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Saturday, January 21, 2006
John Kerry at Tora Bora
Posted by on 1.21.06 @ 6:50PM
"Isn't it time we had the truth? Yes or no, did Osama Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in 2001?" -- John Kerry, Daily Kos, January 20, 2005
John Kerry, the world famous Francophiliac junior senator from Massachusetts, now begins blogging at the cozy Dem cave of Daily Kos with the same high dudgeon of his late campaign.
It is strangely nostalgiac to hear John Kerry's rightous tone sound exactly the same today as it did the last time he was on the stump, November 2, 2004. It feels fourteen months as if it is fourteen minutes, because he launches into the podium pounding mode about Osama Bin Laden, Tora Bora, what Bush didn't do, war on terror, yes or no, war, war, bring it on, me, Bush, me.
The Kerry charge, from the last weeks of the campaign, as I best recall it, since it seems like last year's runner up movie for the Golden Globes, is that George Bush ran down and trapped the scared, hallucinatory, mass-murdering OBL in the perilous landscape of the Tora Bora mountains in November and December, 2001, and then, because George Bush is a wimpy, stupid, slab-sided, Cheney-creepy commander in chief, George Bush let OBL get away.
Kerry never explained why George Bush would let OBL get away -- why George Bush would order the US to war within moments of the 9-11 attack, sending waves of aircraft at Kabul and Kandahar and anything else with a profile in Afghanistan, reducing the Taliban to snarling dust, and then, at the last moment, with the bad guy backed into a box canyon ten thousand feet high, would decide, nah, I'm soft-minded, let's break off. Kerry just accused: George Bush refused to pull the trigger! Why? That was left to our imaginations.
Yet in the heated last moments of the campaign, Kerry's charge made enough sense to the blue team to rally the polling and show momentum in Ohio, Florida, Iowa, New Mexico, and other states Team Kerry needed to win.
My memory is that this sound bite of huff-and-I'll-puff electioneering was doing well at the blue watering hole until, deus ex machina, OBL popped up on a video, the weekend before election day, chanting much the same rubbishy we'll-forgve-you-if-you-forgive-yourself stuff, and Kerry got caught on camera treating OBL as an irritant, or a dirty trick, or a talking head trying to steal his TV time, and the electorate realized, what are we thinking? John Kerry is all talk, no shoot.
Now we are are fourteen months on, and Kerry is back to the future as a Francophiliac junior senator from Massachusetts, and yet he still wants to know why George Bush is such a dope to let OBL get away.
Facts are sturdy. I report what I have learned from Gary Berntsen, retired CIA officer, who was Jawbreaker, the man chaged with tracking down and killing OBL at Tora Bora from November to mid-December, 2001.
OBL did retreat with several hundred woozy loyalists into the woeful mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border; OBL did prepare an ambush for any forces that pushed up, Russian style, to get him in those valleys. And the CIA did send spotter teams up to the peaks to use laser identifiers to target the Taliban and Al Q death squads. And we did drop a BLU-82 on the site where we had good intelligence, including voice-identifying, that OBL was hiding; and then we sent in waves of bombers with 500 pound bombs. The valley was shredded, pulverized, reorganized.
What didn't happen was that Gary Berntsen requested a U.S. Army Ranger Battalion to finish the job on the ground, and he didn't get it. Gary does not know who turned off the request, sometime between December 4 and when he was pulled out, December 15. Gary is certain it was not Tennett, or Pavitt, or Rumsfeld, or Powell, or even Franks at CENTCOM. The troops may have worked, may not: it's still worth debating. Instead the decision was made to let our so-called Afghan allies do the job, and some of them sold their services to OBL and walked him out to Pakistan.
What is true is that George Bush ordered CENTCOM and the CIA to assault and take a country of gangsters and jihadists: and it took about 100 CIA officers and contractors, with the support of various Afghan warlords, about 60 days to clean the country of the bad guys. OBL got out because he paid for a guide and then walked into the control of the same Pushtun clans that he supported during the Soviet invasion of the 1980s.
Al Q high command has not moved much since December 2001. The CIA missile strike on January 13, 2005, killed, according to still confirming reports, four of the major Al Q leaders who were likely at Tora Bora, or near to, in December 2001. The missile strike missed bumpy headed Ayman al-Zawahiri, but he hasn't run far.
Would a major ground assault get the job done today? Gary Berntsen believes the risks are great. Also complicating the story now is that Pakistan is unstable and that Iran is now the main enemy. The U.S. does not want to alienate Pakistan as it builds support to go up against scared, hallucinatory, mass-murdering Iran.
To return to John Kerry's frozen question: "Isn't it time we had the truth? Yes or no, did Osama Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora in 2001?"
The answer is that intelligence is good that OBL was at Tora Bora in November - December 2001,and that he is still there, or has been, ever since. And that the Bush Administration still wants him dead, which is why the President took the risk of approving the missile strike of January 13, to strip away more of OBL's prayer group.
Now, John Kerry, if you were president today, would you have taken that Januay 13 shot and risked losing Pakistan? Would you take the next shot, when it comes? Yes or no? And by shot, I mean, using a platform to kill human beings, many of them collateral to the target, including one scared, hallucinatory, mass-murdering tall man.
I am not certain you would take the shot, John Kerry, which is likely the reason you are not president -- because you did not convince a majority of voters that you are a shooter as well as Francophiliac junior senator from Massachusetts.
Dead Arafat, Live Casus Belli
Posted by on 1.21.06 @ 4:37PM
In Damascus, the usually unoriginal and clumsy Bashar al-Assad now announces a shrewd, dangerous new game when he charges that Israel assassinated the dead Egyptian national Yasser Arafat.
"Among the many assassinations that Israel has carried out in a systemic and organized manner, the most dangerous one was the assassination of Arafat." He adds, "This was done secretly, under the watching eyes of the world. But no country responded -- as if nothing happened at all."
This is not the idle blame-shifting of a rascal. I read al-Assad's charge as a cunning invention of a useful casus belli to attack Israel and its supervisors the U.S., the UN, and anyone of the road map that want to get in the way. Since Damascus and Tehran routinely pay for and order attacks on Israel already, Bashar al-Assad is not searching for a reason to attack, he is naming the reason to continue the attacks, to increase the pace going into the March elections in Israel
Also, the identifying of the casus belli of assassination is potent rhetoric to heave at your enemies. It works well for the UN and the U.S. and Lebanon's democrats to hammer at the al-Assads over the Hariri assassination -- so it will work equally well for Damascus and Tehran to hammer at Olmert and Bush and Rice over the Arafat death. Also, Arafat's death is not in the distant past, as are the tedious grievances over the 1948, 1967, 1973 border lines, or the schoolyard whining about the security fence coming on my side of the deed. Arafat's ugly, painful 2004 death was globally reported, mysterious, prolonged, ghoulish, and is now completely covered up by a coalition of Arab and French physicians and clinics.
Many of the terror bosses have told me over the last year that Arafat was poisoned by the Jews. I recall Hamas, Popular Resistance Committee, Al Aqsa and Islamic Jihad speakers each signing on to the charge: and the PA's Saeeb Erekat didn't dismiss the possibility that Arafat died as a result of criminal conduct.
The Damascus Corgi Bashar al-Assad now picks up the Palestinian charge and throws it into the Arab view. You accuse me of Hariri? Why don't you accuse the Jews of Arafat? Where is the UN investigation of Arafat's last days? Has Sharon been questioned, or Olmert, or any member of the Mossad? Don't you go to the movies? What does the American Jew Spielberg says of the Jews when they are in trouble -- that they shoot and blow up noble Palestinian scholars and diplomats as if they were wild boars in the streets of Europe.
Will Bashar al-Assad's new tactic work? Does Ahmadinejad's tactic of telling anti-Semitic Europe to take back the Jews you slaughtered and ran off work? The answer is no to both; however, these smears are both, in their Cossack cliché fashion, most recognizable, most effective as talking points. And oil at $70 a barrel most profoundly works to stay the hand of reason.
Iran Talk and November 2006
Posted by on 1.21.06 @ 2:40PM
Iran Talk is a most hot new topic for the foreign policy crowd and the few thousand wine-sipping diplomats who circulate poorly heated chateaus and speak of demarches and defuses.
But is Iran Talk hot enough to gush into the Congressional campaign in November 2006? Can Team Bush transfer the mumbling evasiveness of Straw, Steiner, ElBaredei and Lavrov into slogans to take into the field to rally the GOP base for several wobbly Senate seats?
For example, how does Iran Talk play in Pennsylvania to help the President appear on platforms with incumbent, poll-trailing Rick Santorum? Does telling the evangelical-Catholic-veteran-Fox red base that a vote for Rick is a vote to strengthen my hand in the coming showdown in the Perisan Gulf -- does this turn out the numbers to overwhelm the routinely sluggish blue team of minorities and union legacy hosueholds? Does give-me-strength work in Rhode Island for sad sack Chafee; in New Jersey for young Kean against the machine pol Menendez; in Florida for the femme fatale Harris against the dullard Bill Nelson?
Spoke to my professional roundtable last eve, Curry of MSNBC, Fund from Opinionjournal.com, Todd of Hotline, and Whalen of Hoover, and they are collectively perusaded that Iran Talk will figure in the election tactics this year.
How does it work for the Democrats? Does demanding withdrawal from Iraq seem logical in the face of an Iran nuke threat? Or can the Dems twist themselves to say that Team Bush has wasted blood and treasure on the wrong threat these last four years, that Iran is what Team Bush should have attacked after Kabul? But the Dems are a default anti-war, soft diplomacy crowd, so how does any war-drumming help a Dem candidate?
