National Review articles from August 2007

National Review archives from August 2007

Dr. Deaths.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 13, 2007... Theodore Dalrymple's article in the July 30 issue ("Cutthroats in White Coats") was spot-on. Especially insightful was the observation that, "for revolutionary violence to be sustained, it needs the leadership of an educated minority capable,...

Nothing to lose.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 13, 2007... I read with interest Dr. Dalrymple's "Cutthroats in White Coats." I was once surprised that people with so much to lose could be involved several layers deep in terror cells. My friend, whose wife is a prominent surgeon, suggested that these...

Beware fairness.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 13, 2007... I hope the confidence Rush Limbaugh expressed in Byron York's "An Unfair Doctrine" (July 30) is justified--that the return of the Fairness Doctrine doesn't stand a chance. The Ivy League waters down grades, schools have for years refused to...

Correction.(Correction notice)
August 13, 2007... In our July 30 issue, Bing West's piece, "Battle of the Narratives," spoke of 20 decapitated bodies in Salman Pak, Iraq. This atrocity had been reported in various media. Later, however, Mr. West discovered that the story wasn't true--that this...

Elizabeth Edwards says that John Edwards is the most feminist candidate in the race.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Elizabeth Edwards says that John Edwards is the most feminist candidate in the race. Not true: He does too much primping.

July was supposed to be the new September. Instead of waiting for Gen. David Petraeus to report on the state of the surge in Iraq in the fall, panicked Republicans--egged on by the media--seemed set to mandate withdrawal right away.(THE WEEK)(Editorial)
August 13, 2007... July was supposed to be the new September. Instead of waiting for Gen. David Petraeus to report on the state of the surge in Iraq in the fall, panicked Republicans--egged on by the media--seemed set to mandate withdrawal right away. But the...

The word "genocide" rolls trippingly off liberal tongues these days.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... The word "genocide" rolls trippingly off liberal tongues these days. Consider a recent New York Times editorial advocating withdrawal from Iraq: "There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing,...

Dick Gephardt started out pro-life but switched his position in time to run for president.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Dick Gephardt started out pro-life but switched his position in time to run for president. Addressing an abortion-rights banquet, he blamed his past on the misfortune of having been raised in a "working-class family of Baptist faith." John...

After passengers reported the suspicious behavior of six Muslim clerics on a US Airways flight last November, the clerics were questioned and cleared--and the passengers were slapped with a lawsuit.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... After passengers reported the suspicious behavior of six Muslim clerics on a US Airways flight last November, the clerics were questioned and cleared--and the passengers were slapped with a lawsuit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has...

The Washington Post ran a front-page story on the administration's "bold new assertion of executive authority.".(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... The Washington Post ran a front-page story on the administration's "bold new assertion of executive authority." Experts were quoted on how "astonishing" and "breathtaking" and "Nixonian" the administration's claim of executive privilege was,...

Finally there is a voice of reason in the CIA-leak case.(THE WEEK)(John Bates)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Finally there is a voice of reason in the CIA-leak case. It belongs to federal judge John Bates, who in mid-July threw out a lawsuit by Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame Wilson alleging that Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, and several...

In the last two years of the Clinton administration, the Republican Senate confirmed 15 appeals-court nominees.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... In the last two years of the Clinton administration, the Republican Senate confirmed 15 appeals-court nominees. Today's Democratic Senate has, so far, confirmed only three of Bush's nominees. Sen. Patrick Leahy called the Republicans'...

Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire in a talk early in July.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) compared 9/11 to the Reichstag fire in a talk early in July. "After the Reichstag was burned... it put the leader of that country in a position where he could basically have authority to do whatever he wanted."...

House Democrats never have been known as tightwads, and the budget they just passed for the Department of Labor won't change their reputation.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... House Democrats never have been known as tightwads, and the budget they just passed for the Department of Labor won't change their reputation: It spends about a billion dollars more than President Bush requested. One of the agencies within the...

Yes, the shutdown of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor was good news.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Yes, the shutdown of North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear reactor was good news. But Kim Jong Il's threat has been reduced just barely, and the flaws in the February 13 deal between North Korea and the other participants in the six-party talks remain...

