National Review articles from February 2001

National Review archives from February 2001

For the Record.(political news)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... President Clinton analyzes election: "They thought the election was over, the Republicans did. By the time it was over, our candidate had won the popular vote, and the only way they could win the election was to stop the voting in Florida."... ..

The Week.(John Ashcroft's nomination to be attorney general ; other political issues)
February 5, 2001... John Ashcroft's critics are demanding to know whether he will enforce the nation's laws as attorney general. After eight years of Reno, one can only wonder: Since when is that a qualification for the job? President Clinton's departing...

Clinton: Enough.(Bill Clinton)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... It would be perfectly appropriate, strictly as a legal matter, for independent counsel Robert Ray to indict Citizen Clinton. Bill Clinton lied under oath in the Paula Jones sexual-harassment case, compounded the offense by repeating his lies to...

Tax Cuts: Now More than Ever.(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... Over the last few years, Republican politicians have learned to defend tax cuts on grounds of fairness. Simple fairness demanded an end to the marriage penalty; the estate tax was unfair as a form of multiple taxation; tax cuts generally were a...

The Cabinet: Not So Happy New Year.(George W. Bush's cabinet nominations)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... The rush of almost holiday cheer that conservatives felt when George W. Bush's cabinet nominations were first announced ended when one of the best of them, Linda Chavez, came under fire for giving shelter to an illegal alien, and Team Bush...

America: Two Nations?(race relations)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... Benjamin Disraeli spoke of "two nations," meaning the rich and the poor of England. John Dos Passos in U.S.A. upped the ante, declaring, "All right, we are two nations." Those words have resonance in America today, not in terms of rich and...

Conservatives: Blood, Soil, and Sense.(tolerance of pro-Confederatism is mistake)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... One of the particulars in the Left's bill of indictment against John Ashcroft is that he once gave an interview to Southern Partisan, a magazine of that region's history and culture, praising it for defending the memories of Robert E. Lee,...

Notes & Asides.(dolichocephaly)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... Dear Mr. Buckley: Much as I dislike beating dead horses, may I respectfully submit that when it comes to the word dolichocephaly, you still don't get it. In your Dec. 4 response to my letter, you quoted your Heritage dictionary as follows:...

How "Special"? For How Long?: Between Washington and London.(U.S.-U.K. relations)
February 5, 2001... In the final reviews of his presidency, Bill Clinton's legacy is generally depicted as modest: stylish but slightly disappointing, something on the lines of a Louis Vuitton handbag containing a very small check. If you are the president-elect,...

The Kindest Cuts: Bush goes after tax relief.(George W. Bush)(Brief Article)
February 5, 2001... In a meeting last month to discuss the congressional agenda, President Bush reminded the Senate's Republican leaders that the new player in town would have plenty to say about legislative strategy. "The ball's in my court, now," Bush said, and...

Hell Behind Bars: The crime that dare not speak its name.
February 5, 2001... Prison rape may be America's most ignored crime problem. Since the mid 1970s, male-on-male rape has become more common than male-on-female rape, and a key reason for this is that the prison population has quadrupled. Prison rape tortures...

Beijing, Past and Future: What the Tiananmen Papers show.
February 5, 2001... January 8 saw the publication of the so-called "Tiananmen Papers," transcripts of high-level discussions among the Chinese leadership in the period leading up to the suppression of the 1989 student movement. What do these documents reveal about...

The Untempting Temptation: Where have you gone, Salome?(Review)
February 5, 2001... All those organizations with the word "family" in their names can relax. The Fox network's new Temptation Island is no threat to the American republic, the institution of marriage, or the morals of our young. The first episode was, however, a...

'Conservative' and 'Racist': The Ashcroft nomination and the Left's foulest card.(Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft)
February 5, 2001... 'No one is suggesting he's a racist," commentator Mark Shields recently remarked of attorney general-designee John Ashcroft. In this, he was repeating a familiar liberal line. But his comment needs to be carefully parsed, because Shields wasn't...

A Battle, and an Opportunity: Make a stand with Ashcroft.(Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft)
February 5, 2001... There is a profound culture war being waged in our nation. Sometimes we fight about race, sometimes about religion, and often about political ideology. Navigating the battlefields of these issues, one by one, is always a dangerous task. But...

