National Review back issues from August 2007:
Correction.(Correction notice)
Aug 13, 2007 ... In our July 30 issue, Bing West's piece, "Battle of the Narratives," spoke of 20 decapitated bodies in Salman Pak, Iraq. This atrocity ...
Elizabeth Edwards says that John Edwards is the most feminist candidate in the race.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
Aug 13, 2007 ... Elizabeth Edwards says that John Edwards is the most ...
After passengers reported the suspicious behavior of six Muslim clerics on a US Airways flight last November, the clerics were questioned and cleared--and the passengers were slapped with a lawsuit.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
Aug 13, 2007 ... After passengers reported the suspicious behavior of six Muslim clerics on a US Airways flight last November, the clerics were questioned and cleared--and the passengers were slapped with a lawsuit. The Council on American-Islamic Relations has helped the "flying imams" file an accusation ...
"Scott Thomas," a pseudonymous soldier who files occasional pieces on life at the front in Iraq for The New Republic, had some particularly raw vignettes recently.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
Aug 13, 2007 ... "Scott Thomas," a pseudonymous soldier who files occasional pieces on life at the front in Iraq for The New Republic, had some particularly raw vignettes recently: soldiers laughing at a woman soldier or contractor disfigured by an IED; the discovery of a mass grave of children, which ...
A twentysomething Muslim woman who served as a juror in a London murder trial is being charged with contempt of court because she listened to music on an iPod, hidden beneath her head-covering hijab, while the trial was in progress.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
Aug 13, 2007 ... A twentysomething Muslim woman who served as a juror in a London murder trial is being charged with contempt of court because she listened to music on an iPod, hidden beneath her head-covering hijab, while the trial was in progress. The judge in the case had thought he could hear tinny ...
There are some curious nuggets of information to be unearthed from the Federal Election Commission's campaign-contribution database.(THE WEEK)(Barry Manilow's contributions)(Brief article)
Aug 13, 2007 ... There are some curious nuggets of information to be unearthed from the Federal Election Commission's campaign-contribution database. Consider, for example, the filings for singer Barry Manilow. Back in February, he gave the maximum permitted contributions of $2,300 each to Democrats ...
The game of checkers has been completely solved.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
Aug 13, 2007 ... The game of checkers has been completely solved. A computer program has been developed that will make the best possible response to any of the 500 billion billion possible board positions that might arise in the noble game. The program, called Chinook, is the ...
Our pleasant blue Earth has a sister planet, Venus, of approximately the same size and internal composition.(THE WEEK)(Brief article)
Aug 13, 2007 ... Our pleasant blue Earth has a sister planet, Venus, of approximately the same size and internal composition. Venus, however, is not pleasant at all. An atmosphere 93 times heavier than Earth's creates pressure at the planet's surface equivalent to that half a mile down in our oceans ....
S-chipping away at free markets.(PUBLIC POLICY)(expansion of State Children's Health Insurance Program)
Aug 13, 2007 ... TEN years ago, Congress enacted the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or S-CHIP, to cover kids whose parents were doing too well to qualify for Medicaid assistance but not well enough to buy their own insurance. Now the program is up for reauthorization, and congressional ...
'Peace through light': the latest case of missile defense and its enemies.(DEFENSE)(Airborne Laser program problems)
Aug 13, 2007; ... FRIDAY THE 13TH may not be the most auspicious date for a high-stakes missile-defense test, but it didn't bother Air Force Col. John Daniels. "We had no concerns," he says. Indeed, the plane that he and many others have spent years building worked just about perfectly on that star-crossed ...
Farmers on the dole: the crying need for ag reform.(PUBLIC POLICY II)(federal support on agriculture)
Aug 13, 2007; ... AMERICA has the most innovative and industrious farm community in the world. Contrary to conventional wisdom, most of it gets by without government support--but a small handful of very large producers are stuck in a cycle of dependency on the federal government. Drenched in subsidies, ...
Transcript court-ordered mediation in the matter of.(The long view)(Satan vs. Hillary Clinton)
Aug 13, 2007; ... His Satanic Majesty plaintiff v. President Hillary Rodham Clinton defendant Present: His Satanic Majesty (Satan), plaintiff; plaintiff's attorney, Mr. Bertram Fields; President Hillary Rodham Clinton, defendant; defendant's attorney, Mr. Gregory Craig ...
The madness begins.(Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism)(Book review)
Aug 13, 2007; ... Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism, by James Piereson (Encounter, 253 pp., $25.95) PITIFULLY few subjects in American history have received, or wasted, as much ink as the Kennedy assassination ....