Bizarrely, the National Intelligence Estimate played in the press as a huge setback to the Bush administration.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Bizarrely, the National Intelligence Estimate played in the press as a huge setback to the Bush administration. It said that the U.S. faces a "persistent and evolving terrorist threat," including from al-Qaeda in Iraq, al-Qaeda's "most visible...

Al-Qaeda is thriving in Pakistan, thanks to an ill-advised ceasefire deal that Pervez Musharraf cut with tribal leaders in 2006.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Al-Qaeda is thriving in Pakistan, thanks to an ill-advised ceasefire deal that Pervez Musharraf cut with tribal leaders in 2006. The Pakistani army ceased military operations in exchange for a promise that militants would stop incursions into...

A vat of trouble.(the problem with value-added tax)
August 13, 2007... THE economics literature has demonstrated that taxing consumption is preferable to taxing income. In a recent review of the literature that I coauthored with Berkeley economist Alan Auerbach, we found that a wholesale switch to a consumption...

If the results of the Turkish election had been designed by a committee consisting of Henry Kissinger, Bernard Lewis, and Dick Morris, it could scarcely have come up with a more calming outcome.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... If the results of the Turkish election had been designed by a committee consisting of Henry Kissinger, Bernard Lewis, and Dick Morris, it could scarcely have come up with a more calming outcome. The election has given the ruling party, the...

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez does not take criticism well, a fact illustrated by his shutdown of RCTV, Venezuela's second-largest TV channel, earlier this year.(THE WEEK)(Radio Caracas Television)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez does not take criticism well, a fact illustrated by his shutdown of RCTV, Venezuela's second-largest TV channel, earlier this year. Now, in a new effusion of chavismo, the Castro-hugging president has declared...

Vets for Freedom, a group made up of people who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, took to Capitol Hill the afternoon before Harry Reid's all-nighter.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Vets for Freedom, a group made up of people who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, took to Capitol Hill the afternoon before Harry Reid's all-nighter. They attempted to convince senators to give Gen. David Petraeus and his new counterinsurgency...

"Scott Thomas," a pseudonymous soldier who files occasional pieces on life at the front in Iraq for The New Republic, had some particularly raw vignettes recently.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... "Scott Thomas," a pseudonymous soldier who files occasional pieces on life at the front in Iraq for The New Republic, had some particularly raw vignettes recently: soldiers laughing at a woman soldier or contractor disfigured by an IED; the...

Conrad Black, who is both a baron and a press baron, was convicted recently of four felonies in Chicago.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Conrad Black, who is both a baron and a press baron, was convicted recently of four felonies in Chicago. His friends, who include the founder of NATIONAL REVIEW and several of its editors and writers, notably Mark Steyn and John O'Sullivan, can...

Inside Harry's Dorm.(Poem)
August 13, 2007... Inside Harry's Dorm. A heavy-lidded Hillary, Eyeballs a tad bloodshot, Having disdainfully declined The comfort of a cot, Reiterated, just before The last mouse hit the sack, That she's for dumping Iraq...

A twentysomething Muslim woman who served as a juror in a London murder trial is being charged with contempt of court because she listened to music on an iPod, hidden beneath her head-covering hijab, while the trial was in progress.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... A twentysomething Muslim woman who served as a juror in a London murder trial is being charged with contempt of court because she listened to music on an iPod, hidden beneath her head-covering hijab, while the trial was in progress. The judge...

There are some curious nuggets of information to be unearthed from the Federal Election Commission's campaign-contribution database.(THE WEEK)(Barry Manilow's contributions)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... There are some curious nuggets of information to be unearthed from the Federal Election Commission's campaign-contribution database. Consider, for example, the filings for singer Barry Manilow. Back in February, he gave the maximum permitted...

The game of checkers has been completely solved.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... The game of checkers has been completely solved. A computer program has been developed that will make the best possible response to any of the 500 billion billion possible board positions that might arise in the noble game. The program, called...

Our pleasant blue Earth has a sister planet, Venus, of approximately the same size and internal composition.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Our pleasant blue Earth has a sister planet, Venus, of approximately the same size and internal composition. Venus, however, is not pleasant at all. An atmosphere 93 times heavier than Earth's creates pressure at the planet's surface equivalent...

Coming soon to Los Angeles: a new exhibit by NR's own Roman Genn.(THE WEEK)(National Review, James Gray Gallery)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... Coming soon to Los Angeles: a new exhibit by NR's own Roman Genn. Starting in September, the James Gray Gallery in Santa Monica will play host to a series of Genn's oil portraits. Genn's illustrations have graced our covers and inner pages...

