaign. I'm going to give you a couple of snippets from his initial post to make a larger point: Welcome…

Via the World Tribune: The U.S. military in Iraq has captured the deputy military chief of the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah, coalition officials said. Iraqi sources said the U.S. Army has arrested the No. 2 figure in Hizbullah's military wing. The sources said the unidentified Hizbullah commander…

Michael Goldfarb has the scoop at his new blog: The McCain Report--"A Blog You Can Believe In"!

We're Frosted

Just one day after Pakistani officials told the Wall Street Journal that negotiations with the Taliban in South Waziristan were put on hold, the governor of the Northwest Frontier Province said that negotiations are continuing. In fact, the governor expects that a deal will be completed in a matter…

It's not just the real Mohammed who is image conscious. On trial for his life, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed took time from his defense to quarrel with a court-artist's depiction of his nose: During that process, the sketch was shown to Mohammed's defense team, and the accused terrorist took a moment to…

Yesterday Lieutenant Andrew Grayson became the sixth U.S. soldier exonerated of any wrongdoing in an incident at Haditha in 2005. Grayson is the first Marine tried for his alleged transgressions; two others will face trial later this year: Eight military personnel were originally charged over the…

Does Obama have a problem with women voters? Will disaffected Clinton voters jump ship and support McCain? American University political scientist Brian Schaffner writes this today, offering some advice about how Obama can boost his numbers among women. Schaffner argues that in order to win, Obama…

From Hit and Run: Googling the Welfare State, by Michael C. Moynihan. From Real Clear Politics: Smiling at Obama Is a Reflex, by Kathleen Parker. From New York Daily News: Bill Clinton faces benching in fall presidential campaign, by Thomas M. DeFrank. From Policy Review: The Ultimate Literary…

John McCain certainly isn't the best looking of the remaining presidential candidates, but I wouldn't have expected the blogosphere's most prominent lefty to make a big issue of the disparity. I was of course wrong. The following critique of a picture of McCain that appears on his campaign website…

A word on today's purging of USAF leadership. Official line is that Air Force brass let the nuclear mission slip in the years since the Berlin wall fell. That's true, for a variety of reasons. Standing down Strategic Air Command, the post-Vietnam leadership handoff from nuclear bomber pilots to…

K-Mart's abstinence sweatpants, which read "True Love Waits" on the front and back, will remain on shelves, at least for now. This is a welcome improvement from the "hyper-sexualized" clothing worn by many of today's tweens, but I wonder if it ultimately affirms the very suggestions it ostensibly…

Peggy Noonan is one of the few right wing writers who, like me, managed to completely resist Hillary Clinton's charms during the Democratic race for the White House. But in her column today, out of a fully justified sense of joy, Noonan engages in a little shark jumping. Taste the righteous…

A COUPLE OF MONTHS ago Ross Douthat, the Atlantic senior editor and occasional WEEKLY STANDARD contributor, wrote an intriguing essay called "The Return of the Paranoid Style," in which he argued that the spate of anti-war, anti-Republican films flooding the multiplexes were a liberal reaction to…

Kiev

From the Wall Street Journal: Why Obama Must Go to Iraq, by Pete Hegseth. From Real Clear Politics: The Bad War?, by Victor Davis Hanson. From Policy Review : The War Against Himself, by Sam Munson. A terrible loss: Moscow (Indiana) covered bridge. Your humble scribe's boyhood Indiana community…

JAY ROCKEFELLER, CHAIRMAN of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released (yet another) report written by Democratic staffers claiming the Bush administration politicized intelligence. The "report" is a political document that is already accomplishing its goal: making headlines. I'll leave it to…

Jimmy Carter--who definitely knows a thing or two about alienating Americans--isn't keen on the idea of an Obama/Clinton administration, as he told the London Guardian: "I think it would be the worst mistake that could be made," said Carter. "That would just accumulate the negative aspects of both…

Jay Rockefeller, Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, released (yet another) report written by Democratic staffers claiming the Bush administration politicized intelligence. The "report" is a political document that is already accomplishing its goal: making headlines. I'll leave it to…

Barack Obama was thrown off guard by John McCain's proposal for them to appear together at 10 town hall meetings this summer before the party conventions. Or maybe his initial response was merely disingenuous. Obama has insisted for months now that the campaign should be civil and friendly and…

Obama should have been able to breathe a sigh of relief since she's finally gone. But instead, loyal Obama supporter Tony Rezko was convicted on 16 of 24 charges of corruption. What did Obama say? "I am saddened by today's verdict. This isn't the Tony Rezko I knew." Seriously. Power Line's Scott…

The Obama camp has moved quickly--and deftly--to shut down the Hillary Clinton bid for the vice presidential pick. The well-sourced Jackie Calmes reports in the Wall Street Journal that "close advisers to Sen. Obama are signaling that an Obama-Clinton ticket is highly unlikely." The way they're…

Carla Bruni, France's first lady, says "her husband was so bright he appeared to have 'five or even six brains.'" That's five or six more than her.

