Bragging goes hand in hand with failure. I’ve met a lot of stars in my life—sport and literary ones, and not a small amount of film stars, too—and I’ve yet to come across a successful one who boasted. Sure, there was Mohammed Ali, but his was a jig, a publicity stunt to make up for the years of white man forced … [Read More]

Another Bush Administration castoff has resurfaced. Who will be next? Don Rumsfeld? First it was Paul D. Wolfowitz, ex-Deputy Director of the Pentagon, now it’s George J. Tenet, ex-CIA Director. Both were intimately involved in dragging Uncle Sam into the Iraq quagmire, the former as an advocate, the latter as an enabler. We all know where “neocon” apparatchik Wolfowitz is coming … [Read More]

As the fourth anniversary of his 2003 appearance on the U.S.S. Lincoln in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner approaches, President Bush has declared the day, May 1, a national holiday, which he said will henceforth be known as Mission Accomplished Day, or MAD for short. “On this day,” Bush said in his televised Oval Office proclamation, “Americans in all walks … [Read More]

The casus belli for “Operation Iraqi Freedom”, the invasion of Iraq, was a fraud. We know that now. Even though there was no threat whatever to the United States from Iraq, the decision was made by Richard Cheney in consultation with his junior associate, George W. Bush, to invade and occupy Iraq, a country which had been decimated by an economic … [Read More]

The first time I met Pat Buckley was in 1964 and the circumstances were rather strange.  It was at the Palace hotel in Gstaad, and a few friends and I were drinking around the large piano in the grill while the pianist was playing a spirited version of Mussolini’s favorite tune, “Giovinezza.” Our singing the ode to youth and fascism apparently … [Read More]

Every once in a while the political spectrum changes polarities, and the traditional concepts of “Left” and “Right” undergo a radical transformation: wars have this effect, quite often, and, in the present case, the political landscape is shifting before our eyes.   How do I know this? Well, suddenly I find myself agreeing with all kinds of people I would … [Read More]

Americans should really read this article from the Sunday Observer of London, discussing the latest terrorist outrages in Iraq. On the one hand, every thinking and informed person, who has not been fooled, is perplexed, repulsed and horrified at the carnage inflicted upon the people of Iraq by those suicide terrorists setting off car and truck bombs among civilians. On the … [Read More]

The House of Representatives reconvened this week after its Easter Recess.  A key legislative item is the renewed effort to begin the process of transmogrifying the District of Columbia into the functional equivalent of a State of the Union—and to do so without the benefit of an amendment to the Constitution.  Never underestimate how wily liberal leadership can be.  The proposal … [Read More]

In case you were planning a career as a nasty, mean-spirited shock-jock, who makes his living using his media pulpit to slam people who mostly can’t (or won’t) fight back, here’s a handy tip: Stick to attacking our culture’s designated pinatas. Working-class whites, Southerners, all white Protestants (but especially Evangelicals), stay-at-home moms, and Mormons are all safe targets. In most circles, … [Read More]

As I mentioned a couple of months ago, there was an attempt going around D.C. to kill my American Conservative article "Obama's Identity Crisis" before I'd even finished it. Now, the would-be censor, some guy named Alexander Konetzki, recounts in the Washington Monthly his heroic effort to silence my questioning of the Presidential candidate's media image: "Ever since Barack Obama burst … [Read More]