The American Spectator

TROUBLING INCOMPETENCE
Re: Angelo M. Codevilla’s CIA’s Vulnerability Is Congenital:

Mr. Codevilla’s synopsis of CIA’s culture of incompetence is troubling, indeed. Even worse than the Agency’s operational deficits is its refusal to acknowledge them and compensate.

One wonders, for example, about the Jordanian agent who brought the Chapman station suicide bomber into play. Mr. Codevilla observes that CIA had no way to vet the Jordanian.

I suppose the Israelis did, though. I expect the Israeli intelligence community either knew everything there is to know about the Jordanian or could discover it chop-chop. Did the CIA consult with its Israeli counterparts on this matter?
— Paul Kotik
Plantation, Florida

PAYING ATTENTION
Re: Jeffrey Lord’s The Michael Steele/Haley Barbour Book Flap:

I heard some of the GOP congressional leadership was upset because they didn’t know Michael Steele’s book was coming out. I guess the conservative beef that the GOP leadership doesn’t really pay attention to their concerns is true.

Don’t they look at Regnery Publishing’s website? If they had seen it, they’d have known it was coming out…
— Robert Nowall
Cape Coral, Florida

ACTING STUPIDLY
Re: RiShawn Biddle’s Arne Duncan City Limits:

The stupidity of conservatives is boundless. Mr. Biddle (writing in NRO) celebrated the alliance between conservatives and Al Sharpton over education reform. Now Mr. Biddle has discovered discouraging words about Duncan’s tenure in Chicago. Did it ever occur to anyone in your shop that this new found consensus is nothing more than another case of Republicans getting snookered? The “reforms” in NY, Chicago, and D.C. are as radical left as could be. Yes, it is possible to have left-wing political machines that combine thuggish techniques and the appearance of reform.

I am a conservative who writes about the schools. The real story is the inability to get another point of view published in the New York City newspapers for example. The anti-union position of Rhee and Joel Klein has formed an unholy alliance between the press Barons of NY and school reform. You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. So if the “reforms” focus on the impediment unions present to their “reforms,” than we’ll back anyone who goes along with blaming the union for the failure of the Black underclass to achieve anything after 50 years of hundreds of billions of tax dollars being poured down the inner city rat holes.

The charter school revolution will turn out to be nothing more than a dollar feeding frenzy as the worst political forces create “not for profit” charter school operations and get the money flowing directly into their hands. This movement will take large immigrant communities like NYC and further atomize them. Instead of a public high school, we will be cursed with multi-ethnic charter schools that will go unmonitored. Get ready for the madrassa’s!
— Marc Epstein

REID’S DIALECT
Re: Mark Hyman’s Bigots and the Press:

“Last year, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described presidential aspirant Barack Obama as a ‘light-skinned’ black man ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’”

Barack Obama is a light-skinned black man because his mother was white. That fact means that Stanley Ann Dunham, Mama Obama, had something in common with Strom Thurmond — each procreated with a racially diverse partner. Unlike Thurmond, it has not been reported that Papa Obama provided financial support for his child.

Noting then-Senator Obama’s complexion does not make Harry Reid a racist, any more than his demeaning of Justice Clarence Thomas made him a racist. The worst that can be said of Reid is that his comments were insensitive.