National Review articles from October 2006

National Review archives from October 2006

On Wal-Mart-ophobia.( )(Letter to the editor)
October 9, 2006... Byron York's article in the last issue ("Hatin' That Store") underscores a strange phenomenon. While I agree that Wal-Mart has been a good thing for my small town in conservative rural Oklahoma, the common perception in the town is different....

Shine on ...?( )(Letter to the editor)
October 9, 2006... In a recent article ("The Carolina Kid," August 7), you had a graphic with an apparent historical error. It was a cartoon that had John McCain hugging a palmetto with a crescent moon in the sky, sort of like the state flag of South Carolina....

Union jackery.( )(Letter to the editor)
October 9, 2006... I very much enjoy your magazine from this side of the Atlantic. Yet one change is needed to make it perfect. When talking about Europeans, would you mind using the term "Continentals," "continental Europeans," or even "Euros"? This would...

A frightened repub.( )(Letter to the editor)
October 9, 2006... When I saw your Nancy Pelosi cover (Sept. 25) I thought you had come out early with your Halloween issue. Be more considerate. I'm already frightened enough. Jerry Tarver Richmond, Va. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NATIONAL REVIEW...

The week.(Afghanistan, Coalition forces' moral highground, Jay Rockefeller, journalists see Republican loss in Congressional elections as blessing in disguise)
October 9, 2006... * Could someone just provide a list of things that don't provoke Muslim rage? * The United States did not bomb 190 Taliban gathered in an Afghan cemetery because "coalition forces," as the Army put it, "hold themselves to a higher moral...

Free to choose (as someone once said).(income distribution)
October 9, 2006... EVERY time I hear someone argue that the distribution of income is unjust and must be remedied by high taxes on the rich, I think back to a time when I was recruiting economists for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. About ten...

Real estate section.(Poem)
October 9, 2006... The U.N., where, once, Eleanor Held court as our ambassador, Is Third World-weighted and should be Recycled as a property-- This here's a hot tip--that returns More on the buck. Knowing concerns Already eye what could become A...

Measuring words.(ISLAM)(Pope Benedict XVI blundered)
October 9, 2006... YES, the pope blundered. In discussing the relationship between reason, violence, and Islam, Benedict XVI referred to a Byzantine emperor's comments on the subjects from around 1391. The pope noted that the emperor had raised the question of...

Dealing with the enemy.(George W. Bush on military commissions)
October 9, 2006... ABLOC of Republican senators, led by John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, is determined to disable the intelligence-collecting capabilities of the United States while it is at war with a deadly foe against whom intelligence is the best...

The home front.(national security politicised)
October 9, 2006... THE Democrats, and not a few allied pundits, claim that the Republicans are preparing to campaign based on fear. They say that as though it were a bad thing. It isn't. Fear is nature's way of spurring us to take action to prevent harm. It is...

More troops.(George W. Bush to send additional troops to Iraq)
October 9, 2006... THE question of whether we have enough troops in Iraq has been acrimoniously debated throughout the war. We have never considered more troops a cure-all--how you use troops is just as important as their sheer Numbers--but the events of recent...

The chairman dissents: and the chairman--Pat Roberts of the Senate Intelligence Committee--is right.
October 9, 2006... A SENATE committee undertakes an in-depth study of a critical national issue. After years of investigation and debate, it releases a report, offering a number of conclusions. At the end of the report, the committee's chairman makes a statement...

Plame hall of shame: led, natch, by the New York Times.
October 9, 2006... THE Valerie Plame affair should not be allowed to recede into memory without an "accountability moment" for the journalists and commentators who bought former ambassador Joseph Wilson's (now thoroughly discredited) conspiracy theories and sold...

Conspicuous consumption: how to measure economic wellbeing.(Brief article)
October 9, 2006... WHEN George W. Bush took office in January 2001, the economy was producing roughly $10 trillion worth of output annually. This year, it looks like production will be in the neighborhood of $13.5 trillion. If we think of our nation's GDP as...

A 'tough,' 'ugly' business: Rumsfeld on the record.(Donald H. Rumsfeld)(Interview)
October 9, 2006... The Pentagon DONALD RUMSFELD has had some rough sledding lately, and I ask him how his spirits are. "Good," he says. Although, after a shoulder operation, his left arm is in a sling, and "I haven't been able to play squash for a week." ...

