National Review articles from November 2008

National Review archives from November 2008

Cars for communism.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2008... In his review of The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin's Russia ("In the Nightmare," Sept. 29), Ronald Radosh writes that the book offers "a dramatic account of the previously unknown story"--that is, the story of the "thousands of...

An insider reports.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
November 3, 2008... Stan J. Liebowitz says that relaxed underwriting standards led to the housing bubble ("Anatomy of a Train Wreck," Oct. 20), and he is correct. I saw the change from within the industry: I worked for Herb and Marion Sandler's World Savings and...

The way this campaign is going, Obama might be able to go back to Trinity.(The Week)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... The way this campaign is going, Obama might be able to go back to Trinity.

Shed a tear with the bereaved--journos mourning the passing of their friend and hero, the good, old John McCain.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Shed a tear with the bereaved--journos mourning the passing of their friend and hero, the good, old John McCain. McCain, they say, was open, honest, independent-minded. But age and the pursuit of office have turned him into a cranky, impulsive...

Bare-knuckle campaigning is as old as the hills, as are complaints about it, so when Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.) accuses John McCain and Sarah Palin of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division," and evokes George Wallace and the four girls murdered in the Birmingham church bombing, one might shrug and let it pass.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Bare-knuckle campaigning is as old as the hills, as are complaints about it, so when Rep. John Lewis (D., Ga.) accuses John McCain and Sarah Palin of "sowing the seeds of hatred and division," and evokes George Wallace and the four girls...

Imagine if Senator McCain had a chum who had bombed abortion clinics.(The Week)(John McCain)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Imagine if Senator McCain had a chum who had bombed abortion clinics. You might have heard of it. In real life, you learned, only belatedly, of Barack Obama's political and grant-writing partner, and unrepentant terrorist, Bill Ayers. Obama's...

Gov. Sarah Palin showed considerable moxie and talent in overthrowing Alaska's Republican establishment.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Gov. Sarah Palin showed considerable moxie and talent in overthrowing Alaska's Republican establishment. The national press has given her no credit for the accomplishment, and she has been showered with abuse, some of it quite disgusting, since...

Within seconds of John McCain's selection of Palin, her political enemies in Alaska began spreading word about "Troopergate.".(The Week)(Sarah Palin)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Within seconds of John McCain's selection of Palin, her political enemies in Alaska began spreading word about "Troopergate." The alleged scandal is that Palin fired Alaska public-safety commissioner Walt Monegan because he would not fire a...

Though the vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden now seems as old as the Wars of the Roses, it should not be forgotten that the moderator, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, had an interest in the outcome.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Though the vice-presidential debate between Sarah Palin and Joe Biden now seems as old as the Wars of the Roses, it should not be forgotten that the moderator, PBS anchor Gwen Ifill, had an interest in the outcome....

Many media outlets publish "fact check" features during campaigns.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Many media outlets publish "fact check" features during campaigns. Judging from their performance in this presidential election and the last one, we would be better off without them. They graded Governor Palin more harshly than Senator Biden...

The McCain campaign launched a salvo of new economic proposals, the most ambitious of which is a plan to buy distressed mortgages at face value.(The Week)(John McCain)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... The McCain campaign launched a salvo of new economic proposals, the most ambitious of which is a plan to buy distressed mortgages at face value. The problem with this plan is that it cannot improve on current law without rewarding reckless...

ACORN, the community-organizing outfit with which Barack Obama has a long and fruitful history, has put together a team of voter-registration workers drawn in no small part from that most reliable Democratic constituency: felons.(The Week)(Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... ACORN, the community-organizing outfit with which Barack Obama has a long and fruitful history, has put together a team of voter-registration workers drawn in no small part from that most reliable Democratic constituency: felons. Their Nevada...

Under current law, in order to represent a workplace, a union must allow a vote by secret ballot--if the union wins, which it does more than half the time, it can organize the workers.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Under current law, in order to represent a workplace, a union must allow a vote by secret ballot--if the union wins, which it does more than half the time, it can organize the workers. Many on the left don't like this: They would prefer to use...

