Saturday, June 14, 2008

14 Jun 2008 08:45 pm

Face Of The Day

A Swedish fan waits for the start of the Euro 2008 Championships group D football match Sweden vs. Spain on June 14, 2008 at the Tivoli Neu stadium in Innsbruck. By Michal Cizek/AFP/Getty.

14 Jun 2008 07:00 pm

Good Vibrations

A brief history of the vibrator:

In the early 20th century, everything in the garden was rosy until electrification made vibrators available in the home. They were, incidentally, electrified ten years before either the washing machine or Hoover...With names like Dr Macaura's Blood Circulator or the fabulously titled Veedee Vibrator, these were common devices. The Science Museum has many. “People never expect that the Science Museum has over 40 examples of vibrators,” says Katie Maggs, its assistant curator of medicine. Indeed. The product leaflets of these machines claimed they cured not just hysteria but also deafness, polio and impotence. No doubt dropped arches, halitosis and dandruff were in there somewhere, too. These machines were advertised everywhere. Good Housekeeping ran a “tried and tested” on vibrators in 1909, claiming they brought a glow to the face.

I bet they did.

14 Jun 2008 05:35 pm

Ideas Of The Year...In June

A list of the the 11 1/2 biggest ideas of the year, thus far. My contribution here.

14 Jun 2008 04:55 pm

Green Wheels

Ryan Avent on the car-sharing industry:

There’s no denying that automobiles are a very convenient way to get around, especially when you’re carrying a lot of stuff. The problem is that when everyone uses one and we structure our lives around them, everything goes to the dogs. But demand for occasional-use vehicles is going to grow. And things like Zipcar probably positively influence dense living and transit ridership, because they make it easier to live a carless life. Ditto for cabs; they’re largely plain old dirty cars, but because they make it easier for households to ditch personal vehicles, they surely have a net green effect.

14 Jun 2008 04:41 pm

The Porn Stash That Wasn't

Jesse Walker hopes Judge Alex Kozinski will stand his ground.

14 Jun 2008 04:28 pm

The View From Your Window

New Haven, Connecticut, 3.30 pm.

14 Jun 2008 04:27 pm

Dumped For Obama

In Adams Morgan, it's quite the trend.

14 Jun 2008 04:27 pm

Not Everything Is Made In China

Artist Luca Pizzaroni is collecting clothing labels from around the world.

(hat tip: Pushback)

14 Jun 2008 03:39 pm

Britney Back In Rehab!

From Mark Bowden's article on Murdoch and the WSJ (interview with Bowden here): 

This is how Murdoch understands journalism—as content, a word he uses all the time, rather than as a form of literature or public service, and as a commodity whose value largely derives from its instant retail malleability. A short, crisp scoop that dramatically advances a major developing story—Obama’s poll numbers down! Britney back in rehab! Steinbrenner to fire another manager!—can be neatly packaged for a dizzying variety of media: print, radio, TV, the Internet, or even cell-phone screens. It doesn’t matter much to a fully integrated media conglomerate like News Corporation how its customers choose to access this content, as long as the transaction pays. Business and financial news is ideally suited to this kind of cross-seeding, since markets are now global and customers are tuned in all day, every day. One of the first strong messages Journal reporters and editors received from their new owners was that Murdoch wants scoops. He wants his reporters out in front of every competitor on the planet.

14 Jun 2008 01:28 pm

Quote For The Day

"I’m someone who grew up taught by the Sisters of Mercy and the Jesuits. And both those nuns and those priests taught me, and taught us, my classmates, how to pray--that it simply wasn't the recitation of memorized prayer but meditation and contemplation.

The situation you're talking about is when my wife was in labor for a long time, I walked out of the hospital and walked around the corner and there was a church. And actually, it was a shrine to Saint Elizabeth who is the mother of Mary, the mother of God, which is more than ironic and important.

