National Review articles from January 2009

National Review archives from January 2009

Loaded history.(Letter to the editor)
January 26, 2009... Kevin D. Williamson repeats a couple of myths in his review of American Rifle: A Biography ("Politics in the Round," December 15). One is that the colonists fought the British with hit-and-run tactics; true to a point, but the major battles of...

Practice what you preach.(Letter to the editor)
January 26, 2009... I'm just curious. NATIONALREVIEW supported the "nuclear option"--a move to end a filibuster with a simple-majority vote, rather than a three-fifths majority as is normally required--when the Republicans had 55 votes in the Senate and Democrats...

Feigning civility is a waste of time.(Letters)(Letter to the editor)
January 26, 2009... I take issue with one comment regarding Ann Coulter in Kevin D. Williamson's critique of the book Media Madness, by James Bowman ("Biased and Bonkers," October 20). Williamson laments Bowman's praise of Coulter for her being "daringly...

If Harry Reid is so worried about being embarrassed by new senators.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... If Harry Reid is so worried about being embarrassed by new senators, shouldn't he keep Al Franken out?

With the Fed having done all it safely can to stimulate the economy--perhaps more than it safely can--Presidentelect Obama is proposing that Congress pass a $1 trillion stimulus.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... With the Fed having done all it safely can to stimulate the economy--perhaps more than it safely can--Presidentelect Obama is proposing that Congress pass a $1 trillion stimulus. He wants that figure to include $300 billion in tax...

The recorded conversations of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, soliciting bids for Barack Obama's Senate seat, threatened to embarrass the president-elect. How could Venus have arisen from such a polluted local sea?(The Week)
January 26, 2009... The recorded conversations of Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich, soliciting bids for Barack Obama's Senate seat, threatened to embarrass the president-elect. How could Venus have arisen from such a polluted local sea? Blagojevich then made his...

"In the most popular governments," wrote John Adams, "elections will generally go in favor of the most ancient families.".(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... "In the most popular governments," wrote John Adams, "elections will generally go in favor of the most ancient families." The Kennedys have confirmed his judgment, providing representatives, senators, and a president over 60 years. But now...

Al Franken pulled 225 votes ahead of Sen. Norman Coleman in the recount of Minnesota's poll, according to the state canvassing board.(The Weeks)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Al Franken pulled 225 votes ahead of Sen. Norman Coleman in the recount of Minnesota's poll, according to the state canvassing board. The Coleman campaign believes that 150 ballots in Democratic Minneapolis were double-counted, and that some...

Until 2005, the standard biography of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson included an item about how the Kansas City Athletics drafted him as a pitcher.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Until 2005, the standard biography of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson included an item about how the Kansas City Athletics drafted him as a pitcher. It turns out that this wasn't true, but nobody knew until the Albuquerque Journal decided...

Get used to it.(The Week)(politics in the United States)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Get used to it. Jihadist demonstrators in Jakarta, enraged (this minute) by Israel's invasion of Gaza, waved a poster of Obama, with symbolic bullet holes in his forehead. When George W. Bush gave a press conference in Baghdad last month, an...

President-elect Obama shrewdly sequenced his cabinet appointments.(The Week)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... President-elect Obama shrewdly sequenced his cabinet appointments. Early picks such as Tim Geithner for Treasury and Bob Gates for Defense established the media narrative of Obama's "centrist and pragmatic" advisers. The script has stuck even...

Obama's invitation to Rick Warren, evangelical megapastor, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration accomplishes several things and seeks to accomplish several others: Thank you.(The Week)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Obama's invitation to Rick Warren, evangelical megapastor, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration accomplishes several things and seeks to accomplish several others: Thank you. Warren invited Obama to an AIDS conference in 2006, and was...

President Bush spoke about life after January 20: "One thing I don't want to do is stay on the stage.(The Week)(George W. Bush)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... President Bush spoke about life after January 20: "One thing I don't want to do is stay on the stage. The spotlight needs to shift to President-elect Obama... because he's the president. Therefore, I won't try to get it to shift to me. And...

Remember all those reports suggesting that Hillary Clinton might have a conflict of interest as secretary of state in dealing with the foreign donors who contributed zillions of dollars to her husband's foundation?(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Remember all those reports suggesting that Hillary Clinton might have a conflict of interest as secretary of state in dealing with the foreign donors who contributed zillions of dollars to her husband's foundation? Well, the reports were right....

