Monthly Archives: September 2010

Another despicable congressman

Immediately below Paul Mirengoff describes one despicable Democratic congressman (Alan Grayson) waging a despicable campaign in search of a winning message, or at least a suitable bogeman. Southern California Rep. Loretta Sanchez is another despicable congressman waging a despicable campaign. Sanchez faces a strong challenge from Republican Van Tran. In the case of Sanchez, the bogeyman is her opponent. He’s a native of Vietnam, you see, having left Saigon with »

A despicable congressman wages a despicable campaign

All over America, Democratic congressional incumbents are struggling to stave off the tide that threatens to sweep them out of office and out of power. There’s a flailing quality to their efforts, as they search for a winning message or, at least a suitable bogeyman. But Rep. Alan Grayson knows exactly how he intends to approach this election. He will stand or fall on the same kind of deranged and »

Mollifying Muslims, and Muslifying Mollies

In today’s Star Tribune Katherine Kersten tells the story of the cartoonist formerly known as Molly Norris. Norris is the former Seattle Weekly cartoonist who he drew a lighthearted cartoon of a poster announcing “Everybody Draw Mohammed Day.” Tongue firmly in cheek, Kersten recalls, she named the day’s sponsor as a nonexistent group: “Citizens against Citizens against Humor.” Everything about Molly Norris is “former” because she’s “gone ghost” on the »

The plot thickens in West Virginia

The Senate vacancy resulting from Robert Byrd’s death produced what initially seemed like a decent opportunity for the Republicans to pick up that Senate seat. After all, West Virginia is no longer a solidly Democratic state. In addition, President Obama, who never quite connected with the state’s voters (both Hillary Clinton and John McCain defeated him handily in 2008), has become increasingly unpopular there. But the Democrats caught a major »

Good news where it matters most

Hoping to lift some of the gloom that that threatens to drive away their donors and keep their rank-and-file at home, the Democrats have released internal polling in selected races that they claim shows the Party’s electoral prospects are not nearly as bad as many believe. But the most probative recent poll result I’ve seen comes from the non-partisan Pew organization. It shows that independent voters currently favor Republicans over »

Gloom on Merseyside

Over the course of the 20th century, the two winningest English soccer clubs were the Merseyside duo of Everton and Liverpool. And, although this certainly was not the case in the first decade of the 21st century, both clubs enjoyed their share of success. Everton, after a dreadful 1990s, established itself as a top-six club. And Liverpool, while playing fourth fiddle to Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal, won two FA »

Mick Kelly’s solidarity

At Verum Serum, Morgen Richmond has dug up some interesting information on the “anti-war activists” whose domiciles were searched as part of an FBI terrorism investigation in Minneapolis (and elsewhere) yesterday. One of them is a public high school teacher in Minnesota. And then there was this: Revolution & Socialism in Latin America Wednesday, 10/4 @ 7pm @ May Day Bookstore, 301 Cedar Ave – 1 block west of the »

Christopher Coates takes the stand, cont’d

There are a few news reports of the dramatic testimony given to the Civil Rights Commission by former Department of Justice voting rights section chief Christopher Coates yesterday. The Washington Post carries a serious story. The Los Angeles Times has a short article. The AP effectively drains the story of all the facts that give the story drama and color. In another version, the AP devotes a grand total of »

Antiwar or Pro-Hezbollah?

During the Vietnam era, the “antiwar” movement was misnamed. Its leaders, for the most part, were not against war at all; they were just on the other side. Today a series of raids in Minneapolis and Chicago suggested that the same might be true of today’s antiwar movement. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports: “FBI raids homes of several Twin Cities war protesters.” The homes of five Twin Cities activists, including »

Let’s make that S Street

We’ve written before about J Street, a collection of leftists with a history of harsh criticism of Israel that claims to represent the “sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews.” In my first post about the group, which I called “The J Street Deception,” I wrote: “There’s nothing wrong with Carteresque Jews forming a lobbying group, but it would be nice to see a little bit of truth in their advertising.” »

Rich Lowry administers justice to Charlie Crist

National Review editor Rich Lowry has just posted an open letter to Florida Governor and independent senatorial candidate Charlie Crist in reponse to this ad. Here is Rich’s letter: Governor Crist– How time flies. It was only a few months ago that you were clogging our phone lines with assurances that you were a “Reagan conservative” and a committed Republican. Since then, of course, you have only continued your sprint »

The limits of irony

The clever use of irony can make you rich and famous. It can elicit gales of laughter from people who agree with your point of view and the occasional chuckle from those who don’t. Yet irony has its limits as a political tool. And it can backfire when substituted for serious discussion in a setting that still purports to be serious, as the clowns who invited professional ironist Steven Colbert »

Overcoming the deficit

In a series of posts written in July and August, I looked at polling in certain congressional districts that Larry Sabato had rated as “toss-up” or “leans Democratic.” I found that the Republican candidate often had a decent lead in the “toss-up” districts and often was even or ahead in the allegedly Democratic-leaning ones. Now, Glen Bolger of Public Opinion Strategies has applied something like this approach on a larger »

Assessing the Tea Party movement’s short-term political impact

Charles Krauthammer argues that the Tea Party movement has “created the enthusiasm gap” that is propelling Republicans towards “the sweeping victory that awaits them on Nov. 2.” In my view, though, it does not require the Tea Party movement to explain the enthusiasm gap. We saw such a gap, along with sweeping victories, in 1994 and 2006-08. Enthusiasm gaps appear when events disgust one set of partisans and demoralize the »

Christopher Coates takes the stand

Former Department of Justice voting rights section chief Christopher Coates testified this morning before the Civil Rights Commission regarding the department’s disposition of the case against the New Black Panther Party. Coates disobeyed the instruction of his superiors in order to testify and claimed whistleblower protection for his testimony. PJM has posted Coates’s testimony in full here. It has also posted J. Christopher Adam’s related column here. Coates’s testimony is »

Car-buncle on the body politic

It has been hard to keep up with events involving the Obama administration’s takeover of General Motors, but we should try. it takes us down the road to national socialism and gangster government. Investor’s Business Daily checked in on GM with the the timely editorial “GM: Car-buncle on the body politic.” “Cancer on the body politic” might be more like it. The Washington Post notes in passing that GM made »

Bagels and lox with Ahmadinejad

The Wall Street Journal’s Bret Stephens sat down for a breakfast meeting of prominent journalists with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in New York on Tuesday morning. He wrote up an account of his experience in “Breakfast with Ahmadinejad.” The column is must reading. It concludes on this note: In the New York Times’s account of the breakfast, reporter Neil MacFarquhar–who asked an opaque question about Cyrus the Great and was roundly mocked »