National Review articles from August 2005

National Review archives from August 2005

Artificial sweeteners.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the Editor)
August 8, 2005... I enjoyed Jason Lee Steorts's article on the sugar industry and U.S. farm policy ("Sugar Daddies," July 18). But any discussion of this policy is incomplete if it doesn't mention the sugar industry's powerful partner in crime: the corn...

Sounds like a deal.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the Editor)
August 8, 2005... John O'Sullivan wrote in "The Islamic Republic of Holland" (July 18) that the citizens of Holland, along with many other Europeans, are agonizing over the need to import people in order to keep their welfare states afloat as birthrates decline....

Proportional failure.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the Editor)
August 8, 2005... Victor Davis Hanson's "Are They In the Army Now?" (July 4) deploys some very instructive statistics about the military's supposed recruitment woes. His data about the socioeconomic and racial distribution of combat deaths are a useful...

No strings attached.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the Editor)
August 8, 2005... In the July 18 issue ("Gotta Be the Shoes"), Richard Brookhiser wrote: "The only other option for serious informal footwear in New York is... the cowboy boot." Has he forgotten loafers (without the tassels, please)? Stephen F. Drabik ...

Property and privilege.
August 8, 2005... The recent dreadful decision of the United States Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London held that New London could take the homes of ordinary citizens in the name of urban planning. It didn't seem to matter to the five-member majority...

The Washington Post editorialized that John Roberts is "a man of substance and seriousness" and that President Bush "deserves credit" for nominating him.(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... The Washington Post editorialized that John Roberts is "a man of substance and seriousness" and that President Bush "deserves credit" for nominating him. The Los Angeles Times said that he is "a judicious choice." But we'll try to keep an open...

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's jurisprudence, all too often, has been neither based on the Constitution as understood by its ratifiers nor mindful of the requirements of the rule of law.(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's jurisprudence, all too often, has been neither based on the Constitution as understood by its ratifiers nor mindful of the requirements of the rule of law. She has been applauded, especially by liberals, for her...

The economy is growing, federal revenue is therefore up (14 percent), and the deficit is going down (by $100 billion).(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... The economy is growing, federal revenue is therefore up (14 percent), and the deficit is going down (by $100 billion). What's not to like? Republicans are claiming that the new numbers prove that their tax cuts, and especially the supply-side...

Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, spoke to the NAACP about the relationship between blacks and the Republican party.(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, spoke to the NAACP about the relationship between blacks and the Republican party. Much of what he said was worthwhile. But he knew, or should have known, that the headlines...

Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, prompted howls with his entirely commonsensical suggestion that the federal government should focus most of its energy on trying to prevent truly catastrophic terror attacks using commercial aviation or weapons of mass destruction.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Michael Chertoff, the head of the Department of Homeland Security, prompted howls with his entirely commonsensical suggestion that the federal government should focus most of its energy on trying to prevent truly catastrophic terror attacks...

Speaking of which, Chertoff recently lifted restrictions that have confined airline passengers to their seats for a half hour after taking off and before landing at Reagan National Airport.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Speaking of which, Chertoff recently lifted restrictions that have confined airline passengers to their seats for a half hour after taking off and before landing at Reagan National Airport. The no-stand rule was put in place during the...

That was close.(The Week ...)(subsidy bills)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... That was close. For a minute there, it looked as though the House was going to cut $100 million from a $400 million subsidy bill for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Then cooler heads--and the moldy oldie "Save Big Bird"...

Political connoisseurs want to know, what's the matter with New York these days?(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Political connoisseurs want to know, what's the matter with New York these days? Look at the field in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. When front-running Bronx politician Freddy Ferrer isn't playing the race card, as he did against...

Conservatives--along with some liberals, such as those at the NAACP--have reacted ferociously to the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Conservatives--along with some liberals, such as those at the NAACP--have reacted ferociously to the Supreme Court's decision in Kelo v. New London. Logan Darrow Clements, for one, wants sweet revenge. He's proposing to seize Justice David H....

