National Review articles from January 2005

National Review archives from January 2005

On Venezuela.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the Editor)
January 31, 2005... John J. Miller ("Friends of Hugo," Dec. 27) falsely alleges that "representatives from the Center for Economic and Policy Research" are "members" of a "media response team which contacts the press about its coverage of Venezuela." The Center...

Not being able to find political bias at CBS News is like not being able to find political bias at ABC.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Not being able to find political bias at CBS News is like not being able to find political bias at ABC. Or NBC. Or PBS. Or NPR. Or...

Iraq continues to produce gruesome news almost hourly.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Iraq continues to produce gruesome news almost hourly. President Bush has nonetheless remained properly adamant that the January 30 elections for a national assembly go forward. Insurgencies are defeated politically as much as militarily, and...

Here's a question for the Democratic leadership in the Senate.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Here's a question for the Democratic leadership in the Senate. Were you trying to embarrass your party on January 6, the first real business day of the new Congress? First, after making a lot of noise, you tried--and failed--to show some...

The first rule of election recounts is: count until you pull ahead, and then declare the counting over.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * The first rule of election recounts is: count until you pull ahead, and then declare the counting over. Immediately after Election Day in Washington State, Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi led Democrat Christine Gregoire by 261...

House Republicans got off to a clumsy start of the critical new congressional session when they hastily retreated from hastily proposed reforms to the ethics rules.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * House Republicans got off to a clumsy start of the critical new congressional session when they hastily retreated from hastily proposed reforms to the ethics rules. The Republicans had earlier decided to drop the rule that its leaders would...

President Bush has nominated Michael Chertoff, an appeals-court judge on the Third Circuit, for the position of Homeland Security chief.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * President Bush has nominated Michael Chertoff, an appeals-court judge on the Third Circuit, for the position of Homeland Security chief. Aformer head of the criminal division at Justice, Chertoff has a reputation as a hard-nosed prosecutor...

Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams says that he "exercised bad judgment.".(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams says that he "exercised bad judgment." Greed will do that to you sometimes. The Department of Education paid him to promote the No Child Left Behind Act, which he did in his columns and on his...

Gonzales, Worked Over.(Brief Article)(Poem)
January 31, 2005... GONZALES, WORKED OVER The Senate Democrats had at Gonzales with a vigor that Recalled the dungeon Walsingham Ran for the faerie queene; each slam (Leahy appeared to be turned on) Left the invited guest, like, wan:...

Michael Gerson has served George W. Bush magnificently as chief speechwriter, during both the 2000 campaign and the first term in office.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Michael Gerson has served George W. Bush magnificently as chief speechwriter, during both the 2000 campaign and the first term in office. His departure would have prompted us to declare his enormous talents "indispensable" to this president...

The Club for Growth, under the leadership of Stephen Moore, has been remarkably successful at electing progrowth conservatives to Congress, and at striking fear in the hearts of liberal Republicans.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * The Club for Growth, under the leadership of Stephen Moore, has been remarkably successful at electing progrowth conservatives to Congress, and at striking fear in the hearts of liberal Republicans. The Club is going to keep backing...

John Kerry summoned Evan Thomas of Newsweek to his home to complain about the magazine's post-election coverage.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * John Kerry summoned Evan Thomas of Newsweek to his home to complain about the magazine's post-election coverage. After Thomas left, Kerry followed him to show him a note from a schoolgirl saying that he was "the greatest." Kerry then said,...

The Senate confirmation hearings of attorney-general nominee Alberto Gonzales included one moment that left many of us, well, gasping for air.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * The Senate confirmation hearings of attorney-general nominee Alberto Gonzales included one moment that left many of us, well, gasping for air. It came when Sen. Edward Kennedy took up the task of painting Gonzales as an enabler of torture...

William Rehnquist is not only the chief justice of the Supreme Court, but the head of the federal judiciary.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * William Rehnquist is not only the chief justice of the Supreme Court, but the head of the federal judiciary. He reports annually on the health of that branch of government. In the reports of recent years, Rehnquist has too often defined the...

Resolve to ridicule.
January 31, 2005... I've made a New Year's resolution. Having recognized that fortifying myself to deny the siren songs of fattening comestibles and brown liquor will do nothing to win the War on Terror, I've resolved to do something more helpful to the effort on...

Cutting-Edge commentary on K-12 education.
January 31, 2005... A Forum on Paying Teachers Properly For more than a century, public education has worked with a single salary schedule that compensates teachers for college credits, education degrees, and years of experience--but not for their...