And so I, constantly, realize it's a long road, it's a long journey, and we can't get there alone. And so I'm very open and find it quite necessary to ask for help and assistance and inspiration. And that comes in a very powerful way in the form of prayer," - Tim Russert, great Catholic.

14 Jun 2008 01:23 pm

The Party That Reagan Built

A paragraph from William Schneider's 1987 article about Reagan's impact on American politics:

What keeps the Reagan coalition together is not affection or agreement but the perception of a common threat. The threat is that liberals will regain control of the federal government and use it, as they have in the past, to carry out their "redistributionist" or "reformist" or "anti-military" program. The threat will not disappear when Reagan leaves office, and neither will the Reagan coalition--not even if it loses the 1988 election. A coalition may be defeated, as Reagan's was in the 1986 Senate elections, but that does not mean it has been destroyed. In the short run the Republicans are likely to lose many elections, just as the Democrats did over the fifty-year history of their New Deal coalition. The short-term fate of the Republican Party is highly dependent on the condition of the economy. That is what brought the party to power in 1980 and kept it in power in 1984. A major recession would spell the end of Republican rule. But the Reagan coalition would dissolve only if the various groups that compose it no longer felt they had a common interest in limited government. The Republicans are now the party of a weak government and a strong state, attracting people who are committed to one or both objectives. The Reagan revolution, not just Reagan himself, has acquired a popular constituency.

14 Jun 2008 01:19 pm

The Candidates On Russert

McCain's statement:

I am very saddened by Tim Russert's sudden death. Cindy and I extend our thoughts and prayers to the Russert family as they cope with this shocking loss and remember the life and legacy of a loving father, husband and the preeminent political journalist of his generation. He was truly a great American who loved his family, his friends, his Buffalo Bills, and everything about politics and America. He was just a terrific guy. I was proud to call him a friend, and in the coming days, we will pay tribute to a life whose contributions to us all will long endure.

Obama's:

I’ve known Tim Russert since I first spoke at the convention in 2004. He’s somebody who, over time, I came to consider not only a journalist but a friend. There wasn’t a better interviewer in TV, not a more thoughtful analyst of our politics, and he was also one of the finest men I knew. Somebody who cared about America, cared about the issues, cared about family. I am grief-stricken with the loss and my thoughts and prayers go out to his family. And I hope that, even though Tim is irreplaceable, that the standard that he set in his professional life and his family life are standards that we all carry with us in our own lives.

14 Jun 2008 01:13 pm

Obama In Iowa

Good works, better politics:

Not only is the Obama campaign helping to raise money for the relief effort, the websites Community Blogs are providing information on where volunteers who live in or near the affected areas are needed to assist local residents in building sandbag levees to protect peoples' homes. They had specific information on what towns needed help and where volunteers should go to offer their help. This included an appeal for volunteers to bring cold bottled water for the folks working at sandbagging - it is grueling hard work and the floods have contaminated many of the local water supplies.

(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty.)

14 Jun 2008 12:58 pm

In Russert's Wake

Joe Klein remembers the drinking days; John Cole gets queasy at the network coverage; David Remnick on "gotcha at its highest form". Tom Shales:

He was by nature a fair-minded kind of a guy, and spite, bullying and nastiness were not in his playbook. They would have tainted the show -- worse, they would have spoiled his fun.

If that was unthinkable, so is the idea of this felicitous and edifying ritual suddenly and without warning coming to an end, of it being Sunday morning and time for "Meet the Press," but with Tim Russert absent. It's just not right that he is gone, just not right. It's an affront, an outrage, an act of cruelty -- and something that Russert never was: unfair.

14 Jun 2008 12:25 pm

I Now Pronounce You Friend And Friend

An article on incentivizing friendship:

...a number of scholars are seeking to shore up friendship in a surprising way: by granting it legal recognition. Some of the rights and privileges restricted to family, they argue, should be given to friends. These could be invoked on a case-by-case basis - eligibility to take time off to care for a sick friend under an equivalent of the Family and Medical Leave Act, for example. Or they could take the form of an official legal arrangement between two friends, designating a bundle of mutual rights and privileges - literally "friends with benefits," as Laura Rosenbury, a law professor at Washington University, puts it. One scholar even suggests giving friends standing in the tax code, allowing taxpayers to write off certain "friend expenditures."