Tony Blair, speaking of the London bombings four days after they happened, blamed them on "Islamist extremist terrorists" who, in recent years, have struck "Madrid, Bali, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, Yemen, Turkey, Egypt, and Morocco, of course in New York on September 11, but in many other countries too.".(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Tony Blair, speaking of the London bombings four days after they happened, blamed them on "Islamist extremist terrorists" who, in recent years, have struck "Madrid, Bali, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Kenya, Tanzania, Pakistan, Yemen, Turkey, Egypt,...

The Guardian, Britain's leading left-wing newspaper, has--naturally!--a policy of "diversity" in hiring newsroom staff.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... The Guardian, Britain's leading left-wing newspaper, has--naturally!--a policy of "diversity" in hiring newsroom staff. One of their recent "diversity" hires was a bright 22-year-old named Dilpazier Aslam, a British-born person of the Muslim...

At an interview given on Bastille Day--the celebrated anniversary of a riot that precipitated decades of anarchy, mass murder, despotism, and war--Jacques Chirac, the president of France, unburdened himself of some opinions about the superiority of his nation to the uncouth and perfidious Anglo-Saxons.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)(Interview)
August 8, 2005... At an interview given on Bastille Day--the celebrated anniversary of a riot that precipitated decades of anarchy, mass murder, despotism, and war--Jacques Chirac, the president of France, unburdened himself of some opinions about the...

President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest--and the U.S. government announced that it would allow nuclear-power technology sales to India.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... President George W. Bush and Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh met at the White House in a historic indication of common interest--and the U.S. government announced that it would allow nuclear-power technology sales to India. After...

Iranian journalist and political prisoner Akbar Ganji was on hunger strike for nearly 40 days before being transferred, shortly before this magazine went to print, from the infirmary of Iran's Evin prison to a Tehran hospital, apparently for emergency treatment.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Iranian journalist and political prisoner Akbar Ganji was on hunger strike for nearly 40 days before being transferred, shortly before this magazine went to print, from the infirmary of Iran's Evin prison to a Tehran hospital, apparently for...

The regime of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is approaching North Korean levels of whimsical ferocity.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... The regime of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe is approaching North Korean levels of whimsical ferocity. As part of a campaign named Drive Out Rubbish, hundreds of thousands of people have lost homes and livelihoods as the government bulldozed shanty...

Newspaper and wire-service sub-editors--the people who write the headlines and photo captions--live a dull and thankless existence for the most part.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Newspaper and wire-service sub-editors--the people who write the headlines and photo captions--live a dull and thankless existence for the most part. Once in a while, however, the humble sub is permitted to craft a thing of beauty and power...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth and penultimate installment of the Harry Potter series, went on sale one minute after midnight, July 16.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth and penultimate installment of the Harry Potter series, went on sale one minute after midnight, July 16. It sold 6.9 million copies. In the United States. In the first 24 hours. This swells the...

There are three inanimate objects in this story.(The Week ...)(legal)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... There are three inanimate objects in this story. The first is a comet named Tempel-1, a glob of ice, dust, and rocks around half the size of Manhattan island. Object number two is a spacecraft named Deep Impact, roughly as big as a Volkswagen...

Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, the Catholic archbishop of Vienna, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that while the Church has no objection to "evolution," that does not mean it accepts everything that travels under that name.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... Christoph Cardinal Schonborn, the Catholic archbishop of Vienna, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times arguing that while the Church has no objection to "evolution," that does not mean it accepts everything that travels under that name. The...

The Terror, Explained.(The Week ...)(Poem)
August 8, 2005... THE TERROR, EXPLAINED It sports no Danton or Marat Yet plots in any habitat. Headless and tailless as The Blob McQueen confronted, it's a job Beyond the competence of Dems, Whose rude asides and sly ahems ...

John Hillen, an NR contributing editor, has been nominated by President Bush to be assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 8, 2005... John Hillen, an NR contributing editor, has been nominated by President Bush to be assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. Hillen earned a Ph.D. at Oxford in international affairs, and a Bronze Star in the Persian Gulf War...

