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<% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>This is your link.
Posted 11:20 PM | [Link]
TOOGOOD TOO BAD: [Rod Dreher] Live on CNN tonight, I caught the press conference, if you can call it that, given by Madelyne Toogood, the 26-year-old leading contender for the Joan Crawford Mother of the Year Award. This whole story stinks. The awful woman deserves to be slapped around by the legal system for the walloping she gave her four-year-old the other day, which was caught on video. That said, I think she was right tonight when she wailed that the child, who has been placed in foster care, shouldn't be made to suffer for her mother's sins. The little girl must be traumatized enough by what's already happened; couldn't the authorities have placed her with members of Toogood's extended family? How is the child's interest protected by having to live with total strangers for the time being? Furthermore, why the hell is this a national story?
Posted 11:20 PM | [Link]
THAT DIVINE MR. BLAIR [Andrew Stuttaford]
In a post on Friday, I commented that Britain's Tories were not yet ready to classify Tony Blair as a god. Other Britons may not be so sure. One reader writes quoting a Reuters report: "Children Confuse Prime Minister With God" (Reuters, October 28, 1999), in which Tony Blair was described by a seven-year-old respondent as having "grey long hair, curly with a grey beard, a grey-like dressy thing and he does miracles."
Posted 9:40 PM | [Link]
NO NEED TO READ THIS BOOK [Andrew Stuttaford]
Creepy Eric Hobsbawm, the English historian who spent a lifetime toadying to Communist orthodoxy until formally - if not intellectually - quitting the party in 1986, has just published his autobiography, which is reviewed in today's Financial Times. The reviewer, A.C. Grayling, is not slow to bring the reader's attention to the intellectual and moral sewer in which this 'historian' has chosen to spend his life. Hobsbawm tries to explain this by claiming that he "belonged to the generation tied by an almost unbreakable umbilical cord to the hope of the world revolution." It's not difficult to imagine the tremor of excitement with which that rotten man, still seemingly possessed by dreams of millennial slaughter, wrote down those words. Grayling, fortunately is more skeptical, noting that "the Communist experiment was (and where it continues, remains) a wretched disaster unforgivable on human rights, and no excuse will do." Quite right. The reviewer then goes on to note that, "as Hobsbawm's absorbing book...shows, the desire for peace and justice that motivates every sincere votary of the Left was his own too, and loyalty to that aspect of things deserves praise." Quite wrong.
That wasn't loyalty, it was fanaticism. As for the notion that "every sincere votary of the Left" is motivated by a desire for "peace and justice" , that seems, shall we say, little more than delusional. Turning to Hobsbawm himself, a lifelong entanglement with the totalitarian Left would suggest that the only "peace and justice" he had to offer was the peace of the mass grave and the justice of the show trial.
Posted 9:10 PM | [Link]
WE KNEW IT ALL ALONG [Jonah Goldberg]
Biggest fines ever for campaign finance violations. I particularly like the part which notes that the fines would be bigger except that too many of the corporations Clinton took money from were dummy fronts for Chinese contributions.
Posted 3:33 PM | [Link]
MORE MAIL [Jonah Goldberg]
From a proud mom:
"Appropos of nothing. My 13 year old son was working on a school project yesterday and asked -"Why did the French give us the Statue of Liberty as a gift, and I can't tell the teacher it's because we saved their butts in two World Wars."Sure, his grasp of historical timeline was off, but I must admit I got a little misty. A flying monkey in the making - his birthday is next month, he's getting a gift subscription to NRO on dead tree.
Posted 2:10 PM | [Link]
OH NO! THIS GERMAN DOESN'T LIKE ME [Jonah Goldberg]
From a German reader in regard to yesterday's column:
Actually, dear Jonah, we Germans do not only dislike Americans like you, we even think you are neofascist shitheads.You indeed are one, brainlessly talking about sending others to fight for a very inappropriate goal called the American Way of Life (yourself staying conveniently at home pretending to fight in your own sweet way). Oh, Jonah, please spare us any more of these ways, especially in written form as you are just a very boring, very uninspired lobbyist.
"Hang the Germans!" depicts, although being an incredibly hilarious joke of yours, quite exactly the moral and intellectual ground on which you stand. And there, what a coincidence, you find yourself on the same level with your government idols. This could be a good opportunity for you to see faces of sheer greed, corruption and belligerency outside your own bathroom, but I´m afraid, you would have to take yours first out of those peoples asses.
[Name withheld to protect the self-parodying]
Posted 11:47 AM | [Link]
AND THE NOMINATION GOES TO...: [Rod Dreher] K-Lo naturellement. America needs its own Iron Lady.
Posted 12:03 AM | [Link]
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RICH... [Jonah Goldberg]
Don't you think someone from National Review should run for president?
Posted 5:57 PM | [Link]
AN E-MAIL: [Rich Lowry]
“Dear Mr. Lowry:
The heck with the Minnesota Twins; what about the Kansas City Royals? I don't believe I have ever read a comment by you about the Royals. This willful ignorance by a major, conservative website of a slighted, small-market baseball team is now leading directly to hate crimes such as the shocking incident that took place last night in Comiskey Park.
This is unconscionable! I demand a full frontal apology, an immediate end to the hate that consumes large-market baseball fans and hence unfairly targets small-market baseball teams, and, of course, reparations. Lots of 'em. Just send me a check and I'll end my proposed boycott of the New York Yankees website.
While you're at it, give Jonah a big fat raise.”
Posted 5:09 PM | [Link]
GERMANY Vs. AMERICA [Jonah Goldberg]
Doesn't anybody find it funny that in Germany Iraq is the number one issue, soundly trumping the economy -- even though they'd play a very minor role if they did participate in any invasion. But in the United States, where American troops would lead the battle and America would pay the lion's share in blood and treasure, the Democrats think the war shouldn't trump the economy as a campaign issue?
Posted 5:04 PM | [Link]
SO MAYBE I POSTED THAT GFILE NOTICE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Posted 4:50 PM | [Link]
BY THE WAY I DIDN'T POST THAT GFILE NOTICE [Jonah Goldberg]
Posted 4:49 PM | [Link]
TWO CHEERS FOR DOMES: [Rich Lowry]
I know domes have no character, but what they lack in character, they make up in NOISE: recall the 1995 Yankee-Mariners series in the (blown to smithereens) Kingdom, and ah, the racket and roars of the 1991 Twins-Braves World Series that will be duplicated this year, at least in the play-offs. (Dear Twins fans: I’ve mentioned the Twins, OK? So now you can stop feeling so slighted!)
Posted 4:21 PM | [Link]
SPEAKING OF…: [Rich Lowry]
…Rumsfeld, his condemnation of inspections has been really sweeping. I wish the administration would just say, “We have Iraq’s final offer on the table. It’s doesn’t offer unconditional access, and is built on a lie—that Iraq doesn’t have any chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons programs—so the era of endless cat-and-mouse games has now ended. The only way for Iraq to avert war is for Saddam to relinquish power.”
Posted 4:20 PM | [Link]
A WORRISOME SIGN: [Rich Lowry]
It appears that the negotiations over the UN resolution are being left to the “perm reps” in New York, with the British doing the heavy-lifting. Potentially bad news. Nothing should be left to the career UN-niks. During the last Gulf War, James Baker personally negotiated the resolution with other foreign ministers. Something similar should happen here (I nominate Don Rumsfeld for the job).
Posted 4:19 PM | [Link]
A STATEMENT FROM HAGEL: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
A few days ago, I ran an item about the complaints that President Bush was asking for an October vote on Iraq for political reasons. I called Sen. Hagel's office to get his take, since he's been a prominent Republican critic of the president, but didn't get an answer in time to post it. (I didn't give them tons of time to get back to me.) Here it is, for the record: “I don't think that's the case. This president, this Congress, every responsible elected official knows that Saddam Hussein is a threat. This president I think made a very effective presentation last week to the United Nations. He talked about the fact that this was not a U.S. vs. Iraq issue, this is a United Nations vs. Iraq issue. This brutal dictator has been in violations of United Nations Resolutions for ten years. We are going to have to deal with this, but I don't think President Bush is saying we are going to war tomorrow or even before an election.”
Posted 3:54 PM | [Link]
THE TRUMAN SHOW: [Rich Lowry]
Bush has a chance to be the Harry Truman of our era, a president looked down upon by the smart set who, through his courage and gut instinct, forges a new international order. And this could be his NSC-68.
Posted 3:52 PM | [Link]
THE GFILE IS UP!!! THE GFILE IS UP!!!!
Posted 3:36 PM | [Link]
ATTACKING THE VICAR [Andrew Stuttaford]
Britain's dispiriting Conservative party has, once again, shot itself in a foot by now riddled with bullets.
This report from the London Guardian notes how a senior Tory has attacked a comedian's portrayal of Tony Blair as 'blasphemous'. The problem is not, apparently, Blair (even the supine Tories wouldn't go so far as to give him divine status) but the way in which the prime minister is being portrayed as the
'Vicar of St. Albion'.
Now, I haven't seen the routine in question, but over the past few years the often hilarious 'Vicar' (whether on TV or as a weekly feature in the magazine Private Eye) has offered a more effective critique of Mr. Blair than anything that the Tories have ever managed to cobble together. In it, Blair is portrayed as a relentlessly sermonizing 'progressive' parson
who has more than a touch of Machiavelli about him. The only people it could possibly offend, one might think, would be in the Labour Party.
Apparently not.
Posted 3:34 PM | [Link]
AGAINST INSPECTIONS: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Brink Lindsey's take.
Posted 3:13 PM | [Link]
MOUSSAOUI'S HATE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From the AP:
PARIS - The older brother of Zacarias Moussaoui blamed "merchants of hate" — extremist Muslims — for his sibling's plight and appealed Friday for him to abandon the path that put him in jail, awaiting trial for his alleged role in the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
"If I have a message for him it is that he change, that he abandon this ideology of hate and understand that he is mixed up in an abominable tragedy," Abd Samad Moussaoui said in an interview.
"It is possible for him to change," Abd Samad said.
The elder Moussaoui has remained largely silent since the arrest of his brother, but held a news conference to coincide with publication of his book, "Zacarias Moussaoui, My Brother." It is a portrait of a rootless family and a denunciation of the strict Wahhabi strain of Islam that he says was his brother's downfall.
Posted 3:05 PM | [Link]
RE: STRAY NON-IRAQ THOUGHT I [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Wow, that was stray, Rich.
Posted 2:59 PM | [Link]
ARMEY IN RETREAT: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
On "Hardball" last night, Dick Armey backed away from his earlier statements about Iraq. Matthews: "Mr. Armey, Mr. Leader, do you still take that position that we should not participate in an unprovoked attack on another country, i.e. Iraq?" Armey: "Let me say first of all Chris that the President has been so great, not only in addressing the world, but sharing information with those of us here in Congress. I have to tell you Chris, I am much more well-informed about Iraq and how insidious they are today than when that statement was made. . . . [M]y awareness level regarding how serious Saddam is as a threat not only to the United States but to other, and perhaps more immediately, other precious nations in his region, is much more well-informed than at the time I made that statement."
Posted 2:55 PM | [Link]
STRAY NON-IRAQ THOUGHT II: [Rich Lowry]
My prediction: the A’s go to the World Series. It just feels that way…
Posted 2:53 PM | [Link]
STRAY NON-IRAQ THOUGHT I: [Rich Lowry]
I was reminded yesterday that the best part of McDonald’s is breakfast. The pancakes are so good they taste like cup cakes.
