National Review articles from February 2008

National Review archives from February 2008

A life in letters.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
February 11, 2008... In your January 28 issue ("The Week"), you refer to a letter to the editor that I wrote to the New York Times, published on January 3, 2008. You state that my claim of being "a life-long Republican until the candidacy of George W. Bush" is a...

In the Democratic presidential candidates' South Carolina debate, Hillary said, "I will make the commitment to have people in the White House who are honest and trustworthy.".(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... In the Democratic presidential candidates' South Carolina debate, Hillary said, "I will make the commitment to have people in the White House who are honest and trustworthy." So where would she put Bill?

It's not at all clear that the economy is entering a recession.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... It's not at all clear that the economy is entering a recession. What we have here isn't trouble in the housing market that is spreading to other sectors of the economy so much as panic in stock markets and the press that is spreading to...

Christians honor the Man of Sorrows.(The Week)(Democratic Party presidential candidates)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Christians honor the Man of Sorrows. Post-Christians honor suffering: who felt it most, and who is entitled to the greatest recompense. The Democratic party is answering these questions in the caucus room and the polling place. Hillary Clinton...

One interesting, perhaps prophetic, aspect of the Democratic spats is Bill Clinton's role.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... One interesting, perhaps prophetic, aspect of the Democratic spats is Bill Clinton's role. When a San FranciscoTV reporter bearded him about the Nevada caucuses, Clinton answered with a mix of do-you-know-who-I-am entitlement and schoolyard...

John Edwards has become the incredible shrinking populist.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... John Edwards has become the incredible shrinking populist. The candidate's frenzied corporate-bashing in Iowa--a state always game for low-down populist pitches--hoisted him to a respectable second at 30 percent, which declined to 17 percent in...

Will Ron Paul be "read out" of the libertarian movement?(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Will Ron Paul be "read out" of the libertarian movement? James Kirchick of The New Republic performed a useful service by publicizing inflammatory passages from the Ron Paul Political Report and the Ron Paul Survival Report. The now-defunct...

Nevada is one of twelve states that has voted in favor of medical marijuana.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Nevada is one of twelve states that has voted in favor of medical marijuana, and on the eve of its caucus, the Marijuana Policy Project offered $20,000--$5,000 for the primaries, $5,000 for the general election, and...

Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho pled guilty to disorderly conduct last August after he was accused of soliciting sex from an undercover cop in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho pled guilty to disorderly conduct last August after he was accused of soliciting sex from an undercover cop in a bathroom at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. Since news of the incident got out, the senator has been...

There has been a good deal of controversy about voter-identification laws, and the Supreme Court recently heard a challenge to Indiana's policy.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... There has been a good deal of controversy about voter-identification laws, and the Supreme Court recently heard a challenge to Indiana's policy. Civil-liberties groups claim the law--which mandates that each voter present a valid photo ID at...

Last year, Judge Laurence Silberman threw out the D.C. handgun ban as a violation of the Second Amendment.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Last year, Judge Laurence Silberman threw out the D.C. handgun ban as a violation of the Second Amendment. The Supreme Court has now taken up the case, and the Bush administration has, surprisingly, weighed in against Judge Silberman. Solicitor...

It is one thing to allow foreigners to invest in U.S. companies.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... It is one thing to allow foreigners to invest in U.S. companies. But what about foreign governments? You're going to be hearing a lot more about "sovereign wealth funds"--investment funds owned by governments--over the next few years. They are...

Visiting the Middle East, President Bush hoped to advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and also to strengthen the Gulf Arabs in the face of the Iranian threat.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Visiting the Middle East, President Bush hoped to advance the peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and also to strengthen the Gulf Arabs in the face of the Iranian threat. The objectives are worthy, but in present conditions...

The legislature of New Jersey voted to apologize for slavery (the state did not abolish slavery until 1846).(The Week)
February 11, 2008... The legislature of New Jersey voted to apologize for slavery (the state did not abolish slavery until 1846). The text of the resolution goes way beyond the 19th century, asserting that "the vestiges of slavery" are ever before us, from "the...