The Chavez Debacle: A personal account.(onetime Secretary of Labor appointee Linda Chavez)
February 5, 2001... Linda Chavez called me at home a little before midnight on Saturday, January 6, worried. "Something has come up that may derail my confirmation," she said. Just four days earlier, President-elect Bush had nominated her for secretary of labor,...

Alan Dershowitz, Goofball: The professor's progress.
February 5, 2001... Alan Dershowitz says he doesn't get defensive when people accuse him of going a little overboard in his analysis of the Florida presidential fight. Yes, he accused George W. Bush of staging a "legal coup d'etat" and called secretary of state...

War No More: The folly and futility of drug prohibition.
February 5, 2001... America's drug policies are never seriously debated in Washington. Year after year, our elected representatives focus on two questions: How much more money should we spend on the drug war? and, How should it be spent? In the months preceding...

Author of His Country.(Review)
February 5, 2001... The Life and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, edited, with a biographical essay, by Philip Van Doren Stern (Modern Library, 876 pp., $14.95) As I write, there is a struggle brewing over Confederate imagery in the Georgia state flag, and...

A New Declaration.(Review)
February 5, 2001... A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, by Harry V. Jaffa (Rowman & Littlefield, 608 pp., $35) The towering reputation of Abraham Lincoln unites in opposition two furious factions that are ideologically...

Romantic Rot.(Review)
February 5, 2001... The Way of All Flesh: The Romance of Ruins, by Midas Dekkers, translated by Sherry Marx-Macdonald (Farrar, Straus, 280 pp., $25) Hubert Robert, a.k.a. "Robert des Ruines," made a splash at the French Academy's Salon of 1767 with a painting...

No Place for Mortals.(Arab-Israeli conflict in Hebron)
February 5, 2001... Above the dashboard of Bus No. 160, which travels the 50-minute route from Jerusalem to Hebron, somebody had pinned to the fabric a button with a little red heart in the middle, reading "I LOVE THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST." I had just pointed this...

Lost and Found.(Review)
February 5, 2001... Tom Hanks is the kind of beloved actor who can make a retardate look like a prince, and a smartass seem lovable. In Cast Away (why two words instead of one?), he is Chuck Noland, a fervent FedEx engineer whom we watch plying his...

Shelf Life.(Review)
February 5, 2001... Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was a born essayist, in no merely metaphorical sense. His paternal grandfather was T. H. Huxley, one of the most prominent public intellectuals of the 19th century, the apostle of evolution who came to be known as...

On the Right - The Perils of Being John Ashcroft.
February 5, 2001... NEW YORK, JANUARY 5 The hearings in the matter of John Ashcroft for attorney general will be, indeed have already been, one more immersion in the recurrent pesthole of American politics, the liberal gangbang of choice conservative figures....

On the Right - The Demolition Of Linda Chavez.(Brief Article)(Column)
February 5, 2001... NEW YORK, JANUARY 9 The miasma was there, the coiling blast dispatched by the losers to suck Linda Chavez into oblivion. There would be satisfaction at several levels: 1) They would be saying no to President-elect Bush; 2) they would be...

On the Right - Pardon Clinton !#*!(Brief Article)(Column)
February 5, 2001... NEW YORK, JANUARY 16 The meeting of Tory intellectuals and men of affairs pondered the question: Should Clinton be pardoned? Important to wait until after he is indicted, one man said. If Bush pardons him before an indictment, there...

Misanthrope's Corner.(Column)
February 5, 2001... The other day I made a phone call to reschedule an appointment with a new optician. I sensed something memorable was going to happen as soon as I heard the receptionist's voice. It was trite and flat, incapable of expressing joy or sorrow,...

For the Record.(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... Alan Greenspan: "Should current economic weakness spread beyond what now appears likely, having a tax cut in place may, in fact, do noticeable good." . . . "Greenspan probably has more impact on the fate of a tax cut than the president of the...

The Week.(George W. Bush's inaugural address; pro-life politics; other political issues)
February 19, 2001... We always said you couldn't trust them with the silver; we didn't know to mean it literally. George W. Bush's inaugural address was an impressive one. Even bitter-end chad-massagers like Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker admitted that it...

