National Review articles from February 2007

National Review archives from February 2007

Con man.(Letter to the editor)
February 12, 2007... In his cover story on McCain and Romney ("GOP Duel," Dec. 31), Jonathan Martin faults Rudy Giuliani for being "pro-abortion-rights, pro-gay-rights, [and] anti-gun." Fair is fair, but why give his economic measures short shrift? As mayor of New...

Make war, not arrests.(Letter to the editor)
February 12, 2007... Although I appreciate Bing West's military service and am happy to assume his judgment is generally sound, I still found his article ("Do or Die in Iraq," Jan. 29) wanting. He calls the lack of an identification system for rooting out...

... Do or die.(Letter to the editor)
February 12, 2007... In regard to Richard Brookhiser's article of January 29 ("Rebels on the Hudson"), I have been getting solicitations from various pro-Confederate organizations that wish again to sing the song of the South. I suppose I receive these mailings,...

The Clinton-Obama race is getting hotter.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... The Clinton-Obama race is getting hotter. How long until she points out that she was married to the first black president?

Nancy Pelosi's hundred hours are over, and the republic has sustained no serious damage.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Nancy Pelosi's hundred hours are over, and the republic has sustained no serious damage. In part that is because the president still has the veto pen, and we trust that he will use it to keep taxpayers from having to pay for embryo-destructive...

Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo has said in the past that it would be "delusional" to think he could win the presidency, but he has nonetheless announced his intention to explore a run.(The Week )(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Colorado Rep. Tom Tancredo has said in the past that it would be "delusional" to think he could win the presidency, but he has nonetheless announced his intention to explore a run. He believes that his candidacy will force the Republican field...

Washington is preoccupied with the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.(The Week)
February 12, 2007... Washington is preoccupied with the trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Now why is there a trial? Let's see. Shady characters in the Bush administration were thought to have outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee in retaliation for the...

The administration announced that the president will stop authorizing the NSA's terrorist-surveillance program.(The Week)(George W. Bush, National Security Agency)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... The administration announced that the president will stop authorizing the NSA's terrorist-surveillance program. All monitoring of terrorist communications that cross into the United States will now occur under the authorization of special...

When Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California, conservatives who supported him reasoned that while he was a social liberal, he was also a disciple of Milton Friedman.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... When Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor of California, conservatives who supported him reasoned that while he was a social liberal, he was also a disciple of Milton Friedman. Bad call: Schwarzenegger's latest move has been to propose to tax,...

When the Duke lacrosse story broke, it immediately became a rallying cry for "social justice.".(The Week)(Duke University)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... When the Duke lacrosse story broke, it immediately became a rallying cry for "social justice." The rape of a poor black woman by three privileged white men was a perfect propaganda piece for the Left: a jarring metaphor of racial, social, and...

The House of Representatives has five members who never vote on the floor: they're called "delegates," and they hail from the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... The House of Representatives has five members who never vote on the floor: They're called "delegates," and they hail from the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, and American Samoa. Because four of them are Democrats...

Hawaii's John C. Calhoun, Sen. Daniel Akaka, is sponsoring, for the second time, legislation that would hand over sovereignty of our island state to native Hawaiians.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Hawaii's John C. Calhoun, Sen. Daniel Akaka, is sponsoring, for the second time, legislation that would hand over sovereignty of our island state to native Hawaiians. Akaka seeks to create what he calls a "Native Hawaiian governing entity," a...

Democratic congressmen Maurice Hinchey and Dennis Kucinich and socialist senator Bernie Sanders are trying to combat the pernicious influence of conservative media by reviving the Fairness Doctrine.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Democratic congressmen Maurice Hinchey and Dennis Kucinich and socialist senator Bernie Sanders are trying to combat the pernicious influence of conservative media by reviving the Fairness Doctrine. For those who don't remember, the Fairness...

Wal-Mart, like many other large companies, is a perpetual target of abuse from raving leftists hurling accusations of corporate greed and worker exploitation.(Wal-Mart Stores Inc.)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Wal-Mart, like many other large companies, is a perpetual target of abuse from raving leftists hurling accusations of corporate greed and worker exploitation. What makes Wal-Mart unusual, however, is that it is now standing up to these...

