...to all of our readers. As always, we have much to be thankful for, even though this season has been a tough one in some respects.
This year we're having an organic, free-range turkey, certified never-penned and never-caged. We'll see if we can tell the difference.
[...]
Bruce Cole is the president of the American Revolution Center at Valley Forge, the first museum and education center dedicated to teaching the story of the American Revolution. He is also the art historian who served as the pre-Obama worship chairman of the National Endowment for [...]
In view of his study of Republics Ancient and Modern, Professor Paul Rahe is one of the academy's foremost authorities on the history of republics. Although his recent work on soft despotism is not far from his Thanksgiving reflections this year, so also is his older work on republics:
On [...]
The Federal Reserve has delivered a rather bleak forecast for the U.S. economy, not just in the short-term, but in the medium-term as well. The Fed is predicting that the unemployment rate will be in just below 10 percent at this time next year and in the 6.8 [...]
That's the headline in the St. Louis Post Dispatch. The reference is to the attack on Kenneth Gladney by thugs from the SEIU, although if you didn't already know that, I'm not sure you could glean it from the Post-Dispatch's account. One of those charged is a Post-Dispatch reporter [...]
Abe Pollin, owner of the Washington Wizards and former owner of the Washington Capitals, died yesterday at age 85. Pollin brought basketball and hockey to Washington, DC. He also built two arenas with his own money, the Capital Center in the 1970s and the MCI (now Verizon) Center in the [...]
The lead story in today's Washington Post is called "Nuclear Power Regains Support." Unfortunately, though, the story's focus is not on the U.S. The dateline is London, as the Post chronicles how the "commander" of a group of Greenpeace activists who stormed a nuclear plant in Britain a [...]
A few years ago, we wrote a series of pieces about Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WVa) who in 2006 became the target of ethics inquiries. The inquiries stemmed from the fact that between 2000 and 2004, Mollohan's net assets increased from $562,000 to at least $6.3 million. During that [...]
...tomorrow morning at 8:05 eastern, when I'll be on. We'll talk about the recent indictments in connection with the Minnesota/Somalia pipeline, the East Anglia climate email scandal, and canned cranberry sauce. All I can say is, I hope they hold me over for two segments! There are lots of places [...]
Current poll data are brutal for the Democrats. In the Rasmussen survey, President Obama's approval index, the difference between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of his performance, has hit a record low of -15. Overall, voters disapprove of Obama by 54-45%. That's no doubt in part because [...]
President Obama said at a news conference today that he will "finish the job" in Afghanistan:
After eight years, some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the [...]I spent a long weekend at Dartmouth visiting my daughter Deborah. On Saturday night she played in the fall concert of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra. The concert featured Shostakovich's deeply disturbing Cello Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. It was a terrific concert, conducted with style by [...]
Oral argument is set for Dec. 4, 2009, at 9:00 a.m., on the DartmouthTrustees' motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit filed by several Dartmouth alumni against the College for violating its 1891 Agreement with Dartmouth's Assocation of Alumni. The Agreement mandated parity on the Board between Charter' [...]
We've written about the leaked emails and other documents from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Center here, here and here. Another intensely interesting email thread, which doesn't seem to have gotten much notice, relates to the fact that the last decade, contrary to the alarmists' [...]
The email correspondence of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) continues to provide valuable insight into its efforts to "mainstream" the pro-mullah line. Jennifer Rubin has posted correspondence between the NAIC and Karim Sadjadpour (of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and Afshin Molavi (of the [...]
Last night, I wrote about the hand-wringing that has resulted from France cheating its way into the World Cup via a blatant handball. I suggested that this reaction would not occur under comparable circumstances in American sports.
Today comes news that the players for Wigan in the English [...]
That's what today's Rasmussen survey says. Rasmussen finds that likely voters oppose the Democrats' health care "reform" plans by a record margin, 56%-38%. It will be interesting to see whether these numbers remain stable or whether, perhaps, today's result is an outlier. One thing we know for sure: the' [...]
In an article titled "Obama's Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage," Der Spiegel sums up President Obama's Asian trip as a complete failure:
Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. [...]
Last week, France qualified for the World Cup with a goal, scored in overtime, via a clearly intentional handball by French super-star Thierry Henry. The reaction to that goal fascinates me because it is quite unlike what I think the reaction would be to a comparable instance of cheating in [...]
One unfortunate byproduct of President Obama's foolish attempt to make his mark on the Middle East by pressuring Israel to abandon all settlement construction is this: Obama's failure appears to have brought French President Sarkozy back onto the stage. Anxious to make his mark in international relations, and probably hoping [...]
