EdDriscoll.com

Posted 10/5/2002 10:53:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
SKIP THE CHIANTI: Flak magazine reviews Red Dragon:

Red Dragon's sins are not of commission but omission; not what it does wrong, but what it just plain fails to do. It's resolutely average and, worse, unambitious, so bloody competent that it is in fact bloodless, cleanly avoiding opportunities to take its scenario someplace interesting, frustrating any attempts to get really caught up in it. But those qualities befit a movie that's both a third sequel and a remake; no doubt its focus-group scores were through the roof.

Posted 10/5/2002 09:38:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
SEGWAY UPDATE: Gray Davis signs bill allowing Segways on California sidewalks. Two days later, San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly introduced legislation that would ban the two-wheelers in the city. You have to hand it to those carefree, experimental, progressive San Franciscoans. They always let people do their own thing.

Posted 10/5/2002 08:44:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
MAYOR OF PARIS STABBED, "but his life was not in danger", according to this Newsday.com report. A 40-year old man was taken into custody, but no word yet on a motive.

Posted 10/5/2002 07:30:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
OBSESSED WITH WINONA: That's what the LA Examiner says that LA District Attorney Steve Cooley is. Cooley has put "at least eight attorneys to work full time on this case, with a deputy district attorney having to reschedule a murder prosecution so she can convict Ryder". The Examiner says that Cooley thinks that busting Winona could "cleanse the DA's office of its failure to put O.J. Simpson behind bars"! Now mind you, I don't like to see celebrities get away with crimes that ordinary folks would be punished for. But eight attorneys for one shoplifting case? Get real.

Posted 10/5/2002 03:32:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE MAN WHO KNEW: Eric Olsen has an interesting post on John O'Neill, the FBI agent who "may have known more about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda than any other person in America", but died in the World Trade Center on September 11th. Eric says that PBS's Frontline is doing a documentary on O'Neil that will be shown on TV and available on their Web site this week.

Posted 10/5/2002 02:50:53 PM by Edward Driscoll

GETTING QATSI WITH IT: I just uploaded a few still shots, and long essay on the recent DVD releases of Koyaanisqatsi and Powaqqatsi to the Blogcritics site.

Posted 10/5/2002 02:47:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
A MOMMIE DEAREST FOR THE 21st Century? The NY Daily News reviews the new CBS telemovie, Hell on Heels: The Battle of Mary Kay, starring Shirley MacLaine(!) as the late Mary Kay. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Posted 10/5/2002 01:14:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
BAD RECEPTION: A recent lawsuit claiming cell phone use caused brain cancer fell on deaf ears when the judge recognized the claim as junk science.

Posted 10/5/2002 12:15:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
FACT CHECKING THE TIMES' A**: Andrew Sullivan flashes back to the New York Times' coverage of Israel's destruction of Saddam Hussein's nuclear reactor in 1981.

Posted 10/4/2002 11:54:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
GORE ACCIDENTALLY DENIES HOLOCAUST EVER HAPPENED: Glenn Frazier has the details. Imagine if Bush--or any Republican--made such a verbal gaffe. It would be front page news in a second.

Posted 10/4/2002 11:43:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEORGIA DEMS ASK: "Why should Florida and New Jersey courts have all the fun?", as DeKalb County voters file suit to throw out results of McKinney-Majette primary.

Posted 10/4/2002 10:04:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS ON CLINTON:

There probably was not a delegate present who would not have been primed to laugh at a George Dubya "cowboy" joke. Yet Mr Clinton's most notorious foreign policy action was to launch a flight of cruise missiles into the outskirts of the city of Khartoum, destroying the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on the pretence (now acknowledged to have been false) it was a chemical weapons facility. How could such an atrocity have been committed? Because Mr Clinton did not even demand an inspection, did not consult the UN or Congress, and over-ruled Joint Chiefs of Staff, CIA and State Department.

As found on The Greatest Jeneration Blog.