The Obama camp has moved quickly--and deftly--to shut down the Hillary Clinton bid for the vice presidential pick.

The Pakistani government's recent negotiations in the Northwest Frontier Province and the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan have sparked objections from U.S. military and intelligence officers. In the June 9 edition of THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and I explained why the deals are…

This new report on citizen approval of political parties is hardly earth-shattering. The study finds that Democrats hold a significant lead among adults on overall favorability (57 percent compared to 39 percent for Republicans). But the end of the study contains more interesting--and…

For those interested in a quick and easy-to-use dynamic graphic showing how different groups voted in Democratic primary states, check this out. Choose a group--men, women, black, white, income level etc.--and see how the vote breakdown changes. It's a very impressive visual display of the current…

ABC News took a look at the "10 worst running mates Barack Obama could choose." It's a who's who of Obama's controversial friends and supporters: Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Father Michael Pfleger, and the Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, to name a few. As ABC's Jake Tapper said in the…

With Hamas un-endorsing Obama after his speech yesterday at AIPAC, I can't help but wonder what his next successful "pander pivot" will be. Perhaps his next move will be to back off from this pledge: I will cut tens of billions of dollars in wasteful spending. I will cut investments in unproven…

Worse than the Hummer, dastardlier than a Gulfstream V, cow flatulence is the bête noire of the environmental movement. "Livestock are responsible for 18 per cent of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, more than cars, planes and all other forms of transport put together." And until…

Our friend Pete Hegseth, who served in Iraq with the 101st Airborne and is now chairman of Vets for Freedom, has an outstanding op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal regarding Barack Obama's refusal to visit Iraq. A taste: Mr. Obama has dismissed the value of such trips, suggesting they are…

London

THE DEBATE CONTINUES over the benefits of engaging with the Islamic Republic of Iran, a state that has been dedicated to Islamist terrorism since 1979. The notion of a productive meeting with Iranian leaders is fantasy. However, the debate is important because it reveals how the proponents of…

Mitch McConnell is not going to win the Scott McClellan Award for Unity, Bipartisanship and Comity. Good for McConnell. He's forcing the clerk to read nearly 500 pages of a global warming bill now before the Senate as an objection to the Democrats' stalling on judicial appointees. It's nice to see…

Barack Obama seemed a bit miffed last night when he said: "I honor--we honor--the service of John McCain, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine." What exactly does he want McCain to do? Acknowledge that Obama was the editor of the Harvard Law Review? No one denies…

The U.N. Food Summit in Rome kowtowed to President Ahmadinejad in barring an Iranian journalist critical of the pint-sized tyrant from attending his address. After international criticism, however, the U.N. has apologized. The United Nations apologised Wednesday to an Iranian journalist who was…

Today, Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner reported on continuing progress in Iraq: For the third week in a row security incidents in Iraq are at the lowest levels in four years. ... These security gains follow the coordinated offensive operations over the past year, and the recent security operations in…

Was the son of a Republican congressman the source of the infamous Austan Goolsbee memo on NAFTA? That is the claim in a pair of articles (here and here) published late last week by the Toronto Star. The existence of the memo, which asserted that Obama's economic adviser had downplayed the…

It's frequently observed that America's labor bosses no longer seem to have U.S. interests at heart. Is it any surprise, given that they are committed to tapping into the international leftist/socialist network to try to get their way? ...the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), joined by…

Per the Sun-Times article Jonathan V. Last links to below, we learn that Fr. Pfleger's dog is named "Imani," which is "an African word for 'faith.'" Um, last time I checked "African" isn't a language. Actually, the word "imani" means "my faith" in Arabic. I guess Pfleger, like Brother Farrakhan, is…

