10/31/2005
The ACLU Exposed
Stop The ACLU Interviews Alan Sears, President of the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF)
Decoding Bush's Latest Speech by John Chuckman
The following quotes are from Bush's speech about the War on Terror, as given October 6, 2005, and largely repeated October 28. It was a speech especially dense with Bushspeak, a dialect which never means what it seems to say. Perspective and the occasional translation follow the quotes.
10/29/2005
Broken Homes, Broken Children by Mary Eberstadt
Thanks to the groundbreaking work of those willing to buck resistance to the bad news—Judith Wallerstein, Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, Sarah MacLanahan, Gary Sandefur, David Blankenhorn, Maggie Gallagher, Linda Waite, and others—an empirical record of the damages of broken homes has been available for some time now, welcome or not. Best-known among this scholarship is Wallerstein’s unique 25-year study, summarized in The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce, which followed 131 children at intervals into adulthood.
10/28/2005
Why Judges Aren't Smarter by John R. Lott Jr
Why have high-quality judicial nominees become so difficult to confirm? I think it's because those who oppose a smart candidate's political views worry that once on the bench the smart judge will write influential opinions or even sway other judges.
Lengthy confirmation battles with high rejection rates discourage Presidents from nominating the very best and brightest and, perhaps just as important, discourage the very best from accepting nominations.
Lengthy confirmation battles with high rejection rates discourage Presidents from nominating the very best and brightest and, perhaps just as important, discourage the very best from accepting nominations.
10/25/2005
Top Bush Supporters Set to Launch Anti-Miers Ad Campaign
A 30-second TV ad is set to air tomorrow, Wednesday, that some believe may be as effective at helping stop the Harriett Miers confirmation as the Swift Boat ads were in helping stop John Kerry.
10/24/2005
Contrarians in Conflict! Anarchists in Abundance! by Roderick T. Long
Issue 19.3 of the Journal of Libertarian Studies offers a cornucopia of exciting and controversial articles debating some of the central questions of libertarian theory:
10/21/2005
Are Jews Smarter? What Genetic Science Tells Us
Did Jewish intelligence evolve in tandem with Jewish diseases as a result of discrimination in the ghettos of medieval Europe? That’s the premise of a controversial new study that has some preening and others plotzing. What genetic science can tell us—and what it can’t.
10/20/2005
'None of Us Have the Right To Avert Our Gaze'': Ralph Nader Interviews the Rev. William Sloane Coffin
Rev. William Sloane Coffin has been a leader against the war in Vietnam, an advocate for civil rights and an opponent of nuclear weapons. Coffin was an Army officer in World War II, acting as liaison to the French and Russian armies. Upon graduating from Yale University in 1949, Coffin entered the Union Theological Seminary until the outbreak of the Korean War when, in 1950, he joined the CIA and spent three years in Germany fighting Stalin's regime.
10/18/2005
Lawyer: Ailing Vet Deported From Canada by Gene Johnson
An Army veteran who fled to Canada to avoid prosecution for growing marijuana to treat his chronic pain was yanked from a hospital by Canadian authorities, driven to the border with a catheter still attached, and turned over to U.S. officials, his lawyer says.
Dying to be Politically Correct by Paul Jacob
Now, each year, the U.S. government spends $200 million to help prevent malaria in the rest of the world, primarily in Africa and Asia. That's mighty nice of us. But none of the money goes for the inside residential spraying of DDT that allowed Americans to get a handle on the spread of the disease.
Daryl Bradford Smith interviews Michael Collins Piper
Piper alleges that the Zionists are engaged in a global, criminal conspiracy
Torture and Misery in the Name of Freedom by Harold Pinter
But the "free world" we are told, as embodied in the United States and Great Britain, is different to the rest of the world since our actions are dictated and sanctioned by a moral authority and a moral passion condoned by someone called God. Some people may find this difficult to comprehend but Osama Bin Laden finds it easy.