There's a new Washington game. A cabinet department requests a "study" of some important issue by an outside group with a patina of bipartisan fairness.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... There's a new Washington game. A cabinet department requests a "study" of some important issue by an outside group with a patina of bipartisan fairness. The group writes a report, and the media promptly spin it as an indictment of the Bush...

On what they call "Saviours' Day," Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, spoke to a mass of his followers.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... On what they call "Saviours' Day," Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, spoke to a mass of his followers. And he spoke about Barack Obama. He said, "You are the instruments that God is going to use to bring about universal change, and...

Sarah Palin, the world's most famous hockey mom, dropped the ceremonial first puck before the Philadelphia Flyers' home opener.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sarah Palin, the world's most famous hockey mom, dropped the ceremonial first puck before the Philadelphia Flyers' home opener. Some critics suggested that the team should instead have invited Joe Biden, a native...

When California began registering same-sex marriages earlier this year, the state had to change its license forms.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... When California began registering same-sex marriages earlier this year, the state had to change its license forms. Instead of "bride" and "groom," the new blanks read "Partner A" and "Partner B." No one liked that solution much; it was...

In its June Boumediene ruling, the Supreme Court dreamed up a constitutional right for alien enemy combatants to challenge their detention in court.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... In its June Boumediene ruling, the Supreme Court dreamed up a constitutional right for alien enemy combatants to challenge their detention in court. Now the disastrous consequences of that ruling are clear: A judge has ordered that 17 jihadists...

The Bush administration removed North Korea from its list of terror sponsors.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... The Bush administration removed North Korea from its list of terror sponsors. In exchange, North Korea agreed not to resume plutonium reprocessing at a facility in the city of Yongbyon--something it had threatened to do--and to allow the return...

Christians are under attack in the Indian states of Orissa and Karnataka, where Hindu mobs have driven them from their homes and carried out forced conversions.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Christians are under attack in the Indian states of Orissa and Karnataka, where Hindu mobs have driven them from their homes and carried out forced conversions. Christians also are under attack in Iraq, where Islamist bombers have targeted...

Economic basket cases abound at the moment, but none quite so fraught as Iceland.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Economic basket cases abound at the moment, but none quite so fraught as Iceland. Little country, great trouble. Its financial system has collapsed because its foreign debt is ten or even twelve times the size of the...

A small movement of people wanted Hu Jia to win the Nobel Peace Prize.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... A small movement of people wanted Hu Jia to win the Nobel Peace Prize. He is a Chinese democracy activist, now in prison. That describes a great many people. Hu was arrested in advance of the Olympics, on charges of "inciting subversion of...

Venezuela's oil production has fallen by a quarter since Hugo Chavez took over, and the country isn't even getting market price for half of its product, which is diverted and sold at a discount to Cuba and other Chavez allies under the Petrocaribe arrangement.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Venezuela's oil production has fallen by a quarter since Hugo Chavez took over, and the country isn't even getting market price for half of its product, which is diverted and sold at a discount to Cuba and other Chavez allies under the...

Reinier Alcantara tried very, very hard to make Cuba's soccer roster, because World Cup qualifying was being played in Washington, D.C.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Reinier Alcantara tried very, very hard to make Cuba's soccer roster, because World Cup qualifying was being played in Washington, D.C. He made it. And he had a plan to defect. It wasn't easy, but he found a crease, and he ran like hell. He ran...

Linus Pauling was a great scientist and was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Linus Pauling was a great scientist and was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry. He was also a quack who believed that massive doses of Vitamin C would cure cancer. Professor Pauling was a conscientious peace activist and was awarded the Nobel...

Dept. of unfortunate controversies.(The Week)
November 3, 2008... DEPT. OF UNFORTUNATE CONTROVERSIES: Chris Buckley, with some of his father's genius for public controversy, wrote an endorsement of Barack Obama for Tina Brown's new website, The Daily Beast. Not wanting to be a thorn in the side of NR's...

