Monthly Archives: December 2007

A Year of Lunacy, In Review

Those who have listened to our radio show know that one of its popular features is our “Loon of the Week” award. We’ll be on as usual from 11 to 1 central (12 to 2 eastern), and during our first hour, we’ll review the loons of 2007, culminating in the award of our Loon of the Year prize for 2007. There were 46 Loons of the Week this year. My »

Why America’s in the Gulf

Investor’s Business Daily summarizes the evidence counseling against underestimating Tehran and Moscow. The IBD editorial is a good companion to Walter Russell Mead’s important Wall Street Journal column “Why America’s in the Gulf” (subscribers only). Mead’s column concludes: Today the U.S. is building a coalition against Iran’s drive for power in the Gulf. Israel, a country which has its own reasons for opposing Iran, remains an important component in the »

Listening to Mr. Islam

Buried in Bill Gertz’s Inside the Ring yesterday was the following item: Pro-Muslim officials at the Pentagon are putting political pressure on one of the U.S. military’s most important specialists on Islamist extremism, according to defense officials. Stephen Coughlin, a specialist on Islamic law on the Joint Staff, met recently with Hasham Islam, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon R. England’s close aide. The officials said Mr. Islam, a Muslim who is »

Romney’s point, part 2

In “Romney’s point,” Paul Mirengoff noted the support for John McCain by liberal editorial boards in New Hampshire and Boston, while adding a correction that the liberal Concord Monitor had not expressly endorsed Senator McCain. Making its support for McCain express, however, the Monitor endorses Senator McCain today. According to the Monitor, McCain is “Republicans’ best choice.” The Monitor writes: McCain’s willingness to break with his party on issues like »

Liberal Fascism

If that phrase seems counterintuitive, you haven’t been paying attention, as Glenn Reynolds says. There are two kinds of socialism: national socialism, i.e., fascism, and Marxian socialism, i.e., communism. You can draw distinctions between the two, but it’s pretty pointless, like pointing out the differences between the Crips and the Bloods. In today’s USA, those who want to impose their preferences on you are generally on what we call the »

Not Just Unhelpful: Incompetent

Today, Pakistan’s government released a transcript of what it said was an intercepted call from an al Qaeda leader that showed that Benazir Bhutto’s murder was carried out by terrorists. That seems likely, as Islamic terrorists have tried to assassinate President Musharraf and other Pakistani politicians on a number of occasions. Further, on the same day as the attack on Bhutto, gunmen opened fire on a rally for rival politician »

Huckabee’s Bad Week Continues

Mike Huckabee is learning how it feels when people actually pay attention to what you’re saying. He followed up his first bloopers on Afghanistan, which Paul noted yesterday–“apologizing” for Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, and stating that martial law was still in effect–with yet another, telling MSNBC: We have seen what happen in the Musharraf government, he has told us he does not have enough control of those eastern borders near Afghanistan »

Hillary on the Hot Seat

AOL News has inaugurated a new feature called “Hot Seat” in conjunction with a number of bloggers, including us. The Hot Seat is a daily poll that takes off from a blog post. Today’s Hot Seat poll comes from Scott’s post of earlier this morning, featuring a cartoon by Michael Ramirez, on Hillary Clinton’s lack of national security experience. Here is today’s poll: This content requires the most recent version »

The leading “corrupt” politicians of the year

The organization Judicial Watch has announced its list of the »

Predictions 2008

Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Lopez, and Mark Hemingway make some funny contributions to NRO’s Predictions 2008 Symposium. But Victor Davis Hanson places first in humor with credit for playing against type: We will learn from the fading Hillary campaign that Sen. Obama actually had a fourth name »

An unappealing appeal

The Israeli left dominates Israel’s media in worse fashion than the left dominates the American media because of the relative paucity of media outlets and other counterweights in Israel. And the Israeli left is at least as sick as the American left. Thus the request by Haaretz editor David Landau to Secretary Rice that the United States “rape” Israel in order to bring peace, reported by Jewish Week and denied, »

Who’s leaking to whom?

AEI resident scholar and Middle East Quarterly editor Michael Rubin points out that this Washington Post story by Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler is so thinly sourced that a careful reader can probably deduce who is leaking to whom: United States Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad to the Post, and Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to Clinton-era NSC official Bruce Riedel at Brookings. To comment on this »

This won’t hurt a bit

Michael Ramirez is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for Investor’s Business Daily and former Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow. Below is yesterday’s cartoon. Apart from the conception of the cartoon, I love how recognizable the gentleman to the right is despite the surgical mask. The caption reads: “Don’t worry, I have experience. I’m not a surgeon, but I was married to one for eight years.” The cartoon appears to have been »

Harper’s Libels the U.S. Army With An Anonymous Smear

We’ve covered the story of Bilal Hussein, an Iraqi stringer for the Associated Press who was on cozy terms with terrorists, most recently here. Hussein was arrested in the company of terrorists and has now been charged with giving material support to terrorist groups. An investigating judge in Baghdad has the case and will decide whether there are sufficient grounds for prosecution. If so, he will refer the case to »

Our best remaining option in Pakistan

While Mike Huckabee has disassociated himself from the view he initially (and, it seems, inadvertently) expressed »

Why Bush and Rice should stay home

I met Dan Diker on our first evening in Israel this past summer. He is an officer of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs headed by Dore Gold. Dan is a foreign and defense policy analyst for the center. He has just filed this exclusive dispatch with us: Today »

Mike Huckabee on the Bhutto assassination

According to this report from CBS News, Mike Huckabee reacted to the assassination of Benazir Bhutto by expressing »