Tornado at a frat party.(The Week)(Bill Clinton)
February 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'RECENT events," mused former Clinton impeachment lawyer Greg Craig, "raise the question: if Hillary's campaign can't control Bill, whether Hillary's White House could." I love this. But it's worth remembering...

The New York Times is apparently having so much trouble finding genuine examples of U.S. soldiers who commit atrocities abroad that it has decided to look for them at home.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... The New York Times is apparently having so much trouble finding genuine examples of U.S. soldiers who commit atrocities abroad that it has decided to look for them at home: In a 6,300-word article, the newspaper claimed to document 121 cases of...

On the Golf Channel, Kelly Tilghman, an anchorwoman, and Nick Faldo, a legend of the game, were having a chat.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On the Golf Channel, Kelly Tilghman, an anchorwoman, and Nick Faldo, a legend of the game, were having a chat. They were talking about what other golfers might do to stop Tiger Woods. Faldo quipped, "Maybe they...

A new study says that mandatory diversity training backfires: after looking at data from 830 workplaces, researchers discovered that sensitivity seminars and their ilk led to declines in the number of women and minorities in management.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... A new study says that mandatory diversity training backfires: After looking at data from 830 workplaces, researchers discovered that sensitivity seminars and their ilk led to declines in the number of women and minorities in management. Black...

Allow us to offer Canada's "human-rights commissions" a slogan: "we may disapprove of what you say--and if we do we'll make you pay.".(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Allow us to offer Canada's "human-rights commissions" a slogan: "We may disapprove of what you say--and if we do we'll make you pay." No, it's not entirely original, but it does have the virtue of being true. In recent months, the publishers...

Those who were unable to attend the 2006 Pyongyang Film Festival missed a treat: a tender dramedy titled The Schoolgirl's Diary, one of the two films produced in North Korea that year.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Those who were unable to attend the 2006 Pyongyang Film Festival missed a treat: a tender dramedy titled The Schoolgirl's Diary, one of the two films produced in North Korea that year. With a script that is reported to include contributions...

The Village Voice is celebrating a half century of reporting and commentary by Nat Hentoff.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... The Village Voice is celebrating a half century of reporting and commentary by Nat Hentoff. He has long been a jazz fan, a free-speech absolutist, and a self-described socialist. We will take one from Column A, half of one from Column B, and...

New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that director Philippe de Montebello will retire at the end of 2008, after 31 years on the job.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that director Philippe de Montebello will retire at the end of 2008, after 31 years on the job. Montebello excelled at all the un-artsy arts of administration--collecting, fundraising,...

Okay, so this Polish guy walks into a brothel and finds his wife working as a call girl.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Okay, so this Polish guy walks into a brothel and finds his wife working as a call girl. According to the Reuters news agency, that actually happened recently, and Poland's gag writers must be on strike too, because the shocked husband could...

When Philip Agee died in early January, Reuters called him a "whistleblower.".(The Week)(In memoriam)
February 11, 2008... When Philip Agee died in early January, Reuters called him a "whistleblower." Oh, is that what he was? Agee was a CIA agent who turned against his employer, and his country, and published Inside the Company: CIA Diary. The year was 1975. Agee's...

Bobby Fischer's 1972 world-championship chess match with Boris Spassky in Reykjavik was rightly seen as a Cold War allegory.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... Bobby Fischer's 1972 world-championship chess match with Boris Spassky in Reykjavik was rightly seen as a Cold War allegory. Spassky, the product of Russian chess culture brought to machine-tooled efficiency by the Soviet Union, faced the...

In April 1958, Americans were lining up outside department stores waiting for the latest delivery of Hula-Hoops.(The Week)(In memoriam)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... In April 1958, Americans were lining up outside department stores waiting for the latest delivery of Hula-Hoops. The craze lasted only a few months. By September the manufacturer, Wham-O, was stuck with millions of unsold hoops. Wham-O soon...

If Napoleon met Goethe with the words "Voila, un homme," what would he have said about Sir Edmund Hillary?(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... If Napoleon met Goethe with the words "Voila, un homme," what would he have said about Sir Edmund Hillary? With a summit of six feet and five inches, the New Zealander looked like a mountain. Along with Tenzing Norgay, his Sherpa climbing...

