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National Review articles from February 2006
A journal of news and opinion on national and international issues. Publishes articles, reviews of the arts, and editorials from a conservative standpoint. Numerous political cartoons appear throughout.
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National Review archives from February 2006
Ike on 'the mall'.(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2006... I was surprised to note that NR's discussion (in The Week, Dec. 19) of a proposed Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., was inaccurate. The proposed plaza memorial will not be "on the Mall," but will be across the street from the Mall, south...
Out of sight, out of mind.(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2006... I am a Connecticut resident, and I was chagrined to see Lowell Weicker, my state's erstwhile senator, mentioned in two succeeding issues ("Cause(s) and Effect(s)," Dec. 19; The Week, Dec. 31). Yes, I know NR helped defeat his reelection bid in...
You say potato ...(Letter to the Editor)
February 13, 2006... Whether one agrees with Paul Johnson's assertion that 2005 is a great improvement over 1955 depends on whether one believes that improvements in the political arena outweigh the spiritual and moral disintegration of Western society ("In These...
In Osama's latest tape, he touts an obscure left-wing American book and borrows lines from Michael Moore.(The Week)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... In Osama's latest tape, he touts an obscure left-wing American book and borrows lines from Michael Moore. We're beginning to think that when we find him, he'll be carrying a Nation tote bag.
Bin Laden said that he would accept a truce if the United States offered one.(The Week)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Bin Laden said that he would accept a truce if the United States offered one. We won't. He said we should pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq. We're staying, until they can defend themselves. He said new strikes against the United States are...
In the 1970s and early 1980s, this magazine was full of debates and worries about inflation: its causes, its costs, possible remedies.(The Week)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... In the 1970s and early 1980s, this magazine was full of debates and worries about inflation: its causes, its costs, possible remedies. In other fora, intelligent people fretted that endemic inflation was, like the crime wave, a sign that...
Sen. Hillary Clinton celebrated Martin Luther King Day by telling the crowd at an Al Sharpton event that Republicans run the House of Representatives "like a plantation--and you know what I'm talking about.".(The Week)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Sen. Hillary Clinton celebrated Martin Luther King Day by telling the crowd at an Al Sharpton event that Republicans run the House of Representatives "like a plantation--and you know what I'm talking about." Yes, Hillary, you been in the storm...
Maybe it's Martin Luther King Day.(The Week)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Maybe it's Martin Luther King Day. At an MLK celebration in New Orleans, Mayor Ray Nagin called for the city to be "a chocolate New Orleans... a majority African-American city. It's the way God wants it to be." He also said God was punishing...
Independent counsel David Barrett spent ten years and $21 million investigating both relatively petty crimes by former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, and a not-so-trivial coverup of those crimes by the Clinton administration.(The Week)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Independent counsel David Barrett spent ten years and $21 million investigating both relatively petty crimes by former HUD secretary Henry Cisneros, and a not-so-trivial coverup of those crimes by the Clinton administration. Democrats are...
A poll on the liberal blog the Daily Kos asked: "Who [sic] do you despise more?".(The Week)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... A poll on the liberal blog the Daily Kos asked: "Who [sic] do you despise more?" The choice was between George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden. The president took an early lead, but ended up with a mere 41 percent of the votes. Nice to see the Left...
Oregon law allows physicians to assist the suicide of terminally ill patients to relieve their pain or, more commonly, to assuage their fears of being a burden or losing their dignity.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Oregon law allows physicians to assist the suicide of terminally ill patients to relieve their pain or, more commonly, to assuage their fears of being a burden or losing their dignity. When he was attorney general, John Ashcroft interpreted...
Last September, 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre was beaten into a coma, apparently by her adoptive mother and stepfather.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Last September, 11-year-old Haleigh Poutre was beaten into a coma, apparently by her adoptive mother and stepfather. Doctors said she was in a persistent vegetative state. Later that month, the Department of Social Services sought, and...
Art Laffer, righter than ever.(Arthur Laffer, American economist)
February 13, 2006... IT was the most famous dinner in the history of economics. Back in 1974, Arthur Laffer, Jude Wanniski, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld met at the Washington Hotel, in the nation's capital. As legend has it, when the conversation turned to tax...