I'm a big believer in the under-valued virtue of friendship, and wrote a long essay on the matter, "If Love Were All." It's the final third of "Love Undetectable" and probably the single piece of writing I'm proudest of. But I loathe the idea of government's getting involved in this inherently private relationship. Marriage is different - there are very good reasons for government to encourage care of joint households, finances and children. If we want to leave money to friends, or grant them power of attorney, we have the legal means to do so. But a core element of real friendship is freedom - freedom without any government meddling or incentivizing.

14 Jun 2008 11:39 am

I Am Kobe

Jonah Lehrer speculates about the neurological basis of fandom:

...when I watch Kobe glide to the basket for a dunk, a few deluded cells in my premotor cortex are convinced that I, myself, am touching the rim. And when he hits a three pointer, my mirror neurons light up as I've just made the crucial shot. They are what bind me to the game, breaking down that 4th wall separating fan from player. I'm not upset because my team lost: I'm upset because it literally feels like I lost, as if I had been on the court.

When my dad would watch an England-France rugby game, he would sometimes literally swoop to tackle the living room rug. And occasionally kick in the air. Most amusing. But at least he knew how to play rugby. So many couch potatoes live entirely vicariously.

(Hat tip: Kottke)

14 Jun 2008 10:16 am

3.7 Ounces

Artist Michele Pred's makes sculptures from items confiscated at San Francisco International Airport.

(hat tip: Notcot)

14 Jun 2008 09:17 am

The Professor Of Dirt

Paul “Moose” Curtis makes graffiti by cleaning. He uses a pressure washer and stencils to draw in grime, soot, and dust:

14 Jun 2008 08:39 am

Lessig On Kozinski

As usual, sanity:

What I mean by "the Kozinski mess" is the total inability of the media -- including we, the media, bloggers -- to get the basic facts right, and keep the reality in perspective. The real story here is how easily we let such a baseless smear travel - and our need is for a better developed immunity (in the sense of immunity from a virus) from this sort of garbage.

Friday, June 13, 2008

13 Jun 2008 08:30 pm

A Question Of Empire, Ctd

A reader writes:

I think your resistance to "empire" (or its rough approximation in the Middle East) stems from your fidelity to limited government principles. Reading your blog I think there are two undercurrents of our foreign policy that rankle these sensibilities- how our power has corrupted us, and how it is, at the end of the day, an enormous wealth transfer.

Those bases you refer to - in South Korea, Germany, Japan, etc. - essentially amount to the most generous welfare program in world history. Indeed, it's useful to think of our entire foreign policy, from the Cold War through this day as national security welfare: we are the defenders of last resort for the Gulf Monarchs, Israel, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Europe, etc. We spend billions upon billions of dollars - more than at any time since WWII for god's sake - to defend these nations.

Now, during the Cold War this at least made sense: it was ultimately about our self defense - it deterred Soviet adventurism, reduced the chances that Japan and Germany would re-arm, and allowed the defended nations to focus on economic development, which was considered a bulwark against communism. But today? There is simply no point.

Continue reading "A Question Of Empire, Ctd" »

13 Jun 2008 07:45 pm

Quote For The Day

"Past error is no excuse for its own perpetuation.  Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom.....Now, as ever, we do ourselves best justice when we measure ourselves against ancient tests, as in the Antigone of Sophocles: 'All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil.  The only sin is pride.'" - Robert F Kennedy.

13 Jun 2008 07:07 pm

A Christianist Meets Obama

A fascinating first-person account:

Sen. Obama personally took time to meet each person and shake their hand. He’s not as large a man as I envisioned from seeing him on television. But, he’s warm and personable --- obviously one of the reasons why people like him. He seemed to remember names well. He hugged a couple of the participants—mostly the black preachers who attended. He also seemed to be on top of the issues; and he’s obviously very intelligent.