Vladimir Putin's mid-life crisis grows ever more bizarre.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Vladimir Putin's mid-life crisis grows ever more bizarre. First he reportedly left his wife for a 24-year-old rhythmic gymnast; then he found a new job, sort of; then he invaded Georgia; then he shot a runaway tiger (and was later given a tiger...

O. J. Simpson was convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping, for breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room with five cronies and straight-arming two dealers of sports memorabilia.(The Week)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] O.J. Simpson was convicted of armed robbery and kidnapping, for breaking into a Las Vegas hotel room with five cronies and straight-arming two dealers of sports memorabilia. Simpson fared better in 1995 when he was...

Jorg Haider was one of the most disturbing figures in Europe.(The Week)(Brief biography)(Brief article)
November 3, 2008... Jorg Haider was one of the most disturbing figures in Europe. An Austrian born in 1950, he was the child of convinced Nazis. After the war, these parents were treated as social pariahs, which Haider found unfair. A deep sense of resentment...

Emergency planning.(THE ECONOMY)(Essay)
November 3, 2008... THE Paulson plan went from unpalatable to worse. The Treasury Department will now inject equity directly into major banks in exchange for preferred shares, making the institutions an offer they literally cannot refuse. Of the $700 billion in...

Closing arguments.(CAMPAIGN 2008)(Essay)
November 3, 2008... THE country wants a change. It is fed up with both parties, but especially Republicans after eight years of Bush. The financial crisis has heightened that mood. John McCain has not appeared to be the steady, unflappable, reformist leader the...

Health scare.(CAMPAIGN 2008 II)
November 3, 2008... IN a 2005 survey of health economists, 91 percent agreed that company health benefits come out of wages. No other issue generated as much consensus. The idea is that an employer hires, and sets his compensation policies, based on what employees...

The courts vs. marriage.(THE LAW)
November 3, 2008... IN 2005, Connecticut enacted "civil unions," designed to be marriage in everything but name for same-sex couples. We are not sure what good purpose is served by such laws. The reason governments recognize marriage in the first place is to...

Era error: talk of liberalism's triumph is overblown.(2008)(Essay)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DURING this election season, liberals have often drawn an analogy to the 1980 election. They drew it at first to explain Barack Obama's poll numbers, which were weaker than one might have expected given the...

Barack's grenade-lobber: meet political strategist David Axelrod.(2008 II)(Barack Obama)
November 3, 2008... IMAGINE the following scenario: A handsome, charismatic minority candidate defeats a heavily favored Democratic insider for the presidential nomination in an acrimonious race that drags out all the way to the convention. He then finds himself...

Pushing 60: democrats could acquire a filibuster-proof majority.(2008 III)
November 3, 2008... AFTER the election of 2004, Republicans controlled 55 seats in the Senate. It is anyone's guess whether after this election they will have even 41 seats--the minimum number to prevent cloture, which requires 60 votes. If they cannot filibuster,...

Obama's core: the West, for him, is not the best.(2008 IV)(Barack Obama)
November 3, 2008... LEON TROTSKY's The Russian Revolution does not occupy a high place in the literature of conservatism. But the old Bolshevik could on occasion be perceptive. Analyzing the improbable rise of Rasputin, he noted how frequently shamanism flourishes...

The real Ayers issue: it's about revolution, not terrorism.(2008 V)(Ayers, Bill)
November 3, 2008... 'LA educacion es revolucion!" Bill Ayers, the former Weatherman terrorist who is Barack Obama's friend and "education reform" collaborator, was opening the World Education Forum in Venezuela. It was just two years ago, November 2006. As a...

Ride of the regulators: the question is not whether, but how.(WALL STREET CRISIS)
November 3, 2008... FIRST fire, then brimstone, then collateralized debt obligations: Both Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Iran's Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati (a hardliner's hardliner) are arguing that the 2008 crash is down to the Big Fellow upstairs. Ortega reported...