From the Chicago Sun Times: Pfleger Is Apartment Hunting, by Cathleen Falsani. From Policy Review: Answering Edward Said, by Peter Berkowitz. From Variety : Tom Cruise Dons His Eye Patch and Starts Shooting Again, by Peter Bart. Read this one for the comments (HT: John Podhoretz at Contentions).…

Hillary gets? Word is that Hillary is "open" to being Obama's veep and is "withholding a formal departure from the race partly to use her remaining leverage to press for a spot on the ticket," according to the AP. Bloggers are yet again buzzing about the possibility of a Democratic "dream" ticket.…

Mahmoud Ahmadenijad has provided his analysis of our domestic politics: "Whoever wins the elections, I'm sure that the United States will change, it will have a different approach… The new president will have to respond to the real demands of the American people: 40 million American citizens do…

Chicago's Cardinal Francis George has placed Fr. Pfleger on leave. The Sun-Times has the whole scoop. Choice details include: * Pfleger was asked to take a voluntary sabbatical; he refused. * After being placed on involuntary leave, Pfleger was asked to leave the rectory. * Pfleger had previously…

After lamenting the cost imposed by overeating in the West on the world's hungry, conference-attendees at the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization grappled with food shortages over a modest menu that included "puff pastries with corn and mozzarella, pasta with pumpkin and shrimp, and rolls of…

Obama already agreed in theory to do town halls and now says he is still interested, but don't expect him to keep his word. A week ago, Obama rejected McCain's proposal for a joint-trip to Iraq as a "political stunt." In coming weeks, I anticipate similar language will begin to appear with respect…

I promise I will not make a habit of defending Barack Obama. So please view what follows as not a defense of Obama but rather a plea that McCain partisans concentrate their criticism in the right places. The above YouTube has been making the rounds today. It shows a bunch of similarities between…

The RNC puts out a new ad: The best Hillary quotes: "Senator McCain will bring a lifetime of experience to the campaign, I will bring a lifetime of experience and Senator Obama will bring a speech that he gave in 2002." And: "I think it's imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can…

In response to John McCain's call earlier today for joint town hall appearances, Barack Obama's campaign released a statement from campaign manager David Plouffe. "As Barack Obama has said before, the idea of joint town halls is appealing and one that would allow a great conversation to take place…

The Washington Post reports this morning that Korea has decided to withdraw from its commitment to allow the import of U.S. beef: In April this year, Lee moved to lift the ban, without consulting many of his own advisers, his party or the public. He did so shortly before a meeting on trade with…

In desperate need of a victory, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is making concessions to ensure members of his own party don't vote against his proposal to permit terrorist suspects to be detained without charge for up to 42 days. At prime minister's questions today, Gordon Brown described the…

I agree with much that has been said/written about John McCain's speech last night. Although he was too critical of George W. Bush and his fellow Republicans and, as always, a bit eager to offer that criticism, the broad strokes of the speech were the right ones. McCain should run as a reform…

Near the kick-off of his victory speech last night, Barack Obama commented, "Thank you to my grandmother who helped raise me and is sitting in Hawaii somewhere right now because she can't travel but who poured everything she had into me and who helped make me the man I am today." You remember…

Because everyone else has criticized John McCain's speech from last night, I'm hoping it won't jeopardize my shot at a future seat on the Straight Talk Express if I add my voice to the choir and say I also thought it was a poor performance. No one expects McCain to match Barack Obama when it comes…

During his first speech of the general election in St. Paul tonight, Barack Obama fired a predictable opening shot at McCain: "While John McCain can legitimately tout moments of independence from his party in the past, such independence has not been the hallmark of his presidential campaign. It's…

BARACK OBAMA HAS DEFEATED Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination--but with a new and unwelcome twist. He hasn't succeeded in ridding himself of Clinton (or her husband Bill). She refuses to go away, much less concede.

