National Review back issues from March 2007:
Act casual.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007; ... In a recent edition of The Week (Dec. 18, 2006), you bemoaned the possible negative effects of a male contraceptive pill "in this age of regrettably ...
Sympathy for the devil.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007; ... John Derbyshire may be NATIONAL REVIEW's resident atheist, but he's crossed a certain Rubicon by capitalizing the personal pronoun "His" in referring to Satan ("Flow Ho Ho," Feb. 12). I don't know whether Anton ...
All in good time.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007; ... Though I agree with Ramesh Ponnuru's incisive take in many of its particulars ("The Home Front," Feb. 12), the sad truth is that the conservative resurgence is mostly out of our hands. Only when liberal government becomes intolerable to Americans--as it surely will--will people look to us ...
Child's play.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007; ... In "The Home Front," Ramesh Ponnuru avers that our tax system benefits the childless at the expense of their more fecund countrymen. Yet as the average age of first-time parents goes up, the higher taxes Ponnuru suggests aiming at "affluent childless people" could very well affect and ...
Barack Obama is complaining that the press doesn't take him seriously enough.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Barack Obama is complaining that the press doesn't take him ...
Like a lot of battle plans, Senate majority leader Harry Reid's didn't survive contact with the enemy.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Like a lot of battle plans, Senate majority leader Harry Reid's didn't survive contact with the enemy. He wanted his troops to inflict damage on President Bush by voting for a resolution against the surge. That would have been an easy vote for Democrats, since the surge polls poorly. But ...
When it was reported that Speaker Pelosi had requested a military plane big enough to fly her and her entourage coast to coast nonstop, Republicans delightedly pounced on a scandalous "Air Pelosi" story.(The Week)(Nancy Patricia D'Alesandro Pelosi)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... When it was reported that Speaker Pelosi had requested a military plane big enough to fly her and her entourage coast to coast nonstop, Republicans delightedly pounced on a scandalous "Air Pelosi" story. The plane she purportedly requested can accommodate 45 passengers, with a crew of 16 ...
Sen. Hillary Clinton said that the record profits of "the oil companies" should be put in an alternative-energy fund.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Sen. Hillary Clinton said that the record profits of "the oil companies" should be put in an alternative-energy fund. She is right about the record profits: ExxonMobil made $39.5 billion last year, more than any other company in history. But its profit came second to that of the ...
60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asked Sen. Barack Obama what he made of charges that he isn't "black enough.".(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft asked Sen. Barack Obama what he made of charges that he isn't "black enough." The Senator articulated inter alia that: "I ... notice when I'm catching a cab, nobody's confused about that." In a later segment of the interview, Mrs. Obama joined her ...
"What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?".(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... "What if Mary had taken Plan B after the Lord filled her with his hot, white, sticky Holy Spirit?" What if, indeed? You won't get the answer in the Iowa caucuses, since Amanda Marcotte, who posted the question on her blog, no longer works for John Edwards. Edwards hired her to spearhead ...
Three and a half years after the explosion over the CIA leak controversy, we have the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Three and a half years after the explosion over the CIA leak controversy, we have the perjury and obstruction trial of Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff. And what have we learned? Well, testimony has revealed that a number of top government officials were ...
Most of the commentary on President Bush's proposed 2008 budget has portrayed it as a blowout.(The Week)(George W. Bush)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Most of the commentary on President Bush's proposed 2008 budget has portrayed it as a blowout. It is indeed big: $2.9 trillion, up a trillion from when Bush took office. Much of that increase is attributable to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and is entirely defensible. The big news is ...
A tired old song.
Mar 05, 2007; ... WHAT do Jimmy Carter and the Dixie Chicks have in common? They're southerners who've traded "up" on their southernness. They hit their best moments long ago, but have ridden positive press far beyond their natural shelf life. They think a lot of themselves. Good teeth. What else, what else ...
Our trading partners are pressuring us to reduce our farm subsidies, and record-high crop prices make it a good time to act.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Our trading partners are pressuring us to reduce our farm subsidies, and record-high crop prices make it a good time to act. So President Bush has proposed cutting farm subsidies by as much as $4.5 billion over the next ten years. It is a welcome proposal. But we've been down this road ...