Posted 10/4/2002 06:28:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE BUSH/TRUMAN CONNECTION: Good essay in National Review Online.

Posted 10/4/2002 05:38:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
HUGH: For some reason, when I saw this headline on My Yahoo homepage--"Tearful U.S. Taliban Gets 20 Years--I had a flashback to the episode Star Trek: Next Generation titled "I Borg", with its chief guest character, "Hugh". Hugh of course, was the name that Geordi La Forge gave the young Borg that the crew of the Enterprise had captured, with the intent of sending back to the Borg Collective essentially carrying a computer virus. Because Picard and the crew eventually felt sorry for Hugh, they didn't carry out the mission, and the Borg eventually reappeared. On the one hand, I understand that in an ongoing TV series, you need reasons for the show to go on. Batman and Robin couldn't be killed in a cliffhanger, or there'd be no show. Crockett and Tubbs weren't going to be killed by drug dealers, or there'd be no Miami Vice. And Star Trek wasn't about to wipe out everybody's favorite baddies, so they made Picard look like a wimp instead, when he should have been just a bit ruthless. It would have saved tens of millions or so of lives in the galaxy. That "feeling sorry for a minor representative of the bad guys" headline got me thinking that often feeling sorry for the enemy is a prelude to disaster. Because, let's face it, in a real war, ruthlessness against a totalitarian state isn't a bad thing. Had we not dropped atom bombs on Japan, hundreds of thousands of US and Japanese troops would have perished. The Japanese government was prepared, it said, to sacrifice 20 million civilians to keep the Americans out. Had LBJ been more ruthless in Vietnam, the over three million deaths in Cambodia alone by Pol Pot could have been avoided. We're going to need big brass balls if we attack Iraq. And God help us, and the enslaved people of the Middle East, if we don't.

Posted 10/4/2002 04:31:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE COLOR OF COMBAT: Mackubin Thomas Owens has some thoughts on minorities and war:

The contention that in America's wars, minorities bear a disproportionate burden of the fighting and dying has long been a staple of Left-wing rhetoric since the Vietnam War. Even as late as the Gulf War in 1991, Jesse Jackson, addressing a largely black audience, claimed that "when that war breaks out, our youth will burn first." But as Will Rogers once said, "it's not the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't true." The claim of disproportionate minority casualties wasn't true during the Vietnam War, where the record indicates that 86 percent of those who died during the war were white and 12.5 percent were black, from an age group in which blacks comprised 13.1 percent of the population. It is even less true today. To understand why, it is necessary to look a little beneath the surface. While overall, minorities comprise 30 percent of the Army, one of the two services that would be expected to bear the brunt of close combat in Iraq, they tend to be underrepresented in the combat arms. As the incomparable Tom Ricks observed in a January 1997 article for the Wall Street Journal, the "old stereotype about the Army's front-line units being cannon fodder laden with minorities" is false.

Posted 10/4/2002 04:29:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
A MODEST PROPOSAL: The Brothers Judd have some suggestions as to how to jumpstart the economy.

Posted 10/4/2002 04:17:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHY DO SUPERHEROES GO BANKRUPT? Good article on Ron Perelman and the up-and-down rollercoaster ride he put Marvel Comics on in the 1990s.

Posted 10/4/2002 03:00:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE FUTURE AND ITS ENEMIES: My review of Virginia Postrel's 1999 book is now on Blogcritics.

Posted 10/4/2002 02:32:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE OVER THE HILL GANG, 2002 STYLE: The Oakland Raiders may be old, but they're 3-0:

Jerry Rice, pushing 40, still looks smooth and lithe. Rod Woodson, as hard as Alcatraz looming out in the Bay, is 37. Tim Brown and Rich Gannon, a mere 36, are bristling with vigor. Trace Armstrong and Bill Romanowski, also 36, are looking good, too.