Charlie Rangel has ventured out from his complex of rent-controlled Manhattan apartments just long enough to get himself into another ethical soup, this time by soliciting donations from American International Group.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Charlie Rangel has ventured out from his complex of rentcontrolled Manhattan apartments just long enough to get himself into another ethical soup, this time by soliciting donations from American International Group, the troubled insurance...

Vicki Iseman, the lobbyist whose friendship with Sen. John McCain was the subject of an insinuendo-filled New York Times article last February, has filed suit against the Times for libel.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Vicki Iseman, the lobbyist whose friendship with Sen. John McCain was the subject of an insinuendo-filled New York Times article last February, has filed suit against the Times for libel. While we sympathize with Miss Iseman, she faces a...

In March 2007, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed piece called "Obama the 'Magic Negro.'".(Republican National Committee chairman, Mike Duncan)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... In March 2007, the Los Angeles Times published an op-ed piece called "Obama the 'Magic Negro.'" Paul Shanklin, a parodist, saw the opportunity: He penned a song called "Barack the Magic Negro," to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon." Shanklin...

John Taylor, former undersecretary of the treasury, is worried about the future of the Fed, and it is fit that he fret.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... John Taylor, former undersecretary of the treasury, is worried about the future of the Fed, and it is fit that he fret. Taylor's first concern is that the Fed has ceased conducting monetary policy--which is to say it has moved well beyond its...

Super-Sized stimulus.(Barack Obama's economic policy)
January 26, 2009... RESPONDING to fears shared by most economists that the current recession might turn into a depression, President-elect Obama pulled out all the stops in early January and proposed the mother of all stimulus packages. He would devote as much as...

The Bernard Madoff scandal raises the question: What exactly is the point of the Securities and Exchange Commission?(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... The Bernard Madoff scandal raises the question: What exactly is the point of the Securities and Exchange Commission? In spite of eight separate inquiries into Madoff's operations, neither the SEC nor any other regulator penetrated the financial...

The Bush administration authorized a $17 billion rescue package for GM and Chrysler.(The Week)(General Motors)
January 26, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Bush administration authorized a $17 billion rescue package for GM and Chrysler. Ford, the only one of the Detroit automakers that was not facing bankruptcy, turned down the cash. GMAC, GM's financing arm,...

Democrats are intent on cultivating a mythology of torture to discredit George W. Bush's administration, and the latest epistle of their faith is Sen. Carl Levin's misleading and relentlessly partisan report, "Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody.".(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Democrats are intent on cultivating a mythology of torture to discredit George W. Bush's administration, and the latest epistle of their faith is Sen. Carl Levin's misleading and relentlessly partisan report, "Inquiry into the Treatment of...

Jerry Brown, California's attorney general, thinks that the voters have approved an unconstitutional constitutional amendment. Last year the state supreme court foisted same-sex marriage on the state.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Jerry Brown, California's attorney general, thinks that the voters have approved an unconstitutional constitutional amendment. Last year the state supreme court foisted same-sex marriage on the state. The voters undid it. Brown's legal argument...

As the economy tightens up, many folks will find themselves going out less and seeking entertainment at home instead.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... As the economy tightens up, many folks will find themselves going out less and seeking entertainment at home instead. Anyone planning to watch much TV in California, though, had better act fast: The state's lawmakers are working on a law...

Israel's attacks on Hamas are being widely condemned as "disproportionate" since Israel has inflicted more damage than Hamas has.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Israel's attacks on Hamas are being widely condemned as "disproportionate" since Israel has inflicted more damage than Hamas has. The criticism is a bizarre distortion of traditional justwar theory, which requires (among other things) that...

The U.S. handed over control of the Green Zone to the Iraqis, in a historic step toward the reestablishment of Iraq as a sovereign independent state.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... The U.S. handed over control of the Green Zone to the Iraqis, in a historic step toward the reestablishment of Iraq as a sovereign independent state. Almost as notably, the Washington Post ran a front-page article declaring the war "over, at...

Further signs of Russia's retreat into authoritarianism came with a December 4 raid on the offices of Memorial in St. Petersburg.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Further signs of Russia's retreat into authoritarianism came with a December 4 raid on the offices of Memorial in St. Petersburg. Memorial is a private organization that for 20 years has been collecting data on the victims of Stalin's...

In the 1950s, Cuba was one of the better-off Latin American countries.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... In the 1950s, Cuba was one of the better-off Latin American countries. It had a dictatorship, like so many other countries in the region (and world). That dictatorship was neither the best nor the worst. It was overthrown by revolutionaries led...

