Monthly Archives: April 2005

Name That Speaker

Senator John Cornyn’s web site has a new feature called “Name That Speaker.” The game is to identify the source of the following quote, delivered on the Senate floor: I have stated over and over again on this floor that I would refuse to put an anonymous hold on any judge; that I would object and fight against any filibuster on a judge, whether it is somebody I opposed or »

Sensible talk about religion

As an antidote to the sky-is-falling rhetoric of the left about the role of religion in our politics, don’t miss Michael Barone’s commentary on the matter for Real Clear Politics. Barone dismisses the “silly” claim that the U.S. is on its way to becoming a theocracy, and then proceeds to the serious question of whether strong religious belief is on the rise in America and the world. The answer is »

Meet Ambassador Boschwitz

The Daily Standard has posted my column on the American ambassador to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights for its just-concluded 61st session: “The ambassador nobody knows.” »

Selling the Mailer archives

Douglas Brinkley reports on the sale of the extensive archive of Norman Mailer to the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas: “Mailer’s miscellany.” Brinkley mulls over the rationale for Mailer’s choice of the University of Texas as the depository of his archives, weighing 20,000 pounds in total. Showing the same inquiring spirit that he brought to his authorized hagiography of John Kerry, Brinkley does not inquire »

“Blunt but effective”

Former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger who served the Department for 27 years, defends the nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the U.N. Eagleburger points out two of Bolton’s accomplishments with respect to the U.N. that have been obscured by the quest of Senate Democrats to find people to whom he once was mean. The first is his major role in pushing the U.N. to repeal its deplorable “Zionism »

Senate Democrats receive adult advice

The Washington Post’s David Broder urges the Democrats to back down from their filibusters of judicial nominees. He does so for reasons of principle and strategy. As a matter of principle: Voters placed Republicans in control of the White House and the Senate, and while the opposition still has a constitutional role to play, at the end of the day that function has to be more than talking important matters »

It’s Time to Vote

Mitch McConnell says the Republicans have the votes to stop the Democrats from filibustering President Bush’s judicial nominees. I’m pretty sure he’s right. Not just because McConnell is, in his own words, “a good counter of votes.” More important, because Joe Biden is offering a compromise. Earlier today, Biden said on “This Week”: I think we should compromise and say to them that we’re willing to — of the seven »

Revenge, Colin Powell style

Colin Powell’s tenure as Secretary of State did not produce much of a legacy. Credit for the major foreign policy related accomplishments of President Bush’s first four years — the overthrow of two rogue, terrorist-supporting regimes; their replacement by essentially democratic systems; the devastation of al Qaeda; the spread of hope for democracy in the Middle East — eludes Powell. The best that can be said of the former Secretary »

The will of big media

George Will writes about the decline of newspaper and network news consumption that results in large part, he says, from the rejection by media-savvy youth of traditional journalism. The key question is why media-savvy youth have rejected traditional journalism. One explanation is simply that this audience likes to spend time online. However, to the extent that this is the problem, the MSM can react (and is reacting) by putting its »

Sharansky’s strategy

We continue our debut of selected pieces from the just-publshed spring issue of the Claremont Review of Books with Professor Gerard Alexander’s review of Natan Sharanksy and Ron Dermer’s The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. Alexander subjects the most notable of Sharansky’s arguments in the book to thoughtful scrutiny and finds it wanting: Sharansky’s is a plea to recognize every peoples’ equal moral »

Newsweek’s Bolton BS

Newsweek has posted Michael Hirsh’s cheapest of cheap shots in the Bolton wars: “Bolton’s British problem.” Consistent with the prevailing modus operandi, Hirsh translates thinly disguised policy differences — differences in which Bolton clearly has the better of it — into personal attacks. Here Hirsh scrapes the bottom of a well-scraped garbage pail for a purported news story. What complete and unmitigated baloney. »

“I am nothing”

The Pan Am International Flight Academy in Eagan, Minnesota called the local Minneapolis FBI office regarding its new student — Zacarias Moussaoui — in August 2001. Until recently, the employees involved in making the call have remained silent. Today’s Star Tribune carries a story by Washington correspondent Greg Gordon: “How 2 men helped FBI bring down Moussaoui.” Tim Nelson and Hugh Sims are the two men to whom the headline »

Good News From Lebanon

It appears that the last Syrian troops in Lebanon will leave tomorrow. It isn’t clear how reliable these reports are, but the withdrawal evidently includes Syrian intelligence. This is a remarkable development that must be attributed, at least in part, to the neocons’ conviction that bringing liberty to the Middle East would pay dividends in ways that we can’t predict. Congratulations to President Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, »

I Wonder What the Principle Was?

Actually, I think it’s pretty clear. Chief investigator Robert Parton resigned from the Volcker committee’s inquest into the U.N.’s Food for Peace program, along with another investigator, a week or so ago. One of the three members of the Volcker committee ascribed the resignations to the two employees’ work being finished. Today Parton rejected that explanation. Parton said: Contrary to recent published reports, I resigned my position as Senior Investigative »

Sunnis Confirm Intent to Participate in Elections

Haider Ajina sends his translation of an article that appeared today in the Iraqi newspaper Nahrain, titled “Iraqi Sunni Accord confirms that Sunnis will participate in the next elections”: Adnan Mohamed Selman, president of the Iraqi Sunni Accord, confirmed that Iraqi Arab Sunnis will participate in the next elections. This was backed up by Nasier Alaani, a leader in the Iraqi Islamic Party [a Sunni party] who said that it »

The stuff of legends

Everton legend Duncan Ferguson saved his team again today, coming on as a substitute and scoring a goal with only five minutes that spared us a costly home defeat against lowly Birmingham City. This makes at least half a dozen times that Big Dunc has come on to rescue a result, usually by scoring a goal in the dying minutes, sometimes by causing enough chaos to enable a teammate to »

Justice Sunday, the relgious left, and Senator Frist

Joseph Knippenberg at No Left Turns responds to the efforts of the religious left, and of Washington Post columnist Colbert King, to demonize Senator Frist and the Family Research Council over the Justice Sunday event, which will highlight the attempt of liberal Democrats to block judicial nominees based in part on the deeply held religious beliefs of the nominees. In their desire to write easy, latitudinarian-sounding rhetoric, the interfaith clergy »