13 Jun 2008 06:38 pm

Malkin Award Nominee

"In a depopulating world, the claim that there is a universal right to marry regardless of gender becomes a frightening ally of a claimed universal right to access to genetically engineered children," - Douglas Kmiec, San Francisco Chronicle.

13 Jun 2008 06:16 pm

Face Of The Day

Gabrielle Steenblock, 8, walks across a flooded street near downtown June 11, 2008 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Several areas of the city have already been evacuated and more will follow. Heavy rains are expected over the next few days prompting predictions of an all time historic flood along the Cedar River. By David Greedy/Getty Images.

13 Jun 2008 06:06 pm

The Coolest Apartment For Kids

Check this out:

Eric Clough isn't your typical architectural designer. Sure, he'll design you a fine den or kitchen, but he's clearly got a creative streak that goes much deeper than that. That's why, when given the opportunity, he secretly built an incredible scavenger hunt into a $8.5-million, 4,200-square-foot Park Avenue apartment that included ciphers, riddles, poems and a lot of hidden doors and compartments.

Hey, if I had $8.5 million to throw around...

13 Jun 2008 05:53 pm

Quote For The Day

"Calling Michelle Obama a “baby mama” isn’t just Fox News having a happy casual larf; it’s using urban slang to a) remind you the Obamas are black, b) belittle a woman of considerable personal accomplishment, and c) frame Barack Obama’s relationship to his wife and children in a way that insults him, minimizes his love for and commitment to his family, and reinforces stereotypes about black men. Someone at Fox News just ought to call Barack Obama “boy” at some point so we can have all the cards right out there on the table," - John Scalzi.

13 Jun 2008 04:35 pm

Big Russ's Son II

A collection of thoughts from around the web. Ezra Klein:

Because I think folks should be remembered for their best work, here's a transcript of his September 2002 interview with Dick Cheney. If the press had been as skeptical and aggressive in the run-up to the war as Russert was on that morning, sitting next to the vice president, we never would have invaded Iraq ...  Presumably, he's up somewhere beyond the cloudline, hectoring God about His inconsistencies. "But Lord, in Exodus 6:12, you clearly said..."

Michelle Malkin:

He was a fixture of Beltway political journalism, good on the entitlement crisis, and by all accounts, a good-humored guy. One small personal experience: When I was a lowly videotape library aide at NBC News in 1992, I sent him a critique of the information-gathering system–and he was kind enough to send a reply. R.I.P.

Chris Cillizza:

Russert was, without question, the single most influential political journalist working in Washington. His show -- known to insiders as simply "MTP" -- was not only the most watched of the Sunday news programs but also the one that every politician and journalist aspired to appear on.

Ambinder:

An unbelievable shock; this city will all but shut down over the next few days, so vital was he to its voice.

(Photo: Matt May/Getty.)

13 Jun 2008 04:27 pm

Big Russ's Son

Doris Kearns Goodwin:

"The most extraordinary thing about him was that he just had such unparalleled empathy for whoever he was talking with. You never had the feeling he was trying to get somebody, he just wanted to get them to talk and wanted to get the record straight and his emotional self was as strong as his intellect. As a journalist there was such a strength of his person who everyone who knew him knew. He was just beloved.

I can't imagine what the news bureau is going through down there I heard it is just wailing. He was just a giant of a person he was such a good friend."

13 Jun 2008 03:51 pm

The Death Of Russert

It's a shocking piece of news. There were limits to the Russert style of gotcha-interviewing. But he took political accountability to new levels in journalism, and always treated his subjects fairly. He was also extremely kind and courteous in my own interactions with him. Say a prayer for his family, if prayer is your thing. Especially his dad, for whom this coming Sunday may be extremely painful.

(Photo: Matt May/Getty.)

