Archive for July, 2009

Tell Israel: Cool the Jets!

Iran may wish to have a nuclear deterrent, considering what happened to neighbor Iraq, which did not. But the idea that the regime, having built a nuclear weapon, would launch it on Tel Aviv and bring massive retaliation by scores of Israeli nukes on Teheran and other cities, killing millions of Iranians and all the leaders and their families of all factions of this disputatious people, seems like total madness.

A Damned Murder Inc.

Some time in early or mid-1949, a CIA officer named Bill (his surname is blacked out in the file, which was surfaced by John Kelly in the early 1990′s) asked an outside contractor for input on how to kill people. Requirements included the appearance of an accidental or purely fortuitous terminal experience suffered by the Agency’s victim.

One Small Step for Person, One Giant Leap for Personkind

The day before Thomas Fleming offered his reflections on the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11, I offered mine at Takimag. My focus was different from Dr. Fleming’s. I used the anniversary to reflect on how and why America had declined since Neil Armstrong took that famous step onto the moon, and wished that “we could recover some of what we had in 1969, when American achievement seemed so natural.”

Statistical Deceptions

Last week on NPR, a professor in the Sloan School of Management at MIT explained that what is really at stake in the health-care bill is the U.S. government’s ability to borrow. In other words, the bill is about cutting health-care costs, not about providing hard-pressed Americans with health care.

Substandard: The End of an Illusion

The sale of The Weekly Standard should put paid to any lingering illusion that the neoconservative empire was anything but a Potemkin Village. Whatever happens from this point on, the news of Rupert Murdoch’s repudiation of his ugliest stepchild is as refreshing a pick-me-up as the morning’s second Bloody Mary I am enjoying, anchored off Spetzai on the Bushido with Chronicles’ incomparably hospitable columnist, Taki.

Sgt. Crowley, a Cop in Full

Sunday, professor Louis Henry Gates retreated from his threat to sue Sgt. James Crowley. Friday, President Obama retreated from his charge that the Cambridge cops “acted stupidly.”

As Crowley has not budged an inch—his arrest of Gates was correct, and there will be no apology—there is no doubt who won this face-off. Game, set, match, Crowley and the Cambridge cops.

What is History? Part 38b

You should not drink and bake at the same time. —Arnold Schwarzenegger

. . . the great cities grow like a creeping paralysis over freedom . . . —Owen Wister

Has Obama’s Luck Run Out?

“The sound alone was worth the $24 billion!”

So said fellow Nixon speechwriter Ray Price as the mighty Saturn V rocket lifted Apollo 11 and Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins off the launch pad, three miles away, on the start of their voyage to the moon.

In an Impotent World Even the Bankrupt Can Prevail

The United States, which has been threatening Iran with attack for years, has passed the job to Israel. During the third week of July, the American vice president and secretary of state gave Israel the go-ahead. Israel has made great public disclosure of its warships passing through the Suez Canal on their way to Iran. “Muslim” Egypt is complicit, offering no objection to Israel’s naval forces on their way to a war crime under the Nuremberg standard that the United States imposed on the world.

Why No Evangelical Justice?

When Republicans were warned not to give Sonia Sotomayor the drubbing Democrats gave Robert Bork and Sam Alito—lest they be perceived as sexist and racist by women and Hispanics—the threat was credible, for it underscored a new reality in American politics.