National Review articles from December 2006

National Review archives from December 2006

Couch potatoes.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 4, 2006... In last issue's "Conservatives on the Couch," Ramesh Ponnuru writes, "Limited government does not have enough passionate supporters to overcome the supporters that individual statist programs have when they are being debated." Limited...

Counting bureaucrats.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 4, 2006... Acursory glance at Kevin Hassett's chart portraying government employees gained or lost in a given administration might lead one to believe that Clinton greatly reduced the size of government ("Where Clinton Beats W., Nov. 6). As Hassett notes...

Hard corps.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 4, 2006... Ross Douthat's review of Clint Eastwood's Flags of our Fathers, like his commentary on Eastwood's journey leftward, was right on the mark ("Saint Clint," Nov. 20). The only error in the article is the description of John Bradley as a Marine...

Heads in the sand.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 4, 2006... Michael Fumento's "Covering Iraq" (Nov. 6) is the first article I have read that gets to the heart of the problem in the perception of the war here at home. I returned from Iraq six months ago, and while there I observed exactly what Fumento...

The week.(Ken Mehlman, Joe Lieberman, Rick Santorum)
December 4, 2006... * Well, at least Lincoln Chafee lost too. * Following the elections, even more bad news hit the GOP. Although it was anticipated that Ken Mehlman would be stepping down as chairman of the Republican National Committee regardless of the...

The 25-year boom.(economic growth, gross domestic product)
December 4, 2006... THE tendency of the news media to focus on the negative is well documented. It's not simply that shocking stories sell, but also that most good news just isn't interesting. Economics can be an effective antidote to the pessimism such...

San Francisco values.(Poem)
December 4, 2006... The bridge is gorgeous, so's the bay. Approaching airborne, tourists say It's too good to be true; they're right. Let's just say, parks turn Mother white And smells require hankies soaked To filter out what's being smoked. Frisco is...

Degringolade.
December 4, 2006... HOUSE Republicans have not lost this many seats since 1974, and Senate Republicans have probably had their worst election since 1986. Republicans lost six governorships. It was a comprehensive rout. No Democratic incumbents lost. Liberal and...

Exit Rumsfeld.(Donald H. Rumsfeld and his merits )
December 4, 2006... DONALD RUMSFELD's departure as secretary of defense was a necessary precondition for President Bush to win any measure of public support for the changes his Iraq policy needs. It was also justified on the merits. More than three years on, the...

Notes & asides.(Yale Political Union)(Speech)
December 4, 2006... * WFB was invited to address the Yale Political Union on October 27. He accepted on condition that he would write his own resolution. He proceeded to criticize Democratic spokesmen as if he were speaking from the socialist left. Ladies and...

GOP car wreck: a tune-up won't fix it.(political parties after elections)
December 4, 2006... WELL before midnight on Election Night, three things became clear. First, the Democrats were having a rollicking good election. Second, liberal pundits were having a rollicking good time talking about it. And third, fumbling Republican...

Abhorring a vacuum: the demise of Hastert's majority.(Dennis Hastert)
December 4, 2006... AS the Republican House majority stumbled toward its demise, Speaker Dennis Hastert evoked images of the kindly old uncle staying a bit too long at Thanksgiving dinner. In his presence, everyone around the table was smiling and laughing. But...

The macaca campaign: how George Allen fell.
December 4, 2006... THE last thin hope of Republicans not losing the Senate as well as the House was broken two days after the election when Virginia senator George Allen conceded a 9,000-vote defeat to Democrat James Webb. It was the perfect whimper to accompany...

The color purple: how liberal millionaires are buying Colorado's politics.
December 4, 2006... WHEN Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave votes on abortion, she votes pro-life--always. The National Right to Life Committee has given the Colorado Republican a top rating during her two terms in the House, and in truth her pro-life record stretches...

So goes the nation: you can't build a national party on post-nationalism.
December 4, 2006... MORE was lost on November 7 than an election. The project of making the GOP a truly national majority party also evaporated. And it did so despite the fact that a Republican president was given an unparalleled opportunity by 9/11 to build such...