S-chipping away at free markets.(PUBLIC POLICY)(expansion of State Children's Health Insurance Program)
August 13, 2007... TEN years ago, Congress enacted the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, to cover kids whose parents were doing too well to qualify for Medicaid assistance but not well enough to buy their own insurance. Now the program is up...

Hugh C. Newton, R.I.P.(OBITUARY)(Obituary)(Brief article)
August 13, 2007... HUGH NEWTON's cheerful rubicundity was a fixture on the conservative scene for more than 40 years, whenever he could spare a little time from his mission: spreading the conservative word to the news media. After serving in the Army in the...

NRA nation: the second amendment people are winning.(PUBLIC POLICY)(National Rifle Association )
August 13, 2007... IN March, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a challenge to Nancy Pelosi. "The Democrats have said repeatedly that they blame the Republicans for no gun legislation," he said on his radio show. "Well, now they're in charge. Okay,...

Abortion and crime: one has an effect on the other, but it may not be the effect you think.(THE NATION)
August 13, 2007... VIOLENT crime in the United States shot up like a rocket after 1960. From 1960 to 1991, reported violent crime increased by an incredible 372 percent. This disturbing trend was seen across the country, with robbery peaking in 1991 and rape and...

'Peace through light': the latest case of missile defense and its enemies.(DEFENSE)(Airborne Laser program problems)
August 13, 2007... FRIDAY THE 13TH may not be the most auspicious date for a high-stakes missile-defense test, but it didn't bother Air Force Col. John Daniels. "We had no concerns," he says. Indeed, the plane that he and many others have spent years building...

Taiwan's two dozen: who will dare have relations with Free China?(THE WORLD)(24 countries in diplomatic relations with Taiwan)
August 13, 2007... AND then there were 24--24 nations that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Before June, there were 25, but then Costa Rica defected to Communist China. That is, the government in San Jose transferred its recognition from Taiwan to the PRC. ...

Mugabe's Marvelous Foe: meet Zimbabwean archbishop Pius Ncube.(AFRICA)(Robert Mugabe)
August 13, 2007... ARCHBISHOP PIUS NCUBE, Zimbabwe's senior Catholic cleric, has told his country's sad recent history so many times that his description has become methodical. In the past decade, he recounts, "the GDP has shrunk by 40 percent. Farmers have left...

Put 'em to the test: for a nation of minimally informed voters.(THE NATION II)
August 13, 2007... LAST summer, Mark Osterloh of Tucson, Ariz., was the Paris Hilton of the civics newsbeat, receiving lavish coverage for his cockamamie scheme to bribe Americans into voting. The eccentric activist wanted to make Arizona ballots double as...

Health of the State: doctors, patients, and Michael Moore.(Cover story)(Viewpoint essay)
August 13, 2007... ACCORDING to Sicko, Michael Moore's current film about health care in America, the British and French live in a world of "we," while Americans live in a world of "me." This is reflected in their respective health-care systems: The British and...

Better than genocide: ethnic cleansing in human affairs.(AT WAR)(Viewpoint essay)
August 13, 2007... ETHNIC cleansing is evil. It can never be condoned. Yet our repugnance at the act leaves us with a dilemma: What are we supposed to do in cases where ethnic cleansing may be impossible to prevent--cases in which well-intentioned efforts to...

Farmers on the dole: the crying need for ag reform.(PUBLIC POLICY II)(federal support on agriculture)
August 13, 2007... AMERICA has the most innovative and industrious farm community in the world. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most of it gets by without government support--but a small handful of very large producers are stuck in a cycle of dependency on the...

Sorry, wrong era.(HELP!)(Poem)
August 13, 2007... SORRY, WRONG ERA Osama bin Laden's reviving (Reports on his liver were wrong) While bobbies in Britain continue Uncovering more than mah-jongg. The Democrat party's reliving Those socialized-medicine days ...

Transcript court-ordered mediation in the matter of.(The long view)(Satan vs. Hillary Clinton)
August 13, 2007... His Satanic Majesty plaintiff v. President Hillary Rodham Clinton defendant Present: His Satanic Majesty (Satan), plaintiff; plaintiff's attorney, Mr. Bertram Fields; President Hillary Rodham Clinton, defendant; defendant's...