Sir Edward Heath, the former British prime minister who has died aged 89, was at once an exemplar of our democratic age and a dirigiste anachronism.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
August 8, 2005... Sir Edward Heath, the former British prime minister who has died aged 89, was at once an exemplar of our democratic age and a dirigiste anachronism. Acarpenter's son, Heath went up to Oxford, served honorably in World War II, and entered...

Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded American forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, died aged 91.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
August 8, 2005... Gen. William C. Westmoreland, who commanded American forces in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, died aged 91. Everyone knows why he failed in Vietnam; it's just that everyone knows a different reason. The anti-war Left said he was fighting an evil...

Trading up.(THE LAW)(chief justice selection)
August 8, 2005... PRESIDENT BUSH'S nomination of John Roberts to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor presents an opportunity to bring the Supreme Court's "constitutional law" closer to the Constitution, and to bring power closer to the sovereign people who...

The battle for Britain.(AT WAR)
August 8, 2005... 'HIS was the English pluck, and there is no tougher or truer, and never was, and never will be." Walt Whitman wrote that of the British sailor when he was our enemy during the Revolutionary War. Everyone thought it of ordinary Londoners after...

Plame out.(POLITICS)(Valerie Plame)
August 8, 2005... A GOOD summer scandal in Washington moves fast, with every day bringing additional details that make the story juicier. The sorry saga of Karl Rove's supposed exposure of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame does not fit the bill. The juice seems to...

Humane alternatives.(PUBLIC POLICY)(embryonic stem cell research)
August 8, 2005... AS the Senate prepared to vote on whether to fund research that destroys human embryos, some senators and journalists began to pay attention to newly proposed alternative courses of research. The president's bioethics council, chaired by Leon...

Too flip.(american clothing)
August 8, 2005... IN the photo he stands at ease, a handsome man in a suit and tie and exuding executive amiability, in a sea of beaming, bare-armed co-eds in sundresses and flip-flops. The dissonance between the cut of George Bush's presidential jib and the...

Notes & asides.
August 8, 2005... * Memo To: WFB From: Dorothy McCartney Did you see the article by Bill Steigerwald in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, headlined "Rothbard Nailed the GOP Drift"? Here is what Steigerwald wrote. You may want to comment: Why...

The inquisitor: Charles Schumer, leader of the anti-Bush crusade.(THE JUDICIARY)
August 8, 2005... MINUTES before the Senate Judiciary Committee began hearings on the nomination of Miguel Estrada to the federal bench in 2002, Democratic senator Chuck Schumer of New York was introduced to Estrada's mother. She informed the senator that when...

Operation get Rove: a misguided--and bungling--lynch mob.(POLITICS)(Karl Rove)
August 8, 2005... KARL ROVE certainly doesn't act like a guilty man. Caught in the middle of the "Plamegate" leak investigation, accused of "smearing" Bush critic Joseph Wilson and "outing" Wilson's CIA-agent wife, Valerie Plame, Rove has been going about his...

Corn row: was it Joe Wilson who outed his wife?(POLITICS II)(David Corn)
August 8, 2005... HERE'S the real scandal: On the question of whether Saddam Hussein was seeking to obtain uranium in Africa--a vital national-security concern--the Central Intelligence Agency did not send its most seasoned spies and experienced detectives....

Albania votes: an emerging democracy, emerges.
August 8, 2005... Tirana, Albania YEARS ago, the columnist Charles Krauthammer joked about what he called "the Tirana Index." This was a way of measuring how unfree a country was. For example, election returns out of this capital would tell us that the...

Expensive talk: the gracelessness of the rock-and-roll left.(Live 8 concert)
August 8, 2005... MRS. JELLYBY, in Dickens's Bleak House, was so concerned for the welfare of the natives of Borrioboola-Gha, on the left bank of the Niger, that she quite neglected to look after her own children, who lived in squalor and misery as a result. How...

Ask not: our crazy rules for judicial nominees.(senators views on John Roberts' selection)
August 8, 2005... THE Senate faces a momentous decision in deciding whether to confirm John Roberts as Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's successor on the Supreme Court. Roberts would have great power to determine whether the death penalty will be curtailed or...

