National Review articles from November 2006

National Review archives from November 2006

Grits, maybe, but ...( )(Letter to the editor)
November 6, 2006... Like many who identify themselves as proud southerners, Dave Shiflett ("A Wider View," Sept. 21) is guilty of claiming southern provenance for that which originated elsewhere. Shiflett's most egregious misappropriation is his inclusion of...

From Sinai thundereth what?( )(Letter to the editor)
November 6, 2006... Cathy Seipp's review of the book on Charlton Heston (Oct. 23) does a fine job demonstrating the difficulty of calling Moses a neocon. Yet her suggestion that Heston was more aligned with libertarian thought suffers from a problem. She writes,...

The week.(Hillary Clinton, report on Iraq war, Mark Warner )
November 6, 2006... * Lest you doubt that Hillary is running in '08, she's now wearing a cross. What's she going to do next, bake cookies? * Washington is alive with speculation about what the James Baker/Lee Hamilton Iraq Study Group will recommend after the...

Where Clinton beats W.(Bill Clinton, George W. Bush )
November 6, 2006... WHILE private businesses rise and fall depending on the quality of their products, government workers can slog away in their cubicles without ever confronting competitive pressure. This makes a government job one of the most secure positions in...

John Bolton performs.(Poem)
November 6, 2006... JOHN BOLTON PERFORMS At the U.N., where the feckless Scandalize his name, Bolton, whose demeanor maddens, Takes unnerving aim With a cool insouciance at China, Russia, and Sissified Old World weak sisters Sitting on a hand....

Rogue realities.(NORTH KOREA)
November 6, 2006... WITH its nuclear test, North Korea has again flaunted an action that many nations would deny and engage in only on the sly. This is because rogue behavior is Pyongyang's most lucrative business endeavor. It thinks it can count on South Korean...

Talent v. McCaskill: a showdown in the show-me state.(ELECTION'06)(Jim Talent, Claire McCaskill)
November 6, 2006... SEN. JIM TALENT doesn't blame President Bush for his political travails. It's true that the Missouri Republican is in a tight race: An early-October poll put him three points behind his Democratic challenger, state auditor Claire McCaskill....

Gov. Democrat: the gubernatorial races are looking bad for the repubs.(ELECTION '06 II)
November 6, 2006... REPUBLICANS are playing defense on both the federal and the state levels this election season. Along with the Senate and House, they also hold a majority of governorships. While the fate of the GOP's congressional majorities may be in doubt,...

Oh, olby! Keith Olbermann goes bananas on MSNBC.(THE MEDIA)(MSNBC Cable Network)
November 6, 2006... SHORTLY before Countdown with Keith Olbermann debuted in the spring of 2003, its host told the Washington Post, "Our charge for the immediate future is to stay out of the way of the news.... News is the news. We will not be screwing around with...

A damned statistic: how a Johns Hopkins team got to 654,965.(AT WAR)(Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health)
November 6, 2006... THE respected statisticians at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health have once again proved the truth of the old aphorism "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics." In their second study estimating the death rate in Iraq,...

As we decline ... Examining 'macaca,' spinach, and other crises du jour.(Pope Benedict XVI )
November 6, 2006... ANCIENT Romans did not go around saying "Boy, this decline and fall is really the pits," but then they didn't have cable. The clearinghouse of 24-7 Breaking Alienation had a spectacular late-summer season this year. The school lockdown...

The fate of Rick: a great senator fights for his political life.(Rick Santorum )
November 6, 2006... DURING a televised debate in Pittsburgh on Oct. 12, Republican senator Rick Santorum and his Democratic challenger Bob Casey Jr. stood so close together that it almost looked like they were holding a joint press conference. Yet they quarreled...

Ford, driven: Harold Ford Jr. goes against a Corker of a candidate in Tennessee.(ELECTION '06 III)(Bob Corker)
November 6, 2006... Chattanooga, Tenn. 'HE'S a hugger," says a fan of Harold Ford Jr. while watching the Senate candidate work the room at the Hamilton County Democratic party's annual Estes Kefauver dinner on October 12. It's true; virtually everyone who...