A wider view: in defense of eating heartily, and stiffing the fat police.
October 9, 2006... ONE of the more amusing events during the Katrina anniversary was listening to Richard Simmons throw a hissy fit about southern eating habits. Simmons, a New Orleans native and former fat boy who now skips rope for a living, announced that when...

Diversity on the prowl: don't go stereotyping child molesters.
October 9, 2006... IF "informed Americans" seem unable to get a handle on the country's social problems, it could be that the public forums of our vaunted Information Age are more committed to showing the extent of a problem than to doing anything about it. ...

Question time: the interrogation of terrorists by an idealistic country.
October 9, 2006... THE Bush White House is locked in an acrimonious debate with Republican senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and John Warner over legislation to establish military commissions for the trial and punishment of captured terrorists. At issue are...

Trials of this century: when you prosecute a terrorist ...
October 9, 2006... "IT would be unacceptable, legally," Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina inveighed to the New York Times on September 8, "to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them." Such has been the...

Sounding taps: why military history is being retired.
October 9, 2006... A DECADE ago, best-selling author Stephen Ambrose donated $250,000 to the University of Wisconsin, his alma mater, to endow a professorship in American military history. A few months later, he gave another $250,000. Until his death in 2002, he...

Bush's centerpiece: five years on, how is 'No Child Left Behind' faring?(George W. Bush)
October 9, 2006... THE No Child Left Behind Act has been something of an anomaly during the Bush years. Enacting it was a central pledge of Bush's 2000 campaign. When it passed the House in 2001, however, it drew more Democratic votes than Republican ones. George...

The crime of their dreams: reading the Duke-lacrosse story.(EDUCATION)(Duke University)
October 9, 2006... AT Duke University, three white lacrosse players stand accused of raping a poor black woman. They have been indicted in court and portrayed in the national media as a trio of racist brutes. On their own campus and in publications nationwide,...

All aboard the charters? The state of a movement.(EDUCATION)(charter schools)
October 9, 2006... CHARTER schools have taught us much. Since Minnesota enacted America's first charter law in 1991, 39 states have followed suit and eager school reformers have created some 4,000 of these independent public schools. About 3,600 are still...

A Plan? Anyone?(HELP!)(Poem)
October 9, 2006... Russ Feingold doesn't have one, Nor does John Kerry. Hill, Wary as ducks in season, Flaunts neither claw nor bill. Murtha regroups in Kuwait. Dean hides behind a scream. Jay Rockefeller's clueless. Nancy adjusts a seam. --W. H....

Transcript.(the long view)(Hillary Rodham Clinton)
October 9, 2006... COURT-ORDERED MEDIATION IN THE MATTER OF: His Satanic Majesty, plaintiff v. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, defendant (Present: His Satanic Majesty (Satan), plaintiff; Mr. Bertram Fields, plaintiff's attorney; Sen. Hillary Rodham...

Books in brief.(George Washington's Sacred Fire)(Brief article)(Book review)
October 9, 2006... George Washington's Sacred Fire, by Peter A. Lillback with Jerry Newcombe (Providence Forum, 1,208 pp., $39.95). IN academic circles it has long been taken for granted that George Washington was a Deist--one who believes only in an...

Crisis of faith.(books, arts & manners)(The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality)(Book review)
October 9, 2006... The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality, by Paul Hollander (Ivan R. Dee, 391 pp., $28.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IN both practical and intellectual terms, Communism has been entirely discredited by...

On The Equator.(Poem)
October 9, 2006... How rarely Your mercy visits me, My King, my Father; And so, most of my days, I am Your wandering son Who has cast his lot like a prophet In the desert of his days. And Your deliverance that comes to me then, My Father, my King,...

Still a majority?(books, arts & manners)(The End of Commitment: Intellectuals, Revolutionaries, and Political Morality)(Book review)
October 9, 2006... Voting to Kill: How 9/11 Launched the Era of Republican Leadership, by Jim Geraghty (Touchstone, 384 pp., $15.95) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] JIM GERAGHTY's awkwardly titled new book takes a timely look back at the elections of 2002 and...

Thinking anew.(books, arts & manners)(The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism)(Book review)
October 9, 2006... The First Cold Warrior: Harry Truman, Containment, and the Remaking of Liberal Internationalism, by Elizabeth Edwards Spalding (University Press of Kentucky, 336pp., $40) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] NAME the American president who said,...