10/17/2005
America First!: Its History, Culture, and Politics by Bill Kauffman
A few of his main points:
* War and militarism -- ruinous to the republic and traditional American liberties
* Why we should maintain an army solely for the protection of American soil
* Ordinary people can be trusted to make their own decisions
* Say NO to treaties and institutions that transfer U.S. sovereignty to international and multinational bodies
* A prescription for strict adherence to the Bill of Rights
* American nationalism and its 19th-century underpinnings
* Warnings about reckless immigration policies and economic globalism
* Will a viable third party emerge?
* War and militarism -- ruinous to the republic and traditional American liberties
* Why we should maintain an army solely for the protection of American soil
* Ordinary people can be trusted to make their own decisions
* Say NO to treaties and institutions that transfer U.S. sovereignty to international and multinational bodies
* A prescription for strict adherence to the Bill of Rights
* American nationalism and its 19th-century underpinnings
* Warnings about reckless immigration policies and economic globalism
* Will a viable third party emerge?
10/13/2005
HIDDEN TESTIMONY REIGNITES MIERS FIRES
The DRUDGE REPORT has obtained a copy of sworn testimony given by Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers in 1990 in which she said that she “wouldn’t belong to the Federalist Society” – a conservative and libertarian lawyers’ organization – because it was “politically charged.”
But Bush's Supreme Court nominee did not include in that category the NAACP and other liberal groups, the transcript reveals!
But Bush's Supreme Court nominee did not include in that category the NAACP and other liberal groups, the transcript reveals!
10/10/2005
The Supremacists by Phyllis Schlafly
The gravest threat to American democracy is the supreme power of judges over political, social, and economic policy. Phyllis Schlafly exposes the courts’ fifty-year conquest of legislative authority, made possible by presidents, congressmen, and voters who surrendered without a fight. The Supremacists is both a warning that self-government is in peril and a plan of action for ending the tyranny of judges.
Bork Strongly Disagrees with Miers as Court Pick
Tucker Carlson talks to former judge and Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork about the Harriet Miers' nomination. He says it's, "a disaster on every level" because she has "no experience with constitutional law whatever". The nomination is a "slap in the face" to conservatives.
What to make of Chavez? Anti-American rabble rouser? Castro's devoted friend?
In Gott’s sympathetic account, Chavez is a magnetic personality of the Clintonian type, “a genuinely original figure in Latin America,” a radical left-wing nationalist, to be sure, but a pragmatic improviser, and certainly no dogmatic socialist. Chavez’s program for Venezuela remains somewhat vague, even to the man himself, but his concern for the country’s poor and marginalized is, in Gott's view, sincere and his vocation is essentially democratic.
Why did Bush do it? by Patrick J. Buchanan
Is this what conservatism has come to? By the standard of "no paper trail," we would never have nominated Scalia or Bork, or elected Ronald Reagan, who with his thousands of radio and TV commentaries had the longest paper trail in American history.
10/07/2005
The Conservation Hoax by N. Joseph Potts
Just in time to check this growing mania comes The Bottomless Well, by Peter W. Huber and Mark P. Mills (Basic Books, 2005). It provides nothing less than a total shift of paradigm for viewing the energy crises that have animated the media for at least the past 35 years. For those to whom the book's revelations are largely new, a lifetime's habits of thought on the subject of energy face complete refutation.
10/06/2005
Jon Stewart, Chuck Schumer, and the Clash Over Left-Liberalism's Soul by Anthony Gregory
After stumbling a bit, Schumer responded with the same tired, disconcerting and surreal talking points we often hear from the militant New Dealer Democrats; and then Stewart responded in a way that at once calmed all my apprehensions about the interview. Here’s the exchange:
10/04/2005
How the world was duped: the race to invade Iraq - Robert Fisk
When Colin Powell made his notorious final pitch for war at the UN Security Council, Robert Fisk was there. In the latest extract from his explosive new book, he recalls a tragi-comic occasion.
Out Now - interview with Cindy Sheehan by Joshua Frank
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04. She is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. Sheehan was recently interviewed by Joshua Frank, author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, just published by Common Courage Press.
10/03/2005
The First Casualty in War - Carl Savich
In war, truth is the first casualty.” The Greek dramatist and playwright Aeschylus noted this in the 5th B.C.