Posted 10/19/2002 10:44:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
GEORGE TENANT TAKES RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CIA'S FAILURE TO PREVENT 9/11. But Ronald Bailey of Reason asks:

What does "taking responsibility" mean in today's Federal government? Apparently, it means that when you and your agency fail, you get to demand a bigger budget, more bureaucrats, and more intrusive power over the lives of American citizens. The more you fail, the more you get.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 10/19/2002 10:24:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
CHRIS CARTER TO BECOME A DOLPHIN, assuming he passes the physical. The 36 year old ex-Minnesota Viking wide receiver will apparently leave Dan Marino back in the broadcasting booth at HBO's "Inside the NFL" show to play the rest of the season for the injury-plagued Fins.

Posted 10/19/2002 03:41:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE RELIGIOUS ICONOGRAPHY OF THE APPLE MACINTOSH is explored by Steven Den Beste.

Posted 10/19/2002 03:07:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
INDONESIA NABS MILITANT CLERIC: AP says that "Defense Minister Matori Abdul Djalil stopped short of directly accusing Abu Bakar Bashir of organizing the bloody nightclub attack last week in Bali, but said it was unlikely that he would not have known about many of the country's bomb attacks."

Posted 10/19/2002 03:02:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
WASHINGTON D.C. REGULATES THE LAST NAMES OF NEWBORNS: (No, really!) Dan Pink, the father of the newly born Saul Lerner Pink has the list of regulations (and brother, there are a lot of regulations!) on his Weblog, Just One Thing. (Found via Virginia Postrel.)

Posted 10/19/2002 01:57:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOMOPHOBIA ON THE LEFT, is the subject of this post by Glenn Reynolds. Add it to the list of liberal arguments included in Dean Esmay's fine post in Blogcritics yesterday.

Posted 10/19/2002 01:42:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
10 GREATEST BRITONS? Some surprising names chosen by the more than 30,000 British citizens who took part in a BBC phone and Internet poll. Group Captain Mandrake has the list, and is understandably worried about who the final choice will be, when it's posted in a few weeks.

Posted 10/19/2002 01:35:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
C'MON REX, TELL US HOW YOU REALLY FEEL: Gee, is it just me, or is Rex Reed not very fond of Madonna's latest movie, Swept Away:

Trained in the Nautilus School of Dramatic Art, her toned and sinewy muscles don’t do a thing for sleeveless chiffon, and her hard, chiseled jaw lines are a poor substitute for emotional irony. At 44, she’s a scary mix of pecs and peroxide. Spitting out a series of cruel, sarcastic one-liners, she loses sympathy fast, and there is no tempo or timing in the direction, camerawork or editing to make up for what she loses in pacing. Her colorless voice, like a dry and ratchety ambulance siren, is an irritation that cries for medical attention. When the poor sailor who endures her humiliating, condescending tantrums finally whacks her across the chops, the temptation to yell "What took you so long?" is hard to resist.

Posted 10/19/2002 12:48:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE RETURN OF THE BINARS: Some people see things in black and white. Group Captain Mandrake sees things in ones and zeroes. Or at least that's what it seems in this post!

Posted 10/19/2002 12:33:09 AM by Edward Driscoll
TANGENTS WITHIN A FRAMEWORK: The US will train up to 5000 Iraqi exiles to fight against Saddam. Meanwhile, the Bush administration is weighing an Israel proposal for a joint operation in Iraq's western desert to disarm Iraqi missiles before they could be launched against Israel.

Posted 10/18/2002 10:29:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE LEFT'S WEAPING CLOWN: Speaking of Michael Moore (scroll down to the next post if you missed it), Reason's Brian Doherty has him nailed in a sharp profile.

Posted 10/18/2002 04:40:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHEN DID IT HAPPEN? Dean Esmay writes in Blogcritics, that it's hard not to notice...