The madness begins.(Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism)(Book review)
August 13, 2007... Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, by James Piereson (Encounter, 253 pp., $25.95) PITIFULLY few subjects in American history have received, or wasted, as much ink as...

Apologia Americana.(Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion)(Book review)
August 13, 2007... Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion, by David Gelernter (Doubleday, 240 pp., $24.95) AMERICA, Chesterton famously observed, is a nation with the soul of a church. The remark is often misunderstood as a comment on the ubiquity of...

Ad multos annos!(Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts)(Book review)
August 13, 2007... Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts, edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer (Ivan R. Dee, 512 pp., $35) A QUARTER-CENTURY ago, Hilton Kramer, the former chief art critic of the New York Times, and the...

After the fall.(Falling Man)(Book review)
August 13, 2007... Falling Man, by Don DeLillo (Scribner, 256 pp., $26) IN 1945, Theodor Adorno famously said that "after Auschwitz, writing poetry is barbaric." But the poets kept on writing, and the Holocaust itself became a fixture of the literary scene....

American gothic.(Poem)
August 13, 2007... AMERICAN GOTHIC It came with the house-- God in the attic; And a stream underground That made him rheumatic. Why shouldn't he be Self-righteous?--the mortgage Almost paid up & the kids gone To war and...

Auld Kirk.(SHELF LIFE)(The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk; Locke; Coincidentally)(Book review)
August 13, 2007... ALAN WOLFE's enraged essay on Russell Kirk in The New Republic earlier this summer underscores a problem many people of a rationalist, coolly logical cast of mind--liberals and conservatives alike--have with Kirk. It's not so much that they...

A few charms.(FILM)(Harry Potter film adaptations)
August 13, 2007... I DON'T envy anyone the task of adapting a Harry Potter novel for the screen; it's a thankless assignment that I wouldn't take on if you paid me. Well, all right, maybe I'd do it if you paid me... and okay, I'd probably do it for free... and...

Let's get physical.(THE STRAGGLER)(shovels and compost heap)
August 13, 2007... Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly...

Excuses, excuses.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 27, 2007... Ralph Peters's article on ethnic cleansing ("Better Than Genocide," August 13) is a disappointment. The moral truth it contains is trivial, and can be captured in a single sentence: It is better to dispossess a man of his home and property than...

Bleeding kuomintang.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 27, 2007... I disagree with Jay Nordlinger's suggestion in his piece "Taiwan's Two Dozen" (August 13) that, although Taiwan once "did not have a proper legislature," it does have one now. As the BBC reports, "Taiwan's parliament, which is split...

Cruising for booze.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
August 27, 2007... Neither Michael Moore nor Jay Nordlinger explored the delicious irony in the opening song of Sicko, "I'll See You in C-U-B-A" ("The Myth of Cuban Health Care," July 30). Irving Berlin wrote the music and lyrics of the song for the Ziegfeld...

After saying he would meet with enemies of our country.(The Week)(Barack Obama attendance at Daily Kos convention)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... After saying he would meet with enemies of our country, however irrational, Barack Obama headed straight to the Daily Kos convention.

The Democratic presidential candidates skipped the annual conference of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, but trooped over to the one affiliated with dailykos.com and other left-wing blogs.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The Democratic presidential candidates skipped the annual conference of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, but trooped over to the one affiliated with dailykos.com and other left-wing blogs. Sen. Hillary Clinton, speaking of Iraq,...

Barack Obama rattled his saber at Pakistan early this month.(The Week)(Obama announcement on terrorism in Pakistan)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... Barack Obama rattled his saber at Pakistan early this month. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans.... If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will...

"Scott Thomas," the soldier who, as Baghdad diarist for The New Republic, reported gross and inhumane behavior committed by American troops in Iraq, has a surname: His name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... "Scott Thomas," the soldier who, as Baghdad diarist for The New Republic, reported gross and inhumane behavior committed by American troops in Iraq, has a surname: His name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp. That may be about all he has when the dust...

During a recent candidate forum, Clinton and Obama both said that if there were a draft, which they oppose, young men and women alike should be conscripted to serve in the military.(The Week)(Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... During a recent candidate forum, Clinton and Obama both said that if there were a draft, which they oppose, young men and women alike should be conscripted to serve in the military. Although the candidates attempted to shift the subject to the...

