Sunday, February 27, 2005

Slate: Christopher Hitchens

Beating a Dead Parrot - Why Iraq and Vietnam have nothing whatsoever in common. By Christopher�Hitchens

ARIANNA ONLINE - Columns

ARIANNA ONLINE - Columns

The Washington Times: Inside Politics

Inside Politics - The Washington Times: Inside Politics - February 25, 2005

Village Voice: Nat Hentoff

village voice > news > Liberty Beat by Nat Hentoff

The New York Times: Maureen Dowd

The New York Times: Maureen Dowd

Creators.com: Molly Ivins

Creators.com - Creators Syndicate

Slate: Mickey Kaus

The Circle Game - Plus--Juan Cole vs. Jim Geraghty. By Mickey�Kaus

TIME - Joe Klein

TIME - Joe Klein

WashingtonPost.com: William Raspberry

washingtonpost.com: William Raspberry

George Will: sacbee.com

George Will - sacbee.com

Richard Reeves: Latest Column

Richard Reeves :: Latest Column

Townhall.com: Conservative Columnists: Thomas Sowell

Townhall.com: Conservative Columnists: Thomas Sowell

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish

WashingtonPost.com: Charles Krauthammer

washingtonpost.com: Charles Krauthammer

ESPN.com: Hunter S. Thompson Archive

ESPN.com - GEN - Hunter S. Thompson Archive

WSJ OpinionJournal: Peggy Noonan

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

WashingtonPost.com: Michael Kinsley

washingtonpost.com: Michael Kinsley

Boston.com: Ellen Goodman columns archive

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Opinion / Op-ed / Ellen Goodman columns archive

DRUDGE REPORT 2005

DRUDGE REPORT 2005�

Saturday, February 26, 2005

Dowd: W.'s Stiletto Democracy

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: W.'s Stiletto Democracy:

"It was remarkable to see President Bush lecture Vladimir Putin on the importance of checks and balances in a democratic society."

Friday, February 25, 2005

A New Political Party

I feel like Fiver. Doesn't anyone else see it? "It's coming, it's coming," he said, and no one believed him. Bigwig made fun of him. Hazel was the only one who had faith in his brother's prescience. But the things I'm predicting will take years. It takes a long time for an empire to fall. But once it starts, it can happen fast, as we saw with the Soviet empire fifteen years ago. Why don't people see that when the time comes, ours can fall quickly, too?

Where can our country find wise leadership? The parties don't produce particularly good candidates for the presidency, and that's one of their main jobs. Our system for selecting presidential candidates is broken. I don't see a good way to fix it, except to form a new party. Do you remember Ross Perot? He started a new party. But he wasn't an institution builder, and the American Reform party didn't take hold. The Reform party split up over the Buchanan nomination in the 90s. So we don't have any known alternatives, now.

Who would support the Reform party, were it to re-form? Perot supporters (20% of the voters in 1992). Ventura supporters. Deaniacs. Libertarians, perhaps. All disaffected independents who need someone to vote for.

Who would not be in the party? Evangelicals. MoveOn.org supporters. Democrats and Republicans who are happy with the way their party is going. That's about half of the electorate. The job of a new party is to recruit the other half.

How did the Republican party get started? Did it just coalesce, or did it result from a number of key people doing a lot of hard work? The interesting thing is, I don't remember that Lincoln engaged in much party-building work himself. It just coalesced around him as the election of 1860 approached. Who did the institution building in that case? The Reform party coalesced around Perot in 1992, but it didn't last. Did the Republican party last because the Civil War, and the years before and after the war, were such extraordinary times?

Thursday, February 24, 2005

RonaldReagan.com

RonaldReagan.com

This site has a good message board!

Bush, Putin, and Thucydides

The news this week has been all about Bush telling Putin that he's backsliding on democracy, and he'd better shape up. What a singular privilege, to be lectured about democracy from a man like Bush. What must Putin be thinking as he endures this kind of thing? It's as if Hitler were to lecture FDR and Churchill about anti-semitism in the United States and Britain. Putin has a war criminal sitting in front of him, sanctimoniously telling him that his leadership of Russia is undemocratic.

What's Bush going to tell Putin next? That he shouldn't make war in Chechnya? That he shouldn't use propaganda to destroy people's reputations? That he shouldn't be dishonest in his dealings with the people of Russia? Putin should just walk out on this man, tell this glad-hander that the rest of the world has had enough of him.

Every day, we show the whole world how weak we really are. We show that we can't protect our soldiers from roadside bombs. We show that we send our brave men into battle with no realistic or legitimate purpose. We show that we can't manage to secure the highway from the Baghdad airport to the city. We can't even secure the main thoroughfare in the city itself. But we can destroy a city, Fallujah, with heavy armor and air power, and claim that we have reduced the enemy's ability to fight. Who believes that?