A national primary.(2008)(caucuses)
February 11, 2008... SIX states have voted in the Republican nomination contest, and the field has merely been winnowed. Former senator Fred Thompson dropped out, having run an honorable campaign but also shown his distaste for presidential politics. We were always...

Benchmarked.(AT WAR)(Iraq government)
February 11, 2008... FOR a year, critics of the Iraq War have insisted that whether the Iraqi government meets political benchmarks is the most important measure of success. It didn't matter if the central government was sharing money with the provinces or Sunnis...

One fight, two fronts.(ABORTION)(cloning)
February 11, 2008... Two news items illustrated the state of the debate over the sanctity of human life during the week leading up to the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade. It was reported that the abortion rate has continued to decline. It is down 25 percent since...

Evan Galbraith, R.I.P.(OBITUARY)(In memoriam)(Brief article)
February 11, 2008... VAN GALBRAITH's credentials were pretty impressive. We were classmates at Yale and then he went to Harvard Law School. After that came service as a naval officer, in the folds of the CIA. Then a top law firm in New York City, and on to London,...

Maverick no more: but will conservatives embrace John McCain?
February 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Columbia, S.C. BOB ROYALL is as establishment as you get in South Carolina. Born and raised here, a graduate of the University of South Carolina, the retired chairman of the National Bank of South Carolina, and a...

Minnesota standoff: the specter of a brokered convention haunts the Republican field.(2008 II)
February 11, 2008... IN The Guide for the Perplexed, the 12th-century Jewish philosopher Maimonides asked his readers to imagine a boy whose mother had died in childbirth, and who was raised on an island inhabited only by men. Such a child, Maimonides said, could...

The Sierra Club congressman: will conservatives revolt against Rep. Wayne Gilchrest?(POLITICS)
February 11, 2008... ON February 26, 1998, Andy Harris spotted a headline in a copy of the Washington Post that was sitting in the doctor's lounge of the hospital where he works. "I still remember that it was on the front page of the Metro section, on the...

A knave and his index: Lewis Lapham continues to wound our culture.(CULTURE WATCH)
February 11, 2008... WHAT was Karl Marx's best line? My candidate is his mot, from the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), about history repeating itself first as tragedy, then farce. Consider: It was a minor cultural tragedy when Lewis Lapham...

Nicolas & Carla & Bill & Hillary: menages old and new.(FRANCE)(Nicolas Sarkozy, Carla Bruni; Bill and Hillary Clinton)
February 11, 2008... ONCE, a few years ago, I was sitting outdoors at La Palette, a Paris cafe on rue de Seine. I was there with a French friend of mine, and it was one of those sunny, chilly Paris afternoons designed for sitting outside with a cigarette and a...

The Obama appeal: he's post-racist, but also post-American.(Barack Obama)(Cover story)
February 11, 2008... AS Republicans watched the recent Democratic debates, the mountainous scale of the problems they face glowered down on them. They were already intimidated by the steepness of the first peak--Mount Change. Amid-January Gallup poll showed that...

How to fight a Huck: don't revile his supporters.(2008 III)(Mike Huckabee)
February 11, 2008... MORE nonsense has been said and written about former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee than about any other presidential candidate. Some of his critics have accused him of being a "Dominionist"--someone who wants the government strictly to...

Iraq reborn: what our troops have wrought, and how to preserve it.(AT WAR)
February 11, 2008... IN the final days of 2006, Iraq seemed like a lost cause. The second of two U.S. security crackdowns in Baghdad had failed, with insurgents moving back into "cleared" neighborhoods as soon as thinly stretched U.S. battalions moved on to the...

Around the world with Shultz: a visit to the former secretary of state.(PEOPLE)(George Shultz)(Interview)
February 11, 2008... Palo Alto, Calif. IN the second volume of his memoirs--published in 1982--Henry Kissinger said something extraordinary about George Shultz: "I met no one in public life for whom I developed greater respect and affection." Kissinger...

Help!!!!(Cartoon)
February 11, 2008... ISLAMIC BOOKSTORE BOOKS FOR DHIMMIS [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] HILLARY FOR PRESIDENT [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I HAVE ABOUT AS MUCH OF A CHANCE AS BOB DOLE DID. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] YOU'RE JUST UPSET I'M DOING SO...