...when surveying the American political landscape at the moment, that there are no great Liberal intellectuals anymore. There are a few bright-minded self-described liberals; Robert Reich comes to mind, as does Susan Estrich. Camille Paglia has a truly original and interesting mind. But aside from a few rare exceptions, most "liberal" argumentation seems to come from one of four places: 1) People who disagree with me are racist. 2) People who disagree with me are warmongers who glory in violence. 3) People who disagree with me want the poor to starve and suffer. 4) People who disagree with me are blinded by corporate brainwashing. I would have added "5) People who disagree with me want to oppress women," but that one seemed to fade away after Clinton's impeachment. (By the way, am I the first one to notice that?) In any case, the shorthand terms for all of the above are "right-winger" or "the radical right." At times it's sad to watch. The mighty New York Times is now a laughingstock. Even people who share the New York Times worldview roll their eyes at it. Left-wing journals of opionion like The Nation and The New Republic tend to be humorless and, while they may be angry or resentful, are usually just plain boring.

I don't know if I'd lump The New Republic in there myself. While I'm not a regular reader there, the pieces that I've read (usually because they've been linked to by other bloggers), such as yesterday's "Air War" have been pretty impressive. But overall, I tend to agree with Esmay essay: while there are moderate liberals who are quite reasonable, the further left you go, the further you start seeing things like this, in various forms, over and over again. Michael Moore's made a career of such stunts. But, to paraphrase Esmay's point, when did Michael Moore become the model for intellectual discourse on the left? Or as James Lileks wrote a little while ago:

Who’s more miserable - the far right or the far left? The former is likely to wash its hands of the modern world, lament how things have gone to hell since the Brits stopped shoving civilization down the ululating maws of Wogland, and announce that you’re all welcome to your polyglot mishmash - I’ll be over here getting smashed on port and reading Patrick O’Brien novels. But at least they seem dedicated to enjoying life on their own terms; if they’re cultural conservatives, they retire to their version of Heston’s apartment in “The Omega Man,” surrounded by the remnants of Western glory, keeping to themselves, and venting their spleen now and then by burping off a few rounds at the moaning zombies outside in the darkened park. The hard left, on the other hand, demonstrates all the symptoms of anhedonia, or the inability to feel pleasure - there’s a rancid bitterness, a pissy miserablism that makes you feel very, very sorry for them. The world is going to hell, and they’re stuck in the last car with a newspaper they’ve read six times already; the only person they can harangue is sleeping off a skinful of lager, and they’re trying to work up a hot batch of hatred for the woman in the skin-cream ad above the traincar’s window, but she is rather pretty, in a Sloany way. (Bitch.) They’ve given up on convincing the rest of us fools that we’re trampolining with scissors and knives - all they can do is sneer, whine, mope and spit. In high school terms, they’re the skinny spotted unpopular kids who cannot believe the cheerleaders don’t know how wretched their empty lives really are. Sure, they have dates. Sure, they’re going to college. Sure, they’re going to meet big beefy guys with MBAs and end up in a nice house with a big garden, but don’t they know how empty it all is? Don’t they know that their very existence on the planet causes poverty in Peru and kills fish in the Atlantic?

Check out Esmay and Lileks' essays if you haven't read them yet. They're both very good.

Posted 10/18/2002 02:02:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
BLACK, WHITE, AND BLUES: Suzanne Fields looks at modern day Memphis, and likes what she sees.

Posted 10/18/2002 01:48:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
TALK IS CHEAP, especially when it's all you've got for a defense policy, says Jonah Goldberg.

Posted 10/18/2002 01:25:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
JAMES BOWMAN HAS THE LINE OF THE DAY, in his review of Madonna's latest film, Swept Away, directed by her husband, Guy Ritchie: "It’s the Ritchie bitch as the bitchy rich, as an unkind person might say."

Posted 10/18/2002 02:28:49 AM by Edward Driscoll
ANDREW SULLIVAN IS ALL OVER the North Korean nuclear fiasco, Bill Clinton, and the New York Times, both then (1994) and now. Classic Sullivan: "Hey, guys. We have Nexis now."

