Monthly Archives: July 2006

July 26, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Pleading their Case in the Post

In yesterday’s Washington Post, columnist David Ignatius offered advice to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: accept Hezbollah’s terms for a cease-fire in Lebanon. But how does Ignatius know what Hezbollah’s terms are? They were leaked to him: Lebanese sources outlined for me the compromise package they say was discussed Monday when Rice met with Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, and Nabih Berri, the parliament speaker and leader of the »
July 25, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Who Could Question Their Sincerity?

One of today’s big news stories is Hezbollah’s announcement that it was surprised by Israel’s vigorous response to its act of war. Hezbollah helpfully communicated this to the Associated Press, whose article, by one Scheherezade Faramarzi, simply relays Hezbollah’s message without editorial comment: A senior Hezbollah official said Tuesday the guerrilla group did not expect Israel to react so strongly to its capture of two Israeli soldiers. Mahmoud Komati, deputy »
July 25, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

Leave our satrapy alone

I’ve commented before about that hardy perennial of anti-Republican administration reporting — the story claiming that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is being wrecked by conservative political appointees. Typically, this story cites a decline in the number of government civil rights suits brought — ignoring the possibility that the decline is the result of an unwillingness to bring meritless cases or cases advancing controversial theories (e.g., theories conflating statistical »
July 25, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Revisiting the WMDs

Jennifer Harper of the Washington Times reports on a Harris Poll that, among other things, shows that 50% of respondents–up from 36% last year–believe that “Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded.” The Harris folks term this result “surprising,” but it’s hard to see why. “Yes” is indisputably the right answer to that question. Liberals can dispute whether Iraq had as many WMDs as we believed they »
July 25, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

At least they are consistent

Jacob Laksin at FrontPageMagazine has more on the sad story of “our crippled missile defense,” which I posted about here a few days ago. Laksin recounts how a long line of Democrats — Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, Carl Levin and others — have done their best to leave us defenseless against a missile attack. Let’s look at where liberal Democrats stand on national security. They oppose »
July 25, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

Progress

The Jerusalem Post reports on the substantial progress that Israeli ground forces recently have made in south Lebanon. This includes killing the Maroun al-Ras regional Hezbollah commander; seizing control of a Hezbollah “war room” as well as surveillance devices and a large cache of weapons; conducting operations in and reportedly taking control of the village of Bint Jbeil, considered the “capital of terror” in southern Lebanon; and killing dozens of »
July 25, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

The stakes in Lebanon — and Iran

David Frum explains why Israel must “shatter Hezbollah as a military force and put an end to its state-within-a-state in southern Lebanon” before the international community (in the form of NATO, not the U.N.) is called on to keep the peace. Frum also urges us to “remember the millions of other innocents for whom we would have to grieve unless Iran’s power to wreak terror, next time with nukes, is »
July 25, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Disproportion and double standards

Below I invoke the memory of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and his Commentary essay “THe United States in opposition.” In the subhead of their NRO column on Israel’s war on Hezbollah, Bill Bennett and Seth Leibsohn allude to “Dictatorships and double standards,” the Commentary essay by the great Jeane Kirkpatrick that brought her to the attention of Ronald Reagan and led to her appointment as the American ambassador to the UN »
July 25, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Hoge heaven

Like the powers-that-be in the CIA and the Democratic Party, their arm at the New York Times believes above all else in the war on the Bush administration. One front of that war is the war on John Bolton, to which the Times contributed Sunday with Warren Hoge’s page-one article: “Praise at home for envoy, but scorn at UN.” The story is a model of the journalism in service of »
July 24, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Joel Mowbray returns

Joel Mowbray (email: [email protected]) has returned to the United States from his trip to Israel. We filed seven dispatches by Joel from Israel. Today Joel reports on his return: Before arriving in South Florida this weekend, I had heard from several friends in the area that the Miami Herald was providing slanted coverage of the war in the Middle East. I had visited the web site, but that was largely »
July 24, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Summer in the City Journal

Biran Anderson is the managing editor of the Manhattan Institute’s outstanding quarterly, City Journal. Last week we linked to the summer issue’s “cover package” of articles on immigration including Heather Mac Donald’s “Seeing today’s immigrants straight.” Today Brian writes with news regarding the rest of the issue: Our new issue has posted. In addition to our cover package on immigration that you noted last week, we’ve got: Theodore Dalrymple on »
July 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

The Only Good Conservative is a Really Old Conservative

Oh boy, I can hardly wait. ABC is producing a new series about a female conservative pundit, with Calista Flockhart slated to star. The perspective of the show’s producers is not hard to deduce: Asked to describe the pundit, producer Ken Olin (formerly a star of “Thirty Something’) said, “She’s not Ann Coulter. She’s not insane.” Right. Instead, this “conservative” pundit will be a “a thoughtful conservative. She’s ideologically, in »
July 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

How Peaceful Can You Get?

In a classic of moonbattery, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Betty Williams says she wants to assassinate President Bush: NOBEL peace laureate Betty Williams displayed a flash of her feisty Irish spirit yesterday, lashing out at US President George W.Bush during a speech to hundreds of schoolchildren. “I have a very hard time with this word ‘non-violence’, because I don’t believe that I am non-violent,” said Ms Williams, 64. “Right now, »
July 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

His First Clue

Reuters says that the United States and France are of one mind on Lebanon: France and the United States worked together to oust Syria from Lebanon and, despite tactical differences due to divergent agendas in the region, they agree who is to blame for the current crisis — Hizbollah. The born-again allies, their rift over Iraq a thing of the past, want to isolate and disarm the Shi’ite Muslim group, »
July 24, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

“A left-wing blog with a legal caption”

That’s Byron York’s characterization of Valerie Plame’s lawsuit against the vice president, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby and others. Byron also suggests that the lawsuit may be a vehicle for pumping “value” into Plame’s book, value that had been drained following the disclosure that Patrick Fitzgerald does not intend to indict Rove. »
July 24, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

One reason why John Kerry isn’t president

is that voters couldn’t stand a man prone to make statements like this one: “If I was president [the current war in the Middle East] wouldn’t have happened.” »
July 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Too Effective to Serve

In the time he spent representing the United States at the United Nations pursuant to a recess appointment, Ambassador Bolton has distinguished himself as a vigorous, clear-eyed advocate for American interests. Time and again, he has dispelled the fog that hangs over Turtle Bay. And there has been no sign of the purported personality defects (“Bolton is a meanie”) that the Democrats cited in opposing his nomination the first time »