Posted 2:52 PM | [Link]
STRAY IRAQ THOUGHT II: [Rich Lowry]
Another thing: the problem is not that Saddam hasn’t complied with inspections. It goes much deeper than that: he basically can’t be trusted with control of a relatively advanced country with significant industrial capacity, because that capacity can be turned to nefarious weapons purposes almost at any time, whether he temporarily complies with inspections or not. So, either we raze Iraq’s industry to the ground (which is not an option), or we get rid of Saddam. I want to get rid of Saddam.
Posted 2:51 PM | [Link]
STRAY IRAQ THOUGHT I: [Rich Lowry]
Here’s an absurd aspect of the current debate: some of the war skeptics are now urging massive, ginned-up militarized inspections for Iraq that would constitute a huge violation of Iraq sovereignty. If you put this violation of Iraqi sovereignty together with the other massive one—the no-fly zones over the north and the south—Iraq begins not to look like a sovereign country anymore. In fact, the only piece of Iraqi sovereignty we deem fit to respect is whatever piece of land Saddam Hussein has his feet on on any given moment. This seems very odd: we’re basically creating a quasi protectorate of Iraq, while leaving in power the dictator that’s creating the problem in the first place. Let’s get rid of Saddam, and then restore Iraq as a sovereign country, without no-fly zones and without inspections (or economic sanctions either).
Posted 2:50 PM | [Link]
WELCOME HYPOCRISY [Roger Clegg]
In the Maryland governor’s race, there has been friction between Republican candidate Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., and the Baltimore-based NAACP. It began, predictably enough, with Ehrlich questioning the NAACP’s ability to be the impartial sponsor of a debate between him and Democrat nominee Kathleen Kennedy Townsend; NAACP president Kweisi Mfume demanded that Ehrlich apologize for calling into question his organization’s nonpartisanship.
But then it got more interesting. A week ago, Ehrlich “propos[ed] a face-off about African-American issues,” according to the Baltimore Sun, and this week Mfume had this remarkable response: “The NAACP finds it offensive that anyone running for governor would propose having a debate solely on black issues. It’s an insult. We don’t act alike. We don’t look alike. We don’t think alike. You don’t see an attempt to put on a white issues debate.” Such a debate, said Mfume, “sets social progress back” because it assumes that whites and blacks care about different issues.
Truer words were never spoken, and Mr. Mfume is to be applauded for speaking them. But does he believe them? Even if you believe, against all evidence, that the NAACP is nonpartisan—would Mr. Mfume have gotten so exercised if Ms. Townsend had proposed such a debate?—it can’t be denied that its whole approach assumes, albeit quite wrongly, that black interests are monolithic and that the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People can and does advance the interests of all colored people. To give just one example, the NAACP issues an annual report card on “key civil rights votes” taken in Congress, yet includes votes that have nothing to do with civil rights (like supporting needle-exchange programs and opposing tax cuts) and on which there is, to put it charitably, no African American unanimity (like opposing federal funding for school vouchers). Still, hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, and it will be fun to quote Mr. Mfume’s words back to him in the future.
Posted 2:30 PM | [Link]
MAMA FRED ROCKS: [Rod Dreher] What a kick to have my pal Frederica Mathewes-Green in NRO today. Maybe you don't know this, but she's a convert to Eastern Orthodoxy (she and her husband, Fr. Gregory Mathewes-Green, were previously Episcopalians), and wrote beautifully of her faith journey in Facing East, and its sequel, At The Corner of East and Now. She's a hardcore crunchy-conservative, so you just know I'm thrilled to have the company around here.
Posted 1:54 PM | [Link]
YASSER'S YURT: [Rod Dreher] The NYPost's Uri Dan is a close personal friend of Ariel Sharon's, so when he reports something like this, it's particularly credible. Dan says that the Israelis are not going to exile Arafat or shoot him, but rather bulldoze parts of his compound until he's left ruling over a little more than a couple of rooms and a john. Which is more than he deserves, certainly.
Posted 1:46 PM | [Link]
BUSH AS HITLER, U.S. VERSION: [Mike Potemra]
Cartoonist Ward Sutton makes the comparison, in a cartoon that runs in the current Village Voice.
He has Hitler saying to Bush: "My big moment came when a prominent building--an icon of my nation, really--was destroyed. I used the event as just cause for limiting civil rights. My popularity grew. Great minds were disgusted and horrified." Sutton is a bright guy; I must confess the Reichstag-fire analogy had never occurred to me. But there are two important points to be made about this: Number One, thank God we live in a country where dissent--no matter how offensive--is not punished. Just imagine what would happen to an Iraqi cartoonist who compared Saddam to Hitler (or, to be perhaps more precise, a cartoonist who did not compare Saddam to Hitler). And Number Two, the imputation of Hitlerian malevolence to a president who is fighting a just war, in the cause of world peace, against a proven mass murderer, . . . is simply absurd. And--while reasonable people can disagree on particular civil-liberties restrictions in the war on terrorism--Sutton's Reichstag analogy also fails. It was clear that Hitler wanted to destroy civil liberties, and used the Reichstag fire as a pretext. If Sutton has any evidence that President Bush wants to roll back civil liberties for the sake of doing so, I would love to see that evidence. In the meantime, let us rejoice in the fact that, even in the middle of a war against desperate enemies, we remain the freest country on the face of the earth.
Posted 12:11 PM | [Link]
THE GERMANS, AGAIN [Andrew Stuttaford]
The German justice minister, Herta Daubler-Gmelin, is saying that Bush is using Iraq "to divert attention from domestic difficulties." This, she says, is "a popular method. Hitler has done it before."
In an unrelated development, opinion polls are reporting that Herta's boss, German chancellor Schroeder, has pulled ahead of his conservative challenger. A few weeks ago, Schroeder, who has presided over a crumbling economy, looked set to lose. How has Schroeder managed to "divert attention from domestic difficulties"? By focussing on (his opposition to) war in Iraq.
Posted 12:10 PM | [Link]
WHAT WAS THAT YOU SAID ABOUT CANADA'S DREAMY HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Long waits. Unhappy patients.
Posted 9:49 AM | [Link]
BREAKING NEWS! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From the Associated Press: Charles Schumer admits that "senators regularly vote against each other's nominees for purely political reasons, instead of looking for the best nominee."
Posted 9:46 AM | [Link]
STATE DEPARTMENT STEREOTYPING [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Martin Kramer questions the State view of Muslims in the U.S.
Posted 9:43 AM | [Link]
OH, GOODNESS! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The game/reality-TV shows get worse and worse.
Posted 9:40 AM | [Link]
KRAUTHAMMER IS EXCELLENT (AGAIN) [Jonah Goldberg]
In today's Washington Post he articulates something that's been bugging me for a while: the Democrats are in favor of using military force in inverse proportion to the degree of national interest at stake. They generally opposed the Persian Gulf War but favored a bunch of "humanitarian" adventures in Haiti, Bosnia, Somalia etc. I don't have a huge axe to grind with supporting those efforts but it is deeply weird to oppose war in Iraq but favor war in Yugoslavia. Milosovic is certainly no worse, no more criminal in a purely humantarian sense than Saddam, but Saddam is also a threat to our national interest and so therefor Democrats are relucatant to go after him. As Krauthammer notes, the Democrats only agreed to do it after the UN said it was okay. If the question is one of fighting to defend the interests of the US, Democrats ask "important questions," but if it's about fighting to defend the honor of the UN, then, well then it's go-time.
Posted 9:30 AM | [Link]
I SHOULD HAVE MENTIONED.... [Jonah Goldberg]
That James Gregory (Inspector Lugar) played General Ursus in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" where he declared "The only good human is a dead human!"
Posted 9:20 AM | [Link]
"WHAT WOMEN WANT" [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Guys, hold the door, whatever the feminists say.
Posted 9:19 AM | [Link]
OPERATION: ISOLATE ARAFAT [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
A proven stop-the-bombings strategy.
Posted 9:17 AM | [Link]
AL QAEDA WITH EYES ON WHITE HOUSE AT LARGE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Posted 5:36 AM | [Link]
RE: RE: WHAT'S HAPPENING!! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
You always have to take the bait, dontcha?
Posted 5:36 AM | [Link]
PEGGY NOONAN SALUTES EUNICE STONE: [Rod Dreher] You can read today's entire Peggy Noonan column here. Here's an excerpt. Peggy's talking about the situation down South with the three Muslim medical students: "Later, a sister of one of the young men went on CNN to declare that this was the South, and you know how the South is: 'It has a reputation of racism.' I thought, as I watched this: It has a reputation for patriotism, too. It's why Southern men and women join the armed forces in such high numbers, and why, if the sister were ever attacked by a terrorist, they'd risk their lives to save her sorry, sanctimonious little ... Well, as I watched I got a little mad." Me too, sister, me too.
Posted 1:32 AM | [Link]
CAN YOUR BACKWARDS ISLAMOFASCIST COUNTRY DO THIS?: [Rod Dreher] Behold, you mortals, science has now given us a way to get messed up while being true-blue to Dr. Atkins.
Posted 12:36 AM | [Link]
This is your link.
Posted 12:27 AM | [Link]
RE: WHAT'S HAPPENING: [Rod Dreher] Oh, you had to bring up What's Happening!!, didn't you? You had to remind me, you minx, of how I've never quite recovered from the passing of Shirley Hemphill. And now I'll be up all night obsessing over the cross-cultural weirdness of that Very Special Episode when Rerun got caught bootlegging a Doobie Brothers concert. Has any black person ever voluntarily attended a Doobie Brothers performance? I mean, really.
Posted 12:27 AM | [Link]
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GO, BUSH! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Fred Barnes: "WE HAVE JUST WITNESSED one of the swiftest and most effective exercises of presidential power ever."
Posted 11:08 PM | [Link]
DERB... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
...I take all the blame. Your words provided ample images.
Posted 11:08 PM | [Link]
DISAPPOINTED [John Derbyshire]
When submitting today's column, I challenged the webbies to come up with a suitable top-of-the-page graphic. I am sorry to see that their imaginations failed them.
Posted 11:07 PM | [Link]
WAS THERE AN HHS WHEN WE WERE KIDS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
NIH NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, September 19, 2002
NINE HOURS OF SLEEP KEY TO "BACK TO SCHOOL" SUCCESS
"National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and Garfield launch "How I Get a Heap of Sleep" contest to help focus kids and parents on importance of adequate sleep"
As children and parents prepare for the new school year, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) encourages them to put adequate nighttime sleep on the "back to school" list, along with pencils, binders and backpacks.
According to the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research (NCSDR) at NHLBI, children need at least nine hours of sleep each night on a regular basis for their health, safety, and best performance in school and other activities. Inadequate sleep in children can lead to attention difficulties, easy frustration, and difficulty controlling emotions.
"Adequate nighttime sleep is just as important as healthy eating and exercise for children's development," said NHLBI Director Claude Lenfant, M.D. "The start of the new school year is a great time to establish a good night's sleep as a lifelong habit."
To ensure parents and their children get a strong start this school year, the NHLBI and NCSDR are launching a "How I Get a Heap of Sleep" contest with Paws, Inc., the creative studio behind Garfield the Cat and NHLBI's partner in the "Sleep Well. Do Well. Star Sleeper Campaign." The Campaign's goal is to educate children ages 7-11 – their parents, teachers, and health care providers -- about the importance of adequate nighttime sleep.
