Monthly Archives: November 2006

November 24, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

A bad place to be Jewish

It was bad enough that fans of the Israeli soccer team Hapoel Tel Aviv had the nerve to travel to Paris to support their club in its match with Paris St. Germain. The notoriously racist and borderline fascist PSG supporters taunted the Israeli fans throughout the contest with what the Jerusalem Post delicately described as “chants which were in no way connected to football.” But when the chronically underachieving PSG »
November 24, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

The quest for something to give to Syria

This article in the Jerusalem Post offers several views on what Syria might demand from the U.S. in exchange for “cooperating” in the stabilization Iraq. Whichever view one embraces, the conclusion must be the same –the price is too high and the pay-off too low. The obvious thing one would expect the Syrians to want in exchange for their cooperation is the return of the Golan Heights. Moreover, the Syrians »
November 24, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

Reason for hope when it comes to Gates

Michael Barone has a long piece about Robert Gates, President Bush’s nominee for Secretary of Defense. Barone bases his analysis on Gates’ book, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War. He concludes: The picture I get of Robert Gates from his book is that of a careful analyst, one who sees American foreign policy as generally and rightly characterized by »
November 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Pies Eaten? Feeling Bored?

Join the more than 2,000 people who have already signed up to post on the Power Line Forum. You can comment on the news stories of the day, our posts, or posts by other bloggers. Or you can do what most readers seem to be doing so far: start a topic of your own, on whatever is of interest to you at the moment. Some topics generate hundreds of posts »
November 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Patterico Investigates

On November 13, there was fighting of some sort in Ramadi. The Los Angeles Times reported that the U.S. military had carried out an air strike that “killed at least 30 people, including women and children.” Patterico saw an email from an officer who had participated in the fighting that day, who said the Times’s account was wrong: there had been no airtrike, and those killed–by tank and small arms »
November 24, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Poisoned, Indeed

Former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, who died yesterday, alleged that he had been poinsoned by Vladimir Putin’s Russian government. He had been investigating the murder of Putin critic Anna Politkovskaya when he became ill. Today, British authorities revealed that the radioactive element polonium-210 had been found in Litvinenko’s urine. The quantity so discovered was consistent with a “major dose.” QED. Litvinenko was poisoned, and obviously not by amateurs. When we’re »
November 24, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Mood Indian

Dartmouth College was founded by Eleazer Wheelock in part as a missionary school for Indians. For years its athletic teams were known as the Indians, until Dartmouth banned the name, the symbol and the mascot in 1974. Now a few Dartmouth Native American students have undertaken a public relations campaign raising cries of racism over…well, that would be difficult to say. Joe Malchow has brilliantly followed the train of events »
November 24, 2006 — Scott Johnson

Is there an Ellison connection to the flying imams?

Wednesday’s Investors Business Daily editorial on the flying imams formulates a hypothesis that should be kept in mind as events unfold in the coming days. Asking whether the flying imams were victims or provocateurs, the IBD editorial observes: All six claim to be Americans, so clearly they were aware of heightened security. Surely they knew that groups of Muslim men flying together while praying to Allah fit the modus operandi »
November 24, 2006 — Scott Johnson

How bad was the damage? Part 3

Minnesota represents in small, amplified form the wave that Jay Cost describes in his analysis of the congressional voting results. It is therefore difficult to view as anything but idiotic the statement by Minnesota Republican Party chairman Ron Carey in Donald Lambro’s misleading retrospective on the election: In the tight races where we had candidates who articulated the core issues like low taxes, less government and strong family values, those »
November 23, 2006 — Scott Johnson

How bad was the damage? Part 2

Below John responds to Donald Lambro’s article finding silver linings in this season’s electoral blowout. For anyone needing to overcome the temptation of self-delusion on this subject, I highly recommend Jay Cost’s “Republicans are lucky they did not lose more seats.” Why does Cost deem Republicans lucky? Because this past election represented a 1994-style tide in favor of the Democrats with the results muted by structural factors. Based on a »
November 23, 2006 — John Hinderaker

How Bad Was the Damage?

Donald Lambro sizes up the results of the election of two weeks ago, and finds some silver linings among the clouds. First, many of the races were very close, especially in the House, where two dozen were decided by two percentage points or less, suggesting that “voters are still narrowly divided politically.” Second, the Republicans who fared best, Lambro says, were generally those who ran as conservatives and stayed true »
November 23, 2006 — Scott Johnson

When worlds collide

Today’s Denver Post runs a great column by David Harsanyi on the expedition of Colorado Attorney General John Suthers to Saudi Arabia: “Saudis need a mirror to see injustice.” Suthers was dispatched by the State Department to soothe Saudi sensibilties inflamed over the conviction and sentencing of Homaidan Al-Turki — a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Colorad at Boulder — for keeping his Indonesian maid a sex slave. Harsanyi’s »
November 23, 2006 — Scott Johnson

We give thanks

Despite the holiday, UPI chooses to carry on politics as usual, pointing out that “Bush avoids God in Thanksgiving speech.” God is nevertheless present in President Bush’s Thanksgiving proclamation, right where He belongs. The president’s proclamation this year is in any event a weak echo of Lincoln’s 1863 proclamation, “which set the precedent for America’s national day of Thanksgiving.” The 1863 proclamation, drafted by Secretary Seward, stands the test of »
November 22, 2006 — Paul Mirengoff

Beyond moonbatry to realism

The Pentagon is drafting its own recommendations for how to win in Iraq. Its goal is to provide the administration with a counterproposal in the event the Baker group’s report is unsatisfactory. But the Pentagon’s effort may face a serious complication in the form of the nomination of Robert Gates, who has been working with Baker, to head the Defense Department. It seems likely that the Baker group, which according »
November 22, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Are We Failing In Iraq?

One of the many interesting threads on the Power Line Forum is Is the United States Failing In Iraq?. Most people seem to think so, but why? The thread has lots of interesting commentary, much of it by a liberal who thinks the answer is “Yes.” But, if violence in Iraq is nowhere near as high as most people assume, as I noted earlier today, then by what standard are »
November 22, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Fraud! Scandal! Hanging Chads!

It has come to our attention that some of the newspapers entered in our “Worst Newspaper in America” contest have been cheating! Someone in Reston, Virginia wrote a script to cast lots of votes in favor of the Palm Beach Post. Meanwhile, someone in Gig Harbor, Washington has been casting a bunch of votes for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. We will try to sort this out and make sure we are »
November 22, 2006 — John Hinderaker

Ann Coulter Channels the Power Line Forum

November 21, the Power Line Forum Post of the Day; Seyont says of the six traveling imams: What a great boycott! If all the airlines would offend CAIR, maybe we could do away with security checkpoints. November 22, Ann Coulter’s column on the traveling imams: If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether. Hang out at the Power Line Forum and »