Saturday Night Live isn't the only unusual source of criticism ot President Obama's trip to China. Max Boot notes that some Democrats were less than impressed. For example, Liz Economy of the Council on Foreign Relations stated:
It was, optically, one of the worst U.S. presidential visits' [...]It could be: Brett Favre's return from his second retirement to quarterback the Minnesota Vikings. Of course, that may be a parochial view. But it's been a long time since I was much of a pro football fan, and I've never really been a Vikings fan even though I live' [...]
...I dunno, maybe Jon Stewart comes next. I don't accept the proposition that liberal comedians who aren't funny are somehow arbiters of popular culture, let alone public policy. Still, the fact that Obama's actual policies (not his failure to be a liberal messiah) were lampooned in this vulgar, sometimes-funny skit' [...]
Barack Obama's narcissism has frequently been commented upon, but Glenn Reynolds makes an interesting and potentially important observation:
I think Obama's "charisma" was based on voter narcissism -- people excited not just about electing a black President, but about themselves, voting for a black President. Now that's over, and they're' [...]
Venezuela is sponsoring an international conference of socialist parties in Caracas, which it pretentiously labels the Fifth International. Socialists from 40 countries, representing 50 political parties, are attending. On Friday, Hugo Chavez addressed the conclave. He praised Carlos the Jackal as a hero, describing him as "one of the" [...]
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his confederates are gearing up for a media spectacle:
A lawyer for one of five men facing trial for the Sept. 11 attacks says the men plan to plead not guilty and use the trial to express their political views. Attorney Scott Fenstermaker says his client [...]
Dexter Filkins reports from Afghanistan that "American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban." Filkins notes that "the plan echoes a" [...]
Mary Landrieu announced today that she will vote for cloture on the Democrats' government medicine bill tonight. The Democrats now have 60 votes and will be able to pass their version of government medicine.
UPDATE: Well, I suppose we shouldn't jump the gun. The Democrats will need 60 votes once [...]
One of the hacked East Anglia emails that has gotten considerable play on the web indicates that several alarmist scientists deleted emails that were subject to a Freedom of Information Act request rather than produce them. That's true; here is the context.
On May 27, 2008, David Palmer, who is in [...]
A fascinating, hot-off-the-presses story emerges from the emails that were hacked yesterday from the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre. It is one of many exchanges that shed light on the priority that the global warming alarmists give to politics and career advancement over science.
The story began [...]
We've noted the Obama administration's penchant for bullying America's allies and kowtowing to its adversaries. This Washington Post story presents another case-in-point -- our treatment of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. As Afghan presidents go, Karzai makes a good mayor of Kabul (in a bad year). Nonetheless, right now' [...]
The biggest news story of the day is one that has barely begun to break and will continue to reverberate for months or years to come. Someone hacked into a computer at the University of East Anglia's Hadley Climatic Research Centre, one of the main centers of anthropogenic global warming' [...]
Even congressional Democrats are disgusted with the Obama administration's phony accounting of what the stimulus plan supposedly is accomplishing. Earlier this week, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey lambasted the government's flawed data purporting to show that $160 billion in stimulus spending has created or saved at least 640,000 jobs. [...]
There's a stock column appearing in left-liberal MSM outlets all over the country, The author varies, but the main point is the same: Republican Senators are guilty of "hypocrisy" for attempting to filibuster one of President Obama's judicial nominees after having criticized Democrats for filibustering a host of President Bush's' [...]
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner appeared before the Joint Economic Committee today. One striking feature of Geithner's testimony was how partisan it was. In keeping with the Obama administration's mantra, he repeatedly tried to cast blame on the Bush administration while failing to acknowledge that when the financial crisis developed, he [...]
We noted last night that under the Obama administration's law-enforcement approach to terrorism, if we capture Osama bin Laden the first things we'll have to do are read him his rights and get him a free lawyer. When Lindsay Graham pointed this out to Eric Holder in yesterday's Senate' [...]
Responding to Sen. Lindsey Graham's concern that under administration policy we might have to "Mirandize" Osama bin Laden, Sen. Patrick Leahy claims that "If the U.S. captures bin Laden, there's no need to interrogate him." Leahy explained that we already "have enough on" bin Laden.
Conservatives like to [...]
I'm currently finishing the last volume of Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time. One of the book's themes is the decline and fall of Kenneth Widmerpool, a friend (sort of) of the narrator who is introduced in the first pages of the first volume, some forty years' [...]
Some of us went to law school hoping we might one day participate in the "trial of the century." That trial would command universal attention, involve the central issue of the epoch, and result not only in a just verdict but also a vindication of our way of life.