Posted 10:56 PM | [Link]
CHILL, DREHERSTER [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Um, Rod, my sense of humor died with What’s Happening!!. Oh, wait, what’s that about Buffalo? A war? Oh, yes, we’re at war. I had almost forgotten.
Posted 9:42 PM | [Link]
GREETINGS FROM BUFFALO: [Rod Dreher] Here, a young Muslim man demonstrates that, yes indeedy, Islam means peace.
Posted 9:04 PM | [Link]
MAYBE TOMORROW CAN BE SENSE OF HUMOR DAY ON NRO: [Rod Dreher] Um, Kathryn, I wasn't attacking Bailey & Maserati. It was a roundabout way of making fun of Potemra and myself for being such Seventies-era TV-heads. Believe me, nobody had to browbeat me to memorize anything about bad '70s TV. It's a lonely pastime, curating this wealth of useless knowledge. I'll look over at my wife and say, "This just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead" -- and she thinks I'm speaking in tongues. You twentysomethings don't know what you missed...
Posted 9:00 PM | [Link]
TV DAY ON NRO [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Rod, You can be blocked from The Corner, you know. And, a word in defense of Bailey and Maserati: Maybe their parents didn't browbeat them into memorizing the scripts of myriad TV shows. Just because your parents did, don't take it out on them.
Posted 7:52 PM | [Link]
DER, DIE, DAS: [Rod Dreher] From the Cape Fear episode of The Simpsons, here's an excerpt for Sideshow Bob's testimony before the parole board, trying to win his freedom after having been imprisoned for attempting to murder Bart Simpson:
Lawyer: Well, what about that tattoo on your chest? Doesn't it say, 'Die Bart die'?
Sideshow Bob: No! That's German for 'The Bart the.'
(parole board chuckles, murmurs among itself)
Board member: No one who speaks German could be an evil man!
Board member #2: Parole granted!
Posted 7:17 PM | [Link]
LENNY AND KARL (FROM THE SIMPSONS) ON THE KRAUTS [Jonah Goldberg]
Karl: Yeah, you know, those Germans aren't so bad.
Len: Sure they made mistakes in the past, but aah, that's why pencils have
erasers!
-- Episode 8F09, ``Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk''
Posted 4:35 PM | [Link]
A WONK?: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Is that all I am to you, Rod? I was about to post my own theory about the theme of sexual dominance in the theme song to "Charles in Charge." But now I'll wait until I have something snappy to say about medical savings accounts.
Posted 2:29 PM | [Link]
LILEKS ON IRAQI INSPECTIONS: [Rod Dreher] Lileks explains why the idea of resuming weapons inspections in Iraq doesn't give him much comfort. (Click the "skip right to here" link on Lileks' Bleat).
Posted 2:24 PM | [Link]
RAMESH! HELP!: [Rod Dreher] Fonzie ... LaWanda Page ... Quinn Martin ... Tawny Kitaen. Ramesh, please post something policy-wonkish, to raise the intellectual level of the Corner today. I am powerless before my addictions.
Posted 1:56 PM | [Link]
BEATEN BY TAWNY KITAEN ... [Mike Potemra]
This is a story that will occasion mixed emotions in anyone who enjoyed Whitesnake videos in the 1980s.
Posted 12:20 PM | [Link]
GERMANS: NOTHING IF NOT CONSISTENT: [Rod Dreher] Amazing information in Safire today. He claims Rudolf Scharping, ex-German defense minister, addressed a group of Americans recently, and told them that he explained to a meeting of Chancellor Gerhard Schroder's cabinet why Germany is so opposed to American action against Iraq. Scharping reportedly said that it's because America only wants to go after Iraq to -- wait for it -- please the Jews.
Posted 12:12 PM | [Link]
ONE MORE THING: [Rod Dreher] I'm not a fan of Christian contemporary music, but if anything will change that, it's a radio show called Soul Power Hour on KVSS, a Catholic radio station in Omaha. You can tune in over the Internet on Saturday nights at 9 Central/10 Eastern. Someone sent me a copy of the Soul Power Hour broadcast the week of September 11, and it turned out to just an extraordinary mix of Christian and secular (e.g., Springsteen, Paul Simon) rock and pop, all thematically appropriate to the 9/11 commemoration. The show also featured skillfully edited excerpts from post-9/11 public commentary by President Bush, and clips from news broadcasts over the past year. It was a very moving but entirely non-schmaltzy program, quite professionally done, and even worthy of national attention, if you ask me. Until I listened to Soul Power Hour, I hadn't realized how good CCM music had become over the past decade. Anyway, don't you love how the Internet makes treasures of local radio available to a nationwide, even worldwide, audience?
Posted 11:33 AM | [Link]
HEY, THERE'S AN IDEA: [Rod Dreher] Maserati & Bailey -- would it be more of a Tenspeed & Brownshoe, or Bridget Loves Bernie? And do you know that my wife was on the playground the other day with Boy, and she met a kid named -- I kid you not -- Mannix. Think of the great boys' names you could cull from Quinn Martin Productions: Barnaby Jones, Frank Cannon, uh, uh... . OK, back to work.
Posted 11:20 AM | [Link]
RE: "HAPPY DAYS": [Rod Dreher] Oh, Jonah, we have the same problem at NRO World Headquarters. Yesterday, Potemra and I were happily recalling the greatness of LaWanda Page, and indeed of Sanford & Son -- and then we were asked by the whippersnappery Maserati and Bailey please to explain what is this Fred G. Sanford. Not only had they never seen the indisputably classic "Whopper-Chopper" episode of Sanford & Son, they had never seen Sanford & Son at all! So that essay I was planning on the bourgeois totalitarianism of Charles in Charge -- witness the theme song: "Charles in charge of our days and our nights/Charles in charge of our wrongs and our rights/I want Charles in charge of me" -- will be wasted on these callow youth, who were reading books when they ought to have been watching TV. Kids these days, I swear.
Posted 11:15 AM | [Link]
THE BEST INSPECTOR [Jonah Goldberg]
Rod, the lady from Sanford and Son was real loss. But I am far more aggrieved by the demise of James Gregory, the actor who played Inspector Lugar on the inestimable Barney Miller. He also played the henpecked Senator in the Manchurian Candidate. Sanford and Son was good but it can't hold a candle to Barney Miller.
Posted 11:12 AM | [Link]
ANOTHER SUICIDE BOMBER IN ISRAEL
Posted 9:28 AM | [Link]
THE LIBERTARIAN DODGE [Jonah Goldberg]
Now, I promised various parties that I would refrain from engaging in more libertoid-baiting in my column. But I would like to make one point. As I've written before, libertarians are brilliant at making their philosophy sound simple, straightforward and consistent. But once you criticize them they insist that you've misconstrued or misunderstood their philosophy. Last night, virtually every libertarian I talked to told me in one way or another that I was criticizing the wrong the libertarians. When they’re proselytizing, they quote Murray Rothbard, Von Mises, Reason magazine and even Harry Browne. But, then, if you invoke any of those to criticize libertarianism, they insist that Von Mises, Rothbard, Reason and Browne are unrepresentative of libertarianism. Worse, everybody claims that they have the official or "real" definition of libertarianism – and these definitions are often wildly at odds with each other. For an allegedly simple and straightforward philosophy, it’s awfully complicated and dodgey when on the defensive.
Posted 8:51 AM | [Link]
"ALL-AMERICAN" TERRORISTS
Everything you don't give a damn about re: those Buffalo al Qeada guys. ("One was voted the friendliest in his high school class.")
Posted 8:39 AM | [Link]
BTW [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
As several Corner-reader Rockefeller Center workers reported late yesterday, "Tumbling Woman" is gone from there.
Posted 8:35 AM | [Link]
CREATIVITY IN TERRORISM [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
FBI warns that al Qaeda will hit differently next time.
Posted 8:31 AM | [Link]
I AM ALIVE [Jonah Goldberg]
The debate went ok. It was a bit odd in the sense that neither of us are the sort of conservative/libertarian that we're angry at. The fun part was when the youths fed us booze in some wood-paneled Yalie parlor. Lots of screaming about the drug war. The scary part was when I discovered that pretty much all of the people I was arguing with were born at the tail end of the first Reagan Administration. Most of them never even saw Happy Days on when it was on network television.
Posted 8:29 AM | [Link]
ONE GUESS WHO SAID THIS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
"Even if Iraq managed to hide these weapons, what they are now hiding is harmless goo."
Posted 8:25 AM | [Link]
WHY DOES GEORGE TENET STILL HAVE HIS JOB? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Five CIA analysts were assigned to al Qaeda watch pre-9/11. As Bill Gertz chronicles in his book, Breakdown, back in February Tenet challenged Congress to examine the Agency's "record on terrorism." Tenet had no regrets, no doubt the central agency of U.S. intelligence did what they could. In fact, he even bragged that the CIA had prevented a Millennium attacks. Of course, that was an alert customs agent, not the CIA. Accountability, anyone?
Posted 8:18 AM | [Link]
ANTI-ISRAELI CHIC [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
More bad catwalk politics.
Posted 5:39 AM | [Link]
ONE YEAR?! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
United Nations idiocy.
Posted 5:36 AM | [Link]
IS AH-NALD SELLING SIMON SHORT? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The Terminator could still run for California governor this election, Mickey Kaus says.
Posted 12:37 AM | [Link]
PRISON HOUSE OF NATIONS [Andrew Stuttaford]
Brussels as Roach Motel? According to this report in the Daily Telegraph, there are plans afoot to make sure that EU member states can check in, but not check out.
Posted 12:19 AM | [Link]
OUR BEST WISHES... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
...to Ann Veneman, Ag secretary, who announced Wednesday that she has breast cancer.
Posted 12:19 AM | [Link]
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DON'T ANTI-SEMITES EVER GET TIRED OF THIS SAME NONSENSE? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From an Arabic (state controlled) Saudi daily, Al-Jazirah; a columnist writes:
Christian Europe showed enmity toward the Jews when it transpired that their rabbis craftily hunt anyone walking alone, [tempting] him to enter their house of worship. Then they take his blood to use for baked goods for their holidays, as part of their ritual. Often this deed was uncovered even in the Arab and Islamic countries that protected them – as Ahmad Abd Al-Ghafur wrote, pointing out the events geographically and historically, in his book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, because anyone hunted by them disappears forever. When these incidents proliferated, the security apparatuses began to follow them, until they caught their rabbis committing the crime.
Furthermore, they have played a significant role in toppling and corrupting many of the governments, to the point where this became known among the Arabs, the Germans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, and others.
Translation, as is often the case, is provided by the indispensible MEMRI.
Posted 8:37 PM | [Link]
UNBELIEVABLE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Oxygen is getting a decent review over at UPI. I really cannot be convinced this is possible. (My limited experience with the chick cable network, here.)
Posted 8:28 PM | [Link]
JONAH... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
...swears to me that there will be a G-FILE if we manage a few dozen subscriptions tonight. Evidently he's racked up a bit of an expense bill and the suits are making him pay up.
Some of you write me and say, "Sorry, K-Lo, I already subscribe." But don't you have friends, family, enemies? Anyone can--and dare I say, should--read NR.