Covering Iraq: the modern way of war correspondence.(AT WAR II)
November 6, 2006... Ramadi, Iraq WOULD you trust a Hurricane Katrina report datelined "direct from Detroit"? Or coverage of the World Trade Center attack from Chicago? Why then should we believe a Time magazine investigation of the Haditha killings that was...

It's Pelosi!(HELP!)(Poem)
November 6, 2006... IT'S PELOSI! When boys are bad and mothers try To give the kids a scare, small fry Are frightened more by Nancy than The bogeyman; so Mother, tan A backside, sure--don't spare the rod-- But to instill the fear of God In Junior...

Memos from Hollywood.(the long view)(African Baby Acquisitions Strategy Team )
November 6, 2006... TO: Our clients in the entertainment industry FROM: Kingsley & Winokur Public Relations RE: African Baby Adoption FAQ Dear Clients: At the request of many of our clients, we are now offering an exclusive and dedicated African...

No time to go wobbly.(books, arts & manners)(America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, by Mark Steyn)(Book review)
November 6, 2006... America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, by Mark Steyn (Regnery, 256 pp., $27.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'LIVE free or die; death is not the worst of evils." That 1809 message, sent by General John Stark to his Revolutionary...

The souls of American folk.(books, arts & manners)(Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do about It)(Book review)
November 6, 2006... Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It, by Juan Williams (Crown, 256 pp., $25) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I DOUBT Juan Williams likes the...

Talking smack.(Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy)(Book review)
November 6, 2006... Romancing Opiates: Pharmacological Lies and the Addiction Bureaucracy, by Theodore Dalrymple (Encounter, 165 pp., $21.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ANEW ad campaign from the Partnership for a Drug-Free America insists that "drug addiction...

Getting medieval.(Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe)(Book review)
November 6, 2006... Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe, by Thomas Cahill (Nan A. Talese, 368 pp., $32.50) LET me say right off that I had nothing against Thomas Cahill before reading...

The Dragon.(Poem)
November 6, 2006... THE DRAGON Because I could not hide my hatred Of tattoos, the profanity of scribbling On the skin nature had made perfect, My eighteen-year-old son, At the height of his rage against me, Got a fire-breathing dragon sewn On his...

Crowd-pleaser.(The Departed)(Movie review)
November 6, 2006... MARTIN SCORSESE has spent the 15 years since his career high, Goodfellas, making movies that consistently fascinate and just as consistently miss the mark. There are pleasures to be found in nearly every one of his recent films, but they've...

Numbering the nation.(THE STRAGGLER)(American population)
November 6, 2006... When Mr. Johnson felt his fancy, or fancied he felt it, disordered, his constant recurrence was to the study of arithmetic, and one day that he was totally confined to his chamber, and I inquired what he had been doing to divert...

Making way for jihad.(Knowing the Enemy: Jihadist Ideology and the War on Terror)(Book review)
November 6, 2006... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 29 THE categorical opponents of the detainee bill should spend an unhappy hour reading the new book by Mary Habeck. She is a scholar at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins whose book, Knowing...

Democrats without a home.(on the right)
November 6, 2006... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 6 DEMOCRATS concerned about the 2008 elections will be looking closely at the midterm elections. Hard thought upon these elections tells us interesting things, salient among them that there is no policy extant, among...

Diplomacy hits Kim.(on the right)(Kim Jong-Il)
November 6, 2006... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 13 KIM JONG IL never lets us down. When President Bush announced that he would seek further sanctions against North Korea, Kim replied that he would interpret any such move as an act of belligerency warranting a...

Picking a nit.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
November 20, 2006... In "Births 'n' Dearths" (Oct. 23), Mark Steyn claims that "a society ages when its birthrate falls and it finds itself with fewer children and more grandparents." But this is a strange way to put it. If there are fewer children being born, this...

