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I complained on Monday that the Senate Judiciary Committee is not holding a hearing into whether Elena Kagan is suited to sit on the highest court of the land, but rather offering senators of both parties an opportunity to grandstand while the cameras are rolling. Senators aren’t asking tough questions, and Kagan isn’t providing penetrating [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
Today’s spotlighted TAC article is John Derbyshire’s “Prole Models,” in which he looks at what prospects the Tea Parties may have to overcome the bipartisan elite — our home-grown American equivalent of the “Inner Party” of Oceania in Orwell’s 1984. Present-day Oceania—or, as we say, “the West”—isn’t nearly as brutish as Orwell’s dark vision. We [...]
Filed under: Politics
SyFy (formerly Sci-Fi) has opted to replace its annual Fourth of July Twilight Zone Marathon with a Greatest American Hero marathon. First, I hadn’t realized there were enough GAH episodes for which to justify a “marathon, ” (pathetically, there are). And second, WHY?! Don’t they want people to stay on the channel for long periods [...]
Filed under: Culture
Some of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s defenders are lamenting the fact that a “fighting general” was cashiered by the Obama Administration (although Ambrose Burnside, Joe Hooker, and George Custer were all considered “fighting generals” too), but McChrystal’s reputation for blood-and-guts action was contradicted by the Rules of Engagement (ROE) that were a part of the counterinsurgency [...]
Filed under: War
Ross Douthat had this to say today about why we can’t leave Afghanistan: Why? Because of three considerations. First, the memory of 9/11, which ensures that any American president will be loath to preside over the Taliban’s return to power in Kabul. Second, the continued presence of Al Qaeda’s leadership in Pakistan’s northwest frontier, which makes [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
Elena Kagan faced the Senate Judiciary Committee as her confirmation hearing began today. The Supreme Court nominee had so little to do throughout the afternoon that some commentators were forced to stretch to find something to say about how she handled herself: Stray note: Kagan has been holding her back perfectly erect and maintaining a [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
President Obama is being hailed for toughness in his firing of Gen. McChrystal and brilliance in his replacing him as Afghan field commander with Gen. David Petraeus, who managed the George W. Bush “surge” in Iraq that saved this nation from an ignominious defeat. Herewith, a dissent. By firing a fighting general, beloved of his [...]
Today’s landmark Supreme Court decision strikes down Chicago’s handgun ban. The 5-4 majority said 2nd Amendment Rights must “apply equally to the federal government and the states.” Justice Scalia cited the 14th Amendment’s ever expanding due process clause in support of the majority. The clause is typically applied to diminish individual liberty by increasing the [...]
Filed under: liberties
Robert Byrd, who died early this morning, was at core a conventional New Deal liberal. He was a quondam segregationist, probably one of some conviction — he had been a Ku Klux Klan organizer, after all, though he later claimed he had joined only to advance his career. But for Byrd as for his party, [...]
Filed under: Politics
If CIA Director Leon Panetta is correct and al-Qaeda has been reduced to a tiny remnant http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100627/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_us_afghanistan why are we spending nearly a trillion dollars a year on defense, intelligence, and homeland security? The justification for the doubling of the US government budget over the past eight years has been the need to fight terrorism. Do [...]
Filed under: War