Monthly Archives: April 2005

Among friends

On Friday, I had the honor of speaking at the Heritage Foundation’s 28th annual resource bank meeting in Miami. Every serious account of the rise of the conservative movement emphasizes the role of the Heritage Foundation. I was grateful for the opportunity to participate, regretting only that I could not attend both days of the proceedings. My panel considered, what else, “New Media: the power of the blogs.” My talk »

Satellite Recorded Checkpoint Shooting

Maybe I’m the only one who missed it, but CBS News aired a report Thursday evening, discussed here by AFP, that the fatal encounter between the vehicle taking Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena to the Baghdad airport and American soldiers at a highway checkpoint was recorded by a satellite. American investigators relied on the recording in exonerating the soldiers who fired on the speeding vehicle. Ms. Sgrena has said that the »

Learning from Mario

In his radio address for the Democrats today, Mario Cuomo showed himself to be the faithful student of cornpone constitutionalist and former Ku Klux Klan Kleagle Robert Byrd. Thus spake His Honor: Now, the Republicans in the Senate…are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they can not »

French Bloggers Say “Non”

The Independent reports on the role payed by “les bloggeurs” in the upcoming French referendum on the EU constitution. For those who are skeptical of the whole EU project, as I am, it’s probably good news that the “non” vote seems to be leading. But the “bloggeurs'” chief objection to the EU seems to be that it will disrupt France’s decline into self-satisfied irrelevance by promoting Anglo-Saxon free market economics. »

Remembering the fall of Saigon badly

Last night, CNN remembered the fall of Saigon in its own way. The program started out well enough with a feature on what happened to the half-American babies and young children who were rescued from South Vietnam. As one would expect, the answer is, very good things, at least in the case of the individuals profiled. But then came Bruce Morton. His feature included a clip of fellow relic David »

He’s Working On It

Decision ’08 has a progress report on John Kerry’s effort to sign a form 180 to release his military records, now entering its fourth month: In a hastily organized news conference, a spokesman for the Perpetual John Kerry for President Campaign said the initial phases of “Operation Sign Form SF-180” were going better than expected. Specifically, in the 90 days since Kerry promised on national television to sign the form »

The visionary

The new issue of the Weekly Standard has just been posted online. The most entertaining piece in the issue is Cynthia Grenier’s review of Jane Fonda’s autobiography, but the review is unavailable to nonsubscribers. The Standard has made available its excellent cover story by Stephen Hayes on Paul Wolfowitz: “The Visionary.” »

Decline and renewal?

In the post below I mention Peter Braestrup’s study of the press coverage of Tet, Big Story. Braestrup’s book also makes a cameo appearance in Terry Eastland’s interesting Wilson Quarterly essay: “The collapse of big media: Starting over.” Coincidentally, Braestrup founded the Wilson Quarterly after he left the Washington Post for the Woodrow Wilson International Center, where he wrote Big Story. »

Remembering the fall of Saigon

Thirty years ago today North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon and the last American troops stationed in Vietnam were airlifted off the roof of the American embassy. South Vietnam was reduced to Communist vassalage as the first wave of Vietnamese “boat people” sought escape from servitude. Today’s papers are full of retrospectives; a Google search on Vietnam this morning turns up 16,800 hits on “Vietnam.” For me, the horrible sights »

Rumors of Osama’s Demise

You’ve probably already heard by now that an Arabic site in London has posted a rumor that Osama bin Laden is dead. Apparently there is considerable debate going on among Islamist sites about whether the rumor is true or not. We haven’t mentioned it because we have nothing to add, beyond noting the rumor’s existence. I thought bin Laden was dead for a couple of years before he made that »

Coleman to Subpoena Investigators

We reported here on the resignation of two investigators for the Volcker committee investigating the U.N.’s oil for food scandal. The resignations apparently were in protest over the Volcker report’s gentle treatment of Kofi Annan. Subsequently, Volcker has apparently directed his former investigators not to talk to others who are looking into the scandal. The best investigation of the oil for food program is the one being carried out by »

Katie Kieffer Reports

We contacted St. Thomas senior Katie Kieffer and asked for her report on Ann Coulter’s appearance at St. Thomas. Ms. Kieffer’s report provides a valuable counterpoint to the columns by the Star Tribune’s fatuous columnist as well as to Father Dease’s condemnation of the event: Here are my thoughts on the atmosphere at the Ann Coulter event. Please note that the quotes are accurate to the best of my knowledge, »

Democrats Reject Compromise on Judges

As we noted yesterday, Bill Frist’s offer of a compromise on judicial nominations was a statesmanlike effort. It was scrupulously fair to both parties, constrained the majority just as it would the minority–more, really, since absent the compromise, the majority, Republican or Democrat, would always have the Constitutional option at its disposal–and effectuated the principle, endorsed by an overwhelming majority of Americans of both parties, that all judicial nominees should »

Hateful speech revisited

On April 18 Ann Coulter spoke at the University of St. Thomas campus in St. Paul, Minnesota. When the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s fatuous columnist wrote a characteristically bullying column accusing Coulter of “hate speech,” he provoked a reaction among the administrators on campus. Before long, university president Father Dennis Dease issued a statement condemming Coulter’s speech as “hateful,” despite the fact that he had not attended it or deigned to »

The Least Gracious Apology of the Week…

…was delivered by Ken Salazar, Democratic Senator from Colorado. In a television interview, Salazar called James Dobson and his group, Focus on the Family, “the anti-Christ.” Salazar now says: I spoke about Jim Dobson and his efforts and used the term ‘the anti-Christ.’ I regret having used that term. I meant to say this approach was un-Christian, meaning self-serving and selfish. Oh, OK. Not the “anti-Christ,” just “un-Christian.” Glad you »

Regarding the Dartmouth trustee election

Dartmouth alum John MacGovern writes in answer to questions regarding the irregularities that have plagued the trustee election whose deadline has now been extended to May 6 (references to email attachments in the message have been omitted): There have been all sorts of election irregularities in the Dartmouth trustee election, extending the election deadline was NOT one of them. I, for one, sent a strongly worded email to John Walters, »

Sustain in Spain

Last night we noted that Dartmouth College has hired its first “sustainability director,” Jim Merkel. The Dartmouth Daily story on Merkel’s hiring reported that Merkel — “who is currently bicycing through Spain to promote his book ‘Radical Simplicity'” — has lived “on only $5,000 a year — close to the global average income — for the past 14 years.” We have been flooded with email responding to our post on »