Life in a loudspeaker.( )(Letter to the editor)
November 20, 2006... In "The War Upon Us" (Sept. 25), Richard Brookhiser maintains that the U.S. government must do all it can to "introduce the vexing institution of journalism into the Middle East," on the grounds that it will allay Islamic hatred of the West....

A Mister-Y.(Letter to the editor)
November 20, 2006... Stephen Spruiell has asserted that Keith Olbermann's 'insistence on calling the president 'Mr. Bush' instead of 'President Bush'is his way of saying that Bush holds office illegitimately" ('Oh, Olby!" Nov. 6). Given that Spruiell purports to...

The week.(George W. Bush on Iraq war, Mickey Kaus, Barack Obama )
November 20, 2006... * If the first Bush was "born with a silver foot in his mouth," did Senator Kerry acquire one when he married Teresa? * The White House has now completed a repudiation of its "stay the course" rhetoric--a repudiation that began, fitfully,...

Here come the judges.(Poem)
November 20, 2006... New Jersey's, actually, who Decreed same sexers must Receive the right to toss bouquets- And catch them, too. The dust Hangs heavy over Trenton, though If "marriage," say, were ditched From documents, Rosie, maybe, Could get herself...

A (tall) pretzel of asininity.(John Kerry)
November 20, 2006... ENTRENCHED somewhere in Boston's biotech corridor there must be a newfangled Wonka Works dedicated to growing enormous liberal doofuses in a petri dish, or may be a strawberry patch. And every now and then the Oompa-Loompas roll out something...

And now New Jersey.(same-sex marriage)
November 20, 2006... EARLIER this year, defenders of marriage as we have known it enjoyed a string of victories in the courts. Several state and federal courts turned back challenges to states' marriage laws, leaving it to voters and state legislators to decide...

Behold, a fence.(IMMIGRATION)(Secure Fence Act of 2006)
November 20, 2006... 'WE all know that this bill is going nowhere. We are wasting our time," declared minority whip Steny Hoyer when he joined the 131 House Democrats who voted against the Secure Fence Act in early September. Hoyer let liberal wishful thinking...

Obama madness: is the junior Illinois senator the Democrats' savior?(POLITICS)(Barack Obama )
November 20, 2006... IN late October, during the home stretch of the most intensely contested midterm election in years, many Democrats seemed to drop everything, forget about 2006, and fall into a swoon over somebody who is not, at the moment, running for...

Bush's Vietnam syndrome: the president draws a wrong lesson.(AT WAR)(George W. Bush)
November 20, 2006... PRESIDENT BUSH is infected with a Vietnam syndrome. He just doesn't know it. "I guess if you're 60 years old, you tend to be a product of the Vietnam era," Bush told me and other journalists in the Oval Office recently, when asked if we...

A bicentennial, blown? The question of Lincoln and 2009.(THE NATION)(Abraham Lincoln)
November 20, 2006... NEARLY a hundred years ago, a group of distinguished Americans gathered to honor the centennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth. Their ideas and determination eventually led to the construction of the Lincoln Memorial--one of the nation's most...

Veiled threat: why it may be important to see a woman's face.(CULTURE WATCH)
November 20, 2006... NOT long ago in the hospital in which I once worked, a young male nurse was asked by the administration to remove the ironmongery with which he had recently adorned his face and ears. He was outraged by this assault on his inalienable right to...

Bloody nonsense: when diamonds are a propagandist's best friend.(CULTURE WATCH II)(conflict diamonds, Sierra Leone)
November 20, 2006... IN the halcyon, prelapsarian, pre-9/11 closing days of the last century, the attention of the sentient public was temporarily directed to a pair of particularly gruesome and loosely connected civil wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone in West...

The Thatcherites: or, as they would have said, the IEA-ites.(BRITAIN)(Institute of Economic Affairs)
November 20, 2006... IN the early 1960s the Institute of Economic Affairs in London invited those Tory MPs favorable to the free market to a discussion on promoting their ideas in politics. It was a distressingly small gathering. For this was the heyday of the...