Our enemies can also observe what we have to do to deploy 150,000 soldiers to Iraq. We have to reduce our forces in Korea. We have to place extraordinary demands on our reserves and our national guard. We have to rotate divisions in and out to give our men and women some time away from the horrible conditions there. It's clear that we can't deploy 150,000 soldiers elsewhere while we are involved with state-building in Iraq.

Meantime, our enemies grow stronger by the day. Someday soon, our enemies and our rivals will say, "Your time is up. We'll struggle against you. And we'll fight you if we have to." And they'll treat us the way we have treated them. Others don't respect us anymore. Respect is offered to a leader, and we don't lead. Others fear us. As Thucydides showed us in his parable of self-destruction, the History of the Pelopponesian War: when states fear a great power, as the Greek city-states feared Athens, the smaller states will find a way to unite against the great power to destroy it. As it turned out, Athens destroyed itself by going abroad to fight an unnecessary war in Sicily. After that campaign, Athens never regained its strength.

Athens lost its position of leadership when it began to act like a bully and a predator. Strength flowed away from it after that, just as strength flows away from a leader who shows himself to be weak. Yes, it takes some time to muster the courage that a challenge requires. It takes some time to muster counter-vailing strength. But it doesn't take that much time, and the challenge is coming soon. When it comes, we will look around for people to help us, and no one will be there.

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Krugman: Wag-the-Dog Protection

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Wag-the-Dog Protection:

"So it's important to point out that Mr. Bush, for all his posturing, has done a very bad job of protecting the nation - and to make that point now, rather than in the heat of the next foreign crisis. The fact is that Mr. Bush, while willing to go to war on weak evidence, hasn't taken the task of protecting America from terrorists at all seriously."

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

The Blogs Must Be Crazy: Or maybe the MSM is just suffering from freedom envy.

Wait, He's Got A Bomb! - Bush's secret taper tries deterrence. By Mickey Kaus

Wait, He's Got A Bomb! - Bush's secret taper�tries deterrence. By Mickey Kaus

NYT: Hunter S. Thompson, Outlaw Journalist, Is Dead at 67

The New York Times > Books > Hunter S. Thompson, Outlaw Journalist, Is Dead at 67:

"Yet his early work presaged some of the fundamental changes that have rocked journalism today. Mr. Thompson's approach in many ways mirrors the style of modern-day bloggers, those self-styled social commentators who blend news, opinion and personal experience on Internet postings. Like bloggers, Mr. Thompson built his case for the state of America around the framework of his personal views and opinions."

Monday, February 21, 2005

Herbert: Iraq, Then and Now

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Iraq, Then and Now:

"So tell me again. What was this war about? In terms of the fight against terror, the war in Iraq has been a big loss. We've energized the enemy. We've wasted the talents of the many men and women who have fought bravely and tenaciously in Iraq. Thousands upon thousands of American men and women have lost arms or legs, or been paralyzed or blinded or horribly burned or killed in this ill-advised war. A wiser administration would have avoided that carnage and marshaled instead a more robust effort against Al Qaeda, which remains a deadly threat to America."

Friday, February 18, 2005

Herbert: Our Friends, the Torturers

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Our Friends, the Torturers

"Extraordinary rendition is antithetical to everything Americans are supposed to believe in. It violates American law. It violates international law. And it is a profound violation of our own most fundamental moral imperative - that there are limits to the way we treat other human beings, even in a time of war and great fear."

Sunday, February 13, 2005

David Mamet on Arthur Miller: Attention Must Be Paid

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Contributor: Attention Must Be Paid:

"One service more we dare to ask -
Pray for us, heroes, pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task
We do not shame the day."

Friday, February 11, 2005

Herbert: Torture, American Style

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Torture, American Style

Maher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who emigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York, where he was in the process of changing planes...

Jettisoning the rule of law to permit such acts of evil as kidnapping and torture is not a defensible policy for a civilized nation. It's wrong. And nothing good can come from it.

Monday, February 07, 2005

Jeff Wilson | 02/06/2005 | Celebrating the late Ronald Reagan on his 94th birthday

AP Wire | 02/06/2005 |

Celebrating the late Ronald Reagan on his 94th birthday
: "Celebrating the late Ronald Reagan on his 94th birthday

JEFF WILSON

Associated Press


SIMI VALLEY, Calif. - The Gipper was celebrated during a Sunday gathering of loyalists on Ronald Wilson Reagan's 94th birthday, the first posthumous anniversary of his birth."