Iran Talk looks to be another strong card for the GOP, and Team Bush will play it again and again from Labor Day to Election Day.
And the hallucinatory Ahmadinejad looks to be another of those political phenomenons that, if he didn't exist, the Rovians would have to invent him.
EU Reps Are Kidding Themselves
Posted by on 1.21.06 @ 11:44AM
The joke's on them: the European Parliament passed Thursday a fresh resolution declaring further enlargement of the EU impossible without first voting in a new EU Constitution.
The argument is that the Treaty of Nice set the EU max-out point at 27 members -- which will be realized when Bulgaria and Romania are brought into the fold as early as 2007. Sensible enough -- only the resounding defeat of the vast and incomprehensible EU Constitution that Europe already voted on makes the exercise more academic-bureaucratic than anything else.
Of course, the latest strategy among the Yes men is "cherry-picking," adopting those parts of the defeated Constitution that are deemed to have not been the reason why the whole thing was croaked with a fusillade of democracy. But the We-Win-Anyway, a la carte techique ignores publicly what it implicitly recognizes -- the EU right now is like a shark. It must keep moving or die. Freezing expansion to figure out a phone-book Constitution will freeze Turkey and Ukraine -- Europe's crucial eastern bulwarks -- out of the EU. Without Ankara and Kiev secured and reeling in to the West, Europe is profoundly vulnerable to pressure from anti-European immigrants and power-brokers. That means more terror and less gas.
However little the Parliamentarians would like to admit it, EU expansion is impossible with a turn back toward Constitutionalism -- not the other way around.
Friday, January 20, 2006
McCotter for Republican House Policy Committee
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 5:33PM
Thad McCotter of 11th Michigan explained last eve his candidacy for Republican House Policy Committee chair, the GOP leadership position given up voluntarily by John Shadegg in his run for leader.
The Republican House Policy Committee was the shadow government place back in the Dem majority days, pre-1994. Gingrich, Armey and crew used it to hammer out positions to use to hammer the flaccid Dems. Of recent times, the HRC has fallen into disrepair, trying to maintain too many positions that are just supportive of the majority offices.
Thad McCotter wants to transform the Policy Committee back into a think tank for the ideas needed in future to guide the GOP in House He says he wants a transformational entity, not a transactional. Thad talks like this. He's 40, from a purple district with lots of union legacies, and is smart, very smart, and very very conservative, though he does not line up with the Pence crew in the Republican Study Committee that Shadegg once ran.
I support McCotter for Policy Committee chair. He says he has 35 votes already, in second place to three rivals, and is working the phones. He laughed and said that people aren't calling back quickly, because they know what you want, and worry that any commitment at this point might complicate their maneuvers for the other candidates who are calling.
Also, McCotter was one of the first to sign the letter circulating among the GOP House that calls for all candidates to give up their present posts to run for new posts. This means Blunt runs not as whip but as a back bencher like everyone else.
Also, McCotter is a Boehner guy, and I smiled and told him I am supporting Shadegg.
McCotter and I did agree that the Blunt guys are playing what reminds of a Rose Garden strategy: Blunt is ducking all challenges to debate on the Sunday shows with Shadegg and Boehner (as of Friday night late). The best that can said for Team Blunt, with 85 votes committed on public record, is that a stumble over the finish line looks like a big win for the Rose Garden.
Reid Rumblings
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 3:57PM
It wasn't simply out of Senate gentility that Democratic leader Harry Reid apologized to the Republicans for the ugly hit piece his office sent out fingering 33 Republicans as bribe-taking criminals.
Word on Capitol Hill is that Reid is very nervous about drawing too much specific attention to himself in this newly ethics conscious environment of Washington. And it isn't just his own actions that he has to worry about. Both his wife and his son are active in Washington lobbying circles. The Reid tree's roots are deep, and we're told that Reid was reminded of this early yesterday. The letter was out the door by noon time.
Re: Release the Rest
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 3:03PM
Dave: Don't keep your hopes up, if Washington Post coverage is any indication. The paper's big story today almost pulls a New York Times in not including any mention of the pages missing from the released version of the report. I said "almost" because buried in the middle of the story is this mealy-mouthed reference: "The document, which was released with limited redactions..." How can 120 pages amount to "limited"?
Nigerian MEND: Viet Cong with Oil?
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 2:38PM
Report from Financial Times correspondent at Lagos that the fresh threat to Dutch Shell's platforms and people in the mission-critical Niger Delta is unlike any previous cycle. Usually the gangs steal from the pipelines; the gangs grab a foreigner and ransom him back; the gangs demand protection money. But the new gang is called MEND, for the liberation of the Delta from the central government and the oil cartels, and it looks much more like a nationalist cadre than a shakedown crew. Is this the beginning of a Viet Cong with oil? Grabbing four engineers, from UK, U.S., Honduras and Bolivia, the MEND gang wants Ijaw sympathizers released from government jail and wants Shell to make a $1.5 billion downpayment to clean up the environment of the Delta.
Nigerian output is down near ten percent in less than a month. The Obasanjo government is confused and fractured. The 2007 election demands a new president. Will Obasanjo use a crisis to continue his clumsy, kleptocratic rule? Will Shell and Total and Agip find a fee that the MEND gang accept instead of power sharing in the Delta?
And why does the U.S. care? Because Nigeria is our fourth or fifth daily supplier. The spike in oil barrel prices in London to all time highs is not just Iranophobia.
Nigeria is as stable as Louisiana in hurricane season. Not if. When.
Re: Providence College Bans V Monologues
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 2:38PM
Dave: I did not realize that we shared an alma mater. Though in my days at PC, the biggest to-do I recall was the departure of Rick Pitino to the Knicks, after he had led the most Cinderella of teams, the 1987 Friars, to the Final Four. Ensler had not yet defiled the printed page with her Monologues. I do recall the college's putting on an Edward Albee production, Seascape, one of his less objectionable pieces. Of course I only bothered attending because I was interested in the woman lead …. But I digress.
Good for Shanley. This bodes well for his presidency, and the college.
Olmert Falling
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 2:14PM
Trusted source from Israeli politics indicates that support for Olmert and the Kadima Party is soft and likely to fall away over the next weeks to the March election. Olmert polls about 40 plus seats right now, which would give Kadima the power hand to form a coalition in the Knesset. However, this number includes all the Russians, who will reconsider, and a generous count of the Labor and Likud types who are still persuaded that the now absent Sharon and now decayed Peres represent the comfortable future. These shaky votes will drift.
Also, Olmert will now be tested by the witches of the terror gangs, and he will struggle to answer. Olmert is by training a politician: he chooses between sides and shines. We call it triangulation. It does not work when faced with the bombers. Hamas and Al Aqsa and Islamic Jihad regard Olmert as weak and a U.S. pet. HizbAllah does not fear Olmert, as they know he will not send the tanks north again to Lebanon. And the Egyptians regard Olmert as an acting mayor.
Israel is less resolute now than at any period since 9/11. The jihadists, funded and directed by Tehran, know it. They will bomb in waves. Israel will pause to argue with itself, and this will look like retreat. And Tehran knows that as Israel goes, so goes the power of the U.S. in the region.
Providence College Bans V Monologues
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 1:47PM
My alma mater's new president, Fr. Brian Shanley, has seen the light on the Vagina Monologues. After administrators had feared for years to take a stand on the vulgar feminist program, Shanley has taken a commendable stand.
Shanley wrote a letter to the college yesterday:
The back cover of my paperback edition of The Vagina Monologues asserts (1) that its principal aim is to be "a celebration of female sexuality in all its complexity and mystery" and (2) that it has been "hailed as a bible for a new generation of women." I would argue that both of these claims are false. First, far from celebrating the complexity and mystery of female sexuality, The Vagina Monologues simplifies and demystifies it by reducing it to the vagina. In contrast, Roman Catholic teaching sees female sexuality as ordered toward a loving giving of self to another in a union of body, mind, and soul that is ordered to the procreation of new life. The deeper complexity and mystery lies in the capacity of human sexuality, both male and female, to sacramentalize the love of God in marriage. Any depiction of female sexuality that neglects its unitive and procreative dimensions diminishes its complexity, its mystery, and its dignity. Moreover, to explore fully the dignity of woman requires not only a consideration of female sexuality, but also of the capacity of women for intellectual, artistic, moral, and spiritual activity; none of these dimensions are featured in The Vagina Monologues.
Second, the description of the play as a "new bible" is an indication that its depiction of female sexuality is meant to displace the traditional Biblical view that inspires the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. The two positions are deeply and diametrically opposed. Nowhere is this clearer than in a monologue wherein the alcohol-fueled seduction of a sixteen-year-old girl by a twenty-four-year-old woman is described as resulting in "salvation" and "a kind of heaven." What is thus characterized in traditional religious language is instead abusive, demeaning, exploitative, and morally wrong according to the true Bible. Precisely because its depiction of female sexuality is so deeply at odds with the true meaning and morality that the Catholic Church's teaching celebrates, The Vagina Monologues is not an appropriate play to be performed on our campus. Therefore the college will prohibit the production of The Vagina Monologues.
Hopefully Shanley's push back toward Providence's Catholicism will clear the way for such schools as Notre Dame to do the same next week. President Jenkins is scheduled to speak on the subject of the play and academic freedom. Pray that he sides with Truth.