Bart Didden used to own a property in Port Chester, N.Y., on which he had plans to build a CVS pharmacy.(The Week)(G & S Port Chester sued)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Bart Didden used to own a property in Port Chester, N.Y., on which he had plans to build a CVS pharmacy. His property, however, was within a designated "redevelopment area," and G & S Port Chester, the developer charged with revitalizing the...

You may have heard about the two Border Patrol agents who got sentenced to more than ten years in prison for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... You may have heard about the two Border Patrol agents who got sentenced to more than ten years in prison for shooting a Mexican drug smuggler. An outrage, right? There are calls for a presidential pardon. Congressmen have rallied to the agents'...

Six years ago, a panel led by Donald Rumsfeld warned about the possibility of a "space Pearl Harbor.".(The Week)(weather satellite of United States being destroyed by China)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Six years ago, a panel led by Donald Rumsfeld warned about the possibility of a "space Pearl Harbor." On January 11, we caught a glimpse of what such a disaster might look like, when China destroyed an aging weather satellite with a...

Family time.(income distribution according to fammily size)
February 12, 2007... IMAGINE a society with only three people. Each of them has an annual income of $50,000. At some point, two of them marry. Has the income distribution changed? The answer, of course, is no. Before and after the marriage, each person has...

The Doomsday Clock is a silly reaction to deadly serious things.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... The Doomsday Clock is a silly reaction to deadly serious things. Created by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1947, it supposedly tracks mankind's proximity to The End, with midnight representing the destruction of civilization. In 1953,...

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created a world-storm, but things aren't all going his way.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created a world-storm, but things aren't all going his way. Power, including the conduct of foreign policy, is in any case in the hands of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, known as the Supreme Leader, and...

In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote of Jesus: "Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse.".(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... In his book Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis wrote of Jesus: "Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse." The answer, it turns out, is the last--that is, if we are to believe Hugo Chavez, who pronounced...

Federal prosecutors in New York, in cooperation with the New York district attorney, have indicted the man who ran the U.N. oil-for-food program.(The Week)(Benon Sevan)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Federal prosecutors in New York, in cooperation with the New York district attorney, have indicted the man who ran the U.N. oil-for-food program. Benon Sevan is charged with fraud and with having accepted $160,000 in bribes related to the...

One of the lesser-known of the 20th century's gangster-despots was Mengistu Haile Mariam, who ran Ethiopia as a Leninist-style "people's republic" from 1974 to 1991, complete with nationalization of industry and commerce, secret-police terror, mass killings of "class enemies," and famines brought on by forced collectivization of agriculture.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... One of the lesser-known of the 20th century's gangster-despots was Mengistu Haile Mariam, who ran Ethiopia as a Leninist-style "people's republic" from 1974 to 1991, complete with nationalization of industry and commerce, secret-police terror,...

Is tightening the screws a form of torture?(The Week)(Japan starts fight against North Korea)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Is tightening the screws a form of torture? We certainly hope so. The Japanese are now wielding a new weapon in the fight against North Korea. Remittances from ethnic Koreans living in Japan have long been a source of money for Kim Jong Il's...

In May 2006--news travels slowly out of the Hermit Kingdom--Dear Leader Kim Jong Il asked Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa to lead the National Symphony Orchestra of North Korea.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... In May 2006--news travels slowly out of the Hermit Kingdom--Dear Leader Kim Jong Il asked Japanese conductor Seiji Ozawa to lead the National Symphony Orchestra of North Korea. Ozawa declined. Since the usual Nork M.O. for procuring desirable...

Readers may recall Chen Guangcheng, the blind human-rights activist in China about whom we have written before.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Readers may recall Chen Guangcheng, the blind humanrights activist in China about whom we have written before. Last August, Mr. Chen was sentenced to over four years in prison for exposing forced abortions and other abuses associated with...