There may [...]
Lindsay Graham frequently drives us crazy, but it can't be denied that he has his moments. In today's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, he took Eric Holder to the woodshed:
Graham is right, of course. Under the Obama administration's policies, if we capture Osama bin Laden tomorrow, the first thing we will' [...]
The 32 teams that will compete in the 2010 World Cup finals in South Africa have now been determined. They are:
Italy
Germany
Holland
Spain
Denmark
Switzerland
England
Slovakia
Serbia
Portugal
Greece -- upset winners over Ukraine in today's play-in match in Donetsk
Slovenia -- shock winners over Russia; the' [...]
The Phillips Foundation is now accepting applications for the 2010 Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program. Print and online journalists with less than 10 years of professional experience are eligible. The Foundation created this program to provide fellowships for projects by journalists who share its mission to [...]
In his press conference this past Friday and in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee today, Attorney General Holder has explained his decision to refer KSM and his 9/11 co-conspirators to trial based on a "protocol" released in July.
What protocol? I don't recall reading anything about' [...]
Attorney General Holder is testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning. We have obtained a copy of Holder's opening statement from the Justice Department. On the question why Holder has decided to bring KSM et al. up on criminal charges in federal court in New York, Holder made these' [...]
The Rasmussen survey finds that Republican candidates continue to enjoy a six-point lead over Democrats in the generic Congressional preference poll. This survey offers more evidence that independent voters are decisively turning away from the Democrats, as independents favor the generic Republican candidate by a rather shocking 41 to [...]
Today is the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Johnny Mercer. With the publication of The Complete Lyrics of Johnny Mercer last month, Mercer's place in the pantheon of artists responsible for the great American songbook seems more secure than ever.
Among the more than 1,000 songs for which Mercer' [...]
The Washington Post has a front-page story today about Sen. Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat and her plight as a "centrist in [the] health care debate." According to Post reporter Shailagh Murray, if Lincoln "does not embrace the party line on the health issue, she could face a" [...]
Our friend Tom Cotton, who served in Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009, was in Washington earlier this month with Vets for Freedom. He visited folks in Congress and the White House seeking support for Gen. McChrystal's request for 40,000 to 60,000 more troops for Afghanistan. Tom found that the thinking' [...]
On our radio show last Saturday, we interviewed Andy McCarthy on the Obama administration's decision to try five top terrorists, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in federal court in New York for their "crimes," i.e., making war against the United States. It's a great interview, I think, and as high-level a [...]
Al Gore has made an enormous amount of money by pretending to know something about science. He is by no means the first such charlatan, but he must be one of the most successful. A week or two ago, when we interviewed National Review's John Derbyshire on our radio show, [...]
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 [...]
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' [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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' [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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' [...]
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' [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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' [...]
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" [...]
Manchester United used to have a Norwegian striker named Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Because of his youthful looks and propensity for scoring late, decisive goals (such as the last minute winner in the 1999 European Championship match), Solskjaer was known as the "baby-faced assassin."
As Solskjaer's career was winding down, [...]
Bill Clinton says that a week does not go by that he doesn't think of former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and miss him terribly. Do you believe that? I don't.
Cllinton also says he often thinks that if Rabin had not been killed, "we would have had peace" [...]
During a party scene in the movie "Monkey Business," Groucho Marx spots a waiter carrying a drink, but the waiter tells him the drink is for the guest of honor. Groucho pulls out a dollar bill and says to the waiter: "See this?" The waiter responds by giving Groucho the [...]
The New York Times reviews Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, pretty much as you would expect. It's not really worth reading, as the Times' enmity toward Palin is so extreme: on a much smaller scale, it's sort of like reading what Jefferson Davis thought of Abraham Lincoln. But this [...]
Barack Obama: you can dress him up, but you can't take him out. Every time he goes abroad, he embarrasses himself and sells out his country.
In Japan today, Obama gave a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama. He was asked this question, for which he was unaccountably unprepared:
And to' [...]
We'll be on the radio as usual from 11 to 1 central on AM 1280 the Patriot. At noon central (1 eastern) we'll be joined by Andy McCarthy, who led the successful criminal prosecution of the blind sheikh and others who tried to blow up the World Trade Center in [...]
One of many puzzling aspects of the Obama administration's decision to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others in federal court is the fact that other terrorists will be tried by military tribunals. For example, Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, who led the attack on the USS Cole, will be tried and [...]
We criticized Barack Obama when he bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia. Americans do not bow to royalty. When the royal is the ruling tyrant of a despotic regime, the wrong is compounded. Obama's bowing to the King was deeply offensive.