Stephen Harper's Tory victory in the Canadian elections may be a more stable and significant political change than it appeared on the morning after.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Stephen Harper's Tory victory in the Canadian elections may be a more stable and significant political change than it appeared on the morning after. Tories were inevitably chastened when their tally of seats won left them well short of an...
Iran may have finally exhausted the world's patience.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Iran may have finally exhausted the world's patience. The country's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a raving madman who pledges solidarity with terrorists, holds that the Holocaust is a "myth," and has recently called for Israel to be "wiped...
Ahmadinejad may have an unlikely ally in his quest to wipe Israel off the map: the United Nations.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Ahmadinejad may have an unlikely ally in his quest to wipe Israel off the map: the United Nations. (Okay, maybe it's not that unlikely.) Only days after Ahmadinejad's caustic remarks in November, Kofi Annan was photographed in front of a map at...
France shows all the signs of European hyperliberalism--dirigiste economy; unassimilated minorities; America-tweaking; Israel-bashing--except for one: France is not Holland.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... France shows all the signs of European hyperliberalism--dirigiste economy; unassimilated minorities; America-tweaking; Israel-bashing--except for one: France is not Holland. This was the primary meaning of President Jacques Chirac's threat to...
Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri may be second to Osama bin Laden, but he is al-Qaeda's best strategist and organizer.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri may be second to Osama bin Laden, but he is al-Qaeda's best strategist and organizer. Someone seems to have informed U.S. forces that he was visiting the village of Damadola, in the wild and inaccessible mountains on the...
Mukhtar Mai is a Pakistani woman who was gang-raped in 2002 at the orders of a tribal court, as a punishment for her brother.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Mukhtar Mai is a Pakistani woman who was gang-raped in 2002 at the orders of a tribal court, as a punishment for her brother. (Hint to defendants: Choose another venue.) She prosecuted her attackers, and became an international celebrity. An...
President Bush has been reading the mammoth, powerful new biography of Mao--Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday--and Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times had something to say about that.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... President Bush has been reading the mammoth, powerful new biography of Mao--Mao: The Unknown Story, by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday--and Elisabeth Bumiller of the New York Times had something to say about that. She said that it was no surprise...
Under George W. Bush, American diplomats in Cuba are showing a backbone we have never seen before.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Under George W. Bush, American diplomats in Cuba are showing a backbone we have never seen before. The latest is this: Michael Parmly, head of our interests section, had Lech Walesa speak to some Cuban dissidents by video hookup. Walesa told...
British MP George Galloway, notorious for his involvement in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, has been moonlighting from his Westminster job.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... British MP George Galloway, notorious for his involvement in the Iraqi oil-for-food scandal, has been moonlighting from his Westminster job. He is now a regular on the TV program Celebrity Big Brother, on which he has pretended to be a...
Radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza is on trial in London.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Radical Islamist cleric Abu Hamza is on trial in London. The one-eyed, hook-handed, Egyptian-born preacher is charged with inciting murder and "stirring up racial hatred." (He is also wanted in the U.S. on a 2004 indictment for, among other...
James Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces, a harrowing memoir of his recovery from a life of addiction and crime.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... James Frey is the author of A Million Little Pieces, a harrowing memoir of his recovery from a life of addiction and crime. On the strength of an endorsement by Oprah Winfrey, it sold twice as many copies as pieces. But now, thanks to the...
The death of a little magazine diminishes every other little magazine, especially when, as with the New Leader (1924-2006), we shared a goal.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... The death of a little magazine diminishes every other little magazine, especially when, as with the New Leader (1924-2006), we shared a goal. In 1936, the Socialist publication came under the editorship of Russian emigre Samuel Levitas, and...
NBC has announced that The West Wing has been cancelled.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... NBC has announced that The West Wing has been cancelled. We haven't watched it in a while: a state of affairs sufficiently commonplace to justify canceling the multiple Emmy winner. Apparently, there is a very liberal Mexican-American...
Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean scientist whose pioneering work with stem cells was really just a hoax, has a job offer on the block--with another cloning company.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Hwang Woo-suk, the South Korean scientist whose pioneering work with stem cells was really just a hoax, has a job offer on the block--with another cloning company. Who would hire a disgraced scientist to do the same kind of work he previously...
At Le Moyne College, Scott McConnell was pursuing a graduate degree in education when he wrote a term paper describing the ideal classroom environment as one that would be "based upon strong discipline and hard work" and that could include "corporal punishment.".(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... At Le Moyne College, Scott McConnell was pursuing a graduate degree in education when he wrote a term paper describing the ideal classroom environment as one that would be "based upon strong discipline and hard work" and that could include...
Bin Laden speaks.(The Week ...)(Poem)
February 13, 2006...
BIN LADEN SPEAKS
It was awkward: Democrats'
Faces aped Aunt Pittypat's
Just before Atlanta fell.
Murtha modified "pell-mell,"
While a florid Howard Dean
Turned from puce to Paris green.
When the CIA confirmed...
We hesitated to embarrass our more delicate readers with two paragraphs about nudity, so here are the two stories wrapped up as one.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... We hesitated to embarrass our more delicate readers with two paragraphs about nudity, so here are the two stories wrapped up as one. First, in yet another illustration of the fact that we really should find something useful for our federal...
Contestants for the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas, Nev., were subjected to the usual pre-pageant interviews by the panel of judges.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... Contestants for the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas, Nev., were subjected to the usual pre-pageant interviews by the panel of judges. The questions are apparently directed toward issues pertinent to the interviewee's state. Miss Nevada, a...
The University of Kentucky is about to host the creation of the first chapter of Gamma Gamma Chi, the nation's first-ever Islamic sorority.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... The University of Kentucky is about to host the creation of the first chapter of Gamma Gamma Chi, the nation's first-ever Islamic sorority. Have fun, ladies! But a warning to Lexington men: Panty raids at this house may be punishable by...
One of our original arsenals of democracy--the New Haven factory that armed generations of Americans with Winchester rifles--will close on March 31.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... One of our original arsenals of democracy--the New Haven factory that armed generations of Americans with Winchester rifles--will close on March 31. Winchesters will be available in the future, but in all likelihood none will be manufactured in...
Heinrich Harrer died on January 7 at the age of 93.(The Week ...)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
February 13, 2006... Heinrich Harrer died on January 7 at the age of 93. Harrer was a member of the first team to conquer the North Face of the Eiger, back in 1938. An Austrian, he joined the SS around that same time, not because he knew or cared anything about...
Alito vs. the Democrats.(Samuel Alito)(Brief Article)
February 13, 2006... SENATE DEMOCRATS threw everything they could at Samuel Alito. They distorted his decisions, and his memos. They questioned his ethics. They even tried to paint him as a bigot. But by the end of a week of hearings on his nomination to the...
Listen and learn.(Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)
February 13, 2006... THERE are really just two questions about President Bush's decision to order surveillance, without warrant, of the international phone calls and e-mails of people with known al-Qaeda connections. One, is it legal? And two, should he have done...
Shadegg for leader.(POLITICS)(John Shadegg)
February 13, 2006... THE race for House majority leader is on, with an election set for Feb. 2. The overwhelming favorite is majority whip and acting majority leader Roy Blunt, who with the assistance of Tom DeLay built a formidable political and financial machine...
Mr. Christopher Buckley cordially invites you to join him in New York City on February 9, 2006, for a cocktail party and buffet dinner in celebration and support of National Review and National Review Online.(A Special Invitation)
February 13, 2006... Mr. Christopher Buckley cordially invites you to join him in New York City on February 9, 2006, for a cocktail party and buffet dinner in celebration and support of NATIONAL REVIEW and National Review Online. Editors in attendance will include...
The crumbling castle.
February 13, 2006... ON the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the decision seems simultaneously to have become more sacrosanct than ever, and more imperiled than ever. It is supposedly well-settled as a matter of law. Even some former opponents of the decision...