One radical suggestion that has been put forward for reforming and modernizing Islamic societies is the "weapons of cultural mass destruction" strategy: seduce pious Muslims with decadent Western pop artifacts like junk food, heavy-metal music, and Desperate Housewives--doing to their culture what we have done to our own.
February 12, 2007... One radical suggestion that has been put forward for reforming and modernizing Islamic societies is the "weapons of cultural mass destruction" strategy: seduce pious Muslims with decadent Western pop artifacts like junk food, heavy-metal music,...

The Sundance Film Festival got under way in Park City, Utah, and at the opening-day news conference inaugural chairman Robert Redford took the opportunity to correct any misapprehension the press might have about the festival's political tone.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... The Sundance Film Festival got under way in Park City, Utah, and at the opening-day news conference inaugural chairman Robert Redford took the opportunity to correct any misapprehension the press might have about the festival's political tone....

Without claiming any real knowledge of the matter, we have always supposed the world of professional meteorologists to be a calm and collegial sort of place, where earnest weatherpersons chat quietly about isobars, dew points, and orographic precipitation while sipping from cups of herbal tea with pinkies extended.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Without claiming any real knowledge of the matter, we have always supposed the world of professional meteorologists to be a calm and collegial sort of place, where earnest weatherpersons chat quietly about isobars, dew points, and orographic...

Dept. of Unmade Distinctions.(The Week)(Hanns Eisler outcasted from both Germany and America)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... DEPT. OF UNMADE DISTINCTIONS. From a music review in the New York Times: "The Jewish Communist composer Hanns Eisler... was an outcast in both Nazi Germany and McCarthy-era America."

... as critics of Israel, like the New York Times, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and David Duke, never tire of saying ...(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... ... as critics of Israel, like the New York Times, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and David Duke, never tire of saying...

McCarthy-era America, a frequent target of the New York Times and Pravda ...(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... McCarthy-era America, a frequent target of the New York Times and Pravda...

Art Buchwald's best days as a humorous political columnist were long past when he was suddenly given a new subject.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... Art Buchwald's best days as a humorous political columnist were long past when he was suddenly given a new subject. In 2006, diagnosed with kidney failure, he checked himself into a hospice. But he kept living, and living--and writing, and...

President Bush awarded the second Congressional Medal of Honor for actions in the War on Terror.(The Week)(George W. Bush)(Brief article)
February 12, 2007... President Bush awarded the second Congressional Medal of Honor for actions in the War on Terror. Like the one awarded Paul Ray Smith in April 2005, it was given posthumously. Marine Cpl. Jason L. Dunham was assisting an ambushed convoy near...

No shock, no awe.(POLITICS)(George W. Bush)
February 12, 2007... THE Bush White House often gets things right--eventually, and sometimes after exhausting all other alternatives. President Bush is calling for more troops in Baghdad, at least a year after it became clear that we needed them. He abandoned his...

Symbolism in the Senate.(AT WAR)(American troops in Iraq)
February 12, 2007... BUSH's proposed "surge" of troops into Iraq landed with a thud in Washington. Democrats were quick to denounce him for not truly "changing course," which it turns out--to no one's surprise--they had always been using as a euphemism for leaving...

A surge in candidates.(POLITICS II)(election in United States)
February 12, 2007... THOUGH it is winter, the earth teems with growth: presidential campaigns, green and hopeful, yearning for victory in Iowa a year from now. The Democratic field has filled in nicely, with a lower tier that includes Chris Dodd, Joe Biden,...

The home front: what to do about domestic policy.
February 12, 2007... IT has become a bit of a conservative cliche to say that we are victims of our own success. Like a lot of cliches, this one contains some truth. We had a hand in defeating Communism, ending inflation, reforming welfare, cutting tax rates, and...

Facing reality: toward a conservative foreign policy.
February 12, 2007... ANY consideration of a conservative approach to foreign policy must begin with the reality that there are serious divisions among conservatives on it. The most familiar division is that between neoconservatives and realists. But both schools...

Families and first principles: the conservative fight to protect life and defend marriage.
February 12, 2007... IT may, at first blush, sound too sweeping to say that we have government to protect public health, safety, and morals, and to advance the general welfare. Yet this statement does not imply an unlimited scope for government. Indeed, the...

