Monthly Archives: January 2008

At least he didn’t take it personally

Clark Hoyt, the “public editor” of the New York Times has finally addressed Ed Whelan’s contention that Linda Greenhouse has a conflict of interest by virtue of reporting on Supreme Court cases in which her husband has participated. Readers will recall that Hoyt failed to respond to Ed for a full month. Eventually, Hoyt responded by asking Ed for the briefs Greenhouse’s husband filed — documents that Hoyt surely could »

They Can’t Stand Each Other

They may both be right, too, although I’m pretty sure I’d rather spend an evening with Barack Obama than Hillary Clinton. I didn’t watch tonight’s Democratic debate in South Carolina, but the news accounts are entertaining. What started, many thought, as Obama’s effort to get on the ticket as Veep has escalated into seemingly genuine dislike. What struck me most forcibly was this exchange about Bill Clinton, who has been »

A Relatively Scientific Experiment

I wrote here about the New York Times’ interminable–the first in a series, too!–but entirely bogus effort to portray veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan as traumatized killers. A team of Times reporters did extensive “research,” the methodology of which was never described, and found 121 cases in which a veteran of one of those theaters of war was accused of some form of homicide (including vehicular). The paper made »

The real loser, Part Three

In South Carolina, as in Iowa and New Hampshire, the real loser in the Republican primary was mainstream conservatism. That »

A profile of Michael Yon

Today’s New York Times carries a profile of online war reporter Michael Yon. It seems to me a flavorless account, not even mentioning Yon’s classic 2005 report “Gates of fire,” on the battle of Mosul. The online version of the story links to Yon’s site and mentions that Yon’s work is entirely reader supported. (Readers can contribute to his work here.) The Times also mentions Yon’s forthcoming book, though not »

The prophetic voice

When Martin Luther King, Jr. brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for »

We Can’t Wait

Oliver Stone hasn’t had a hit movie since 1994, if you assume Natural Born Killers was a hit, but he knows his audience: he’s going to direct a film biography of George W. Bush, and if all of Stone’s fellow BDS sufferers buy a ticket, it will be the Gone With the Wind of the 21st century. The movie is to be called Bush, and Stone says we shouldn’t assume »

Bylines of brutality

Today the New York Times resumes its coverage of our crazed killer vets with Deborah Sontag’s “An Iraq veteran’s descent, a prosecutor’s choice.” Contrast Sontag’s long, long story with the minimalist coverage afforded by the Times to the posthumous Medal of Honor awarded to New York native son Michael Murphy. Clay Waters, among others, noted the Times’s reluctance to cover the military heroism of Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iowahawk »

By Maureen Dowd, Derry, New Hampshire

One of the highlights of my trip to Israel this past August was the helicopter tour that took us from Herzliya down the separation fence and over to Sderot. My guide on the helicopter tour was Calev Ben-David, who is in the middle of our group in the photograph accompanying “A view from the fence.” Last week Calev provided a view of Maureen Dowd in Israel with an interesting twist. »

One type of ambiguity

I watched Mike Huckabee’s South Carolina concession speech in its entirety on video here. Governor Huckabee’s reference to losing with honor rather than winning with dishonor is intentionally ambiguous — an ambiguous but somehow honorable attack, I guess, on the purported dishonor of comparative or negative campaigning. It is prefaced, however, by tributes to Senator McCain’s campaign. In context, the dishonor to which Huckabee refers appears to be imputed to »

Some fictional horrors of war

Mark Steyn’s syndicated weekly column addresses last week’s big Sunday New York Times page-one story (part 1!) on the fictitious crime wave perpetrated by American troops returning from combat. John took the Times story apart in “Crazed veterans spark nationwide crime wave.” Mark notes John’s post after introducing the theme of the Times story: “Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, »

“Dishonor”??

Mike Huckabee is talking live on Fox News, and he just said that he is sorry to be in second place, but would rather be in second place with honor, than to win with “dishonor”–that’s the word he used. Huckabee offered no clue as to what John McCain’s “dishonor” consisted of, other than a reference to “attacking other candidates.” If Huckabee seriously thinks it is dishonorable to attack one’s political »

As Greenville County goes. . .

Michael Barone has looked at results from Greenville County, where more Republican votes typically are cast than in any other South Carolina jurisdiction. This is a county where, in 2000, George Bush crushed John McCain. This time, with about half of the precincts in, McCain is running even with Huckabee. Barone speculates that, if these returns are indicative, it’s a bad sign for Mike Huckabee. It’s also the case that »

Fred Thompson, in or out?

Fred Thompson just spoke to his supporters in South Carolina, where he appears headed for a weak third or fourth place finish. Thompson thanked everyone and then spoke about America and conservatism’s contribution to it. He did not talk about Florida or being in the race to stay. Word is that Thompson will return to Tennessee to visit his mother in the hospital. While he’s there, presumably, he’ll consider his »

Hour One

Brian “St. Paul” Ward and I braved the frigid weather–it was 18 degrees below zero this morning–and made our way to the Patriot bunker for today’s radio show. In the first hour, we talked about the weather, the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary, the state of the Republican race, and Fred Thompson. We finished up by awarding our Loon of the Week prize; the finalists were two Democratic »

South Carolina exit poll results, for what they’re worth

As reported by Fox News, the exit polls from South Carolina point to a close race between John McCain and Mike Huckabee, with McCain perhaps having the edge. They show Republican voters split almost evenly between the two, with independents favoring McCain (my apologies, by the way, for suggesting a few days ago that this primary was limited to Republicans). The exit polls results contain no good news for Fred »

Fear the turtle, at least today

You could see it coming. North Carolina’s undefeated, top-ranked college basketball had been lucky to avoid defeat against Clemson and Georgia Tech; surely someone would hang a loss on them before long. But not today at home against Maryland, whose squad is Gary Williams’ weakest in years and has lost to the likes of Ohio and American University. Yet the minnows pulled it off 82-80, in perhaps the greatest of »