Monthly Archives: October 2003

October 25, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Thinking about Churchill

The triumphs and tragedies of the twentieth century are the backdrop that illuminates the greatness of Winston Churchill. The subject is inexhaustible, the drama unsurpassed. Would that we paused to study his life and works with the patience and humility necessary to learn all that he has to teach us about the statesmanship of freedom. Churchill of course spent much of the 1930’s vainly warning of the dangers posed by »
October 25, 2003 — John Hinderaker

A Lynch Mob Gathers

Thomas Sowell is doing everything he can to defend Janice Rogers Brown, the California Supreme Court Justice whom President Bush has nominated to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. It appears that Justice Brown will be denied a vote–in which she would undoubtedly be confirmed–by another Democratic filibuster. Sowell has written three pieces on this outrage; we linked yesterday to “A Lynch Mob Gathers, Part II.” Here is Part I, »
October 25, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Dean Opens Big Lead In New Hampshire

Howard Dean has led among Democratic voters in New Hapshire, but in the latest Zogby poll, he has opened up a 40% to 17% margin over John Kerry, his nearest challenger. Clinton hope Wes Clark languishes at 6%. With just 19% of likely Democratic voters saying they have yet to make up their minds, it is hard to see how Kerry or anyone else can be competitive by January. »
October 24, 2003 — John Hinderaker

On the Positive Side…

An American GI shakes hands with an Iraqi boy in Baghdad. In the photo below, Decorated Crow World War II veteran Barney Old Coyote places Crow Chief Robert Yellowtail »
October 24, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Posturing against “anti-semitism” while ignoring the real thing

Charles Krauthammer on “L’Affaire Easterbrook.” Krauthammer’s analysis is similar to the one I presented in response to Trunk’s blog on the subject a few days ago. Krauthammer finds Easterbrook’s comments tying the religion of various entertainment industry executives to his revulsion over a film their companies made “clumsy and stupid.” However, he also finds that the vilification of Easterbrook has gone too far. And he wonders why, given Easterbrook’s exemplary »
October 24, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

A slippery slope

National Review calls for the sacking of General Boykin for “insubordination.” It compares Boykin to Douglas MacArthur, who publicly advocated attacking China, which was contrary to President Truman’s policy. It also compares Boykin to Gen. Edwin Walker, who claimed (circa 1960) that the U.S. government was 60 percent under Communist control. These comparisons seem inapt. To my knowledge, Boykin has not publicly disagreed with the terms of our military engagement; »
October 24, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Absurdity cries out

Little Trunk has brought to my attention this remarkable account by Natan Sharansky of his recent tour of American college campuses. Sharansky has a larger point to make about the campaign to delegitimize Israel that has made such great inroads on the campuses, but his first-person account of his visit to Rutgers introduces the piece: “When I got to Rutgers University in New Jersey last month, I almost forgot I »
October 24, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Calling Gregg Easterbrook

Through the lens of 9/11 we have discovered that our Islamofascist enemies have exploited the resources of the United States to wage war against it. They use America’s freedoms, its computer facilities and networks, its communications system, its financial system, its transportation system, to devise and execute their program of murder and conquest. I observe one other of our resources exploited by our Islamofascist enemies on display in this striking »
October 24, 2003 — Scott Johnson

Life imitating art

Stephen Barbara provides a graphic account of his attendance at Fenway park for game 4 of the Amerian League championship series between the Yankees and the Red Sox. While ostensibly an exploration of the psychology of Red Sox fans, it is a study of tribal passions, the persistence of hope, and the inevitability of failure: “Surviving the dark ages.” I believe Barbara is getting at what Montaigne refers to in »
October 23, 2003 — John Hinderaker

The Sport of Kings and (Some) Conservatives

Some things we believe to be good without being able to articulate very convincing reasons why. One of those things, for me, is horse racing. The Breeders’ Cup will be run on Saturday, so Yahoo News Photos features some lovely photos from Santa Anita, like this one of a horse being washed after his training run: One of my favorite parenting moments was when my son, then twelve or so, »
October 23, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Scalia Denounces Sodomy Decision

Earlier today Justice Antonin Scalia, speaking at a meeting of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, ridiculed his court’s decision in the recent case finding a constitutional right to sodomy: The ruling, Scalia said, “held to be a constitutional right what had been a criminal offense at the time of the founding and for nearly 200 years thereafter….Most of today’s experts on the Constitution think the document written in Philadelphia in 1787 »
October 23, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Reckless anthropomorphism

Clifford May, writing for National Review Online, provides a level-headed analysis of the controversy over General Boykin. Responding to the outrage over Boykin’s reference to a spiritual enemy called Satan, May responds, “Boykin was clearly speaking here about mass murderers such as bin Laden. If they are not evil, then there is no such thing as evil. But if they are evil, it can hardly be outrageous to describe a »
October 23, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Have They Finally Gone Too Far?

President Bush has nominated Justice Janice Rogers Brown to a seat on the D.C. Court of Appeals. Justice Brown, the daughter of Alabama sharecroppers, was raised in a family that valued hard work and whose motto, she says, was “Don’t snivel.” She has succeeded due to her own merit and indomitable will. Liberals, naturally, will fight to the death to keep her off the federal bench. This is the racist »
October 23, 2003 — Paul Mirengoff

Fraud

Hugh Hewitt in his Daily Standard column asks “who is William Arkin.” Arkin is the guy who started the assault on General Boykin by providing NBC with tapes of Boykin speaking in church and then writing an op-ed piece in the L.A. Times claiming that the general believes in Christian “jihad,” a term, Arkin later admitted, Boykin never used. But what is Arkin’s background. I remember him as one of »
October 23, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Times to Return Pulitzer?

The New York Times hired historian Mark Von Hagen to review the Pulitzer Prize that the newspaper was awarded in 1932 for its reporter Walter Duranty’s writing from the Soviet Union. Von Hagen has now reported that–as has long been known–Duranty’s reporting was fictitious, and the Pulitzer should be withdrawn. Among other things, Duranty covered up the famine in Ukraine in which millions of people starved to death on Stalin’s »
October 22, 2003 — John Hinderaker

Lawyer Envy

In the course of a well-deserved denunciation of our unlamented former governor Jesse Ventura, our friends at Fraters Libertas (the Elder, specifically) have regrettably gone off on an anti-lawyer tangent. The take-off point was Jesse’s complaint that every time he had to enlist legal assistance in defending himself against some defamatory claim, it cost him $750 or $800. The Elder says: “Without even getting a discussion on exactly how this »
October 22, 2003 — John Hinderaker

How Googlers Find Us

One of the small pleasures of this site is tracking the Google searches that lead people to us. Most of them make sense; lots of people get to us by Googling “Power Line” and many are doing searches relating to the issues of the day, on which we have commented. Some are amusing, like the famous “Mary Landrieu nude,” and some seem inexplicable. At the moment, we are showing several »