The lion challenged: why England mustn't sleep.(London bombing aftermath)
August 8, 2005... TWO minor items, hiding in the massive media coverage of the London bombings, illustrate the vast problems of social psychology facing the British. One is the report that the former home secretary (Britain's version of a homeland-security...

Tribal loyalties: the BIA: a Washington disgrace.(Bureau of Indian Affairs)
August 8, 2005... IN recent months, Washington has been abuzz with the scandal of lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who has been accused of bilking Native American tribes. To understand the roots of this scandal--and of a very, very sleazy business--it's a good idea to go...

The Rove affair.(Poem)
August 8, 2005... THE ROVE AFFAIR As an aerobic exercise, Dems got to attitudinize While working up a gorgeous sweat. Kerry, corpuscles violet (Particularly on the nose), Alarmed the doc. When Boxer rose, Eyeliner in some...

Help!!!!(Cartoon)
August 8, 2005... YOU CAN TRUST YOUR CAR TO THE MAN WHO WEARS THE RED STAR... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BUT I HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED THE PORTRAIT YET.

NSA document extracts: telephone transcripts.(National Security Agency)(Transcript)
August 8, 2005... First Extract (Patriot Act roving wiretap authorized) static UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: "Hello?" UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE VOICE: "Joe? This is Judith Miller at the New York Times." UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: "Hey! Judith! How are...

A force for good.(The New American Militarism: How Americans are Seduced by War)(Book Review)
August 8, 2005... The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, by Andrew J. Bacevich (Oxford, 288 pp., $28) ONE is not normally inclined to pay much attention to a book with the phrase "American militarism" in its title. The charge of...

A perfect world.(Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age)(Book Review)
August 8, 2005... Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age, by Russell Jacoby (Columbia, 240 pp., $24.95) TWENTY years ago, in the Reagan years, Russell Jacoby was brooding over what he regarded as the taming of the American Left--in...

A Rose and Milton.(Poem)
August 8, 2005... A ROSE AND MILTON Of roses in their infinite blossomings That have been lost to time in time's abyss, I want one to be spared from nothingness, One without stain or sign among the things That once existed. Fate grants...

Wild about Harry.(Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey)(Book Review)
August 8, 2005... Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey, by Linda Greenhouse (Times, 288 pp., $25) AS a theory of political morality and a practical political philosophy, liberalism is nearly exhausted. Despite decades of hegemony...

Giving them the business.(The United States of Wal-Mart)(The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company)(Book Review)
August 8, 2005... The United States of Wal-Mart, by John Dicker (Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 245 pp., $12.95) The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company, by Don Soderquist (Nelson Business, 240 pp., $24.99) THERE'S...

Clearing the air.(Saving Our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People)(Book Review)
August 8, 2005... Saving Our Environment from Washington: How Congress Grabs Power, Shirks Responsibility, and Shortchanges the People, by David Schoenbrod (Yale, 320 pp., $28) CAN you imagine a world in which the Environmental Protection Agency "could no...

Competitive instincts.(THE STRAGGLER)
August 8, 2005... I AM glad to see that The New Yorker has recently started up a reader competition on its last page. The competition is to suggest a caption for a cartoon. Results, however, have so far not been very impressive. A recent cartoon shows a boss...

Yesterday's battles.(forgetting the wounds of pastwars)
August 8, 2005... NEW YORK, JUNE 28 THIS is the season of war anniversaries, and these engender the best in humankind, and remind us that that which we once thought perduring, and bled and died for, winces away from moral inflexibility under the tides of...

Iraqi doubts.(Iraq war and its worth)
August 8, 2005... NEW YORK, JULY 1 TWO observations about Iraq survive the thousand and one made since the speech of President Bush. They are not coped with in the general slush of arguments for or against our intervention in Iraq, demanding discrete...

Brits surrounded.(bombings and Jacques Chirac's comment on British cooking)
August 8, 2005... LONDON, JULY 12 IT was a history-besotted few days in London last week. The first big question was whether the Olympic Games in 2012 would be held there, or in Paris. London won that one in a squeaker, and the principals gathered for the...