Apologia Americana.(Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion)(Book review)
Aug 13, 2007; ... Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion, by David Gelernter (Doubleday, 240 pp., $24.95) AMERICA, Chesterton famously observed, is a nation with the soul of a church. The remark is often misunderstood as a comment on the ubiquity of religious profession and practice in ...
Ad multos annos!(Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts)(Book review)
Aug 13, 2007; ... Counterpoints: 25 Years of The New Criterion on Culture and the Arts, edited by Roger Kimball and Hilton Kramer (Ivan R. Dee, 512 pp., $35) A QUARTER-CENTURY ago, Hilton Kramer, the former chief art critic of the New York Times, and the late Samuel Lipman, a distinguished ...
After the fall.(Falling Man)(Book review)
Aug 13, 2007; ... Falling Man, by Don DeLillo (Scribner, 256 pp., $26) IN 1945, Theodor Adorno famously said that "after Auschwitz, writing poetry is barbaric." But the poets kept on writing, and the Holocaust itself became a fixture of the literary scene. In the immediate wake of 9/11, many ...
American gothic.(Poem)
Aug 13, 2007; ... <Pre> AMERICAN GOTHIC It came with the house--God in the attic;And a stream undergroundThat made him rheumatic. Why shouldn't he beSelf-righteous?--the mortgageAlmost paid up & the kids goneTo war ...
Auld Kirk.(SHELF LIFE)(The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk; Locke; Coincidentally)(Book review)
Aug 13, 2007; ... ALAN WOLFE's enraged essay on Russell Kirk in The New Republic earlier this summer underscores a problem many people of a rationalist, coolly logical cast of mind--liberals and conservatives alike--have with Kirk. It's not so much that they disagree with him (though many, of course, do) as ...
A few charms.(FILM)(Harry Potter film adaptations)
Aug 13, 2007; ... I DON'T envy anyone the task of adapting a Harry Potter novel for the screen; it's a thankless assignment that I wouldn't take on if you paid me. Well, all right, maybe I'd do it if you paid me ... and okay, I'd probably do it for free ... and fine, maybe I'd empty out my savings and pay ...
Let's get physical.(THE STRAGGLER)(shovels and compost heap)
Aug 13, 2007; ... Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relatively to other such matter; second, telling other people to do so. The first kind is unpleasant and ill paid; the second is pleasant and highly paid. The second kind is capable of indefinite ...
Excuses, excuses.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
Aug 27, 2007; ... Ralph Peters's article on ethnic cleansing ("Better Than Genocide," August 13) is a disappointment. The moral truth it contains is trivial, and can be captured in a single sentence: It is better to dispossess a man of his home and property than it is to murder him. The policy implication ...
Bleeding kuomintang.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
Aug 27, 2007; ... I disagree with Jay Nordlinger's suggestion in his piece "Taiwan's Two Dozen" (August 13) that, although Taiwan once "did not have a proper legislature," it does have one now. As the BBC reports, "Taiwan's parliament, which is split between two major political factions, often ...
Cruising for booze.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
Aug 27, 2007; ... Neither Michael Moore nor Jay Nordlinger explored the delicious irony in the opening song of Sicko, "I'll See You in C-U-B-A" ("The Myth of Cuban Health Care," July 30). Irving Berlin wrote the music and lyrics of the song for the Ziegfeld Follies of 1920. Berlin wasn't traveling to Cuba ...
After saying he would meet with enemies of our country.(The Week)(Barack Obama attendance at Daily Kos convention)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... After saying he would meet with enemies of our country, however ...
The Democratic presidential candidates skipped the annual conference of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, but trooped over to the one affiliated with dailykos.com and other left-wing blogs.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The Democratic presidential candidates skipped the annual conference of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council, but trooped over to the one affiliated with dailykos.com and other left-wing blogs. Sen. Hillary Clinton, speaking of Iraq, said, "We have to keep the pressure on, and ...
Barack Obama rattled his saber at Pakistan early this month.(The Week)(Obama announcement on terrorism in Pakistan)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... Barack Obama rattled his saber at Pakistan early this month. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans .... If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf will not act, we will." Obama was looking for a way ...
"Scott Thomas," the soldier who, as Baghdad diarist for The New Republic, reported gross and inhumane behavior committed by American troops in Iraq, has a surname: His name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... "Scott Thomas," the soldier who, as Baghdad diarist for The New Republic, reported gross and inhumane behavior committed by American troops in Iraq, has a surname: His name is Scott Thomas Beauchamp. That may be about all he has when the dust settles. Challenged on numerous improbabilities ...