Since his service as U.S. attorney general under Lyndon Johnson, Ramsey Clark's career has been a case study in American anti-Americanism.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Since his service as U.S. attorney general under Lyndon Johnson, Ramsey Clark's career has been a case study in American anti-Americanism. From Vietnam to Grenada, from Bosnia to the Middle East, where the United States has been on one side...

Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, was elected president of the Palestinian Authority.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Mahmoud Abbas, aka Abu Mazen, was elected president of the Palestinian Authority. His moderation must be understood in the context of a political culture where extremism in defense of Jew-murdering is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of...

The gondoliers of Venice are to face spot checks on their sobriety after a spate of accidents thought to have been caused by operators' plying the city's famous canals while under the influence.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * The gondoliers of Venice are to face spot checks on their sobriety after a spate of accidents thought to have been caused by operators' plying the city's famous canals while under the influence. New regulations permit the city police to...

Gays may not recruit your children, but they will recruit your ancestors, if your ancestors were famous.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Gays may not recruit your children, but they will recruit your ancestors, if your ancestors were famous. The latest candidate for posthumous outing is Abraham Lincoln, courtesy of a recent book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln, by C. A....

Harvard's Lawrence Summers, the first Ivy League president to forcefully condemn the rise of anti-Semitism ("in effect if not intent") on college campuses, recently reported that things were looking up in academe: The anti-Israel divestment movement has died down and tensions overall have diminished, he told a Jerusalem audience.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Harvard's Lawrence Summers, the first Ivy League president to forcefully condemn the rise of anti-Semitism ("in effect if not intent") on college campuses, recently reported that things were looking up in academe: The anti-Israel divestment...

Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, argues that conservatives don't care about people in other countries unless they affect America's national interest.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Peter Beinart, editor of The New Republic, argues that conservatives don't care about people in other countries unless they affect America's national interest. The charge is untrue: It is conservatives who have put the suffering of the people...

Fahrenheit 9/11 was voted favorite movie at the People's Choice Awards, a run-up to the Oscars.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Fahrenheit 9/11 was voted favorite movie at the People's Choice Awards, a run-up to the Oscars. Well, naturally. Fahrenheit 9/11 raked in more than $100 million thanks to the repeat viewing of infatuated admirers. The People's Choice Awards...

Choose life: grow young with HGH.(human growth hormone)(Advertisement)
January 31, 2005... From the landmark book Grow Young with HGH comes the most powerful, over-the-counter health supplement in the history of man. Human growth hormone was first discovered in 1920 and has long been thought by the medical community to be necessary...

The mid-Hudson Valley, sleepy home of Rip Van Winkle, is suddenly hopping.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * The mid-Hudson Valley, sleepy home of Rip Van Winkle, is suddenly hopping. First came New Paltz mayor Jason West, the gay-marrying 26-year-old house painter. Now comes Alexander Bulay, a local movie-theater owner. Bulay ran a radio ad that...

In 1905 Albert Einstein published three brilliant scientific papers, each of which had a profound effect on the development of the physical sciences.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * In 1905 Albert Einstein published three brilliant scientific papers, each of which had a profound effect on the development of the physical sciences. This year marks the centenary of that annus mirabilis. To celebrate the occasion, London's...

Freedom of speech has been bumping up against religious sensibilities in Britain, with results that cast an interesting light on current sensibilities.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * Freedom of speech has been bumping up against religious sensibilities in Britain, with results that cast an interesting light on current sensibilities. At the end of last year a stage play featuring rape and murder in a Sikh temple caused a...

One common failing of criminals is that, being so focused on instant gratification, they omit to think things through.(The Week)(Brief Article)
January 31, 2005... * One common failing of criminals is that, being so focused on instant gratification, they omit to think things through. The disappearance of Angel Ricardo Mendoza, a trucker hauling 3.6 million nickels--$180,000, but weighing 22.5 tons and...

Rosemary Kennedy, sister of the late president, was born in 1918, apparently mildly retarded.(The Week)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
January 31, 2005... * Rosemary Kennedy, sister of the late president, was born in 1918, apparently mildly retarded. Kennedy-family pathographers have suggested that her father feared disgraceful consequences from her sex life. In 1941 she was lobotomized, which...

Guy Davenport, for many years a professor of English at the University of Kentucky, died at 77.(The Week)(Brief Article)(Obituary)
January 31, 2005... * Guy Davenport, for many years a professor of English at the University of Kentucky, died at 77. He wrote in the range of 50 books, mostly short stories and critical essays. In his spare time, he translated Heraclitus and Diogenes, and...