UPDATE: I'm scanning the online archives of my undergrad paper, The Cowl, for a few highlights of the ongoing Monologues controversy. The administration's equivocating we-don't-like-it-but-we're-allowing-it-anyway statement is here. My critique in 2002 launched pages of letters. Steph Pietros twice slammed the production as degrading to women.
Release the Rest
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 11:02AM
RET's erstwhile co-author Brian McGuire reports in the New York Sun today that Congressional Republicans aren't yet giving up on releasing the rest of the Barrett Report. Among options they're considering: committee investigations, forcing the release through legislation, or continuing press on the three-judge panel overseeing the independent counsel. The Democrats and major media want to relegate this report to partisan non-event status. Republicans and the blogs need to fight back by keeping up the pressure.
Special Interest Filibuster
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 10:31AM
The only folks in Washington seriously advocating a filibuster are extreme liberals with nothing to lose, like the National Organization for Women.
Strangely, even the People for the American Way doesn't mention the "f" word on its home page or its Stop Alito petition. PFAW doesn't seem to take its own Alito opposition seriously: just take a look at its laughably apocalyptic flash flick, "It's a Less Wonderful Life." If Alito on the Court would be so bad, why not advocate a filibuster? My guess is that Ralph Neas understand the political and legal realities where the Nags don't: Alito will be a fine justice. PFAW's holding their fire for the really conservative nominee.
And Iran: Iran, So Far Away
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 10:00AM
Ebrahim Sheibani, nimble and quick, tells the world in his capacity as Tehran's top banker that Iran has o'erleaped the singeing candle of "smart" sanctions -- by pulling its foreign currency reserves out of European banks.
Those cruising Drudge lately will also have learned in old-school counterpoint that -- as human paragon of international law and Nobel Laureate M. ElBaradei refuses to condemn Iran -- non-Laureate Jacques Chirac has started talking up the nuclear option against any would-be terrorist enemy of France. It appears, perhaps not yet a day late and dollar short, that the French leadership understands the limits of diplomacy backed by more panicked diplomacy.
But Paris, in the same way that it can't nuke itself when a den of freaks does home-grown damage on a mind-bending scale, won't be lobbing missiles toward Iran any time soon, either. Iran has learned how sharp the combination of "smart preemption" can be, and our non-state adversaries have adapted, too. Any terrorist worth his salt, post-Afghanistan, knows that the best suicide attack is the one that makes a target country turn on itself, not the host country, like a man covered in fire ants. Europe is very good at exporting the rule of law, and Chirac, at least, now seems willing to export carnage (or at least its credible threat). Europe has to concern itself, too, unfortunately, with the more personal problem of imports.
Grant, Not McAuliffe
Posted by on 1.20.06 @ 9:27AM
Today's NY Sun editorial entitled "Nuts!" imagines the famous response of BGen. Anthony McAuliffe, commander of the 101st Airborne surrounded and besieged in Bastogne in December 1944, to be what President Bush will say in response to bin Laden's truce offer. Forget for the moment that witnesses insist that Gen. McAuliffe's response was far more colorful (and less printable in family magazines) than a mere "nuts." But remember his role: besieged, only able to hang on bravely until relief arrived.
It would have been better for the Sun to put the president in the shoes of Grant at Vicksburg. When the Rebels sought terms, Grant demanded unconditional surrender. On his very worst day, Johnny Reb didn't come close to the level of evil OBL achieves at his most benign. If the troglodyte terrorist chief were in the president's shoes, he'd accept nothing less than America's utter destruction. He should -- and will -- get from G.W. Bush worse, much worse, than the Rebels got from U.S. Grant.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Bootless State Department
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 10:41PM
Conversation with Dr. Mahmoud Al-Zahar, chief of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, who treats PA President Abbas as a used car. The election next week, January 25, will deliver overwhelmingly to Hamas in Gaza and will demonstrate that the Palestinian Authority is a ruse. There is no authority. There are factions within the landscape that have divided loyalties and paymasters. The coalition will consist of Hamas, Al Aqsa, Islamic Jihad, HizbAllah, the Popular Resistance Committee, the PFLP and so forth. I asked al-Zahar if, as a major leader of the Coalition, if he would negotiate with the UN or the Quartet with regard the so-called Road Map. He was adamant. No road map after the elections.
The US State Department depends upon the road map as if it were holy writ. Up ahead is an unknown country. No guides. Bootless.
OBL Speaks of Truce
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 7:51PM
How long will it be before the first Dem says we should talk to bin Laden about his truce offer? It is only a matter of time until one of them does. Is there one among the Dems who will say we will not speak of truces with terrorists, that their unconditional surrender is the only condition on which this war can possibly end? Is there one of Dean's lemmings who will say that the terrorist ideology will bring only misery, suffering and death to bin Laden’s adherents and their kin in
Re: Nuancing the Hillary
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 7:21PM
Apropos of that, Mickey Kaus wrote yesterday:
P.S.: The Michael Goodwin NYDN piece linked above ably outlines the Essential Hillary Dilemma: She's supposed to be the candidate who has the base locked up and can appeal to the center. But thanks to her Iraq vote she now has to re-lock the base while simultaneously appealing to the center. An effective politician might accomplish this while projecting an interesting, variegated, forceful identity. An ineffective politician will look as if she has no identity at all, other than her fabled ambitious calculation. Goodwin:I uncharitably lean toward (a), and David Weigel picks (b), in a podcast we recorded last night all about Hillary and her discontents on the left. Have a listen.All this zigzagging from left to right and back again on abortion, health care and national defense is supposed to make her look like a centrist.P.P.S.: Goodwin suggests the problem isIt's just making her look confused.
she keeps her more moderate and leftist tendencies segregated from each other. The result is that she often seems to be two different people instead of one person with a principled coherence.But that's another way of saying she's scared to explain both tendencies to both audiences. Is that because a) she doesn't have a single, heartfelt, mixed identity; b) she has an identity but doesn't have the chops to present it persuasively to different audiences or c) she has the identity and the chops but is simply too cautious to try? I wouldn't rule out (c).
Nuancing the Hillary
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 5:07PM
So -- as Jim points out -- the Junior Senator from
No one knows except, perhaps, she. Having taught Lil’ Billy the art of triangulation, she’s working hard to modernize triangulation to suit her own campaign, and she’s failing. Instead of the new Clintonism, she’s coming up with the old Kerryism, trying to take both sides of issues and coming up incoherent. Hillary realizes that there can’t be a Dem president who doesn’t at least sound tough on the war. She’s trying to move to the right of the whackolib Dem mainstream without actually disagreeing with anything they say. So Hillary is rejecting immediate withdrawal from
What Hillary hasn’t yet figured out is that Kerryism lost last time because it is incoherent. In peace time, Americans are capable of voting for any fool (they did, twice, for her husband), if they can be convinced that the fool will keep the good times rolling. In wartime -- though the Dems are willfully blind to the fact this is such -- we ask more of our leaders. Miz Clinton’s nascent presidential campaign will flatline because she, like all the rest of the Dems, has neither the stomach for the fight nor any idea how to run it.
Hillary Incoherent, Even As A Hawk
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 4:35PM
Matching the classic rant mode with neo-hawkishness, Sen. Clinton is covered in The Daily Princetonian taking mighty and principled swings at the current adminstration:
I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations.
On the verge of an argument that negotiations are futile, that recourse to European soft power is a recreation for the negligent, Sen. Clinton gets Churchillian, moving on to mighty and principled swings at the current administration in Tehran:
We cannot and should not - must not - permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons.
But then, of course, the other shoe drops. Fools that we were, outsourcing negotiations to our Western allies:
In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations.
We should have outsourced them directly to Moscow and Beijing, cutting out the middlemen - who Cheney is, at the instant of this writing, referring to as "our friends in Britain, France, and Germany." Ah, the realpolitik of Sen. Clinton - since when does Germany sit at the same table with the Big Five? But how, Madame, would our chums in Good Old Europe have felt, suddenly realizing that Iran's ploy to make Asian interests outbalance European had become the fashion of our folly...?
Tel Aviv Bomber Al Aqsa
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 4:22PM
Trusted source speaking to terror gangs identified Tel Aviv bomber as Sam Antar, 20 years old, who belonged to both Al Aqsa in Balata camp as well as Islamic Jihad in Balata camp. Like joining both the Dead Rabbitts and the Bowery B'hoys at Five Points. Dicey but doable if you are a bomb mule, sometimes known as a martyr. His head now rests in a body bag.
Attack commanded by Ala Senakreh of Al Aqsa, who is a regular chatty type. Early indiation that the bomber hit the wrong target. Either premature explosion (fussing with belt in boys bathroom) or just stupid nervous with his prayers, chanted himself into the wrong room.
IDF counter strikes going out now. Aim at Jenin area, at AA and IJ.
Abbas asleep already at Ramallah. Hamas in Gaza refuses to talk on air tonight, as if we might assume Hamas is part of the op. What's Arabic for "born-yesterday-not"?
Damascus Face-to-Face
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 2:45PM
Mention that Ahmadinejad must meet face-to-face in the same sealed, electronic-countermeasured Damascus room as the al-Assads (courtesy PRC-provided technology stolen from Silly Valley), because sigint can read anything the chatty bad boys put in the air or underground. Damascus is like the old days of the face-to-face in the Adirondacks, Cosa Nostra-style. Also, the terror gangs headquartered in Damascus deal in cash Euros banked in Geneva, and so Ahmadinejad must shove the access codes across the table to his hirelings.
