National Review articles from August 2006

National Review archives from August 2006

Point ...( )(Letter to the editor)
August 7, 2006... George Gilder's "Evolution and Me" (July 17) is a wonderful essay, exposing as it does the limitations of Darwinian theory and other assumptions that currently underpin man's probing of the cosmos, the origins of life, and the human mind. The...

... Counterpoint.( )(Letter to the editor)
August 7, 2006... Having read George Gilder's article, I am no more convinced of Intelligent Design than I was before I started it; in fact, I'd say I'm more unconvinced. I expected at least some rational arguments for Intelligent Design, but there was almost no...

Space cadets?( )(Letter to the editor)
August 7, 2006... As a longtime space advocate, I must take issue with John Derbyshire's article "Space Is for Science" (June 5). Yes, space science is very important, but what really advances the human spirit is human beings' exploring, and eventually living...

The week.(rolling hunger strike by celebrities, Joe Lieberman, Robert Novak )
August 7, 2006... * Assorted celebrities are taking turns fasting for a day, in what they call a "rolling hunger strike." They are protesting the Iraq War. We applaud their humanitarianism: Many personal chefs will get a day off. * Later, the celebrities...

Knowing the score.(budget deficits)
August 7, 2006... IN mid-July, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) provided an updated look at our fiscal situation. It included a new deficit figure of $296 billion, down considerably from the February estimate of $423 billion. The new figure, which...

The Arabs protest.(Poem)
August 7, 2006... Their Highnesses, dictators, and Assorted emirs reprimand Excessive mullahs egging on Hezbollah. Hosni, looking wan, Joined with the princes in a move Not seen since Cyrus, in the groove, Coveted ancient Greece; but it's Late in the...

The Israeli front.(AT WAR)
August 7, 2006... NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT was ancient Roman wisdom, meaning, "Nobody harms me with impunity," or, in the present context, Don't try to terrorize the Israelis. Over 700 Hezbollah rockets have taken lives and destroyed property widely within...

The court goes to war.(THE LAW)(Hamdan decision, terrorist interrogation)
August 7, 2006... ADMINISTRATION critics are understandably crowing over the Pentagon's announcement that enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay will be accorded Geneva Convention protections. The announcement represents a back-down from one of the central...

Failure to launch.(NORTH KOREA)
August 7, 2006... WHEN it became clear that the Taepodong-2 missile North Korea test-launched early on July 4 had broken up less than a minute into flight and plunged into the Sea of Japan, many Americans felt a sense of relief. After all, the missile--belonging...

For ethical stem-cell research.(PUBLIC POLICY)
August 7, 2006... AMAJORITY of senators has voted to get the federal government, for the first time, in the business of killing human embryos for research purposes. By the time you read this, President Bush will have vetoed the bill, and won enough votes in...

The sham of 'sunshine': South Korea's policy toward the north does no good.(EAST ASIA)
August 7, 2006... IF you want to know what's wrong with Seoul's policy toward its psychotic neighbor to the north, a trip to the website of South Korean president Roh Moo Hyun will do. There you'll find his government's official response to North Korea's recent...

A new ally: the nuclear deal cements our relationship with India.(SOUTH ASIA)
August 7, 2006... JOE WILSON, a Republican congressman from South Carolina, is a former co-chairman of the House India Caucus and a strong supporter of President Bush's nuclear deal with India. But he says that he was "really very pessimistic about this when it...

How now, cowboy? The uses and abuses of a national icon.(CULTURE WATCH)
August 7, 2006... 'THE end of cowboy diplomacy," Time magazine recently announced of George W. Bush's supposed turn to softer talk and more multilateral policymaking. The Beltway consensus is that the beleaguered president has finally learned that he cannot...

Watch Ann go whoosh! Analyzing La Coulter.(CULTURE WATCH II)(Ann Coulter)
August 7, 2006... I MAY disagree with what Ann Coulter says but I will defend to the death Oscar Wilde's right to say it. Describing the same kind of widow that set Coulter off, he quipped: "Her hair turned quite gold from grief." Wondering what life in...

The mayor who would be president: or would he? A look at Rudy's career, character, and prospects.(Rudy Giuliani )
August 7, 2006... RUDY GIULIANI became "America's Mayor" when he confidently took charge after the terrorist attacks of September 11. He rose to the challenge with grace and grit, and his pitch-perfect reactions captured something far more universal than his own...

The Carolina kid: or at least that's what John McCain hopes to be, this time around.(2008)
August 7, 2006... IT's a warm evening, even for South Carolina, even for late June. It's especially warm--sweat-dripping hot, actually--inside the Lace House, a lovely antebellum home on the grounds of the governor's mansion in downtown Columbia. But heat or no...

