Fred Thompson may not be everyone’s cup of joe. But he is real, and, more importantly, he’s not another man from the Volunteer State who pretended to be folksy. That’s Senator Lamar Alexander, who, like Thompson, was famous for riding around the state in his pickup, wearing that crappy plaid shirt, and emoting.
Of course, now [...]
Archive for May, 2007
Good ole boy for Israel
Posted in Politics on May 31, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
MAD as hell…
Posted in Iran, War and Peace on May 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
…and not going to take it anymore? This is the thesis put forward by Norman Podhoretz in this must-read essay, “The Case for Bombing Iran.” The short version? Nothing other than military means will suffice to assure that Iran does not build and use nuclear weapons.
MAD is, of course, the often-mocked but effective mutual [...]
“Christian nation”
Posted in America, Christianity on May 30, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Here we go again; grist for those who think we’re heading straight for a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. As reported by the Washington Times, we get the wholly unsurprising “news” that a large majority of Americans (67 percent) think the United States is a “Christian nation.”
There is also an interesting polling result on the Bible. [...]
It’s all Israel’s fault
Posted in War and Peace, anti-Semitism on May 29, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
I happened to watch a small segment on MSNBC (new motto: “one month Imus-free and counting”) with one of their analysts, Pat Buchanan. The subject was the usual, the war in Iraq, and the host (Joe somebody or other) was doing his partisan best to get Pitchfork Pat to blame everything on the president.
Buchanan rose [...]
Fascinating perspective
Posted in Arabs, Islam on May 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Melanie Phillips sheds light on unknown (at least to this infidel) portions of the Quran that implore Muslims to love and respect Israel and the Jews. Who knew?
Here’s an extract, which Ms. Phillips cites from the website “Arabs for Israel”:
[Quran] 2:47 Children of Israel! call to mind the favour which I bestowed upon you, and [...]
Remembrance
Posted in America, War and Peace on May 28, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
5.28.2007
This Memorial Day, we give honor to those who have served, and, especially, to those who have given their lives so that we may be free.
These days, it is fashionable to do one of two things. One is to deny honor to those who have fallen [...]
Economic liberty? Not in New York City.
Posted in Liberty on May 27, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Not in New York City, either, but then we already knew that. George Will’s column today is a bracing reminder that here in the (supposedly) land of the free, there are significant pockets of economic feudalism.
Although the focus of Mr. Will’s column is the oh-so-progressive Scandinavian socialist tradition of Minneapolis (Will: “progressive,” meaning statist), [...]
The real McCoy
Posted in Terrorism on May 26, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Torture, that is. Not bogus stories of flushing the “holy” Koran down the crapper; doesn’t fit, for one thing. But why let facts interfere with the left’s fantasy? Or, for that matter, not having the preferred sauces on one’s food. Boo-hoo; I want to get back to killing infidels. And, as [...]
Ingrates
Posted in Great Britain, Idiotarians on May 25, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The British government, that is. Seems they’ve denied entry to 84-year old Tul Bahadur Pun, a Gurkha who was awarded Britain’s highest award for valor, the Victoria Cross, in Burma on June 23, 1944.
This man showed courage above and beyond the call of duty, and, according to this article in the Daily Mail, “single-handedly stormed [...]
Eye opener
Posted in Immigration on May 24, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Like many Anglos, I, too, believed in the notion that the culture of the mass of Hispanics here illegally was family- and church-oriented. In a word, benign; Hispanics as a group would be much less likely than black Americans to sink into a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty and social dysfunction.
Turns out I, and perhaps you, [...]
“a Wilsonian experiment”
Posted in Iraq, War and Peace on May 23, 2007 | 1 Comment »
These few words capture much of what has failed in our attempt to impose a true democracy on Iraq. Oh, they’ve gone through the motions, holding elections, bravely showing the world their purple fingers. But what is the net result? And, more importantly, how are America’s national security interests served?
Andrew McCarthy has a must-read piece [...]
How the mighty have fallen
Posted in Idiotarians, Liberty on May 23, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
And David lamented with this lamentation over Saul and Jonathan his son…” This, from 2 Samuel 17, describes David’s great sorrow at the evil which had overtaken Saul. This is the passage that occurred to me as I read this account of two former stalwarts of human rights: the American Civil Liberties Union, and Amnesty [...]
“kinder, less harsh style of leadership”
Posted in Christianity, Politics on May 22, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
This is a quotation from the new leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, talking of us pesky Baptists. You know that there’s something wrong when the Washington Post, or other liberal outlets, start to write favorable “news” pieces about evangelicals. The recent death of Jerry Falwell, the evangelical the left loved to loathe, has resulted [...]
“increasingly irrelevant”
Posted in Idiotarians on May 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
This is the redundancy put forward by the White House with respect to the nipping at heels by our worst ex-president ever, Jimmah Carter. I think that they were being quite charitable, unlike the allegedly Christian Carter, who never met a terrorist state he didn’t suck up or surrender to.
Jimmah has flatly stated that the [...]
Equal treatment under the law
Posted in Law and order, Liberty, Politics on May 20, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Equal treatment of attorneys general of the United States is definitely not the case for the liberal mainstream media. Case in point is the treatment of (both) AG Gonzales (he’s a clear threat to the Constitution) and former AG John Ashcroft (maybe he had some good points about him). In stark contrast with Clinton’s feckless [...]
