Monthly Archives: September 2003

Myths of racial profiling

This morning’s Minneapolis Star Tribune carries a piece by liberal columnist Doug Grow on the latest study alleging racial profiling by Minnesota law enforcement agencies. Grow’s column is “When will we stop profiling on our state’s roads?” The column is based on a study released last week by the Council on Crime and Justice. The study compiles data from 65 Minnesota law enforcement agencies regarding traffic stops and searches during »

Donald O’Connor, RIP

Consummate song and dance man Donald O’Connor died today in a nursing home at age 78. Born into a circus/vaudeville family, O’Connor was in show business nearly his entire life. His most memorable film was Singin’ In the Rain with Gene Kelly. I’d never seen it until a couple of years ago; it’s a truly great movie with a contemporary sensibility. O’Connor’s “Make ’em Laugh” dance number is deservedly a »

Grounds for Optimism

As most of you know, I’ve expressed some pessimistic feelings about the 2004 election a couple of times in the last week or so, for which I’ve been roundly denounced by a number of readers. Yesterday the Trunk pointed me to the most solid case for optimism I’ve seen in a long time, an assessment by Republican pollster Ed Goeas of the Tarrance Group. It is located here in PDF »

He’s a better man than me

Whereas I skipped the latest Democratic presidential debate, my conservative cousin from New York watched much of it. He had this to say: “During the first half of yesterday’s Democratic debate I noted two comparisons made by the candidates between George Bush and Herbert Hoover. Perhaps they were appealing to voters like my late father-in-law who called Republicans F—Hoovers. Unfortunately for Dick Gephardt the youngest voter who participated in the »

More Successes in Iraq

American troops discovered two weapons caches on a farm near Tikrit today, after receiving a tip from an Iraqi. One of the caches was huge, with a number of surface to air missiles, grenade launchers, a thousand pounds of plastic explosive and other munitions. It’s a race against time, really; Baathist raids on American troops have no military significance but are directed entirely to a worldwide civilian audience–above all, of »

Partisans, liars, and Chaiters

Congratulations to Trunk for coining the word “Chaitred” to refer to the hating of President Bush by liberal partisans like Jonathan Chait. Our Jewish readers will know how to pronounce this word — think of the holiday Chanukah. In my posts on Chaitred, I argued that it is not irrational for liberal partisans to hate President Bush. I also predicted that our future presidents will likely be hated by partisans »

Speaking of Libel Per Se

This AFP photo news item made me laugh; it is reproduced in its entirety: “Pop tart Kylie Minogue has gone to the police with a sheaf of threatening letters sent to her record company and London home.” I think they meant to say “pop star.” Is inadvertent truth a defense? »

New Jet Goes Into Production

The photo below shows the Air Force’s next-generation fighter jet, the F/A-22, called the Raptor. The Air Force has placed an order with Lockheed Martin for 22 Raptors; operational testing will start next year. One of the Raptor’s virtues is that it can evade radar. »

Learning from Churchill

Yale computer science professor and renaissance man David Gelernter has a thought-provoking article in the new issue of the Weekly Standard on the wisdom of joining issue with the leftist moralizers on the war: “Bush’s rhetoric deficit.” Gelernter invokes the history of the arguments over appeasement in the 1930’s to make his case: “We misunderstand 1930s appeasers when we miss the fact that they cared about moral issues first and »

Governor Schwarzenegger?

When I heard today that Gray Davis challenged Arnold Schwarzenegger to a debate, I thought Davis must have received some bad poll data. Sure enough: California Insider reports that two Democratic polls show a clear majority favoring the recall, by 54%-40% and 54%-41% respectively. It’s hard to see how Davis can make up that ground in the ten days he has left. These Democratic polls show Bustamante and Schwarzenegger in »

I Think I’ll Send Him My Card

I sometimes link to New York Times corrections because they’re politically significant; sometimes they’re just entertaining. Like this one: “The Patents column in Business Day on Aug. 18 about a patent application for french fries that are low in carbohydrates referred incorrectly to a patent for a separate invention, a weight-loss laxative developed by a California inventor. According to the patent, the laxative uses a form of E. coli bacteria »

Irreconcilably nutty

Wally Waltner is a native South Dakotan, former Minnesotan, and current resident of Kansas City. He has entered the blogosphere with Irreconcilable Musings. In a post this evening Wally takes a look at Bush hatred, Kansas City style. The specimen under examination may be more pretentious than nutty, but it is worth a look in connection with our continuing exploration of the pathology of Bush hatred. »

No wonder even the Swedes are having second thoughts

Earlier today, I posted George Will’s column on the possible collapse of the European project. To place Will’s column, and my brief commentary about it, in context consider this piece about the new Europe by historian Paul Johnson. As Johnson concludes, “The omens for continental Europe are sinister. The entire plan for perpetual improvement upon which the EU depends is based on continuous economic expansion. There is no provision for »

Our reticent administration

Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal on the mostly unreported successes of our efforts in Iraq. Henninger seems less disappointed by the mainstream media’s unwillingness to report these successes than by the Bush adminiistration’s failure to get the word out. Maybe my colleagues can help me understand this. Is the adminstration intimidated by its critics; does it perceive some advantage in holding its fire at this time; or is »

The Thirty-Year War. So Far.

The Mudville Gazette has a wonderful chronology of the war with the Islamofascists, interspersed with noble and ignoble quotes, ranging from the sublime to the craven. Just a few samples: “The architects of this wickedness will find no safe harbor in this world. We will chase our enemies to the furthest corners of this Earth. It must be war without quarter, pursuit without rest, victory without qualification.” –Tom DeLay “It »

Two Things I Can’t Stand…

…are mimes and Greenpeace activists. Here is an appalling combination of the two: Greenpeace members in Chile “dramatize the possible effects on humans of PCBs, a chemical used in manufacturing that is harmful to human health and the environment in front of the Santiago subway office. Greenpeace targeted its protest against the Santiago subway operator, which it says uses large amounts of PCBs in transformers located in some of its »

Hard to kill

George Will suggests that “this may be remembered as the month when the European project began to collapse under the weight of its unrealism and undemocratic nature.” He is referring to the fact that the “rarely turbulent Swedes” — “one of Europe’s most deferential and state-broken people” — recently voted not to jettison their own currency in favor of the euro. This certainly represents a setback for the European project. »