I am really turning into a 24/7 flack, dudes. That's what you get having a "24 hour" site feature.
Posted 8:25 PM | [Link]
GET 4 FREE ISSUES OF NATIONAL REVIEW!
That's right: We'll send you 4 FREE issues of National Review at absolutely no risk to you. If you're impressed by National Review's superior writing style, analysis, and wit, we'll send you the next 12 issues — for a total of 16 in all! — for only $19.95. Click here for details.
Posted 8:22 PM | [Link]
HELP WANTED [Roger Clegg]
A consortium of left-wing civil rights organizations—including the ACLU, NAACP, and People for the American Way—is advertising for a Campaign Director to lead their drive for guaranteeing voting rights to felons. They’re planning to ratchet up their efforts soon: “A Strategic Plan is under development. Once finalized and adopted later this year, the Plan will set out a multi-faceted, multi-year initiative to remove voting barriers and increase political participation among citizens with felony convictions in several key states.” One of the key requirements for the position? “A high degree of personal and professional integrity.”
Posted 8:21 PM | [Link]
THE ARAB NEWS HAS A U.N.-LIKE FAITH IN IRAQ [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Posted 8:21 PM | [Link]
CRAB-EATING CONSERVATIVES: [Melissa Seckora]
Join America's Future Foundation and a whole slew of crab-eating "classical liberals" (including me) at the 8th Annual AFF Crabfest, Saturday, September 26, from 2-8, if you're in the Washington, D.C., area.
Posted 6:03 PM | [Link]
THE EMPRESS OF AIR: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
"[T]he Bushies have gotten a taste of empire building in Afghanistan and they like it. Karl Rove is building a Republican empire. Richard Perle, Dick Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby are building an ideological empire. Dick Cheney is building a unilateral empire. And Donald Rumsfeld is building a military empire." Boy, that Maureen Dowd can sure write! Anyone have any idea what it means? What's a "unilateral empire," for instance? Perhaps more to the point, what's a non-unilateral empire? What's the difference between what Cheney is trying to do and what Rumsfeld is? And who is this Dick Wolfowitz character--Paul's brother?
Posted 4:29 PM | [Link]
MME. HOULLEBECQ: [Rod Dreher] Don't miss the fascinating detail in that story to which Prof. Dr. Stuttaford linked: accused Muslim-hating novelist Houellebecq's mother is a convert to Islam.
Posted 4:13 PM | [Link]
HOORAY FOR EUNICE STONE: [Rod Dreher] Tammy Bruce thinks Eunice Stone is a good American, and that those three medical students are a bunch of whiners.
Posted 3:39 PM | [Link]
SERIOUSLY, FOLKS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
There will be a G-File tomorrow. (Well, assuming Rich Lowry is willing to vouch for him when the Amtrak goons come calling.)
Posted 3:21 PM | [Link]
FLYING MONKEYS: SIT DOWN [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The esteemed Jonah Goldberg has called from an Amtrak train. Expecting to send his column from there, he has just made the discovery that Amtrak, is, indeed, not worth its ticket price. There's no way for him to get his wisdom to NRO from the D.C.-Boston line. In fact, he could barely talk to me (first time we have talked on the phone all year, for the record. I thought he was a telemarketer and swore at him before he identified himself): Seems there are draconian laws on the government-funded railroad, forbidding talking in designated cars. The police were after him last I heard. Should make for an interesting G-File, someday.
Posted 3:19 PM | [Link]
THE REAL ISSUE [Andrew Stuttaford]
Rod, Quite right. It will indeed be a great day for American democracy when the "did you ever use marijuana?" question ceases to be part of our political life. It will be an even better day when marijuana use ceases to be a crime.
Posted 2:48 PM | [Link]
SHOW TRIAL UPDATE [Andrew Stuttaford]
There's a good report on the trial of French dissident Michel Houellebeck in today's London Times. He is not, clearly, the nicest of guys, but this prosecution makes it clear that France has lost whatever right it once had to call itself a fully free country.
Posted 2:45 PM | [Link]
IF LOVIN' LAWANDA PAGE IS WRONG, I DON'T WANNA BE RIGHT: [Rod Dreher] Kevin Orlin Johnson, a Dallas writer who pens brilliant books on Catholic topics, is a fellow fan of Sanford & Son's LaWanda "Aunt Esther" Page, who died the other day. Kevin says he was surprised to see NRO note her passing, but apparently delighted: "She and I are from the same general area, you know -- she from East St. Louis, I from a lily-white bedroom-community sort of suburb north and east of there. But she was quite the celebrity in the area, long, long before Sanford. She started out as an exotic dancer. Her gimmick was that she'd drench herself in lighter fluid and have the house lights dimmed." Now reader, that's an image to cherish! Though truly, if Fred G. Sanford saw Aunt Esther naked and on fire, he'd clutch his heart and say, "Elizabeth, I'm comin' to join ya, honey!"
Posted 2:43 PM | [Link]
CHUCK HAGEL (R., FRANCE)—CLUELESS: [Rich Lowry]
I wrote in a post last week how Hagel seemed to have lots of questions, but no answers on Iraq. He told David Broder as much in his column today: "Hagel, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, has explored the issue more deeply than many of his colleagues, but he confesses he cannot answer the questions he is raising. 'It is going to be pretty difficult for anyone to stand in the way of a vote [on a resolution authorizing action against Iraq] if the president wants a vote," Hagel said, "but we need some answers.'"
Posted 2:42 PM | [Link]
KINDER, GENTLER INSPECTIONS: [Rich Lowry]
It’s important to realize that the current inspections regime, UNMOVIC, is the product of Iraq pressure on the U.N. to soften inspections and is distinct and different from UNSCOM. The WSJournal has Hans Blix explaining the difference in a news article today: “Mr. Blix, Unmovic's head, has made clear that while the mandate for thorough inspection remains the same, he won't try the abrasive challenges that Iraqis associate with Unscom. 'Unmovic is to be in Iraq to perform correct, effective inspection. It is not to be there to harass, humiliate or provoke,' the Swede said in a speech last year.”
Posted 2:42 PM | [Link]
NOT AGAIN [Melissa Seckora]
More D.C. protesters.
Posted 2:42 PM | [Link]
MOM@HOME, FROM THE LEFT [Sarah Maserati]
It seems there's a counterpart to Rod's "crunchy conservatism" on the left: "natural mothering." This review from the Claremont Review of Books discusses the phenomenon of women whose left-wing politics lead them to embrace stay-at-home motherhood and "reject the feminist model of putting women on an equal footing with men." Now that's food for thought!
Posted 1:59 PM | [Link]
AL QAEDA GETS YOU REAL ANGRY [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Rod, think people have lost their anger? This'll change things.
Posted 1:44 PM | [Link]
RE: POT BROWNIES: [Rod Dreher] It will be a great day for American democracy when this stupid "Did you ever use marijuana?" question ceases to be a part of our political life. I've never been a pot smoker, but it's very hard to get through an American college without knowing them, and spending time around recreational pot users at parties. I'd wager that most people I knew back then who smoked pot at parties quit doing so when they graduated, got jobs and started families. Within reason, I frankly don't care if a political candidate has in his past used pot, or any other illegal drug. I care how he's living his life now. I care what his ideas are. I care about how effective he'll be in advocating and legislating according to his principles. It's just a hunch, but I imagine that it won't be too much longer before past recreational drug use -- again, within reason; I'm not talking about people who have done jail time for it -- simply isn't an issue with American voters.
Posted 1:10 PM | [Link]
WORTH NOTING: [Rod Dreher] I meant to post this the other day, but got distracted. It's too important to let pass, though. In the reports from western New York, about the bust of the alleged al-Qaeda sleeper cell, I read that the FBI was crediting tipsters from within the local Muslim community there for giving them information that led to the arrest of the suspects. We will probably never know the names of these patriotic American Muslims, but it is important to take notice of the fact that they exist.
Posted 1:00 PM | [Link]
FRENCH "JUSTICE" [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Maurice Papon, 92, Nazi collaborator, responsible for over 1,600 murders, is freed from a French prison because of poor health. According to this JPost piece, "Last year, he wrote in a letter to France's justice minister that he felt neither 'regrets or remorse' for his acts." His lawyer tells reports: "He's going to rest, rebuild his health and spend time with family and friends." Seems like he should be awarded only as much mercy as he could spare for the 1600 he sent to be slaughtered. Needless to say, they did not spend their last says resting and catching up with family and friends.
Posted 1:00 PM | [Link]
"ENEMIES LIST" 2002 [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Stanley, no surprise, but CAIR's complaining about Campus Watch, using it as their latest excuse to attack Daniel Pipes.
Posted 12:26 PM | [Link]
NEW SUICIDE BOMBING IN ISRAEL[Kathryn Jean Lopez]
One dead, three injured.
Posted 11:21 AM | [Link]
GONE TO POT [Andrew Stuttaford]
Jonah, the strangest thing about that pot story is that this supposedly 'libertarian' candidate is apparently opposed to marijuana legalization. He may not have ever inhaled, but party members must have been smoking something when they picked him as their candidate.
Posted 11:11 AM | [Link]
EYES ON CAMPUSES [Stanley Kurtz]
An important new organization announces its founding today. Campus Watch will now monitor and publicize the activities of scholars of the Middle East on American campuses. Campus watch understands that academic Middle Eastern studies in the United States is deeply biased against American interests. In hopes of bringing greater balance and fairness to the academy’s treatment of the Middle East, Campus Watch will make available to the public the details of that bias. For Campus Watch’s statement of purpose, go here, but the whole site is worth a look. And if you yourself have noted egregious examples of anti-American or pro-Islamist bias on campus, you can alert Campus Watch by clicking here.
Posted 10:49 AM | [Link]
POT BROWNIES [Melissa Seckora]
If you want a good visual, watch I Love You, Alice B. Toklas," a great Peter Sellers flick from 1968.
Posted 10:49 AM | [Link]
DON'T BREAK OUT THE CHAMPAGNE YET [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From an AP story today: "We've got to be together in the United States supporting the diplomatic and military, if necessary, to solve this problem," House Speaker Dick Gephardt said after the meeting.
Posted 10:05 AM | [Link]
THERE'S WHAT IN THESE BROWNIES? [Jonah Goldberg]
From this morning's Chicago Sun-Times (via the Hotline's Earlybird):
Libertarian gubernatorial candidate Cal Skinner voluntarily walked into the "Past Marijuana Use Confessional" on Tuesday, but said not only did he not inhale--he didn't even know he was using pot until it was over.
In one of the most bizarre marijuana revelations yet, the former Republican state representative admitted to reporters that he unwittingly tried marijuana about 20 years ago when someone cooked up a batch of pot brownies for him as a birthday present and didn't tell him about the secret ingredient.
So did he inhale?
"I guess I swallowed," Skinner conceded. "I mean, I like brownies a lot. I probably ate two or three or four."
Posted 9:56 AM | [Link]
RE: THAT SCULPTURE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
A lot of readers are disagreeing with my prior mention of the "woman hitting pavement" sculpture. Here's one:
At first blush, I agreed with your assessment of the statue on display at Rockefeller Center. It is a grotesque depiction of the horrible events of Sept. 11.
On further reflection, I realized that as unpleasant as the statue may be, it is an accurate depiction of a factual event. Many of the victims did indeed choose to leap from the WTC rather than face death by burning.
