Monthly Archives: September 2007

Media alert

I’m scheduled to appear on a short segment of Hannity & Colmes around 9:30 p.m. (EDT) this evening to discuss Lynne Stewart’s placement on the faculty of Hofstra University Law School’s “Lawyering at the Edge” legal ethics conference. My counterpart on the segment is Temple University hip-hop professor Marc Lamont Hill. As Jack Paar used to say, I kid you not. I will declare victory if I am able to »

Hollywood: A Bronx cheer for, round 3

The verbal fight between David Ehrenstein and Andrew Breitbart should have been called because of a technical knockout in round 2. In round 3, Breitbart responds to Ehrenstein’s assertion that Ehrenstein hasn’t “the slightest doubt that Andrew feels Hollywood should be working 24/7 on stemming the Islamic tide threatening to overwhelm all that’s white and Christian…” with a solid right to Ehrenstein’s chin: I know your biracial homosexual bio perfecta »

The Kingdom

Investor’s Business Daily has an excellent editorial on Saudi Arabia’s role as a terrorist bankroller. The summary at the top of the editorial refers to the new film “The Kingdom.” Read the editorial, skip the film. »

Bankruptcy, Democratic-style

One element (but not the only one) of last night’s Democratic talkathon that deserves attention is the candidates’ unwillingness to challenge the phenomenon of “sanctuary cities” such as Minneapolis and New Have where local authorities refuse to enforce immigration law. This is one point that supports Bill Kristol’s assessment of last night’s debate as marking the possible vulnerability of the Democratic nominee in the fall. Today’s Yale Daily News reports »

Setting the Standard

The Weekly Standard has rolled out its new CampaignStandard blog edited by Matthew Continetti. With Fred Barnes leading off, with Richard Starr coming out from behind his editorial desk to pinch hit, with the pseudonymous “well-known campaign consultant” Richelieu batting third, with Bill Kristol batting cleanup, the lineup looks a little like the punditocratic equivalent of the 1927 Yankees to me. Here’s Bill Kristol summing up last night’s Democratic debate »

The Echo Chamber Loses an Echo

As we have noted many times over the years, the editorial board of the Minneapolis Star Tribune has been one of the few institutions in America more consistently left-wing than the New York Times and perhaps, even, MoveOn.org. This cutting-edge leftism has been carried out for the last 15 years under the leadership of Susan Albright, who was let go by the paper yesterday: The editor who oversees the Star »

Hillary runs out the clock

I watched the entirety of the Democratic presidential debate that took place at Dartmouth tonight. Here are a few observations: First, Chris Matthews seems to have “pregamed” the pregame. If Matthews wasn’t drunk during the lead-up to the debate, as he railed against Barack Obama for not attacking Hillary Clinton harder and Chris Wallace for some offense that wasn’t clear, he did a pretty good imitation. Even Keith Olbermann looked »

Media alert

I’m scheduled to appear on FOX News with E.D. Hill around 11:40 a.m. (EDT) tomorrow morning for a short segment on Lynne Stewart’s placement on the faculty of Hofstra University Law School’s “Lawyering at the Edge” legal ethics conference. Stewart is the attorney who represented the blind sheikh convicted of conspiracy in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Stewart herself was subsequently convicted of providing material assistance to »

Is Hillary Inevitable?

Pundits have pretty well conceded the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton. In a basic sense, this is a reversal of recent history. Over the last few decades, it is the Republicans who have loyally nominated the heir apparent, the guy whose “turn” it was, even when–as when the GOP nominated Bob Dole in 1996–it was clear that he had little or no chance to win. The Democrats, on the other »

From Little Rock to Jena

On the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s use of troops during the Little Rock school desegregation crisis, Shelby Steele finds that this event “was the beginning of a profoundly different America.” He writes: [T]he deeper historical importance of the Little Rock crisis follows from the simple fact that it was televised. . . .[T]here was the daily gauntlet that the black students were made to walk–innocence face to face with »

Wildcat masjids in Minneapolis?

In “Slouching toward dhimmitude in Minneapolis?” I noted the apparent establshment of two sex-segregated “masjids” (mosques) within the (public) Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Having visited the college yesterday to observe the room designated on the outisde as a “masjid” reserved for Muslim “sisters” on the third floor of the Technical Building, I wrote MCTC interim vice president for academic and student affairs Laura Fedock as she requested after she »

Yup, that must be what Ahmadinejad meant to say

Iranian President Ahmadinejad statement that there are no homosexuals in Iran puzzled many people, and none more than folks who have first-hand familiarity with that country. Thus, the Washington Post reports that, according to Iranian American scholars, “Persian culture has historically included the practice of powerful men who keep young boys for sex but are not considered gay.” Moreover, “younger Iranian Americans [say] there is a gay culture in today’s »

The Columbia Party Line

Last night Columbia vice president for alumni relations Eric Furda emailed the following message to alumni: Over the past week the scheduled appearance of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at Columbia’s World Leaders Forum has sparked debate around the world. Here on campus, in countless conversations, students and faculty challenged one another to think critically about the issues raised by his visit. President Bollinger has answered tough questions from the media »

Whom Do You Trust?

No one, apparently. The Center for Media Research reports on a survey recently carried out by BIGResearch, which asked about the “trustworthiness” of various institutions; click to enlarge: At under 3%, Congress’s “trustworthiness” standing is astonishingly low. It is noteworthy that bloggers edge out “the media,” whose standing, at under 5%, is only slightly higher than that of the Congress. Alone at the top, with a lofty 14% trustworthiness rating, »

Where have all the trustees gone?

A reader writes: Am I correct that Columbia University has taken down the list of names of their Trustees from their web site? If so is there a source for this list from an older publication so that we may write to express our dismay at the recent activity at the University? I found a list of trustees here (including a handy identification of gender, religion, and ethnicity like students »

Slouching toward dhimmitude in Minneapolis?

Minneapolis Community and Technical College in downtown Minneapolis is the school that had planned to install footbaths for Muslim students until Star Tribune columnist Katherine Kersten blew the whistle. Now I understand that the authorities governing Minnesota state colleges have taken the matter under advisement. Yesterday a student at MCTC wrote us concerning a small room on the third floor of the Technical Building, which I visited to take a »

Indulgences

Peter Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author most recently of Do As I Say (Not As I Do). The book is a humorous and ultimately edifying expostion of liberal hypocrisy. The Kennedy family all by itself provides substantial material for Peter’s book. For example, Schweizer discusses Ted Kennedy’s opposition to a wind power project on Nantucket Sound that would apparently impair the view from »