Under pressure.(Politics)
January 31, 2005... CONSERVATIVES have no great stake in whether Alberto Gonzales, a Bush friend who has shown no signs of being encumbered with a political philosophy, becomes the next attorney general of the United States. What is very important is that his...

The eye blinks.(The Media)
January 31, 2005... IT is to the credit of CBS that its internal inquiry, led by Richard Thornburgh and Louis Boccardi, did not whitewash the truth about the network's story attacking President Bush's National Guard service. The Thornburgh-Boccardi report calls...

Disaster.(The World)
January 31, 2005... THE Christmas tsunami made the world shake, the United States roll up its sleeves, and the mind falter. The tidal wave produced by the Krakatoa eruption over a century ago was probably greater. But the population of the world has grown,...

Susan Sontag, R.I.P.(Obituary)(Obituary)
January 31, 2005... SUSAN SONTAG burst on the New York intellectual scene in the early 1960s like a breath of fresh air. She saw all the subtitled movies and read all the untranslated novels--that's what intellectuals do--but she also wrote about them in sprightly...

Notes & asides.
January 31, 2005... Memo to: WFB From: Linda Bridges Dear Bill: Did you see this? The following is supposedly an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry midterm. The answer by one student struck the professor as worth sharing with...

Bush's unwelcome welcome mat: divorced from reality on immigration.(Public Policy)
January 31, 2005... NEXT time President Bush explains his immigration policy, he should avoid the usual wonky details about "earned legalization" and non-amnesty amnesties, launching instead into a full-throated rendition of the opening number from Cabaret. It...

Three-piece suits and black robes: business should get serious about judicial appointments.(The Judiciary)
January 31, 2005... No one predicts anything but bloodshed over the Bush administration's forthcoming judicial appointments, especially to the Supreme Court. Active, energetic business support for embattled, highly qualified nominees would help stiffen wavering...

Before you join ... Turkey, and the rest of us, should rethink its accession to the EU.(The World)
January 31, 2005... WELL, at least the Belgians are against it. And Hans-Gert Poettering, chairman of the Christian Democrat bloc in the European Parliament. And Durmus Hocaoglu, an associate professor at Istanbul's Marmara University. And, er, me. Strange...

You deserve a factual look at ...: an assessment of Arafat: will his death open the way for peace?
January 31, 2005... In 1979, under the stewardship of President Jimmy Carter, Israel and Egypt signed the Camp David peace treaty, by which Israel committed itself to yield the Sinai to Egypt, together with all its material and strategic assets. The whole world...

With the Chinese Christians: worshipers in a dark place.(The World II)
January 31, 2005... Beijing I MEET Qiu Yue and her friend Yang Jie at an average-looking restaurant. Qiu has chosen the place precisely because it is unremarkable. Our meeting must have a low profile: Qiu and Yang's safety would be jeopardized if the...

The meaning of a riot: in Britain, Sikh militants close a play--early.(Culture Watch)
January 31, 2005... BY now, we are so used to the idea of Islamic extremism and intolerance that we are surprised when anyone else shows the same disposition. But fanaticism, like totalitarianism, is a permanent temptation: It gives one such a warm, glowing sense...

To convict one doctor, zealots at DEA tore up pain guidelines developed over four years.(Drug Enforcement Administration)
January 31, 2005... Last August, after an historic collaboration between the Drug Enforcement Administration and the University of Wisconsin's Pain & Policy Studies Group, the DEA published new and widely applauded Pain Management Guidelines intended to protect...

The calamitous decline of the Catholic Church In the U.S.
January 31, 2005... In 1965 there were 58,000 priests in the U.S.; in 2002 there were 45,000, of whom 16% come from other countries. In 1965 there were 1,575 ordinations to the priesthood; in 2002 there were 450. In 1965 there were 49,000 seminarians; in...

An idea whose time has come: the necessity and desirability of Social Security reform.(Cover Essay)(Cover Story)
January 31, 2005... PEOPLE think that Social Security reform is an incredibly complicated and difficult subject. But it's not, really. The program's benefits are rising faster than its revenues, which means we're going to have a lot of trouble paying for those...

Cooled down: the global-warming hype is running out of (greenhouse?) gas, as it very much deserves.(The Environment)
January 31, 2005... THE waves of the tsunami had hardly receded before environmental alarmists linked the tragedy to... global warming! One newspaper, the Independent, quoted a British environmental activist saying that "here again are yet more events in the real...