13 Jun 2008 03:42 pm

Conservatism Across The Pond

Greenwald compares Tories to Republicans:

The contrast between the British Right and the American Right could not be more glaring. The former is at least mildly faithful to the principles they espouse, while the latter has morphed completely into an authoritarian, government-power-worshiping faction that thinks it’s waging war against — to use Antonin Scalia’s politicized term — “radical Islamists,” but which is only at war with its own claimed principles and the principles on which the country was founded.

In fact, of course, the Tories are divided over such matters as detention without charge for 42 days. But the strain of liberal conservatism - which I take to be rooted in the Whig, Edmund Burke and updated by bohemian Michael Oakeshott - is still alive and kicking. I have a feeling - a very strong feeling - that if a Democratic president had claimed and asserted the war powers that Bush has, the Republicans would also have exhibited a strong liberal conservative strain. Can you imagine if Clinton had simply waived the FISA law and tapped phones without a warrant? Or detained people without charges for years on end? Bob Barr would be the Republican nominee by now.

(hat tip: John Schwenkler)

13 Jun 2008 03:24 pm

McCain Walking Back On Boumediene?

Not sure how to interpret this:

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: I think maybe legislation working with the Congress, which would define more narrowly the habeas corpus rights of people who we have detained. It's very broad right now. At least try to provide some definition of that so we're not ending up in endless lawsuits. Already the detainees have brought suit on diet, on reading material, on all kinds of other things that are certainly not central to what we have detained them for. So I would hope that we could at least do that.

13 Jun 2008 03:19 pm

Hewitt Award Nominee

"I don’t exactly approve of a lot of the things he stands for and I’m not sure we know enough about him. He’s got some bad connections, and he may be terrorist connected for all I can tell. It sounds kind of like he may be," - Fred Hobbs, a [Tennessee] Democratic Party executive committee.

13 Jun 2008 02:59 pm

Anthony Kennedy vs Carl Schmitt

Scott Horton examines the Boumediene ruling - and what the Bush administration may do in response.

For the past seven years, Americans have witnessed an effort to engineer a “state of exception” to the American constitution. Its key element has been a new definition of war—the “war on terror”–which has neither territorial nor temporal boundaries. This war, as the Bush Administration crafted and advanced it, never served the security interests of the United States. Military analysts and advisors were firm from the outset in opposing it. They argued that any war needed to have clearly defined achievable objectives so that America could quickly and decisively win it...

But the Bush Administration’s conceptualization served a different agenda. It was designed to bolster an assertion of unprecedented executive power, a reshuffling of the political cards at home. The executive was to emerge as the paramount power in the nation’s government, relegating the other branches to the status of constitutional hood ornaments. The Republican Party was to be anchored in to a generation of rule.

13 Jun 2008 02:42 pm

Fendi Chainsaw Massacre

High fashion and weaponry collide.

13 Jun 2008 02:38 pm

A Question Of Empire, Ctd.

Poulos writes:

Andrew is right that this election is likely to be something of a referendum on neoconservative adventurism, but one thing it is likely not to be is a referendum on its noncombustible leftovers. Americans are fine with our Korean presence, even though that war was something of a disaster (or as neocons might say: unfinished)...If the question of ´permanent empire´ boils down to a matter of small ball — haggling over 30,000 vs. 90,000 troops, four versus twelve big bases — the American people will accept the larger numbers if, as I´ve said before, costs in blood and treasure are kept reasonably and acceptably low.

A further point. My reader mocks my alleged naivete earlier. But the truth is: the Soviet Union made all imperial actions by the US look inherently defensive. And that indeed was how the vast expansion of American power-projection across the globe earned its domestic legitimacy. After the Cold War, we had a period of moderate conservative retrenchment, a building of some global alliances, an expansion of free trade and a very limited form of interventionism - minimally in Kuwait, fatally in Somalia, belatedly and multilaterally on the Balkans, impulsively in Haiti. I don't think these actions can be thought of as imperial in impulse.