Meanwhile however, Sebastian Janikowski, their kicker, has been charged with DUI. Maybe he can carpool with Randy Moss.

Posted 10/4/2002 02:24:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
OUTRAGE OF THE DAY: It's a doozy, too. A shipment of pro-Israel newsletters from the Ayn Rand Institute to the University of Toronto has been confiscated at the Canadian border, because, according to Canadian Customs, they �may constitute obscenity or hate propaganda.� The theme of the newsletter: defending Israel�s moral right to exist. Eugene Volokh and Glenn Reynolds have more. And here's the newsletter that caused all the fuss. As Volokh says, if you're Canadian, click at your own risk.

Posted 10/4/2002 02:11:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
WEEK FIVE OF THE NFL: Who's hot, who's cold, who's a sleeper? The Sporting News has the answers.

Posted 10/4/2002 02:06:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANTICIPATION--IT'S KEEPING ME WAITING: ScrappleFace says DNC chairman is 'pumped' about potential 2004 pairings. In other ScrappleFace news, President Bush today announced that Iraq has "nuculer, not nuclear, weapons...there will be no invasion."

Posted 10/4/2002 02:02:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
20 YEARS: That's the sentence John Philip Walker Lindh, a/k/a "Suleyman al-Faris," a/k/a "Abdul Hamid," got for treason. Lindh will be a free man when he's 41 years old.

Posted 10/4/2002 01:50:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANDREW SULLIVAN has this item, appropriately titled...

PAGING DR FREUD: "When the Prime Minister spoke yesterday I thought to myself, "I hope I'll be able to give a speech like that when I grow up" - Bill Clinton, at the Labour Party Conference yesterday.

Posted 10/4/2002 01:01:38 AM by Edward Driscoll
SUMS IT UP PRETTY GOOD: Great Reason cartoon about the Torch.

Posted 10/4/2002 12:37:13 AM by Edward Driscoll
SOCK IT TO ME, BABY! Ladies and gentlemen, the world�s oldest terrorist, with the world�s oldest lime-green terrorist socks.

Posted 10/4/2002 12:26:25 AM by Edward Driscoll
SCREED IS GOOD: Especially when it takes Paul Welstone down a peg or two.

Posted 10/3/2002 07:56:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE DICK CHENEY, RUSH LIMBAUGH, BARBRA STREISAND CONNECTION, as discovered by Matt Drudge.

Posted 10/3/2002 07:38:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
GOOD QUESTION: Joanne Jacobs wants to know why civility on campus is controversial.

Posted 10/3/2002 04:26:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
NICE GUYS. Here's what's happening in backwaters of the Axis of Evil today:

The Associated Press has a photo of a North Korean propaganda poster, which shows three red missiles heading toward a crumbling U.S. Capitol Building, with a tattered American flag in the foreground. The AP translates the poster's text: ''If someone starts an invasion war, we will crush the U.S. bastards first.''

As found on the Wall Street Journal's Best of the Web Today.

Posted 10/3/2002 03:48:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
THIS TIME, WE MEAN IT! ScrappleFace reports that the U.S. is bombing Iraq--with leaflets. (Be sure to check out his link to the actual news article, as well.)

Posted 10/3/2002 01:35:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
HACK ATTACK: Hackers deface State Department Web site.

Posted 10/3/2002 01:02:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
GARY HART MAKES SENSE: (Wow, I typed that, and my fingers didn't catch on fire!) Good essay in the New York Times:

The Vietnam era divided the nation but not as severely as it divided the Democratic Party. The party of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy still seems incapable, more than 25 years after the war's end, of collectively addressing America's defense posture in coherent and creative ways. Instead, once again, Democrats are responding to a Republican president as individual entrepreneurs trying to protect themselves against the traditional conservative charge of being "soft on defense." For proof of Democratic marginalization on these issues, one need look no further than the polls that consistently show Americans trust Republicans more than Democrats to manage foreign policy and conflict. Though the commitment to national defense should be above partisan advantage, how that commitment is carried out will always divide the parties. If the president is successful in convincing the American people that Iraq is an immediate threat to our security, and the Democrats are simply in opposition, this issue could well decide the Congressional balance of power, propelling Republicans to victory in both the House and the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections.