Education: A Gentleman's C, Maybe.(George W. Bush's education policy)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... On one subject, President Bush has already kept his promise to "change the tone" in Washington: that of federal education policy. His $48 billion bill has been received warmly, with few echoes of the rancorous debates of the past. Republicans...

The Clintonites: Of Class and Trash.(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... In ancient history, the Huns and the Mongols would loot and rampage when they arrived. The Clintons, doing them one better, have done so on the way out. President Clinton used the power to pardon to bestow legal kisses on a collection of...

Clinton: The Deal.(Independent counsel Robert Ray's deal with Bill Clinton)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... Independent counsel Robert Ray's deal with Bill Clinton feels like one of the former president's Oval Office assignations: incomplete; a letdown. It wrings from Clinton the merest of confessions: the word "false" to characterize his Paula Jones...

Culture Watch: Action Jackson.(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... Redemption works fast these days. In the interval between NR's last issue and this, Jesse Jackson has fallen, risen, and gone back to work. A few aspects of the quickest story ever told should be remembered. Jackson and his mistress, Karin...

Notes and Asides.(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... Dear Bill: . . . On another subject, I have detached myself from the technology revolution, but I'm attracted back by this report from the Internet on the most sought-after economists writing. I will, of course, write to them, pointing out that...

The McDougal Pardon: If you knew Susan like he knows Susan.
February 19, 2001... The way Hickman Ewing sees it, there's a certain circularity in Bill Clinton's decision to pardon Susan McDougal, the ex-president's old partner in the Whitewater land deal. After being convicted of four Whitewater felonies, McDougal was held...

Church (Groups) and State: The problem with the faith-based bit.
February 19, 2001... President Bush's decision to create a new White House office of faith-based initiatives comes from the success of such initiatives in Texas. But it still requires quite a leap of faith on the part of conservatives: There is a legitimate concern...

What Now, Lifers?: Ditch partial-birth.(pro-life movement strategy)
February 19, 2001... Pro-lifers, one might think, have never had it so good. "As you know, I campaigned as a pro-life candidate," George W. Bush reminded the country shortly before his inauguration. On January 22, his first weekday in office, Bush banned aid to...

One Man's War Criminal . . .: A mad leftist project, revealed.(article by Christopher Hitchens "indicts" Henry Kissinger as war criminal)
February 19, 2001... Last weekend in New York, it was all but impossible to buy the latest issue of Harper's. The magazine contained the first half of Christopher Hitchens's vast "indictment" of Henry Kissinger as a war criminal, for carrying out a foreign policy...

Like, Strike, Dude: The Hollywood writer-worker.(possible Writers Guild of America strike)
February 19, 2001... The only thing worse than being in a meeting with three writers is being in a meeting with 300 writers, which unfortunately describes a meeting of the Writers Guild of America, West. Every few years, the WGA-the putative trade union of...

Sweet Dreams, W.: A little presidential pillow talk.(George W. Bush's love for good night's sleep)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... We don't know how posterity will remember President George W. Bush, but we do know he already has an eye on history. Shortly before taking office, he told a reporter that he hoped to make his mark on his very first day in the White House. "I'm...

A Spoiler's Crusade: Senator John McCain and "the system".(campaign-finance reform)
February 19, 2001... At the weekly strategy lunch Senate Republicans hold in the Mansfield Room of the Capitol, John McCain always sits at a table with the same two senators, Chuck Hagel and Fred Thompson. Hagel and Thompson are among the proud, the few, who...

The Rev. Untouchable: The continuing, sorry saga of Jesse Jackson.
February 19, 2001... Jesse Jackson must be feeling fabulous these days. The nation's most recognizable cleric/politician has been caught knocking up an aide; has been caught lying about it; and is suspected of supporting his auxiliary family with crates of cash...

Days of Reckonings: A smart man, a foolish column.
February 19, 2001... Paul Krugman is probably the smartest man ever to have a regular column on the op-ed page of the New York Times. A professor of economics who has taught at Yale, Stanford, MIT, and now Princeton, Krugman is widely expected to win a Nobel prize...