That statue reminds me of the unspeakable cruelty of our enemies. It is perhaps a more accurate depiction of why we fight than all the memorial services put together.
Let the statue stay -- I want to remain angry.
While I do not take too much issue with the whole "accurate depiction" reasoning, it's a somewhat random sculpture in Rockefeller Center, a year after. I more disagree with the venue than the scultpure itself. I also see a difference, when dealing with current events, between photos of people jumping from the WTC and other horrors that were inflicted on Americans by murderous Islamists and creating a representation through scultpure, which I think we could wait a bit for. We have photos, let's use them--lest people think this was an event of history, rather than the first battle in our current, ongoing, very real war.
Posted 9:56 AM | [Link]
FYI.... [Jonah Goldberg]
I've got to get on a 1:00 O'Clock train to New Haven to debate Mike Lynch at Yale tonight (more libertarians versus conservatives stuff). That means I'm going to try to get G-File done very quickly before I leave. Which in turn means I can't hang around with you layabouts in the Corner all morning.
Posted 8:48 AM | [Link]
THIS IS WHAT YOU DO WHEN YOU WANT TO GUARANTEE PRESS ATTENTION FOR YOURSELF [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Sculpt a woman jumping from the WTC, hitting the pavement below. Of course, the truly demented decision was whoever signed off on it being displayed at Rockefeller Center.
Posted 8:17 AM | [Link]
HIDDEN TREASURE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
If you're like me, you probably miss most of the good stuff Bloomberg News has to offer. Andrew Ferguson's weekly column there is a treasure not to be missed. You can read his current and past columns here.
Posted 8:01 AM | [Link]
ARAB NEWS GOES TO THE U.S. ACADEMY [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The Saudi daily intereviews two American professors. Needless to say, neither supports the U.S. war effort vis-a-vis Iraq.
Posted 7:50 AM | [Link]
PETA COULD LOSE ITS TAX-EXEMPT STATUS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Lesson: Best not to hang with terrorists.
Posted 7:30 AM | [Link]
ARE YOU READY TO PAY FOR MONICA LEWINSKY? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Clintons seeking reimbursement. Just when my Clinton hating starts to die down...the NY Post comes up with something.
Posted 6:06 AM | [Link]
AL QAEDA MORE DANGEROUS THAN EVER? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Bill Gertz reports.
Posted 6:04 AM | [Link]
I WONDER IF THIS IS AN INDICATION OF WHAT AMERICANS THINK OF THE U.N. [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
President Bush's approval rating is back at 70 percent.
Posted 6:02 AM | [Link]
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PICKERING, OWENS, . . . ESTRADA? [Jonathan Adler]
Things may be looking up for 10th Circuit Judicial nominee Michael McConnell. A phalanx of liberal and centrist academics from prominent schools have lined up in support of his confirmation. It appears D.C. Circuit nominee Miguel Estrada, on the other hand, may face some obstacles on the road to confirmation. Next Tuesday, Senator Schumer is holding a subcommittee hearing on "The DC Circuit: The Importance of Balance on the Nation's Second Highest Court." Chances are, this hearing is designed to lay the predicate for opposing Estrada and Bush's other D.C. Circuit nominee, John Roberts. Among the witnesses expected at Schumer's hearing is former D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Abner Mikva. During his tenure as Chief Judge, the D.C. Circuit was filled with partisan rancor; one judge even threatened to punch Mikva in the nose. Once Mikva left, however, tensions on the Court cooled considerably, despite few other changes in personnel. Since leaving the bench, Mikva has served in the Clinton White House and spent a fair amount of time criticizing his former colleagues. Whatever one thinks of Mikva's career as a jurist, he is an odd choice to speak about the need for "balance" on the bench.
Posted 10:59 PM | [Link]
SPEAKING OF THE HIGHER THINGS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
...good piece from Claudia Winkler.
Posted 10:54 PM | [Link]
NRO READERS … Mike Potemra]
… continue to astonish me with wonderful theological reflections. A United Methodist woman from Indiana reports these sentiments from a recent sermon in her congregation: “We need to forgive because a) God, through Jesus Christ, has forgiven us, and b) the bitterness of unforgiveness hurts us more than the offender. Refusing to forgive is like taking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die.” I will remember—and cherish—the line about the rat poison; it captures so well the way fear and hatred eat away at the soul. There is a better way—and I am unhappy to the precise extent to which I do not follow that better way...
Posted 10:12 PM | [Link]
FRENCH FARCE [Andrew Stuttaford]
Rod, as I recall, Voltaire had some pretty rough stuff to say about Islam. Doubtless, he too, would have faced prosecution in today's post-Enlightenment France.
Posted 7:06 PM | [Link]
THE FINAL WORD ON L'AFFAIRE BOB GREENE: [Rod Dreher] Seems to me that the Chicago Tribune's John Kass makes the most sense in his sober, pitiless take on what has befallen his colleague. For Kass, the key to this sordid mess is the unwritten contract a newspaper has with its readers, and how his former colleague Greene risked that for a little intergenerational rogering. Writes Kass: "She was in high school, brought to this newspaper by her parents. They trusted and respected him. They were in awe of him. And he did what he did with their daughter. I don't care about sex lives of reporters or politicians. That's not my business or yours either, as long as they're grown-ups and as long as they don't use the institutions they represent to close the deal. Her parents trusted the Tribune enough to bring their daughter here to interview a top columnist. A bit later, the columnist and the girl were in bed together.Years later, when she contacted him, he called on the FBI to investigate her. Make a legal argument if you wish. But he's lucky that some family member didn't grab him and punch his teeth out."
Posted 5:34 PM | [Link]
ANOTHER VIEW OF RAINES AND THE TIMES [The Hulk]
"Hulk smash!"
Posted 5:13 PM | [Link]
HOWELL RAINES, SECRET HAWK: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
The conservative critics are all wrong, argues Nicholas Confessore in The American Prospect: "What's striking about all this criticism is its superstitious quality. None of Raines' critics actually knows whether he opposes invading Iraq, because none of them has bothered to find out. Rather, when the Times' reporting sets back some conservative crusade, it's simply assumed to be the work of Raines' invisible hand. And instead of, say, picking up the phone and calling reporters and editors at the Times, these would-be media critics prefer a kind of phrenology, stroking the contours and bumps of a particular article -- verb choices, story placement, who gets quoted and how -- to arrive at an ill-informed picture of the reporting process."
I can't speak for all the critics. But I can't say I particularly care what goes on inside the New York Times. Whether Raines orders his editors and reporters to look for anti-war angles doesn't matter. Maybe he really is a hawk (although I think it's fair to say there's evidence to suspect otherwise, e.g. his comments on the Lehrer show earlier this month about the alleged parallels between the Iraq debate and the early stages of the Vietnam war) and his newspaper just somehow keeps coming out with coverage slanted the other way. It's the results--including the verb choices and story placement--that count; and it's the results that are worth criticizing.
Confessore makes only a passing, and rather bizarre, attempt to justify the Times's treatment of Henry Kissinger in mid-August, when he was made out to be making a break with the Bush administration: " Why would Kissinger have written his op-ed at all if not to challenge the Bush administration?" Um, maybe he made it to support the administration, albeit with caveats?
Posted 4:54 PM | [Link]
WHERE HAVE ALL THE IRAQ EXPERTS GONE? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Good stuff from Martin Kramer.
Posted 3:14 PM | [Link]
AMAZING GRACE Mike Potemra]
A reader in Denver, Colorado, offers this marvelous reflection on God's grace: "What is it about human nature that makes us want to have to earn our own 'grace'? (If grace was something to be earned, of course, it would not be grace.) More to the point, perhaps, what is it that makes us think others should have to earn their grace? Therein, I believe, lies the rub. In our self-delusion, like the Pharisee thanking God that he is not like the tax collector, we think we're not all that bad and that other people are pretty bad. Therefore, it ought to be fairly easy for me to earn my grace, and other people should have to earn it. Like the prodigal's older brother, this false pride prevents us from accepting the grace we need and from rejoicing in the grace offered to others."
Posted 2:56 PM | [Link]
IGBY GOES DOWN…: [Rich Lowry]
…is terrific, a little Y Tu Mama Tambien, a little Rushmore, a little The Royal Tanenbaums—altogether a dark, delightful, deep, and occasionally hilarious comedy/drama.
Posted 2:46 PM | [Link]
HOUELLEBECQ: THE NEW RUSHDIE: [Rod Dreher] Following up on Derb's item earlier, here's another take on the French novelist on trial there for insulting Islam. I am astonished this case hasn't got more press. Everyone who believes in free speech and a free press should be raising the roof on writer Michel Houellebecq's behalf. Now, Houellebecq sounds like an unpleasant man, but surely one must be free to criticize religion, even in terms religious believers find insulting. If the Muslims succeed in using the law to silence Houellebecq, do not think they will stop there. One of their complaints is that a character in a Houellebecq (pronounced "WELL-beck") novel experiences a "quiver of glee" every time a Palestinian terrorist is killed. Hell, I dance the tarantella with roses in my hair whenever I hear that the Israeli Defense Forces have sent one of those kaffiyehed Nazis to that dee-luxe apartment in the sky. Is France to declare this salutary feeling a thoughtcrime? If so, how will it be possible for any French citizen to speak out against the growing Islamicisation of their country? Perhaps the French should look to see what is done to those who criticize Islam in Islamic countries if they want to see their own future if things keep going this way. As should we all.
Posted 2:42 PM | [Link]
RE: AHEM [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Rod, that "ahem" will come back to haunt you unless you start monitoring The Corner like a hawk.
Posted 2:29 PM | [Link]
DETAILS, DETAILS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Not 24 hours after Kofi Annan get Iraq's "unconditional" invite to weapons inspectors, the Arab League's ambassador to London admits that the invitation will be limited to military bases. Can't wait for the rest of the details.
Posted 2:28 PM | [Link]
AHEM!: [Rod Dreher] Ramesh, yours truly had insomnia over the weekend, and blogged a Corner link to that Times story, and to rant about the anti-conservative bias in the Times headline -- this before Andrew Sullivan got to it. NRO never sleeps!
Posted 2:25 PM | [Link]
MENTAL HEALTH AT THE TIMES: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
The New York Times Magazine ran a story over the weekend on how Senator Pete Domenici, New Mexico Republican, has become a "champion for the mentally ill" after learning from his daughter's experience with schizophrenia. There have been a few complaints about the story. Mickey Kaus rightly challenged the description of Domenici, on the cover, as a "hard-line conservative." Andrew Sullivan questioned the premise that conservatives should be assumed not to take mental illness seriously. But the real problem with the Times story, it seems to me, is not what it assumes about Domenici or about conservatives; it's what it assumes being a "champion for the mentally ill" means. What it means is, of course, favoring various government interventions that would allegedly help them--notwithstanding the fact that opponents of these interventions often believe that these policies would actually hurt them. I suspect that this sort of labeling--which identifies the left-liberal side of an argument with "environmental activists" or "advocates for the homeless" or what have you--does more damage to conservatives than our being labeled as "hard liners."
Posted 2:15 PM | [Link]
FISH-EYED FOOLS REJOICE: [Rod Dreher] LaWanda Page, who played Aunt Esther on Sanford & Son, has died. I loved Sanford & Son. I like to think I'm in touch with my inner Grady.