Against the wind: McCain keeps up the fight, in the worst conditions imaginable.(John McCain)(Cover story)
November 3, 2008... JOHN MCCAIN sewed up the Republican nomination last February, but his cash-strapped campaign didn't conduct its first serious poll until April. At that time, McCain still enjoyed the luxury of planning for the general election while Barack...

Worse than you think: what went wrong at Fannie and Freddie--and what still might.(WALL STREET CRISIS II)(Essay)
November 3, 2008... THE government's takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the middle of a presidential race--coupled with the fact that their activities contributed significantly to the current financial crisis--has brought these "government-sponsored...

Walls, brakes, and risk: we can learn from the market turmoil, or we can make things worse.(WALL STREET CRISIS III)(Essay)
November 3, 2008... THE U.S. stock market boomed throughout the mid-1980s. One contributing factor was a major technical innovation of that time called "portfolio insurance." This was basically a trading technique by which an investment bank would buy a basket of...

'A fragile state': impressions from Iraq.(AT WAR)
November 3, 2008... Baghdad YOU hear certain things over and over, as you spend some time in Iraq. You hear them from Iraqis, Americans, and others. What you hear is: We've made great progress in 2008. Al-Qaeda, the militias, and the rest of those lovelies...

Ask Michelle Obama[TM]: our new first lady responds to your questions.(the long view)
November 3, 2008... DEAR MICHELLE: First off, congrats to you both for the big win. Although I didn't vote for you, I'm happy for you and your family and wish you the best. Also, I'm glad the whole election thing is over! LOL! My question is this: With...

Help!!!!(Cartoon)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Sure, but think what a crook I'd be without hypocrisy." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT KINDA SLOWED HIM DOWN. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE MEDIA SEEM TO THINK OBAMA'S SOME KIND OF MIRACLE WORKER! ...

Real change, real hope.(books, arts & manners)(Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq)(Book review)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Baghdad at Sunrise: A Brigade Commander's War in Iraq, by Peter R. Mansoor (Yale, 416 pp., $28) ON one level, this is a wartime diary written by a literate brigade commander explaining how to lead 3,500 soldiers...

Confirm thy soul.(SHELF LIFE)(Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now )(Book review)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN her new book, Patriotic Grace: What It Is and Why We Need It Now (Collins, 192 pp., $19.95), veteran conservative author and Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan diagnoses the malady of America's political culture in...

Henry Howard.(SHELF LIFE)(Poem)
November 3, 2008... HENRY HOWARD He raised hell and broke windows, and even worse-The worst sort of proud aristocrat. If so, so what? He wrote the first blank verse And some of our first sonnets. And if that Were not enough to put us in...

The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.(SHELF LIFE)(Book review)
November 3, 2008... Try to imagine the Summa contra Gentiles as written by Keith Olbermann, and you will have some idea of the tone and style of The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism (St. Augustine's Press, 299 pp., $27). The book's author, Edward...

Imagining the Chairman.(ART)
November 3, 2008... THE sculpture (by Sui Jianguo) squats, a weird piece of a whole that was never made, on a median bisecting one of the more affluent slices of Manhattan's Park Avenue. It's of a distinctive, very distinctive, jacket, nothing more, but it's oddly...

Burning man, at both ends.(ESSAY)(Jimi Fritz's 'Rave Culture: An Insider's Overview')(Critical essay)
November 3, 2008... The Middle of Nowhere, Nev. 'HELLO, how are you?" It's 4:30 A.M. and three shadows stand at the edge of our camp. The one in the middle is talking. "We're looking for Ecstasy and enough marijuana to roll a joint. Can you help? In exchange I'll...

Not so great, Scott.(FILM)(Ridley Scott's Body of Lies)(Movie review)
November 3, 2008... NEVER let it be said that Hollywood doesn't respond to the free market. For several years after 9/11, and especially after the invasion of Iraq, the movie business busied itself making exactly the sort of films you'd expect from an industry...

De haut en bas.(THE STRAGGLER)(middle class)
November 3, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] 'THROUGHOUT recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low.... The aim of the High is to remain where they are....