Chafee's challenger: Stephen Laffey tries to knock off the most liberal Republican senator.(THE MIDTERMS)(Lincoln Chafee)
August 7, 2006... HALFWAY up the steep incline of Parker Street, Stephen Laffey jokes, "We should have started at the top and worked our way down." It's a hot July morning here in Lincoln. A hundred feet ahead, the driver of a silver pickup truck announces...

A whale of a party: for a whale of a guy.(NATIONAL REVIEW)(Ed Capano)
August 7, 2006... On June 27, a gala dinner was held for Ed Capano, at Paone's restaurant, blocks from NATIONAL REVIEW offices. Ed has retired, after a career of 45 years at NR. He started in the mailroom; he ended as publisher and CEO. Actually, he will...

Soak the rich!(Cartoon)
August 7, 2006... The taunt takes on a dated tone As tax returns pour in, The deficit diminishes And Paulson, with a grin, Assumes the con at Treasury; Yet liberals persist-- Chanting as if the New Deal were Something the masses missed. --W.H. VON...

The DailyLieb: the only political blog with Joe-Mentum!(the long view)(Joseph I. Lieberman)
August 7, 2006... SMOOTH JOE COOL Posted By: DaLieb (moderator) Greetings, friends, and welcome to my blog! I just got on the plane from Hartford to Bridgeport, where I'm giving a speech in front of a super group called "Connecticut Moderates for Slow,...

Worth fighting for.(books, arts & manners)(Honor: A History)(Book review)
August 7, 2006... Honor: A History, by James Bowman (Encounter, 265 pp., $25.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AS Robert E. Lee agonized over whether to remain loyal to the government of the United States on the eve of Virginia's secession early in 1861,...

A dark era dawns.(books, arts & manners)(Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam)(Book review)
August 7, 2006... Guests of the Ayatollah: The First Battle in America's War with Militant Islam, by Mark Bowden (Atlantic Monthly Press, 704 pp., $26) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'LIKE most of the great turning points in history," writes Mark Bowden of the...

Lessons learned.(books, arts & manners)(The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession)(Book review)
August 7, 2006... The Past as Prologue: The Importance of History to the Military Profession, edited by Williamson Murray and Richard Hart Sinnreich (Cambridge, 298 pp., $23.99) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DOES the study of history have anything to offer...

At the polo grounds: in memory of my father.(Poem)
August 7, 2006... Baseball for beauty! the diamond, home plate the bases & foul lines chalked snowy white bright crack of the bat the quantum packed ball singing into the glove the infield grass green as Eden the outfield mystics lost in air...

Gravy train.(books, arts & manners)(The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money)(Book review)
August 7, 2006... The Big Ripoff: how big business and big government steal your money, by Timothy P. Carney (Wiley, 285 pp., $24.95). [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE relationship between business and government is one of the most misunderstood in all of...

A monster & more.(MUSIC)(Elliot Goldenthal)
August 7, 2006... IT was a fairly big event, in the fairly small world of classical music. This June, Elliot Goldenthal's opera Grendel had its premiere at the Los Angeles Opera, and, about a month later, it traveled to New York, to be the centerpiece of the...

I sing the hobby electric.(THE STRAGGLER)
August 7, 2006... MY wife, a very frugal person, ever on the lookout for household savings, recently instructed me that we must unplug all electric devices when we are not using them. What, the TV? Yes, the TV. Computers? Yes, computers. The standard lamps? Yes,...

A charter for Buffett-Gates.(on the right)(Warren Buffet, Bill Gates)
August 7, 2006... New York, June 27 THE marriage of Buffett and Gates was a truly exhilarating event, even though it leaves the world hanging on the question whether there will be offspring remotely tall enough to do their parents proud. The...

Did he kiss Joe?(on the right)(Joe Lieberman)
August 7, 2006... New York, July 5 I WAS thinking, gee whiz, maybe I am one of the reasons Sen. Joe Lieberman is having such a tough time running for reelection in Connecticut. Here's the story: In October, we threw a great big party in Washington...

Debating over a corpse?(on the right)(Joseph Lieberman's political tale)
August 7, 2006... New York, July 11 EYES do not wander from the race in Connecticut, kicked off by a debate between the incumbent, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, and the challenger, Ned Lamont. Commenting on the race, David Brooks, a seer and a columnist for the...

Those Canadian South Asians.(Letter to the editor)
August 28, 2006... I share the frustration articulated in The Week (July 3) about the inadequate description of the terrorists caught in Canada (they were referred to only as Canadian citizens or South Asians). Reuters and the New York Times ought to call them...