TODAY, SENATOR BARACK OBAMA will speak before the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), where he will execute a maneuver likely to become familiar to the American people in the months ahead: the pander pivot. That is, a sharp turn to the right to satisfy a vital…

In response to today's news that the ballot initiative in California defining marriage as between a man and a woman has enough signatures to make it on the ballot in November, John McCain issued a statement: "I welcome the news that the people of California will have the opportunity to decide on…

A friend on Capitol Hill emails a brief dispatch from the Associated Press reporting that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il received a gift from a visiting delegation of congressional staff members. North Korea's official news agency says the country's leader has received a gift from the chairman…

According to Agence Free Press: Toilet troubles on the International Space Station (ISS) could force Russian cosmonauts to return to Earth early, a Russian official told Interfax news agency Tuesday. "It's true, we have a problem with the flushing system. This is a serious matter," warned Vladimir…

Republicans continue to look like the "brand" on the run. Rasmussen posts this piece documenting further decline since January in the number of self-identified Republicans and continued growth among Democrats. Their May survey finds 31.6 percent identifying as Republicans, 41.4 percent as Democrats…

Writing at TNR's reliably misinformed Environment & Energy Blog, Dayo Olopade lauds the Chinese government's ambitious program to eliminate plastic bags: The move, which bans outright ultrathin plastic bags and puts a price on all others, is said to save China 37 billion barrels of oil annually.…

Some Grade A oppo research from the RNC: Carter In 2008: "The fact is the Obama people already know they have my vote when the polls close tonight." ("Former President Carter Says He Will Endorse Obama," The Associated Press, 6/3/08) Carter In 2006: "I just don't think he's got yet the proven…

Germany's ruling conservative CDU/CSU parties are trying to push the EU to provide asylum for tens of thousands of Iraqi refugees--including many Christians and members of other religious minorities--who fled religious persecution in their homeland and are now stranded in neighboring countries such…

Looks like the economic downturn will be severe: On a spring afternoon, a half-dozen hairstylists to the very wealthy talked about how customers are stretching their $350 highlights and $150 haircuts to every eight weeks instead of six weeks. Some women are cutting out highlights entirely, saying…

Josh Marshall has a typically insightful blog post on what's become of Bill Clinton. My favorite part is the following: The level of his investment in Hillary's campaign (on any number of novel-bearing levels) is palpable and not fully explained by anything as mundane as the hunger for power or as…

From Slate: Bill Clinton, Press Critic, by Jack Shafer. From Power Line: The Personal Is Not Political, by John Hinderaker. From Maclean's: Andrew Coyne liveblogs the trial of Mark Steyn. From the Wall Street Journal: Did Scott McClellan Miss the Surge?, by William McGurn. From National Review…

1_obamasmall.JPG Artist Ron English (whose website is called Popaganda) has created a portrait fusing the faces of Barack Obama and the Great Emancipator. Because, you know.

The Wall Street Journal carries a profile of the House 'Blue Dogs.' And while they're typically characterized as being 'conservative' Democrats, their real claim to fame--such as it is--is an insistence that new spending be accompanied by tax increases: The Blue Dogs recently revolted against House…

Hillary Clinton's claim that she's the popular vote leader isn't as far-fetched as the Washington Post's Fact Checker makes it seem. The Fact Checker says Clinton's claim is delusional because she "has to exclude the 230,000 'uncommitted voters' in Michigan, most of whom would have probably…

Yesterday, John McCain gave a speech to AIPAC, in which he reiterated U.S. support for Israel and called for tougher sanctions on Iran. He also jabbed Obama on his willingness to meet with Iranian leadership: Even so, we hear talk of a meeting with the Iranian leadership offered up as if it were…

In mid-May, Iraqi security forces began to crack down on Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in a Sunni area of Mosul that the U.S. military had described as AQI's last major urban stronghold. As AQI melted away in response to these operations, we gained a glimpse of the brutal and bizarre governance that the…

British police demonstrated their regard for free speech and freedom of religion in threatening Christians with arrest for proselytizing. A police community support officer ordered two Christian preachers to stop handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. The…

An AP report suggests that Hillary Clinton will indeed shut the circus down tonight: WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation's first…

The Home Office in Britain has allocated $25 million for therapy for Islamic extremists, and says counseling is more suitable than criminal charges for those who belong to violent hate-groups. The central element of the Home Office plan is a new national "deradicalisation" programme that would…

Carter Wood points to some interesting findings in RBC Capital Market's annual energy survey: Americans' NIMBY "Not In My Backyard" syndrome also appears to be waning. Only 16 per cent of Americans said that they would oppose the construction of any type of energy plant or facility in their…

I've always been a fan of judges who use creative sentencing in punishing the guilty, but this strikes me as misguided: Call it poetic justice: More than two dozen young people who broke into Robert Frost's former home for a beer party and trashed the place are being required to take classes in his…