During a recent candidate forum, Clinton and Obama both said that if there were a draft, which they oppose, young men and women alike should be conscripted to serve in the military.(The Week)(Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... During a recent candidate forum, Clinton and Obama both said that if there were a draft, which they oppose, young men and women alike should be conscripted to serve in the military. Although the candidates attempted to shift the subject to the importance of "national service," young men ...
The Democratic Congress is determined to send President Bush a bill expanding the federal program that provides health coverage to middle-class families.(The Week)(George W. Bush)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The Democratic Congress is determined to send President Bush a bill expanding the federal program that provides health coverage to middle-class families. The program was originally designed to aid children whose parents made too much money to qualify for Medicaid but still had trouble ...
The FBI raided the home of Republican senator Ted Stevens in connection with a corruption case it is investigating in his state, Alaska.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The FBI raided the home of Republican senator Ted Stevens in connection with a corruption case it is investigating in his state, Alaska. In 2000, Stevens ordered an extensive home-improvement project that nearly doubled the size of his house. Allegedly, the contractors who did the work ...
The record will show that we are not reflexive defenders of attorney general Alberto Gonzales.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The record will show that we are not reflexive defenders of attorney general Alberto Gonzales. If our advice had been taken a few months ago, he would be "former attorney general Alberto Gonzales" by now. But we like false allegations of perjury even less than we like Gonzales. Democrats ...
Justice league.(The Week)(United States's formation and joining with 'League of Democracies')
Aug 27, 2007; ... I HAVE been advocating a "League of Democracies" for several years now. I'm hardly alone. The idea is old and has popped up from time to time for a century. The phrase, embarrassingly enough, was widely used during debates over the Treaty of Versailles. Recently, John McCain called for ...
Has any case against a lower-court nominee been weaker or more disgraceful than the Democrats' case against Leslie H. Southwick, Bush's nominee for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals?(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... Has any case against a lower-court nominee been weaker or more disgraceful than the Democrats' case against Leslie H. Southwick, Bush's nominee for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals? Even though he received the highest rating from the American Bar Association--hardly a friend of the ...
The collapse of the Interstate 35 W bridge in Minneapolis was the Garrison Keillor Katrina: a failure of infrastructure, now in the upper Midwest, that riveted America's attention.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The collapse of the Interstate 35 W bridge in Minneapolis was the Garrison Keillor Katrina: a failure of infrastructure, now in the upper Midwest, that riveted America's attention. (Thankfully, the lack of an accompanying natural disaster held the death toll to single digits.) In a modern ...
Between the Senate energy bill and the energy bill the House just passed, it's hard to say which is worse.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... Between the Senate energy bill and the energy bill the House just passed, it's hard to say which is worse. It looked like the Senate bill's awfulness would be hard to surpass: It calls for a 40 percent increase in automobile fuel-efficiency standards that would make cars less safe and more ...
"There is such a thing in politics," said Martin Van Buren (D., N.Y.), "as killing a man too dead.".(The Week)(Eliot Spitzer's aides' mudslinging at Joe Bruno)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... "There is such a thing in politics," said Martin Van Buren (D., N.Y.), "as killing a man too dead." Eliot Spitzer (D., N.Y.) is learning that lesson. Spitzer, a headline-grabbing liberal attorney general, won the governorship last November with 69 percent of the vote. Lone obstacle to his ...
With a $5 billion ring, Rupert Murdoch wed the Wall Street Journal.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... With a $5 billion ring, Rupert Murdoch wed the Wall Street Journal. Every fan of lively journalism, and every conservative, wishes the happy couple well. The Journal is a profitable titan; still, the economics of newspapering are so grim that it needed an infusion of Murdoch's cash and ...
What is being characterized as a "Saudi arms deal" is provoking opposition on both the right and the left.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... What is being characterized as a "Saudi arms deal" is provoking opposition on both the right and the left. It is not, however, a stand-alone deal; it is part of a broad initiative to knit the Gulf states together with one another and with us against Iran. The region traditionally had two ...
The U.S. and India finally hammered out the details of their agreement to share nuclear technology.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The U.S. and India finally hammered out the details of their agreement to share nuclear technology. Critics of the deal charge that it is too generous--recklessly generous--to India. The U.S. will supply India with nuclear fuel for its reactors, and will allow India to reprocess this fuel ....
The inner thoughts of Gordon Brown, the recent successor in Downing Street to Tony Blair, are a wholly unknown quantity.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The inner thoughts of Gordon Brown, the recent successor in Downing Street to Tony Blair, are a wholly unknown quantity. In a peculiarly lugubrious voice, he delivers himself of abstract language on almost all subjects; his statements might mean anything or nothing. On foreign affairs, he ...
