Monthly Archives: October 2003

Watchful waiting

A few days ago, I expressed my fear that the war in Iraq may not have produced some of the key beneifts I had anticipated — inducing other Middle Eastern states to crack down on terrorism and to shy away from weapons of mass destruction. Reader Kurt Brouwer responed by calling my attention to this report from the liberal San Francisco Chronicle. The report suggests that, in the aftermath of »

Rumsfeld Memo Questions War Progress

What to make of Donald Rumsfeld’s memo to his top assistants, raising questions about the progress of the war on terror? It was first reported in today’s USA Today; since then other news services have picked it up. Here is the Washington Post’s article on the memo. The press will of course play up the memo’s negative aspects, like the statement that we are in for a “long, hard slog” »

Apologetic Christianity

Glenn Ellmers of the Claremont Institute debunks a sorry, but typical, critique of General Boykin’s remarks about God, Christianity, and Islam. The offending piece is by James Carroll of the Boston Globe. Ellmers exposes Carroll’s views as typifying “the modern, liberal conception of religious faith: it is valid only insofar as it rejects the “broadly held theology” that it is actually true.” »

A word fitly spoken

We are great admirers of Yale Professor David Gelernter. There are few men like him in American public life today. Many of his rare qualities are on display in his Wall Street Journal column today, “Terri Schiavo’s life.” It should be made available on OpinionJournal soon, but in the meantime here is what he had to say. Professor Gelernter introduces the subject for those who have not yet heard of »

Clark then and now

On Sunday I summarized and excerpted Newt Gingrich’s brilliant review of Wesley Clark’s new book, Winning Modern Wars. In the review Gingrich contrasts Clark’s new book with his previous book, Waging Modern War. On Monday OpinionJournal made the review available online. In case you missed it, here it is: “The candidate vs. the general.” »

Something in common

Michelle Malkin’s excellent column today moves from falsely grounded opposition to the PATRIOT Act to Hollywood idiotarians and a Republican Achilles heel: “Unseemly allies.” »

The enemy that liberals dare not demonize

A while back, we blogged about the attempt of liberal Senators to impose a litmus test that would bar believing Catholics from positions on federal courts of appeals. Under this approach, nominees who “deeply believe” Catholic doctrine on the issue of abortion would be excluded, even in the absence of evidence that they would decline to follow settled rules of law on the issue. Now something similar may be happening »

We’re Back

As many of you have seen, our site was inaccessible from around 10:00 this morning until just a few minutes ago. The outage affected not just Power Line, but Hosting Matters and all of the web sites hosted by that company, a group that includes Insta Pundit, Little Green Footballs and many others. We don’t yet have any hard information, but we assume this was caused by a continuation of »

Krugman Sinks Ever Lower

As we »

Unintentional Humor in Malaysia

Malaysia’s outgoing Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, caused a furor last week with his “Jews rule the world” speech to an Islamic conference, which we reported on here. Subsequently the newspapers reported that Mohamad complained that his words were incompletely reported and taken out of context; today Reuters, describing the Prime Minister as “unrepentant,” headlines: “Malaysian premier says Jews control the world.” Were the subject matter not so tragic, Mohamad’s comments, »

Planning for Arafat’s Demise

Haaretz reports on the speculation surrounding Yasser Arafat’s health: “With some Israeli officials privately suggesting that Yasser Arafat nust be dead and buried for any real progress toward peace to get underway, senior defense intelligence and operational officers are reportedly gearing up for the aftermath of the chairman’s funeral.” Haaretz says that Israely planners are preparing for some rather grim scenarios in the event of Arafat’s death, and notes that »

Clark Boomlet Over?

The announcement by Wes Clark and Joe Lieberman that they will stop competing in the Iowa caucuses signals, I think, that the mini-boomlet for General Clark is about over. What this highlights is the difficulty of converting generally positive press buzz into actual convention delegates. My guess is that Clark will fade pretty rapidly from the scene–unlike Lieberman, who has been fading slowly from the scene and will continue to »

The Gephardt Briar Patch

The Washington Post is promoting Dick Gephardt as the Democrats’ strongest challenger to President Bush. The Post’s article is titled “GOP Sees Gephardt as Toughest Rival for Bush.” In addition to quoting Republican strategists who say they fear a Gephardt candidacy, the Post points to certain objective factors that would make Gephardt a formidable challenger: his support for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, his Midwestern origins, his (relative) cultural conservatism, »

You can’t be too careful

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Shut Up and Paint

Everyone knows what pathetic moral leaders the West’s artists are, be they musicians, poets or whatever. So I won’t belabor that point. Here’s the latest: Greek “artist” Alexandros Psychoulis has just opened an exhibit in Athens that pays tribute to an Islamofascist homicide bombing of an Israeli supermarket. The photo below shows an installation that includes the Israeli shopper in the foreground; the piece against the rear wall is a »

Islsamofascists Strike Again?

Hosting Matters was the object of another denial of service attack tonight, and its site, along with Insta Pundit, Little Green Footballs, us and a couple of thousand others were down for around two hours. Everything now seems to be working again. I assume this is the work of the same Islamofascist thugs who launched the DOS attack last weekend. I haven’t had time to check on whether pro-Israel site »

Teaching the wrong lesson

Jonah Goldberg ends his “hiatus” on the subject of Iraq to offer an insightful piece on the case for war in light of post-war developments. Goldberg says he never understood why there had to be only one reason to go to war. “There were lots of good reasons to topple Saddam. And while it makes sense to emphasize some over others, they all added up to a list of benefits »