When the story emerged from the shadows' [...]
The Associated Press got an advance copy of Sarah Palin's book, Going Rogue, and assigned eleven reporters, apparently, to try to find errors in it. The eleven collaborated on an article titled "FACT CHECK: Palin's book goes rogue on some facts." In fact, though, the AP's catalogue of alleged [...]
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey is one of the many distinguished lawyers participating at the Federal Society's annual national lawyers conference here in Washington this week. As luck would have it, he was on the program for a speech this afternoon, not long after the Obama administration announced its decision [...]
The indispenable Eli Lake has an important story in the Washington Times about the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) and its leader Trita Parsi. Lake's piece demonstrates that NIAC may well be lobbying for policies favorable to the Iranian government, in violation of federal law.
Lake's evidence consists [...]
Signs of the long-dreaded backlash against Muslim Americans have begun to appear, despite the efforts of the liberal media to portray Nidal Malik Hasan as the victim of his own excessive empathy. The Danville Express reports:
Police arrested 22-year-old Abdul Walid Hamid of Hayward on the evening of Wednesday, Nov. [...]
Thinking along the same lines we were, the Wall Street Journal published chief Reagan speechwriter Tony Dolan's account of Reagan's "tear down this wall" speech in connection with the twentieth anniversary celebration of the fall of the Wall in Berlin on Monday. We posted Peter Robinson's account of [...]
Later this morning, Eric Holder will announce that five top terrorists, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, will be prosecuted and tried in federal court in New York City. This is, of course, the logical consequence of treating terrorist attacks as crimes rather than as asymmetrical warfare.
The potential for these trials [...]
A plurality of likely voters, 45 percent, now consider President Obama's handling of the economy to be "poor," Scott Rasmussen finds. That includes 52 percent of men; most notably, independents (so far, at least) are breaking decisively against the President's economic policies.
I think we should sponsor a pool [...]
The mother of a dead soldier tells President Obama to make up his mind about Afghanistan. Via Drudge.
[...]Sometimes it seems that the Twin Cities metropolitan area is a central front in the struggle against the phenomenon renamed "militant extremism" in the Age of Obama. Minneapolis seems to have proved a fertile source of funds for "militant extremists" who have set up shop in Jordan, Lebanon and [...]
On Tuesday the precocious James Kirchick participated in a workshop discussion with the venerable leftist madman Joe Klein, now of Time, on the final day of the Jewish Federations of North America's General Assembly. Kirchick and Klein were among four panelists in a program devoted to "The Pro-Israel Lobby'" [...]
We and others have written a lot about the obfuscation surrounding Nidal Malik Hasan's massacre at Fort Hood. The New York Times chimes in with an article that could have been written by a parodist, titled "Complications Grow for Muslims Serving in U.S. Military." The source of those "complications" [...]
Today is Veterans' Day, and, as we noted here, it is the occasion for the launching of the Eleven-Eleven Campaign. The Eleven-Eleven campaign is sponsored by Beyond Tribute, on behalf of a group of veterans' organizations that includes American Gold Star Mothers, the Wounded Warriors Project, the VFW [...]
The Associated Press is reporting that President Obama "does not plan to accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented by his national security team, pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government." It has been obvious [...]
Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal have noted that President Obama's policy towards China is called "strategic reassurance." The policy apparently consists of making gestures and concessions designed to convince the Chinese that the U.S. is an innocuous player on the global stage, or at least in the massive [...]
How deep does the culture of political correctness run in the military and the service academies? We're getting some idea in the case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan. The Hasan story has rightly overwhelmed the news. Evidence of the red flags preceding his murder spree continues to accumulate and enrage.' [...]
Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute does a good job of explaining why a government takeover of health care, as envisioned by the bill the House recently passed, will destroy the federal budget:
[...]We've written with some frequency about President Obama's misguided policy towards Russia, which Robert Kagan and Dan Blumenthal aptly describe as "trying to accommodate Moscow's sense of global entitlement." In practice, as Kagan and Blumenthal point out, this has meant "ignoring the continued presence of Russian forces on'" [...]
How are voters reacting to the Democrats' ramming Pelosicare through the House? It may be a coincidence, but in the Rasmussen survey the Republicans have jumped out to a six-point lead on the generic Congressional preference poll. It will be interesting to see whether this proves to be a' [...]
The Washington Post hits a new low in foolish, partisan reporting in this front-page story about Dede Scozzafava and the race in New York-23. Written by Jason Horowitz, with all the finesse of a third-tier lefty blogger, the piece bears the nuanced title: "'Scozzafava' Turns Into Epithet: It's'" [...]