Help!!!!(Cartoon)
February 12, 2007... "We're all Keynesiansnow, right?" FINALLY, A CHANCE TO GET OUT OF MY HUSBAND'S SHADOW. "Fred Flinstone isn't either a male chawinst pig!" [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

NSA surveillance transcript.(the long view)(Interview)
February 12, 2007... Ambient Radio Frequency Eavesdrop: Washington, D.C., Area Begin extract: [Static. Crackles.] UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: "Senator Clinton, can you hear me? Don't say anything, or Russert will notice the IFB in your ear. Just clear...

Words and history.(Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words)(The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... Lincoln's Sword: The Presidency and the Power of Words, by Douglas L. Wilson (Knopf, 352 pp., $26.95) The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows, by Gabor Boritt (Simon & Schuster, 432 pp., $28) WILLIAM SEWARD, the...

Lais Dedicates to Aphrodite the Tools of Her Trade.(Poem)
February 12, 2007... LAIS DEDICATES TO APHRODITE THE TOOLS OF HER TRADE Words cannot say what she was in her prime, This Lais, now a specimen of Time. She used to laugh to see so many men, Not one of whom she'll ever see again. ...

Saving remnant.(Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... Michael Polanyi: The Art of Knowing, by Mark T. Mitchell (ISI, 215 pp., $15) THE boulevard leading into Dachau from Munich is now called the Max Born Strasse. It is named after one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the 20th...

The big dig.(Jamestown: The Buried Truth)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... Jamestown: The Buried Truth, by William M. Kelso (Virginia, 256 pp., $29.95) FOR a century and a half or more, the conventional wisdom held that the original fort at Jamestown, Virginia--site of the first permanent English settlement in...

Books in brief.(Cry Havoc: The Great American Bring Down and How it Happened)(The Art of Victory: Strategies for Personal Success and Global Survival in a Changing World)(Book review)
February 12, 2007... WHY do conservatives seek, as the famous phrase has it, to stand athwart history yelling Stop? Because they are horrified by the sight of society coming undone. They have witnessed the breakdown of the family, the withering of liberal-arts...

Hot properties.(MUSIC)(Anna Netrebko of Metropolitan Opera Orchestra)
February 12, 2007... THE opera world has a scorching-hot star on its hands: Anna Netrebko, the 35-year-old soprano from Russia. Her face is plastered on every street corner of every opera capital. She is adored and panted after. Two summers ago, she created a...

Fables and foibles.(FILM)(Pan's Labyrinth)(Movie review)
February 12, 2007... A FAIRY tale for adults. According to the wizards at Google, this phrase has been used 474 times to describe Pan's Labyrinth, Guillermo del Toro's fantasy of fascist-era Spain, in the month since it made its American debut. I suppose I know...

Flow ho ho.(THE STRAGGLER)(life lessons from jigsaw puzzles)
February 12, 2007... SANTA in his goodness brought me a jigsaw puzzle for Christmas. It is quite a splendid one: a color photograph of Schloss Neuschwanstein, the alpine folly of Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, and inspiration for the Sleeping Beauty Castle at...

Bed reading.(on the right)(travel books by Henry James)(Critical essay)
February 12, 2007... NEW YORK, JANUARY 9 THE sickbed serves to distract attention, but it is unsafe to assume as a corollary that such distraction is enjoyable or even productive. It may have lessened, for a few days, preoccupation with street warfare in...

Yes or no to Bush?(on the right)(George W. Bush)(Interview)
February 12, 2007... NEW YORK, JANUARY 12 YOU are a Republican legislator, retiring after this, your fifth term. Last night, you composed a questionnaire for yourself. (1) Is it a strain to send more troops to Iraq? No. A country of 300 million has...

Congress's dilemma.(on the right)(military spending on Iraq war )
February 12, 2007... NEW YORK, JANUARY 16 HOUSE SPEAKER Nancy Pelosi's comments raise a point worth making. It is that there is, finally, no way for Congress to estop military escalation by the executive except by cutting funds. Or impeaching the president....