Monthly Archives: December 2004

Count your blessings, and guard them

Michelle Malkin points out that the attack on Christmas in America is “is a mere skirmish” compared to the bloody, repressive war against Christians that is taking place in the Middle East and China. And Jeff Jarvis has argued that this bloody repressive war supports his view that our disagreements here in the U.S. over the place of religion represent “a fight for the sake of a fight.” Jarvis’ advise »

Bush to Renominate Judges

Good news: President Bush said yesterday that when the Senate reconvenes, he will renominate twelve judges on whose nominations the Democrats blocked votes in the last session. Democrats professed surprise and disappointment at the President’s lack of “bipartisanship.” Well, I can see why they’re surprised. I mean, the President’s history, when confronted with opposition, has generally been to give up, throw in the towel, and change his policy, right? Heh »

The vanishing Christmas carol

In a column for today’s Wall Street Journal, our friend Katherine Kersten investigates the case of the vanishing Christmas carol: “Bring back those silver bells.” »

A Marine’s dad speaks in the Times

Reader Robert Andrews points us to today’s Washington Times “Inside the Ring” column by Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough with this concluding note: With Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld being criticized for letting a machine sign his name to letters of condolence, we decided to reprint parts of a letter from a Marine’s father first posted on the popular Powerlineblog. The letter was written by Mike Becker of Arizona, whose »

SilverHaze all around

The entity that invested Yasser Arafat’s $1.3 million in the company that owns New York’s Bowlmor Lanes — the trendy Grenwich Village “Bar Mitzvah bowling alley” — was the SilverHaze Partners investment management firm. It appears that the funds invested by SilverHaze were Arafat’s personal funds, although the news stories are not entirely clear on this point. See, for example, the Newsday story “Owner calls for full disclosure,” or the »

This seems like good news

The Jerusalem Post reports that “the US is contemplating incursions into Syrian territory in an attempt to kill or capture Iraqi Ba’athists who, it believes, are directing at least part of the attacks against US targets in Iraq.” The JPost cites a “senior administration official.” The official insists that the U.S. isn’t considering full scale hostilities against Syria, but rather something like “hot pursuit” across the border. Our action in »

With autopen in hand

The AP reports: “Rumsfeld visits troops in Mosul base.” According to the story: U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited wounded soldiers and brought holiday greetings on Christmas Eve amid tight security at an air base in northern Iraq where an insurgent’s attack killed 14 U.S. troops and eight other people earlier this week. Hoping to demonstrate compassion for soldiers’ sacrifices, Rumsfeld landed in darkness and walked immediately from his »

Clueless at WNYC

I appeared this morning on WNYC’s Brian Lehrer Show for a segment with Ana Marie Cox of Wonkette and NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen of Pressthink. WNYC has archived the various segments of the show here. I won’t say that the show ruined my day, but I will admit that it wasn’t the highlight of it. After I appeared on the show this morning, Dennis Fox wrote: Having just listened »

Eyeless at the Associated Press

At Belmont Club, Wretchard has mounted a relentless assault on the AP’s role in the murders of the electoral workers in Bagdad. Start with “The odds against” and continue with today’s “Haifa Street.” (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.) »

Eyesight to the blind

The good news from Jerusalem today is archaeological and timely: “Archaeologists uncover remains of ‘miracle’ site.” The AP story has additional details: ‘Remains of ‘miracle’ site identified.” »

A violin lesson

Chrenkoff has a postscript to the story of the Palestinian who crossed the border into Israel carrying a violin. Israeli soldiers (reasonably enough) required the Palestinian, Wissam Tayyem, to open his violin case. But then, according to Tayyem, they required him to “play a sad song” before he could pass into Israel (the soldiers deny this, and say that Tayyem started playing on his own volition). The story is said »

Clueless at CBS

David Paul Kuhn, chief political writer for CBSNews.com, has made what appears to be a call for the regulation of blogs, which he described as “providing a new and unregulated medium for politically motivated attacks.” As we know, however, Kuhn’s own unregulated employer, CBS News, is hardly a paragon of accuracy. As was shown again in Kuhn’s “Year in Politics” roundup, posted earlier today. Reader David Ragsdale pointed out a »

Two from the Standard

The Weekly Standard has two excellent pieces up today. First, Hugh Hewitt presents a devastating critique of the New York Times for its “rush to score political points out of [the] terrorist attack on U.S. troops” in Mosul. As Hugh demonstrates, Times reporter Richard Stevenson decided, without any support other than a quote from Warren Rudman(?!), that “the loss of two dozen soldiers’ lives must somehow turn into a repudiation »

One leftist gets it

but perhaps only because he used to be a conservative. I’m referring to Michael Lind. His essay in Prospect Magazine locates the Democratic party’s malaise in the red-state and “outer” suburbs or, more precisely, in the sneer that liberals direct at those suburbs. The piece is full of insights, but the following one dazzled me: There never was a time when working-class Americans voted for liberals whose values they rejected »

Force protection

Army Captain Richard Hartnett of “Beef Always Wins” is blogging from Iraq. Today he addresses one of the issues raised by the attack on the Army mess hall in Mosul in his post “Force protection.” I can’t make the link to the particular post work; please check it out. »

Investing alone

The New York Post takes first place in the competition for today’s best headline with its tabloid classic over this eye-opening story on one of Yasser Arafat’s American investments: “Pin-head Arafat’s terror ‘$trike.'” The New York Daily News comes in a respectable second place with the headline over its version of the story: “Yasser, that’s my alley: Put $1.3M in Bowlmor.” As a long-time fan of Mr. Arafat, the New »

Simon says

I went with one of my kids to see the Spanish-language film “The Motorcycle Diaries.” Her high-school Spanish teacher had assigned the film for extra credit and we went like true innocents without knowing what it was all about — akin to the manner in which the film portrays Che Guevara. I wrote about the film in “Motorpsycho Diaries.” In addition to writing screenplays (one an Oscar-winner, the other equally »