When WFB wasn't right.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2008... I found the excerpt from William F. Buckley's book, in which he recounted his disagreement with Ronald Reagan over the Panama Canal (Buckley wanted to turn the Canal over to Panama; Reagan didn't), most interesting ("'United in the Faith,...

We'll take option F.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2008... Kudos to you for putting Byron York's "Sarah Palin, Governor" (October 20) on the web, and pointing out that CNN attributed to York the attitude toward Palin he had accused the press of harboring. I have to say, looking at most of the media...

Against Krugmania.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
November 17, 2008... In "The Week" (November 3), you congratulate Paul Krugman on his Nobel Prize, and state that while his New York Times column is "loopy," his academic work on trade has been "groundbreaking." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The problem with...

The week.
November 17, 2008... * Not Scott McClellan! * Obamacon is the flavor of the month: Republicans who back Barack. Colin Powell, Ken Adelman, and Charles Fried (the last two director of arms control and solicitor general under Ronald Reagan, respectively) are the...

Re: Distribution.
November 17, 2008... SENATOR OBAMA says, "For decades, America has been victim to an anti-tax sentiment that has led to tax cuts that favor wealth, not work." The implication seems to be that the U.S. has pursued a tax policy that is radically different from that...

The choice.(2008)
November 17, 2008... THIS election does not present Americans with a straight-up choice between conservatism and liberalism. This is not so much because John McCain is a moderate, although he is, as because liberals are likely to have effective majorities in both...

Less than stimulating.(THE ECONOMY)
November 17, 2008... NOW that the government has spent billions bailing out Wall Street, political calculus--at least Nancy Pelosi's--demands that equal attention be paid to "Main Street." Thus Democrats in Congress have announced that they are putting together a...

Endless intervention? Giving banks money was distasteful but necessary; telling them how to spend it is tempting but wrong.(WALL STREET CRISIS)
November 17, 2008... IT'S a measure of the predicament in which we find ourselves that merely keeping the banking system going now seems like something of a triumph. It's even more of a measure that, despite the spending of once-unimaginable amounts of money (or...

Giving liberally: a husband and wife get into left-wing giving, in a big way.(PHILANTHROPY)(Herbert and Marion Sandler)
November 17, 2008... WHEN Wachovia bought Golden West Financial two years ago, the man who was the big bank's CEO at the time couldn't contain his enthusiasm. Kennedy Thompson hailed the $25 billion acquisition as a "grand slam home run" for Wachovia. Today the...

The specter called 'John Maynard': when will democrats learn that shoveling money around does not stimulate growth?(PUBLIC POLICY)(Essay)
November 17, 2008... IN a 1965 article for Time magazine on the pervasive influence of British economist John Maynard Keynes, Milton Friedman was quoted as saying, "We are all Keynesians now." This came as a shock--the equivalent of Paul Krugman coming out as a...

HAVA Megillah: when it comes to voting, medium tech can be better than high.(PUBLIC POLICY)(Help America Vote Act )
November 17, 2008... AFTER the Florida election of 2000, which exposed many flaws in the way Americans cast and count votes, everybody in Washington agreed that something had to be done. Situations like that are always dangerous. The result was the Help America...

Toll talk: congestion pricing is the cure for our overcrowded highways.(PUBLIC POLICY III)
November 17, 2008... TEN years ago, Florida's Lee County had a congestion problem. Cape Coral served as a bedroom community for the nearby business hub, Fort Myers, and to get between the two, workers had to cross the Caloosahatchee River. The Cape Coral and...

'A perpetual hissing': notes on an unfavorite practice.(CULTURE WATCH)
November 17, 2008... A FEW nights ago, I had an interesting hissing experience. I was in a movie theater, and a preview for W. came on--this is the film about President Bush by Oliver Stone, the leftist director. The hissing was very strange: sort of tentative,...

Death by rescue: how botched bailouts doomed companies that didn't need to fail.(Cover story)
November 17, 2008... THE road to hell is paved with bad interventions. This year's emergency sallies into the banking system by the Fed, the Treasury, the FDIC, and the SEC have backfired. They were intended to ameliorate a credit crisis and to keep it from...

