Monthly Archives: October 2006

October 25, 2006 — Scott Johnson

George Bush unplugged

President Bush met in the Oval Office today with Michael Barone of U.S News, Tony Blankley of the Washington Times, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal, Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post, Lawrence Kudlow of CNBC, Kathleen Parker of the Orlando Sentinel, Mark Steyn of the Chicago Sun-Times, and Byron York of National Review. Michael Barone has posted an outstanding report here with an MP3 audio recording. Highly recommended »
October 25, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

A back-seat in Baghdad?

Since just after the U.S. toppled Saddam Hussein’s regime, the estimable Daniel Pipes has been advocating that we maintain a military presence in Iraq, but withdraw our troops to the desert. That way, they are available for “essential tasks” like “protecting borders, keeping the oil and gas flowing, [and] ensuring that no Saddam-like monstrosity takes power,” yet are more or less out of harm’s way. I’m glad that the Bush »
October 25, 2006 — John Hinderaker

The Art of Headline Writing

Lots of people have criticized President Bush for failing to articulate his policy in Iraq persuasively to the American people. As I’ve written many times before, I think this criticism is misguided. In fact, Bush has given many eloquent speeches in which he has laid out his strategy for winning the war on Islamic terror, and the role of Iraq in that strategy, in great detail and to great effect. »
October 25, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Making It Up

The New Jersey Supreme Court has decreed that the equal protection clause of New Jersey’s Constitution requires homosexual relationships to be treated, in all legal respects, on a par with marriages. You can read the Court’s decision here. It is quite remarkable; by a 4-3 vote, the Court held that the right to homosexual marriage is not a “fundamental right” that is “deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience »
October 25, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

Annoy the Washington Post, contribute to the Steele campaign

The Washington Post has endorsed Robert Ehrlich, the Republican Governor of Maryland, for re-election. Not long ago, it declined to endorse Michael Steele, Ehrlich’s Lt. Governor, for the U.S. Senate. Instead, it endorsed the Democrat, machine politico Ben Cardin. I hope readers will excuse my cynicism, but I can’t help believing that the Post has made these endorsements with both eyes on the polls. The polls show Ehrlich (who certainly »
October 25, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Steele Closing In

The latest polling from Maryland, done by Voter Consumer Research on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has the Steele-Cardin race a statistical dead heat, with Cardin at 41% and Steele at 39%. Meanwhile, the Steele campaign started running a nice new ad today: This race is going down to the wire, but I’m hopeful Steele will pull it out. It’s not too late to go here to contribute »
October 25, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

Setting things straight

There was a revealing exchange the other day when a reporter from the Boston Globe asked Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney a rambling question about removing some tolls from the Mass. Turnpike. Eventually, Romney interrupted by joking, “Do you have a point of view on this?” The reporter responded, “I represent the people, governor.” To which Romney said, “No, I represent the people, you represent the media.” Via Red State. JOHN »
October 25, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Barone Calls It Even

Yesterday, Michael Barone evaluated the fifty most competitive House races and predicted a winner (sure or likely) in each. The result: a dead heat, which raises some interesting questions: My predictions would produce an almost evenly divided House: 219 Democrats, a net gain of 16, and 216 Republicans. Such a result would raise the question of whether Mississippi Democrat Gene Taylor, who declined to vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker »
October 25, 2006 — Scott Johnson

A look at Quds Day

MEMRI executive director Steven Stalinsky takes a look at Quds Day, an Iranian holiday introduced by Ayatollah Khomeini that is marked on the last Friday of Ramadan: “Western press ignores Iran’s hate-filled Quds day.” Stalinsky reports that the festivities this year this year’s focused both on calling for the annihilation of America and embracing Iran’s nuclear program. He also reports: President Ahmadinejad gave a series of speeches leading up to »
October 25, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Minnesota notes

Twin Cities ABC affiliate KSTP has released a SurveyUSA poll showing the Minnesota gubernatorial race essentially tied, while Amy Klobuchar maintains a strong lead over Mark Kennedy. The SurveyUSA poll reflects “likely voters.” In Minnesota every vote counts in this election. The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll, by contrast, reflects results of all adult respondents weighted under a secret formula to reflect the likelihood of the respondents’ actually voting. In »
October 25, 2006 — Scott Johnson

The modern way of war correspondence

Michael Fumento has posted an extended version of his article in the current National Review on “The Baghdad Brigade,” reporters who pretend they can and are covering the war throughout Iraq from the IZ and hotel rooms in Baghdad. In a message he writes that it “shows the incredible lengths they go through to show that they really are rough and tough war correspondents when in fact they may as »
October 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Ellison In Trouble?

We have reported extensively on the Congressional campaign of Keith Ellison (formerly known by aliases including Keith Hakim, Keith X Ellison and Keith Ellison-Muhammad). Ellison’s history includes an association with the Nation of Islam that extended over at least nine years, about which Ellison has repeatedly lied. Those lies have been repeated as facts in the local press, even though they are easily disproved by reference to local newspaper articles. »
October 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Athletes Get Involved in Missouri

Missouri has an embryonic stem cell/cloning research amendment on the ballot next month. As I’ve written before, I’m against government spending on embryonic stem cell and cloning research because the science isn’t promising. If it were, the pharmaceutical companies would do it. So this appears to me to be just another boondoggle; a handful of scientists and others will make off with many millions of taxpayer dollars, and decades from »
October 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

“Abandon All Hope”

Blog of the Week Confederate Yankee eloquently outlines the disaster that would occur if the Democrats win next month, and the U.S. withdraws precipitously from Iraq. This is only the briefest of excerpts; please do read it all: [W]hat no candidate in favor of withdrawal wants to address is what will happen to the Iraqi people if anti-war candidates do take control of Congress and attempt to live up to »
October 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Podcasting the Election, and Making News. Sort of.

During the first half hour of our show on Saturday, we talked about the shift in momentum toward the Republicans in recent days. We discussed several races, including the Minnesota 6th, an open seat where Republican Michele Bachmann is running against Democrat Patty Wetterling. No sooner had we gotten into a discussion of that race than we got a call from “Michele from Stillwater,” who made a typically high-energy contribution »
October 24, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

The stuff of legends

Yesterday, Fox News contributor Mara Liasson described Barack Obama’s “life story” as “compelling. Believe me, she doesn’t know the half. Check out Big Lizards and learn about Obama’s boyhood in war-ravaged Hawaii; his daring double major in political science and international relations at Columbia; his tragic and devastating defeat in a 2000 congressional primary; and his heroic comeback in which he avenged not only his own defeat but also that »
October 24, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Ford versus Cohen

Reader Susan “in Nashville” Kaestner must be a loyal Power Line fan. She suggests that Glenn Reynolds “shouldn’t get the jump on ALL the best local Harold Ford, Jr. blogging, should he?” She observes: “Jr. has just shot another toe off his own foot, but you knew with his brother Jake running as an Independent against the only real Progressive [endorsed] Democrat [Steve Cohen] in the state it was going »