A dreadful tale of squalor and injustice tells you all you need to know about Muammar Qaddafi and the way he runs Libya.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... A dreadful tale of squalor and injustice tells you all you need to know about Muammar Qaddafi and the way he runs Libya. Over 400 local children contracted AIDS, and some 50 of them have died. Admission that poor medicine was the cause would have been shaming, and so five Bulgarian nurses ...
Why Bush smiles.(poem)(Poem)
Aug 27, 2007; ... <Pre> WHY BUSH SMILES Two lefties from Brookings opiningOn Iraq last week in the TimesWere so optimistic, PelosiAppeared to be sucking on ...
Since Mao Tse-tung, back in the 1950s, succeeded in recreating the old Manchu empire, the Communist government of mainland China has had the problems colonial powers always have with disgruntled subject populations.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... Since Mao Tse-tung, back in the 1950s, succeeded in recreating the old Manchu empire, the Communist government of mainland China has had the problems colonial powers always have with disgruntled subject populations. These problems have been worst in Tibet, where the natural instinct to ...
The Eritrea-Ethiopia War of 1998-2000 generated many refugees, among them over 4,200 Kunamas, Eritrean pastoralists who took the wrong side in that war and now live in a camp across the border in north Ethiopia.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The Eritrea-Ethiopia War of 1998-2000 generated many refugees, among them over 4,200 Kunamas, Eritrean pastoralists who took the wrong side in that war and now live in a camp across the border in north Ethiopia. The camp is milked for taxes and recruits by a local Eritrean rebel group ....
Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued Cambridge University Press for libel after it published a book last year that named Mahfouz as a sponsor of terror.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... Saudi billionaire Khalid bin Mahfouz sued Cambridge University Press for libel after it published a book last year that named Mahfouz as a sponsor of terror. The book, Alms for Jihad, is a careful study of the international system of Islamic charities that funnel money to al-Qaeda and ...
"Ethnic studies" is of course a bogus academic discipline, its topics adequately covered, in any well-organized university, by the departments of anthropology, sociology, history, and linguistics.(The Week)(Ward Churchill )(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... "Ethnic studies" is of course a bogus academic discipline, its topics adequately covered, in any well-organized university, by the departments of anthropology, sociology, history, and linguistics. Even by the fraudulent standards of a bogus discipline, though, ethnic studies professor Ward ...
Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was killed in what police describe as an assassination.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... Chauncey Bailey, the editor of the Oakland Post, was killed in what police describe as an assassination. He had been investigating the shady finances of an establishment listed in the Oakland, Calif., phone book as Your Black Muslim Bakery. (It once was called merely Your Bakery--until the ...
After astronaut Lisa Nowak tried to kidnap her love rival earlier this year, NASA commissioned an independent review of astronaut health care.(The Week)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... After astronaut Lisa Nowak tried to kidnap her love rival earlier this year, NASA commissioned an independent review of astronaut health care. The review has revealed that on at least two occasions our astronauts went into space sufficiently intoxicated to draw the attention of flight ...
With their conspicuous pocket protectors, their too-short pants showing an expanse of white sock, their love of gadgets, and their gaucherie around girls, nerds are perhaps the most familiar of all the strange, wild tribes that inhabit the modern American high school.(The Week)(high school geek classification)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... With their conspicuous pocket protectors, their too-short pants showing an expanse of white sock, their love of gadgets, and their gaucherie around girls, nerds are perhaps the most familiar of all the strange, wild tribes that inhabit the modern American high school. There is even a sort ...
Break out the asterisks.(The Week)(San Francisco Giant's Barry Bonds)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... Break out the asterisks. Barry Bonds is the holder of major-league baseball's record for career home runs by an abuser of performance-enhancing drugs. Typically, baseball players do not radically increase their production at age 35, let alone grow into a new shoe and cap size. Bonds did ...
The death, at age 89, of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman was greeted, by cineastes as well as theists, with shrugs.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... The death, at age 89, of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman was greeted, by cineastes as well as theists, with shrugs. Bergman was quintessentially of his time--the existentialist Fifties, when he achieved cult status--and of an even earlier time: His roots were in the 19th-century ...
"The West is born of Christianity, and the crisis of the West is that it isn't Christian anymore.".(The Week)(death of Cardinal Aaron Lustiger)(Obituary)(Brief article)
Aug 27, 2007 ... "The West is born of Christianity, and the crisis of the West is that it isn't Christian anymore." Such was the judgment of Aaron Lustiger, who, as a Jew born to Polish immigrants living in Paris, was a first-hand witness to the ravages of the 20th century. During World War II, he was ...
