Monthly Archives: November 2009

November 17, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Shadows, take 2

Twenty years after Tony Rice called on resophonic guitar virtuoso Jerry Douglas and friends to record Gordon Lightfoot’s “Shadows” with him, bluegrass heartthrob Alison Krauss decided to record this magnificent song as well. She assembled her Union Station bandmates — Dan Tyminski, Ron Block, Barry Bales and Douglas — to back her on it. Rice must have had something to do with inspiring her to record the song. Paying tribute »
November 17, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Blind Pig Finds Acorn

Tom Friedman wrote something that I more or less agree with today, about the Israel/Palestinian “peace process”: It is time for a radically new approach. And I mean radical. I mean something no U.S. administration has ever dared to do: Take down our “Peace-Processing-Is-Us” sign and just go home. … Let’s just get out of the picture. Let all these leaders stand in front of their own people and tell »
November 17, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Live From New York, It’s Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? Possibly Not

Eric Holder is scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee tomorrow, and the fur may fly. Presumably he will be questioned about both the Fort Hood massacre and his decision to bring KSM and others to New York for criminal trials. Byron York makes the interesting point that the Senate could still reverse the administration’s decision to bring terrorists to the U.S. for trial: On the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed »
November 17, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Shadows

Today is Gordon LIghtfoot’s birthday. The guy is a wonderful songwriter, an old-fashioned carouser who is also an incurable romantic, and a pensive kind of man’s man. I first saw him perform live in 1970 at Dartmouth’s Spaulding Auditorium in the Hopkins Center for the Arts just after he had jumped to Warner Brother from United Artists and released Sit Down, Young Stranger (the album was later renamed If You »
November 17, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Trying KSM: Why? part 3

No reason of law or justice, history or tradition, supports the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al. in federal court. Indeed, as Thomas Sowell observes, it is something of an obscenity. The cost of cloaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al. with the constitutional protections afforded American citizens comes at a steep price. John Yoo spelled it out in painful detail in the Wall Street Journal yesterday: “Trying KSM in »
November 16, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Barack Obama’s America-effacing presidency

Yesterday, John was kind enough to link to, and quote from, my Examiner column called “Why Does He Hate Us?” Here, with your indulgence, is the whole thing. On the morning after the deadliest instance of Islamist terrorism in the United States since 9/11, President Obama warned the American public not to “jump to conclusions” about the motives that impelled Nidal Hasan’s rampage of mass murder at Fort Hood. By »
November 16, 2009 — John Hinderaker

More Liberal Violence

We are beginning to see way too many echoes of the 1930s, as national socialist and Marxian socialist thugs try to drive competing political views off the streets. The worst offenders so far have been the Service Employees’ International Union, which has repeatedly sent its members out into the streets to beat up anyone who isn’t toeing the Obama line on issues like socialized medicine. Most recently it’s International ANSWER, »
November 16, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Using Obama — the Chinese take their turn

With Russia playing President Obama like a fiddle, it’s natural that China would want to get in on the act. Thus, it’s no suprise that the Chinese regime invited Obama to Beijing. Nor is it any suprise that Obama accepted the invitation. Gordon Chang, in the Weekly Standard, considers the trip in the context of our relationship with China. The context, as Chang sees it, is this: [China] is the »
November 16, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

“Going Rogue” — “a good account”

According to the Washington Post “multiple former McCain [campaign] officials” are disputing, and indeed trashing, Sarah Palin’s account of the campaign, as presented in her new book, Going Rogue, which is already a best-seller. Nearly all of these former campaign officials have chosen to remain anonymous. But according to USA Today, one high-level campaign official has gone on the record to call Palin’s book “a good account.” That official is »
November 16, 2009 — Scott Johnson

The good news from Minnesota

Our friends at the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota have been scouring Recovery.gov for the good news from the Land of 10,000 and eight congressional districts. They report: MINNEAPOLIS, MN–You’d never know it without going online to the new and improved federal government stimulus tracking website, but the economy and jobs picture is really picking up in Minnesota’s 57th congressional district. There in plain sight, it states that 35 jobs have »
November 16, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

The “No Drama Obama” Theme

As Barack Obama’s presidency stumbles through its first year, some of his supporters are wondering what ever happened to the “No Drama Obama” of those heady days of the campaign. For example, Steve Clemons, unhappy about the demise of ultra-liberal White House Counsel Greg Craig, writes that Craig’s fall and the leaks associated with it stand in sharp contrast to the internal vow of key stakeholders in Barack Obama’s campaign, »
November 16, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Paul Rahe: The Great Awakening, part 2

Hillsdale College Professor Paul Rahe writes: Back in early September, I attended the annual meeting of the American Political Science Convention, which was held — for the first time — outside the United States in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. One of the panels I attended had as its focus the first eight months of the Obama administration and that administration’s prospects. Those on this particular panel were for the most part »
November 15, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Nature abhors a vacuum

Bill Clinton is in Jerusalem trying to clean up behind President Obama and Hillary, whose strident anti-settlement policy has blown up in their face. Clinton’s comments are significant only because they show what a shambles the administration’s Middle East policy has become. Obama and his Secretary of State have managed to alienate the Israeli government by virtue of their initial hard line on settlements, and to place the leader of »
November 15, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

America’s first “pacific” president?

President Obama declared in Tokyo that he is “America’s first Pacific president.” He thus displayed, simultaneously, his Obama-centric view of the world and his ignorance of American history and geography. Asian countries have become understandably nervous about the Obama admnistration’s policy of “strategic reassurance,” whereby the U.S. tries to convince the Chinese that it has no intention of containing their rising power, a pledge Obama reiterated in his Tokyo speech. »
November 15, 2009 — John Hinderaker

“Real” Journalism

Anita Dunn, architect of the administration’s “Fox isn’t a real news network” strategy, has singled out one person who does “amazing…journalism.” Who is that? Comedian Jon Stewart. Of course, to be fair to Ms. Dunn, she may have inferred from the fact that Stewart isn’t funny that he was trying to be a serious journalist. »
November 15, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Why Does He Hate Us?

Don’t miss Paul’s Sunday column in the Examiner on the roots of President Obama’s anti-Americanism. It must be an odd thing to be President of a country that you think has an evil history. In the area of foreign and national security policy, however, Obama can operate largely unchecked. And a weak, guilt-ridden policy toward our foreign adversaries is almost certain to produce grave consequences. To some extent, we have »
November 15, 2009 — Scott Johnson

Trying KSM: Why? part 2

Speaking at a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania last year during the campaign, Barack Obama addressed the Supreme Court’s Boumediene decision granting Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their confinement through habeas corpus proceedings in federal court. Obama asserted that the “principle of habeas corpus, that a state can’t just hold you for any reason without charging you and without giving you any kind of due process — that’s the »