Deja VU.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 28, 2006... I loved the picture of "Ruby" Giuliani on your August 7 cover. If elected, he could be both president and First Lady. As in the Clinton days, we would get two for the price of one. K. William Hess Oceanside, Calif.

A foreing sport.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 28, 2006... I can't understand why in the July 17 issue the editors, in a moment of absentminded drivel, took a swipe at Futbol. While denigrating the game itself and wondering why anyone could be interested in such low-scoring fare, you even expanded your...

Not such a flop.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 28, 2006... In regard to your editorial "Failure to Launch" (August 7), I don't think it's fair to call the launch a "failure." Complex devices like the Taepodong-2 missile almost never work the first time, but telemetry will inform the engineers what...

Two thumbs up.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 28, 2006... I was a little shocked by Florence King's florid evaluation of Ann Coulter's unrestrained observational style ("Watch Ann Go Whoosh!," August 7). While little pleases me more than new material from Miss King--methodically whittling great oaks...

Enlightenment.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 28, 2006... In reference to John Derbyshire's amusing column on electricity (August 7): If the voltage is high enough, the "electricity" will spill out of a cut cable, despite what he may have been told. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Michael Kornitzky...

The week.(John Kerry, Joe Lieberman)
August 28, 2006... * John Kerry says the current fighting between Israel and Hezbollah wouldn't have broken out if he were president. Al Gore thinks his election as president in 2000 would have held the earth's temperature constant. If a Democrat wins the White...

Fidel the fascist.(Fidel Castro)
August 28, 2006... AS of this writing Fidel Castro is either alive or dead, but his status is in limbo. Nonetheless, this is as propitious a moment as any to recognize Castro for what he truly is or was: the last fascist dictator. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ...

So Long, Joe.(Poem)
August 28, 2006... SO LONG, JOE Though Dodd pitched in and Big Bad Bill Pulled all the organ stops-- Which bugged the Missus--Lieberman Decelerates like tops Ignored by unattractive kids Cranky on Christmas Day, Until, with one last wobble, Joe...

Losing in Lebanon.(AT WAR)
August 28, 2006... As an illustration of Clausewitz's famous axiom that war is a continuation of politics by other means, the Israel-Hezbollah conflict is almost ideal. Hezbollah wants to stay on Israel's northern border, toward the ultimate goal of wiping Israel...

A fighting chance in Iraq.(AT WAR II)
August 28, 2006... THE Iraq debate has become largely a matter of semantics: Is the country suffering a civil war or not? Hawks generally want to deny that this is a civil war for the same reason that opponents of the war insist that it is: The term "civil war"...

Apres Fidel.(CUBA)(Fidel Castro)
August 28, 2006... WHEN Fidel Castro temporarily ceded power to his brother Raul before undergoing intestinal surgery, the Cuban exiles of Miami took to the streets and cheered. And why not? They have felt the weight of Castro's oppression. His precise medical...

A compromised plan.(IMMIGRATION)
August 28, 2006... REP. MIKE PENCE of Indiana and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, both Republicans, are making a last-ditch effort to bridge their party's divide on immigration and pass a bill this year. We agree that the country, and the Republican party,...

The biggest threat we face: the West vs. radical Islam.
August 28, 2006... INTERNATIONAL terrorism, in its Muslim-extremist variety, is a world phenomenon. In my view it will eventually blow itself out, probably by the collapse of the Muslim world into secularism. But in the meantime it constitutes the biggest threat...

Before they go nuclear ... Iran and the question of preemption.
August 28, 2006... CONSPICUOUSLY absent from the West's diplomatic strategy in the Iran nuclear crisis is any mention of preemption. Avoiding this now-vulgar term may help alleviate the administration's image problem, but the U.S. is starting to give the...

Europe's loss, America's gain: the story of Ayaan Hirsi Ali.(PERSONALITIES)(Biography)
August 28, 2006... THOSE who know the Muslim world have long maintained that the necessary reforms will occur only when women are no longer willing to put up with the injustices that its culture and customs do to them. Comes the hour, comes the woman. Her name is...

Swann rising: a big-time talent runs for governor.(Lynn Swann)
August 28, 2006... Pittsburgh, Pa. LYNN SWANN is in motion, pushing a gray-haired lady in a wheelchair to her poker game. When she gets there, she asks the young man his name. He says, "I'm Lynn Swann." She says, "No, you're not, you're sh**tin' me." I'm...

The unlikeliest girlie man: Arnold Schwarzenegger gives Californians what they want.
August 28, 2006... WITH four months left in his campaign for reelection, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger found himself at odds with the state's Democratic legislature over the minimum wage--and who could raise it faster. Although Schwarzenegger had...