The word on immigration: voters didn't say yes to amnesty.
December 4, 2006... THE 2006 election has already had pernicious consequences. One of them is the emergence of the view--eagerly peddled by open-borders advocates--that congressional Republicans' commitment to immigration enforcement was a central reason for their...

The battle of Hastings: should the impeached judge head the House Intel Committee?(ELECTION AFTERMATH)(Alcee Hastings, House Intelligence Committee)
December 4, 2006... IN the summer of 1988, the House of Representatives considered articles of impeachment against Alcee Hastings, a federal judge in Florida accused of conspiring to take bribes. It was only the tenth time in U.S. history that a judge had faced...

Make it mean something: the least Republicans can do is lose for the right reason.(congressional elections)
December 4, 2006... FIRST, the sour grapes: Remember the glum little pouts on the faces of the network anchors twelve years ago, when it was the Republicans sweeping the map? Remember Peter Jennings's bitchy little aside--that the voters who elected a Republican...

The way back: '08 is the best revenge.(congressional elections)
December 4, 2006... THIS time, let's not fight among ourselves. It can be healthy for parties to engage in intramural recriminations after a defeat. But there really is no need for a Republican bloodbath this time. Everyone knows why Republicans lost so badly, and...

Of providence and policy: three assassination attempts failed, and an evil empire fell.(HISTORY)
December 4, 2006... DID the attempted assassinations of John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and Margaret Thatcher change history? Were these leaders spared by God for the great purpose of bringing about the largely peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union? Did God's hand,...

Rumsfeld at large.(the long view)(Donald Rumsfeld, Damien Fahey )(Interview)
December 4, 2006... Rumsfeld behind the Returns/Refunds counter at Best Buy: CUSTOMER: "Hi, I'd like to return this DVD player please." RUMSFELD: "That's a perfectly reasonable request." CUSTOMER: "Thanks." RUMSFELD: "You didn't let me finish....

Dear Santa.(Poem)
December 4, 2006... DEAR SANTA: Leahy wants John Bolton dumped. Rangel wants handouts. Biden can't make up his mind. Rockefeller pouts. Boxer wants a union for Every slack-jawed elf. Teddy's list's so loopy, I'd Leave it on the shelf. --W.H. VON...

How we fight.(Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy)(Book review)
December 4, 2006... Finding the Target: The Transformation of American Military Policy, by Frederick W. Kagan (Encounter, 432 pp., $29,95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE Bush administration's military policy in general and its conduct of the Iraq War in...

Cultural suicide.(Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance)(Book review)
December 4, 2006... Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance, by Ian Buruma (Penguin, 320 pp., $24.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT's far too soon to know if the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim...

Old age.(Poem)
December 4, 2006... Youth is very sad. It sees the possibility Of wrinkles coming. Even in Arcady, death stalks. Old age, on the contrary, is happy. It says, "Just think, I have today." Besides, Einstein's Face, surrounded by its halo of white hair, Grew...

A dandy Tory.(Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister)(Book review)
December 4, 2006... Disraeli: The Victorian Dandy Who Became Prime Minister, by Christopher Hibbert (Palgrave Macmillan, 432 pp., $29.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE story is told that when Daniel Patrick Moynihan worked in the Nixon White House he gave...

The right manual.(Winning Right: Campaign Politics and Conservative Policies)(Book review)
December 4, 2006... Winning Right: Campaign Politics and Conservative Policies, by Ed Gillespie (Threshold, 304 pp., $26) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] FOR wits, there is no lower-hanging fruit than politics. Consider H. L. Mencken: "A national political...

A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement.(Brief article)(Book review)
December 4, 2006... A Glorious Disaster: Barry Goldwater's Presidential Campaign and the Origins of the Conservative Movement, by J. William Middendorf II (Basic, 303 pp., $26.9) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ABRACING and informative book, taking us through the...

Making history.(Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography)(Book review)
December 4, 2006... Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography, by David S. Brown (Chicago, 320 pp., $27.50) FROM the publication in 1944 of his doctoral dissertation as the classic Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860-1915, to his death from...

