Monthly Archives: January 2004

France Is Safe After All

From this morning’s New York Times Corrections section: “The Public Lives profile on Wednesday, about Michael Arad, an Israeli who is one of the designers of the ‘Reflecting Absence’ memorial to be built at ground zero, misstated the location where he served in an infantry reconnaissance unit in the Israeli army. It was in the West Bank, not the Left Bank.” Too bad; it would have been fun to see »

For What It’s Worth

I watched the Democratic debate tonight on and off; I probably didn’t catch more than half of it, but don’t feel like I missed much. For what it’s worth, here are my impressions: Howard Dean: He seemed to be on Prozac, with the exception of one moment, at the end of an answer, when he suddenly got an expression exactly like Jack Nicholson in The Shining. Nothing that happened tonight »

I finally bit the bullet

and watched my first Democratic presidential candidates debate of the season. I thought it was a great night for Kerry. Sounding assured and knowledgeable, he seemed a cut above everyone except Lieberman, whose spirited defense of the war isn’t likely to help him much. Of the other major candidates, I thought that Clark was easily the worst. I don’t know whether his unwillingness to disavow Michael Moore’s statement that Bush »

Angry but not crazy

An interesting new blog The American Thinker has linked to my piece about why the Dems don’t need Howard Dean, and his angry approach, in order to corner the anti-war vote and take advantage of any bad news from Iraq. Thomas Lifson agrees with my analysis up to a point but suggests that Kerry, Clark, and Edwards may not be able “to eschew the very anger than undid Dean.” I »

With critics like these he can’t be all bad

The Washington Post’s Tina Brown knows New Yorkers. Or at least a certain kind of New Yorker — rich ones who read the magazine of the same name that she used to edit. Brown reports that this crowd could not be happier about “the ebbing of Howard Dean.” This is true even though Dean himself comes from a well-to-do Park Avenue type family. As Brown explains it, “Although Dean is »

The referee has counted to nine

David Tell at the Weekly Standard was one of the first pundits to spot Howard Dean’s emergence last year. And he has been one the few conservative pundits to argue that Dean had a fair chance of defeating President Bush. In the aftermath of the Iowa non-concession speech, however, Tell concludes that Dean is finished. Indeed, he predicts that Dean will finish fourth in New Hampshire. Tell’s reasoning is straightforward »

Another al-Qaida Mohammed?

The lead story in today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune is the unsealing of a Minnesota federal district court indictment against Mohammed Warsame. Warsame is a resident of Minneapolis by way of Canada and Somalia. He was first arrested and detained last month as a material witness. Yesterday’s indictment charged Warsame with conspiring to provide material support to al-Qaida from at least March 2000 through Dec. 8, 2003, the day he was »

Bush Pledges Spending Limit

The biggest complaint of conservatives like us about the Bush administration has been its apparent lack of interest in reining in spending. Bush’s desertion of the small-government portion of his base has caused increased grumbling in recent months, and may have contributed to recent erosion of his approval ratings (along with his immigration proposal). Now the administration is moving to stop the hemorrhaging of federal money–or at least to appear »

Dean’s Idea of Moderation

Everyone is advising Howard Dean to settle down and act more presidential after his nationally-televised primal scream therapy, but he doesn’t seem to know how to do it. Yesterday he dusted off the Diebold conspiracy theory. Apparently the Democrats’ position will be that all voting machines must be manufactured by companies that have Democratic CEOs. Meanwhile, the likelihood that no Democrat will be able to win a majority of the »

Global Warming Causes Frostbite

This just in: Global warming may cause “parts of Europe and North America [to] get drastically colder.” Here in Minnesota, I think it’s already happening. The temperature this morning was ten degrees below zero. The current cold wave is just in time for St. Paul’s annual Winter Carnival, where workers last night were putting the finishing touches on the ice palace. This photo is of the last ice palace, in »

Fisk this

Unhappy with President Bush’s treatment of the marriage issue in last night’s State of the Union address, Andrew Sullivan decides to fisk the relevant passages. Now, fisking excerpts from a SOTU is a bit like fisking a bumper sticker, and indeed Sullivan’s fisking consists mostly of demanding specifics, something these speeches almost never provide on any issue. As I see it, though, Bush’s core point is sound — the electorate »

“Right” from the start, but so what?

A number of commentators suggested, following Howard Dean’s defeat in Iowa, that the Democrats now realize that passionate opposition to the war in Iraq is a political dead-end. For example, Jeff Sikkenga of No Left Turns writes: “Iraq is now about finishing the job and winning the peace, not about why we went to war in the first place. In their heart of hearts, most post 9-11 Americans just don’t »

More on the Smearing of Judge Pickering

Reader Daniel Barnes wrote to challenge my deconstruction of Paul Krugman »

Learning from LBJ

Professor Jon Lauck of South Dakota State University has kindly forwarded us his piece from today’s Roll Call on Tom Daschle’s difficult balancing act representing a conservative state while serving as minority leader of a liberal senate contingent. Professor Lauck’s piece is “Like Lyndon Johnson, Daschle has trouble balancing two jobs.” We hope his assessment of Daschle’s difficulties at home in South Dakota are not overly optimistic; it give us »

Hugh’s Advice to Howard Dean

Hugh Hewitt has written a speech for Howard Dean to deliver at the beginning of Thursday night’s debate, which Hugh thinks might enable Dean to recover from Monday night’s fiasco and get up off the mat. It’s pretty good, too. Will Dean give it? Probably not; if he were as smart as Hugh, he wouldn’t be on the mat in the first place. »

Ashcroft’s revenge

John Podhoretz, in the New York Post, notes that President Bush last night took off the gloves and not only defended the much-maligned Patriot Act, but signaled that it will be a major issue in November. As Podhoretz observes, “Democrats running for president, particularly Kerry, have attacked the president for not doing enough to protect the homeland. And yet they have been attacking the Patriot Act – which is the »

Palestinians Feel Slighted

UPI reports that Palestinians are feeling left out after President Bush’s state of the union speech: “Palestinian representatives are angry U.S. President George Bush made no mention of the Arab-Israeli conflict in his state of the union address. ‘If he wants democracy in the Middle East, the most ready area for elections in all forms, both regional and local, is Palestine,’ Saib Uraiqat, Palestinian minister of negotiations, told al-Jazeera. “Uraiqat »