The British are good at tradition, and one of them is that Queen Elizabeth broadcasts to the nation on Christmas Day.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... The British are good at tradition, and one of them is that Queen Elizabeth broadcasts to the nation on Christmas Day. It brings everyone together, don't you know? Britain's Channel Four likes to run an alternative broadcast; this year, Mahmoud...

Uneasy lies the head that wears a beauty queen's tinsel tiara.(The Week)(Laura Zuniga)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Uneasy lies the head that wears a beauty queen's tinsel tiara. Consider, for example, 23-year-old Laura Zuniga of Mexico, who was crowned Miss Hispanic America in a Bolivian pageant last October. Just a few weeks later Miss Zuniga was being...

"In the Bleak Midwinter" is one of the most beloved of English carols.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... "In the Bleak Midwinter" is one of the most beloved of English carols. It hails the coming of the Christ. But, on National Public Radio, it goes a little differently: It hails the coming of Barack Obama. At least it does on Garrison Keillor's...

Once upon a time, the wire services were pretty good about reporting the facts (and just the facts, ma'am).(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Once upon a time, the wire services were pretty good about reporting the facts (and just the facts, ma'am). Today, their reports read a lot like opinion columns--ones that come from the left. Here's a habitual offender, the Associated Press:...

Our congratulations to Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of Arkansas on the birth of their 18th child the week before Christmas.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Our congratulations to Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar of Arkansas on the birth of their 18th child the week before Christmas. The Duggars are now the proud parents of ten sons and eight daughters, their eldest almost 21. Conservative Baptists, the...

Actress Nicole Kidman has just made a movie about Australia.(The Week)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Actress Nicole Kidman has just made a movie about Australia. On a German TV talk show to promote the movie, Ms. Kidman was handed a didgeridoo--a crude wind instrument favored by Aborigines down under. She obligingly played a few notes. Alas,...

Paul Michael Weyrich is dead at the age of 66. He was one of the conservative movement's great institution builders.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Paul Michael Weyrich is dead at the age of 66. He was one of the conservative movement's great institution builders. A native of Wisconsin, he was inspired by the presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater and soon moved to Washington, where he...

Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., was in some ways an emblematic figure of the American Century.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Avery Cardinal Dulles, S.J., was in some ways an emblematic figure of the American Century. A scion of the WASP elite--he was the son of Eisenhower's secretary of state, the great-grandson of Benjamin Harrison's, and the grand-nephew of Woodrow...

The career of Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Irish writer/politician, broke into two halves.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... The career of Conor Cruise O'Brien, the Irish writer/politician, broke into two halves. In the Fifties and Sixties, as a diplomat and man about the global village, he pushed a neutralist line at the U.N. and worked to no good effect with...

Samuel P. Huntington was not afraid of controversy.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Samuel P. Huntington was not afraid of controversy. Serving on the Harvard faculty for almost six decades, the distinguished political scientist was a member in good standing of the mainstream academic elite. But in the early 1990s, when...

Helen Suzman was probably the leading anti-apartheid politician among South African whites.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... Helen Suzman was probably the leading anti-apartheid politician among South African whites. She had brains, style, and guts. After apartheid fell, she was staunch against South African corruption, and against the horrors next door, in Mugabe's...

The playwright Harold Pinter was widely referred to as "the Shakespeare of our time" and his obituaries certainly treated him as such.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
January 26, 2009... The playwright Harold Pinter was widely referred to as "the Shakespeare of our time" and his obituaries certainly treated him as such. In contrast, many people come out of his plays wondering if there is anything to them beyond the atmospherics...

You'll notice a new design of NR this issue, part of the long evolution of the magazine's look.(The Week)
January 26, 2009... You'll notice a new design of NR this issue, part of the long evolution of the magazine's look. We believe in change too! Just the incremental Burkean variety. Most significantly, we've gone to four-color printing throughout (note especially...

Conflagration.(THE MIDDLE EAST)
January 26, 2009... I SRAEL has been extremely reluctant to respond to the aggression of Hamas, but nobody doubted that the day of reckoning would come. Since taking power in Gaza in January of 2006, Hamas has been preparing for war, training a fighting force...

The shrine of FDR: why the left worships there.(Franklin D. Roosevelt)
January 26, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'A NORMAL person," the liberal economist Brad DeLong recently pronounced, "would not argue that the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression." New York Times financial columnist and Newsweek contributing editor Daniel...