A misfit.(Stranger Than Fiction)(Movie review)
December 4, 2006... OURS is an age of big-man comedy--of giant doofuses, six-foot-plus oafs with bobbing, oversized heads, who thrive on a devastating combination of size and silliness. In the 1980s, this was Bill Murray's metier; now it belongs to Vince Vaughn,...

Evergreen Elsinore.(Andrew Sullivan's 'The Conservative Soul')
December 4, 2006... READING Andrew Sullivan's new book The Conservative Soul (reviewed in the last issue of NR by Jonah Goldberg), I was interested to see that Andrew, when in high school, acted in a performance of Hamlet. He played one of the minor roles, the...

Gay impasse.(same-sex marriage)
December 4, 2006... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 27 THE New Jersey court has simply brought the gay-marriage issue one step forward in its ineluctable march to the Supreme Court--or to a constitutional amendment. The New Jersey majority did a very cool thing...

Who is being smuttier?(James Webb)
December 4, 2006... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 31 THE charge by assorted gentry that James Webb is not qualified to serve as a United States senator because there are lewdnesses in his published fiction rattles one's faith in democracy. A few questions need to be...

The Lieberman question.(Joseph I. Lieberman)
December 4, 2006... NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 3 ANEWSMAN pressed me a couple of days ago on the matter of the Senate election in Connecticut. Whom would I vote for? That's an improper question, as we all know: that's why voting is done in private. But I had been...

Conflict and diamonds.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 18, 2006... In "Bloody Nonsense" (Nov. 20), Jack Jolis writes of the "non-issue of 'blood diamonds.'" He asserts, "If there were not a single diamond produced on the African continent, there would not be one fewer war there, nor one fewer human victim...

Raging bull, or just bull?( )(Letter to the editor)
December 18, 2006... In his review of Martin Scorsese's The Departed ("Crowd-Pleaser," Nov. 6), Ross Douthat positions Goodfellas as the director's "career high." Yet Raging Bull is overlooked, despite its obvious virtues. Like Goodfellas, it stars Robert DeNiro...

The week.(John Murtha, Trent Lott, Sam Brownback)
December 18, 2006... * Admit it: You're grateful Michael Richards isn't a Republican. * When old footage that showed Rep. John Murtha nibbling at a bribe dangled by an FBI "sheik" appeared online, the hero of the Iraq resistance was transformed overnight into...

Check the label.(liberals)
December 18, 2006... THERE are few liberal tics I hate more than the pronouncement "I don't believe in labels." Liberals seem not to like being tagged and marked for what they are because they don't like to be hemmed in. This reflex has a long intellectual...

Waiting for baker.(Poem)
December 18, 2006... WAITING FOR BAKER Baker can give a buttoned frock That zippered look. He's slick. His forward pass--see Florida- Is flawless. His drop-kick... But this is now, OK? If James Can't pull this chestnut out (And by the way, why...

Security first.(AT WAR)
December 18, 2006... OUR position in Iraq has continued to deteriorate. The civil war has worsened. The Sunni insurgency in Anbar is as strong as ever. Prime minister Nouri al-Maliki demonstrates almost daily his dependence on the anti-American thug Moqtada...

Legends of the fall.(IMMIGRATION)
December 18, 2006... IMMIGRATION restrictionists did badly in the election, but only because they were disproportionately Republicans in a bad year for the breed. The notion that they lost because they were restrictionists is spin from the open-borders crowd. ...

Milton Friedman, R.I.P.(Obituary)(Brief article)
December 18, 2006... WE live in a world transformed by Milton Friedman. Our pay stubs reflect one of the achievements about which he was properly ambivalent: He was one of the economists who, during World War II, introduced tax withholding to finance the military...

Milton Friedman, R.I.P.(notes & asides)(Obituary)
December 18, 2006... It isn't right to rail against fortune when death comes to a friend, or a hero--in this case, both--at the high age of 94. Still, we are free to choose, and there was grief when word came to us of the death of Milton Friedman. We were on board...

