Monthly Archives: June 2003

June 27, 2003 — Scott Johnson

The unabridged version

For those of our readers seeking the unabridged version of Senator Mark Dayton’s homily at the St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis, quoted by Rocket Man below, here it is: “If we’re so right, why are there so few of us left?” You will note that the text for Senator Dayton’s homily is — somewhat surprisingly given the occasion and the venue — the Bhagavad Gita. Heavy! »
June 27, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Say it ain’t so, Charles

Charles Krauthammer lauds the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold racial preferences in college admissions. He argues that the issue is one that should be decided by the states, not the courts. The states’ rights justification for permitting racial discrimination by state governments is not new. It gave conservatives a bad name for decades. »
June 27, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Land of the free

William McGurn has a special column in the Wall Street Journal’s Weekend section — a tribute to Americans via the widow of a British expatriate who was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11: “On July 4, God Save the Queen.” »
June 26, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Batting .500 isn’t good enough

Not when it comes to Supreme Court appointments, as we are reminded every year at this time. Unfortunately, .500 is just about what the Republicans have batted since Nixon was elected (I don’t even want to think about Eisenhower’s selection of Warren and Brennan). For every Burger there’s been a Blackmun; for every Rehnquist, a Stevens; for every Scalia, an O’Connor; for every Thomas, a Souter, and so on. Thus, »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Senator Dayton on Theology

Minnesota’s Mark Dayton may be the least distinguished member of the U.S. Senate. His abilities are modest at best, and his history of psychological problems is well documented–by himself. He is qualified for public office only by his immense inheritance. Dayton recently gave a “homily” at St. Joan of Arc Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Here are some excerpts: “Our country has moved decidedly to the right. Our citizens, many are »
June 26, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Amazing disgrace

In one sense the Supreme Court’s opinion today in Lawrence v. Texas, asserting the existence of a constitutional right to homosexual sodomy, was utterly predictable. Thirty years ago the liberal constitutional scholar John Hart Ely wrote a classic law review article (“The Wages of Crying Wolf”) condemning the jurisprudence of Roe v. Wade, and Lawrence is in a sense only a few steps further down the jurisprudential arc that will »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

France’s Would-Be Margaret Thatcher

You may have heard about Sabine Herold, the 21-year-old student who is leading the opposition to France’s striking unions. The Daily Telegraph reports on her visit to England: “Standing on a telephone box in her pearl earrings and high heels, she addresses crowds of 80,000, urging them to rise up against the striking teachers, Metro workers, rubbish collectors and air traffic controllers who are ruining people’s lives. With her student »
June 26, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Keeping one’s eye on the ball

Hugh Hewitt, in his Daily Standard column, comments on the second-guessing of President Bush’ intelligence assessments and reasons for going to war. Hugh identifies a key concept here: since September 11, “it is okay to overestimate a threat, but it is never okay to underestimate one.” »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Saudi al Qaeda Leader Captured

Ali Abdul Rachman Al-Gamdi, believed to be the ringleader of the al Qaeda group that carried out the bombings in Saudi Arabia last month, has been captured. »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Cuba Falling Apart

Here is how socialism ends: Cuba is literally falling apart. The photo below is of a building in central Havana that collapsed yesterday after decades of neglect and deterioration. »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Thank You, Tony

We have commented several times on the grotesquely unfair attacks on Tony Blair and his administration by the BBC and other British news services. Now, here’s something we can do to lend support to Prime Minister Blair. Reader and fellow blogger Jon Sanford of West Falmouth, Massachusetts has set up ThankYouTony.com, a very well-designed site where you can send your thanks and encouragement to the Prime Minister. I just did. »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Don’t Worry, Folks, We’re Perfectly Safe

Dafydd ab Hugh called our attention to this headline, which relieved us greatly: Power Line-Breast Cancer Link Questioned. Of course, we never thought there was any connection. »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Byron York on the “Missing” Weapons

Byron York responds to a long article in New Republic by John Judis and Spencer Ackerman, which claims that the Bush administration “engaged in a pattern of deception” about Iraq, exaggerating the threat of weapons of mass destruction and “depriv[ing] Congress of its ability to make an informed decision about whether or not to take the country to war.” (Paul Krugman termed this article “magisterial” in his most recent diatribe »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Blair Fights Back

Tony Blair’s government is fighting back against the BBC’s constant attacks on Blair’s Iraq policy. Blair’s communications director, Alistair Campbell denounced the BBC in the House of Commons yesterday. Campbell took on the BBC’s claim that Blair’s administration “sexed up” its dossier on Saddam Hussein’s regime. The BBC’s attack was weak on its face, as the BBC criticized only a single statement in the dossier, and did not disprove that »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

State Department Questions Mobile Lab Findings

Career bureaucrats at the State Department with loyalties to the Democratic Party have done everything possible to frustrate the Administration’s policy initiatives. The most recent outrage is a memo by the Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research which questions the conclusion by the CIA and DIA that the mobile laboratories found in Iraq were intended for biological weapons production. Following the usual pattern, the report’s conclusions were then leaked to »
June 26, 2003 — John Hinderaker

The Medicare Disaster Deepens

Medicare is an unsustainable program; its enactment was, in my opinion, our government’s worst post-World War II mistake. If left in place, the program will inevitably swamp the budget and make both unprecedented deficits and massive tax increases inevitable. Now Congress appears poised to make the problem worse by adding a prescription drug benefit estimated to cost $400 billion over the next ten years. Stephen Dinan, writing in the Washington »
June 26, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Critical masses

Peter Wood is the anthropologist whose anatomy of the ideology of “diversity” in his book of this year is now, in light of the Supreme Court’s Grutter decision, mandatory reading. (The book is Diversity: The Invention of a Concept.) On FrontPage this morning Professor Wood highlights a point made by Justice Rehnquist in his dissent — the peculiarities of the Court’s blessing of the related invention of the “critical mass” »