The Democratic Congress is determined to send President Bush a bill expanding the federal program that provides health coverage to middle-class families.(The Week)(George W. Bush)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The Democratic Congress is determined to send President Bush a bill expanding the federal program that provides health coverage to middle-class families. The program was originally designed to aid children whose parents made too much money to...

The FBI raided the home of Republican senator Ted Stevens in connection with a corruption case it is investigating in his state, Alaska.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The FBI raided the home of Republican senator Ted Stevens in connection with a corruption case it is investigating in his state, Alaska. In 2000, Stevens ordered an extensive home-improvement project that nearly doubled the size of his house....

The record will show that we are not reflexive defenders of attorney general Alberto Gonzales.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The record will show that we are not reflexive defenders of attorney general Alberto Gonzales. If our advice had been taken a few months ago, he would be "former attorney general Alberto Gonzales" by now. But we like false allegations of...

Justice league.(The Week)(United States's formation and joining with 'League of Democracies')
August 27, 2007... I HAVE been advocating a "League of Democracies" for several years now. I'm hardly alone. The idea is old and has popped up from time to time for a century. The phrase, embarrassingly enough, was widely used during debates over the Treaty of...

Has any case against a lower-court nominee been weaker or more disgraceful than the Democrats' case against Leslie H. Southwick, Bush's nominee for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals?(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... Has any case against a lower-court nominee been weaker or more disgraceful than the Democrats' case against Leslie H. Southwick, Bush's nominee for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals? Even though he received the highest rating from the American...

The collapse of the Interstate 35 W bridge in Minneapolis was the Garrison Keillor Katrina: a failure of infrastructure, now in the upper Midwest, that riveted America's attention.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The collapse of the Interstate 35 W bridge in Minneapolis was the Garrison Keillor Katrina: a failure of infrastructure, now in the upper Midwest, that riveted America's attention. (Thankfully, the lack of an accompanying natural disaster held...

Between the Senate energy bill and the energy bill the House just passed, it's hard to say which is worse.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... Between the Senate energy bill and the energy bill the House just passed, it's hard to say which is worse. It looked like the Senate bill's awfulness would be hard to surpass: It calls for a 40 percent increase in automobile fuel-efficiency...

"There is such a thing in politics," said Martin Van Buren (D., N.Y.), "as killing a man too dead.".(The Week)(Eliot Spitzer's aides' mudslinging at Joe Bruno)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... "There is such a thing in politics," said Martin Van Buren (D., N.Y.), "as killing a man too dead." Eliot Spitzer (D., N.Y.) is learning that lesson. Spitzer, a headline-grabbing liberal attorney general, won the governorship last November with...

With a $5 billion ring, Rupert Murdoch wed the Wall Street Journal.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... With a $5 billion ring, Rupert Murdoch wed the Wall Street Journal. Every fan of lively journalism, and every conservative, wishes the happy couple well. The Journal is a profitable titan; still, the economics of newspapering are so grim that...

What is being characterized as a "Saudi arms deal" is provoking opposition on both the right and the left.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... What is being characterized as a "Saudi arms deal" is provoking opposition on both the right and the left. It is not, however, a stand-alone deal; it is part of a broad initiative to knit the Gulf states together with one another and with us...

The U.S. and India finally hammered out the details of their agreement to share nuclear technology.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The U.S. and India finally hammered out the details of their agreement to share nuclear technology. Critics of the deal charge that it is too generous--recklessly generous--to India. The U.S. will supply India with nuclear fuel for its...

The inner thoughts of Gordon Brown, the recent successor in Downing Street to Tony Blair, are a wholly unknown quantity.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The inner thoughts of Gordon Brown, the recent successor in Downing Street to Tony Blair, are a wholly unknown quantity. In a peculiarly lugubrious voice, he delivers himself of abstract language on almost all subjects; his statements might...

A dreadful tale of squalor and injustice tells you all you need to know about Muammar Qaddafi and the way he runs Libya.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... A dreadful tale of squalor and injustice tells you all you need to know about Muammar Qaddafi and the way he runs Libya. Over 400 local children contracted AIDS, and some 50 of them have died. Admission that poor medicine was the cause would...