Beware of bi: what do Democrats mean when they talk up 'bipartisanship'?(POLITICS)
December 18, 2006... FOLLOWING the Democrats' failure in 2004 to defeat the president she called "incompetent" and "dangerous," minority leader Nancy Pelosi sought advice on how to end the GOP leadership's "freak show." She reportedly asked a group of marketers,...

Blue Dogs bark: the role of moderate dems in a Pelosi House.(POLITICS II)(Nancy Pelosi)
December 18, 2006... REP. JOHN TANNER, chairman of the self-styled "Blue Dog Democrats," has a colorful way of describing the influence he hopes his group of moderate lawmakers will have in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's House. "They'll have to talk to us on the tarmac...

Damn Yankees: the GOP and its Northeast problem.(POLITICS III)(Republican National Committee)
December 18, 2006... THOMAS F. SCHALLER, a Democrat who teaches political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, has written a book urging his party to stop trying to win back the South and instead focus on making gains in the Midwest and West. In...

Exit of a champion: Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich is defeated in Maryland.(POLITICS IV)
December 18, 2006... REPUBLICANS and conservatives suffered a lot of losses last month, on Election Day. And one of the toughest to take was that of Robert L. Ehrlich, the governor of Maryland. He is a true-blue Reagan conservative, and he governed one of the most...

Bombing big-time: a comedian works without a writer.(CULTURE WATCH)(Michael Richards)
December 18, 2006... IF you've spent any time at all around young people, you know that whiskers are back in fashion. Young men are growing them in all sorts of tufts and outshoots--from wispy, devilish strands around the upper lip and chin to fully inflated...

Nancy with the pretty face: Speaker Pelosi and other characters of the moment.(CULTURE WATCH II)(Nancy Pelosi)
December 18, 2006... 'I'M looking forward to moving forward" sounds just like George W. Bush but it's a safe bet that Election 2006 cured him of this particular locution. His days of looking forward are so manifestly behind him that we can only hope that he doesn't...

Economist on a white horse: how Milton Friedman saved the world.(Cover story)(Obituary)
December 18, 2006... 'THERE is but one event, but that is an event for the world--Burke is dead!" wrote Canning, the Tory wit and future prime minister, to a diplomat friend who had asked for the latest news. "He is the man that will mark this age... to all time."...

A vote for Rudy: why Giuliani should be president.(2008)(Rudolph W. Giuliani)
December 18, 2006... I HAVE voted against Rudy Giuliani, and I have voted for him. Voting for him is better; it's what I hope conservatives, Republicans, and Americans will do in 2008. Giuliani formed a presidential exploratory committee after the midterm...

Evangelicals for Romney: a major question of the coming period.(2008 II)(Mitt Romney)
December 18, 2006... EARLIER this year, Mitt Romney, the undeclared GOP presidential candidate, came to the attention of Mark DeMoss, a public-relations specialist in Atlanta. "I had not met him, but his stand on traditional marriage as governor of Massachusetts...

Transcript from the al-Jazeera political talk show the al-Irshad Group.(the long view)(AL-IRSHAD, Imam Qu'Turush, Salil Faqtb)(Interview)
December 18, 2006... NOVEMBER 30, 2006 AL-IRSHAD: "Issue One! The American midterm elections! Republicans out! Democrats in! What does this mean for the future of the American war against Islam? I ask you, Most Exalted Imam Qu'Turush." QU'TURUSH:...

Rangel's theme.(Poem)
December 18, 2006... RANGEL'S THEME He's calling for the draft again As if the Army, seeking men, Employed impressment gangs the way Brits did in mad King George's day. The Era of Good Feeling was Already stressed; now Rangel does What makes Pelosi's...

Child of the revolution.(Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel)(Book review)
December 18, 2006... Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech, and Became a Feminist Rebel, by Bettina F. Aptheker (Seal, 560 pp., $16.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] BETTINA APTHEKER claims in her new memoir that Pablo Neruda once called...

Red like us.(Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power)(Book review)
December 18, 2006... Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power, by Thomas B. Edsall (Basic, 320 pp., $26) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] AN old joke has one German Jew asking another why he is reading Der Sturmer. He...