Posted 10/18/2002 02:07:13 AM by Edward Driscoll
IRA EINHORN FOUND GUILTY OF MURDER: The ex-hippie guru was convicted for murdering his 30 year old girlfriend in 1977 and stuffing her corpse in a locked steamer trunk in his apartment. If you're familiar with Philadelphia and her DA, the tough talking, hard-as-nails Lynne Abraham, you'll love this classic line: "Metaphorically speaking, Ira Einhorn and his Virgo moon are toast." While he won't get the death penalty, (as part of our deal with France to expedite him), it's a safe bet that Einhorn will get life in prison. I guess it's time to give the "Free Mumia" crowd another celebrity convict to rally behind. Speaking of which, how 'bout this juxtaposition on Yahoo? A search under "Mumia Abu-Jamal" brings up the following categories at the top of the page:

Shopping: buy Mumia Abu-jamal CDs on Yahoo! Shopping Music Directory Category Matches 1 - 1 of 1 • Death Row Inmates >Mumia Abu-Jamal

Amazing.

Posted 10/18/2002 01:25:59 AM by Edward Driscoll
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, CHUCK! Chuck Berry, The great rock and roll pioneer turns 76 today.

Posted 10/17/2002 05:35:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
WATCH M2: No, it's not instructions for 007's latest case. Larry Kudlow says M2 could indicate "a very bullish development for stocks":

Milton Friedman's M2 — the money measure that takes into account currency, checking accounts, money market funds, and savings accounts — could be signaling a big economic pick-up next year, a very bullish development for stocks. While M2 is certainly not an infallible indicator of economic trends, historically it links to current and future changes in national income. So it is worth watching.

Sir John Templeton (who looked--and sounded--amazing for 90) said last week on CNBC's Louis Rukeyser's Wall Street that the Dow should end the century at 1,000,000, which sounds staggering, but it's simply about seven percent annual growth, compounded. Let's get rolling!

Posted 10/17/2002 04:23:02 PM by Edward Driscoll
AIR WAR: If you haven't read The New Republic article that Glenn Reynolds links to yet, you owe it to yourself to click on over--it's a staggering look at the hoops that reporters allow themselves to be put through to broadcast from Baghdad, even when they know that what they'll report will be lies and distortions! The New Republic also mentions an upcoming Cinemax show, which sounds very, very interesting:

There are alternatives to mindlessly reciting Baghdad's spin. Instead of desperately trying to keep their Baghdad offices open, the networks could scour Kurdistan and Jordan, where there are many recently arrived Iraqis who can talk freely. "Amman is the place to find out what's really going on in Iraq," says ex-CIA officer Robert Baer, who spent the mid-'90s working in and around Iraq. (To CNN's credit, it has sent reporter Brent Sadler to Kurdistan despite Baghdad's furious objections.) Or they could use their access to depict the harsh realities of life under Saddam--even if it means never returning to Iraq. It's a method used by [French documentary filmmaker Joel] Soler in his documentary Uncle Saddam, to be aired on Cinemax next month. After spending a month ingratiating himself with Saddam's entourage, Soler convinced the Iraqis to grant him camera time with His Excellency's inner circle. His film shows Saddam to be a lunatic, devoid of morality or humanity. It captures images of Saddam's unique style of fishing-hurling grenades into a pond and then sending aides to retrieve the kill. It documents Saddam's megalomania: Iraq's biggest paper features Saddam in a new pose on the cover each day. "I don't need a relationship with Iraq," he explains of his decision to bare all. "It was my one shot. Every day it was how can I push the limits." To be sure, after screening his documentary for film festivals and Iraqi opposition groups in the U.S., Soler found red paint splattered on his Los Angeles home, his trash can set on fire, and a death threat in his mailbox. But with the film he smuggled out of Iraq via courier, Soler gives more psychological insight into Saddam than ten years of American TV reportage.