But the post-9/11 move to Iraq - again posited originally as defensive - is being revealed as something much more profound and much more of a precedent. Even large lingering numbers of troops in Germany or South Korea do not mean much (although I'm increasingly persuaded there's no real point for them there either). But an expansion of troop presence in the tens of thousands deep into the Arab heartland is a huge shift - the first real shift since the end of the Cold War. And that makes this election a very profound one in many ways: it's about the direction of the US - the meaning of the US - in a post-Cold War world. A permanent Iraq presence really does mean an imperial future for the US - revealed nakedly for what it is.

It's not so much my naivete as a simple fact. In a way not exposed so baldly before, the empire is beginning to have no clothes.

13 Jun 2008 01:42 pm

Searching For The Holy Grail Of Urban Planning

Discussion timeline: Ryan Avert praises urban density as a solution to high fuel prices and falling housing prices; Matt largely agrees; John Schwenkler dissents; And Matt Frost defends ghost towns.

13 Jun 2008 01:28 pm

The View From Your Window

Great Falls, Montana, 7 am-- June snow.

13 Jun 2008 01:12 pm

"A Dead End"

Maliki ends the negotiations with the Bush administration over the continuing occupation. He seems to believe he is running a sovereign country.

13 Jun 2008 01:09 pm

McCain On Boumedien

"One of the worst decisions in the history of this country." And so the choice gets clearer.

13 Jun 2008 01:03 pm

Poseur Alert

The manufacturers of the Obama monkey-doll replied to a few appalled customers:

To Those with Heartfelt Queries,

We chose twenty-two customer queries today that we believe merit a response.  You touched us with either your concern, intelligence, humor, sensitivity, and/or your thoughtfulness.  We thank you.  There are other queries we received today as well that we chose not to respond to, because of their spewing of venom and their aimlessness.

We at TheSockObama Co. are saddened that some individuals have chosen to misinterpret our plush toy.  It is not, nor has it ever been our objective to hurt, dismay or anger anyone.  We guess there is an element of naviete on our part, in that we don't think in terms of myths, fables, fairy tales and folklore.  We simply made a casual and affectionate observation one night, and a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little.  We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases.   

Continue reading "Poseur Alert" »

13 Jun 2008 01:00 pm

A Dead Heat In North Carolina

McCain 45; Obama 43. Hmmm.

13 Jun 2008 12:33 pm

Obamacon Watch

Colin Powell hints.

13 Jun 2008 12:33 pm

McCain, Obama, Debt

I found David Brook's column earlier this week on the morality of debt particularly cogent. I do think that the management of one's own finances is an important facet of personal morality. I grew up in a home that always had to watch the budget very closely, and as I grew up, I always felt that financial responsibility was a core conservative value. And, although countries and governments obviously have more lee-way than individuals over the long run, I also regard any government that spends more than it taxes over an economic cycle to be immoral.

That's why I've come to see the Republican party as a deeply corrosive force with respect to public morality. It perpetuates the idea that debt - and constantly increasing debt - is a virtue. Over the last seven years, as I often repeat, the Bush Republicans have added $32 trillion to the unfunded liabilities that future generations have to pay. After instituting torture, this is easily the most grotesquely immoral act of the current administration and Congress. It is thieving from the next generation. Reagan bears a burden of responsibility in this, but Bush II has combined the ideology of supply-side fantasy with trust-fund rich kid insouciance. I want government small and I want it solvent. And, to my mind, that is the core conservative position - which is why the current Republicans are not just un-conservative; they are the enemy of conservatism.

All this is a preamble to a pettier matter. Contrast the two candidates on their personal fiscal morality. Obama, who grew up on food stamps and foreswore a lucrative corporate law career, "reported no liabilities in his annual financial disclosures." McCain, who married an heiress worth millions, has more than $100,000 in credit card debt:

The presidential candidate and his wife Cindy reported piling up debt on a charge card between $10,000 and $15,000. His wife’s solo charge card has between $100,000 and $250,000 in debt to American Express. Another charge card with American Express, this one for a “dependent child,” is carrying debt in the range of $15,000 and $50,000.