Posted 2:06 PM | [Link]
INCIDENT ON ALLIGATOR ALLEY [John Derbyshire]
Just one personal point I'd like to make about the incident of the three Muslim med students, if nobody minds. Eunice Stone, the lady who shopped them, is a nurse. My late mother was a nurse, all her working life. I grew up around nurses. I know from nurses. Nurses are very observant--they're trained to be. And nurses are not stupid.
Posted 1:59 PM | [Link]
THE DERB PLAN [John Derbyshire]
Can't we inspect and attack? I mean, the UN inspectors demand to be taken to grid reference 018439, stat. Iraqis: "Ah, that's not possible just at the moment." So we carpet-bomb that grid reference within the hour. Heck, we know there are no inspectors there.
Posted 1:40 PM | [Link]
FRONTLINE'S POPE, CONT'D [Jonah Goldberg]
Rod, fair enough on your point about the last segment. I though that discussion was great too. I guess my objection is one of proportionality. I do not object to discussing the Holocaust and its relationship to this Pope or the Church generally. I think it's indispensable. But, it seemed to me at least, that the producers reveled in showing pictures of the Holocaust at the expense of intelligent analysis. Indeed, they chickened out almost entirely when it came to Pope Pius XII. The narrator says Pius believed "denouncing the Germans would risk more Jewish lives." This may or may not be true, but it hardly does justice to the controversy surrounding the Church during that period.
Indeed, the documentary may have been electrifying in parts, but I think that has more to do with the fact the subject matter is electrifying than the skill of the producers. The skill required to make this Pope less than astounding is beyond even the best PBS producers. You can make a terrible documentary about the Grand Canyon and the Grand Canyon will still seem pretty cool. Indeed, I've written and produced two mediocre documentaries (about Gargoyles and the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris), both of which have appeared on public television, and their relative success was largely derived from this principle.
Posted 1:39 PM | [Link]
RICH BBC DISCLAIMER [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
From a NRO reader/BBC listener (what a combo!):
The BBC aired an interview with Rich Lowry this morning regarding Iraq's latest maneuver. The interviewer closed the refreshing segment with these words: "there you have the stalwart views of Rich Lowry."
I wonder whether they ever say things like "there you have the craven opinion of the left-wing Maureen Dowd." Or "the weak-kneed position of the liberal Richard Cohen."
Posted 1:36 PM | [Link]
SHE SAID/THEY SAID: [Rod Dreher] Justin Katz has some sensible things to say about the Muslim med students stopped in Florida.
Posted 1:32 PM | [Link]
RE: CONDITIONS [Jonah Goldberg]
Even if there are no conditions on the inspectors (assuming there are inspectors) it's important to recognize how difficult these missions are. For example, I was listening to a congressional hearing with a panel of former UN Chief Inspectors on C-Span radio the other day (again, yes, because I am that cool). I don't know which one told this story, but it was pretty illuminating. Apparently, during one of the previous hunt and peck searches in Iraq, the inspectors received intelligence from a very reliable and high-ranking source that there was a huge secret stockpile of nasty weapons under the central Baghdad cemetary. Fortunately, the inspectors checked out the story and it turned out to have been a ruse set up by the Iraqi government. Saddam's people wanted the UN to bulldoze the cemetary, desecrating Muslim graves and the like just so the Iraqis could denounce the action for propaganda purposes.
Even if we end up sending inspectors to Baghdad "without conditions", there is every reason to assume that the Iraqis will do everything they can to turn it into a circus. Remember Saddam has foregone 160 billion dollars in oil revenues just because he wanted to keep inspectors out. In other words, he has something to hide and he is willing to incur great costs to keep it hidden -- for a reason.
Posted 1:13 PM | [Link]
RE: FRONTLINE'S POPE: [Rod Dreher] Jonah, I liked that Frontline documentary more than you did. You're right to note that two of the five segments -- the ones on liberation theology and feminism -- were off-the-charts biased. They were so slanted and inaccurate as to be worthless, and ought to be shown in journalism school as a perfect example of what happens when your biases color your reporting. That said, I wasn't nearly as bothered by the section on the Pope and Judaism as you were, perhaps because the more I learn about the way the Catholic Church treated the Jews for centuries, the more I revere the courageous things John Paul has done to heal the deep wounds between the faiths. That really will be one of his great legacies. Secondly, I found the final segment, which presents JP2 as a tragic figure, railing prophetically against the "culture of death" while the world rushes heedless toward the abyss, to have been close to electrifying (at least that's how I remember it). There was a quote from a Washington Post journalist who covered the Vatican for years, in which he said that the pontiff stood against so many of the deep trends of his time, and has largely failed to convince people that he is right. That is his tragedy, said the reporter. "But if it turns out that he was right," the reporter said, "then the tragedy is ours."
Posted 1:12 PM | [Link]
THE PROPHET JONAH Mike Potemra]
But isn't that an incentive for us to go on sinning to our heart's content, because no matter what evils we commit God will forgive us anyway? "Certainly not," wrote St. Paul to the Romans; "we have been united together in the likeness of [Jesus's] death" and must therefore consider ourselves "dead to sin." The human race is united in the One who died for us; and so we should pray for each other, and strengthen each other against sin, instead of hating each other and reveling in our knowledge of each other's evil acts. Mr. Jacoby quotes from the book of the prophet Jonah, about how God decided not to punish the repentant people of Nineveh; but he neglects to mention the passage in the book of Jonah that is most relevant to this particular controversy. After God forgave the Ninevites, what happened? "Jonah was greatly displeased and became angry. He prayed to the Lord, 'O Lord...take away my life, for it is better for me to die than to live.' But the Lord replied, 'Have you any right to be angry?'" (Jonah 4) In Jonah's opinion, even death was better than a life in which he had to let go of his hatred of the people of Nineveh. But God had other plans for Jonah, and for all of us: "I desired mercy and not sacrifice."(Hosea 6:6, quoted twice by Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.)
Posted 1:10 PM | [Link]
GRACE ISN'T CHEAP Mike Potemra]
But didn't Jesus's crucifiers get off cheap? Doesn't it, to use Mr. Jacoby's phrase, "eat[] away at the very foundations of civilization" if we let people get away scot-free when they have just murdered an innocent man? It's easy to see the source of Mr. Jacoby's confusion: He is simply-without making any necessary adjustment--transposing the divine order of grace into the very human order of society. And of course, if we were to just abolish all our human laws and punishments the result would be a Hobbesian war of all against all. But that is not what the pope was talking about when he asked God to forgive the terrorists' immortal souls; nor is it what Jesus was talking about on the Cross. They were talking, rather, about the unconditional love of God for His errant children, manifested in His willingness to be executed on their behalf. There is no such thing as "cheap grace": It comes to sinners completely free of charge, a gift of God.
Posted 1:10 PM | [Link]
FALLACIES ON FORGIVENESS Mike Potemra]
I want to thank Rod for calling readers' attention to Jeff Jacoby's column. It's very important that we try to understand why, exactly, Mr. Jacoby is wrong on this question. The crux of his misunderstanding comes in this passage: "Countless Christians embrace cheap grace. They believe their religion requires them to forgive every offense and pray for every offender, no matter what the offender did or whether he wants to be forgiven. No crime is too heinous, no cruelty too monstrous, to qualify for this instant absolution." Now, Point One is that the Christian faith does, in fact, ask us to forgive those who have sinned against us, even as Jesus when He was on the Cross asked His Father to forgive the (clearly unrepentant) sinners who were in the very act of crucifying Him.
Posted 1:10 PM | [Link]
CARDINAL NGUYEN VAN THUAN, RIP: [Rod Dreher] The world has lost a moral and spiritual giant: Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan, who has died of stomach cancer. Most Americans have never heard of him; it's our loss. The cardinal suffered horribly at the hands of the Vietnamese communists, who threw him into a concentration camp because of his faith. The communists finally had to station two guards outside of his cell, because he kept engaging the lone guards in conversation, and converting them to Christianity. After 13 years in prison, he was finally released, and two years ago in Rome, was made a cardinal by Pope John Paul II. I had the great privilege of meeting and interviewing the cardinal, and I feel sure now that I was in the presence of a saint. He radiated uncommon gentleness and sanctity, though anyone who knew what he had endured at the hands of the communists understood this great man had a will of iron. Check out the link above, which will take you to a Vatican radio interview with Cardinal Nguyen Van Thuan, in which he explains how he kept hope alive while in captivity. You might also check out his concentration-camp memoir, The Road to Hope: A Gospel from Prison.
Posted 12:45 PM | [Link]
JONAH... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
..I would definately save that somewhere secure. Ramesh knows I would delete both those postings, as much as I love you, for the right price.
Posted 12:42 PM | [Link]
11:05 AM, September 17, 2002 [Jonah Goldberg]
That is when Ramesh Ponnuru called Jonah Goldberg a "great man." You heard it, you saw it, he said it. There's no taking it back.
Posted 12:34 PM | [Link]
SCHOOL CHOICE AND THE POLLSTERS: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
Earlier this year, Terry Moe--a noted school-choice advocate who works at Stanford University and the Hoover Institution--accused Phi Delta Kappa and the Gallup organization of cooking the books to make vouchers look less popular than they are. Now, the Hoover journal in which Moe made his charge, Education Next, has published a response from PDK and Gallup. It had been a while since I read Moe's original article, and read alone the response seemed pretty impressive--until I read Moe's rejoinder, which shreds PDK and Gallup and leaves me persuaded that the polls are indeed biased against vouchers, and possibly intentionally so.
Posted 12:19 PM | [Link]
JAG AT HARVARD LAW [Sarah Maserati]
Recently, Harvard Law School grudgingly announced that it would allow the military to recruit on campus. For decades the military has been barred from doing so because of "discrimination" (a.k.a.: Don't ask, don't tell). It's not that Harvard suddenly warmed to the people who are willing to give their lives so that leftist legal scholars can criticize them; they just want government funds, and they can't have it both ways. And so it is that the good people at JAG Corps (Judge Advocate General) can now recruit what few patriotic Harvard Law students there are. But activists haven't given up; in fact, they've discovered new depths of pettiness. They have vowed to scuttle the online sign-ups for JAG interviews by getting their own to fill the slots before those who are sincere in their desire to enlist can sign up. One of the defenders of the idea expressed hope that the military would "go away." Let's hope not.
Posted 12:19 PM | [Link]
LIFE IMITATES JONAH: [Ramesh Ponnuru]
The great man wrote an essay for NR a few weeks ago on patriotism and politics. He noted, among other things, that conservatives are condemned for accusing liberals of lacking patriotism (whether or not they have actually made the accusation), while liberals are given a pass when they actually make an equally incendiary accusation of racism against conservatives. Perhaps this is because liberals have done this so often that everyone understands it's not serious?
In any case, the Texas Senate race is illustrating Jonah's point. Republican candidate John Cornyn says that his Democratic opponent, Ron Kirk, supports "the liberal Senate Democrat clique that is frantically trying to find reasons to oppose President Bush's leadership" on Iraq. Kirk responded that he would support Bush if we moved against Iraq, but added that he and other Democrats were being more "thoughtful and deliberative" than Cornyn because they, unlike Cornyn, were concerned about the "disproportionately minority" troops. Kirk is supposed to be a moderate, but he's playing every race card in the deck.
Posted 12:05 PM | [Link]
THE EURO REALLY IS BAD [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
This is priceless.
