July 2004 
Porno War(Comments Off)
Just how high did authorization go for the Abu Ghraib “abuses,” as the deliberate torture and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners by American troops are demurely called? Was it really, as President Bush claimed in his flatulent “address to the nation” in May, a mere case of “disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values,” or were the people who really did the dishonoring and disregarding by authorizing and encouraging what happened on a far higher level than the trailer-trash grunts elevated to global celebrity by the dirty pictures in which they leer and smirk at their victims?
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The Ministry of Fear—July 2004
Thomas Fleming on deadly word games, Srdja Trifkovic on CAIR and the ADL, Doug Bandow on the good and bad of the ACLU, and William R. Hawkins on the left and globalization. Plus, Kevin Michael Grace on Morris Dees and the SPLC, and Ted Galen Carpenter on building a socialist Iraq.
Hatemongers
What do you call a man who loves his country but is not so enthusiastic about the government that confiscates half of his income? Who takes care of his own family but is not sure why, through tax policies and affirmative action, he is also supposed to take care of the children of other people he does not know? Who believes in charity but believes it begins at home and does not really extend beyond the borders of the United States?
Ronald Reagan, R.I.P.
By no means the least of Ronald Reagan’s achievements as man and president was that he may well have been the first chief executive since Herbert Hoover who did not deserve a prison term for his crimes. He also managed to hold the presidency twice, hand his office over to a designated successor, and remain a popular and even a beloved figure for the rest of his life. Aside from these not inestimable accomplishments, however, his enduring legacy as a conservative statesman is pretty thin.