In the middle of gathering his footage, Soler recounts this horrifying tidbit to TNR, about how his Iraqi government minder took him to a hospital, ostensibly to examine the effects of sanctions, but then called in a nurse with a long needle:

"He said, 'Now we'll do a series of blood tests.'" Soler jumped on the table screaming: "I said, 'I'm calling my ambassador.' If I'd been American, forget about it."

TNR's article is chockablock full with examples similar to Soler's tale. But Soler had the right idea: gather the truth, and get the hell out. Why Peter Arnett, Christiane Amanpour, and the rest of CNN's faces want to go back there time after time, even know though they know they'll be transmitting lies as news, speaks volumes about their vanity--and of CNN's willingness to compromise news for the sake of a dramatic video feed.

Posted 10/17/2002 03:24:58 PM by Edward Driscoll
IT WAS 20 YEARS AGO TODAY: Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman compares the NFL QBs of 1982 to the QBs of today, and finds today's often come up wanting.

Posted 10/17/2002 02:30:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMING QUAGMIRES, COMPLACENT MODERNS, AND THE RETURN OF THE TIRANA INDEX. All will be revealed in Jay Nordlinger's latest column.

Posted 10/17/2002 02:00:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
AN OMINOUS NEW ERA: Regulation-by-litigation began to be the order of the day at the EPA in the late 1990s. (Excuse while I plant my tongue firmly in cheek.) Thank God that staunch conservative Christie Todd Whitman is riding shotgun over the EPA, preventing such excess from occurring under her watch!

Posted 10/17/2002 01:39:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
A JOKE: That's what the Kurds call Saddam’s “landslide election victory”

Posted 10/17/2002 01:37:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE COLA WARS GET TOUGH: Forget Coke versus Pepsi--they're just kids in a sandbox compared to Zam Zam versus the west. There's a Cola Jihad in the works!

Posted 10/17/2002 01:46:20 AM by Edward Driscoll
RANK STUPIDITY (literally!) by Ananova reporters covering the USAF discovered by RAF Group Captain Lionel Mandrake in his regular column on Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing.

Posted 10/16/2002 11:44:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
AXIS OF EVIL, SOUTHEAST ASIA CONFERENCE: North Korea has the bomb. UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds has an idea as to why North Korea has chosen to come clean. And John McCain looks better in light of Pyongyang' announcement, while Al Gore, Jimmy Carter and the Nobel Committee, each looks worse (if that's possible).

Posted 10/16/2002 11:33:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE WASHINGTON POST GETS IT: They have an article headlined "Report: Terror Funds Flow Through Saudi Arabia", with this opening paragraph:

The Bush administration's efforts to cut off funds for international terrorism are destined to fail until it confronts Saudi Arabia, whose leaders have tolerated some of its wealthy citizens raising millions of dollars a year for al Qaeda, according to a new report from an influential foreign policy organization.

Of course, near the end is this paragraph:

The report acknowleged that criticizing Saudi Arabia publicly and demanding a crackdown on Islamic banks, charities and wealthy sponsors of al Qaeda could create a backlash that would jeoprodize the survival of the Saudi government.

And this is a bad thing??

Posted 10/16/2002 11:27:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
JONAH GOLDBERG FINDS SEVERAL WAYS to link Al-Qaida to the D.C. sniper attacks.

Posted 10/16/2002 06:23:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SNIPER SEARCH: "Jack Dunphy", National Review Online's cop-in-residence, has some suggestions for Charles Moose, Montgomery County, Maryland's chief of police.

Posted 10/16/2002 06:18:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
INTO HOME MUSIC RECORDING? This looks like an extremely comprehensive site devoted to professional recording techniques.

Posted 10/16/2002 05:32:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS, my review of Alan Flusser's latest book, Dressing the Man: The Art of Permanent Fashion is now online at Blogcritics. (To compensate for how swishy that review makes me sound, I'll be reviewing Black & Decker power tools, and Steven Seagal movies next. But first I need a Cosmopolitan and some quiche.)

