Monthly Archives: July 2005

July 24, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

From the Roberts front

The Roberts nomination remains Topic A, but it’s a more quiet front than one might have expected. Evan Thomas and Stuart Taylor have a lengthy piece in Newsweek suggesting that Roberts will be a “case-by-case” Justice in the Anthony Kennedy mode. Though not an ideologue, I don’t think Roberts will be anywhere near that unmoored. This transcript from the PBS Newshour in 1997 is another small piece of evidence in »
July 24, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

Washing their hands and averting their eyes

I fear that this piece by Osama Saeed, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain, may represent mainstream British Muslim thinking about the subway bombings. Saeed disagrees with Tony Blair that the Muslim community needs to do more to combat terrorism. He argues, instead, that Blair needs to do more, by which he means appease radical Islam. Saeed suggests that Islamic terrorism must be a symptom of a bad »
July 24, 2005 — John Hinderaker

Checking In

I’ve been out of commission for a few days due to a family medical emergency. We’re currently in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I went to a coffee shop with a wireless connection to advise Paul and Scott of my whereabouts and put up a link to the op-ed that Ron Eibensteiner and I have in the Star Tribune this morning, and found that Scott had already done it. Thanks. I’ll »
July 24, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

Souteronomy

That’s the title of an email I received from our good friend Dafydd ab Hugh, who questions whether David Souter “grew in office” or was always a liberal and simply “passed” as a conservative on John Sununu’s say-so. Here’s what Dafydd wrote: I’ve been ruminating a lot about David Souter. The myth is that he was thought to be a staunch conservative, but then he “grew in office” once appointed »
July 24, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Hugh Hewitt’s new home

Our friend Hugh Hewitt has opened up shop in a handsome new cyberhome that puts his books prominently on display, as befits the philosopher king of the blogosphere. Please check out his new site and let him know that he did the right thing ([email protected]). »
July 24, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Remembering the Schumers of yore

A reader wonders how frequently the MSM will point out that Supreme Court confirmation hearings began as a way for Southern Democrats to impede progress on civil rights, just as the filibuster was a tool for the same Southern Democrats to do the same thing. He’s betting it won’t come up too often; I’m betting “won’t come up too often” understates the matter. He points us to this History News »
July 24, 2005 — Scott Johnson

To be young, gifted and Republican

Meg Kreikemeier writes: Shortly after the election I dug through all sorts of statistics to discredit Lawrence O’Donnell’s claims that the red states were “welfare states.” After Howard Dean claimed that Republicans haven’t worked an honest day in their lives, I used some of those statistics to write a piece for the Chicago Tribune which has finally been published today. In it I quote Paul Mirengoff from a post he »
July 24, 2005 — Scott Johnson

McKinney’s tinfoil gavel

The Democratic Party disgraces itself with the place of honor accorded Al Sharpton and other notorious anti-Semites. Last year the Seattle Times published Professor Edward Alexander’s column taking notice: “The Democratic Party’s anti-Semitism problem.” Foremost among the figures discussed by Alexander is of course Sharpton. If there is a more vile person in American public life, I don’t know who he is. In June 2004 John Kerry had this to »
July 24, 2005 — Scott Johnson

The case for Minnesota’s governator

In “Winners, losers and collaborators,” I criticized the “heatlh impact fee” on tobacco that Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty successfully advocated to resolve Minnesota’s budget impasse earlier this month. At the bottom of the post John Hinderaker took issue with my criticism and came to the defense of Governor Pawlenty. John let me have the last word in the argument that day. In today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, John teams up with »
July 23, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

Paving the way for Hamas

Caroline Glick in the Jerusalem Post reports on the peaceful protest by Israelis against the expulsion by their government of Jewish settlers from their farms and communities in Gaza and northern Samaria. She writes: These people’s homes will be either destroyed or turned over to the same Palestinian terrorist forces that have been attacking them continuously for the past five years. Their hothouses and livestock are set to be turned »
July 23, 2005 — Scott Johnson

The reality gap

Avram Shacham writes: After reading all the praise for Secretary Rice in yesterday’s WSJ, isn’t it sad to see the reality gap between Rice’s praise for Abbas and Abbas’ own Fatah suicide bomber being caught at the same time on the way to kill more Jews in Tel Aviv? Also note how sad that the terrorist’s handler is a Palestinian, who implemented the “Right of Return” by marrying an Israel »
July 23, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Miss Universe…the prequel

In “Miss Universe…the sequel,” we reported that the gorgeous Canadian Miss Universe had been banned from making commericial appearances with her official sash in Toronto. The city relied on an ordinance that prohibits anything that might be “degrading to men or women through sexual stereotyping.” Municipal authorities have since relented and apologized. Now Professor Scott Moffat of Wayne State University reminds us: In light of Toronto banning Miss Universe from »
July 23, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

Maybe next time

Robert Novak speculates about what was up with the Edith Clement “boomlet” last Tuesday. According to Novak: Mentioning the little-known Judge Edith Brown Clement as front-runner for the Supreme Court vacancy was not a ploy to obscure the eventual selection of Judge John Roberts. She was the real runner-up, after evoking mixed reviews from conservatives. I’m reasonably certain that the White House did present Clement’s name to certain conservatives on »
July 23, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Bad news/good news

Tomorrow’s New York Times Book Review carries Judge Richard Posner’s long, interesting essay on “why both left and right can plausibly denounce the same media for being biased in favor of the other”: “Bad news.” Judge Posner attributes a decisive role to the economic considerations that are frequently highlighted in his analysis: The limited consumer interest in the truth is the key to understanding why both left and right can »
July 23, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Prisoners of the Japanese

Tomorrow’s Washington Post Book World carries Robert Asahina’s review of a new book on the Amerian, British, Australian and other prisoners of war held by the Japanese in the far Pacific during World War II: “At the enemy’s mercy, in Asia…” Asahina writes: “Abu Ghraib” and “Guantanamo” have entered the vernacular as grim reminders of how quickly right yields to might during wartime. But the casual use of words such »
July 23, 2005 — Scott Johnson

Return to “Return to Murderapolis”

Last Monday the Daily Standard posted my column “Return to Murderapolis.” The column touched on themes that I’ve written about (with John) for the past three years — violent crime, racial disparities in crime rates and the correlative disparities in law enforcement outcomes, and the crippling failure of Minneapolis’s liberal leaders to confront these related disparities. I largely avoided reference to crime rates and other numerical measurements of serious crime »
July 22, 2005 — Paul Mirengoff

(Over)thinking about Judge Roberts

Ann Coulter is not the only smart conservative who wonders whether John Roberts is “one of us.” As Scott noted below, Charles Krauthammmer has called Roberts a blank slate. And the astute blogger PoliPundit fears that President Bush has blown the pick. There are two issues here: (1) is Roberts a conservative and (2) if so, what kind (and how solid) of a conservative jurist will he be. The first »