A new Kingfish.(All the King's Men)(Movie review)
October 9, 2006... IN the movies, succeeding in politics is simple: You just need to take on the special interests, promise the world to the poor, and give a really stirring speech. Which means that Huey Long, the outsize Depression-era governor of Louisiana, was...

Gridiron Dad.(THE STRAGGLER)(football gear)
October 9, 2006... THE kit presented some puzzles. There were seven white plastic pads of several different shapes. From vague recollections of seeing football players on TV I knew that the knees and thighs are padded. Exploring the interior of the pants, I found...

Ideological warfare?(on the right)(political drama)
October 9, 2006... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 8 PRESIDENT BUSH has eight times (someone is counting) struck the theme that the war we are in is a decisive ideological struggle. Anyone who is killed today, in Afghanistan or Iraq, will certainly subscribe to the...

Is victory possible?(on the right)(George W. Bush )
October 9, 2006... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 12 GEORGE W. BUSH radiates singular American strengths when especially taxed. The flashbacks of 9/11 included the fateful scene in the schoolroom in Florida when Andrew Card, his chief of staff, approached his ear and...

Stumped by morality?(on the right)(law on terrorist suspects interrogation)
October 9, 2006... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 15 THE divisions on the question of how to deal with terrorist suspects reminds us that there is confused reasoning in town. This is not unexpected, but this time around it gives especially interesting paradoxes. ...

Lehigh low.( )(Letter to the editor)
October 23, 2006... I decided to do a little research on my own alma mater to see if John J. Miller's thesis about the decline of military history held true ("Sounding Taps," Oct. 9). Lehigh University (conservative enough to still have ROTC) lists all of its...

Choices and chances.( )(Letter to the editor)
October 23, 2006... In his brief essay "Free to Choose" (Oct. 9), Kevin A. Hassett correctly points out that most people's income reflects their own choices in life. But I would temper this observation: While many people do make bad decisions, there are also many...

The week.(Mark Foley, Bob Woodward )
October 23, 2006... * Mark Foley has checked himself into rehab for alcoholism. We hope the scotch was older than the boys. * There is more than enough disgrace in the latest congressional scandal to spread around. Most of it goes to Foley, who repeatedly...

On capitol carnality.(Mark Foley's political drama)
October 23, 2006... MARK FOLEY is a grotesque guy as far as I'm concerned. The disgraced former congressman indisputably hit on teenagers he met as congressional pages. It was an outrageous breach of trust. And investigations are underway to see what else he did....

Hillary's Salvo.(Poem)
October 23, 2006... "If my husband," Hill said, "had Read that heads-up"--she was mad-- "He'd have jetted to New York Like"--I paraphrase--"a stork" (An avenging stork) "and stopped All that mess before it popped." Here's the problem: When the Cole Got...

Misestimate.(AT WAR)(National Intelligence Estimate)
October 23, 2006... A LEAKED portion of the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) says that the Iraq War is being used as a recruiting tool by jihadists around the world, causing Democrats to scream that the war has made us less safe. We don't doubt the...

Soundness on detainees.(AT WAR II)
October 23, 2006... DEMOCRATS were happy to let John McCain and a few other Republicans do their dirty work on the issue of interrogation of terrorism detainees. They thought the Arizona Republican would make President Bush bend to what seemed to be his position...

The finger's back.(AT WAR III)(political tale of USA)
October 23, 2006... THERE'S no doubt that a lot of Republicans enjoyed seeing Bill Clinton again, in full finger-wagging, I-did-not-have-sexual-relations-with-that-woman fury, during his confrontational interview on Fox News Sunday. But it was still strange to...

Senator Allen's Webb: the Democrat in Virginia--an unusual fellow--is putting up an unexpected fight.(POLITICS)(James Webb, George Allen)
October 23, 2006... JOHN HERRINGTON was driving his car across San Francisco's Bay Bridge, on his way to an amateur boxing match in 1978, when he first heard of James Webb. The young author was on the radio to promote Fields of Fire, his just-published novel about...

There goes Lindsey, again: South Carolina conservatives are tired of senator Graham's act.(POLITICS II)(Lindsey Graham )
October 23, 2006... THERE'S a little joke, a throwaway line, really, that South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham often uses when he addresses audiences in his home state. "We change senators every 50 years," Graham says. "Thanks for the job." Audiences usually...

