Monthly Archives: June 2005

Litigation of interest

Today’s Star Tribune reports the filing of a lawsuit questioning the Star Tribune’s circulation figures: “Star Tribune advertisers file lawsuit over circulation numbers.” The story by Chris Serres is a good one. It quotes Star Tribune publisher Keith Moyer responding to the complaint: “We have complete confidence in our circulation numbers and we believe our reported circulation will stand up to examination. We’re looking forward to vigorously and successfully demonstrating »

Le morte de Christopher

Every three months I announce that the Claremont Review of Books is my favorite magazine — every three months because the magazine is a quarterly. CRB is the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute, the organization whose mission it is to restore the principles of the American Founding to their rightful, preeminent authority in our national life. The magazine is also popular in the White House; 30 copies of each »

A generation of pushovers

In 1942 the writer Philip Wylie bizarrely castigated his fellow Americans as “a generation of vipers.” If I remember his book of that title correctly, “mom” and “momism” had something to do with it. Today Michelle Malkin seems to have more reliably spotted a dangerous trend: “Namby pamby nation.” »

Only the wrong survive

Robert Byrd was elected the United Senator from West Virginia in 1958 and served for 12 years as the leader of the Senate Democrats in the capacity of Majority or Minority leader, from 1977-1989. Byron York has reviewed the attention afforded by the Washington Post to Senator Byrd’s previous career as an Exalted Cyclops and Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan. York concludes: “A review of the paper »

Excellent Speech

Clear, confident, substantive. There was nothing in it that we and our readers didn’t already know, but the message is one that many rarely hear. And the networks all carried it after all. That’s good; President Bush nearly always does well when people see him, instead of seeing Democrats talking about him, as they will on the evening news. The only thing I thought was odd was the unnatural quiet »

Now You Can Watch “Average Joes Strike Back”

Reader Mark Eichenlaub is today’s honorary Power Liner. In addition to his earlier contributions, he sends a link to this Associated Press retrospective on President Bush’s speech tonight: FORT BRAGG, N.C. – President Bush on Tuesday appealed for the nation’s patience for “difficult and dangerous” work ahead in Iraq, hoping a backdrop of U.S. troops and a reminder of Iraq’s revived sovereignty would help him reclaim control of an issue »

As Long As We’re Passing Along Rumors…

–see the bin Laden story below–a reader points out this item: “Al Zarqawi Sighted Near Syrian Border”: Jordanian terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been seen handing out money to evacuee families in the small town of al-Karabla, near al-Qaim on the Syrian border, according to a message posted to various Islamist websites, signed by ‘Muhib al-Faruq’. Of course, this seems like something they would only say if it wasn’t »

Blog the Live 8 Concerts!

This is a fantastic opportunity for enterprising bloggers who can respond on short notice. Bob Geldof and the Live 8 crew are making available backstage passes for a limited number of bloggers to attend, and blog about, all of the upcoming Live 8 concerts. If you are interested in attending either the Philadelphia concert or the London concert–both Saturday night, July 2–send us an email ASAP at [email protected]. Here is »

Another Osama Rumor

Reader Mark Eichenlaub pointed out this item in yesterday’s Mirror: SAS troops were last night poised to storm into Afghanistan and capture Osama bin Laden. Special forces have “good intelligence” the al-Qaeda boss or a senior henchman is holed up in a Taliban enclave. Two squadrons are on stand-by waiting for the go-ahead from reconnaissance troops on the ground in Afghanistan. Specialist counter-terrorist soldiers in the rapid-deployment group are on »

We hold these truths

This past March I wrote about the argument in the two Ten Commandments cases that the Supreme Court decided yesterday. Here is what I wrote: Today the Supreme Court heard oral argument in the Kentucky and Texas Ten Commandments cases: “High court debates commandments displays.” I think you can probably guess for which side the protestors pictured outside the Court today in the photo below are rooting. The issue involved »

Wishing for defeat

Brendan Miniter has written the column that says what I had wanted to see on the resurgence of the Vietnam metaphor to argument about Iraq: “The defeatist caucus.” (Courtesy of RealClearPolitics and reader Michael Yore.) »

Cafe hellhole

In the post below, Star Tribune editorial page editor Susan Albright defends the Star Tribune editorial in which the paper condemned the American detention operation at Guantanamo as a “hellhole.” Our confidential Washington source has emailed us the PDF of a two-week menu for the detainees in the “hellhole.” Click here for a look. JOHN adds: The horror! A close reading of the menu reveals that, while the apples, bananas, »

Eyesight to the blind

Susan Albright is the editor of the editorial page at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. When one of our readers wrote the publisher of the paper to protest the paper’s disgraceful editorial seconding of Dick Durbin’s condemnation of the American detention operation at Guanatanamo, the publisher forwarded the message to Albright for response. Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of our reader, here are the deep thoughts of Susan Albright: As the editor »

Monday, Monday

We received many warm messages responding to our recollection this past weekend of Rick Monday’s rescue of the flag during the Cubs-Dodgers game at Dodgers Stadium in April 1976. At the time Monday was playing for the Cubs; he would later become a member of the Dodgers. Reader Don Burden writes: In late January of 1985 I attended a fantasy baseball camp in Tempe, Arizona. The camp was unusual in »

The reasonable man replaced

This morning, after learning that the Supreme Court had deemed unconstitutional the display of the Ten Commandments inside two Kentucky courthouses but had upheld a similar display on the state capitol grounds in Texas, I surmised that some absurd hair-splitting had occurred. It turns to be worse than I thought. As one might expect, eight of the nine Justices thought that the outcome in the two cases should be the »

Indispensable

The July-August issue of Commentary has arrived at my house. I’ve already read three terrific articles — Charles Krauthammer’s “The Neoconservative Convergence” (which Krauthammer delivered in somewhat different form at a Commentary dinner I had the privilege of attending in May), “Columbia and the Academic Intifada” by Efraim Karsh, and “What Happened to the Movies?” by Joseph Epstein. As far as I know, none of the contents of this issue »

They Heard The “Koran Abuse” Charge Was Working

The government of Pakistan has released 17 men who were imprisoned in Lahore for some months after being freed from Guantanamo Bay: The men were apparently released on the theory that they were innocent, but all six who were interviewed by the Associated Press acknowledged that “they were arrested in Afghanistan after going there to fight the U.S.-led coalition that ousted the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 for harboring »