Fun to consider how the gangs could defeat NSA by making a mobile phone call to Vegas to make supper reservations at Bellagio's Le Cirque, and while on hold, they could bounce the call to Gaza. How long before a DNC apparatchik said that satellite spying on Le Cirque is criminal?
Quisling Rising
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 2:23PM
Hallucinatory and dangerous Ahmadinejad is in Damascus for two days of brainstorming how to attack the tabloid United States, crouching Lebanon, mullah soaked Iraq, and confused Israel using terror gang cut-outs in order to draw attention from the showdown at the IAEA on February 2,3.
Extreme knothead Bashar al-Assad, in his new role as Corgi to the Persian bloodhound, rolled over and announced his support for Iran's nuclear weapons program at Natanz and other semi-secret, completely non-bombable underground sites.
The al-Assads, weakened by family feuding and the beggary of the oil cut-off from Saddam's gang, need Ahmadinejad to approve a new credit line as well as negotiate with the Saudis and French so they can stay in power. You will recall that the Saudis, especially the royal bastard Bandar (who wants to be king once the octogenarian set tumbles off the podium of life), want a Sunni-Moslem Brother solution in Damascus. Tehran nixes Bandar's bright ideas; however, Tehran is stuck with the terminally stupid Bashar and his scary, Medusa of a sister Bushra.
Ahmadinejad will order a general offensive the next six weeks, against Beirut, against Jerusalem, against Baghdad. The terror gangs in Damascus, especially the Gaza dominant Hamas, will obey.
Smile when the Murthaites and Deaniacs and Pelosians claim that Iran is none of our affair. Quisling rising.
Bomber Weather
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 1:11PM
Al Aqsa Brigade, the military elite of the Fatah Party, is responsible for the training and deploying of the 20-year-old suicide bomber who just destroyed a sandwich shop in Tel Aviv.
Islamic Jihad claims credit, because the 20 year old, now indicated as Sami Antar, was an IJ recruit from the Balata refugee camp in the West Bank. However the bomber was entirely handled by Al Aqsa, led by the cadres out of Jenin.
The bombing is said to be the first of waves of bombings directed at testing and weakening new acting Prime Minister Olmert as he demonstrates his Sharonism prowess in the campaign for voting in March.
The bombing is also meant to show that PA President Abbas is a fool and false witness, that Fatah is fractured into many parts, that Al Aqsa is the only vigorous part of the old PLO, that the election next week is the end of Abbas as a politician.
What this means for the U.S. State Department is that the U.S. policy is attached to the losers in the Palestinian Authority. What this means for the Bush Administration is that Olmert will be boxed in by terror bombs and will struggle mightily to prove that unilateral concessions to murder gangs is effective state policy. The Gaza withdrawal last summer was a failure and is now the crux of the imminent triumph of Hamas in the rogue state of Gaza.
I routinely speak with the terror gangs. They do not fear Olmert or Bush or the UN; they are cocky and well financed and aggressive; they mean to grab Gaza, then the West Bank, then Egypt after Mubarak, then the whole of the crescent from Damascus to Cairo. Not apocalyptic thinking, rather tactical and scheduled.
Appeasement from Olmert, appeasement from Bush, appeasement from the EU or the UN or anyone who shows up with an acronym, will fail.
Bomber weather. And you are right this is on the table in Tehran: where do you think Damascus gets the money to feed the gangs?
Pence Endorses Shadegg
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 11:48AM
After deafening silence and facing pressure from conservatives to speak up about the race for majority leader, Republican Study Committee chairman Rep. Mike Pence endorsed John Shadegg this morning.
This is great news and should be a great boost for the right man.
The RSC just sent Pence's letter around:
Two weeks from today, the Republican Congress will face a choice of enormous significance in the life of our nation and our majority. As chairman of the Republican Study Committee, it is always my goal to take action, with deliberation, in the best interests of our members and the conservative movement.
Out of respect for the fact that members of RSC would be supporting a variety of candidates, I had intended to withhold any endorsement in the race for Majority Leader. But given the addition of a prominent RSC member to the field and given that many members have already expressed a preference, it has become clear to me that an earlier, personal endorsement is now appropriate.
My choice is John Shadegg. While I see Roy Blunt and John Boehner as conservative men with honorable records of service in Congress, I am proud to endorse John Shadegg for Majority Leader of the United States House of Representatives.
John Shadegg is a proven conservative leader in Congress. During his years as chairman of the Republican Study Committee and the House Policy Committee, John Shadegg has demonstrated a passion for the conservative agenda and a heart to build bridges between the diverse members of our Republican conference.
John Shadegg is a son of the Republican revolution, a member of the fabled class of 1994, and a leader who has never lost his zeal for reform. John Shadegg knows what fiscal and moral reforms are necessary to restore public confidence in the integrity of our national legislature. Now, more than ever, we need leadership with the energy and vision to steer this Congress back to our roots of fiscal discipline, limited government and traditional values.
John Shadegg is the right man with the right agenda to lead our majority during the challenging days that lie ahead. I humbly urge all my colleagues to support John Shadegg of
as our next Majority Leader. Arizona Sincerely,
Mike Pence
Chairman
Republican Study Committee
Roy Blunt Makes His Case
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 10:28AM
In the WSJ editorial page (free link) today. And it ain't so pretty.
The majority of Blunt's piece touts the great economic success of a Republican majority in the House. So they got out of the way... some of the time... when they weren't spending astronomical amounts. Kudos to you.
So what are his big reforms, tapping that wealth of conservative dissatisfaction? Identifying earmarks with the legislators who put them there, no "pay-go" (the system that demands that tax cuts are offset by tax increases), and annual budget reconciliation.
These reforms are improvements. But they're the bare minimum for a very broken system. Blunt says nothing about curbing the soaring budgets or thousands of earmarks. Under Blunt's plan, pork wouldn't necessarily decrease, but we would better identify the porkers. And then the reference to "shadowy 527s"? Blunt's a man of the party establishment, and regulating campaign spending is just another phrase for incumbency protection.
Contrast Blunt to John Shadegg's piece yesterday. Shadegg acknowledges and confront's the Republicans' failures head-on. Shadegg would also add greater transparency to the earmark process: they would have to be attached to the regular appropriations bills instead of slipped in in the conference report. Shadegg seems to be the man of action and not lip service in this race.
Tim Kaine, Party Poster Boy
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 9:32AM
Roll Call reports today that Democrats will ask Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine to deliver the Democratic response to the State of the Union Address. The symbolic value is understandable, but I wonder if Howie Dean, et al. have ever seen the guy speak. He's got to be the goofiest Democrat since Tom Daschle. If Kaine delivers it, the Democrat response will be more of a yelp than a counterpunch.
Iran's Nukes
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 8:59AM
The otherwise thoughtful Roger McKinney points out, in today's Reader Mail, that, "We couldn't stop the USSR, China, India, or Pakistan from getting the bomb, and we probably won't stop Iran. MAD prevented any of those countries from launching a missile, even though they were as crazy and paranoid as the Iranians." From that, he concludes that we needn't fear an Iranian nuclear attack. But he's entirely wrong.
MAD -- mutually assured destruction -- deterred the Soviets from attacking us because we had sufficient forces to mount a counter attack that would destroy them even though they were in the process of destroying us. It was predicated on a fact not present with Iran. If the Soviets attacked - by missile or aircraft - we would have known instantly and with certainty who the attacker was. With Iran, they would not do that for the same reasons.
I disagree with the idea that the Soviets, Chinese, Indians, or Pakistanis are as "crazy and paranoid as the Iranians." They are crazy and paranoid in a very different way. The messianic radical Islam that dominates Iran's thinking is entirely different from the expansionist communism that was the Soviets. The Chinese are a third category. The Iranian method of attack would be designed to conceal the identity of the attacker. If they sailed a Liberian-registered ship into New York harbor, and the crew exploded a large nuclear device within yards of Manhattan, we'd suffer millions of dead and not know who the attacker was. Which precludes a nuclear counterstrike. No American president is going to launch one on the basis of a CIA assessment of who might be responsible. You don't launch ICBMs targeted at "to whom it may concern."
As I said last night on Fox (you can view the clip here), the US and Israel are the only nations serious about ensuring Iran doesn't obtain nuclear weapons. With the Israelis, we need to make a classified assessment of when the Iranians will be getting close to a weapon, and use our stealth aircraft and cruise missiles to knock out their facilities before they achieve their goals. This won't do more than delay the Iranian program, but it has the benefit of taking the advantage of time away from Iran and keeping it to ourselves.
Stop the Mexican Border Incursions
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 8:23AM
I just heard this yesterda: apparently the Mexican military engages in routine cross-border operations (yep, that's in U.S. territory) as armed escorts for alien and drug smuggling operations. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff called concern over the operations "overblown" and "scare tactics." That's not going to go over too well.
Free the Barrett Report
Posted by on 1.19.06 @ 8:03AM
In his column today, Bob Novak practically dares a member of Congress to leak the Barrett Report.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Tariq Aziz at Ease
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 6:46PM
In happier days he made pilgrimages to Assisi. Now, if ever he is released from custody in Iraq, he reportedly hopes to find asylum in Italy. Wouldn't he be more suited to replace Kofi Annan at the U.N.? Here's the tidbit, illustrated by an item big enough to intimidate many a mogul.