'Poll tax!' they cry: the democratic response--written in stone.(POLITICS III)(Federal Election Integrity Act)
October 23, 2006... I DON'T know about you, but when I go to vote on a Tuesday morning, I just waltz into my polling place, say, "Hi, I'm Jay," and proceed to the booth. Then I vote for the most right-wing candidates I can find. This doesn't mean much on the Upper...

Down at Gitmo: a visit to the world's most controversial prison.(AT WAR)
October 23, 2006... Guantanamo Bay, Cuba WHEN most people think of the detention facility here, they conjure up images of "Camp X-Ray." That was the makeshift facility--basically chainlink fence enclosures--where detainees were first held when brought here in...

Can their program be destroyed? The military options against the mullahs.
October 23, 2006... AT Natanz, about 130 miles from Tehran, the Iranian regime is constructing a vast "commercial scale" uranium-enrichment facility that will house as many as 55,000 centrifuges. Deep under several meters of steel-reinforced concrete, conveniently...

What the Hungarians wrought: the meaning of October 1956.(THE 20TH CENTURY)(Hungarian Revolution)
October 23, 2006... IN October 1956, just fifty years ago, Hungarian freedom fighters rose against their Soviet colonizers and oppressors. Their forebears had done the same under Lajos Kossuth in 1848, and the Habsburg and Russian autocracies then combined to...

From the congressional IM database.(the long view)(instant messaging)
October 23, 2006... EXCERPT 1 [SenatorTed joined the session at 01:40] SenatorTed: hey wazzup? You awake? LOL... [REDACTED]: jes sittin here chillin.... u? SenatorTed: kewl kewl... yah jes chillin. R u hangin in the page room? [REDACTED]:...

Not helpful.(HELP!)(Cartoon)
October 23, 2006... Like the kiss of death, McGovern Piles on with the bug-out crowd, Landing (oompf) atop both Murtha And John Kerry--who got loud. George, a Flying Fortress fly-boy Over Germany, God bless, Tends to show up in my Tarots As intestinal...

Who were we?(Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century)(The American Way of Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life)(Book review)
October 23, 2006... Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century, by Robert Kagan (Knopf, 544 pp., $30) The American Way of Strategy: U.S. Foreign Policy and the American Way of Life, by Michael...

Enemies within?(The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege)(Book review)
October 23, 2006... The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege, by Damon Linker (Doubleday, 272 pp., $26) OF the making of conspiracies to undermine the political well-being of the United States, it seems, there is to be no end. In the past couple of years, of...

Parting the waters.(From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics)(Book review)
October 23, 2006... From My Cold, Dead Hands: Charlton Heston and American Politics, by Emilie Raymond (Kentucky, 416 pp., $27.95) BEFORE neocon became standard liberal code for Bush-lover or warmongering Jew, the usual insulting reference tossed at the rare...

Dinosaurs.(Poem)
October 23, 2006... Nature I think is beautiful It does not know its thorns It lives on pleasure plentiful-- Each leaf and bird adorns The lizard roared where he would be Arrayed in coat of mail; I wish that every eye might see-- I would not harm a...

The peacemaker.(SHELF LIFE)
October 23, 2006... "WHY are you doing this?" a political consultant asked Ronald Reagan in a quiet moment of the 1980 campaign. "Why do you want to be president?" Reagan's answer was simple, surprising, and unhesitating: "To end the Cold War. There has to be a...

Beans, beans.(COUNTRY LIFE)
October 23, 2006... IN my valley the frost date--the date after which you may expect no frosts at night--is Memorial Day. Now some tough kales and spinaches will survive all winter under the snow, and the traditional date for planting peas is St. Patrick's Day....

Missing from the pope.(on the right)(Pope Benedict XVI)
October 23, 2006... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 19 THE talk over the weekend concerning the pope's blunder had to do with his under-instruction in diplomacy. Several matters were cited, among them that he had, for lack of intelligent concern, dispatched his principal...

One part macaca.(on the right)(George Allen's mother hid that she is a Jew)
October 23, 2006... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 22 MEMBERS of the voting public who have slogged their way through the difficulties of Virginia's Sen. George Allen in the past month have found it heavy going. What stopped this breathless spectator was the final...

Vote for Lieberman?(on the right)(Joseph I.Lieberman)
October 23, 2006... NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 26. THE question most frequently asked in Connecticut of rightwing voters is: Whom do you intend to vote for on November 7? There are only two patriotic answers to that, but hang on as the drama unfolds. Voting is...