Posted 11:27 AM | [Link]
MORE THAN NIGGARDLY PRAISE [Jonah Goldberg]
FYI, in the course of searching for syndicated column topics, I read Derb's latest, an essay on the word "niggardly." It is outstanding and elegant.
Posted 11:11 AM | [Link]
ATTENTION: D.C.-AREA COLLEGE STUDENTS [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Americans for Victory Over Terrorism are having a "teach-in" tonight at George Washington University with Jim Woolsey, Bill Bennett, Charles Krauthammer, and Walid Phares. Details are here and here.
Posted 10:19 AM | [Link]
FRENCH WRITER ON TRIAL FOR INSULTING ISLAM [John Derbyshire]
Enjoy free speech while you still have it, guys. In France you can go to jail for saying rude things about Islam.
Posted 9:59 AM | [Link]
RE: WHY HASN'T NORM MINETA FIRED THIS MAN? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Jonah, when this mystery man is located, he should be made Transportation Secretary.
Posted 9:55 AM | [Link]
WHY HASN'T NORM MINETA FIRED THIS MAN? [Jonah Goldberg]
Saudi pilots are being banned from training in the US. That means someone in the transportation/State Dept. bureaucracy is doing the right thing and he still has his job? How bizarre.
Posted 9:52 AM | [Link]
MILLENNIAL POPE, AGNOSTIC PRODUCERS [Jonah Goldberg]
But what was even more annoying, and galling, was the long meditation on religion itself. The producers just tacked on a bunch of personal testimonials from the likes of Germaine Greer(!) about their belief in God and religion, with almost no relevant commentary on the Pope himself. It was as if the producers were so flummoxed that people can believe in God and be devout, that they had to explain it to people with a bunch of new agey gobbledygook, including a long montage of undersea life. Okay, I’m done. It’s just that I can’t afford to spend so much time screaming at the TV without venting.
HE DIDN’T LIKE COMMUNISTS, YOU KNOW? [Jonah Goldberg]
Another, annoyingly revealing insight into the producers’ mindset, was their treatment of the Pope’s relationship with liberation theology in Central America. Immediately following the segment on the Pope’s long relationship with Solidarity and his triumphant fight against Communism, the program focused on JP’s problems with the Marxists in Central America. Not once did the producers concede, let alone deal with, the fact that the Sandinistas were backed by the Soviets. It just didn’t come up. How can you intelligently discuss the Pope’s view toward Central America without dealing with that? From the Producer's perspective the Pope was just cranky toward the Marxist priests because, well, they were hippies or something.
Posted 9:39 AM | [Link]
FRONTLINE’S POPE [Jonah Goldberg]
I know this is about three years late, but over the weekend I watched the 1999 Frontline documentary "The Millennial Pope." It was a two and half hour "biography" of JP II which claimed to be a "bold psychological profile" of the Pontiff. I was blown away by how bad it was. Well, not bad; weird, arrogant, myopic, confused, yeah, but maybe not bad. It certainly looked pretty and had a lot of interesting information in it. But, even after having worked in the PBS world for half a decade, I’m hard pressed to think of a better example of PBS’s hubris. I was flabbergasted. First of all, the program spent at least an hour, all told, on the Holocaust. Now the Holocaust is serious and important, but at times you wondered if they changed topic in the middle. And the treatment of the Church and the Holocaust wasn’t even all that controversial. It seemed like the producers, like so many others at PBS, just think footage of the Holocaust is self-evidently justifiable. The Pope’s experience under the Nazis is obviously very significant, but this was vastly disproportionate. One example: I searched the transcript and found that the words Jew or Jewish appeared about as much as the words Christ, Christianity, Catholic and Catholicism combined!
Posted 9:34 AM | [Link]
CONDITIONS [Richard Brookhiser]
Would you buy a rug from a dealership run by Saddam Hussein and the House of Saud? "For you, madam, special price. Only today. Antique. In the villages, is finished. No more! Tomorrow? I go to Italy." I have heard this a dozen times in the bazaars.
But, GWB has a put us on a U.N. footing. So we must now say to Kofi Annan, inspections if you like, but on these terms, conducted by ten or twelve thousand Americans, British and Turks. This was not the regimen before 1998, but then three thousand of our citizens had not been murdered in 1998. A new day demands new standards. We should see within a week or even less how serious if at all this is.
Posted 9:16 AM | [Link]
200 LOST SOVIET NUKES [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Good thing we know from Scott Ritter that Iraq definitely doesn't have any of them.
Posted 8:56 AM | [Link]
SAUDI COMMERCIAL ON THE WASHINGTON POST OP-ED PAGE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The prince forgets to explain how pay money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers fits into his government's fight against terrorism.
Posted 5:50 AM | [Link]
THE FLORIDA HOAXERS [John Derbyshire]
I have seen surprisingly (well, I am surprised) little commentary on how last week's Florida incident will affect the T.I.P.S. program. With patriotic heroine (for my money) Eunice Stone being publicly called a hysterical liar, or at best a dimwitted, gullible cracker, how many other people will want to follow her example? And suppose the three Islamo-cretins decide to file a million-dollar lawsuit against Mrs. Stone: how many people will be dialing the T.I.P.S. line then?
Posted 5:37 AM | [Link]
I WAS SURPRISED [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
...by the news folks last night. They seemed to get that Saddam Hussein is not civilized and that his word cannot be taken with anything but a grain of salt. Actually, the only person who didn't seem to get it was Scott Ritter.
Posted 5:25 AM | [Link]
WOW [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
You think that's the biggest gap in Corner postings ever?
Posted 5:22 AM | [Link]
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FORGIVENESS? HOW ABOUT SOME ATONEMENT FIRST. [Rod Dreher] Jeff Jacoby says the Pope shouldn't have been so quick to ask God to forgive the 9/11 hijackers.
Posted 3:54 PM | [Link]
RETHINKING BOB GREENE'S THING: [Rod Dreher] I'm thinking maybe I jumped the gun on Bob Greene's situation. The story I read last night reported that the female with whom he'd had sexual contact was a "girl" -- the word the Chicago Tribune used -- and that he'd first met her as part of a high school project. One assumes that a "girl" in high school is a minor. But it turns out I was wrong: today it is reported that by the time she and Greene had a sexual encounter, she had passed the legal age of consent. I still think that makes him sleazy, but barring further damaging revelations, it seems to me an overreaction to fire a reporter simply for being sleazy, at least sleazy in this way.
Posted 3:51 PM | [Link]
SWEDISH SWINGS [Andrew Stuttaford]
There were elections in Sweden over the weekend. Any Corner readers still looking at this post after that first sentence will not be surprised to know that it is almost certain that the Social Democrats will, as is nearly always the case, dominate the new government. It's not quite business as usual, however. Sweden now plays host to a large immigrant population and the country has not proved immune to the current tensions in Europe over multiculturalism. The leader of the country's Liberal party (a broadly centrist grouping) recently broke ranks with the elite consensus and proposed a number of immigration reforms, including a provision that non-citizens who remain unemployed for more than three months should return to their home countries. Another suggestion was that those applying for citizenship should have to pass a language test. These ideas were greeted with predictable outrage, but the Liberals may have had the last laugh: their share of the vote rose from 4.7% in the 1998 elections to over 13% this time. Sweden's conservatives, the excitingly-named Moderates, largely avoided this issue, something that may have contributed to a slump in their vote from 23% in 1998 to 15% yesterday.
Posted 3:35 PM | [Link]
DOGS IGNORE DREW [Andrew Stuttaford]
Vegetarian dog food is now available in India. According to a delightfully worded piece in the Daily Telegraph "about 80 per cent of the population--and a similar number of pet dogs--do not eat meat for religious reasons."
It's no news that many Indians have religious objections to eating meat,but who knew that the dogs over there were so pious?
Posted 1:41 PM | [Link]
READER MAKES A GOOD POINT [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
About that lesbian fertility-clinic story: "Europe's first fertility centre solely for lesbians and single women will open in Harley Street, today." How can the EU stand for that? Isn't it discriminating against other women who want unattached sperm?
Posted 1:22 PM | [Link]
DREW A GURU? [Andrew Stuttaford]
Kathryn, that's good news about Drew Barrymore, I suppose (hopefully, she'll also change her views on gun control). Is it relevant for Corner folk, however? As slavish followers of food directives from Rod Dreher and Ted Nugent, I thought that we all meant to be out foraging for organic berries and snacking on freshly butchered squirrel.
Posted 1:14 PM | [Link]
RE: NORWEGIAN [Jim Robbins]
Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, aka the Norwegian Blue (beautiful plumage), is the same guy I blogged about last Friday. Here is an update on him. Note that the Iranians also recently kicked out Afghan radical Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who is now calling for attacks on American assets in Afghanistan from undisclosed locations. I don't think Teheran wants to take any chances with these guys being links between them and al Qaeda. Kinda like Saddam and Abu Nidal, but more humane.
Posted 1:11 PM | [Link]
THOSE BRITS, AHEAD OF US AGAIN [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Lesbian ferility clinic opens in London.
Posted 1:11 PM | [Link]
NO LONGER COOL TO BE A VEGETARIAN [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
If you usually take diet cues from Drew Barrymore, time to change.
Posted 12:02 PM | [Link]
DOLLY, BE AFRAID, VERY AFRAID [Andrew Stuttaford]
The good news: the Washington Post is reporting that cloned food will soon be available.
The bad news: there will still be problems with second helpings.
Posted 11:59 AM | [Link]
SNOOP'S IMAGE [Jim Robbins]
The Wall Street Journal reports that Snoop Dogg (Calvin Broadus) is changing his image from "gangsta" to "pimp," which apparently involves "feeling good" and "dressing good" and losing some of the anger. Apparently, no more ditties like "Serial Killa." He states, "Middle-America would rather me be pimping than gang-banging." One can appreciate the ability of an artist to recast himself and pursue new image-based marketing strategies, but what about all the kids who took that "gangsta" stuff seriously and screwed up their lives? What about the poor suckas who thought Snoop Dogg was keeping it real just for them? Can they turn on a dime and recover the opportunities they lost while they were living the life and not raking in millions in royalties? Guess what kiddies -- it was just a commodity, like all the pre-packaged mass-market rebellion designed to divest you of your minimum wage pay. Snoop Dogg will be hosting this year's "Muppets Christmas Special." I think we can declare the revolution over.
Posted 11:58 AM | [Link]
IRAN DEPORTS NORWEGIAN [John Derbyshire]
Andrew: "According to the Iranian foreign ministry, the individual in question, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, is a Norwegian citizen."
My guess is, he was pining for the fjords.
Posted 11:50 AM | [Link]
CONFUSED? [Andrew Stuttaford]
If Western governments needed a reminder of the complexity of the war against terror, this story is not a bad place to start: Iran has, if only briefly, forgotten its responsibilities as a member of the Axis of Evil, and deported a suspected leader of an Iraqi group linked to Al-Qaeda back to Norway. Norway? According to the Iranian foreign ministry, the individual in question, Najmuddin Faraj Ahmad, is a Norwegian citizen.
Posted 11:35 AM | [Link]
SADDAM WILL HAVE NUKES BY CHRISTMAS? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
U.N. approach: Let's just wait and see!
Posted 11:24 AM | [Link]
LOOKS LIKE THE SAUDIS ARE COMING AROUND [Jim Robbins]
It was inevitable. All that talk about Arab unity with Saddam and so forth -- based on what? They know their interests. And the President's critics are rapidly running out of issues.
