Monthly Archives: November 2005

Arlen Specter joins Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader

in contending that Terrell Owens is a victim. »

The disgrace of Randy Cunningham

The New York Times story by John Broder on Congressman Randy Cunningham’s plea to some old-fashioned, major league graft is “Lawmaker quits after he pleads guilty to bribes.” The magnitude of Cunningham’s bribe-taking is mind-boggling. Like the legendary Chicago alderman who when he died left behind wads of cash secreted away in the closet, Cunningham leaves some big shoeboxes to fill. What can he possibly have been thinking? Broder of »

Wake up and listen to the muezzin

Mark Steyn’s Telegraph column addresses the Olympic mega-mosque that has caputured my attention: “Wake up and listen to the muezzin.” Steyn writes: Tablighi Jamaat, the Islamic missionary group, has announced plans to build a mosque next door to the new Olympic stadium. The London Markaz will be the biggest house of worship in the United Kingdom: it will hold 70,000 people – only 10,000 fewer than the Olympic stadium, and »

Mesh this

History repeats itself, the first time as farce, the second time as fraud. Or vice versa. So the saga of Mary Mapes would indicate, as I argue in my Standard column: “Second time’s a charm?” Mapes was of course the producer of the CBS 60 Minutes II segment on President Bush’s service in the Texas Air National Guard that aired on September 8, 2004, just as the presidential campaigns of »

Wingmen for Bush

I’ll have more to say about Mary Mapes and her new book tomorrow. In the meantime, though, for the true story of President Bush’s Air National Guard service, please check out Wingmen for Bush. Reader Doyle Elkins directs us to the site and writes: “You can read what Bush’s flight instructors and fellow pilots have to say about him.” »

Terrorist science theater 2005

MEMRI has posted a video prepared by the terrorists that used the cement trucks to attack the hotels in Baghdad. The video is five minutes long and but is really very interesting, providing insight into how these attacks are carried out. Reading the transcript doesn’t have quite the same effect as watching it, but will save you a few minutes. The video is available here and the transcript is available »

Directly from his heart to you again

Bruce Thiessen writes: I don’t know about you guys, but now that Thanksgiving is over, I’m looking forward to a Merry Christmas. I’ve come bearing gifts. The first song is a song I wrote to drive environmental extremists a little crazy. It’s called Christmas Tree Hugger. The second song, Arnold’s Christmas Tree, introduced by “Arnold (a fake one)” tells the story of how Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California (called the »

David Duke explains…

“Why Cindy Sheehan is right!” Where, oh where are Maureen Dowd and the rest of Mother Sheehan’s adoring friends among the mainstream media to cover this illuminating development? »

Meet Tablighi Jamaat

Last night we noted the Sunday London Times article on the Olympic mosque proposed for the 2012 Olympic games complex. The story reported that the mosque is to be the new UK headquarters of Tablighi Jamaat, a worldwide Islamic missionary group. A reader has directed us to this enlightening article by Alex Alexiev on Tablighi Jamaat from the January 2005 issue of Middle East Quarterly: “Tablighi Jamaat: Jihad’s Stealthy Legions.” »

What a mesh

I’ve spent the last few days reading Mary Mapes’s Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power. Mapes was of course the producer of the September 8, 2004 60 Minutes II segment attacking President Bush’s Air National Guard Service. The book is infuriating in so many ways that it would take an inordinate amount of space to do justice to it, and I’m not sure whether »

Worthier (by far) than Arafat

Come professors, judges, please heed the call: Patterico requests your assistance: “Please nominate Patterico for a Nobel Peace Prize.” He explains: I’m not asking because I think I somehow deserve it. I just want to mock the idea that being nominated is some great distinction. For example, I keep reading that murderer Stanley “Tookie” Williams was nominated for one, as if this is somehow relevant to whether he should be »

Vietnamizing Iraq

The estimable editors of the New York Sun have a far higher threshold for pain than we do. They are able not only to continue reading New York Times columnist Frank Rich, but also have the patience to subject his columns to the critical examination they merit. Don’t miss today’s editorial on Rich’s Sunday Times column: “Frank Rich’s war.” See also Jed Babbin’s closely related Spectator column: “The Vietnamization of »

Crossings

FrontPage has posted an informative column by David Hornik on the continuing Israeli struggle against terrorism: “Intifada ad infinitum.” Hornik concludes with a summary of events related to the Rafah crossing: The Rafah crossing opened for the first time on Saturday under the new arrangement whereby the Palestinians are responsible for who enters, apart from farcical European “monitoring.” Some 1,500 Palestinians entered from Egyptian Sinai in the course of the »

Lawyers High and Low

Low would be Ramsey Clark, the lunatic lefty who has trafficked for forty years on the fact that Lyndon Johnson, in what Johnson described as his most appalling mistake, appointed him Attorney General. Clark has now showed up in Baghdad to volunteer his legal assitance to Saddam Hussein. Clark is one of those lefties who never met a dictator he didn’t suck up to. The Associated Press reports that Clark »

Cheney or McCain, who is the hero?

Charles Krauthammer has written an important piece for the Weekly Standard on torture. Krauthammer argues that there should be two exceptions to an anti-torture policy. The first covers the “ticking time-bomb” case — the terrorist who knows when and where the bomb in, say, New York City is going to explode. The second covers high-level terrorists such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Krauthammer does a great job of exposing John McCain’s »

What Bush and Napoleon have in common

The Washington Post’s Jim Hoagland finds that the U.S. intervention in Iraq is yielding benefits in other parts of the region, particularly in Egypt and Israel. Hoagland quotes Saad Eddin Ibrahim, the Egyptian democratic activist, who told him that, while he initially opposed the U.S. action in Iraq, he now understands that it has unfrozen the Middle East, just as Napoleon’s 1798 expedition did. Elections in Iraq force the theocrats »

An Olympic mosque?

A Power Line reader who describes himself as a “disgusted expat” has directed us to this mind-boggling Sunday Times of London story: “Giant mosque for 40,000 may be built at London Olympics.” The Times reports: A massive mosque that will hold 40,000 worshippers is being proposed beside the Olympic complex in London to be opened in time for the 2012 Games. The project’s backers hope the mosque and its surrounding »