Monthly Archives: August 2007

The flying imams surrender to John Doe

In the case of the Flying Imams against US Airways and the Metropolitan Airports Commission, brought to you by CAIR, the Flying Imams have dismissed their claims against the John Doe defendants who alerted the airline to their suspicious behavior. Minneapolis attorney Gerard Nolting, who volunteered his services to any John Doe defendant ultimately named by the Flying Imams, writes: The Flying Imams just filed a dismissal against all John »

The staging of the hug

Reader Jud Walker adds his own eyewitness testimony to my post “What made Sammy run?” Walker writes: I enjoyed reading your note about Sammy Davis, Jr. I was standing about 20 feet from [Davis and Nixon] when “The Hug” occurred. I was a grad student/volunteer stagehand at the concert at the Miami Marine Stadium (unused since Hurricane Andrew) for the Young Voters for the President (all those screaming college kids »

In their own words

There is no substitute for getting to know our enemy in his own words, a task made considerably easier by the publication of The Al Qaeda Reader earlier this month. Introduced by Victor Davis Hanson, edited by Raymond Ibrahim, the volume collects previously available declarations as well as heretofore untranslated items identified by Ibrahim in his work at the Library of Congress. Bruce Thornton’s provocative review is posted at VDH’s »

UnCAIRing

The ongoing federal prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation is receiving almost no coverage in the mainstream media, though it has been full of newsworthy revelations. Among the intensely interesting items to come out of the trial is the brief filed by CAIR seeking to strike the government’s list of unindicted co-conspirators in the case. This morning NRO has posted “Coming clean about CAIR,” a column collecting my thoughts on »

Chaitred revisited

“The editors” of the New Republic have been careful to speak with one voice in their ongoing quest to determine the veracity of their Baghdad fabulist. In the current issue, however, editor Jonathan Chait steps forward to speak in his own name. Chait is of course the TNR editor who proudly proclaimed his hatred of President Bush in a September 2003 article. In his honor I dubbed the phenomenon Chaitred. »

Such a fixer

The current issue of Columbia Magazine carries a profile by Tim Warner of New Republic editor Franklin Foer celebrating him as “the fixer” who is resuscitating the magazine. (The profile is not available online at present. Thanks to reader Robert Avery for sending me a copy today.) If not the most poorly timed article in the history of journalism, it is nevertheless laughable in light of the ordeal inflicted on »

What made Sammy run?

Writing last week about the time when Elvis met Nixon put me in mind of Nixon’s equally surprising connection to Sammy Davis. I originally discussed it in a post back in 2003 that I thought might be worth another look. I don’t recall a time when Sammy Davis was not a celebrity along with the rest of the Rat Pack. Although I learned as a teenager that he had overcome »

Col. Chandler reports

A reader forwards an update from Marine Lt. Col. Phillip Chandler to the families of the Marines serving in his unit, among whom is our reader’s son: Dear Families, Since my last email update in late July, we have passed the four month mark in our deployment and are fast approaching the five month mark. We have also passed our original 60 day deployment window for operations in Al Anbar »

Lessons for “the editors”

The New Republic has gone silent on its internal investigation into its Baghdad fabulist, but Jack Kelly has not forgotten the story. Indeed, he sees the spirit of the Baghdad fabulist at work in the AFP’s recent photographic report on the Baghdad crone holding the magic bullets. Kelly draws lessons from the exposure of the AFP’s work: There are some lessons in this for news organizations. First, if you had »

The second time as farce

In a terrific column for NRO Andrew McCarthy takes apart last weekend’s New York Times story by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau on the FISA-reform bill passed by Congress before its summer recess. Risen and Lichtblau are the reporters who blew the NSA’s terrorist surveillance program in December 2005. McCarthy provides the background: The Gray Lady »

Where have all the grown-ups gone?

John Derbyshire describes himself as a pagan. He is vexed (to borrow one of the words he uses in his review) by Robert Spencer’s defense of Christianity and critique of Islam in Spencer’s new book Religion of Peace? Why Cbristianity Is and Islam Isn’t. He goes so far as to suggest that “there is something a bit infantile behind it all.” Yet it is Derbyshire who comes off a bit »

UPI discovers a new form of harassment

Kassam rockets fired on the Israeli town of Sderot have caused the deaths of several innocent civilians. In May, for example, Shirel Friedman and Oshri Oz were killed by Kassams in the space of a week. I wrote about my visit to Sderot in in “A view from the fence.” Two days after my vist to Sderot, two Israelis were wounded in another Kassam rocket attack. These rocket attacks have »

I think we can eliminate David Brooks as a suspect

Yesterday the New York Times published an interesting article on the identification of the source of Wikipedia edits through WikiScanner. Toward the end of the story the Times resorts to unusual understatement to describe its own behavior: The New York Times Company is among those whose employees have made, among hundreds of innocuous changes, a handful of questionable edits. A change to the page on President Bush, for instance, repeated »

CAIR’s legal gambit

The amicus curiae brief filed by CAIR in the Holy Land Foundation trial is a curious document. (I wrote about the brief over the weekend in “CAIRless lies.”) It purports to object to the government’s public identification of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator of the Holy Land Foundation prior to trial. But the government has introduced substantial evidence linking CAIR with the Holy Land Foundation at trial. CAIR’s motion and »

Studying War and Peace

City Journal has posted two important essays from its new issue. Military studies long ago disappeared from the curriculum of most institutions of higher learning. Victor Davis Hanson explains “Why study war?” Bruce Bawer shows that what has displaced the study of war is “The peace racket.” And that it means to do some serious damage, if it has not done so already. »

Will get fooled again

It’s been a while since we last heard from “the editors” of the New Republic updating us on the status of their investigation into the bona fides of Baghdad Diarist Scott Thomas Beauchamp. The internally inconsistent updates provided by “the editors” furnish one clue to the issue in doubt, but most reasonable people have already come to the conclusion that the New Republic has been Glassed again. Now comes Richard »

Fundamentally Flawed

On Tuesday evening, CNN will debut a three-part series called God’s Warriors. The series, devoted to an examination of “religious fundamentalism,” is created and hosted by Christiane Amanpour; the first segment, to be aired Tuesday, is called “Jewish Warriors;” Wednesday’s show is “Muslim Warriors,” followed by “Christian Warriors” on Thursday. While these three topics are treated as though they were on a par, there are some obvious distinctions. Like, the »