Monthly Archives: June 2005

June 20, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Only the wrong survive

I dusted off my college books and took another whack at parsing Senator Byrd’s exposition of the Pardoner’s Tale in my Daily Standard column this week: “Tales from the Senate.” I caught up with yesterday’s Washington Post article on Byrd by Eric Pianin too late to work it into the Standard column, but I think it’s fair to say that the column’s theme can usefully be applied to the Post »
June 19, 2005 — Scott Johnson

This father’s day

Read Jonah Goldberg’s loving eulogy on his father, Sidney Goldberg: “The hop bird.” Read the column by Star Tribune sports writer Jim Souhan on Rod Carew’s memorial efforts on behalf of his daughter Michelle, lost in 1996 to leukemia: “Carew campaigns for kids.” Think of Dan and Deb Dunham, the parents of Marine Corporal Jason Dunham, missing their son on this Father’s Day: “A soldier’s valor, a gripping story of »
June 19, 2005 — John Hinderaker

If They Were Fakes, They’d Say More

Lots of people are starting to question the authenticity of the “Downing Street Memos”: the Alamo City Commando, Captain Ed, and many others. Some of the circumstances are indeed strange. We now know that the reporter who publicized the memos, Michael Smith of the London Times, claims that after receiving the documents from a leaker, he had a secretary retype the documents using an old-fashioned typewriter, and then either destroyed »
June 19, 2005 — John Hinderaker

The Real Thing

Marines in western Iraq made a sobering discovery yesterday that highlights the folly of those who decry “torture” at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay: Marines on an operation to eliminate insurgents that began Friday broke through the outside wall of a building in this small rural village to find a torture center equipped with electric wires, a noose, handcuffs, a 574-page jihad manual – and four beaten and shackled Iraqis. »
June 19, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Thank you, Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn’s Chicago Sun-Times column on Turban Durbin states the case against the Senator with Steyn’s characteristic bite: “Durbin slanders his own country.” Steyn writes: [G]ive Durbin credit. Every third-rate hack on every European newspaper can do the Americans-are-Nazis schtick. Amnesty International has already declared Guantanamo the “gulag of our times.” But I do believe the senator is the first to compare the U.S. armed forces with the blood-drenched thugs »
June 18, 2005 — John Hinderaker

Newt Says: Censure Durbin

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich sent the following letter to all U.S. Senators today: Dear Senator _______________: By his statements equating American treatment of suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay with the behavior of the evil regimes of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Pol Pot »
June 18, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

Signing off for a week

I’ll be on vacation in New England for a week and won’t be posting. I’m very much looking forward to a week in which the only arguments I have to make will be about where to eat dinner. »
June 18, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

A success, but is it enough?

Fox News reports on the successful offensive launched by our military against terrorists in an area of Iraq near the Syrian border. So far, at least 50 terrorists have been killed and about twice that many captured. Iraqi soldiers are participating alongside our forces. In the past, says Fox, they did not participate in similar efforts in this region. The purpose of the attack is to stanch the flow of »
June 18, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

“Don’t you think that there’s an enormous difference?”

You may have seen this at Instapundit or elsewhere, but I don’t want any of our readers to miss it. Pavel Litvinov, a former prisoner of conscience in the Soviet Union, reports the following in the Washington Post: Several days ago I received a telephone call from an old friend who is a longtime Amnesty International staffer. He asked me whether I, as a former Soviet “prisoner of conscience” adopted »
June 18, 2005 — John Hinderaker

Gov. Bush Wants Schiavo Investigation

This strikes me as a poor idea: An investigation into the circumstances surrounding Terri Schiavo’s collapse 15 years ago is necessary “so that there can be closure,” Gov. Jeb Bush said Friday. Bush said that although the autopsy report “clarifies many questions surrounding the case, it leaves some unanswered.” Those include the cause of Terri Schiavo’s original injuries and a discrepancy in her husband’s account of exactly what time she »
June 18, 2005 — John Hinderaker

Now That Was Brutal!

Reader Charles Kindt reminisces about his days as a pilot during the Vietnam war: Back in mid 1967, whilst enjoying a lovely stay at an Air Force Survival School at Fairchild Air Force Base, outside of Spokane, Washington, many of us were treated to “torture music” as part of our delightful stay. We were not even terrorists, but just a bunch of Vietnam bound flyers and crew, learning the oh, »
June 18, 2005 — Scott Johnson

This one’s for Doug Jeffrey

When I visited Hillsdale College for its Spring Convocation in April, I had a ball at dinner with Imprimis editor Doug Jeffrey, his gracious wife Terry, and Hillsdale Professor Mickey Craig of No Left Turns. Both Doug and I are fans of singer/songwriter John Prine. We talked about Prine’s then upcoming show in Ann Arbor, which Doug was planning on attending. Today’s Washington Post has an excellent, long profile of »
June 18, 2005 — John Hinderaker

Love Story

In our digressions from politics, we’ve occasionally written about art, as in this post about Raphael. Raphael is in the news again, as scholars claim to have uncovered details of his secret love affair with the daughter of a baker. If, like me, you think that the Renaissance artists were among the most interesting people in world history, you may enjoy the story. The woman in question, who apparently entered »
June 18, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Tunes, tools, knaves and fools

Yesterday’s Chicago Tribune carried the terrific column by John Kass: “On serious note, Gitmo tactics far from torture.” The column followed up on Kass’s Thursday column: “Guantanamo is no place for a pop princess.” In the earlier column Kass had some fun with the use of the music of Christina Aguilera to induce cooperation from Guantanamo detainees. Kass thought that Aguilera’s music was insufficiently atrocious and offered his own suggestion. »
June 18, 2005 — Scott Johnson

When I’m 63

As an addled teenager, I studied political philosophy at the feet of John Lennon. But the team of Lennon/McCartney — as singers, songwriters, and instinctive harmonists — was the organic entity that made the Beatles. We celebrate Paul McCartney’s birthday; today he turns 63. Bring to mind any one of his tough, beautiful, moving songs — “Things We Said Today,” “We Can Work It Out,” “What You’re Doing,” “I’m Looking »
June 17, 2005 — John Hinderaker

Durbin Feels the Heat

Dick Durbin has posted a sort-of apology on his web site; here it is: »
June 17, 2005 — John Hinderaker

“Blalock’s Beauty College Has Got Your Back”

I saw this story on television last night, then forgot about it until it showed up on InstaPundit tonight. This is part of Glenn’s wonderful “pack, not a herd” series. A masked gunman tried to hold up a beauty school in Louisiana and lived to regret it: [Beauty school employee Dianne] Mitchell tripped the robber as he tried to leave and cried aloud “get that sucker” as the group of »