Eliot Spitzer, the new Democratic governor of New York, is in a fight with the legislature over filling the position of the state's chief financial officer.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Eliot Spitzer, the new Democratic governor of New York, is in a fight with the legislature over filling the position of the state's chief financial officer. Spitzer nominated three number crunchers, but the Democratic-controlled Assembly chose one of its own. Spitzer went ape, traveling to ...
And now to North Korea: when did Kim Jong Il become trustworthy?(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... And now to North Korea: When did Kim Jong Il become trustworthy? That's the question one asks in response to the deal over North Korea's nuclear program. Kim will get $400 million in fuel oil in exchange for shutting down the Yongbyon nuclear reactor. The U.S. is to move toward normalizing ...
Senior American military officials gave a briefing in Baghdad on Iranian weapons that have killed 170 Americans and wounded 620 since 2004: EFPs, or explosively formed penetrators, that release armor-cutting molten copper balls.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Senior American military officials gave a briefing in Baghdad on Iranian weapons that have killed 170 Americans and wounded 620 since 2004: EFPs, or explosively formed penetrators, that release armor-cutting molten copper balls. The briefers said that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard ...
If there is one aspect of War on Terror diplomacy that robs administration officials of their sleep more than any other, it is surely the U.S.-Pakistan relationship.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... If there is one aspect of War on Terror diplomacy that robs administration officials of their sleep more than any other, it is surely the U.S.-Pakistan relationship. John Negroponte testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee in January that "Pakistan is a major source of Islamic ...
The number of nations that extend formal diplomatic recognition to the Republic of China (which is to say, Taiwan) rather than to the People's Republic of China (Red China) is down to 24.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... The number of nations that extend formal diplomatic recognition to the Republic of China (which is to say, Taiwan) rather than to the People's Republic of China (Red China) is down to 24. Grenada dropped off the list in January 2005, in return for an aid donation equivalent to $1,500 for ...
A nationwide smoking ban went into effect in France, yet another blow to the stereotype of the French as a nation of louche but intellectual libertines, Jeanne Moreau and Alain Delon lounging in bed discussing Heidegger through a fug of cigarette smoke.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... A nationwide smoking ban went into effect in France, yet another blow to the stereotype of the French as a nation of louche but intellectual libertines, Jeanne Moreau and Alain Delon lounging in bed discussing Heidegger through a fug of cigarette smoke. Ah, ou sont les Gitanes d'antan? ...
The human-interest story of the fortnight is surely the one about Lisa Nowak, the lovesick astronaut.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... The human-interest story of the fortnight is surely the one about Lisa Nowak, the lovesick astronaut. Aside from offering a rich trove of similes, allusions, and puns to witty editorialists ("star-crossed," "moonbat," "lust in space," "fatal gravitational attraction," etc., etc.), this ...
The rule of gambling is that the house always wins.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... The rule of gambling is that the house always wins. It is also the rule of sexual objectification and runaway celebrity culture, as Anna Nicole Smith's life showed. At moments she seemed the capable mistress of her fate. Who didn't smile when she appeared before the Supreme Court, in ...
A little insight into the way we live now was offered the other day by Rick Kushman, TV columnist of the Sacramento Bee.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... A little insight into the way we live now was offered the other day by Rick Kushman, TV columnist of the Sacramento Bee. Mr. Kushman had been hobnobbing with studio people, and retailed the following story. Marc Cherry, the creator of ABC's hit show Desperate Housewives, and, says Kushman, ...
Not all rallies are reported equal.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Not all rallies are reported equal. Washington recently saw two big public demonstrations: the March for Life, marking the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and another let's-abandon-Iraq-and-impeach-that-bastard-Bush extravaganza. None of the big-three networks sent a national reporter to cover ...
Sometimes a nomination needs a warning label.(The Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Sometimes a nomination needs a warning label. When the National Book Critics Circle picked Bruce Bawer's While Europe Slept as one of five finalists in the criticism category, Eliot Weinberger, who announced the selections, called Bawer's book "racism as criticism"; John Freeman, president ...
Thrill Me.(Poem)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007; ... <Pre> THRILL ME Brownback doesn't; Huckabee'sToo jejune to be my squeeze.Giuliani sounds like Oz,While McCain's recalling Ma's ...