Iran Talk and the New Dark Age
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 4:39PM
The cold war with Iran is a quarter century old and moving toward a crisis. A crisis, says the wag, is when there are no good options, and that describes the threat of the violent, ruthless, hallucinatory Iran under the priest craft of the mullahs and the non-rational talk of Ahmadinejad and his IRGC cabal. No good options. The crash of nation states ahead is as inevitable as fission. Meanwhile the EU shivers and feigns. The United States State Department is a pitiable schoolmarm. The United Nations is a fiction dreamed up by Cervantes.
What is to be done? Prepare for the dark ages. In the immediate future I can turn my irony at those among us who apologize for Tehran by doubting the threat. The blogometer at Hotline listed three self-enamored Democrat voices yesterday, Atrios, Lean Left and Matt Yglesias, who each contribute ignorant partisanship to the debate. Lean Left regards Iran as organized crime, not as a nuclear fuelled terror state with a stated desire to eliminate the State of Israel. Atrios hears "Iran Talk" as propaganda to advance an unstated domestic agenda by the Bush team or some imagined controlling authority. And Yglesias points to the first world war as a warning that preemption is futile.
The summary of these positions is that Iran is not a profoundly potent and mass-murdering enemy of the United States of America and its allies. The apologizing left now assumes the same blind role evidenced by the out of power Republican minority in the 1930s, who regarded FDR's looming confrontation with Germany and Japan as a diversion from squabbling about deflation. As if Iran policy is electioneering for '06 or '08, as if Iran is a Republican dirty trick.
How far will the smarty-pants leftosphere go down the path of appeasement to the Iran monster, and how many of the rightosphere will follow? History offers examples that the day the argument ends is the day none of us will much care about who is right. The EMP will mark the end of the digital age and the start of the dark age.
America's Future Foundation
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 4:18PM
For
those in the Beltway, I just got word that America's Future
Foundation, a group of young conservative/libertarian professionals, will
be having a panel discussion this evening.
Panelists include
The event will take place at the Fund for American Studies,
Great SCOTUS News
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 1:44PM
The Supreme Court unanimously let stand the New Hampshire parental notification law today.
Re: A Democratic Call
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 11:58AM
Paul: Yes, that "no play" offsides was equally bizarre. A couple Colts defenders jumped across and immediately pointed at a Pittsburgh lineman as the culprit who drew them offsides. Only in super slo-mo replay could one detect an ever so slight twitch by that lineman beforehand. But to the normal eye it sure appeared that the Colts culprits were simply trying to provoke a call against Pittsburgh -- an easier way to get a team to lose yardage than stopping them on fourth and inches. Unable to decide what happened, the referees pretended nothing had. As head referee, Morelli deserves the blame here too. The final call was his, ultimately. You can safely say he calls them as he sees or doesn't see them!
Big Story with John Gibson
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 10:52AM
I'll be on this evening (about 5 pm EST) with John to talk about Iran and the coming UN kabuki dance on sanctions. Hope you can catch it.
Re: A Democratic Call
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 9:55AM
Wlady: Didn’t that same game also involve a bizarre ruling from the officials where they called a “no play” after what was clearly an off-sides on either Indy or
An Owl No More
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 8:43AM
Embarrassed by hypocrisy, Teddy Kennedy quits his own exclusive club.
Federalism and Assisted Suicide
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 7:30AM
Do I think that the CSA regulations at issue in Oregon are unconstitutional under the Commerce clause? Yes, I do, and I bet that Justice Thomas would agree. But Thomas didn't concur in the judgment on those grounds -- and rightly so. Bill Ardolino reminds me that I wrote about this in a comment I left on INDCJournal in October:
The question in the assisted suicide case is a matter of reading the statute, not the Constitution. The Court is asked to decide if the Controlled Substances Act is meant to extend to doctors in a case like this. Almost certainly, it is. (Not that it's a good law; it isn't.)Ardolino still doesn't see that this is an "an overriding angle," but it is. (John Cole, whom Ardolino links to approvingly, has grasped the point and updated his post.) That's why I join Thomas in picking on the majority's reliance on principles they rejected in Raich, even though I like those principles. It's the capriciousness that's the problem, not the practical result of the ruling.In Raich, this sort of application of the CSA, overriding state law, was found constitutional under the commerce clause vis-a-vis medical marijuana. Now, Raich was wrongly decided. Some have speculated that the liberals, who seem to want to interpret the CSA as circumscribing executive power in this case, may be joined on the pro-Oregon side by Thomas, on commerce clause grounds. But Thomas's general rule of thumb is to only reconsider precedent when the petitioner or the respondent requests it, and there are good reasons for that. I don't think Oregon asked for justices to consider the Constitution at all (though I haven't read everything related to the case); it makes a big difference.
A Democratic Call
Posted by on 1.18.06 @ 1:51AM
Here's someone I bet you never see again referring an important NFL playoff game. Pete Morelli was the genius last Sunday who on review reversed an unmistakeable interception by Pittsburgh's Troy Polamalu, giving the Indianapolis Colts undeserved new life late in a game they otherwise would have lost right there.
But never fear -- Morelli has all the makings of a Democratic appointee to a federal court. The founding fathers of the NFL's challenge procedures, not to mention common law, established that no call can be overturned without "indisputable visual evidence" that the initial call was incorrect. So what did Morelli do? He not only ignored that basic understanding and common practice, but wrote new law out of whole cloth, claiming Polamalu failed to intercept if his knee remained on the ground when he subsequently fumbled after having clearly caught the ball.
Too bad for Morelli that the NFL's Supremes promptly overruled him on Monday. Would that Antonin Scalia had their clout.
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Re: Federalism
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 8:36PM
Dave: I think it'd be best to wait until tomorrow, when I'll have a column on the case posted, to get into that.
Tonight on the Alan Colmes Radio Show
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 5:28PM
I'll be debating Alan and Michael Ratner of the "Center for Constitutional Liberty" (Harrumph!) on the latest exercise of the usual suspects. The ACLU, CAIR, Greenpeace and others filed suit to stop the NSA intel gathering op authorized by the president.
I'm predicting that at least half of the plaintiffs in these lawsuits will be dismissed because they lack legal standing to sue. Moreover, the laws the plaintiffs cite doesn't say what they contend. This is a case I wish I could argue for the government.
Happy 300th Ben Franklin
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 4:08PM
"I have sometimes wish'd it had been my destiny to have been born two or three centuries hence," wrote Benjamin Franklin at the close of his life, near 1790, "for inventions of improvement are prolific, and beget more of their kind. The present progress is rapid. Many of great importance, now unthought of, will before that period be procured."
On this wintry day, the three hundredth anniversary of Ben Franklin's Boston birth, January 17, 1706, it is dry irony to repeat his wish, that we all could be born two or three centuries hence to see the wonders of invention in this great land of Franklin's greatest invention, liberty in men's souls absent idle entails, arbitrary government, suicidal priestcraft, hereditary piracy. It is fun to imagine that if Franklin had been born in 1806, he would have marveled by 1890 at chemistry, railroading, telephones and the screw propeller steamship. Born in 1906, he would have marveled by 1990 at quantum mechanics, aircraft, spacecraft, computer technology and pharmaceuticals. Born in 2006, he would have marveled by 2090 at a return to the beginnings, the great invention of liberty in men's souls, this time the Republic of the United States of America writ large, sea to sea to sea to sea, absent the Mandarin bullies of the Forbidden City, the hallucinatory priestcraft of Persia, the paranoid pirates of the Kremlin, the entailed sheiks of Arabia. Or not yet, not yet.
Suicide Is Painless, Subjectively
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 3:52PM
Poulos grants Justice Scalia his sensible definition of the phrase "legitimate medical purpose" but laments the cultural tendency toward legitimizing assisted suicide:
...we are making more of a culture of death with each passing year, and like it or not, a if a death-cultured definition of "legitimate medical purpose" has any meaning, it surely includes the prescription of drugs to produce death -- if that death is the desire of the patient. Every powerful force in the culture is pushing toward and reinforcing the definition of health as "the fulfilment of the desire of the patient."
Thankfully, though, words still have meaning and Scalia had Webster's at his side as he wrote his dissent:
Virtually every relevant source of authoritative meaning confirms that the phrase "legitimate medical purpose" does not include intentionally assisting suicide. "Medicine" refers to "[t]he science and art dealing with the prevention, cure, or alleviation of disease." Webster's Second 1527. ...
He also calls on medical authorities -- other objective experts:
...virtually every medical authority from Hippocrates to the current American Medical Association (AMA) confirms that assisting suicide has seldom or never been viewed as a form of "prevention, cure, or alleviation of disease," and (even more so) that assisting suicide is not a "legitimate" branch of that "science and art." ...
Yet Scalia's critique cuts deeper than Justice Kennedy's absurd definition of "legitimate medical purpose."
The only explanation for such a distortion is that the Court confuses the normative inquiry of what the boundaries of medicine should be-which it is laudably hesitant to undertake-with the objective inquiry of what the accepted definition of "medicine" is.
Scalia's is a world in which words have meanings that cannot be altered by will or Supreme Court opinion. Medicine could deteriorate to a point at which the word "medicine" is fundamentally changed (and acknowledged as such by Webster's) and physician-assisted suicide is legitimate. But fortunately, we aren't there yet.
Trent Lott
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 2:30PM
Conservatives were holding their collective breath. Not to fear. Trent Lott is here... or at least running again. As if there were any question.
A Ridiculous Majority Opinion...
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 2:12PM
...calls for a ridiculous pun in the dissent. Scalia writes (pdf):
Since the Regulation does not run afowl (so to speak) of the Court's newly invented prohibition of "parroting"; and since the Directive represents the agency's own interpretation of that concededly valid regulation; the only question remaining is whether that interpretation is "plainly erroneous or inconsistent with the regulation"; otherwise, it is "controlling."
