Monthly Archives: September 2007

Who killed the grown-up?

Scott has commented about Diana West’s excellent new book The Death of the Grown-Up. Diana’s basic argument is that we have become a nation of perpertual adolescents. We can’t say no and we don’t know right from wrong (or, what is almost the same, to the extent that we do know we refuse to insist on this knowledge). This state of affairs caused the “conservative” side to lose the so-called »

UCLA violates California’s ban on racial discrimination

California law (Proposition 209) prohibits the use of race as a factor in, among other things, admission to public universities. If this article in the New York Times Magazine by David Leonhardt is accurate, UCLA is violating California law. It’s doing so by preferring African-American applicants under the guise of preferring low income students. We know that these preferences are racially based because, according to Leonhardt, as low income black »

He who laughs last

Hillary Clinton has a chilly disposition and a chilling laugh. Starting with the Sunday talk show circuit last Sunday, she put the laugh on display in a big way. What is it about that cackle? In today’s New York Times, Patrick Healy treats it as a subject deserving of serious attention. On the one hand, the laugh signifies Clinton’s effort to simulate a normal person. On the other hand, it »

“Battlespace Preparation”

We noted here and here the phony attacks on Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly by “Media Matters,” a Soros-financed cog in the Clinton machine. These attacks were completely without merit, yet they garnered a remarkable amount of play in the mainstream media. Glenn Reynolds connects the dots between these scurrilous attacks and the 2008 election: IT’S NOT A “SMEAR” — it’s better understood as “battlespace preparation.” And the target is »

The Dreaded “Religious Right” Rears Its Head

Salon reports breathlessly that the “Religious right may blackball Giuliani.” This is, of course, the kind of headline that liberals delight in; it reflects their conviction that the Republican Party is dominated by a sinister cabal of Christians. That’s an odd way to think of Christians, in my opinion, but there you have it. The actual story is less dramatic than Salon’s headline. A meeting of the Council for National »

Bombs Away?

The Guardian has an entertaining account of John Bolton’s speech before a Conservative Party gathering in England. The article is titled “Bolton calls for bombing of Iran,” and it sounds like that’s more or less accurate: “I don’t think the use of military force is an attractive option, but I would tell you I don’t know what the alternative is. “Because life is about choices, I think we have to »

Combat Deaths Continue to Drop

It looks as though September will have the lowest U.S. death toll in Iraq in 14 months. September also represents the fourth consecutive monthly decline in deaths of U.S. service personnel. It seems remarkable that a strategy involving a more aggressive use of a larger number of troops could result in fewer fatalities, but that appears to be the case. I don’t know how to explain it other than by »

The Columbia outtakes

Filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney’s “Indoctrinate U” premiered in Washington this past Friday at the Kennedy Center via American Film Renaissance. In advance of the premiere Deroy Murdock profiled Maloney in “Move over, Michael Moore.” Also of note regarding the film are the Washington-based Express’s interview with Maloney and Bill Steigerwald’s interview with Thor Halvorssen. While filming “Indoctrinate U,” Maloney attempted to interview Columbia students on campus. He was stopped by »

Young guns of the House GOP

I meant last week to get to the Weekly Standard articles on the young members of the House Republican leadership including Fred Barnes’s profile of “The leader,” House chief deputy minority whip Eric Cantor. Over the past few years that I have seen Cantor speak in Minneapolis, I’d been wondering when someone in the national media was going to take note of this obviously rising star. I wrote briefly about »

Hollywood: A Bronx cheer for, round 5

In round 5 of the dust-up between Andrew Breitbart and David Ehrenstein in the Los Angeles Times over Hollywood politics, Ehrenstein shows up but otherwise throws in the towel. Andrew looks back on the week’s exchange with Ehrenstein and lobs a few parting provocations in the form of an Academy Award acceptance speech. Andrew’s performance should give heart to those in the business who share his views that they have »

A phony convergence

Thomas Ricks of the Washington Post has written a piece called “For a Democrat, Options in Iraq Could Be Few,” in which he suggests that the vision of the leading Democratic presidential contenders may not “differ markedly from that of the Bush administration.” I suppose it’s possible that one or more of the three leading contenders would pursue the Bush administration’s policy of using our troops to crush terrorist and »

He wasn’t supposed to take it personally

Justice Clarence Thomas has written an autobiography called My Grandfather’s Son. The book ends with his swearing in as a Supreme Court Justice. It covers in detail Thomas’s confirmation hearings, in which he was accused at the last minute of sexually harassing Antia Hill years earlier. Hill had not complained about Thomas’s behavior at the time or for years thereafter (there was no mention of any of this when Thomas »

Best line of the day

From columnist Paul Greenberg, a long-time observer of the Clintons: Whenever I grow soft on the new Hillary Clinton — the termperate, moderate, responsible senator who does her homework, ably represents her constituents, and respects those who may disagree with her — it occurs to me that maybe I’m just engaging in the willing suspension of disbelief. I used to fall for every new Nixon, too. »

Duke Apologizes

Earlier today, Duke President Richard Brodhead apologized for his, and Duke’s, failure to support the three falsely accused lacrosse players: “Given the complexities of this case, getting the communication right would never have been easy,” Brodhead said. “But the fact is that we did not get it right, causing the families to feel abandoned when they were most in need of support. This was a mistake. I take responsibility for »

No Newt Is Good News

Just days after sounding as though he would likely jump into the Presidential race, Newt Gingrich announced today that he is out. His spokesman said that Newt will not run in 2008, because it will not be legally possible for him to explore a Presidential bid while continuing to run his nonprofit organization, American Solutions. This rationale seems odd in a couple of respects, but I think Gingrich’s decision is »

How the left lies; one more example

Responding to another Hillary Matters smear, this one of Bill O’Reilly and this one dutifully regurgitated by CNN/MSNBC, Juan Williams speaks up to explain “What Bill O’Reilly really told me.” Williams and O’Reilly also discuss the smear in the video below. Juan Williams’s most recent book (the occasion of his appearance on O’Reilly’s radio show) is Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black »

In search of realistic realists

Unrealistic realists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski and John Mearsheimer think Iran a conventional power that can be deterred by mutual assured destruction. They do not seriously attend to the most obvious features of the Iranian regime, such as words spoken and deeds done. Caroline Glick examines the message of Ahmadinejad’s speeches during his visit to New York this week. Glick notes the inattentiveness of the media to Ahmadinejad’s words and »