Terrorism? Islam? What connection?(This Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... Terrorism? Islam? What connection? So implied Long Island University when it fired five seniors from their jobs as residence-hall assistants for making a spoof hostage video. In the film, which turned up on YouTube, the quintet demanded doughnuts and pastries in exchange for the release of ...
George Santayana, who taught there, called Harvard the "toy Athens" of America.(This Week)(Harvard University)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... George Santayana, who taught there, called Harvard the "toy Athens" of America. The toy Athens is looking pretty ragged these days. Harvard replaced former president Larry Summers, ousted in a faculty-led coup, with Drew Gilpin Faust. Faust spent a quarter century as a feminist historian ...
The University of Wisconsin has decided to hire its first military-history professor in 15 years--an action that the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, credits NATIONAL REVIEW with motivating.(This Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... The University of Wisconsin has decided to hire its first military-history professor in 15 years--an action that the student newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, credits NATIONAL REVIEW with motivating. Last fall, NR's John J. Miller reported on the decline of military history in higher ...
The Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism is given once a year, to a journalist who exhibits "love of country and its democratic institutions" and "bears witness to the evils of totalitarianism.".(This Week)(Brief article)
Mar 05, 2007 ... The Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism is given once a year, to a journalist who exhibits "love of country and its democratic institutions" and "bears witness to the evils of totalitarianism." The award is worth $20,000 ....
Rudy's run.(2008)(Rudy Giuliani)
Mar 05, 2007 ... RUDY GIULIANI is a compelling candidate for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. He saved New York City, by restoring law and order and breaking with the disastrous urban liberalism of the 1970s. He will forever be honored for his leadership after the 9/11 attacks. And his ...
Planet Gore.(PUBLIC POLICY)(Al Gore)
Mar 05, 2007 ... THE U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released a summary of its latest report. The release has had the intended effect: generating fresh gloom and doom about global warming. The New York Times described the report as "a grim and powerful assessment of the future ...
Ralph de Toledano, R.I.P.(OBITUARY)(Obituary)
Mar 05, 2007 ... RALPH DE TOLEDANO was the saddest man I ever knew. One only hopes that his death on February 3, at 90, ended that sadness, though it requires a very dogmatic belief in God to be confident of it. I heard from Toledano ("not de Toledano," he instructed me years ago) at regular ...
The great audacious hope: Senator Obama kicks off.(2008)(Barack Obama )
Mar 05, 2007; ... Durham, N.H. AT a town-hall meeting in the University of New Hampshire field house, Barack Obama says people can ask any question they like and promises to answer "without equivocation." There's applause, and hands go up all around the gymnasium packed with a couple of thousand people on a ...
A mandate in Texas: the story of a compulsory vaccination and what it means.(PUBLIC POLICY)
Mar 05, 2007; ... ON February 2, Texas became the first state to require that young girls be vaccinated against some sexually transmitted viruses. This happened when Gov. Rick Perry issued an executive order requiring that students receive a new vaccine before entering the sixth grade. Perry's order has met ...
The death of the Hamilton Center: a case in upstate New York has implications all over.(EDUCATION)
Mar 05, 2007; ... ON August 24, 2006, Hamilton College president Joan Stewart, one of her top deans, and three professors toasted the birth of the Alexander Hamilton Center. They poured champagne, clinked glasses, and anticipated a bright future for their new project. "We drank from a bottle of Dom Perignon ...
Plots to behead: dealing with the phenomena of our time.(AT WAR)(Essay)
Mar 05, 2007; ... READERS of NATIONAL REVIEW, I know, will jump to no hasty or unwarranted conclusions when I inform them that I happened to be in Toronto when 17 young Muslims were arrested there for plotting to blow up the Canadian parliament and behead the prime minister, and in Birmingham when nine of ...
Into Africa: to Timbuktu and back.(TRAVEL)
Mar 05, 2007; ... FINDING your way around Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, should be easy to do. Wide, ramshackle boulevards radiate from plazas and monuments --this is French Africa, after all--and even the hovel-lined dirt alleys are organized into a relentless grid. Buzzards perch on top of the ...
More: the crying need for a bigger U.S. military.
Mar 05, 2007; ... IN 1979, the captain of the USS Canisteo refused to certify his ship as seaworthy, because, in his opinion, his men had not been adequately trained. It was the first time in 15 years that a U.S. Navy captain had refused to take his ship to sea. His courage, coupled with a blistering report ...