More saliently, McCain's tax and spending proposals add far more to the federal deficit than Obama's. After the massive debt racked up in the last eight years, both McCain and Obama unforgivably want to add more. But McCain is the worst. Sometimes, personal morality is a sign of public morality, isn't it?

13 Jun 2008 12:31 pm

When Two Icons Clash

In mid-air, no less:

13 Jun 2008 12:18 pm

Here, Intern, Intern, Intern

Via Matt, a blog that collects ads from DC's Craigslist. It's called "m4intern": DC's most common sexual preference. This place really can get a little frisky in the summer.

13 Jun 2008 12:15 pm

Fox Family Values

One point about Fox News' decision to label Michelle Obama as her husband's "baby-mama": isn't it remarkable that a "conservative" news outlet would actually view a married black couple who have brought up two apparently great kids in wedlock as effectively unmarried:

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as one “chiefly in African-American usage” that refers to, “The mother of a man’s child, who is not his wife nor (in most cases) his current or exclusive partner.”

It's at that point that you suspect that what motivates the conservatives at Fox is not a concern about the black family or a belief that role models of good African-American marriages should be celebrated and supported. It's that the poor state of the black family can be used to marginalize and demonize African-Americans to garner ratings and support Republicans. It's really disgusting, but sadly unsurprising.

13 Jun 2008 11:49 am

Malkin Award Nominee II

"I was going out the door this morning when I learned about the Supreme Court ruling — that the American people had lost to radical Islam, 5 to 4," - Andy McCarthy, NRO.

13 Jun 2008 11:39 am

Nerd Fight!

The Pluto controversy ignites once again.

13 Jun 2008 11:22 am

Malkin Award Nominee

"Only one thing is certain: Our terrorist enemies still at large must be amazed, amused and encouraged by the continued insistence by legal elites that they be treated like petty American criminals rather than fanatical killers eager for martyrdom. It is as though the five justices and their clerks are wholly ignorant of the rising stack of books and flood of articles detailing the nature of the enemy and their creed of death," - Hugh Hewitt, responding to Boumediene.

I hope terrorists are amazed at the West's ability to fight them without abandoning the core principle of its own freedom. It's what they are trying to destroy.

13 Jun 2008 10:54 am

"We Invaded To Liberate"

A reader fisks me bad:

"We invaded to liberate, not to control".

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Of course this is about control, and always has been. Oil, Israel, Iran. Remaking the Middle East. Securing Bush's place in history as the Conqueror of the East, the only man man enough to take the recalcitrant desert barbarians by the scruff of the neck and bring them to heel.

Empire? We've been a continental empire (some would say a hemispheric empire) since at least the Mexican-American War, an international empire since the Spanish American War, and a global empire since the end of WWII, with our eastern march at the wall in Berlin and our western march at the DMZ in Korea. Democracies can be empires too. Ask the Athenians (and ask them about the Sicilian Expedition while you're at it).

What do you mean, empire is not in our blood? We ARE the Roman Empire -- at least, the Western Roman Empire. Russia, of course was the Eastern Roman Empire. The Cold War was the contest to see which would prevail. We won. Now we retake the provinces of Judea -- our Holy Land, which we've been trying to re-take for a thousand years  -- and Persia and Afghanistan, the farthest extent of our ancient Greco-Roman influence.

I agree with Ferguson: our problem is not empire -- it's incompetence.

No, I have not become a neo-con -- but let's be realistic: beyond the drive to re-take the East, there's all that oil. We need it. They have it. Therefore we must control them. It's that simple. It's not even a moral question, it's just biology: where the energy source is, the strongest will congregate. It's not a matter of "corporate profits" -- although it is that too. It's a matter of survival. Obama will not leave Iraq either. You watch.

Continue reading ""We Invaded To Liberate"" »