No, Iraq is not Vietnam
Posted in Iraq, War and Peace on May 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
By itself, the graphic proves nothing, except the undeniable fact that we’ve lost far fewer (for this, God be thanked) in Iraq than in Vietnam. It says nothing as to the essential rightness of either conflict.
It should, however, provide some perspective on the relative costs of bringing some measure of freedom to the Middle East. [...]
The Shat
Posted in Culture, Politics on May 19, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
No, not the past tense of something scatological. Rather, might he be the hero of Republican politics, and the best nominee for president in 2008 for the Grand Old Party?
Well, The Shat, William Shatner, is certainly tanned, rested and ready. And unlike Tricky Dicky Nixon, he’s not dead yet. In a tongue-in-cheek mini-essay from Peter [...]
“delicate compromise”
Posted in Immigration, Law and order on May 18, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Stinks on ice, the new immigration “deal.” Winners appear to be millions of people here illegally. The biggest loser? The rule of law.
The basics, only slightly slanted from the left, from the WaPo:
The Bush administration and a bipartisan group of senators reached agreement yesterday on a sprawling overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws that would [...]
John Edwards isn’t wrong…
Posted in Politics, War and Peace on May 17, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
…just wrong-headed. And the timing is wretched.
John Edwards is too pretty to be president, and far too liberal. He is a neo-populist, still flogging that “cross of gold” approach, creating class animosities, striving to assure those on the bottom that, don’t worry, we’ll bring down those rich bastards. Where “rich bastards” includes everyone above the [...]
The GOP’s Al Sharpton
Posted in Politics on May 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
In 2004, when Al Sharpton was welcomed to join the other Democratic candidates for president, I thought, “oh well, what can you expect? They’re Democrats, after all…” By which I mean that Sharpton, a low-life race-baiting felon-in-all-but-name, should not have been there. No credibility; only there because liberals can’t say no to [...]
Sin is such a drag
Posted in Christianity, Politics on May 15, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Now we know what kind of tame evangelicals DNC chair Howard Dean thinks we should all be. He cites Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, in this article about his longing to join evangelicals with the Democratic Party.
Dr. Dean also knows what ails those who don’t go to church. It’s that pesky sin; the [...]
Justice delayed can be torture
Posted in Justice on May 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
I’m no fan of the death penalty, but one of its uses ought to be a warning to those who might attempt committing crimes similar to that of the condemned prisoner. Case in point is the recent untimely (more on this below) killing of a death row inmate in Tennessee.
This particular moke had killed [...]
One man’s terrorist…
Posted in Terrorism on May 14, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
…is another man’s freedom fighter. Or so goes the apology for terrorism as a tactic. Before we condemn all terrorists, it is useful to first look in the mirror. Armed men fighting for the noblest of causes have committed terrorist acts.
This includes the fight against slavery (e.g. John Brown) and every war [...]
While we’re on the subject…
Posted in Terrorism on May 13, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
…of Islam, a few words from Raymond Ibrahim (via Victor Davis Hanson’s website) about apologists for Islam. With specific reference to one Tariq Ramadan, who the blind PCers at Georgetown University salivated over (never met an Islamist they didn’t love):
While Ramadan and other apologists can pontificate all they want about “true” Islam, the fact [...]
"lethal stupidity"
Posted in Uncategorized on May 13, 2007 | 1 Comment »
This is a most appropriate phrase, used to describe the more conservative of Britain’s two major political parties’ attitude towards the Islamification of their nation. From Melanie Phillips, citing Tory leader David Cameron, who:
…says in today’s Observer, after his stunt spending two days with a Muslim family in Birmingham, that the term ‘Islamic’ or [...]
Form over Function
Posted in Culture, Liberty on May 12, 2007 | 1 Comment »
I admit it — I’m a Yankee. Born and bred in New York, so at least in the Civil War sense I’m a Yankee, as opposed to a Southerner. But I’m a Yankee in the earlier, and broader sense: an American who is a spiritual and political descendant of the Puritans who [...]
Except when we go wobbly
Posted in Great Britain, War and Peace on May 7, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
The president’s gracious welcome to Queen Elizabeth II today was a reminder of the ties that bind all nations of the Anglosphere. We are not English, or even British in our ethnicity (didn’t realize that English was an ethnicity, eh?). Yet we remain Anglo-Saxon in our world outlook, and in our concept of [...]
All pander, all the time
Posted in Politics on May 6, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
No, not those adorable giant black and white rodents from China. Rather, what most politicians seem to do most of the time. None appears to have quite gotten the pander polka down so well as The Hillary, however. Clinton supports a do-over on the 2002 vote that authorized the Iraq war.
This is [...]
Dont’ja just hate it?
Posted in Liberty on May 4, 2007 | 1 Comment »
Hate crimes, that is. Welcome to 1984, where thoughtcrime “is the only crime that matters.” Now we’ve got our wonderful legislators telling us that we’ve got to think correctly when we commit crimes, else we’ll be more severely punished.
The pending enlargement of federal “hate crime” law (WaPo story) will do precisely that: [...]
"to the very Last One"
Posted in Terrorism on May 2, 2007 | Leave a Comment »
Seems those Palestinians are at it again. If there was any question that Hamas is a terrorist group, and should be destroyed, it should be put to rest by this report from the Jerusalem Post:
Sheik Ahmad Bahr, acting Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, declared during a Friday sermon at a Sudan mosque that [...]