Posted 10/16/2002 04:30:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
"AMERICA'S FIRST CATASTROPHIC EX-PRESIDENT": David Frum asks, "could there be a less deserved Nobel Prize than the one just awarded to former U.S. President Jimmy Carter?", in an excellent essay.

Posted 10/16/2002 02:50:14 PM by Edward Driscoll
HITLER VERSUS HUSSEIN: Jonah Goldberg takes on the critics of the coming war against Saddam Hussein who seek to compare and contrast him with another mass-murder of 60 years ago:

So who cares if he's "as evil" as Hitler? If Saddam were merely 90 percent as evil as Hitler — to make an almost childish point — would that mean a moral case couldn't be made against him? And that's the second problem with comparisons between Hitler and Saddam: It defines deviancy down. Something that was once considered a "maximum" — Hitler's evil — now becomes a minimum. The assumption seems to be, "Well, if he's not as evil as Hitler, than there's no point in doing to Saddam what we did to Hitler." Well, that's crazy. Do we really want to live in a world that operates on the rule that so long as you are just a fraction less horrible than Hitler, you aren't horrible enough to be stopped? And, for that matter, do we really want to say that if Hitler had been a fraction less horrible than he was, our efforts would be unjustified? Never mind that the proof of Saddam's iniquity is far more convincing in 2002 than the proof of Hitler's was in, say, 1939.

The Hitler-Hussein argument also fails to take into account another mustachioed madman: Stalin. Which is pretty ironic, because apparently, Stalin was Hussein's role-model.

Posted 10/16/2002 01:48:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
PETA UPDATE: Lots of good stuff (well, actually very bad stuff--but good content) about the "cuddly" folks at PETA, and their overt endorsements of terrorism at Instapundit.com today.

Posted 10/16/2002 12:12:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE QUOTE OF THE DAY comes from Harry Belafonte, speaking to CNN's Larry King on October 15th:

The public does not come from the same kind of a sophisticated sense of history and all the different things that I've been exposed to.

Found via Matt Drudge.

Posted 10/16/2002 01:16:26 AM by Edward Driscoll
WE ARE THE REVOLUTIONARY VANGUARD! Well, at least as far as the blogosphere is concerned. It's about to get pretty crowded soon, as EarthLink Inc. is planning to sell blogging tools to its five million consumer and small-business customers. (Incidentally, it's pretty cool that Information Week feels like it doesn't need to explain what the heck a blog is to its readers.)

Posted 10/16/2002 01:11:05 AM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT MOMENTS IN DEMOCRACY: The AP headline reads "Saddam Wins Presidential Referendum". But what really makes the article is the juxtaposition between these two paragraphs:

All 11,445,638 of the eligible voters cast ballots, said Izzat Ibrahim, vice chairman of the Revolutionary Command Council that is Iraq's key decision-making body. "This is a unique manifestation of democracy which is superior to all other forms of democracies even in these countries which are besieging Iraq and trying to suffocate it," Ibrahim said at a news conference in Baghdad, apparently referring to the United States.

Well, it is unique. And soon to be obsolete, as well.

Posted 10/15/2002 11:43:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
ROBERT REICH, SUPPLYSIDER: He's proposing exempting the first $15,000 of all income from payroll taxes. As Stuart Buck says, "Call me surprised"!

Posted 10/15/2002 07:42:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
NO ONE CAN PREDICT THE FUTURE. But I think there are things to be said for both sides of the argument, especially post 9/11. And while I think the children of this country are our future, especially the children of the people who built this country, and at the end of the day I just want justice, I can safely say that Joe Bob Briggs isn't going to get a talk show anytime soon. But he should. Or the terrorists will have won.