Courts vs. law: why you shouldn't want an activist judiciary.
January 26, 2009... AT the end of 2008, the number of states allowing physician-assisted suicide grew from one to three. There was, however, a difference in the way the two states' laws changed. In Washington, voters passed a referendum to legalize the practice....

And global warming too! Sorry, a gas tax won't solve all our problems.
January 26, 2009... THE last several weeks have seen the emergence of a surprising phenomenon: conservative magazines and websites' promoting the idea of raising gas taxes. The theory is that if fuel becomes more expensive, we will use less of it, thereby reducing...

Promises to keep: and deficits before we sleep.
January 26, 2009... THE most important domesticpolicy crisis this country faces was not discussed by either candidate in the 2008 presidential election. On the Democratic side, that is understandable. Democrats, after all, bear disproportionate responsibility for...

Greg Craig and the terrorist: the new White House counsel and the ugly case no one wants to talk about.
January 26, 2009... By any standard, the story of Pedro Miguel Gonzalez is astonishing. The son of a prominent Panamanian politician, Gonzalez, according to U.S. prosecutors, murdered a United States Army sergeant on a road outside Panama City on June 10, 1992,...

A tyrant's 'liberation': remembering the fall of Batista, and the 50 years of Cuban misery that have followed.(Fulgencio Batista)
January 26, 2009... NEW Y EAR'S DAY marked the 50th anniversary of the Castro regime. The media noted it, Castro's apologists celebrated it, and survivors on three continents remembered the regime's victims and its destruction of a thriving society. Though I was...

The man who saved AEI: Christopher DeMuth--thinker, strategist, administrator.(American Enterprise Institute)(Biography)
January 26, 2009... THE leaders of Washington's two most important conservative think tanks meet for lunch about once a year. They aren't close friends, but Chris DeMuth of the American Enterprise Institute and Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation share a lot of...

Housework.(The Bent Pin)
January 26, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ONE of the advantages of working at home is being able to stay up until all hours and watch the infomercials about the advantages of working at home. I never knew I had it so good. The pitches are delivered by...

Transcript: Larry King Live, January 16, 2010.(The Long View)(Interview)(Broadcast transcript)
January 26, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] LARRY KING: Tomorrow night! The whole hour! The cast of Hogan's Heroes talks about the Holocaust! From Hilversum, Illinois! Hello! CALLER: Hi, Larry. Hi, Mr. Madoff. BERNARD MADOFF: Hi. LARRY KING: Do...

Where the buck stops.(Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush)(Book review)
January 26, 2009... Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, by Peter W. Rodman (Knopf, 368 pp., $27.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SUCCESSFULLY exercising presidential power in...

FDR reconsidered.(New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America)(Book review)
January 26, 2009... New Deal or Raw Deal? How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged American By Burton Folsom Jr. (Threshold, 336pp., $27) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] SOME seem to believe Barack Obama is the second coming of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Newspaper...

Shelf Life.(Benedict XVI: An Intimate Portrait)(Book review)
January 26, 2009... GERMAN journalist Peter Seewald is the author of two very popular book-length interviews with Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger. His new book, Benedict XVI: An Intimate Portrait(Ignatius, 260 pp., $24.95), lives up to its title: It offers an...

Going great guns.(Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle Over the Second Amendment)(Book review)
January 26, 2009... Gun Control on Trial: Inside the Supreme Court Battle over the Second Amendment, by Brian Doherty (Cato, 126 pp., $16.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT'S been half a year since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in District of...

Anglo-Saxon Nature Gnomes.(Poem)
January 26, 2009... ANGLO-SAXON NATURE GNOMES For frost to freeze, for fire to burn trees, For earth to hide seeds, for ice to bridge Water, to walk on bright gleaming mail; For Almighty God alone to unbind Fetters of frost. For Winter to...

Sameness and Slumdog.('Revolutionary Road' and 'Slumdog Millionaire')(Movie review)
January 26, 2009... AS if to deliver the coup de grace to a lousy year for movies, shortly after Christmas the New York Times set out to calculate just how padded today's "blockbuster" box-office totals really are, chiefly by inflated ticket prices. For instance,...

Sugar Islands.(City Desk)(Travel narrative)
January 26, 2009... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHERE I live the seasons have quarterly distinctness, sharp as a shepherd's calendar in a medieval book of hours. But as you slide down the flank of the continent, the atmosphere softens, the offshore colors glow,...