A passionate rapprochement.(Letter to the Editor)
August 29, 2005... I enjoyed Michael Potemra's review of Is the Reformation Over? by Mark Noll and Carolyn Nystron ("One Church, After All," July 18). Potemra's comments about Catholics and evangelicals coming closer together during the last 40 years are spot-on,...

Rights and privileges.(Letter to the Editor)
August 29, 2005... The discussion of Griswold v. Connecticut in the July 18 issue ("The Bad Decision That Started It All"), while well argued, failed to address the heart of the matter: The notion underlying Griswold, that there is some fundamental right to...

Only what's necessary.(Letter to the Editor)
August 29, 2005... Ramesh Ponnuru writes in "Ask Not" (August 8) that Republican senators should insist that John Roberts answer questions about how he would rule on prospective Supreme Court cases. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with asking Roberts to state...

Conscripting facts.(Letter to the Editor)
August 29, 2005... A note in "The Week" memorializing the late Gen. William Westmoreland (August 8) states that Westmoreland "was leading an army of draftees against guerrillas who were the clients of nuclear superpowers." In fact, two thirds of Vietnam-era...

Why has Latin America turned left?
August 29, 2005... In the past five years, Latin American governments that came to power in the 1990s and favored privatization, deregulation, and the opening of their borders to foreign trade and investment have been swept aside and replaced by presidents who...

Jeanine Pirro, the district attorney of Westchester, will run as a Republican for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat.(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Jeanine Pirro, the district attorney of Westchester, will run as a Republican for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. Pirro's husband is a convicted felon. So does that make it a level playing field?

It was an idea whose time had passed as soon as it came: various administration bigs suggested renaming the war we are in "the global struggle against violent extremism.".(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... It was an idea whose time had passed as soon as it came: Various administration bigs suggested renaming the war we are in "the global struggle against violent extremism." But President Bush tacitly overruled them, using "war on terror" five...

Republican Jean Schmidt won the special election in Ohio's heavily Republican second district with only 52 percent of the vote.(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Republican Jean Schmidt won the special election in Ohio's heavily Republican second district with only 52 percent of the vote. Democrats called the narrow margin a "victory" for Iraq-war veteran Paul Hackett. They say that the race showed...

The Democratic money machine, already reeling from the collapse of their voter-registration group, America Coming Together, suffered another blow with a deep split in the AFL-CIO.(American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial )(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... The Democratic money machine, already reeling from the collapse of their voter-registration group, America Coming Together, suffered another blow with a deep split in the AFL-CIO. In late July, two major players in the labor organization, the...

New York governor George Pataki announced he would not seek a fourth term, bringing to a close a tenure that long outlived its bright beginnings.(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... New York governor George Pataki announced he would not seek a fourth term, bringing to a close a tenure that long outlived its bright beginnings. Pataki won office in the GOP annus mirabilis of 1994, beating incumbent Mario Cuomo. Pataki said...

Check out the Garden State.(The Week)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Check out the Garden State. Sen. Jon Corzine, who is your average thickening millionaire, ended his 33-year marriage in 2002 and became an item with Carla Katz, president of a state employees' union, who has teeth like Chiclets. Corzine loaned...

Bush sent John Bolton to the U.N. on a recess appointment.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Bush sent John Bolton to the U.N. on a recess appointment. His nomination had been filibustered by Democrats who threw every charge at him that Joe Biden and Chris Dodd could scrape from the floor of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He...

The Central American Free Trade Agreement passed the Congress, just barely.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... The Central American Free Trade Agreement passed the Congress, just barely. The vote was close because Democratic support for free trade has collapsed over the last decade. In 1993, 102 House Democrats voted for NAFTA. They were in the minority...

Congress celebrated the arrival of its summer recess by going on a bender.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Congress celebrated the arrival of its summer recess by going on a bender. The energy bill it passed is not completely without merit--it repealed some onerous regulations on the electric and gas utility industries. But that deregulation came at...

Many state governments effectively prohibit people from buying cheap, basic health insurance by imposing all kinds of mandates.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Many state governments effectively prohibit people from buying cheap, basic health insurance by imposing all kinds of mandates. They demand that insurance policies cover the cost of hair transplants, or treatment for alcoholism, or chiropractic...

