For the Cheney-Bush White House, the recent NIE concerning Iran’s nuclear capability was a bombshell. Its significance was recognized immediately by all interested parties. No doubt this is the reason Dick Cheney had it bottled up for a year. Putting aside articles by Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, we first learned about this new National Intelligence Estimate from White House … [Read More]

Oh, Justin, Justin, Justin.  My friend, I know that you’re too intelligent to be taken in by the likes of Bill Donohue.  The same Bill Donohue who said “Yeah, I believe in freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but don’t become a salesman. Don’t hawk it like that on the street” has made his living at the Catholic League for … [Read More]

I understand the, uh, over-sensitiveness of Christians when they believe they are being forced to take their Christianity out of “the public square,” as my good friend Scott Richert avers, but the Huckster’s “floating cross” ad is a vulgar display of I’m-more-Christian-than-you-guys electioneering that is even beyond the pale for Catholic League president Bill Donahue, who is surely no militant secular … [Read More]

Some of you nice folk out there may remember that three weeks ago I wrote about a giant corporation screwing old ladies and retired people who have worked all their lives just to see their life savings go up in smoke. I will not bore you with details. Suffice to say that a giant corporation did not do its due dilligence … [Read More]

The 2008 Republican presidential race has already produced two upsets: the rise of Mike Huckabee from no-hoper to a serious threat to Mitt Romney in Iowa and the spectacular fundraising success of Ron Paul, who raised over $4.2 million on Nov. 5 alone and be the top Republican fundraiser for the fourth quarters of 2007. The potential exists for a bigger … [Read More]

I support Ron Paul, and I intend to vote for him in the Illinois primary.  But I had a little different reaction from Justin’s when I watched the clip of the congressman commenting on the Huckster’s Christmas ad.  My friend and colleague Aaron Wolf is right: “That was not a wise comment by Ron Paul.” In fact, the congressman seems tired … [Read More]

Finally, Ron Paul is acting like a contender—attacking the other candidates: Ron isn’t the only one who thinks the Huckster sounds like Berzelius Windrip, and with good reason.   [Read More]

Last week one got to watch and hear various face-saving gestures by Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who was discovered to have taken politically incorrect positions on a signature issue. As a senatorial candidate from Arkansas in 1992, Huckabee had dared to state that he opposed sending women into combat because it jarred with their “dignity.” The former Arkansas governor … [Read More]

As a native New Yorker who has lived in the City (albeit Queens) most of his life, I have some reason to be grateful to Rudolph Giuliani. His policies—and the capable police commissioner he hired, then enviously fired, William Bratton—helped reverse the decline of a once vital city, whose coffers had been scraped, its thugs empowered, and institutions corrupted through during … [Read More]

Jim Geraghty, writing in National Review, has some advice for Ron Paul: “In a perfect world, I’d like to see Ron Paul say, ‘My campaign has never been about money, but we find ourselves with more money than we will need from a nationwide network of generous grassroots supporters. I’m going to take what I don’t need for immediate campaign expenses … [Read More]