The menace in France: in which our correspondent talks goats.(CULTURE WATCH)
August 28, 2006... IN these dark times, when war threatens to engulf a considerable portion of the globe, I hesitate to obtrude upon the public a merely personal problem; but the fact is that we in France--I mean my wife and I--have a border problem. Our...

Challenge upon challenge: as our enemies get more capable, so must we.
August 28, 2006... THERE is a new sort of war in the Middle East, brought on by the need to engage terrorists on their ground--and by the terrorists' savvy response, which often nullifies Western advantage. Once the jihadists grasped that America and Israel...

An arrow in our quiver: why the U.S. government should consider assassination.
August 28, 2006... NO sooner did the Israeli government begin its military operations against Hamas and Hezbollah than European politicians and diplomats, as well as NGOs, warned Israel to cease its actions lest there be collateral civilian damage. Jacques Chirac...

Not qualified: the American Bar Association and its role in our confirmation process.
August 28, 2006... WITH its lurch leftwards in recent decades, the American Bar Association can no longer plausibly claim to be a nonpartisan professional-services organization for lawyers. But even as it has degenerated into another liberal advocacy group, the...

World Trade Center.(Cartoon)
August 28, 2006... WORLD TRADE CENTER Directed by Oliver Stone, Who heretofore hasn't been known For movies with flag-waving themes; It opened last Wednesday to screams Not heard since James Cagney reprised George Cohan. Critics were surprised,...

Official transcript: "Larry King Live," September 23rd, 2007.
August 28, 2006... LARRY KING: "Tomorrow night! The incomparable Shirley Jones! And Donald Rumsfeld! From Ashland, Oregon, you're on with Mel Gibson! Hello!" CALLER: "Hi, Larry. I would just like to say that I hope that members of the Jewish community never...

God's gift to man.(Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney)(Book review)
August 28, 2006... Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney, by Paul Johnson (HarperCollins, 320 pp., $25.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN 1988, the British historian Paul Johnson published a slim volume called Intellectuals. What is an...

Myth mongering.(To Cherish the Life of the World: The Selected Letters of Margaret Mead)(Book review)
August 28, 2006... To Cherish the Life of the World: The Selected Letters of Margaret Mead, edited by Margaret Caffrey and Patricia Francis (Basic, 429 pp., $29.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] MARGARET MEAD, the most famous anthropologist of the 20th century,...

Past and Future.(Poem)
August 28, 2006... PAST AND FUTURE What hope have we to endure when everywhere In nature we see whatever writhes alive Stake out its territory and selfishly tear Its clutched food raw in the struggle to survive? When human history reeks with the...

Find X.(Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra)(Book review)
August 28, 2006... Unknown Quantity: A Real and Imaginary History of Algebra, by John Derbyshire (Joseph Henry, 390 pp., $27.95) IN 1935, a prominent man eulogized one of his friends: "There is, fortunately, a minority composed of those who recognize early in...

American leftie.(Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair)(Book review)
August 28, 2006... Radical Innocent: Upton Sinclair, by Anthony Arthur (Random House, 400 pp., $27.95) TIMED to coincide with the centenary of Upton Sinclair's best-known book, The Jungle, his expos of the meatpacking industry, Anthony Arthur's Radical...

Oliver's story.(Oliver Stone's 'World Trade Center')(Movie review)
August 28, 2006... THIS spring, shortly after the release of United 93, the cultural critic Ron Rosenbaum fretted that Hollywood's interest in the heroism of Flight 93's passengers might be "a symptom of our addiction to fables of redemptive uplift." By swaddling...

Talking the talk.(accent)
August 28, 2006... I WAS being interviewed once, and the reporter described my accent as "northeastern throat." So that's what they think we sound like. But the city has many subaccents, attached to castes, as well as ethnicities and races. Many of them have...

Let him live?(on the right)(morality, George W. Bush)
August 28, 2006... NEW YORK, JULY 21 WHEN I was young I would play with my younger sister weighty moral games. I remember one of them which said... Suppose by pushing down just here (I touched my thumb down on a spot of grass) we could kill one Chinese at...

Chewing the figures.(economic conditions)
August 28, 2006... NEW YORK, JULY 28 FIFTY years ago, Sen. Paul Douglas of Illinois appeared in the Senate chamber lugging a huge manuscript. He plopped it on the rostrum and--wept. Yes, he actually cried. Tears ran down his face. When he recovered, he...

Everybody's business.(Muslim fundamentalism)
August 28, 2006... NEW YORK, AUGUST 1 THE old injunction about minding your own business has always been problematic, because carried to formal lengths it distresses other laws, laws that have to do with being one's brother's keeper. From large-scale...