Monthly Archives: November 2008

November 22, 2008 — Paul Mirengoff

The plot thickens in California

The votes by which the people of California passed Proposition 8, restricting the definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman, had barely been counted when the ACLU filed a lawsuit. That suit, filed directly with the California Supreme Court, claimed that Prop. 8 would change the California Constitution in so fundamental a way — i.e., taking important rights away from a minority group — that »
November 22, 2008 — Paul Mirengoff

Common sense, then and now

Cliff May (via the Wall Street Journal) calls attention to this statement from 2002 by Eric Holder, Obama’s nominee for Attorney General: One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them and find out what their future plans might be, where other cells are located; under the Geneva Convention. . .you are really limited in the amount of information »
November 22, 2008 — John Hinderaker

Close Guantanamo Bay?

For the last six months, terrorism expert Tom Joscelyn has been studying the thousands of pages of unclassified information that have been made available about the approximately 250 terrorists and terrorist supporters still held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay. He begins his report on that review in the current Weekly Standard. During the Presidential campaign, Barack Obama’s pledge to close Guantanamo Bay was one of his cheap applause lines. What Obama »
November 22, 2008 — Scott Johnson

Across the Great Divide: A salute

Barton Gellman is the Washington Post reporter who has written the new book Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency. Gellman invited Paul Mirengoff and others to comment on his book at TPMCafe. Gellman deserves credit for inviting Paul to engage in the online discusssion of the book and Paul reciprocates the spirit in his comments. Paul’s recap of his discussion online discussion with Gellman is here. Paul invokes the metaphor of »
November 22, 2008 — Scott Johnson

Sunlight

Today is the birthday of the old Youngbloods’ maestro Jesse Colin Young. I saw Jesse perform in Minneapolis in 2006 with the lineup he calls Celtic Mambo and wrote about it in “Elephant Mountain revisited.” In advance of the show I contacted Jesse through the agent listed on his site and requested a telephone interview. I was pleasantly surprised to hear back from him after the show: We were too »
November 22, 2008 — Scott Johnson

Turkeys on parade

Last night John commented on the MSM/liberal outcry over Governor Palin’s interview at the Alaska turkey processing plant. “And you thought her media outings as a vice presidential candidate were as bad as it gets,” says MSNBC host David Shuster regarding the interview footage. Referring to Shuster, Mark Steyn finds “the nancy boys at MSNBC bleating all over the screen about the Great Turkey Carnage” to be hilarious. Mark adds: »
November 21, 2008 — Paul Mirengoff

An appeal not to appeal

A federal judge has found that the government doesn’t have enough evidence to convince him that five of the six Boumediene detainees were planning to travel to Afghanistan to fight our troops (the evidence was deemed sufficient as to the sixth). As I understand the facts, there is a document that says this. But Judge Richard Leon concluded that he didn’t have enough information to assess the credibility of the »
November 21, 2008 — John Hinderaker

Today We Learned Something Horrible About Liberals

The liberal web sites were on fire today, but not about Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State or Tim Geithner’s elevation to the Treasury Department, or the six percent jump the Dow took in the last hour of trading. No, as so often happens, the liberal web sites were hysterical about…Sarah Palin. Governor Palin has returned to Alaska and one might have thought, out of sight, out of mind. »
November 21, 2008 — Paul Mirengoff

Across the great divide, a recap

My week-long discussion with Bart Gelman and others about Bart’s book on the Cheney vice presidency ended today. The participants represented an eclectic group of Cheney bashers. Fortunately, all of them were civil and some of their commentary was insightful. For the most part, my debate was with Bart over two issues: (1) is his book anti-Cheney and (2) is it fair. The first issue should have required no debate, »
November 21, 2008 — Paul Mirengoff

Interesting times

I may well have been wrong in doubting that Barack Obama would nominate Hillary Clinton to be Secretary of State. It seems that Politico, Jake Tapper, and CNN are now all reporting that Clinton will, in fact, be offered the position after Thanksgiving. Members of the transition team are saying that Clinton’s financial disclosures are satisfactory and the way is clear to tap her for the top job at Foggy »
November 21, 2008 — John Hinderaker

Minnesota Senate Recount, Update III

The Senate recount continues in Minnesota; well over half of all ballots will have been recounted by the end of the day. Challenges are increasing from both campaigns and tempers seem to be fraying, with the campaigns holding dueling press conferences today, but changes in the count do not seem to be dramatic. The Franken campaign said today that they think Coleman’s lead has been cut to “double digits,” assuming »
November 21, 2008 — John Hinderaker

Media Alert

I’ll be on Hannity and Colmes tonight at 8:10 central, 9:10 eastern, talking about Eric Holder, the Minnesota recount and maybe other topics. Michael Steele will be guest hosting for Sean Hannity; should be fun! To comment on this post, go here. »
November 21, 2008 — Scott Johnson

Prayers for AG Mukasey

Kathryn Lopez provides an eyewitness account of Attorney General Mukasey’s collapse last night while speaking at the Federalist Society’s national conference in Washington. Kathryn reports that midway through his remarks Mukasey seemed rattled by a heckler who called him a “tyrant.” Today’s Wall Street Journal carries Mukasey’s important column “Al Qaeda detainees and Congress’s duty.” UPDATE: Andrew McCarthy has the text of AG Mukasey’s Federalist Society speech and more here. »
November 21, 2008 — Scott Johnson

The National Book Awards 2008

This year’s National Book Award winners were celebrated at the awards ceremony in New York on Wednesday evening. Insofar as the nonfiction category is concerned, the awards demonstrate the dominance of the left over the awards. The AP provided an almost comic account of the herd of independent minds at play in mid-town Manhattan during the awards ceremony: The economy inspired nervous laughter; the name Barack Obama happy, relieved applause. »
November 20, 2008 — Paul Mirengoff

Why so many old Washington hands?

One by one, beginning with Joe Biden, Barack Obama is filling key positions in his administration with old Washington hands. Jim Geraghty provides the details. Why, after promising “change” and deriding (as Geraghty notes) the notion that you can get improved results with “the same Washington players,” is Obama taking this approach? One theory is that Obama doesn’t have much of a palace guard of Washington outsiders, as a governor »
November 20, 2008 — John Hinderaker

Minnesota Senate Recount, Update II

An hour ago, Minnesota’s Secretary of State posted the latest data on the Senate recount. Candidly, I’m not quite sure what to make of it. The Secretary of State’s numbers indicate that 51 percent of precincts and 42 percent of total ballots have been recounted. The Secretary shows that Norm Coleman’s total votes have gone from 534,687 counted on November 4 to 534,475, while Al Franken’s votes have declined from »
November 20, 2008 — John Hinderaker

Were They Expecting Bernardine Dohrn as Secretary of Defense?

Barack Obama hasn’t been sworn in yet, but he already is disappointing his supporters on the Left. Some Republicans are almost giddy at the mainstream appointments Obama has made or is reported to be considering–Hillary Clinton, Rahm Emanuel, Tom Daschle, Bob Gates, and so on. Jennifer Rubin, for example, writes: Little did we know that “Change we can believe in” really meant “Change that will delight the Right and freak »