Saddam Hussein has adopted a clear strategy for his trial on charges of crimes against humanity stemming from his decades-long rule of Iraq. He planned on diverting attention from the crimes and the evidence of them by focusing the world's attention on his political rants from the dock. Perhaps…
THE MUSLIM WORLD has erupted in anger and indignation over the publication of a series of editorial cartoons in Denmark that criticize Islam and its prophet Mohammed. Protestors have burnt three consulates, two in Syria and one in Lebanon and many Muslims have gone into the streets demanding…
CANADIANS SENT a message to the political establishment in Ottawa on Monday night that will reverberate for years. The message turned out to be different than either of the two major parties expected or wanted, neither an outright rejection of one nor an embrace of the other.
THE REVELATION by the New York Times of an NSA program to review international communications could only cause surprise among those unfamiliar with the history and mission of the agency. The National Security Agency descended from various post-WWII military signal agencies, a centralized and…
ENGAGED IN A FIGHT for their upcoming elections, the Canada's Liberal party has become mired in a series of political embarrassments that now has involved a reluctant U.S. State Department, even while the Martin government grapples with yet another finance scandal.
THE GOOD NEWS for the Democrats is that their leadership has settled on an electoral strategy for 2006. The bad news is that they have cribbed their game plan from one of the most disastrous campaigns in their history. The Democratic leadership has decided to elevate surrender to a party platform…
The House condemns the government for its arrogance in refusing to compromise with the opposition parties over the timing of the next general election and for its "culture of entitlement," corruption, scandal and gross abuse of public funds for political purposes and, consequently, the government…
PRESIDENT BUSH'S DECISION to finally push back against the "Bush lied!" fable paid off in strange ways this past week. Democrats seemed caught by surprise that the president would attack them so frontally on Veteran's Day; the shock caught them flatfooted all weekend long. Senators from the…
WHEN THE MEDIA began covering the spreading violence in France, it appeared to go out of its way to avoid the notion that Islam had anything to do with the riots or their organizers. After all, even the French viewed the first couple of nights of unrest with a jaundiced eye. A nation that…
OVER THE PAST DECADE, Republicans have ridden a wave of success that has carried them to a powerful position in a remarkably short period of time. While post-World War II America split White House time fairly equally between Republicans and Democrats, the Congress spent most of that period under…
ONE CAN DRAW CONCLUSIONS about the values of society by the places of worship it builds and the gods they revere in them. Ancient Aztecs built temples to gods requiring bloody human sacrifices, while Zoroastrians largely concerned themselves with less murderous and more deeply spiritual centers of…
IT HAS NOW BEEN ALMOST TWO WEEKS since George W. Bush touched off a conservative civil war by nominating his White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court. Miers, who has worked with Bush for over a decade, received the appointment based, we're assured, on the confidence the president…
MARK ZAID has a full schedule these days, working on behalf of his beleaguered client, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer; media appearances, tilting at Department of Defense windmills, correcting poorly-written AP stories, and handling late-night interview requests. If anyone has an excuse to beg off an…
SENATOR CHUCK SCHUMER had just finished his last sputtering of outrage at the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court when news broke that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which he chairs, had a small problem. Newsday and the New York Post both reported that the DSCC was in…
SHAKESPEARE HAD IT RIGHT. Thanks to C-SPAN and the passions stoked from the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court, the American voters had a chance to see a range of idiocy from the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, all of it coming from the sound and fury of Democrats trying…
POINTING OUT the sorry state of filmmaking has become a summer tradition over the past few years, usually due to the target market of the movies released during this season. It seems as though half the films released after Memorial Day have roman numerals following the title and the other half are…
IN 2003, as part of that year's Intelligence Authorization Act, Congress specifically authorized the creation and funding of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which quickly and simply changed its common name to the 9/11 Commission. Congress mandated that this…
THE ONGOING CONTROVERSY over the Able Danger project deepened this week when two more sources from the U.S. Army data-mining project came forward. Navy Captain Scott Phillpott and civilian contractor James Smith joined Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer in claiming that Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta…
REPRESENTATIVE CURT WELDON dropped a delayed political bombshell with a special-orders speech last June in which he revealed the existence of a data-mining program at the Pentagon named Able Danger, which he claimed had identified Mohammed Atta and three of the other 9/11 hijackers as al Qaeda…
AFTER A STRING OF BOMBINGS in London, the British media began peppering Tony Blair and John Howard with questions about the effects of Britain's presence in Iraq on suicide-bomber recruitment. During the hastily-arranged press conference the day of the second series of attempted bombings,…
THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA is often inconsistent in covering stories. They gave us wall-to-wall coverage when George W. Bush's National Guard service came under scrutiny, but suddenly made themselves scarce when over two hundred Vietnam veterans pointed out hole after hole in John Kerry's service…
ANYONE FAMILIAR WITH WEDDINGS knows the drill: for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do us part. But if New Jersey author and wedding expert Sharon Naylor has analyzed the current direction of marriage correctly, that phrase may soon pass from modern weddings faster than it…
EARLIER THIS SPRING the journalistic world celebrated the most famous of all anonymous sources, Deep Throat. More than three decades after he inadvertently began the Age of Anonymous Sourcing, Mark Felt became the toast of media circles when he acknowledged his role in Watergate, the scandal that…
HILLARY CLINTON made headlines earlier this week when she compared President George W. Bush to Mad magazine's Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed, freckle-faced mascot whose signature statement is "What, me worry?" As political put-downs go, this hardly ranks as the most egregious, even in the modern…
FOR TWO WEEKS Eason Jordan has been engulfed in a blogswarm. During remarks at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, the now-former CNN executive accused the U.S. military of deliberately targeting journalists in Iraq for murder. The unleashed fury of the blogosphere eventually overcame a media…