Well worth reading the whole thing.

Posted 10/3/2002 12:57:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
DC AND U.N. SHOOTINGS: Not surprisingly, InstaPundit is on the case. Start here, then scroll for updates.

Posted 10/3/2002 12:55:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT THE INTERNET WAS MADE FOR: As discovered by Jonah Goldberg. (Requires Macromedia Flash.)

Posted 10/3/2002 12:53:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE CAPTAIN KANGAROO/IWO JIMA CONNECTION: No, really. It's a great story.

Posted 10/3/2002 12:31:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK: Secret Service 'war driving' around Washington for unsecure wireless LANs.

Posted 10/3/2002 11:10:30 AM by Edward Driscoll
NO, THIS IS NOT FROM THE ONION, PART II: Recently widowed 50-something actress kisses 20-something actor, who had studied his craft under her husband. Arrest warrants issued for both actor and actress.

Posted 10/3/2002 11:02:12 AM by Edward Driscoll
CHANGING PLACES: The Sporting News thinks that when Darrell Green hangs up his cleats after twenty years as a Redskins' cornerback, he should think about becoming an NFL referee:

Think about it. Who would be a better judge of what really is, and isn't, pass interference than Green? Or who could determine holding better than a veteran lineman such as Bruce Smith?

Posted 10/3/2002 10:58:10 AM by Edward Driscoll
KA-BOOM: Flak magazine looks at Nevada's rejected license plate.

Posted 10/3/2002 10:54:39 AM by Edward Driscoll
GENTLEMEN, START YOUR WEBLOGS: Matt Drudge says that starting next week, the Washington Times will be serializing excerpts from Fighting Back a new book by Bill Sammon, which looks at the war on terrorism from inside the Bush White House.

Posted 10/3/2002 10:29:44 AM by Edward Driscoll
STANLEY CROUCH ON AMIRI BARAKA, "New Jersey's "Poet Laureate":

It was simple evolution: All whites - and Jews especially - should be murdered; then all Negroes who did not submit to his agenda; then all homosexuals; then all capitalists; then all who did not agree that the Western world and capitalism should be destroyed. True, Jones began his career more than 40 years ago as a very talented Greenwich Village poet, essayist, playwright and novelist, a black bohemian with a Jewish wife and two children. But that LeRoi flipped out inthe late '60s, left his wife and children after deciding to become a racist black leader and sold out his talent in the interest of hysterical diatribes that have gotten neither worse nor better in the past 35 years. Consistency is all. For those who would celebrate his writing, there is only one question. What good book has he written since 1965? What truly good poem? Or does one become a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and poet laureate of New Jersey just by staying alive?

Michelle Malkin also has some thoughts.

Posted 10/3/2002 12:54:01 AM by Edward Driscoll
REPLICA GUNS NOW, TOY GUNS NEXT? Group Captain Mandrake looks at the latest reduction in England's civil liberties, part of his ongoing series.

Posted 10/2/2002 11:54:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE NJ SUPREME COURT/CALVIN AND HOBBES CONNECTION, as found by Virginia Postrel, on her Dynamist.com Weblog. Postrel says that following NJ politics, "A person could become cynical." Can't argue with that!

Posted 10/2/2002 11:10:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
PAYBACK: IT'S A...Bush cuts deal by leaving Daschle out.

Posted 10/2/2002 10:49:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
VALHALLA, I AM COMING! Upon us all, a little rain must fall, when we each realize that most of Robert Plant's early lyrics with Led Zeppelin, were really, really, really silly. (But, as a token concession to youth, I still think Jimmy Page was a pretty nifty guitarist in his prime.)