Therapist's notes: the New York Times company mental health clinic.(the long view)
February 11, 2008... First Session: The clients gathered for the first time today for our surge-related-depression clinic. Forgot to order extra chairs, so for the first few moments several of the clients were forced to stand "Gitmo style," as one of them...

Poisoned root.('Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning')(Book review)
February 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, by Jonah Goldberg (Doubleday, 496 pp., $27.95) NO political term has been more overused and misused than...

Trial by fire.('Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full')(Book review)
February 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, by Conrad Black (Public Affairs, 1,148 pp., $40) ALMOST a decade ago, at the zenith of his power and wealth, Conrad Black set out to write a biography of the most powerful and...

The lives of others.('The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia')(Book review)
February 11, 2008... The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, by Orlando Figes (Metropolitan, 784 pp., $35) IT has been the worse part of a century since the bloody birth and savage adolescence of the Soviet state, but the events of those years are...

The code.(Poem)
February 11, 2008... THE CODE I took my son from his weary mother. I gathered him up and paced the living room In a grey sunrise crossed by early lightning. After a little while he stopped his crying, Lifting his head from my shoulder to...

Date in Pyongyang.(ESSAY)(New York Philharmonic Orchestra)
February 11, 2008... LAST summer, the New York Philharmonic was invited by the government of North Korea to play a concert in Pyongyang. The Philharmonic accepted; the concert will take place on February 26. And we confront a burning question: Were they right to...

Less than monstrous.(FILM)('Cloverfield')(Movie review)
February 11, 2008... IF the name "Cloverfield" meant nothing in particular to you as of the first of this year--if it sounded like a shampoo, perhaps, or a new brand of imitation butter--then you are obviously not an American (okay, a male American) between the...

Gripe homeostasis.(THE STRAGGLER)(tax policy; health insurance)
February 11, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NOT my favorite time of year. Taxes, for one thing. As a freelancer, working from check to check, the nearest I get to the sly painlessness of the salaryman's withholding tax is quarterly "estimated" payments. Figure...

Inside Obama.(on the right)(Barack Obama)
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK, JANUARY 11 AT 3:00 A.M. the night after Iowa, a tough-minded friend e-mailed me (he didn't want to wake me at 3, merely to record what was going through his mind after the tumultuous victory). "I must say," he wrote, "I liked...

See who gave.(on the right)(political fund raising)
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK, JANUARY 8 IF you are in search of details on financial traffic moving about, paying for all the political ads we come across, plus high living for the traffic cops, go to your computer and try searching for "Federal Election...

Primary confusions.(on the right)
February 11, 2008... NEW YORK, JANUARY 15 SEBASTIAN MALLABY, a journalist for the Washington Post, writes to formulate, or rather reformulate, the complaint we are entitled to make on the matter of our primary practices. Mallaby reminds us that if three people...

That old-time preservation.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
February 25, 2008... In criticizing National Heritage Areas ("An Ugly Heritage," January 28), John J. Miller appears to be condemning all preservation efforts. While his critique of the National Trust has merit, he gives the impression, if only by omission, that...

St. Alfred Prufrock.(Letter to the editor)
February 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In his review of Lapham's Quarterly ("A Knave and His Index," February 11), Roger Kimball quotes Lewis Lapham as saying that St. Augustine "formulated his notion of Christian morality as a response to his having been...

Well, at least his team won.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Well, at least his team won the Super Bowl.

Rudy Giuliani bowed out after a weak third-place finish in Florida, his self-defined must-win state.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Rudy Giuliani bowed out after a weak third-place finish in Florida, his self-defined must-win state. Unavoidable liabilities and a bad strategy combined to undo him. Giuliani always had baggage: his longtime support of abortion; his hostility...

Taps sounded for John Edwards in South Carolina, a state he had won in 2004; this time he came in third.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Taps sounded for John Edwards in South Carolina, a state he had won in 2004; this time he came in third. When Edwards looked at the world, he saw only his youth in mill towns, an experience of poverty that he believed was emblematic of...