Asbestos kills: and more than just people: jobs, ethics, and elementary justice.(Law And Health)
January 31, 2005... IT'S become a familiar scenario across the U.S.: A jovial air pervades this parking lot adjacent to a union hall that belies the serious purpose that has brought together a group of middle-aged men. For much of the afternoon they've been...

The long view.(Column)
January 31, 2005... Transcript: Larry King Live, January 25th, 2005 LARRY KING: "The whole hour tonight on the tsunami! The after-effects! The relief effort! We'll be talking to experts, and former presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush the Elder! And your...

Help!!!!(Comic)(Cartoon)
January 31, 2005... "I'M STRETCHED TOO THIN." "Hey, all our bank-robbery loot has consecutive serial numbers--what are the odds against that!" [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED]

Putin's Russia.(Poem)
January 31, 2005... PUTIN'S RUSSIA Shades of the prison-house descend; The governors are his, The Duma, neutered, signs off as He masticates Big Biz. The media's his pussycat, And though he took a bath Reprising Borgia...

The misanthropes.(Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World)(Book Review)
January 31, 2005... Consumer's Guide to a Brave New World, by Wesley J. Smith (Encounter, 219 pp., $25.95) LEO STRAUSS found it telling that Machiavelli mentioned only one other figure who served as the teacher of princes, the office that Machiavelli was...

British Isles Cruise: a once-in-a-lifetime experience: the National Review 2005.(Calendar)
January 31, 2005... Join NR's 50th Anniversary Sailing July 10-21 on Crystal Cruises' stunning Symphony with WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR., ROBERT BORK, PAUL JOHNSON, PEGGY NOONAN, LAWRENCE KUDLOW, RICH LOWRY, KATE O'BEIRNE, JAY NORDLINGER, JOHN O'SULLIVAN and DAVID...

Photograph.(Poem)
January 31, 2005... PHOTOGRAPH It will not change, no matter what you will-- That earliest version, hanging on my wall. Caught in the act of innocence, it knows None of the dark inventions you propose. Of all your thousand new-found faces...

The prophet.(Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History)(Book Review)
January 31, 2005... Dragons of Expectation: Reality and Delusion in the Course of History, by Robert Conquest (Norton, 272 pp., $24.95) ALL the essays in this volume have memorable lines, but one in particular leaps off the page: "There are other problems than...

American icons.(Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas)(Book Review)
January 31, 2005... Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas, by David Hackett Fischer (Oxford, 864 pp., $50) ABY WARBURG, scion of a Hamburg banking family, had no interest in ledgers or letters of credit; he had, however, a passion...

Mother's boy.(Borges: A Life)(Book Review)
January 31, 2005... Borges: A Life, by Edwin Williamson (Viking, 574 pp., $34.95) THE Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), prolific master of the short burst, known for his poems, essays, and stories and for never having written a novel, was the...

Jump street.(Essay)
January 31, 2005... I'M scared of heights. That's not quite true. I'm scared of falling. That's why one afternoon a few weeks ago I was left wondering why I was about to climb into an airplane, ride in it for about 20 minutes, then jump out. It was the...

Offstage moments.(City Desk)
January 31, 2005... GREEN rooms are offstage rooms where actors relax when not performing. The origins of the name are lost in the mists of time; the traditional guess is that the color green soothed eyes that had been staring into limelight. Limelight is long...

Penetrating social security.(on the right)(Column)
January 31, 2005... NEW YORK, DECEMBER 17 IT becomes clearer, day by day, that the talk about reforming Social Security is an ideological debate. The New York Times's summary on December 17 is useful: "Away from the conference [called by President Bush during...

Uncle Scrooge.(on the right)(Column)
January 31, 2005... NEW YORK, DECEMBER 30 ON the matter of the tsunami, several thoughts come to mind, disparate but not unrelated. 1) The first recalls Bishop Butler of the 18th century. Ronald Knox nicely summarized what I have come to call "Butler's...

Whither taxes?(on the right)(Column)
January 31, 2005... NEW YORK, JANUARY 4 AC-SPAN look-in on President Bush's challenge on tax reform featured two bright scholars, libertarian in outlook. Mark Henrie, from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and Doug Bandow, of the Cato Institute,...

Relaxation therapy for your feet: visco-elastic foam has changed the way people sleep, now it helps the way you walk.(Advertisement)
January 31, 2005... My feet hurt! How many times have you heard or said that... standing in line at the grocery store or simply while doing daily routine tasks? I feel like the older I get the more my feet ache. I've tried elevating my feet, soaking them in a hot...