Reform school: Sarah Palin and the future of the GOP.(THE RIGHT)(Republican Party)(Essay)
November 17, 2008... SARAH PALIN is by most accounts a capable woman, but it was hardly fair to ask her not only to raise five children, govern a state, and run for vice president but also to carry all the symbolic freight of America's culture wars. Yet it has been...

'The world is my constituency': are liberals rejecting the liberal-internationalist tradition?(THE LEFT)(Essay)
November 17, 2008... 'WE are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy," declared Barack Obama in accepting the Democratic nomination. Is that still true? Peter Beinart analyzed the liberal-internationalist tradition in the summer issue of World Affairs,...

Help!!!!(Cartoon)
November 17, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "Tell me more about your programmer." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "'Intelligent design'?--Why, those patronizing little twerps!" [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WE WANT YOU TO REGISTER TO VOTE 75 TIMES BECAUSE...

Special nightmare edition of ... the corner Wednesday, November 5, 2008.(the long view)
November 17, 2008... It's a Wonderful Day [Rich Lowry] Last night, I went to bed feeling a bit dejected. And yet this morning, upon waking, a sense of calm and peace has come over me. I feel reborn in a world guided and governed by a Wonderful Spirit. Truly, Master...

A broad at home.(the bent pin)(Essay)
November 17, 2008... 'SHINE, perishing republic," as Robinson Jeffers said when I voted him the poet I would most like to have a beer with. As I write this in the waning days before the election, Campaign '08 has been buffed up to reveal a high gloss of...

Days of iron.(There Is No Alternative: Why Margaret Thatcher Matters )(Book review)
November 17, 2008... 'There Is No Alternative": Why Margaret Thatcher Matters, by Claire Berlinski (Basic, 386 pp., $27.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] EVEN now as a frail old lady, Margaret Hilda Thatcher, the Rt. Hon. the Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven,...

A model war correspondent.(The Forever War)(Book review)
November 17, 2008... The Forever War, by Dexter Filkins (Knopf, 384 pp., $25) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NEW YORK TIMES correspondent Dexter Filkins has written a gripping book, rich in vivid vignettes of courage, chaos, service, depravity, and death. The...

Lincoln as war leader ...(Tried by War: Abraham Linclon as Commander-in-Chief)(Book review)
November 17, 2008... Tried By War: Abraham Linclon as Commander-in-Chief, by James M. McPherson (Penguin, 384 pp., $35) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN conjunction with the bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth on February 12, 2009, some 50 new books about him...

... And as American thinker.(Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point)(Book review)
November 17, 2008... Lincoln at Peoria: The Turning Point, by Lewis E. Lehrman (Stackpole, 412 pp., $29.95) THE question of second acts in political leadership is one of the enduring riddles of history. Most would-be leaders simply fade into...

Poem.(Poem)
November 17, 2008... So, you imagined I would be the kind it would be possible you could forget, that I would throw myself, out of my mind, beneath the hooves of a bay thoroughbred; or beg some local sorceress for spoken incantations over...

The emperor of common sense.(Samuel Johnson: The Struggle)(Samuel Johnson: A Biography)(Book review)
November 17, 2008... Samuel Johnson: The Struggle, by Jeffrey Meyers (Basic, 400 pp., $35) Samuel Johnson: A Biography, by Peter Martin (Harvard, 608 pp., $35) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ENGLISH writer, opera producer, and all-round high-culture...

Bushed.(FILM)(W.)(Movie review)
November 17, 2008... WHO would have thought that the Bush era, of all seasons, would take the edge off Oliver Stone? The post-9/11 period has made radicals out of many people far more moderate than Stone, and madmen out of many people far more levelheaded. Yet the...

Baracktopussy.(happy warrior)(Barack Obama)
November 17, 2008... BY the time many of you read this, the winner of the presidential election will be known--assuming, that is, that the result is sufficiently non-close that it's beyond the margin of lawyer. So, before we close the book on this election season,...