Get it? Afowl, parroting? Get it?
Re: Federalism
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 1:38PM
John, You criticize the liberals on the Court of inconsistency, if I read your comments below correctly. I agree that regarding home-grown marijuana as interstate commerce in Raich was quite a stretch. But do you also think that regulating a licit drug's "legitimate medical purpose" is outside the commerce clause?
Federalism, But Only When We Feel Like It
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 1:03PM
Surely, assisted suicide is a state issue: The federal government doesn't belong in the middle of a state-regulated doctor-patient relationship. Except the Court ruled in Gonzales v. Raich, the medical marijuana case, that the feds do indeed belong right there. I've only read summaries of the opinions so far, but it sounds like Thomas is spot on: Kennedy pretends to make a statutory ruling based on the Controlled Substances Act, but in fact makes a constitutional ruling at odds with Raich. (Thomas correctly dissented in Raich; Kennedy joined the majority.) O'Connor, at least, is a consistent federalist (whether or not the justification makes sense), but she's leaving the Court. Kennedy and the liberals are willing to check federal power when they feel like it, but only so long as they retain the veto and don't actually establish a general principle. The hubris is breathtaking.
Supreme Swinger
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 11:40AM
In our culture of death, much will be written about the Supreme Court's 6-3 upholding of Oregon's assisted suicide fetish. Among other things, though, it signaled who the successor to Sandra Day O'Connor will be: none other than Anthony Kennedy, who jumped at the chance to make his presence felt as "a more influential swing voter after O'Connor's departure," as the AP put it in its initial report. Yet another reminder that the real shift in the court's balance won't come unless President Bush can make a third binding appointment.
Roberts Comes Through
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 10:54AM
We've seen him performing well during oral arguments, but in his first major decision, Chief Justice John Roberts joined Justices Scalia and Thomas in dissenting against the Court decision upholding the Oregon assisted suicide law. The opinions aren't posted yet, but it looks like we'll be treated to another great Scalia dissent.
He Speaks So Well
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 10:00AM
Hopefully Mayor Nagin won't be teaching English to the chirrun on Nawlins' (more from that CNN story linked above):
"You can't have New Orleans no other way."
"I don't care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day," Nagin said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. "This city will be a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be."...
"How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about," he said.
"New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina. It is going to be a chocolate city after. How is that divisive? It is white and black working together, coming together and making something special."
"Chocolate" NOLA Preempts Judge
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 9:58AM
Mark Gauvreau Judge won't be joining Laura Ingraham after all today -- Ray Nagin's call for a "chocolate" New Orleans (that's a city with a black majority, apparently) is taking precedent.
Former Chief Justice Al Gore on the NSA
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 8:47AM
Well, until Al Gore chimed in about the NSA wiretapping story, I was convinced the President had the authority under Article II of the Constitution to conduct warrantless searches and surveillance to protect the USA against foreign threats. In fact, I was under the impression that every President since Jimmy Carter had maintained that despite FISA (signed in 1978 by said Georgia peanut farmer), the executive had the inherent and irrevocable authority to conduct such operations. No less than Bill Clinton and Al Gore's own Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick maintained that presidential authority in testimony before the Senate. And then there's the whole FISA Court of Review opinion from 2002 that affirmed the president's warrantless surveillance authority (the Supreme Court subsequently declined to hear the ACLU appeal of the matter thus settling it for the time being). But pay no mind to all that.
It seems that former Chief Justice Gore (I know, you missed that part of his bio -- he served as Chief Justice between inventing the Internet and serving as the role model for Oliver in Love Story) has set the record straight. According to __ Gore (he's held so many prominent positions that we hardly know which honorific to use), President Bush has broken the law. Whew. Once again, Al has come to the rescue.
Thank you Al. Thank you. And now, back to American Idol...
Re: Sixty Days
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 6:57AM
John: So if the recidivism rate were as high as I claim - and I think we can both dispute the numbers - you think it wouldn't make any difference whether Hulett was imprisoned for sixty days or sixty years? I give up. I'd rather imprison the guy for the max (which, in this case, would be about sixty years) and thus preventing him from committing more child rapes in that period. So what if treatment may work in some cases? The sentence provided by law should be imposed not only to punish but just as importantly to prevent the criminal from committing more crimes while he's in jail. This judge imposed a sentence that abuses the law. He should be removed and Hulett jailed for the maximum sentence.
Re: Golden Globes
Posted by on 1.17.06 @ 12:20AM
I watched part of the first season of 24 and a couple of episodes last season. But you can't miss an episode if you want to catch every plot twist, and I guess I've never been convinced that it's worth the commitment. (Another factor: My bride-to-be is uninterested. There aren't many shows that I watch alone anymore.)
I generally find the Globes less frustrating than the Oscars, so I usually catch them. Steve Carrell's hilarious acceptance speech alone was worth my time. As far as Davis is concerned, I didn't really have a dog (figuratively speaking!) in the Best TV Actress fight, so I wasn't too upset. (I can't really comment on the Best Drama award -- I'm not a good enough person to have seen Brokeback Mountain yet.)
Monday, January 16, 2006
Mark Judge Live on Laura Ingraham
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 11:42PM
Mark Gauvreau Judge, whose recent column "Right-Wingtips" sparked quite a counter-revolution (e.g. here), will be a guest on Laura Ingraham's show Tuesday in the 10 a.m. ET slot. Don't miss him. And please be nice.
Re: Golden Globes
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 11:39PM
John: Obviously you are not a 24 fan as you chose the Golden Globes for your post-season Monday Night Football night TV-filler. What a shame. An awards show that honors Geena Davis and her heavy-makeupped performance in Commander in Chief instead of a show that keeps up the fight between good and evil free of the Left Coast's melodramic. Give it a try next Monday night. The only good thing that came out of the Golden Globes tonight was that Kiefer Sutherland's real-life father, Donald, didn't win for his uber-aggressive imitation of a "Republican" in Chief.
The real question, though, is when the Nielson ratings come out tomorrow who will the real winner be? 24 or the Globes?
Golden Globes
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 10:04PM
Paradise Now won for best foreign film. Its country of origin? Palestine. This brings to mind Cathy Seipp's account of a conversation with Oliver Stone:
[H]e went on to say that he'd just returned from Palestine, where he'd been interviewing Arafat. I asked if that was a package tour that included stopovers in Utopia and Xanadu. The conversation kind of went downhill from there, and luckily the valet soon pulled up with Stone's car.
Re: Sixty days
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 9:43PM
Jed: If it were true that pedophiles have a nearly 100% recidivism rate, then it wouldn't really matter if Hulett were released in 60 days or 20 years, since he'd be all but guaranteed to prey on another kid. Indeed, getting him on easy-to-break parole, making it possible to impose a life sentence without him actually hurting another child, would be ideal. Fortunately, that's not true at all.
Here's some data on the subject. The most pessimistic study cited shows a 53% recidivism rate for child molesters. And while the data isn't quite conclusive, there is indeed some evidence that treatment makes a significant difference.
Re: Sixty Days
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 7:08PM
John: It is absolutely not any more complicated in any respect. It's absurd to say, as the judge did, that he is more concerned with rehabilitation than punishment. This judge and his apologists are setting up the idea that this man is susceptible of rehabilitation, which is contrary to ALL the available data. The incidence of recidivism in pedophiles is nearly 100%, regardless of treatment, counseling, clay modeling or singing Kumbaya in group therapy. What purpose does our criminal justice system serve if not to protect the innocent -- especially the defenseless -- from those who will do them harm?
The judge had an obligation to take this animal off the streets. He didn't do so. That judge is allowing a convicted child rapist out on the streets again to victimize more children in less time than a shoplifter might serve in jail. The sentence should be -- and, I expect will be -- and the judge removed from the bench forthwith. If I had small children and this animal were roaming around, I couldn't let those kids out of my sight. Should that be my burden?
Re: Sixty days
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 6:44PM
Careful there, Jed. The story's a bit more complicated than that.
Because Hulett was a first-time offender, Corrections Department officials told the judge that he wouldn't receive sex-offender treatment while in prison. The judge worried that without treatment, Hulett would go on to abuse more children as soon as he was let out of jail. He set the sentence at a 60-day minimum so that Hulett could be released under stringent conditions, including a treatment requirement. The judge made some mush-headed comments about "punishment" not being important, but his basic contention that sex-offenders need therapy isn't wrong.
Now that the state is offering Hulbett treatment in jail, one expects that the judge will reconsider the sentence.
P.S. Let me emphasize that I don't think treatment is more important than punishment; If I heard that a child-rapist couldn't get therapy in prison, my first instinct would be to try to make sure he never gets out, not to find a way to arrange therapy. So I'm not necessarily defending the judge's decision so much as saying it's not quite as insane as it sounds at first blush, and that the facts of the case suggest that things will work themselves out.
Sixty days
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 5:35PM
That's how long a Vermont judge gave convicted child rapist Mark Hulett for repeatedly raping a little girl. To say this is a disgrace to the legal system is to understate its importance and the injustice of it by several orders of magnitude. the judge should be removed from the bench forthwith. He is unfit for the job.
The best comment on this legal horror was made by a writer to John Gibson's show on FNC. The gent, having survived the Alito hearings, wrote last week that it seemed the sentence was shorter than a Joe Biden question. 'Tis sad, 'tis true. 'Tis true, 'tis sad.