The glamour of the Space Shuttle is its ordinariness.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... The glamour of the Space Shuttle is its ordinariness. A shuttle is a thing that goes routinely back and forth, like the motion of a loom, or the hourly flights between LaGuardia and Ronald Reagan airports. The Space Shuttle, however, is the...

Forgive us for not breathing a sigh of relief upon reading that a new intelligence estimate puts Iran ten years away from having a nuclear bomb instead of the previously thought five.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Forgive us for not breathing a sigh of relief upon reading that a new intelligence estimate puts Iran ten years away from having a nuclear bomb instead of the previously thought five. The conventional wisdom is that we now have more time to...

The life and times of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, an octogenarian, explain why the Arab world is in so deep a mess.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... The life and times of the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, an octogenarian, explain why the Arab world is in so deep a mess. A spoiled playboy by nature, drinking and womanizing, he flagrantly offended the strict Wahhabi Islam whose guardian he...

Israel is moving ahead with its pullout from Gaza.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Israel is moving ahead with its pullout from Gaza. Prime Minister Sharon is making a hard-headed calculation that Israel should, absent a reliable negotiating partner on the Palestinian side, unilaterally act to the extent possible to establish...

Uzbekistan was always as good a location as any for some Bush administration hypocrisy.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Uzbekistan was always as good a location as any for some Bush administration hypocrisy. It is a nasty regime, in an obscure part of the world, with an extremely useful U.S. airbase. Why bother with human rights there? But the administration...

Profiles in pointlessness.(The Week ...)
August 29, 2005... THERE's a great scene in one of the Airplane! movies in which one gun-toting terrorist after another walks through a metal detector at the airport. The detector buzzer keeps buzzing as security ignores a long line of cigar-chomping bad guys...

"Having invented a new Holocaust," wrote Robert Frost, America cried "King's X--no fairs to use it anymore!".(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... "Having invented a new Holocaust," wrote Robert Frost, America cried "King's X--no fairs to use it anymore!" So Frost greeted the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki--wrongly. Imputing childishness, he was childish himself. By...

The new Rolling Stones album has a track--called "Sweet Neo Con"--bashing George W. Bush and Condi Rice.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... The new Rolling Stones album has a track--called "Sweet Neo Con"--bashing George W. Bush and Condi Rice. Political songs are an innovation for the Stones, just like touring in their sixties. Rock on, guys. But how do you become cool again, when...

The heir presumptive, it has been revealed, to the earldom of Essex is William Capell.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... The heir presumptive, it has been revealed, to the earldom of Essex is William Capell. His fourth cousin, once removed, is the current incumbent--the eleventh--Frederick Paul de Vere Capell, who inherited the title in June at the age of 61. A...

Frist Peels Off.(The Week ...)(Poem)
August 29, 2005... FRIST PEELS OFF As squadron leader flying wing, It simply isn't done, old thing: Richthofen would have pounced, and there You'd be, embarrassed in mid-air. Good form when flying wing implies One always looks out...

Peter Jennings, longtime anchor of the ABC evening news, was not the last of a breed.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... Peter Jennings, longtime anchor of the ABC evening news, was not the last of a breed. The last were Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley. They were the gods; their successors at the Big Three networks--Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Dan Rather--were the...

"You really shouldn't be here at all.".(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
August 29, 2005... "You really shouldn't be here at all." In an article for National Review Online in June, American freelance writer Stephen Vincent quoted these cautionary words of a British-embassy official in Basra. Worse, Vincent wrote about what he saw....

Getting to know John Roberts.(THE COURTS)
August 29, 2005... JOHN ROBERTS has been an extremely cautious conservative. He has not only avoided associating himself with controversial legal, political, or moral positions; he has also tried to distance himself from the Federalist Society, an organization...

Stem sell out.(PUBLIC POLICY)
August 29, 2005... BILL FRIST, the Senate majority leader, has come out for federal funding of stem-cell research that destroys human embryos. His speech did not do much to clarify the issues involved. The senator recognized that a human embryo is "nascent human...