You probably don't know this, but you should. There's this wonderful woman out there named Larwyn who has earned the thanks of conservative bloggers everywhere over the last few years. She sends multiple emails a day to the top 50 or so conservative bloggers highlighting what they need to know.…

It appears the Democratic Party is no more alive than the conservative movement--at least according to two prominent opinion columnists writing in today's papers. The New York Times's Bob Herbert has the lowdown on the Democratic downfall: This was supposed to have been the Democrats' year. But…

With Hillary Clinton perhaps ready to finally return to Chappaqua like a latter-day but defeated Cincinnatus, we can turn our attention to something that really matters - Barack Obama's choice of running mate. There's been a significant boomlet for Jim Webb recently as he's one of the few Democrats…

DAFYDD AT BIG LIZARDS has all sorts of bad things to say about my review of Andrew McCarthy's excellent new book, Willful Blindness: A Memoir of the Jihad. I will avoid addressing the snarky insults in Dafydd's post and stick to his attempts at substantive criticism. First, he claims that I…

In 2007, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was steadily pushed into northern Iraq. By the spring of 2008, the network attempted to regroup in certain areas, particularly around the city of Mosul. Mosul has long been an important hub for the Sunni insurgency and Coalition commanders have identifi ed it as a…

"IN TIMES LIKE THESE, it helps to recall that there have always been times like these," says Paul Harvey, the legendary radio commentator. A "great transformation [is] taking place around the world...a tectonic power shift...the world is very different," writes Fareed Zakaria in his Post-American…

Private First Class Ross Andrew McGinnis received the Medal of Honor posthumously this morning in the East Room of the White House. In a more perfect world, PFC McGinnis would be a household name. Below are some of President Bush's moving remarks from today's ceremony: A week ago on Memorial Day,…

In this week's print issue of the Weekly Standard, John Podhoretz brought a much-deserved axe to the execrable film adaptation of the TV series "Sex and the City." I don't want to repeat what he said, but I do have some further barbs of criticism to hurl at the film. First of all, you might be…

Note to our readers: The online editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD and proprietor of this blog, Michael Goldfarb, has taken a leave of absence effective today to serve as deputy communications director of the McCain campaign. He'll be focusing on their online activities. We'll all be assisting deputy…

Trent Duffy's evisceration of Scott McClellan's memoir, which Steve Hayes and Jaime Sneider comment on below, is well worth a read, but to grasp the full extent of McClellan's dishonesty regarding the Plame affair, check out Robert Novak's column today. Novak writes: On Page 173, McClellan first…

Above is a clip of a very angry Hillary Clinton supporter venting this weekend at the Democrats' little shindig. She wonderfully personifies the predictable dead-end of identity-based politics. Will the Democrats be able to reassemble their coalition before November? Not if this woman has anything…

Rumors are sweeping the internets that Hillary Clinton may be shutting her circus down tomorrow. As with all things Clinton, I suspect ulterior motives. You've probably heard the other rumors on the internet that a devastating videotape of Michelle Obama saying some exceptionally incendiary things…

This Wednesday marks the 19th anniversary of the military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. One of those gunned down in the mayhem was a young man by the name of Jiang Jielian. On the night of June 3, 1989, as the Chinese People's Liberation Army began clearing the…

Rasmussen has released this new poll that should make Team McCain pretty happy. In a survey of 800 likely voters, McCain is trusted more than Obama in four key areas: the economy (47 to 41 percent), national security (53 to 31 percent) and Iraq (49 to 37 percent), and taxes (44 to 38 percent).…

Hillary Clinton and her supporters have complained of rampant misogyny toward her in this election, even from Obama. And now, some savvy feminists are pushing back against the sexism and helping the McCain effort. ABC's Jake Tapper reports: The founder of the DFL Feminist Caucus in swing state…

Despite Obama's assertions that Iraq is distracting from the fight in Afghanistan, this new report from the front lines emerges: Missions by special forces and air strikes by unmanned drones have "decapitated" the Taliban and brought the war in Afghanistan to a "tipping point", the commander of…

Barack Obama's potential partner-in-summiting (without preconditions, but with preparations) has issued more soothing commentary on world affairs: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot "satanic powers" and repeated his controversial belief that Israel…

Building on Trent Duffy's devastating op-ed, I just want to discuss one aspect of McClellan's account that strikes me as particularly disingenuous. McClellan has cited Bush's partial declassification of an intelligence report as playing a critical part in his own disillusionment. According to…