Hearing lessons: a how-to guide for judicial confirmations.(THE SUPREME COURT)
February 13, 2006... IF Samuel Alito is eventually confirmed as a justice, as he almost certainly will be, we won't have a conservative Supreme Court. Most legal conservatives do not regard Justice Anthony Kennedy as one of their number. So even if Alito and Chief...
Off course: some conservatives keep the strangest company.(THE RIGHT)
February 13, 2006... JUST for the record, David Keene doesn't hesitate to say what he thinks of Al Gore--"He's a fool"--or the former vice president's followers at MoveOn.org--"These are nutty people." Of course, sentiments like that might not seem newsworthy...
Traveling foul: the Democrats' national pastime.(CONGRESS)
February 13, 2006... JUST days after the GOP announced a "lobbying reform" package meant to mitigate political damage from the Jack Abramoff scandal, the Democrats held a grandstanding press conference at the Library of Congress to announce their own...
Protesting too much: I have in my hands a list ...(Justice, television programs)
February 13, 2006... 'CHARLIE, what's the biggest cop mistake?" asks a character in the first episode of the new ABC television show In Justice.
"Making an early assumption?" replies Charlie.
"Yes, an early assumption--and sticking with it."
And with...
Faux documentary: the tired saga of Left agitprop.(CULTURE WATCH)
February 13, 2006... LET's be clear at the outset: Eugene Jarecki's Why We Fight is a reprehensible film in its intellectual dishonesty. But it is so poorly cobbled together that it never rises above the propaganda level of Fahrenheit 9/11. It purports to be a...
Reality bites: making stuff up for fun and profit.(CULTURE WATCH II)
February 13, 2006... TRUE story: I'm in my local Peet's Coffee shop, early in the morning, buying a cup of coffee. The line is long. After about ten minutes, I get to the front, and I'm about to give my order when a nice-looking girl swoops in front of me, smiles...
Say it ain't so: how the GOP majority lost its way.(Grand Old Party )(Cover Story)
February 13, 2006... IN recent months, Republicans in Congress have finally seemed to complete a circuit that began with their complaints about Democratic abuses of power fifteen years ago. Then, House Speaker Jim Wright was one of the GOP's favorite symbols of...
Troubled continent: a crisis of demography--and of the spirit.(EUROPE)
February 13, 2006... THE images we recently saw on the TV news suggest that Europe has, once again, lost its way. It looks as though Europe is set to repeat in the 21st century the disasters of the 20th.
Europe--especially France and Germany--seems to have a...
Martha-Ann's moment.(HELP!!!!)(Poem)
February 13, 2006...
MARTHA-ANN'S MOMENT
Like final scenes that stun the stalls,
Mrs. Alito's tears,
Run on front pages and TV,
Brought readers off their rears,
While viewers, dabbing openly,
Glared at the shaken Dems
As...
NSA surveillance extract.(United States National Security Agency)
February 13, 2006... 23:18:33 GMT BEGIN CALL
UNIDENTIFIED SENIOR AL-QAEDA OPERATIVE: "Hello? Hello? Who is there?"
UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: "Hello?"
23:18:36 GMT BEGIN FISA WARRANT QUERY
USAQO: "Yes, hello. Yes. Listen to me now. Yes, I want to...
Bad girls of America.(Women Who Make the World Worse and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports)(Book Review)
February 13, 2006... Women Who Make the World Worse, and How Their Radical Feminist Assault Is Ruining Our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports, by Kate O'Beirne (Sentinel, 256 pp., $24.95)
SWEDISH newspapers recently ran an unusual story about the misdeeds...
The blood-soaked terrain.(Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War)(Book Review)
February 13, 2006... Upon the Altar of the Nation: A Moral History of the Civil War, by Harry S. Stout (Viking, 576 pp., $29.95)
No topic is more studied or written about in our country than the Civil War. The books never stop coming--they will probably never...
To Julien.(Poem)
February 13, 2006...
TO JULIEN
December 28, 2001-March 29, 2004
There are no words can soften such a loss.
All that survives of you, beloved boy,
Is gratitude that you were here with us,
And the overflowing memories of joy;
For even as...