Prayer.(Poem)
December 18, 2006... When we are invited to a banquet, we take what is set before us; and were one to call upon his host to set fish upon the table or sweet things, he would be deemed absurd. Yet we ask the Gods for what they do not give, though they have given us...

Before the fall.(The Emperor's Children)(Book review)
December 18, 2006... The Emperor's Children, by Claire Messud (Knopf, 448 pp., $25) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IF it were non-fiction, Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children might have been titled Brats: A Study in Pre-9/11 Liberal Narcissism. I'm glad she...

Tough guy.(Casino Royale)(Movie review)
December 18, 2006... THE first James Bond movie I saw was The Living Daylights, one of Timothy Dalton's two outings in the role, in which 007 foiled a nefarious arms dealer (is there any other kind?) and a rogue Russian general, helped rout the Soviets in...

The party.(CITY DESK)(Christmas parties)
December 18, 2006... THE end of autumn is the season of obligation--of Christmas parties, office parties, book parties for the holiday list, all perks of our specialness as city dwellers. Open bars greet us as we arrive, bags of trinkets accompany us as we leave....

Tuesday's ultimatum.(on the right)(elections in the United States)
December 18, 2006... NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 8 PARTISANS (both Democrats and Republicans) grieve especially, on Election Day Plus One, for individual legislators defeated, men and women, however few, who inspired confidence for whatever reason. Tenacity and...

The inside story.(on the right)(voter statistics)
December 18, 2006... NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 10 WE aren't supposed to make any generalities based on race, color, or creed, just to begin with. Invidious comparisons can be made, and indeed are every day made, by individuals. Still, institutions go to extraordinary...

Minimum wage vs. free markets.(on the right)
December 18, 2006... NEW YORK, NOVEMBER 22 MS. PELOSI, the new Speaker of the House, has told us that she will call up as maybe the first order of business increasing the minimum wage. Here are the relevant facts. The federal minimum wage, enacted in...

Rudolph the red-state candidate?(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 31, 2006... In "A Vote for Rudy" (Dec. 18), Richard Brookhiser advocates making Rudolph Giuliani the 2008 Republican presidential nominee. In fact, the former mayor would likely be a disaster for the party, and for conservatives. This is true for both...

Everyone's a critic.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 31, 2006... Ross Douthat's recommendation of The Departed ("Crowd-Pleaser," Nov. 6) was wide of the mark. The film has no redeeming value. It is a snuff flick filled with gratuitous foul language and false images of life in a great city. It especially...

An admonishment.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
December 31, 2006... Initially, Ramesh Ponnuru's words in "The Way Back" (Dec. 4) seem harmless. He closes his piece by admonishing conservatives to "maintain their principles" as they react to November's electoral thumping. But the rest of the article is...

The week.(Mitt Romney, John Bolton, Jimmy Carter)
December 31, 2006... * Are we allowed to be against Obama? * Running for the Senate in 1994, Mitt Romney pledged to work for "full equality for America's gay and lesbian citizens" and argued that he would be a more effective champion of this cause than Ted...

Flight from Russia.(Russian petroleum industry)
December 31, 2006... WHEN Alexander Litvinenko was asked on his deathbed who was behind his poisoning, he fingered Vladimir Putin. While the dots linking Putin to the polonium poisoning will probably never be connected, Litvinenko's death is part of a pattern....

The Clintons crank up.(Poem)
December 31, 2006... Obama got them off the dime. It wasn't that the time was prime, And, please, forget about the stars: When crowds engulfed Obama's cars, Tore at his shirts and proffered books To get his autograph, the looks-- I wasn't there, but those...

Half-Baked.(improving the conditions in Iraq)
December 31, 2006... THE report of the Iraq Study Group is being treated by the media as a tablet handed down from on high, but its analytical poverty is making it a non-starter. James Baker and Lee Hamilton managed to corral a group of ten Republican and...

Deal or no deal? The new, yet eternal, politics of Social Security.(George W. Bush's reform)
December 31, 2006... LOSING the midterm elections may have brought President Bush closer to achieving his goals for Social Security reform. Those goals are to make the program solvent and to expand the "ownership society." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The...