Indy Radio
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 5:09PM
I'm subbing for Greg Garrison tomorrow on his WIBC show broadcast in the Indianapolis area, 9-12 EST. And not only because TAS has Indiana roots but because his story in today's NY Sun is a real grabber, RET will be one of our guests. See ya on the radio tomorrow am.
Monologues at Catholic Colleges
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 4:35PM
There's been much to-do at the University of Notre Dame for its allowing the presentation of the Vagina Monologues, and a Queer Film Festival. President Fr. John Jenkins will be delve into the controversy next Tuesday, January 24 in an address titled, "Academic Freedom and Catholic Character." Unless he's announcing that Notre Dame is cancelling such events in the future, this may be an empty teaching moment.
Typical Boy Clinton
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 3:01PM
The thing I noted about what sources told me about the Barrett Report was that this was typical Clinton. He nominates a man with a dubious record to his cabinet and then they all just obstruct justice to get him in. Cisneros lies about his sex life, about payments to his paramours, about his income, and about his taxes to the IRS -- all under oath. Then Clinton's administration assists him in his cover-up before the IRS and an Independent Counsel. They stall the Independent Counsel and complain that the IC is taking so long. Is there anything new here?
"A Group of Liberals"
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 2:46PM
Like it or not, that's how news radio station WMAL in D.C. is reporting Al Gore's crowd. Associating with the MoveOn.org crowd is going to cost the conservative/libertarian allies at the event.
Shadegg and the Spirit of 1888
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 2:38PM
Let the balloting go on and on and on for the leadership posts in the GOP on February 2. Five ballots at least, perhaps a dozen: let the haranguing and back-stair deals climb and climb. Why? Because a secret ballot and the release of all pledges by the second ballot ensures that the best man will win out on the basis of his vision, his temper, his nerve.
Look at the example of the surprisingly spirited 1888 Republican National Convention at Chicago, long before the so-called state primary contests -- which are truly national media gabfests voted upon by a fraction of the party in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and other small states -- had made the delegates irrelevant. The 1888 delegates arrived in need of a candidate to go up against the strangely protectionist and obstuse incumbent Grover Cleveland, who had beaten the railroad machine candidate of James G. Blaine in 1884 after the infamous "Rum, Romanism and Rebellion" quote late in the contest.
The Party needed a fresh face and a clean sweep of the railroaders who bought and overbought Congress and the executive departments. Senator John Sherman of Ohio, iconoclastic brother of the infamous and endlessly quotable W.T. Sherman, was the clear leader for the nomination as the delegates arrived in mid June in torrid, capitalist Chicago. His closest rivals were Postmaster W.Q. Gresham of Indiana, a Union Army war hero at Shiloh, Vicksburg, Atlanta, and Chanuncey Depew of New York, the railroad potentate famous for his quip, "I get my exercise by acting as pallbearer to my friends who exercise." Needed for majority was 416, but in the first and second and third ballots the most Sherman could win were 244. Meantime, Gresham peaked at 123 and Depew at 99. The first day's voting ended with loud meetings over beef and beer along Michigan Avenue. Sometime overnight, in smoke-filled dens where elder gentlemen contemplate eternity and cash, the magnificently secure Depew withdrew.
Little noticed on the first day, but much ballyhooed on the second, were the booms for the cavalry hero Senator Russell A. Alger of Michigan and the unassuming Hoosier former Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana. On the fourth and fifth ballots on Saturday June 23, Alger and Harrison climbed in the count to 142 and 213 respectively, while Sherman was stuck at 224 and Gresham was sinking. The trend was in place. On the third day the delegates broke for the grandson of a president and son of a congressman. Harrison went over the top with 544 and defeated Cleveland in November.
Just this tempestuous a scenario would deliver a revolutionary awakening for the GOP leadership. Let the earmarked bulls battle between machine candidate Blunt and non-threatening non-machine candidate Boehner on the first ballot. Let one of them drop out. The released delegates will break for Shadegg -- or perhaps the possibility of a new name nominated from the floor, such as the kingmaker behind Shadegg, Mike Pence of Indiana, a quiet Hoosier like Harrison, once upon a time.
NYT Photo Props
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 2:29PM
The New York Times is playing fast and loose (hat tip: Michelle Malkin) with photo captioning. I demand a comprehensive review of all Iraq photos in the Times since the beginning of the war!
Farkistan vs. Teddy
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 1:57PM
Ted Kennedy has a forthcoming children's book, and the evil genius photoshoppers of Fark.com are having a field day.
Re: So Far...
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 1:56PM
Paul and Jed: I don't agree that "24" is a soap opera prime time drama. One thing I like about the show is the lack of "romance." Nonetheless, the occasional "love" subplots are compelling because they force the characters to confront moral dilemmas. For example, "Do I save my (insert word) wife, daughter, girlfriend, other family member, or do I save (insert word) the president, millions of innocent civilians, or coworkers?" Makes for interesting choices and motives throughout the show -- keeping in mind very few "24" characters are not expendable. And although Jack may get involved with a coworker (or two), he is not so "into them" to not do his job, and in the end is not above being rid of them -- permanently, if need be.
Gore Doesn't Know About the Internet!
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 1:28PM
"Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements."
I could have sworn he took the initiative in creating something to fix that. (He must have forgotten about the "digital Brown Shirts.")
Read Along With Al
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 1:16PM
Drudge has the text of the speech that Gore isn't even done delivering.
UPDATE: Apparently, the speech as written doesn't have enough assurances that Gore is shocked, appalled, etc. He keeps ad libbing extra sentences to that effect.
Gore, Continued
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 1:13PM
Gore just mis-defined that unitary executive theory, unsurprisingly. The unitary executive theory does not say that executive power is unchecked by the other branches of government. It says that executive agencies should be answerable to the President. Does Gore not know the facts, or just not care about them?
Gore Speaks
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 12:50PM
Boy, did we dodge a bullet in 2000.
One more time: We don't know the technical details of the NSA program, and for good reason. Those technical details may, and probably do, make FISA inapplicable. James Risen's sources leaked information not because they were concerned about FISA, but because they thought the program was questionable under the Fourth Amendment. The caselaw isn't with them on this: A national security-related "border search" simply isn't an unreasonable search. If FISA is inapplicable, Article II warmaking powers, which certainly include spying on the enemy, are applicable.
All of Gore's screaming about "disrespect for the law" is entirely off point.
Re: So Far ...
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 11:17AM
Lady G: I thought when you wrote "hell hath no fury" you might be alluding to these poor viewers in South Carolina, who missed the last 10 minutes of 24 due to the station switching to the local news at 10:00 (the NFL game that preceded 24 ran long).
Of course, it wouldn’t be modern
Jed: Along with the soap opera element, the other real stretch of credulity is all the inside jobs and moles, in every season. This season, we already we have a presidential chief of staff in on the scheme (whatever the scheme is), and past seasons have seen infiltrators galore, right up the chain of command.
There are plenty of bad guys in the outside world to do the trick just fine, thank you.
Re: So Far...
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 10:55AM
Paul and Lady G: Yes, "24" is off to a rocking start, and -- fortunately -- the soap opera aspects have yet to make their tiresome appearance. That's what turned me off to the show a year ago. For professional anti-terrorist operators and analysts to be so consumed by the who's sleeping with whom intra-office jealousies was too much for me. Maybe that's what makes good tv, but I'da fired the whole lot of 'em and replaced them with people who could keep their minds on their work. They could solve that with a name change. Instead of calling it "24," how about "As the World Burns?"
Which MLK?
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 10:19AM
On the far left, there is often grumbling that we don't celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy in toto. King was a socialist, and stridently antiwar. This tends to get swept under the rug; if it didn't, it would be hard to countenance a national holiday. That part of King's legacy belongs only to the left.
What we celebrate is not what is divisive but what is unifying about King's legacy: his fight for equality against racism, his dream of a colorblind society -- what can be plausibly described as "King's Conservative Legacy," but which of course is bigger than that.
We're not celebrating a man so much as a beautiful idea that he stood for and articulated. And that's another reason -- Steve Sailer, focusing making observance of MLK Day more popular, has floated others -- to move this holiday from King's birthday in January to the anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" Speech in August.
Re: Happy Holiday
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 9:32AM
Wlady, Speaking of speeches, Al Gore (with our very own Bob Barr) is delivering a "major address" today at the DAR Constitution Hall in Washington. I'm sure they'll invoke MLK Jr., but what would be the reaction if President Bush were to deliver a major address today on an apparently unrelated topic?
Anyhow, the group putting on the event, the Liberty Coalition, is a mix of odd bedfellows: Grover Norquist's ATR, the American Conservative Union, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Townhall with the ACLU, Mothers Against the Draft, Amnesty International, and MoveOn.org. And the event is co-sponsored by the anti-Federalist Society, the American Constitution Society. I'm not sure what to think of this amalgam, but we'll know more when Al takes the stage at 12 noon today. C-Span is carrying it live.
Happy Holiday
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 9:12AM
Happy Martin Luther King Day. Good luck especially in having a listen to the one and only "I Have a Dream" speech. For some reason, the King family holds all rights to it, so that the one of 20th century history's greatest publicly delivered speeches is not in the public domain. Only in America! Read all about it in Sunday's Washington Post
There'll be lots of AmSpecBlogging today, but no regular lineup. We return in force on Tuesday.
Re: So Far...
