Monthly Archives: April 2007

Mark Moyar: Brilliant historian, academic pariah

Historian Mark Moyar has published the first volume of Triumph Forsaken, a work that I believe will prove to be the indispensable history of the Vietnam war. Today’s New York Sun reports on Professor Moyar’s unbelievable difficulty landing an academic position: Mark Moyar doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype of a disappointed job seeker. He is an Eagle Scout who earned a summa cum laude degree from Harvard, graduating first in »

McCain to Propose a “League of Democracies”

In a speech tomorrow at the Hoover Institution, John McCain will propose a new “league of democracies” to supplement the United Nations: “It could act where the U.N. fails to act,” McCain says. Such a new body, he says, could help relieve suffering in Darfur, fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa, develop better environmental policies, and provide “unimpeded market access” to countries sharing “the values of economic and political freedom.” »

The Star Tribune does that wudu, take 2

Pursuant to its two-week free access policy, the Star Tribune has already removed Curt Brown’s page-one Star Tribune article on the coming of Sharia to the Minneapolis Community and Technical College from its free archive. Here is the paragraph I quoted from the article in “Sharia in Minnesota”: Minneapolis Community and Technical College is poised to become the state’s first public school to install a foot-washing basin to help the »

When wudu won’t do do

Over at Swanblog, my colleague Peter Swanson explains when wudu won’t do do. To comment on this post, go here. »

The Star Tribune in decline

Today’s news brings the latest circulation numbers for the six-month period ending in March compared to a year ago at the top 20 newspapers in the United States. Throwing out the Dallas Morning News numbers, which may represent a cumulative decline over an extended period, the Star Tribune comes in the third largest loser in circulation with a one-year decline of 4.9 percent. If the Star Tribune wants to move »

ACC Champs

The Duke lacrosse team won the ACC championship yesterday, defeating Virginia 12-9. The game was played in Durham, as was Duke’s overtime victory over Virginia earlier in the year. Duke, with a record of 12-2, is ranked second in the nation behind undefeated Cornell, which defeated Duke 7-6 in Durham. Virginia (12-3) is third. »

Still a maverick but no longer useful

Nothing illustrates the cynicism and intellectual dishonesty of the mainstream media better than its treatment of John McCain. The MSM likes to harp on the theme of McCain’s alleged transformation from gutsy maverick in 2000 to pitiable party man in 2008. In reality, though he’s the same guy. To be sure, McCain no longer is pounding George Bush, but then he’s not running against Bush this time. The real test »

The Dems’ Debate, a postcript

I missed the Democratic presidential debate last week. I might have had trouble reporting it objectively in any case, and the reaction of some well-connected Democrats may be more probative than anything I could have said first-hand. From Richardson supporters and potential supporters, I heard disappoinment. Apparently, he just didn’t do very well. Richardson is a borderline contender at best, so he could hardly afford to come up short on »

Welcome Back, Tony

Tony Snow returned to work as White House press secretary today, following a return of the cancer for which he had surgery in 2005. Welcome back, Tony, and best wishes for a full recovery and a long life. »

A basic tenet of public life, part 3

Over at NRO, Andrew McCarthy review’s George Tenet’s act on 60 Minutes last night. I’ll paraphrase: The act should have been closed on or about September 12, 2001. To comment on this post, go here. JOHN adds: It appears that Tenet’s nose is continuing to grow longer. At NRO, Michael Ledeen responds to Tenet’s several-page-long description of a meeting in Italy in which Ledeen was involved. »

Israel’s Hezbollah War: What went wrong?

In the immediate aftermath of Israel’s Hezbollah war last year, I commented that the war was a defeat for Israel. There has been some debate about whether the war was in fact a defeat for Israel. Mark Helprin, for example, argued that Israel won the war. The official Israeli postmortem has yet to be delivered. In the meantime, however, in the summer 2007 issue of Middle East Quarterly, the Israeli »

Paulose v. Swanson: Minnesota Lawyer moves the story

Mark Cohen is the editor of the weekly Minnesota Lawyer, where he also publishes a weekly column. His two columns on United States Attorney Rachel Paulose — here (April 2) and here (April 16) — have provided perhaps the only intelligent media coverage of my friend Rachel, who has recently been the subject of a hatchet job or three. For some reason, until last week the story of the exodus »

On the DOJ hiring “scandal”

John missed the Washington Post’s revelation of the Department of Justice hiring “scandal” in his round-up yesterday. George Mason University Law School Professor Todd Zywicki helpfully elaborates on it at the Volokh Conspiracy: Oh my goodness–a bust of James Madison in [the first attorney’s] very office! Gracious, a civil rights lawyer who clerked for Charles Pickering–who “congressional Democrats…contended” was hostile to civil rights (apparently since some congressional Democrats “contended it,” »

A basic tenet of public life, part 2

Bill Kristol notes George Tenet’s imaginary encounter with the “neocon” for all seasons: SCOTT SHANE REPORTED in Saturday’s New York Times that former CIA chief George Tenet’s dramatic description in his book, At the Center of the Storm, of an August 2002 presentation at the CIA by defense undersecretary Douglas Feith and his staff, is at the very least misleading. In order to suggest that Feith’s staff was utterly out »

Podcasting Resumes

I haven’t done a podcast for a while; two weeks ago the station gave me defective files, and last weekend I was out of town and didn’t do the show. Yesterday Brian “St. Paul” Ward and I were back in the studio. The first hour was lively, with discussion of recent events in Congress and abroad, a number of calls, and, not just a Loon of the Week, but a »

A Basic Tenet of Public Life…

…should be that, if you are given a vitally important responsibility and screw it up badly, you should thereafter maintain a discreet and humble silence. Someone forgot to tell George Tenet. He’s now written a book, which I haven’t read and won’t, in which he apparently whines about all the other people who are to blame for whatever has gone wrong in Iraq, while “taking responsibility” for the CIA’s abysmal »

About that Spring Offensive

The Telegraph has a nice article about American helicopter crews that are decimating the Taliban in southern Afghanistan: Lt Denton and Capt Staley were in one of the two-man aircraft, escorting two Black Hawk helicopters, when they spotted eight motorcycles, with a rider and passenger on each. It seemed unusual and the Apache broke away to take a closer look. Dropping to 200ft, it swooped close to the motorcyclists – »