Posted 10/2/2002 10:44:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
DARE TO DREAM: New Jersey Democrats launch write-in campaign for Joe Piscopo. Move indicates lack of enthusiasm for Lautenberg, insiders say. Why yes, this is satire. But then, so is what's going on in New Jersey right now.

Posted 10/2/2002 09:30:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
NO, THIS IS NOT FROM THE ONION: Delegates to the African and African Descendants' World Conference Against Racism voted today to eject all non-blacks from the conference.

Posted 10/2/2002 09:06:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE TIMES SQUARE TIME MACHINE, courtesy of James Lileks, who does a magnificent job of recreating the last hundred years or so of that archetypal American place.

Posted 10/2/2002 08:51:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
CRACKDOWN: Charles Johnson says that peace groups do not serve Egyptian law.

Posted 10/2/2002 08:48:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
HERR CLINTON: John Fund says Gerhard Schroeder did what it took to win--but at what cost to Germany?

Posted 10/2/2002 08:37:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
MY LATEST REVIEW IS NOW ONLINE AT BLOGCRITICS: It's on the new coffee table book, Stanley Kubrick: A Life In Pictures. (Incidentally, in a nice bit of synchronicity, it's preceded on Blogcritics by an article by Eric Olsen called "Titanium Monolith".)

Posted 10/2/2002 03:38:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
NJ AS BANANA REPUBLIC: Dems Can Replace Torricelli. UPDATE: Republicans will challenge. ANOTHER UPDATE: Orrin Judd has some thoughts.

Posted 10/2/2002 02:57:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
CBS IDENTIFIED BONIOR AS A REPUBLICAN, on Monday's Early Show. The Media Research Center has the details, and a still shot. No word yet on what Newt Gingrich thinks of CBS's faux pas.

Posted 10/2/2002 02:49:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
9/11 PHOTOS: Apparently taken by an amateur photographer from his Brooklyn living room window. When you get to the last one, go back to the first one to see how the view had changed.

Posted 10/2/2002 02:15:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
BUSH'S IRAQ PLAN GAINS MOMENTUM.

Posted 10/2/2002 02:10:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
RED DRAGON: You've seen the movie, now see the movie. Other than to pad Dino De Laurentiis' bank-account, is there any reason why this film was remade? (If anyone has a link to an article with Michael Mann's take on why Manhunter, his 1986 film (which I loved, by the way), was remade, and what he thinks about the new version, please send it to me, and I'll be happy to post it.)

Posted 10/2/2002 02:04:29 PM by Edward Driscoll
ALL TORCH, ALL THE TIME: Here's the link to all of the post-Torricelli shenanigans in New Jersey as assembled on InstaPundit.

Posted 10/2/2002 12:38:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE INTERNET: IT'S NOT JUST FOR WEBLOGS ANYMORE! "FedEx Sees A Dot-Com Payoff".

Posted 10/2/2002 12:36:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT MARK STEYN COLUMN, which you've probably read already, but what the hell. Great references to Tom Daschle putting the bomp in the bomp-sh-bomp-sh-bomp, and the ram in the ram-a-lama-ding-dong, and Al Gore's political antennae, "still as reliable as a 1948 TV with busted rabbit ears". Click on over and read it on your DuMont monitor if you haven't seen it already.

Posted 10/2/2002 12:20:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE OF THE SAME: As a follow-up to his column yesterday, Jonah Goldberg goes through the rest of the list of reasons not to invade Iraq:

it's a checklist, not an on/off switch. And in the end that's the response to all of these alleged silver-bullet antiwar arguments. No one argument is sufficient, pro or con. You need to look at a long list of criteria and make a decision. Some pro-war arguments are very strong, some less so. But you have to add them all up together and look at the final tally. So: Is Iraq a brutal totalitarian regime? Check! Is it a proven threat to its neighbors? Check! Is it a proven threat to its own people? Check! Is it a proven threat to our allies? Check! Is it willing to export terrorism abroad? Check! Is it likely that if it got weapons of mass destruction, it would use them recklessly? Check! Is it working very hard to get weapons of mass destruction? Check! Would Saddam's people be better off without him? Check! Would we and our allies be better off without him? Check! Do we have the power and capabilities to get rid of him without paying too high a cost? Check! And, would getting rid of him make it less likely that another September 11 would "happen again"? Check.