Fever in the Alps: global elites and global warming.(THE WORLD)(Essay)
Mar 05, 2007; ... Davos, Switzerland EVERY year, the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum has a theme, and this year it's "The Shifting Power Equation." But the real theme here in Davos is global warming--it's on everyone's lips, and everyone's brain. There are 17--17!--separate sessions on global ...
Huxley's period piece: Brave New World turns 75.(ESSAY)(Critical essay)
Mar 05, 2007; ... THIS year marks the 75th birthday of Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, first published in February 1932. That novel became one of the most discussed works of literature of the 20th century. Its title, which Huxley took from Shakespeare's play The Tempest, has passed into the ...
Our last nerve.(the bent pin)(Essay)
Mar 05, 2007; ... AMONG the intimacies that used to be saved for marriage were the words, "If you do that one more time I'll scream." Nerve-wracking, however, is not what it used to be. Our era of overexposed celebrities has turned us into molar-grinding practitioners of promiscuous irritation aimed at ...
Global warming.(HELP!!!)(Poem)
Mar 05, 2007; ... <Pre> Global Warming I know Greenland is melting. I know the polar bearsLook poorly in the Arctic; But I get those rude ...
Transcript from Larry King Live: February 10, 2008.(the long view)(Discussion)
Mar 05, 2007; ... LARRY KING: "Tomorrow night! The whole hour with former presidential candidate John Edwards, direct from the Wayside County Men's Correctional Facility! From Appleton, Wisconsin, hello!" CALLER: "Hi, Larry. Hi, Senator Clinton. I was wondering if Senator Clinton, knowing what ...
Fight the real enemy.(The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11)(Book review)
Mar 05, 2007; ... The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, by Dinesh D'Souza (Doubleday, 352 pp., $26.95) DINESH D'SOUZA's new book about the blame for 9/11 begins with a quotation from Abraham Lincoln--one that I did not know but the gravamen of which I heartily ...
Bio hazard.(Next)(Book review)
Mar 05, 2007; ... Next, by Michael Crichton (HarperCollins, 448 pp., $27.95) IN reviewing Next, Michael Crichton's new novel of the biotech future, I have to begin with a disclosure. Crichton now footnotes his novels, and in the endnotes to this one he cites my book Liberation Biology--which he ...
St. John of Harvard yard.(Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition)(Book review)
Mar 05, 2007; ... Illiberal Justice: John Rawls vs. the American Political Tradition, by David Lewis Schaefer (Missouri, 368 pp., $24.95) HARVARD philosopher John Rawls's death in 2002 generated obituaries even more embarrassingly pompous than the sort academics usually write for one another. He ...
To The Haunted Child.(Poem)
Mar 05, 2007; ... <Pre> TO THE HAUNTED CHILD The circles underneath your violet eyesremain with me once I have closed my own.I know those ghosts the nightlight will disguise.I've seen the starkness in the half-starved bone,the straining candor and the skittish grace,and all ...
God, man & sex.(book reviews)(Book review)
Mar 05, 2007; ... THE name of Milton Himmelfarb would deserve immortality if only for his coinage of the famous aphorism that Jews earn like Episcopalians but vote like Puerto Ricans. A new anthology of his writings, Jews and Gentiles (Encounter, 273 pp., $25.95), edited by his sister, Gertrude Himmelfarb, ...
And the winner is ...
Mar 05, 2007; ... WHY do we still care about the Oscars? The world of cinema is so awash in awards shows that nearly every movie gets to call itself a winner: If your favorite film doesn't take the New York Film Critics Circle laurels, maybe the London Critics' Circle will smile upon it; if it doesn't get a ...
Move on.(CITY DESK)(newspaper Master's Voice )(Essay)
Mar 05, 2007; ... A MORGUE is a place where bodies are stored; a newspaper's morgue is a place where clippings are filed. Bodies lie in a morgue temporarily, awaiting burial; clippings are not buried, but slumber in their folders until the moment when someone wants to hear their stories. The ...
China up there.(on the right)
Mar 05, 2007; ... NEW YORK, JANUARY 19 In August, President Bush approved a new U.S. policy on space exploration and on the military and commercial uses of space. The White House announced that the United States would not agree to any arrangements that would restrict our own ventures into space. ...
