Monthly Archives: September 2010

Maryland, where Obama can still feel needed

About a month ago, I saw Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley campaigning at the Bethesda metro station in the Montgomery County suburbs of Washington, D.C. This struck me as unusual, especially so early in O’Malley’s election season (he had no serious opponent in the Democratic primary). Democrats running for statewide office typically don’t shake many hands in Montgomery, County; they take that vote for granted, as well they might. I asked »

Democrats Playing Defense

The Examiner looks at where the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is spending its money, and finds that it is defending Democratic incumbents in 22 districts and trying to gain a Republican seat in only one. That pretty much tells the story of this election cycle. As a Minnesotan, I find it interesting that the DCCC is not putting any money into Minnesota’s 6th District in hopes of defeating my friend »

Is Barack Obama My Keeper?

Some commentators are criticizing President Obama’s response to a supporter at a campaign event who asked him why he is a Christian: “I’m a Christian by choice,” Obama told his audience here. “My family didn’t — frankly, they weren’t folks who went to church every week. And my mother was one of the most spiritual people I knew, but she didn’t raise me in the church. “So I came to »

God Damn America?

We wrote here and here about FBI raids in Minneapolis and Chicago that targeted “antiwar” activists who are suspected of providing material support to terrorist groups. We focused on the Minneapolis angle, but Jim Hoft adds valuable information about what happened in Chicago, where the FBI raided the home of Hatem Abudayyeh, the executive director of the Arab American Action Network: Hatem Abudayyeh is the executive director of the Arab »

A despicable congressman wages a despicable campaign, Part Two

A few days ago, I noted that Rep. Alan Grayson, having falsely accused his opponent Dan Webster of being a draft dodger, was now calling accusing him of Taliban tendencies. Grayson claimed, among other things, that Webster has advocated the blblical command, “wives submit to your husbands.” To support this claim, Grayson’s ad included a clip of Webster uttering those words. To the surprise of no one who has been »

Last Nail In the Coffin?

On paper, this headline should doom the Democrats’ hopes for a comeback between now and November: Consumer confidence drops to lowest since February. Americans’ view of the economy turned grimmer in September amid escalating job worries, falling to the lowest point since February. The downbeat report, released Tuesday, raises more fears about the tenuous U.S. economic recovery. … The Conference Board, based in New York, said its monthly Consumer Confidence »

What Christopher Coates said

Last week, as Scott has discussed here and here, Christopher Coates, former head of the Voting Section at the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division (CRD), testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Coates’ underlying claim before the Commission was that the Department of Justice’s “public representations to [the] Commission and other entities do not accurately reflect what caused the dismissals of three defendants in the New Black Panther »

Raese Pulling Ahead in West Virginia

Today’s Rasmussen Reports shows Republican John Raese with a two-point lead, 48-46, over Governor Joe Manchin in the race to succeed Robert Byrd as Senator from West Virginia. Just a few weeks ago a Raese victory would have been considered a stunning upset, but this year it appears anything can happen. »

The trouble with the Star Trib poll, cont’d

In 2002 I wrote a column exploring the trouble with the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll. It was a poll that seemed regularly to overstate Democratic strength. Rob Daves was the Star Tribune employee responsible for the Minnesota Poll results I was writing about. In 2002 I offered to bet Daves dinner for two at a restaurant of the winner’s choice that Norm Coleman would do at least five points »

A Minnesota miscarriage of justice

Three years ago Koua Fong Lee killed three Minnesotans when he rammed his 1996 Toyota Camry into the rear of another car at the Snelling Avenue exit of Interstate Highway 94 in St. Paul. Lee careened into the other car at 90 miles per hour and was, not unreasonably, convicted of criminal vehicular homicide. Lee’s particular Toyota model was never part of the controversy over the alleged unintended acceleration of »

Where Are People Stoned to Death?

In Iran, of course; in that case the victims are mostly women. Also much closer to home, in Mexico, which continues to spiral downward and can now be classified, perhaps, as a failed state: Small-town mayor stoned to death in western Mexico. The news, as is so often the case from south of the border, is horrific: A small-town mayor and an aide were found stoned to death Monday in »

Houses: The Greatest Threat to Peace?

This New York Times headline feels like deja vu all over again: Diplomats Desperately Try to Save Mideast Talks. What imperils the talks? Those warlike Israelis are thinking about building houses again! Israel’s decision this weekend to end its freeze on West Bank Jewish settlement construction sent diplomats on three continents into desperate activity on Monday as they tried to keep Middle East peace talks alive. And although the discussions »

No Surprise Here

Glenn Reynolds has done a series of posts on economic news at InstaPundit under the heading “Unexpected!” The failure of the administration’s liberal economic policies to bear fruit–the fact that, on the contrary, they have worsened our economic problems–is always unexpected to those who, apparently, have no knowledge of economic history. Some stories, though, are not just foreseeable but inevitable. This one, from the New York Times, is in that »

Justice in Dearborn, Sort Of

We wrote here about the criminal prosecution of Christian evangelists in Dearborn, Michigan, who had the temerity to pass out the Gospel of John on a public street, a block or two away from an area where a Muslim festival was going on. They were charged with disorderly conduct; you can see how disorderly they actually were in this video: Now, via Andy McCarthy at The Corner, we learn that »

Allah and man at Yale

There is a special kind of dishonor attached to a citadel of freedom that chooses to provide a respectable forum to a tyrant and genocidal maniac. This is the dishonor that Yale University has achieved by hosting Mahmoud Ahmedinejad for a special session of Hillary Mann Leverett’s graduate seminar in U.S.-Iranian diplomacy. In the course of his speech before the United Nations General Assembly, Ahmadinejad perpetrated the outrage of accusing »

The rough draft of a history that’s already been drafted

“The speech [by President Obama on his new strategy for Afghanistan] sounded to me like a slick lawyer trying to sell a dubious settlement to a skeptical. . .set of clients.” Power Line, December 1, 2009 “Obama ended up designing his own [Afghanistan] strategy, a lawyerly compromise among the feuding factions.” Bob Woodward, Washington Post, September 27, 2010 Bob Woodward began his career in journalism by breaking stories that otherwise »

Annals of outreach

Patrick Poole reports that a known Hamas operative and unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history – Kifah Mustapha – was recently escorted into the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center and other secure government facilities, including the FBI’s training center at Quantico, during a six-week “Citizen’s Academy” hosted by the FBI as part of its “outreach” to the Muslim Community. The group was accompanied by reporter Ben »