In a column, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal made a passing reference to a meeting Senator McCain recently had with conservatives.(The Week)(Senator John McCain)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... In a column, John Fund of the Wall Street Journal made a passing reference to a meeting Senator McCain recently had with conservatives. He told those conservatives that as president he would try to nominate justices similar to John Roberts--but...

Mitt Romney brings out the worst in John McCain.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Mitt Romney brings out the worst in John McCain. McCain could have pointed out that he had fought tirelessly for the surge for years while Romney was hedging his bets. That would have been a reasonable point, and a powerful one. Instead, McCain...

For many conservatives, nothing about John McCain sticks in the throat so immovably as the yoking of his name with Edward Kennedy's in the 2005 immigration bill.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... For many conservatives, nothing about John McCain sticks in the throat so immovably as the yoking of his name with Edward Kennedy's in the 2005 immigration bill. McCain-Kennedy never came to a vote, but it formed the basis for subsequent bills...

"We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," Barack Obama said in his maiden run for the U.S. Senate in 2004.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... "We need to rethink and decriminalize our marijuana laws," Barack Obama said in his maiden run for the U.S. Senate in 2004. That was a noteworthy statement, for decriminalization is a rare position among practicing politicians. After the...

Hillary Clinton's endlessly recalibrated position on providing driver's licenses for illegal aliens captures her career in miniature.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Hillary Clinton's endlessly recalibrated position on providing driver's licenses for illegal aliens captures her career in miniature. After arguing that a New York proposal to give illegals driver's licenses "makes a lot of sense," she promptly...

Twenty-eight House Republicans are retiring, a factoid widely seen to spell doom for the Republicans' chances of taking back the House or even keeping their current strength.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Twenty-eight House Republicans are retiring, a factoid widely seen to spell doom for the Republicans' chances of taking back the House or even keeping their current strength. There is some truth to that analysis. But some of those retirees are...

The point of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was to restrain surveillance within our borders.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... The point of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was to restrain surveillance within our borders. The government must go to a secret FISA court and prove that its target is legitimate before it can wiretap. Last year, however, a...

Spring is the traditional season for fighting in Afghanistan.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Spring is the traditional season for fighting in Afghanistan. The Taliban are known to be preparing to mount a big offensive, and ordinary Afghans are getting ready to join whoever looks like winning--which is only prudent of them. Afghan...

Dozens were killed on February 1 when twin bombers struck at Baghdad markets.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Dozens were killed on February 1 when twin bombers struck at Baghdad markets. The bombers, both women, died in the blasts, but they were not suicides--both had Down syndrome and were unwitting tools in al-Qaeda's deadly attack. This is a sign...

Hamas carefully prepared the demolition of the wall demarcating the Gaza Strip from Egypt.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Hamas carefully prepared the demolition of the wall demarcating the Gaza Strip from Egypt. Taking everyone by surprise, hundreds of thousands of Gazans swarmed across. Even more surprising, they proved not to be the poverty-stricken folk of...

Iraq's Kurds suffered from some of Saddam's most evil deeds, and Kurdistan, under its somewhat-reconciled rival leaders, Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, has been freer, more prosperous, and more secure than the rest of Iraq.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Iraq's Kurds suffered from some of Saddam's most evil deeds, and Kurdistan, under its somewhat-reconciled rival leaders, Masud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, has been freer, more prosperous, and more secure than the rest of Iraq. But Kurdistan has...

The college--endowment racket.
February 25, 2008... IN the United States, almost everything is taxed. Sales taxes apply to the things we buy, property taxes apply to the things we own, and income taxes apply to checks we receive. Higher education is one of the few areas exempt from this...

After 9/11, Yasser Arafat was photographed in a hospital apparently giving blood for the victims, and he was made to appear in the world's press as a human being after all.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] After 9/11, Yasser Arafat was photographed in a hospital apparently giving blood for the victims, and he was made to appear in the world's press as a human being after all. But the scene was rigged, according to a...

The homicidal career of George Habash, who died on January 26, documents that the hateful seed of Arab extremism sometimes takes root in non-Islamic soil.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... The homicidal career of George Habash, who died on January 26, documents that the hateful seed of Arab extremism sometimes takes root in non-Islamic soil. Islamism's apologists always evinced glee in pointing out that Habash, founder of the...