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 9:11AM
Paul: Want to see real anger on Monday night's "24"? Wait until Jack's old girlfriend meets his new girlfriend. As the saying goes, "Hell hath no fury ..."
Sunday night's episode, though, was a good prelude (along with all the usual "24" audience easy-to-guess foreshadowing) to tonight's two hours. Jack is most definitely back, and needed.
Horrors
Posted by on 1.16.06 @ 8:52AM
John, I'll have to e-mail my pal Hunter and ask why he's going to horror flicks at all. I have two boys, 11 and 6, and the movies we end up going to with them are quite horrible enough. I particularly worry about the sexual image imprinting from many cartoons, with their dominatrix female characters in thigh high boots and thrusting bazooms.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
So Far ...
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 11:09PM
The best line in the "24" season that debuted tonight was as follows:
"Listen kid, let's get one thing straight. The only reason you're still conscious is because I don't feel like carrying you. Now get in the truck."
But there will be more. The show's two-night season debut continues tomorrow. I'd say it's off to about a B+ start. It's tough to see patriots like Michelle Dessler and former President Palmer finally taken down by the forces of darkness. But Jack is back, and he looks angry. Something tells me he'll get his man.
The Brit Al Gore
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 8:13PM
The Guardian newspaper reported this morning that the British equivalent of Al Gore, young Mr. Phil Sands, was kidnapped in Iraq on Boxing Day and rescued about a week later by surprised US troops who were searching the building he was held in pursuit of bad guys. Mr.Gore, who has - fortunately -been missing for months is reliably reported to have been sighted somewhere in the DC area, in which he is expected to give a speech tomorrow. In response to which we can reasonably be expected to reiterate the question, as Mr. Sands related to the Guardian, asked by the US trooper who discovered him.
Re: MoveOn Moving On
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 8:02PM
John: MoveOn's relationship to the liberal press is that of a monkey to the mirror on the wall of his cage. There's only one side to the hyperlib story, and it makes the Military Industrial Complex look complicated. The liberals -- their radicals, media and congressbeings -- all live in the same bubble, and within the bubble there is a thermodynamic equilibrium. No heat or light enter or leave, no changes are allowed. And, they think, it will always remain undisturbed. Which is why they believe their press allies will always be faithful and immune to the real world economy. Fire liberal reporters? Fie on those who would fire. How dare they?
Re: MoveOn
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 7:53PM
I don't know, Jed. It would seem to be against MoveOn's long-term interests to force bloated liberal newspapers to go bankrupt rather than making staff cuts.
On the other hand, maybe the fat-cutting will make papers more responsive to readers and less apt to broadcast the unfiltered inside-the-bubble CW, in which case MoveOn can't win either way.
MoveOn Moving On
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 7:16PM
The Dems' campaign against Judge Samuel Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court is - as my sons might say - so over. The Sunday morning tv talk shows either beat on the Dems for making such a bad showing (as did the ever more liberal Chris Matthews) or simply ignored the whole thing (as did Meet the Press). Perhaps the best evidence of the unstoppable nature of the Alito momentum is that even MoveOn.org is demoting their anti-Alito campaign to the bottom of the page.
One of the new MoveOn headline stories is hilarious. Instead of defending the insane liberal bias of the media, MoveOn is now bashing the media for laying off reporters. MoveOn knows who its friends only reliable pals are, and - to its credit - will fight for them. Even as a broken clock is correct twice a day, there had to be a case in which MoveOn.org would perform honorably, even if only to its own lights.
Re: Shadegg for leader, Cantor for whip
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 6:03PM
John, Hear! Hear!
As far as the Cromwell reference goes, I just know there's a joke about tyrants with good intentions in there somewhere.
Shadegg for leader, Cantor for whip
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 5:46PM
The current contest for GOP leader in the House of Representatives is the first time in the history of the Republican Party that party members, that is, all of us in the blogosphere, can directly influence the decision.
For the next three weeks, until the secret ballot vote on February 2, the back benchers will be eyes and ears open to e-mail and catcalling from us in the pachyderm herd. Establishment candidate Roy Blunt of Missouri -- who speaks in favor of grotesque earmarks and does not condemn DeLay for his lunatic 527 abuses -- has fallen short of pledged votes to lock it up for the first ballot. Challenger John Boehner of Ohio is a sincere and well-prepared reformer of the rotten practices that led to the present crisis. Boehner opposes earmarks and the egregious forms of lobbyist bribery such as travel tickets and accommodations, such as back-scratching, money-laundering 527s. And now there is John Shadegg of Arizona, who represents the Directory-fiery Republican Study Committee, which fancies itself the Spirit of '94, the clean it all up tyros, Cromwell rides again.
I am a fan of brooms.
My choice, after speaking with eloquent Thad McCotter of Michigan, who supports Boehner, and gregarious Jeff Flake of Arizona, who supports Shadegg, is to go to work promoting Shadegg. What the GOP needs is energy and passion, to prepare for the lame-duck hood of the presidency, to transform the party into a disciplined, policy-driven enterprise. Also, Shadegg is the kind of a rainmaker that can handle majority or minority leadership, pending a sell-off in the 06 elections.
Also, also, my eye is fixed on Arizona rising and prepping the party for the reformer crusade coming from the senior senator from Arizona as he launches his campaign in 07.
I support John Shadegg of 3rd Arizona for leader and Eric Cantor of 7th Virginia for whip. Showtime. Make your voices heard now: each and every back bencher with a vote reads his or her e-mail closely: shout down the House of the 527 Mortal Sins.
Clinton and McCarthy
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 3:33PM
Interesting that former President Bill Clinton eulogized former presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy earlier this week.
According to several people who used to see McCarthy regularly at The Palm restaurant in downtown Washington, D.C., McCarthy was no fan of Clinton as the years passed through his administration. By 2000, McCarthy was as disgusted by his party's leader as most other right-minded folk, and didn't hide it. To the end, he was a man who put integrity ahead of just about anything else.
NC-10?
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 1:45PM
Over at The Reform Club, Hunter Baker picks up on Thomas Hibbs's observation about horror movies:
Yet, the most depressing and horrifying thing about these sorts of films is, alas, not the explicit gore. It is the fact that at nearly every screening of a gruesome horror film I attend (from Massachusetts to Texas), I see parents in the audience with young children. That strikes me as a serious form of child abuse and a more convincing sign of the impending apocalypse than anything depicted on the screen.Baker writes about seeing small children at Blade 2. A commenter at the Rock, Paper, Dynamite blog mentions a 4-year-old at Dawn of the Dead. I myself was distracted by a toddler during Freddy vs. Jason. What is wrong with these parents?
I'm generally pretty easygoing about leaving people to raise their own children, but in this case theaters are doing a disservice to their other customers by admitting these tykes: It's hard to enjoy a movie when you wonder at every scene, what is this kid going to see next? Maybe the MPAA needs to introduce an absolutely-no-one-under-ten rating, a sort of junior NC-17. Heck, if a theater chain unilaterally introduced a no-kids-at-horror-flicks policy, I'd be more likely to patronize it.
Re: House Race
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 1:02PM
John, Of course a campaign is necessary. These guys have to get their message out to the caucus and to the party. But changes still can and will come along in the next couple weeks of jockeying. The proclaimed vote totals ought to be taken for what they are: rough estimates by self-promoters. That's their job. But some pundits are occupied with these slight shifts as if it were election night and returns were pouring in from across the country. This race is "inside baseball" for now.
Re: House Race
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 11:00AM
But Dave, if nothing matters until the secret ballot vote, then why have a campaign at all?
Frontrunners never say "the only poll that matters is the one on election day," or any variation thereof. Plainly, Boehner's losing.
UPDATE: Catching up, I now see that Boehner started with this talking point yesterday in response to a release claiming that Blunt has the race wrapped up, with 117+ commitments. Boehner's other objection to the Blunt announcement is stronger: If Blunt has it won, why not step down from the whip post? Shadegg, meanwhile, claimed yesterday that "We already have defections from the Blunt list and we expect more."
House Race
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 9:41AM
The three House majority leader candidates are on Fox News Sunday. Rep. John Boehner on the ongoing tallies (approx. transcript): "We're polling our colleagues. Nothing matters until they vote by secret ballot." Those few words of common sense outweigh the week of hot air emitted by these candidates, their surrogates, and the punditocracy.
Glory Road forty years onward
Posted by on 1.15.06 @ 1:51AM
Most enjoyed Glory Road this evening, a recognizably friendly sports flick, recreating the back country El Paso underdogs rising with heroic sweat to win the big game of the NCAA championship in 1966. The heartfelt reason to see the movie is the music, a medley of Motown from the time that makes for sweet memory. It was fretful and puzzling to be seventeen years old in 1966, with LBJ, Vietnam, Cold War, civil rights, rock and roll, marijuana, and the perennial mystery of romance; but sitting in a suburban Philadelphia theater at Narbreth in a wet snow storm in 2006 while watching the turbulent sixties on the big screen with Smokey Robinson and the Temptations as accompaniement, I felt magical to have been there, even as a boy-man spectator. I think I remember watchng the actual victory on black and white tv, Texas Western defeating the imperial Kentucky, a black Cinderella ascending to the throne. Forty years passed like a Koufax fastball.
Forty years on, the same sports movie may feature a pickup soccer game in Djibouti or Karbala or Kandahar, and the montage will spin from the WTC falling to Saddam falling to Tehran falling, and the music will be the sentimental grousing of Eminem and T.J. Kool, and my son may duck in to watch it from a sudden storm, and he will think, forty years like a Rocket fastball..
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