Bad boys of Europe.(Power and the Idealists: Or, The Passion of Joschka Fischer, and Its Aftermath)(Book Review)
February 13, 2006... Power and the Idealists: Or, The Passion of Joschka Fischer, and Its Aftermath, by Paul Berman (Soft Skull, 314 pp., $23.95)
IN modern times, the Left has been wrong about everything important--with the one exception of Nazism. Wrong about...
In a strange land.(American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville)(Book Review)
February 13, 2006... American Vertigo: Traveling America in the Footsteps of Tocqueville, by Bernard-Henri Levy Random House, 320 pp., $24.95)
IN 2004, the editor of The Atlantic Monthly decided to respond to the growing strain in Franco-American relations by...
The bosses sell out.(Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise)(Book Review)
February 13, 2006... Solidarity for Sale: How Corruption Destroyed the Labor Movement and Undermined America's Promise, by Robert Fitch (PublicAffairs, 432 pp., $28.50)
ROBERT FITCH is a chastened leftie--as opposed to an ex-leftie. This is an important...
Getting pally with ally.(Ally McBeal television program)
February 13, 2006... 'THOU shalt not follow a multitude to do evil," commanded Moses very wisely. The true-born straggler ("one that is separated by wandering off in some irregular manner from others"--Webster's Third) finds no difficulty in cleaving to this...
Are you scared of Alito?(Samuel Alito)
February 13, 2006... NEW YORK, JANUARY 10
SO Senator Kennedy wants to know why it is that, "undeterred by the public outcry, the president vows to continue spying on American citizens." That mauling of Bush was done in passing, on the first day of...
Some say potatoes.(Al Gore's political activity)
February 13, 2006... NEW YORK, JANUARY 17
INSIDERS passed on the word that former vice president Al Gore would not go so far as actually to call for the impeachment of George Bush, and indeed he did not. The crowd at Constitution Hall was disappointed. But...
Reforming the rich.(on the right)(publicizing executive salaries)
February 13, 2006... NEW YORK, JANUARY 20
ON the matter of reform in publicizing executive salaries, a few observations:
The way it is being handled now is marginally inexcusable, and unquestionably disgraceful. A case can be made, using prime libertarian...
Where the girls are.(Letter to the editor)
February 27, 2006
Indentured servitude?(Letter to the editor)
February 27, 2006
Saddam Hussein has sued President George Bush--and Prime Minister Tony Blair, to boot.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
Let's hope the veneer of change counts for something.(The Week)(John Boehner)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island is the most liberal Republican in the Senate.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
The unemployment rate dropped to 4.7 percent, the lowest rate in four and a half years.(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
In his State of the Union address, Bush declared America addicted to oil.(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
For years, Republicans have treated health care as a "Democratic issue" to pay attention to only when necessary.(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
They're revising the estimates of how much the new Medicare prescription-drug benefit will cost--revising them, amazingly enough, downward.(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
Congress approved $40 billion in spending restraint.(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
An enterprising Louisiana man has filed a class-action lawsuit against Apple, the maker of the iPod.(Apple Computer Inc.)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
Ibn Warraq is the nom de plume of a Pakistani Muslim living in the United States and writing about Islam as he sees it.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
Among the legislators elected to the Palestinian parliament is 56-year-old Mrs. Mariam Farhat, mother of three.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
When the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran to the U.N.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
Speech impediment.(free speech)
February 27, 2006
One of the more fanciful dreams we at NR sometimes have--right after the one about immigration reform--is that some Hollywood bigwig will make a movie about the real Che Guevara, something different from the cloying mess that now passes for the Che biographic canon: a film about the murderous thug whose tenure as Cuba's chief executioner saw the death of thousands, often by Guevara's own hand.(Brief article)
February 27, 2006... * One of the more fanciful dreams we at NR sometimes have-right after the one about immigration reform--is that some Hollywood bigwig will make a movie about the real Che Guevara, something different from the cloying mess that now passes for...
Art imitates life.(Geena Davis's performance)(Brief article)
February 27, 2006
Some Woodshed.(The Week)(Poem)
February 27, 2006