Posted 10/15/2002 04:14:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
BEST LAWYER STORY OF THE YEAR, as forwarded to me by my wife (who is a lawyer):

This is the best lawyer story of the year, decade and probably the century. A Charlotte, NC, lawyer purchased a box of very rare and expensive cigars, then insured them against fire among other things. Within a month having smoked his entire stockpile of these great cigars and without yet having made even his first premium payment on the policy, the lawyer filed claim against the insurance company. In his claim, the lawyer stated the cigars were lost "in a series of small fires." The insurance company refused to pay, citing the obvious reason: that the man had consumed the cigars in the normal fashion. The lawyer sued... and won! In delivering the ruling the judge agreed with the insurance company that the claim was frivolous. The Judge stated nevertheless, that the lawyer held a policy from the company in which it had warranted that the cigars were insurable and also guaranteed that it would insure them against fire, without defining what is considered to be unacceptable fire," and was obligated to pay the claim. Rather than endure lengthy and costly appeal process, the insurance company accepted the ruling and paid $15,000.00 to the lawyer for his loss of the rare cigars lost in the "fires." NOW FOR THE BEST PART... After the lawyer cashed the check, the insurance company had him arrested on 24 counts of ARSON!!!! With his own insurance claim and testimony from the previous case being used against him, the lawyer was convicted of intentionally burning his insured property and was sentenced to 24 months in jail and a $24,000.00 fine. This is a true story and was the 1st place winner in the recent Criminal Lawyers Award Contest.

UPDATE: I had a very strong feeling this story was apocryphal when my wife forwarded it to me, but it was too good a shaggy-dog story not to post. Here's the Snopes.com article debunking it, as forwarded by a couple of my readers.

Posted 10/15/2002 03:41:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
CLEAR PROOF THAT RADICAL ISLAM IS EVIL: They've declared war on man's best friend:

A conservative Iranian cleric has denounced the "moral depravity" of owning a dog, and called for the arrest of all dogs and their owners. Dogs are considered unclean in Islamic law and the spread of dog ownership in Westernised secular circles in Iran is frowned upon by the religious establishment. "I demand the judiciary arrest all dogs with long, medium or short legs - together with their long-legged owners," Hojatolislam Hassani is quoted as saying in the reformist Etemad newspaper.

I wonder what the WTC rescue dogs--and their owners--think of this.

Posted 10/15/2002 01:24:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOW WOULD REAGAN HAVE HANDLED the war on terrorism? Good essay by Peter Schweizer in National Review Online. And it's still disconcerting and strange to see someone still alive referred to in the past tense. What a tragedy that the man who did more to win the Cold War than anyone else can't enjoy the fruits of his labor. UPDATE: Orrin Judd has a test to determine if you've accidentally joined The Vast Wing Conspiracy.

Posted 10/15/2002 12:43:36 PM by Edward Driscoll
WANT LUXURY? TAKE THE BUS! I'm not sure if I'm buying Brock Yates' essay, but mainly because I have terrible flashbacks from leaving NYU to come home to South Jersey for weekends. I'd leave on Friday night, via Manhattan's Port Authority Bus Terminal. The folks who inhabited that Terminal, as well as my bus (a conventional, Greyhound-style bus--probably ex-Greyhound) seemed straight out of Night of the Living Dead. But I can't argue with this logic:

This is a natural evolution of the travel business. With Amtrak bound up in idiotic government meddling, egregious union work rules, outdated trackage and useless routes and most of the airlines in the tank - despite $5 billion in government aid since 9-11 with more on the way - there had to be other solutions. A luxury bus line like Exec Connect America will hardly solve the problems of the travel industry, but it sure as hell can remove some of the misery for harried business travelers who have borne the brunt of the downward spiral in the air and rail passenger business. And that's a start.

Fair enough.

Posted 10/15/2002 12:31:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU DON'T SAY! AP Headline: "Saddam Unopposed in Iraq Elections". Hey, with a theme song like "I Will Always Love You", how can he lose?? UPDATE: The coercion of Saddam's elections is going largely unreported in European news coverage.