Posted 11:18 AM | [Link]
LET JOY BE UNCONFINED!: [Rod Dreher] Amy Welborn brings news that folks down in Georgia are raising money to restore Flannery O'Connor's house and farm. There are independent filmmakers in Georgia raising money for a fictional film about the great lady's life; Sissy Spacek is reportedly set to play Flannery's mother, Regina.
Posted 10:07 AM | [Link]
THE AFGHAN OUTLOOK [Stanley Kurtz]
Here’s a disturbing report about just how tenuous the Karzai government’s grip on Afghanistan is. As the report makes clear, the United States and its allies have been reluctant to commit manpower to the pacification of the countryside, or money to national development. Stories like this make it clear that we are headed for a series of uncomfortable choices about the money and manpower it will take to bring a new day to the Muslim world.
Posted 9:18 AM | [Link]
FYI [Jonah Goldberg]
No G-File today in observance of Yom Kippur.
Posted 9:14 AM | [Link]
TASTE WATCH [Andrew Stuttaford]
German press agency DPA is reporting that German police have seized cigarette lighters modelled as a burning WTC tower. The lighters "showed the tower with an aircraft protruding from it and Osama Bin Laden posing triumphantly in the foreground" and were on sale at a town festival. The police intervened after complaints from members of the public.
Posted 9:00 AM | [Link]
TASTE WATCH [Andrew Stuttaford]
German press agency DPA is reporting that German police have seized cigarette lighters modelled as a burning WTC tower. The lighters "showed the tower with an aircraft protruding from it and Osama Bin Laden posing triumphantly in the foreground" and were on sale at a town festival. The police intervened after complaints from members of the public.
Posted 9:00 AM | [Link]
"LIBERTY WINS" [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The man who wrote the book on privacy, The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen, gives the adminstration a pass on civil-liberties thus far, thanks to checks and balances, he says.
Posted 6:29 AM | [Link]
"DOLLY, INC" GIVES UP [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
The company that created Dolly, the cloned sheep, is downsizing its cloning work.
Posted 5:57 AM | [Link]
ALL TALK [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Mark Helprin says the president is more talk than action as far as the war goes.
Posted 5:54 AM | [Link]
SOME PEOPLE NEED TO TAKE NOTICE: [Rod Dreher] A popular writer working for a large media organization through his work becomes sexually involved with a minor. Is the writer transferred to another beat? Does the publisher make public appeals for forgiveness and understanding? Does the publisher otherwise try to make excuses for the rotten behavior of his employee, or blame a sexually corrupted American society? Not if the media organization is the Chicago Tribune. This is what happens when the people who run an organization whose mission depends on the public's trust take their responsibilities seriously. What a refreshing thing to see.
Posted 1:21 AM | [Link]
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EERIE [Andrew Stuttaford]
An observant reader points out that Norman Mailer has the same first and last initials as Norm Mineta.
What could this mean?
Posted 10:09 PM | [Link]
WASTED YEARS [Andrew Stuttaford]
This has nothing to do with my failure to post over the last couple of days, but The Lost Weekend, that 1945 classic on the perils of alcoholism, was showing on TCM this evening. At one point poor, distintegrating Don Birnam (Ray Milland) wakes up in the drunks' wing of a New York hospital. A nurse explains to him where he is, and in an aside comments how many of the regulars got their start in the Prohibition years. That was, clearly, a commonplace (and commonsense) observation at the time. What a shame that, nearly sixty years later, those politicians busily waging the destructive and counter-productive 'war on drugs' still haven't got the message.
Prohibition has never worked.
Posted 9:04 PM | [Link]
FEELING WEAK.... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Gore White House talk....Florida election mess...Donna Brazille and the Congressional Black Caucus (sorry, I had C-SPAN on last night)....can't take much more....!
Posted 8:46 PM | [Link]
ANDREW!!!! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Oh, how we missed you. And, I don't think "the suits" want me posting anymore, cause I don't think I sold enough subscriptions to NRODT last night (despite Rod's valiant effort to back me up). Feel free to remedy the situation, dear Corner readers, tonight or tomorrow, here.
Posted 8:44 PM | [Link]
DEMOCRACY, EU-STYLE [Andrew Stuttaford]
There's a touch of France and, tactfully, a suggestion of Germany about the strategically-named Jean-Claude Juncker, the prime minister of Luxembourg. Judging by a quote in the September 14th issue of the Economist, there's a hint of Macchiavelli too. According to Juncker, the way that the EU's federalists succeed in winning more and more power from the Union's member states is to "decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no-one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back."
Posted 8:29 PM | [Link]
LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF FRESH VEGETABLES [Andrew Stuttaford]
One advantage of a weekend away from the Internet: the chance to catch up on some reading the old-fashioned way - on paper. Well, sometimes that's a good thing. And sometimes it's not. Here, for example, is Norman Mailer in last week's London Sunday Times:
"The notion that we have an active democracy that controls our fate is not true. Was I ever able to vote on how high buildings could or should be? No. Was I ever able to say I don't want food frozen? No. Was I ever able to say I want aeroplanes to have half as many seats? Nobody's ever been able to vote on anything that really counts in terms of how our lives are led."
Well thanks, Norman for the, er, insight...
Posted 7:12 PM | [Link]
SPEAKING OF THE SAUDIS... [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
...they're suggesting they'll allow us to us our airbase there if the U.N. approves of any Iraqi action we take. Of course, we all know the likelihood of that happening in the next 12 months, given the U.N.'s track record vis-a-vis Saddam's snubs.
Posted 4:23 PM | [Link]
WHAT THE SAUDIS REALLY THINK OF US? [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
You will not see this stuff on those commericals the Kingdom is airing on U.S. television.
Posted 4:13 PM | [Link]
NOW THAT PHIL IS BACK ON TV… [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
…(although it may not be for long, considering his ratings) he might consider interviewing some women who have had abortions and find out if they considered it "15 minutes" and "easy." Just about the only people who try to peddle that line are the abortion industry and their most avid supporters: the "women’s groups," who cry "woman-hater" at the slightest suggestion that women who choose abortions often suffer mentally and physically for years after the "easy...procedure." And, needless to say, the "birth matter" is of zero concern to them—some of whom were able to, at least for some time, support "live-birth abortions," i.e. a nurse leave as kid to die after a "failed" abortion because his mother wants him dead. Mercifully, live-birth abortion (infanticide) is now illegal, and by the time it was up for a final vote this year, nearly no one publicly opposed its prohibition.
Posted 4:11 PM | [Link]
PHIL DONAHUE GETS AN ABORTION [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
Here’s a snippet from an interview in September’s O magazine (Oprah Winfrey’s) between Oprah and Phil Donahue on his most controversial show: He aired an abortion in progress.
O: When you aired controversial shows, were more people pleased than outraged?
PD: If you look up outrage in the dictionary, there’s a picture of me. We once even filmed an abortion—a side shot of a woman in stirrups, the physician dilating the cervix, everything. You heard the machine. You saw the birth matter in a jar. We filmed it. Then we called the Archdiocese of Chicago, the pro-life people, sat them in a room, and played the tape before going anywhere near the air with it. When I walked into the room after they’d seen it, half the people were crying. The major grievance of the pro-life and Catholic Church folks was that the tape made abortion look easy. I said, "Well, that’s the procedure—15 minutes." Their fear was that if we aired this, everybody would run out and get abortions. I said, "Look, this issue is splitting families. It’s at the center of America’s agenda." Somehow, we got to air that. The highest percentage of stations in the history of Donahue did bot show it, yet significant numbers did. Today, you’ll never get that on television.
Posted 4:11 PM | [Link]
ALWAYS WORTH READING [KJL]
Joe Bob Briggs's week in review.
Posted 10:47 AM | [Link]
SPEAKING FROM THE GRAVE [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
>Mohammed Omar message played on al-Jazeera.
Posted 10:43 AM | [Link]
!!! [Kathryn Jean Lopez]
A demented Spanish catwalk.
Posted 10:36 AM | [Link]
AND ONE MORE THING: [Rod Dreher] Don't drink a liter of diet Coke at midnight. Just don't.
Posted 2:46 AM | [Link]
MORE NY MEDIA BIAS: [Rod Dreher] While I'm in rant mode, let me kvetch about Jim Dolan, a reporter for Channel 7, the ABC affiliate in NYC. The other night he reported on the three Muslims being stopped in Florida, and ended his report with editorializing about the small-town Georgia woman who called the police after she heard, or claimed to have heard, the three guys making a joke about a terrorist act. I don't have a transcript of Dolan's remarks, but he gave a heavy, condescending, Al-Gore-in-the-debate sigh as he remarked that the woman ruined the day for three innocent Muslims. The clear subtext was: What do you expect from a Georgia redneck anyway? Dolan didn't consider for a second that maybe the woman heard exactly what she said she'd heard, and that perhaps the Muslims were lying when they said they never made such a joke. His assumption seemed to be that the woman is a racist Southern cracker, and that was that. (To be fair, in my Corner posting the other day on the matter, I didn't consider the possibility that the three Muslim men might not have made the remarks they were accused of. Bias goes both ways. Mea culpa.)
Posted 2:45 AM | [Link]
THE NYTIMES, BEING ITSELF AGAIN: [Rod Dreher] Here is a story from today's New York Times Magazine, about how Sen. Pete Domenici finds inspiration for some of his legislative work from a family tragedy. You won't see the sub-headline on the electronic version of the story, but you should know that this is what it says: "Pete Domenici is a social and fiscal conservative. So how did he become the Senate's leading advocate for the mentally ill?" Excuse me, but how does the second sentence logically follow from the first -- unless you assume that conservatives instinctively don't give a rat's ass about the mentally ill? The bias here is so blatant that you really have to marvel that not one of the educated men and women who edit the Times Magazine caught it. Hell, they probably put this issue to bed thinking themselves broad-minded for condescending to see some good in the heart of a right-wing politician.
Posted 2:27 AM | [Link]
FLANDERS FAMILY VACATION FUNSPOT: [Rod Dreher] I wish I were making this up.
Posted 2:08 AM | [Link]
RE: THE LEFEBVRITES: [Rod Dreher] I dunno, Mike, I'm no Lefebvrite, nor do I plan to become one, but it seems to me incredibly short-sighted to dismiss Bishop Fellay's take on the situation in the Church as excitability. Seems to me Fellay is more right than wrong on this one. I find it hard to be comforted by His Eminence's sanguinity. I would feel much better if more (non-schismatic) cardinals agreed with Bishop Fellay on the state of the Church; perhaps then we'd see some dramatic change for the better.
Posted 1:03 AM | [Link]
RE: WOW: [Rod Dreher] You're right Kathryn, it would be a good time to subscribe. I was reading the new issue on the subway home Friday -- the one with the "crunchy conservatives" cover story by me (thanks all you crunchy NRO-niks who helped me with it) -- and I kept finding so dang much to read there. I thought, "Man, I can't believe people who put out a magazine this good pay the likes of me to show up." Then I remembered that my Billie Holiday and John Coltrane posters probably hold up the back wall in NRO World Headquarters (that, and I've taken on the responsibility of feeding Purina Conservative Chow to the scraggly Nockian Remnant which homesteads in the stacks, behind the 1970-era issues of Commentary and Brookhiser's old Tiger Beats).
Posted 12:55 AM | [Link]