In Defense of Racial Profiling: Where is our common sense?
February 19, 2001... 'Racial profiling" has become one of the shibboleths of our time. Anyone who wants a public career in the United States must place himself on record as being against it. Thus, ex-senator John Ashcroft, on the eve of his confirmation hearings:...

The Long View.(political humor)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... poppotus: Hey! Is that you? albertgore: I'm sorry. Do I know you? poppotus: Al, it's me! It's Bill. albertgore: Bill? Bill Clinton? poppotus: Yeah! This Instant Messaging thing is cool! albertgore: I didn't even know you had a computer....

Reagan in Full.(Review)
February 19, 2001... Reagan, In His Own Hand: The Writings of Ronald Reagan That Reveal His Revolutionary Vision for America, edited by Kiron K. Skinner, Annelise Anderson, and Martin Anderson (Free Press, 549 pp., $30) We were awfully excited when we first...

Sick Thoughts.(Review)
February 19, 2001... Culture of Death: The Assault on Medical Ethics in America, by Wesley J. Smith (Encounter, 285 pp., $23.95) The stories Wesley J. Smith has to tell are appalling. If you have any doubt about the corruption of modern medicine, you need to...

Refried Beans.(Review)
February 19, 2001... The Years with Laura Diaz, by Carlos Fuentes (Farrar, Straus, 516 pp., $26) Carlos Fuentes has benefited from a kind of literary affirmative action: He is Mexico's best-known novelist and therefore considered its most talented and...

Endless Siege.(Review)
February 19, 2001... A Line in the Sand: The Alamo in Blood and Memory, by Randy Roberts and James S. Olson (Free Press, 356 pp., $26) For good reason, this story is the stuff of legends. On February 23, 1836, amid fierce winds, hail, and frigid temperatures,...

Bitter and Sweet.(Review)
February 19, 2001... When, in 1957, the Swiss playwright and novelist Friedrich Durrenmatt wrote his novella Das Versprechen (The Pledge), he subtitled it Requiem for the Crime Novel. It has a framing story: A retired Zurich police chief reminisces to Durrenmatt,...

City Desk: Snow Day.(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... The first sign of snow in the city can be unusual sounds at night. On early winter mornings, when the sleep cycle has brought me almost to awareness, I become aware of a hush, like sonic velvet. On it, like jewels in a case at Bergdorf's, are...

Books in Brief.(Review)(Brief Article)
February 19, 2001... In Fact: Essays on Writers and Writing, by Thomas Mallon (Pantheon, 352 pp., $26.95) It's hard to decide whether Thomas Mallon is a better fiction writer or essayist, because he's so good at both. The appearance of In Fact, a delightful...

Books in Brief.(Review)
February 19, 2001... It's Getting Better All the Time: 100 Greatest Trends of the Last 100 Years, by Stephen Moore and Julian L. Simon (Cato, 294 pp., $14.95) This book gets its title from a Beatles tune and shares some of the Fab Four's cheery optimism. Famed...

On the Right - What Ashcroft Might Have Said.(John Ashcroft)(Brief Article)(Column)
February 19, 2001... NEW YORK, JANUARY 19 Senator Feinstein, quizzing John Ashcroft, asked a question both interesting and profound. What I can't understand, she asked her former colleague in the Senate, is how you can feel as strongly as you do about all...

On the Right - McGovern's Third Freedom.(George McGovern)(Review)
February 19, 2001... NEW YORK, JANUARY 23 George McGovern is at it again, endeavoring to mitigate human afflictions. He is better at mobilizing against natural afflictions than man-made ones. When he was the Democratic candidate for president in 1972, he did...

On the Right - High On Drug-Warring.(Brief Article)(Column)
February 19, 2001... NEW YORK, JANUARY 26 T he new president has a great deal on his mind, added to which is the burden, imposed by past legislation and executive order, to conclude the civil war in Colombia. That isn't the stated reason for our intervention...

Misanthrope's Corner.(2000 presidential election)(Brief Article)(Column)
February 19, 2001... The beauty of coming out for the repeal of the Nineteenth Amendment is that I am now at liberty to say "I have a feeling something is going to happen" without worrying about compromising my feminist credentials. There's a lot to be said...