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Monthly Archives: December 2004
More on Rumsfeld
I find it hard to take the “autopen” controversy seriously, for the reasons the Trunk outlines below. I would guess that every Senator uses an autopen to sign his or her correspondence. (Of course, those Senators would argue that they don’t sign letters of condolence to the parents of soldiers.) Beyond the purely symbolic, I also find it hard to believe that many people are impressed by the claim that »
The thundering herd speaks, sort of
The mainstream media have perfected the art of the stampede, and it seems to be on display in the case of the now-infamous Rumsfeld autopen. According to this Google News roundup, approximately 840 stories have run on Rumsfeld’s admitted use of an autopen to sign condolence letters to the families of fallen soldiers. The thundering herd has spoken. Among the journalists and editorial writers whose support of the military is »
Stressing ownership
Sebastian Mallaby in the Washington Post argues that privatizing social security would “add[] to the stresses of the modern world,” and thus cannot be justified unless it “brings a serious economic payoff.” Privatizing social security would increase stress levels, says Mallaby, because determining where to invest one’s retirement money entails making tough choices and taking risks. Thus, Mallaby believes that many, perhaps even most, people would prefer to have the »
The democratic urge
Chrenkoff has the latest installment of good news from Iraq. This edition focuses on news relating to the upcoming elections. He begins with the results of a recent poll of 5,000 people in and around Baghdad, which suggests that “an overwhelming majority are prepared to make a clean break with the past and pursue democracy–now.” To this end, 220 registered parties are expected to field approximately 5,000 candidates. This means »
Bobby Vee’s Morning in America
Earlier this month we wrote about Fargo’s gift to popular music in “V for Vee” — Bobby Vee — and in “Minnesota’s other rock star.” Readers of a certain age will recall such memorable Vee hits as “Take Good Care of My Baby,” “Rubber Ball,” and “Come Back When You Grow Up.” Vee is still going strong at age 61. We immediately heard from Bill Bennett of the “Morning in »
A crowded field
John Hawkins at Right Wing News lists his picks for the Twenty Most Annoying Liberals In The United States. It speaks volumes that the likes of Al Franken, Whoopi Goldberg, Ted Kennedy, Bill Maher, the New York Times, Lawrence O’Donnell, Keith Olberman, Ron Reagan, George Soros, and Barbra Streisand couldn’t crack the top 20. »
The liberal multilateralist case against Kofi Annan
Writing in the Opinion Journal, Kenneth Cain, who served in U.N. peacekeeping operations in Somalia, Rwanda, Haiti and Liberia, argues that “the salient indictment of Kofi Annan’s leadership is lethal cowardice, not corruption” and that “the evidence is genocide, not oil.” Cain focuses on “the two ground-zeros of Mr. Annan’s failed leadership while he was head of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations–Rwanda and Bosnia.” In Rwanda, “at the crucial »
Advantage: Time
While Time has us as Blog of the Year, Newsweek has a “fast chat” with Wonkette. Ana Marie, not surprisingly, has a liberal take on the Dan Rather fake document scandal: Q. What did you think of the bloggers’ role in the Dan Rather affair? A. I think they did a disservice to the debate because they made the debate about the documents and not about the president of the »
Why a slap in the face won’t do
Jeff Jarvis wants to “slap” those on both sides of America’s religious divide “back to their senses.” With religion under major attack in places like China, Jarvis thinks that God would “roll his eyes” over the debate in this country regarding the place of religion. Indeed, he characterizes the debate as “a fight for the sake of a fight.” I think Jarvis is missing the political dimension to the fight. »
The rest of the story
Blogger La Shawn Barber writes about the contribution of the smaller blogs to Hurricane Dan in her NRO column: “The blogosphere’s smaller stars.” »
The Model minus one
Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post has a story about Omar and Mohammed Fadhil of Iraq the Model. Meanwhile, the third “Model” brother, Ali, is abandoning the blog. He states: My stand regarding America has never changed. I still love America and feel grateful to all those who helped us get our freedom and are still helping us establishing democracy in our country. But it’s the act of some Americans »
Hometown guys make good
We have always liked and respected the news reporters at the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Thus it’s not a surprise that Star Tribune reporter Matt McKinney has written a gracious and informative article about us for this morning’s paper: “Local site a top dog in Web logs.” Now if the Star Tribune columnists or editorialists had a kind word to say about us, that would qualify for Ripley’s. Fortunately for us, »
The bubbling cauldron
Michael Kinsley discovers the “unnerving seriousness and sophistication” of the blogosphere. Not long ago, Kinsley claimed to have come up with a mathematical proof that Social Security privatization can’t work. He challenged leading economists and proponents of privatization to refute his proof. According to Kinsley, no one responded — except for bloggers, whose responses to Kinsley were, as Glenn Reynolds put it, “everywhere.” See this line-by-line response from Donald Luskin, »
Haggard for poet laureate
I don’t know how our friends at RealClearPolitics missed this column, but the best of the day must surely be the one by David Holwerk, the editorial page editor of the Sacrabmento Bee: “Poet of the people: Why Merle Haggard should be California’s next poet laureate.” Holwerk makes Haggard sound more or less like a latter-day Woody Guthrie, appending the lyrics to “Mama Tried,” “Tulare Dust,” “Hungry Eyes,” and (the »
Teaching the free man
American Jews are celebrating their three-hundred and fiftieth anniversary here. The first Jewish community in North America was established in New Amsterdam (New York) in 1654. In 1658 fifteen Jewish families arrived in Newport, Rhode Island. By 1759 their numbers and resources had increased sufficiently that they undertook the construction of what has become America’s oldest synagogue, the Touro Synagogue of Newport. In 1790 Rhode Island became the thirteenth state »
Should he stay or should he go?
Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, that is. The Democrats have been after his scalp for years. Now some influential Republican Senators, along with Bill Kristol, have joined the anti-Rumsfeld cause. In the latest development, Rumsfeld is being criticized for not personally signing letters to the families of those killed in action in Iraq. From where we sit, it’s difficult authoritatively to assess Rumsfeld’s performance — there’s just an awful lot we »
