Monthly Archives: November 2004

Re: Steve Gardner

Thanks to all of our readers who have written offering to make contributions to Steve Gardner or otherwise expressing interest in helping him. We tracked down Mary Laney, the freelance reporter who wrote the Chicago Sun-Times story that Deacon linked to earlier today. Here’s her message: I’m glad you picked up my column on Steve Gardner. He certainly deserves better than he’s gotten for speaking up about what happened on »

Twice-read tales

In response to Jacob Weisberg’s line about the new Tom Wolfe novel I Am Charlotte Simmons — “You may never put down a Tom Wolfe novel. But you never reread one, either” — Hugh Hewitt wonders which modern novels people read twice. Sadly, I could only think of two post Ulysses novels I’ve read twice, both about baseball (at least at one level) — Bernard Malamud’s The Natural and Phillip »

Only in America (it’s GRRREAT)

President Bush has nominated Carlos Gutierrez to be the next Secretary of Commerce. Here is what the president had to say about the new secretary. Carlos Gutierrez is one of America’s most respected business leaders. He is a great American success story. As CEO of the Kellogg Company, he has been an effective, visionary executive. He understands the world of business, from the first rung on the ladder to the »

Live blogging Prime Minister Aznar

Over at the Barcepundit (English Edition), Franco Aleman is live bloggging the testimony of Spanish former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar before the parliamentary commission investigating the 3/11 terrorist attack. »

What ever happened to Steve Gardner?

Steve Gardner served on a Vietnam swift boat crew with John Kerry. He was the only member of the 12 man crew who spoke against Kerry, thus becoming a key figure in the most fascinating and, I believe, significant story of this year’s election. Unfortunately, as the Chicago Sun-Times reports, Gardner seems to have paid a heavy price for contradicting the official line on Kerry’s Vietnam service. According to Gardner, »

Oil-for-Kojo, part 2

William Safire picks up on Claudia Rosett’s New York Sun column exposing Kojo’s extended financial relationship to the oil-for-food scandal in “My son, my son.” UPDATE: And the Journal Online has posted Professor Reynolds’s “Time for a Kofi break.” »

Hanging chads, meet empty ovals

John Fund takes a look at the Washington state governor’s race and reasonably concludes that the need to clean up our election system now is imperative: “Florida northwest.” UPDATE: For more on the Washington race check out Hamilton’s Pamphlets and Sound Politics. See also Pull On Superman’s Cape. »

Stranger in a strange land

Before tonight, the last time I saw Leon Russell perform was at the old St. Paul Civic Center (now demolished) in 1976 or 1977; Firefall was the warmup act and Leon played to a house that couldn’t have been more than half full. My friend Scott Sansby, who had anchored the rhythm section on drums for Leon’s wife Mary McCreary on her debut album and subsequently toured with her, wangled »

Reconsidering realignment

Peter Schramm links to and comments on the most recent journalistic noodling to telling and humorous effect in “Realigment?” over at No Left Turns. Last year I considered the same question and expressed my doubts in “What is realignment?” Schramm’s comments today address the question within the parameters I sought to mark out last year. »

To break the stalemate kick some ass

There seems to be no limit on ingenious proposals to reward the obstructionist conduct of Senate Democrats with respect to President Bush’s judicial nominees. All of the proposals seek in some fashion to limit the president’s power in heretofore unknown ways. First, the idea was to develop slates of nominees, most selected by the president; some by the Democrats. Alternatively, maybe the nominees could be the product of negotiations between »

Following In Arafat’s Footsteps

There will be a student council election tomorrow at Al-Najah university in Nablus, on the West Bank. The photo below shows a group of students participating in the student council election on behalf of Hamas. The Associated Press report says: Palestinian supporters of the Islamic Hamas group, holding a big map of what is now Israel and the Palestinian Territories, including the West Bank and the Gaza Strip…. The map »

Some Thoughts on a Slow News Day

There really isn’t much going on today, although that could change if rumors of martial law in Ukraine prove correct. So far, though, no sign of anything untoward going on there. Prompted by a couple of readers, I wandered over to Sports Illustrated’s site and voted for Pat Tillman for Sportsman of the Year. He’s currently in third place. It’s a totally non-binding vote, as the editors will do what »

Meet Command Sgt. Maj. Jordan

We yield to no one in our admiration of Michael Jordan, but I can’t figure out why we haven’t heard anything about his oldest brother James — make that the Army’s Command Sgt. Maj. James R. Jordan. Command Sgt. Maj. Jordan is completing his thirtieth year of service with the Army’s 35th Signal Brigade and reaching his mandatory retirement date. Because his unit is about to be deployed to Iraq »

Creeping up the river

This Rolling Stone piece about the election is worth reading. It contains the observations of Ruy Teixeira, Peter Hart and David Gergen. Gergen, whose comments often seem hackneyed these days, is the most insightful, I think. For example: The Republican Party is discovering that you can reach out to lower-income working people, whose lives are in huge flux. As Peter was pointing out, those voters are looking for something beyond »

Voter Fraud In Ukraine, and Here

The Telegraph has anecdotal evidence of election fraud in Ukraine: It was 5.30pm on election day in Ukraine when the thugs in masks arrived armed with rubber truncheons. Vitaly Kizima, an election monitor at Zhovtneve in Ukraine’s Sumy region, watched in horror as 30 men in tracksuits stormed into the village polling station. “They started to beat voters and election officials, trying to push through towards the ballot boxes,” he »

Maureen Dowd’s Best Column Ever

That’s because she turns it over to her brother Kevin, whom she describes–a bit dismissively, or am I being too sensitive?–as “a salesman.” Before yielding the floor to Kevin, Maureen writes: I’ve been surprised, out on the road, how often I get asked about my family. They’re beyond red – more like crimson. My sister flew to West Virginia in October to work a phone bank for W. People often »

Iraq, the bigger picture

This column by Frank Devine in the Australian presents the thesis of intelligence analyst George Friedman in his new book America’s Secret War. As Devine tells it, Friedman views the war in Iraq as less about WMD (although the U.S. believed Saddam possessed them) than about disabusing Islam of the notion that the U.S. was weak of will and, relatedly, about causing Islamic states to lose their enthusiasm for global »