Summer in Baghdad.".(AT WAR)(Iraq's parliamentary government )
Aug 27, 2007 ... THE Iraqi parliament's decision to adjourn until September 4 gives an easy sound bite to American advocates of withdrawal from Iraq. "Why should our soldiers fight and die in 120-degree heat," they will ask, "while Iraqi lawmakers go on vacation?" But the truth is that the ...
FISA fumbles.(AT WAR II)(1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)
Aug 27, 2007 ... THE right thing it is not, but the Democratic Congress has done a barely adequate thing, by temporarily acknowledging the executive branch's authority to monitor international communications for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence. This acknowledgment should not have ...
Sinking in the West: Ted Stevens's last hurrah?(POLITICS)(Republican senator's case)
Aug 27, 2007; ... IF Republican senator Ted Stevens is worried about the federal investigation that recently led to a joint IRS and FBI raid on his Girdwood, Alaska, home, he's not really showing it. At a moment when a lesser man would be keeping his head down, Stevens hasn't changed his style at all. ...
A doctor, but whose? Diagnosing the disorder in the surgeon general's office.(PUBLIC POLICY)(Richard Carmona)
Aug 27, 2007; ... THIS has been a summer of surgeon-general headaches for the Bush administration. In July, former surgeon general Richard Carmona, who served from 2002 to 2006, appeared before a congressional committee to criticize his former employers, claiming he had been muzzled for political reasons. ...
Risky operation: socialized medicine comes at a cost.(PUBLIC POLICY II)(health care issues)
Aug 27, 2007; ... EARLY in August, both houses of Congress voted by clear majorities (and the Senate by a bipartisan one) to extend for another five years the so-called State Children's Health Insurance Program (or S-CHIP), which had been scheduled to expire this September. This program had originally ...
Interesting people, yes ... but, sadly, not absorbing.(BRITAIN)(migrant moslems in United Kingdom)
Aug 27, 2007; ... APRIL is the cruellest month, and "Mohammed" is the commonest name, or soon will be, in England. The news that, by the end of the year, "Mohammed" will be the name given to more male babies in England than "John" has a symbolic significance, even if it is only the logical result of a ...
In China's Tibet: the way life goes in a thoroughly occupied country.(THE WORLD)
Aug 27, 2007; ... Lhasa, Tibet YOU can come and go and never notice how damned creepy this town is. I write from a rooftop cafe in the Barkhor District, the one neighborhood in Lhasa that hasn't been bulldozed to make room for modern Chinese aesthetics (square buildings in white tile and blue ...
Let's do the Ponzi flip! The real-estate market cruises for a bruising.(CULTURE WATCH)(Flipping Out)(Television program review)
Aug 27, 2007; ... IF you want to know about the collapse in the home-mortgage business, I suppose you could read the New York Times, The Economist, Forbes, or the Wall Street Journal. The problem with that tactic is you'd then have to wade through a lot of hard words--things like collateralized debt ...
Is he for real? Assessing non-non-candidate Fred Thompson.(Cover story)
Aug 27, 2007; ... Philadelphia IT'S late July, and even though he's been on the non-campaign trail for five months, Fred Thompson has yet to appear on the same dais with any other Republican presidential candidate. That's about to change here at the Marriott Downtown, where both Thompson, the ...
The house of Chambers ... and the assault of the local bureaucrats.(PEOPLE & PLACES)(Whittaker Chambers )(In memoriam)
Aug 27, 2007; ... ON the night he tried to kill himself, Whittaker Chambers wrote a letter to his two children. It did not include a detailed account of the Alger Hiss spy case, which had driven Chambers to what he called "spiritual exhaustion." Instead, the letter contained simple fatherly advice: "I urged ...
The rogue vogue.(the bent pin)(the adjective's usage)(Essay)
Aug 27, 2007; ... 'WHAT fresh hell is this?" was Dorothy Parker's automatic response to a ringing telephone. It's the question I ask myself when Americans latch on to a word that allows us to talk incessantly about something we don't want to think about. We did it with "surreal" when we abandoned realism; ...
The long view.(blog entries)
Aug 27, 2007; ... http://www.scottthomasbeauchamp.blogspot.com November 3, 2007 My new suit A lot of you have been asking about the new suit I was wearing on Larry King last night. Well, when I got home from Iraq--it's a long story; most of it is here and some of it is here on the New ...
Obama at the tiller.(HELP!!!!)(poem)(Poem)
Aug 27, 2007; ... <Pre> OBAMA AT THE TILLER He would have scared the pants offPhlegmatic Bismarck, thoughThe Kaiser's respiration--Affecting ...