Politics for a billion.(on the right)
Mar 05, 2007; ... NEW YORK, JANUARY 23 The round number is now $500 million. Five hundred million dollars is what each major party's presidential nominee is expected to spend between now and November 4, 2008. Today's story focuses on Hillary Clinton's decision not to accept public campaign ...
Howard Hunt, R.I.P.(on the right)(rest in peace)(Biography)
Mar 05, 2007; ... NEW YORK, JANUARY 26 My name has been linked to that of Howard Hunt, who died on January 23, and I readily acknowledge that we were associates and close friends during the period (1951-52) when I worked for the CIA in Mexico. Howard Hunt was my boss, and our friendship was such ...
We must go from Korea.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 19, 2007; ... I would like to comment briefly on Jim Talent's excellent article "More," calling for a bigger U.S. military (March 5). While I agree with him on the need to keep the armed forces equipped and staffed properly for their missions, I also can't help wondering if our military is not simply ...
Enemies at home and abroad.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 19, 2007; ... Some points on Roger Kimball's review of Dinesh D'Souza's new book, The Enemy at Home ("Fight the Real Enemy," March 5): American culture, under the persistent encouragement of the organized Left and its judges, has deteriorated terribly in the past 50 years, and continues to get worse ...
Just a few trillions.(Letter to the editor)
Mar 19, 2007; ... In a recent edition of The Week (March 5), you stated that the "big news" about the 2008 budget proposed by President Bush "is that this budget makes a serious effort to rein in runaway entitlement costs." Thanks--I haven't had such a hearty laugh since the Clinton administration. Eleven ...
Intelligent design?(Letter to the editor)
Mar 19, 2007; ... If I have it right, John Derbyshire believes that we must stop imagining that the warning proffered in Brave New World applies to our circumstances ("Huxley's Period Piece," March 5)--after all, designer babies "ought to be welcomed by free citizens in a free society." The presentation of ...
Does this mean that Hillary Clinton is too unethical.
Mar 19, 2007 ... Does this mean that Hillary ...
Election season nominally begins with the candidates announcing their campaigns; it truly begins with the first knife fight.(Brief article)
Mar 19, 2007 ... Election season nominally begins with the candidates announcing their campaigns; it truly begins with the first knife fight. The Clinton and Obama camps had that little rumble, thanks to David Geffen and Maureen Dowd. Geffen, the liberal Hollywood mogul (is there any other kind?), ...
John Edwards has a template for making sense out of Iraq.(Brief article)
Mar 19, 2007 ... John Edwards has a template for making sense out of Iraq. He told a crowd in Nashua, N.H., that our presence there was like scolding a child for not making his bed, then making the bed repeatedly. "We're continuing to enable this bad behavior." Over the last four years, millions of Iraqis ...
Al Gore enjoyed a twofer on Oscar night.(Brief article)
Mar 19, 2007 ... Al Gore enjoyed a twofer on Oscar night. In case An Inconvenient Truth did not win for best documentary, he was given stage time with Leonardo DiCaprio to announce that the Oscars had gone green (presenters rode to the ceremony in hybrid vehicles). But of course An Inconvenient Truth did ...
Ramesh Ponnuru has the cover story in this issue of NR, making the conservative case for John McCain.
Mar 19, 2007 ... Ramesh Ponnuru has the cover story in this issue of NR, making the conservative case for John McCain. Lest any of our dear readers be confused, this is not an official endorsement, but a ...
A Washington Post expose found squalid conditions in a building that houses outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.(Brief article)
Mar 19, 2007 ... A Washington Post expose found squalid conditions in a building that houses outpatients at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Embarrassed Army officials dispatched construction crews to remove mold, patch ceiling holes, and repair elevators. The Pentagon then resorted to the first refuge of ...
In its initial stages, the Baghdad troop surge has shown promise.(Brief article)
Mar 19, 2007 ... In its initial stages, the Baghdad troop surge has shown promise. Shiite thug-cleric Moqtada al-Sadr has apparently fled to Iran, and he has ordered his militia not to fight us. We have been able to pick off some of his top leaders, and the Shiites' appalling ethnic-cleansing campaign ...