Posted 10/15/2002 11:39:02 AM by Edward Driscoll
GREASY KID STUFF: Some drivers in England have turned to using old cooking oil to power their cars, to avoid Britain's hefty gasoline taxes. Naturally of course, "police in west Wales are actively tracking down anyone who uses cooking oil instead of gasoline or diesel. Offenders are receiving £500 fines, while a special police unit known as the Frying Squad is dedicated to busting greasers", according to the latest edition of Reason Express.

Posted 10/15/2002 11:35:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE LATEST SNIPER VICTIM WORKED FOR THE FBI: It probably wasn't a wise move for the sniper to anger that organization even further.

Posted 10/15/2002 11:29:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
VANDALS STRUCK U.S. MILITARY RECRUITING CENTER IN SAN JOSE: I've always naively assumed that San Jose was more anti-idiotarian than San Francisco. But events like this make me wonder.

Posted 10/15/2002 11:22:40 AM by Edward Driscoll
AFTER LAST NIGHT'S IMPROMPTU AUTOGRAPH SESSION on Monday Night Football, ESPN.com's Page2 section looks at what else Terrell Owens might have stashed in his uniform.

Posted 10/15/2002 11:17:33 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE TIMES' 'RAINES OF ERROR', as examined by Dave Kopel.

Posted 10/15/2002 11:02:36 AM by Edward Driscoll
TURNING THE TABLES: Nothing like PETA getting a taste of its own medicine.

Posted 10/14/2002 10:54:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
NELSON MANDELA, SNITCH: Can't get Dubya on the phone? Why not call his old man! That's what Mandela did recently. Happy Fun Pundit has the details (be sure to read the article in the National Post that he links to).

Posted 10/14/2002 08:37:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
DC SNIPER UPDATE: Another shooting.

Posted 10/14/2002 08:33:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
BUSH AS NIXON UPDATE: You may remember from last week, when we linked to an essay comparing George W. Bush with Richard M. Nixon. Orrin Judd takes exception to this analogy.

Posted 10/14/2002 04:12:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
THERE'S A POTENTIAL SUSPECT IN CUSTODY in the DC sniper case. UPDATE: Police now "say the man is not a suspect in the D.C. sniper attacks", according to CNSNews.com.

Posted 10/14/2002 04:05:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
AND THEN WHAT? Shiloh Bucher brings the more brainless opponents of the war against terrorism up to speed with what's happened in Afghanistan since America liberated it from the Taliban.

Posted 10/14/2002 03:54:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
LOOKS LIKE UTHANT IS BITING THE DUST: Clicking on his homepage brings nothing more than a "thank you for reading UThant" message. Too bad--that was one funny Website while Mr. Thant was cranking out the satire. At the moment, his archieves are still active. Click here and look around--I have no idea how long the site will remain up. In related news, I just added ScrappleFace to my links page--I think he's a worthy successor to The Artist Formally Known as UThant.

Posted 10/14/2002 03:36:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
FALLING SUN: Good essay on Japan, taxes, MacArthur, Rising Sun and banking (and a few other things as well!) by Bruce Bartlett. An timely, but unstated subtext in this essay are several ideas on how we must reform Iraq's economy like we did Japan's. Of course, overtly stated is how stupid many American-bashing pundits were in believing the superiority of that economy in the late 1980s.

Posted 10/14/2002 03:28:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
CRUISIN' WITH THE TOOZ: Pat Toomay describes what it was like to have John Matuszak as a roommate. (Hint: picture Animal from the Muppets weighing 300 pounds, and you're in the ballpark.)

Posted 10/14/2002 03:17:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE COWBOYS KNOW THEY'RE LUCKY TO BE 3-3, according to this AP report.

Posted 10/14/2002 03:14:13 PM by Edward Driscoll
THERE'S "RATHER CURIOUS PHRASING" in the statement regarding al-Qaida and today's attack on US forces in Kuwait issued by Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef, according to Charles Johnson, who takes issue with it.

