Monthly Archives: September 2006

One of a kind

I don’t believe that, in baseball’s century and a half of history, anyone has had a more distinguished overall career than Frank Robinson. Not if you consider his accomplishments as a player (MVP in both leagues, triple crown winner, sixth on the all-time home run list), manager (1,000 plus wins, manager of the year in 1989), and pioneer (baseball’s first African-American manager). Robinson’s on-the-field career probably will come to a »

Miss Czech Republic Wins!

In a mild upset, Miss Czech Republic won the Miss World competition earlier tonight. The AP’s account of the contest is here; the pageant’s official site has more. Here, the winner is crowned by the outgoing Miss World: And here she is, shortly after: Miss Romania was second: THe Miss World contest has introduced a number of innovations, including a series of preliminary competitions (Miss Sport, etc.) whose winners automatically »

Meet Mark Kennedy

The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a pretty good profile of Mark Kennedy, who, as everyone knows, is running for a key Senate seat in Minnesota. In order to make the report more personal and less biased, the Strib did not assign one of its hard-left political reporters to the story; instead, the profile was written by sports reporter Jay Weiner. And it’s not bad; it emphasizes Kennedy’s “dorky” but driven »

The Case Against Kofi Annan

From tomorrow’s London Sunday Times Magazine, the case against Kofi Annan: Srebrenica is rarely mentioned nowadays in Annan’s offices on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat building in New York. He steps down in December after a decade as secretary-general. His retirement will be marked by plaudits. But behind the honorifics and the accolades lies a darker story: of incompetence, mismanagement and worse. Annan was the head of the »

For Dartmouth alumni: Vox the vote

Dartmouth trustee Peter Robinson appears with a Saturday message for Dartmouth alumni over at NRO’s Corner: As you know, voting on a undemocratic new alumni constitution is now taking place. Those who favor the proposed document—that is, those who wish to entrench the College establishment, protecting the status quo from the challenges it would have to face if alumni were permitted genuine democracy—have already spent tens of thousands of dollars »

India Blames Pakistani Intelligence for Train Blasts

Indian authorities have arrested four more suspects in the July train bombings in Mumbai that killed nearly 200 people. Mumbai’s police chief gave a press conference in which he blamed Pakistanis and the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, for the plot: On Saturday, Mumbai’s police chief said his team had cracked the case and found solid evidence as a result of what he called one of India’s biggest and most widespread »

From Miss World to Habeas Corpus

I did a very fun appearance on Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning. We began by talking about the Miss World pageant, and continued on, in a more serious fashion, with the politics and the legalities of the Democrats’ commitment to terrorists’ rights. Click the play button to listen to it: Bill exemplifies a quality that I think is typical of the best conservative commentators: the ability to combine good »

Keith Ellison for dummies

After he unexpectedly won the endorsement of the DFL nominating convention for Minnesota’s Fifth District congressional seat on May 6, Keith Ellison faced a serious problem. The problem was how to deal with his well-known involvement with the Nation of Islam. Had Ellison not managed to dispose of the problem, his candidacy would likely have been irreparably weakened in the competitive DFL primary field. Ellison chose to deal with the »

Keith Ellison for Dummies

After he unexpectedly won the endorsement of the DFL nominating convention for Minnesota’s Fifth District congressional seat on May 6, Keith Ellison faced a serious problem. The problem was how to deal with his well-known involvement with the Nation of Islam. Had Ellison not managed to dispose of the problem, his candidacy would likely have been irreparably weakened in the competitive DFL primary field. Ellison chose to deal with the »

A Fristful of fence

As I noted yesterday, Senator Frist knew what he was talking about when he wrote on Thursday after the cloture vote that the border fence act would pass. Having already passed the House, the border fence bill passed the Senate yesterday 80-19. Mickey Kaus calls it “a Fristful of fence” and, among other interesting observations, notes: Hillary did the traditional, sleazy Kabuki Straddle: On the final passage of the fence »

96 tears, 97 reasons

“96 Tears” is of course the 1966 one-hit wonder by ? and the Mysterians. Now comes Investors Business Daily with “Ninety-seven reasons Democrats are weak on defense and can’t be trusted to govern in wartime.” Reader William Katz describes it as “a vigorous, creatively written piece.” And it’s got a heckuva beat. »

Zawahiri’s paradox

Steven Den Beste alerts us to this paragraph from CNN’s account of Zawahiri’s speech: “Can’t you be honest at least once in your life and admit that you are a deceitful liar who intentionally deceived your nation when you drove them to war in Iraq under the pretext of the presence of nuclear weapons there and under the pretext of al Qaeda’s connections with Saddam Hussein, following which evidence proved »

Of course things are worse, our side isn’t in charge

Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, both of whom served as staff members on President Clinton’s National Security Council while al Qaeda emerged and our government did essentially nothing to stop it, have a piece in the Washington Post called, “Of Course Iraq Made It Worse.” The title reflects the ipse dixit nature of column — the authors’ certitude that the threat of terrorism has become worse due to our action »

How Low Can Liberals Sink?

It’s hard to say. Right now, it’s like a limbo contest in which they’re already underground. The latest is an absurd photoshop job of Michelle Malkin ostensibly wearing a bikini in a “Girls Gone Wild” pose. Several problems, though: 1) Michelle’s head is obviously too small for the attached body; 2) anyone who has spent 30 seconds with Michelle would know that the large, beefy body to which her head »

How Unpopular Is the Iraq War?

Leaders of the Democratic Party apparently think that attacking the Iraq war is the ticket to electoral success; over recent weeks, they have coordinated a series of attacks on the war, including the selective leak of misleading portions of the National Intelligence Estimate and Bob Woodward’s just-released rehash of anti-war arguments. But how unpopular, in fact, is the war? Michael Barone takes a look at recent poll numbers from belwether »

Get Off Our Side!

That must be the Democrats’ reaction to the new videotape by al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri. Much as Osama bin Laden’s video, released just before the 2004 election, embarrassed Democrats’ by its close tracking with their talking points as articulated in Fahrenheit 9/11, down to My Pet Goat, Zawahiri’s latest shows a keen awareness of the Democrats’ election themes. I haven’t been able to find a full transcript, but »

In defense of waterboarding

Vasco Kohlmayer explains why waterboarding should be the interrogation method of choice in certain circumstances, namely when more conventional methods aren’t working and the terrorist is believed, reasonably, to have vital information. Apparently, waterboarding has succeeded in breaking down resistance to providing truthful information every time it’s been used (usually in less than a minute), even when the subject knows in advance that death is not a possibility. Moreover, the »