Posted 10/2/2002 01:27:12 AM by Edward Driscoll
PORSCHE REALLY KNOWS HOW TO BUILD AN SUV--and Group Captain Mandrake has exclusive photos, on his A letter from the Olde Countrie blog.

Posted 10/2/2002 01:23:55 AM by Edward Driscoll
PARACHUTES WERE SABOTAGED AT CAMP LEJEUNE in North Carolina, according to the Jacksonville Daily News.

Posted 10/1/2002 09:51:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS IT QUARTERBACK CONTROVERSY TIME IN PITTSBURGH? UPDATE: Cowher chooses Tommy Maddox to start.

Posted 10/1/2002 09:42:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
KIDS, DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME: Man breaks record by clipping 153 clothespins to his face.

Posted 10/1/2002 04:11:23 PM by Edward Driscoll
SOCIALIZED MEDICINE: As bad as it is, at least it's got a silver-bullet shaped vibrator lining to it.

Posted 10/1/2002 03:35:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
ONE GREAT DRINK: I made my first Brandy Manhattan this weekend--it's yummy. By the way, don't forget to tip the bartender from time to time!

Posted 10/1/2002 03:31:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
MOSS IN MO' MESS: Randy Moss charged with possessing small amount of marijuana.

Posted 10/1/2002 03:13:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE ANSWER IS YES, to all of the rhetorical questions about Jesse Jackson that Rod Dreher asks in this post on The Corner on National Review Online.

Posted 10/1/2002 02:41:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
TEARING THE BOSS A NEW ONE. Al Barger really, really doesn't like The Rising the new, 9/11-influenced album by Bruce Springsteen, and, in perhaps the ultimate put-down, says:

Even Al Gore would likely have come up with more interesting attempts at songwriting than this.

Ouch. I haven't bought The Rising yet, and I don't know if I will, simply because Bruce basically lost me as a listener right around the time of Tunnel of Love. But all of his 1970s albums are certainly worth checking out (as if you didn't own them already).

Posted 10/1/2002 01:56:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE NEXT TORCH: Dave Kopel examines the Democrats' legal options in New Jersey. Hey, maybe they could appoint Amiri Baraka as an interim successor! UPDATE: James Taranto also has some thoughts on replacing the Torch.

Posted 10/1/2002 01:34:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHAOS: That's what John Podhoretz says the Democratic Party is in right now:

There is no other word for it. The Torch's vanishing act was only the latest piece of bad news for a party that ought to be sitting very pretty with only 36 days to go before a midterm election.

Podhoretz adds,

Over the past week, a powerful image of the Democratic Party has begun to be fixed in the American mind. We all watched as Al Gore, Tom Daschle and Ted Kennedy waged a friendly competition about who could be more critical of a popular president when it came to that popular president's foreign policy and handling of the war on terrorism. This is not where the Democrats should be five weeks before the November elections. They're not all unethical, and they're not anti-war for the most part. But that's politics for you.

It's a great article. Go check it out.

Posted 10/1/2002 01:30:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
CELEBRITY MELTDOWN ROUND-UP: Chevy Chase's "friends" tore him a new one at the Friars Club over the weekend. Why were they so hard on him? The ever-so-eloquent Al Franken told Chase, "Because you've always been an arrogant bleep," Franken said. "I don't like you Chevy, and none of us ever did." Maybe Chase should have asked for the roast to have been held in Cuba. Meanwhile, "former movie star" (as the New York Post dubbed him--ouch!) Alec Baldwin was booed in Minnesota, a prominent dairy state, for his efforts on behalf of PETA to outlaw milk. And of course, Barbra Streisand's Shakespearean inventions aren't going over too well, either.