Posted 10/14/2002 02:50:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
LOOK BACK IN ANGER: A Mike Bloomberg voter is sorry he voted for him:

I guess I was a fool to believe that Bloomberg—a former Democrat who changed party affiliations to run for office—would become anything but what he is today.

UPDATE: Found on the New York Post's Page Six Column was this tasty item:

Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter went head-on with Mayor Bloomberg at Andrew Stein's dinner party last week. The dinner, in a private room at The Four Seasons, was in full bloom when Carter took out a cigarette and lit up right in front of the virulently anti-smoking mayor. As Howard Stringer, Amanda Burden, Mike Wallace and Roger Waters looked on in amusement, Bloomberg bit his tongue while Charlie Rose suggested the two debate the issue on his show. Carter declined but proposed his pal Fran Lebowitz instead.

Good for Carter for showing his displeasure right at the source!

Posted 10/14/2002 02:33:30 PM by Edward Driscoll
IRAQI COUP FOILED: Stephen Green has the details, and adds, "don't get too excited about any coup in Iraq. The bold ones are either already dead, or waiting for US armor and Special Forces to arrive." As a great man once said, "let's roll"!

Posted 10/14/2002 02:29:35 PM by Edward Driscoll
MEET LEONARDO, a "mummified" dinosaur. He's proving to be a treasure-trove of information for scientists. (Link spotted via Group Captain Mandrake.)

Posted 10/14/2002 01:52:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS THE CIA FIGHTING TERRORISM IN IRELAND? That's what this post from The Corner on National Review Online says. Interesting--and logical. Although I hope we're not spreading our resources too thin.

Posted 10/14/2002 01:29:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
STEVEN DEN BESTE HAS SOME THOUGHTS about the Balinese bombing.

Posted 10/14/2002 01:21:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
CONGRESS, PRESIDENT, NATION UNITED OVER USE OF FORCE. ScrappleFace has the details. And I'm firmly behind this measure, as well.

Posted 10/14/2002 01:14:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
SADDAM HUSSEIN HAS CHOSEN "I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU" as his campaign song. No, really--this comes from Mark Steyn, rather than Scrappleface or the Onion. Joanne Jacobs has some alternative themes for Saddam.

Posted 10/14/2002 01:08:08 PM by Edward Driscoll
NICK SCHULZ SAYS that environmental activists, having lost their initial arguments, rather than admitting their position is flawed, are simply "getting shifty".

Posted 10/14/2002 02:03:29 AM by Edward Driscoll
LORD OF THE RINGS EXTENDED CUT COMING TO DVD: The Digital Bits has the details of this extended version of the LOTR that's coming soon, including this tidbit:

Many of you already know a little about the 30 minutes of material that's been added back in, but here's a list of SOME of the new scenes: an extended opening with Bilbo writing his memoirs, a new introduction to Samwise Gamgee, a scene at the Green Dragon Inn, the Hobbits witnessing the departure of the Elves from Middle Earth on the way to Bree, Aragorn singing the ballad of Beren and Luthien, Aragorn at his mother's grave, new moments during the departure from Rivendale in which we see Arwen's emotional reaction to Aragorn's leaving as well as Elrond seeing the Fellowship off, a scene in the mines of Moria in which we learn how the Dwarves unleashed the fire-demon, Galadriel's complete gift-giving scene at Lothlorien and more footage of the battle at Amon Hen.

The folks at the Bits have more details, so if you're a LOTR fan, click on over and check it out.

Posted 10/13/2002 10:12:47 PM by Edward Driscoll
AS STEVEN DEN BESTE ONCE SAID, President Bush has made Iraq "an offer they can't accept."

Posted 10/13/2002 02:02:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
STEPHEN AMBROSE DIED TODAY AT AGE 66. (I'm back from a weekend trip to Monterey with my wife. Don't look for a lot of posting today, however.)