French heads of state seem always to have been plagued by marital issues.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... French heads of state seem always to have been plagued by marital issues. Recall King Robert the Pious, whose attempt to marry his cousin Bertha led to the couple's excommunication in A.D. 997, the subject of a striking painting by Jean-Paul...

For reasons that Al Gore would no doubt be glad to explain to you, the global-warming trend has caused record snowfalls over southern China, exposing the fragility of the infrastructure supporting China's economic miracle.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... For reasons that Al Gore would no doubt be glad to explain to you, the global-warming trend has caused record snowfalls over southern China, exposing the fragility of the infrastructure supporting China's economic miracle. The nation's power...

There are many styles of generalship, as any military buff will tell you, but generals who operate in the buff are not common.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... There are many styles of generalship, as any military buff will tell you, but generals who operate in the buff are not common. Such a one was Milton Blahyi, leader of some rebel forces in the First Liberian Civil War, of 1989-96. Mr. Blahyi was...

Osama bin Laden has several wives; the King of Saudi Arabia and most of the men in his family have too many to count.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Osama bin Laden has several wives; the King of Saudi Arabia and most of the men in his family have too many to count. All such much-endowed men should hurry to Britain, where they will be showered with taxpayers' money. The relevant government...

In the most hotly contested election since Saddam Hussein narrowly defended his title of Grand Potentate of Greater Mesopotamia with 99.96 percent of the vote, both Fidel Castro and his brother/henchman Raul were reelected to Cuba's sham parliament, the National Assembly of Popular Power, with 98.4 and 99.4 percent of their constituents' votes, respectively.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... In the most hotly contested election since Saddam Hussein narrowly defended his title of Grand Potentate of Greater Mesopotamia with 99.96 percent of the vote, both Fidel Castro and his brother/henchman Raul were reelected to Cuba's sham...

From a biologist's point of view, Europeans are rather peculiar.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... From a biologist's point of view, Europeans are rather peculiar. Practically all other human populations are dark-haired, dark-eyed, and quite uniform in skin color. Only in Europe, and especially in eastern and northern Europe, do we find a...

So dammerung unspools, with a stay in a psychiatric ward.(The Week)(Britney Spears)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... So Britneydammerung unspools, with a stay in a psychiatric ward. It is hard to know what is worst about this cocktail of professional and personal disintegration. Maybe this: the glee with which the organs of publicity that made a pert,...

In her new autobiography, Kathleen Turner says she felt uncomfortable making Body Heat because "I was no great beauty.".(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... In her new autobiography, Kathleen Turner says she felt uncomfortable making Body Heat because "I was no great beauty." We'll just pause here for a moment while you read the last sentence again. Back? That could be the most clueless statement...

Students at Choate, the prep school, protested its invitation to Karl Rove to speak at commencement.(The Week)(Choate Rosemary Hall )(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Students at Choate, the prep school, protested its invitation to Karl Rove to speak at commencement. Rove has graciously agreed to speak there on another occasion. Jillian Ruben, the president of the Choate Young Democrats, explained the...

An AP/Yahoo poll asked which presidential candidate Americans would most like and least like to have on their bowling team.(The Week)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... An AP/Yahoo poll asked which presidential candidate Americans would most like and least like to have on their bowling team. Hillary Clinton topped both categories, the first one narrowly in a crowded field, the second by a 3-to-1 landslide over...

Suharto died on January 27, aged 86.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
February 25, 2008... Suharto died on January 27, aged 86. His name--like most Javanese, he had just the one--flickered in the background of international news for decades, rarely reaching the front pages, because Indonesia is not a very consequential nation. It is...

The comeback ... adult.(POLITICS)(Senator John McCain)
February 25, 2008... MITT ROMNEY is a smart and talented man who has run a vigorous campaign based mostly on conservative issues. He vows to keep fighting all the way to the convention. But he took third place in several Southern states on Super Tuesday, a dismal...

Rumbles in the offing.(POLITICS II)
February 25, 2008... MAYBE it was what Shakespeare called "the fell incensed points of mighty opposites." Maybe it was what a historian of left-wing movements called "tiny ferocious creatures devouring each other in a drop of water." But the Democrats' Super...