Monthly Archives: July 2009

Hamas: The terror elite

Not long ago, I heard a senior European diplomat describe Hamas as a relatively moderate organization in the context of the Middle East. Moreover, while perhaps not characterizing Hamas as “moderate” overall, American politicians such as John Kerry and Jimmy Carter and Europeans such as Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi and Britain’s Tony Blair have spoken of “engaging with moderates” within Hamas. It is vitally important for Americans to understand »

Who moved my pork?

Yesterday we noted that among the “stimulus” projects funded by the Democrats in their stimulus porkapalooza was $16.7 million for canned pork processed by Lakeside Foods at Lakeside’s Minnesota plant. The Lakeside Foods award was one of several literal pork projects flagged by Drudge yesterday. Following a script originally written by George Orwell, the Obama administration has sent the pork products down the memory hole. The Obama administration Web site »

An old debate revisited

Everything that I have learned about American politics derives more or less from reading the works of Harry V. Jaffa and his most frequent subject, Abraham Lincoln. Jaffa’s Crisis of the House Divided on the Lincoln-Douglas debates began to restore the proper understanding of Lincoln’s political thought. Historian Allen Guelzo observed in the bibliographic essay that concludes his highly regarded biography of Lincoln that Crisis is “incontestably the greatest Lincoln »

Welcome to the club

India has now joined the list of U.S. allies receiving shabby treatment from the Obama administration. Actually, the shabby treatment arguably has been ongoing — despite their globe-trotting, neither President Obama nor Secretary of State Clinton bothered to visit our giant and increasingly important ally in the sub-continent during the first six months of the administration. Now, Clinton has finally visited India, but the government probably wishes she had stayed »

Trope-a-Dope

Here is the abstract of an article in the Denver University Law Review called “The First (Black) Lady.” The author is Verna WIlliams, a law professor at the University of Cincinnati – College of Law: First Lady Michelle Obama is an accomplished woman in her own right, defying racial, gender, and class stereotypes to excel in private practice and public service. Yet, during the campaign, a different portrait of this »

The wrong kind of transparency

Upon taking office, President Obama proclaimed that “transparency will be the touchstone of my administration.” Six months later, we learn (via AP) that Obama has decided to put off the annual mid-summer budget update from mid-July, when it usually is released, to mid-August. Apparently, as AP suggests, the White House wants to delay the bad news at least until Congress leaves town on its August 7 summer recess. The midsummer »

Consider us stimulated

One of our enterprising readers has figured out “the number” of the Web site on which the Obama administration announces stimulus projects. Our reader has pointed out one such project in our own back yard. According to the Web site, Wisconsin’s Lakeside Foods is the recipient of $16.7 million in stimulus funds awarded by the Department of Agriculture for a project at Lakeside’s processing plant in Plainview, Minnesota. (Plainview is »

A house derided

Mike Allen reported last week that the American Conservative Union asked FedEx for some $2 million in return for the group’s work on its behalf in a legislative dispute involving the jurisdiction of the National Labor Relations Board. Allen disclosed that ACU chairman David Keene flipped and sided with UPS after FedEx refused to engage the ACU’s services. Allen’s story includes a copy of the ACU letter to FedEx outlining »

Obama makes it easy to just say no

Not long ago, President Obama demanded an end to all construction in and around Israeli settlements on the West Bank, including “natural growth” construction. Prime Minister Netanyahu, taking a position that Israelis overwhelmingly support, rejected this demand. The U.S. and Israel are reportedly attempting to reach some sort of a compromise on this issue. Now, Obama has decided to pick a new fight with Israel by demanding that Israel freeze »

Why Should We Listen to Them?

The editors and reporters at the New York Times are constantly hectoring us on various subjects, in their editorials as well as their news stories. Sometimes the subject is climate change, which requires a sophisticated knowledge of mathematics to evaluate competing theories. Or maybe it’s health care, where the paper’s editors denounce the rest of us for being reluctant to commit to trillions of dollars worth of government medicine. The »

A little “nuance” goes a long way

Earlier this year, the Washington Post proclaimed, in a story by Joby Warrick and Peter Finn, that “not a single significant plot was foiled” as a result of the harsh interrogation of detainee Abu Zubaida. I took on that article here. Today Warrick and Finn are back to give us what they call a “more nuanced look” at the interrogation of Abu Zubaida. As Marc Thiessen shows, this more nuanced »

News From Iran

On Thursday, three National Guardsmen from Minnesota were killed in a rocket attack on the base in southern Iraq where their unit, the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division, was providing security. Today the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the attack was carried out by members of an Iranian-trained militia, apparently with Iranian-made weapons: Iraqi authorities have arrested a member of an Iranian-backed militia for the missile attack that killed three »

How not to write about a baseball game

Here are the first two paragraphs of the Washington Post’s report on yesterday’s baseball game in which the Chicago Cubs beat the Washington Nationals: Somewhere along the way, wins lost their currency in Washington. The Nationals’ season long ago plunged to depths known only in the Mariana Trench, so victories have little value and do not always constitute progress because even they have been scarred by hapless hitting, woeful fielding »

Anne Bayefsky: Obama’s real agenda

Anne Bayefsky is a professor at Touro College and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. She has forwarded us this condensed version of a longer piece posted here on the Jerusalem Post Web site, commenting on President Obama’s meeting with a select Jewish audience this past Monday: Barack Obama is the most hostile sitting American president in the history of the State of Israel. This was the very first »

Sergeant John Beale, RIP

Reader John Throckmorton served in Iraq in 2006-2007. He sends us this video and comments: “This is a moving video of a community’s response to the death of a U.S. Army sergeant in Afghanistan. The tape runs 12 minutes and is a must see.” He adds: Killed in action the week before, John C. Beale was returned to Falcon Field in Peachtree City, Georgia, just south of Atlanta, on June »

Coup are you? part 5

Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya put a lot of planning into the illegal referendum he hoped to hold. It was this illegal referendum that prompted his removal from office. Zelaya apparently didn’t trust Hondurans to vote the right way on the referendum. According to a Catalan Europa Press report picked up and translated by Babalu Blog, Zelaya had the machinery in place to rig the results. It’s a fascinating story »

What about the Biden crisis?

Speaking in Seattle to campaign contributors behind closed doors this past October, Joe Biden all but endorsed John McCain for president: “Mark my words,” Biden warned the assembled supporters. “It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing »