Monthly Archives: January 2004

Kerry Wins

John Kerry is well on his way to a double digit victory over Howard Dean in New Hampshire. He joins a very short list of candidates who have won both the Iowa caucus and N.H. primary, all of whom went on to capture the nomination. In all likelihood, Kerry too will be nominated. Unlike Dean, he’s the kind of guy who can protect a lead. What was the biggest factor »

What I Really Meant To Say…

Over the last few days, David Kay has sown a considerable amount of confusion by giving piecemeal, not particularly consistent interviews to a number of news outlets. So far, of course, the administration’s opponents have seized on Kay’s comments to Reuters, the New York Times and others as evidence that “Bush Lied!” about Iraq’s WMDs. This morning, on the Today Show, Kay gave a much more pro-administration account than in »

Civil war, uncivil opponent

Reader Randy Allred called my attention to this David Broder and Dana Milbank piece in the Washington Post on the declining level of civility in Washington under the Bush adminsitration. The authors purports to take a balanced “both sides bear the responsibiity” approach. But why run a front-page story about partisanship breaking out in Washington, under the headline “In Bush’s Term, Tone Worsened,” unless the purpose is to have a »

Trailer-home Democrat

Reader Peter Swanson is not impressed with Wesley Clark’s recitation of his humble beginnings growing up in a trailer home at Fort Irwin. Mr. Swanson notes that “EVERYONE at Irwin lives in a trailer home. Something to do with the desert. I tried a case with one of my colleagues who was stationed at Irwin. She and her husband, as captains, had a nice double wide. I was fortunate to »

Who’s got the surge?

Real Clear Politics takes a last pre-tally look at today’s New Hampshire primary. It sees conflicting signals. ARG’s final tracking poll finds Dean surging. Zogby, who found Dean to be surging over the weekend, says it’s Kerry whose surging now and has a 13 point lead. The only safe bet, says RCP, is that “that Wes Clark is finished after today. He’s dropping in most of the polls and it »

Civil Libertarians for Polygamy

We have noted that the Supreme Court’s Lawrence decision, which held sodomy laws unconstitutional, as well as the growing movement arguing that homosexual marriage is constitutionally required, has led to claims that polygamy and other arrangements that have historically been regarded as deviant must also be permitted. It now turns out that the civil liberties community, as personified by the ACLU, is supportive of the bigamists’ position: [Brian] Barnard, a »

They’ve Got to Get New Editors

This morning, the New York Times’ Corrections section includes three politically-relevant corrections, two of which are attributed to “editing errors.” Here they are: Because of an editing error, a front-page article yesterday about David A. Kay, the C.I.A.’s former weapons inspector, misstated his view of whether the agency’s analysts had been pressured by the Bush administration to tailor their prewar intelligence reports about Iraq’s weapons programs to conform to a »

Kerry me back, part 2

Reader Todd Lowdon writes: I enjoyed very much your “Kerry Me Back” piece in Powerline. My friend, Peter Robinson, touched on a related point in NRO’s “The Corner” late last week (see “Vietnam Redux”). A reader suggested to him that now, with the left having lost its monopoly on news and opinion media, a Kerry nomination would offer a nice opportunity to revisit both the Vietnam War and anti-War movement »

A Sign of Progress

The Telegraph reports: [In Iraq], thousands of Saddams are queuing up to change their once illustrious moniker to something more in tune with the times. More than 300 are in the process of changing their names, and each day several forlorn-looking Saddams visit Baghdad’s directorate of citizenship, where deed polls are granted. Many more are too scared to own up in public and have quietly adopted a new identity. “It’s »

Ted Kennedy de-bunked again

About a week ago, I posted an impassioned denunciation of the war against Saddam by »

The Jerusalem Post sizes up the Democratic field

Those Democrats who think that “foreign policy” means a policy approved by foreigners should check out this editorial by the Jerusalem Post, by way of National Review Online. (I’m assuming here that these Dems are willing to include in the decision-making process foreigners with a demonstrated recent history of friendship towards the U.S.). The J-Post’s editorial board believes that “after 9/11, there should be no debate over the need to »

An economic interpretation of the New Hampshire primary

Zogby finds that Dean is continuing to surge in New Hampshire, and is now trailing 31-28. Hugh Hewitt suggests that the people in New Hampshire have an economic interest in doing something interesting every four years to maintain their primary’s status as an “event.” Ratifying what Iowans have done isn’t good enough. I think there’s something to Hugh’s elegant analysis, although I would speculate that the motive may be at »

Vindicating the Founders

Tom West is professor of politics at University of Dallas and senior fellow of the Claremont Institute. In 2001 Tom published an urgently needed book on the political thought of the men who wrote the Constitution, Vindicating the Founders: Race, Class, Sex, and Justice in the Origins of America. The book represents a compelling and successful effort of intellectual rescue. Better late than never, the Indianapolis Star ran a good »

Kerry me back

Today’s Wall Street Journal runs an important column by Army special forces/Vietnam war veteran Stephen Sherman addressing John Kerry’s antiwar activism upon his return to the United States from his distinguished service in the war: “Conduct unbecoming.” Sherman notes Kerry’s work with Vietnam Veterans against the War. He writes: “Mr. Kerry became a leader in the VVAW and even testified before Congress on the findings of the [VVAW Winter Soldier] »

Hammering Tonge

Jenny Tonge, a Liberal Democrat Member of Parliament, has said that she would consider becoming a suicide bomber if forced to live like Palestinians. Tonge stated, “I think if I had to live in that situation – and I say that advisedly – I might just consider becoming one myself.” In a subsequent “clarification” of her remarks, she added “I do not condone suicide bombers or terrorism. But I do »

David Kay Pops Off

David Kay is going out in an unprofessional blaze of glory. He is giving interviews to one news outlet after another, popping off in various more or less inconsistent directions. Heavily edited accounts of these conversations are now cropping up everywhere; here is an AP summary of some of the recent interviews. The New York Times’ version is here. It’s hard to know what to make of this, since we »

Around the world with VDH

Victor Davis Hanson offers up another quicky state of the world piece, and ends up wondering why, given all of the favorable developments, the Democratic contenders persist in making world “disaster” the central theme of their campaigns. Actually, it seems to me that the contenders are moving away from that approach. This is certainly the case with Kerry and Edwards, both of whom voted to authorize the war. These two »