Conservatives on the couch: a diagnosis.(Republican Party)
November 20, 2006... CONSERVATISM is in crisis. Everyone is saying so, and everyone is right. But the nature of the crisis, its causes and possible solutions, is badly misunderstood. The fact that Republicans are facing a tough election is not a crisis. Even...

No substitute for victory: as goes the Iraq War, so go many things.(AT WAR II)
November 20, 2006... THROUGHOUT history, countries at war have puzzled and even agonized over how to allocate their scarce military resources. This concern has been particularly acute whenever a nation has confronted multiple enemies spread over a wide geographic...

Some Surprise.(HELP)(Poem)
November 20, 2006... SOME SURPRISE Harold Ickes, in the shade Like Frankenstein's gimping aide, Plotted an October ploy; But (1), moneybags were coy, And (2), so unstrung, the pot Got, like, peanuts from that lot. Add a black vote that's depressed...

From the congressional inbox.(the long view)
November 20, 2006... To: MadamSpeaker@HouseofReps.gov From: AhmadMan@iranonline.ir Subject: Congrats!!!! Dear Madam Speaker: Hey!!! Congrats on the midterm thang!! Great to know that there's a sane voice back in the U.S., LOL!! Would love to get...

Sulky Sullivan.(The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back)(Book review)
November 20, 2006... The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back, by Andrew Sullivan (HarperCollins, 304 pp., $25.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I'M asked few questions more than "What happened to Andrew Sullivan?" Why did one of the...

Before quag met mire.(books, arts & manners)(Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965)(Book review)
November 20, 2006... Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965, by Mark Moyar (Cambridge, 542 pp., $32) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] COMPARING the Iraq War to Vietnam is a staple of Bush-administration critics. The purpose of the analogy is to arouse a sense...

The Wise Man.(Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War)(Book review)
November 20, 2006... Dean Acheson: A Life in the Cold War, by Robert L. Beisner (Oxford, 832 pp., $35) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN I was a student at Groton in the 1980s, after the Old Boys' network had been swamped by the meritocracy, there was a...

Working classical.(MUSIC)(Paul McCartney, Danny Elfman, John Adams )
November 20, 2006... WE will glance at three composers, starting with one of the most successful of our time--indeed, of all time: Paul McCartney. Belonged to a British band, some years back. Composed such hits as "Penny Lane" and "Yesterday." For about 15 years,...

What wicked thing.(Poem)
November 20, 2006... WHAT WICKED THING What wicked thing could I have ever done-- what error, what false motive, what mistake in stupid enthusiasm or in fun with malice aforethought, that my heart must break? The dogs in every neighbor's yard, despite...

Saint Clint.(FILM)(Clint Eastwood's movies)(Flags of Our Fathers)(Movie review)
November 20, 2006... BY now almost everyone knows the story. Once upon a time Clint Eastwood made brutal, violent, and implicitly right-wing movies like Dirty Harry. Now he makes brutal, violent, complicated movies like Unforgiven and Mystic River and Million...

Straight shooting.(COUNTRY LIFE)(hunting)
November 20, 2006... IT is a convention of popular art that animals welcome their own demise. The merry grilling pig decorates many a rib shack. Now is the time of year in my valley when bars, diners, and motels sprout orange banners, decorated with buck heads, and...

Simple moral arithmetic.(on the right)
November 20, 2006... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 17 SOME years ago, at the outset of the age of e-mail, I was lunching with three or four media moguls, and the discussion turned to security. Specifically, how to guard A from B's gaining access to A's correspondence. The...

Help for the distressed.(on the right)(Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner)
November 20, 2006... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 20 AT mighty events, little happenings can take on major life, as I was reminded on Thursday evening when I found my pants falling off. I was talking to a stranger dressed in white tie and tails, the uniform for dais...

Pelosi ahead.(on the right)
November 20, 2006... NEW YORK, OCTOBER 24 EVERYBODY is predicting big gains for the Democrats in November. If they succeed in taking the House of Representatives, that means that Nancy Pelosi is in our future. There is a lot about her that is distinctive,...