Posted 10/1/2002 12:29:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
RUMSFELD ROLLS THE TAPE: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld showed graphic proof yesterday of Baghdad's long defiance of the U.N. in the form of surveillance video of Iraqi missiles and shells launched at American aircraft. Rumsfeld says that since Iraq issued a letter offering to let U.N. weapons inspectors re-enter the country "without condition," the regime has fired 67 times on allied planes, 14 this past weekend.

Posted 10/1/2002 12:21:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
SAME OLD SONG AND DANCE: Jonah Goldberg's latest column on National Review Online is about the left's use of arguments left over from 1968 against attacking Iraq. He starts with a great story, one I have to file away for future reference:

I can't remember where I read it or even who said it, but an old story keeps popping into my head. A former leftist-turned-conservative (from the old Partisan Review crowd, I think) encounters an unreconstructed lefty at a party. The lefty starts spouting all kinds of silliness about capitalist robber barons or American imperialism or some such. The conservative responds, "Your arguments are so old, I've forgotten the answer to them."

Posted 10/1/2002 09:47:32 AM by Edward Driscoll
FRESNO BUS ATTACK: A passenger slashed the throat of a Greyhound bus driver as the bus traveled down a California freeway, causing it to careen out of control, authorities said. The driver survived but two other people died and dozens were injured. Curiously, according to the AP report:

Almost exactly a year ago, on Oct. 3, 2001, a passenger on a Greyhound bus in Tennessee cut the driver's throat, causing a crash that killed seven. Two weeks later, passengers on another Greyhound bus were credited with averting disaster in Utah after they helped thwart an alleged hijacker. And in November, a Greyhound passenger angry that he wasn't allowed to smoke scuffled with a driver in Arizona, causing a crash that injured 33.

Given the current environment, I'd have no problem with Greyhound drivers getting very rough with out-of-control passengers. Armed bus drivers? Makes sense to me.

Posted 9/30/2002 09:09:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
NURSE BLOOMBERG IS UPSET, according to Andrew Stuttaford, posting on National Review Online's The Corner Weblog.

Posted 9/30/2002 09:07:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
EVOLUTION ROBOTICS: Orrin Judd and Glenn Reynolds have both linked to this story on Evolution Robotics. I covered them last month for Nuts & Volts magazine's special robotics issue. Sadly, my article isn't online, but you can order a back issue here. All I can say, with tongue only slightly in cheek, is...Advantage Ed!

Posted 9/30/2002 05:54:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
RUINING MS. PERFECT'S LIFE: USA Today wants to know why the government is trying to do just that.

Posted 9/30/2002 05:50:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE U.S./STAR WARS CONNECTION, according to Free-Market.Net.

Posted 9/30/2002 05:46:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU HAVE TO LIKE A GUY WHOSE BLOG IS TITLED "Am So a Pundit".

Posted 9/30/2002 05:35:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
REPUBLICANS ATTEMPT TO BLOCK TORRICELLI REPLACEMENT, according to the Washington Post:

Even before Torricelli announced his withdrawal Monday at a news conference in Trenton, N.J., GOP officials said they were ready to go to court to block Democrats from fielding a replacement candidate so close to the election. "The laws of the state of New Jersey do not contain a 'we think we're going to lose so we get to pick someone new' clause," taunted Torricelli's challenger, Doug Forrester. On a practical level, Democratic party officials have yet to settle on a consensus choice to take Torricelli's place on the ballot. Even assuming an agreement by Tuesday on Rep. Bob Menendez or another replacement, they will have only five weeks to shed the ill-effects of Torricelli's ethics woes, introduce their candidate to the voters around the state and rough up Forrester on the issues.

UPDATE: Orrin Judd has more.