A lib-lib Romance: don't count liberals and libertarians as hitched just yet.
December 31, 2006... 'LIBERTARIAN" has become something of a feel-good word lately. Markos Moulitsas, the guru behind the Daily Kos, penned an essay not too long ago making the case for the "libertarian Democrat." His analysis is thin gruel, but what's interesting...

X marks the spot: why old-fashioned voting may be better than modern.
December 31, 2006... Do you remember the Election Crisis of 2006? In the weeks before November 7, Democrats laid the groundwork for widespread legal challenges to voting results, readying themselves to find irregularities, voter suppression, and outright fraud in...

She was right: Jeane Kirkpatrick, statesman and intellectual.
December 31, 2006... THE most important story about Jeane Kirkpatrick was told by Jay Nordlinger in his NRO tribute to her: "Facing a group of visiting American dignitaries, [Andrei Sakharov] said, 'Kirkpatski, Kirkpatski, which of you is Kirkpatski?' Others...

Dominican Republican: our man up north in Manhattan.(CULTURE WATCH)(public assistance)
December 31, 2006... I MUST confess to a sin, although among NATIONAL REVIEW readers it is probably more like a heresy: I have been, as recently as this year, a ward of the welfare state. It wasn't my fault. I slipped onto the dole without even realizing it,...

GOP duel: the primaries get underway, dominated by two men.(Mitt Romney, John McCain)
December 31, 2006... THE race for the White House in 2008 was going to be different. For the first time since 1952, neither a sitting president nor a vice president would be on the ballot. With no candidate enjoying the advantages of incumbency, there would be no...

Sixteen months: John Bolton serves as U.S. ambassador to the U.N.(Biography)
December 31, 2006... IN all honesty, it was amazing that John R. Bolton ever became U.S. ambassador to the U.N. in the first place. He was a committed conservative, a hawk, a skeptic of international organizations. (It might be better to call him a realist about...

Hyde in winter: a grand old career in a Grand Old Party.(Henry J. Hyde in House of Representatives)(Biography)
December 31, 2006... UNLIKE many of his GOP colleagues, Henry Hyde of Illinois is leaving Capitol Hill by choice: After 32 years in the House of Representatives, this remarkable man has finally decided to call it quits. In January, a Democrat from Texas will occupy...

Before you say no ... a correspondence, nonfictional, between a young boy, a housewife, a headmaster, and the young boy's brother.(TRADITION)
December 31, 2006... March 7 Dear Mrs. Heath: I wish to ask you a great favor. My brother David goes to Cranwell and he says they go easier on brothers, so I might have a chance to get in even though my grades aren't so terribly good. But I need three...

Viewing CBS.(Cartoon)
December 31, 2006... Katie Couric's ratings, now Lower than a nursing sow, Prompted Katie to invite Baker's group, a few, to light Something, anything--a FUSE-- That would make tomorrow's news. Though they tried (Panetta humped), Nothing worked. The...

Transcript from Larry King Live, December 24, 2006.(the long view)
December 31, 2006... LARRY KING: "Tomorrow night! The whole hour with Whoopi Goldberg and the rest of the Iraq Study Group! From Arlington, Virginia! Hello!" CALLER: "Hi, Larry. I'd like to ask your guest if he's doing any outreach into the midget or dwarf...

The greats.(books, arts & manners)(The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World)(Book review)
December 31, 2006... The President, the Pope, and the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World, by John O'Sullivan (Regnery, 360 pp., $27.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] JOHN O'SULLIVAN does not, in this dazzling new book, indulge in schadenfreude. But he...

Advertisement.(Poem)
December 31, 2006... Time is not worn, O lady with the Rolex on your wrist. It wears us from the time we're born And when we're gone its tickings still exist. Your show of wealth But shows how costly manacled you are To what corrosive in its stealth...

Scoundrel times.(Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews)(Book review)
December 31, 2006... Betrayal: France, the Arabs, and the Jews, by David Pryce-Jones (Encounter, 171 pp., $23.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN October 1980, PLO terrorists set off a car bomb near a synagogue in Paris's rue Copernic. France's prime minister of...