From the New York Times: What Obama Left Out, by William Kristol. From the Washington Post: Will the Real Scott Please Stand Up, by Trent D. Duffy. From Standpoint: Breaking Faith with Britain, by Michael Nazir-Ali. From the Daily Mail: How my mother's fanatical views tore us apart, by Rebecca…

Germany's unemployment rate fell "below 8% for the first time in more than 16 years." Unemployment in France is 7.8%. Among EU members, unemployment averages 7.1%. If only the U.S. economy were as strong as our European brethren. If only the U.S. unemployment rate were so low, fewer headlines would…

Trinity United Church of Christ, "days after the Rev. Michael Pfleger, a visiting Catholic priest, mocked Obama's Democratic rival during a sermon at Trinity United," reports CNN. Bloggers have many questions for Obama. At Contentions, John Podhoretz says, "There's something about this decision…

Some good news from Iraq: American deaths in the Iraq war dropped to 19 in May, their lowest monthly level since the invasion in 2003, the United States military said Sunday, though officials said they were reluctant to highlight the number as a milestone.

In his column in yesterday's New York Times, Tom Friedman waddled into the Obama "talk with our enemies" thicket: The fact is, Mr. Obama was right to say that he would talk with any foe, if it would advance U.S. interests. I swear, I hate to sound like a broken record, but that's not at all what…

Byron York was on Fox News Sunday's roundtable, and he summed up the hopeless naiveté of former White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "What distinguishes McClellan is that he was amazingly naïve in his belief that George W. Bush could kind of bring us all together, which is why he comes to…

Father Pfleger in action Over the weekend, Barack Obama gave his best Roberto Duran "No Más" impersonation and divorced himself from Trinity United Church, however belatedly. The proximate cause was a sermon given at the church last Sunday by his longtime friend, Father Michael Pfleger, in which…

Trent Duffy was the deputy White House press secretary under Scott McClellan. Everyone assumed he would take over when McClellan left and that the White House press operations would improve dramatically, or at least as much as they could under an overly cautious Dan Bartlett. But McClellan never…

Kalamazoo

AGENBITES AGAIN

Illuminating the Medieval Hunt

General David Petraeus was back in Washington last week. President Bush has promoted him to chief of Central Command (CENTCOM), which requires Senate confirmation. Under Petraeus's leadership, Iraq has changed dramatically. Why can't the Democrats change with it?

My Dearest Friend

The story of the Democratic Congress is this: So much to do, so little done. Issues of importance are crying out for attention. The alarms are largely ignored. The list of big issues is long and includes immigration, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care and health insurance in general,…

So there I am in Avignon, lost, and I go into a shop and ask, "Où est le bistro La Fourchette, s'il vous plaît?" in my best Iowa accent.

In the guise of interpreting the California constitution, the state's Supreme Court on May 15 made certain that the issue of same-sex marriage will be a national one in the 2008 presidential race. The 4-3 decision ripped away the presumed middle ground on the issue and (assuming the court grants no…

Once upon a time--which is to say, a generation or two before Sean Penn and Britney Spears--the popular gossip culture in America was preoccupied not with dysfunctional entertainers but with misbehaving millionaires. And not the men who made the millions, but their errant sons and grandsons, such…

Comedy at the Edge

Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s

Shortly before 10 A.M. on October 9, 2006, George W. Bush read a statement from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House. He fixed his face to look resolute. The previous day, in spite of its many promises over many years to discontinue its nuclear program, North Korea had tested a nuclear…

Miró, Miró on the Wall

The rest of the country may have dimly registered a flurry of scandal over romantic text messages involving Detroit's mayor four months ago. But the controversy has become a growing political cancer that threatens not only to get Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick turned out of office and even sent to jail,…

Social science has confirmed what political observers have been telling us for months: There is a clamor in America to dampen the spirit of intense partisanship that prevails in Washington. A recent survey sponsored by the Hoover Institution and the Economist showed that seven in ten Americans wish…

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I 've been wondering: Can you push back if you're reaching out? It seems impossible, doesn't it? How about if you're going forward? Pushing back while you're going forward would probably make it impossible to reach out, especially if you're pivoting at the same time. But that's how things are in…

Eric Felten's column, How's Your Drink, is a great contribution to American Letters. His passion for the sacrament knows no bound, and one imagines his plush Wall Street Journal expense account is put to good use. That is, in the pursuit of research. Felten's latest contribution concerns the…