Monthly Archives: February 2005

Big story

Jack Kelly’s Sunday Pittsburgh Post-Gazette column has become a must-read. Kelly is remarkably unaffected by the prevailing journalistic hostility to information circulated via the blogosphere. He not only welcomes the information, he chides his journalistic colleagues for ignoring it and getting the story wrong. Today’s column emphasizes the shortcomings of his journalistic colleagues, prominently quoting soldier/columnist/blogger Austin Bay and asking “when will journalists be held to account for getting every »

Cleaning up the mess

A reader has forwarded us this article by Terence Kivlan from yesterday’s Staten Island Advance (brief registration required) on Rep. Vito Fossella’s letter to the Belgian Prime Minister protesting the anti-Bush urinal stickers that we noted last week at the time of the president’s visit to Brussels: “Belgians get scolding from Vito.” Kivlan wrote: Photo stickers of President Bush and the American flag placed in urinals in some Belgian ministry »

A word from Efrat

Andy Weinstein writes from Efrat regarding one of the comments we posted from a reader on Sharon’s strategy: I just saw the following quote from Carol Herman (no idea who that is) in a post on Powerline: “The 8,000 civilians in Gaza are not holding back the tides of terrorism. They’re just a costly interference. Using up taxpayer money, to sport small enclaves, where, surprise to no one, the settler’s »

Rocket Man, call your office

Beauty pageants are Rocket Man’s beat, so in his absence a reader has kindly alerted us to the Mrs. World competition just concluded in Amby Valley, India. Forty-one contestants competed for the title of the most beautiful woman of marriage in the world. Mrs. America was one of the forty-one contestants. I hadn’t previously seen the pride of America, but — please feel free to sing along — there she »

“We can see it” Part Two

Fox News reports that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has taken a significant step towards democratic reform by ordering the constitution changed to allow presidential challengers to appear on the ballot this fall. This decision constitutes a reversal of course by Mubarak. And, as Captain Ed notes, it occurs one day after Condoleezza Rice snubbed Mubarak by cancelling a long-planned trip to Cairo in protest of the arrest of a leading »

The wheels are turning

Hugh Hewitt continues to hold his usual position (the lead) in providing insightful comment about the looming battle to fill the next Supreme Court vacancy. Hugh notes that three of the five leading candidates (Harvie Wilkinson, Michael Luttig, and John Roberts) live in Virginia. If one of these men is nominated, it will provide Virginia Senator George Allen the opportunity to move front-and-center. Allen is up for re-election in 2006 »

Reflections on appearing on television

Trunk and Rocket Man have been appearing semi-regularly on television since last September. My first appearance came a little more than a week ago, and the first appearance in which I presented an argument was this past Wednesday. After that appearance, I wrote a paragraph about the strangeness of it all. I intended that the paragraph would introduce a longer piece, but that piece hasn’t panned out. I have decided »

The trouble with Hudna

It’s been a long time since we linked to anything over at DEBKA because of concerns about its unreliability. Suffice it to say that its post on the Tel Aviv bombing discloses information that is profoundly troubling if true: “Terrorists shatter phony calm in Tel Aviv, shop for heavy weapons.” UPDATE: The report in Haaretz belies DEBKA’s: “Militants: Hezbollah operative recruited PA bomber.” The Haaretz story, however, relies on the »

What the Harvard women want

The new issue of the Weekly Standard carries an important essay on the Summers affair by Harvard professor of government Harvey Mansfield: “Fear and intimidation at Harvard.” Here’s the key passage: It takes one’s breath away to watch feminist women at work. At the same time that they denounce traditional stereotypes they conform to them. If at the back of your sexist mind you think that women are emotional, you »

Intellectual history with a political moral

This is an essay question. What do Steve Hayward, Douglas Feith, Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb (and William Kristol), George W. Bush, Leo Strauss, Larry Arnn, and Charles Krauthammer have in common? (Hint: The article connecting them appears in tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review.) If you answered “neocons,” you get full credit and you have demonstrated your understanding that that we’re not calibrating intellectual affiliation at a high level »

Nothinggate

Whatever “legs” the Gannon story had are being cut off as adults in the center and on the left weigh in. Centrist Andrew Sullivan thinks that the only scandal is the gay-bashing in which the left has indulged. On the merits, he finds the matter “trivial.” And leftist David Corn suggests that the matter “may be smaller than it seems” and that, to some extent, Gannon has gotten a bum »

Ms. found in a bottle

A friend writes: This is what the Kos-sacks have left. They were enraged by the “stolen election” of 2000. Many of ’em opposed war in Afghanistan. Lost. They campaigned hard for the Democrats in 2002. Lost. Opposed war in Iraq. That happened anyway. They hoped for a quagmire. The statue came down in three weeks. They celebrated the hard times in Iraq. But they didn’t last forever. They bet all »

Comments on Sharon’s strategy

We have received several thoughtful messages in response to my comment this morning on Charles Krauthammer’s column prainsing what he deduces to be Ariel Sharon’s strategy as well as my reference to Neville Chamberlain. One reader who asked not to be identified writes: I was a little disappointed by your opening piece today on Israel and its statesmen. I agree Peres falls short certainly. However, whether one agreed with Oslo »

This one’s for Mrs. Trunk

Mrs. Trunk is on the road and missed my appearance on Kudlow & Company this afternoon. She has requested a transcript. Duane Patterson of Radioblogger has kindly supplied it: “Blog shield boundaries.” What oft I was thinking was not so well expressed, but it was fun to join Kudlow in the “company” of the estimable Hugh Hewitt. »

Reshaping the electorate

Michael Barone seems omniscient to me in his analysis of psephological data. I’m agnostic on his thesis, but I wouldn’t miss this article excertped from his forthcoming new edition of The Almanac of American Politics for the world: “American politics in the networking era.” (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics.) »

Rocket Man wants you to know…

that the noose continues to tighten around Zarqawi. Today’s good news: “Iraqi forces capture key al-Zarqawi aide.” »

New problems for Laurence Tribe

Ramesh Ponnuru reports that Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe appears to have “presented fantasy as fact” and, in so doing, taken credit for the achievement of others in his 2003 account of his role in a 1980 Supreme Court case. Last year, Tribe was shown to have failed to attribute material written by another scholar that he lifted into one of his own books. Rocket Man knew Professor Tribe at Harvard »