Why Bush smiles.(poem)(Poem)
August 27, 2007... WHY BUSH SMILES Two lefties from Brookings opining On Iraq last week in the Times Were so optimistic, Pelosi Appeared to be sucking on limes; While Reid, whose demeanor already Suggests an addiction to quince, ...

Since Mao Tse-tung, back in the 1950s, succeeded in recreating the old Manchu empire, the Communist government of mainland China has had the problems colonial powers always have with disgruntled subject populations.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... Since Mao Tse-tung, back in the 1950s, succeeded in recreating the old Manchu empire, the Communist government of mainland China has had the problems colonial powers always have with disgruntled subject populations. These problems have been...

The Eritrea-Ethiopia War of 1998-2000 generated many refugees, among them over 4,200 Kunamas, Eritrean pastoralists who took the wrong side in that war and now live in a camp across the border in north Ethiopia.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The Eritrea-Ethiopia War of 1998-2000 generated many refugees, among them over 4,200 Kunamas, Eritrean pastoralists who took the wrong side in that war and now live in a camp across the border in north Ethiopia. The camp is milked for taxes and...

Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued Cambridge University Press for libel after it published a book last year that named Mahfouz as a sponsor of terror.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued Cambridge University Press for libel after it published a book last year that named Mahfouz as a sponsor of terror. The book, Alms for Jihad, is a careful study of the international system of Islamic...

"Ethnic studies" is of course a bogus academic discipline, its topics adequately covered, in any well-organized university, by the departments of anthropology, sociology, history, and linguistics.(The Week)(Ward Churchill )(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... "Ethnic studies" is of course a bogus academic discipline, its topics adequately covered, in any well-organized university, by the departments of anthropology, sociology, history, and linguistics. Even by the fraudulent standards of a bogus...

Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was killed in what police describe as an assassination.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was killed in what police describe as an assassination. He had been investigating the shady finances of an establishment listed in the Oakland, Calif., phone book as Your Black Muslim Bakery. (It...

After astronaut Lisa Nowak tried to kidnap her love rival earlier this year, NASA commissioned an independent review of astronaut health care.(The Week)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... After astronaut Lisa Nowak tried to kidnap her love rival earlier this year, NASA commissioned an independent review of astronaut health care. The review has revealed that on at least two occasions our astronauts went into space sufficiently...

With their conspicuous pocket protectors, their too-short pants showing an expanse of white sock, their love of gadgets, and their gaucherie around girls, nerds are perhaps the most familiar of all the strange, wild tribes that inhabit the modern American high school.(The Week)(high school geek classification)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... With their conspicuous pocket protectors, their too-short pants showing an expanse of white sock, their love of gadgets, and their gaucherie around girls, nerds are perhaps the most familiar of all the strange, wild tribes that inhabit the...

Break out the asterisks.(The Week)(San Francisco Giant's Barry Bonds)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... Break out the asterisks. Barry Bonds is the holder of major-league baseball's record for career home runs by an abuser of performance-enhancing drugs. Typically, baseball players do not radically increase their production at age 35, let alone...

The death, at age 89, of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman was greeted, by cineastes as well as theists, with shrugs.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... The death, at age 89, of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman was greeted, by cineastes as well as theists, with shrugs. Bergman was quintessentially of his time--the existentialist Fifties, when he achieved cult status--and of an even earlier...

"The West is born of Christianity, and the crisis of the West is that it isn't Christian anymore.".(The Week)(death of Cardinal Aaron Lustiger)(Obituary)(Brief article)
August 27, 2007... "The West is born of Christianity, and the crisis of the West is that it isn't Christian anymore." Such was the judgment of Aaron Lustiger, who, as a Jew born to Polish immigrants living in Paris, was a first-hand witness to the ravages of the...

Summer in Baghdad.".(AT WAR)(Iraq's parliamentary government )
August 27, 2007... THE Iraqi parliament's decision to adjourn until September 4 gives an easy sound bite to American advocates of withdrawal from Iraq. "Why should our soldiers fight and die in 120-degree heat," they will ask, "while Iraqi lawmakers go on...

FISA fumbles.(AT WAR II)(1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)
August 27, 2007... THE right thing it is not, but the Democratic Congress has done a barely adequate thing, by temporarily acknowledging the executive branch's authority to monitor international communications for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence....