EdDriscoll.com

Posted 11/9/2002 01:10:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
RELIGION OF PEACE UPDATE: Reason's Daily Brickbat reports:

The Ayatollah Mohsen Mujtahed Shabestari, who is supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's personal representative to Iran's Azerbaijan province, is upset with three U.S. religious figures: Jerry Falwell, who has called the prophet Mohammed "a terrorist"; Pat Robertson, who claims Islam is a religion of violence seeking to "dominate and destroy"; and Franklin Graham, the son of televangelist Billy Graham, who says Islam is "a very evil and wicked religion." Shabestari is seeking to disprove these false notions by calling for the three to be killed.

Posted 11/9/2002 11:14:56 AM by Edward Driscoll
"CLOUDCUCKOOLAND": Victor Davis Hanson looks at the ongoing implosion of anti-Americanism. Hanson writes:

The dream of 1960s radicals was supposedly that someday the United States might use its vast cultural influence and military power to be on the "right side of history." That meant — instead of Pavlovian opposition to idealistic socialists and occasional Communists in preference for odious figures like Pinochet, Somoza, or Franco — we would try to topple just those regimes and implant democracies in their place. Few then lectured that the Nicaraguans should be left to handle their own dictators or that we had no right to tell the Spanish what to do with Franco. Instead, support for revolutionary movements was voiced and action demanded. Well, with the end of the Cold War, those days of hope have at last arrived. Noriega, Milosevic, and Mullah Omar not only were fascistic and bloodthirsty, but they are also all gone thanks to the United States military. Rather than seeing protestors chanting to ignore Saddam Hussein, I would have expected that the refrain would be "Solidarity with the brave Iraqi people in their brave struggles against a fascist mass murderer."

I can't help but think that simple knee-jerk hatred of the right is driving the left to many of these extreme positions that have no internal "logic" otherwise. It would be a fascinating "what if" scenerio to ponder what their response would have been if Clinton had pursued Islamic terrorism with the same vigor that President Bush has, when presented with several opportunities to do just that.

Posted 11/9/2002 10:29:21 AM by Edward Driscoll
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF THE LEFTIST BIGOTRY that Andrew Sullivan wrote about recently, spotted by Joanne Jacobs.

Posted 11/9/2002 10:00:23 AM by Edward Driscoll
A TWO-FISTED FISKING? The New York Post's "Page Six" column reports that "Maverick director Larry Clark beat up the distributor for his movie "Ken Park" after the jerk declared that America deserved to get attacked on 9/11."

Posted 11/9/2002 02:28:30 AM by Edward Driscoll
COMPARE AND CONTRAST Garrison Keillor in 2002 on Norm Coleman and in 1998 on Bill Clinton.

Posted 11/9/2002 02:14:38 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE SILVER BULLET: JunkYard Blog has the skinny on the seldom discussed Paragraph Five of our resolution regarding Iraq--and it's a doozy.

Posted 11/8/2002 11:57:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
"WITHIN WEEKS": That's how long military officials are saying it would take the US to be prepared to strike Iraq if Saddam Hussein violates the terms of a new U.N. resolution that was approved on Friday.

Posted 11/8/2002 05:18:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
HIGH TECH SMELLS SUCCESS, in Republican Congress.

Posted 11/8/2002 04:49:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE BUSH-GROUCHO CONNECTION, as discovered by John Podhoretz. Nice to see Bush and Ari Fleischer not taking Helen Thomas very seriously, by the way.

Posted 11/8/2002 03:59:39 PM by Edward Driscoll
WISHFUL THINKING: "Pelosi Favored to Lead House" reads this AP headline. No--Denny Hastert leads the House. Remember--the evil Republicans in charge--you know the drill, right? Pelosi is the Democrats' minority leader. I normally don't think of AP as waving their bias in the reader's face, and they haven't been anywhere near as bad as Reuters, post Sept. 11th. But the person who wrote this article clearly is having trouble accepting which party has been charge of Congress since January of 1995.

Posted 11/8/2002 11:46:08 AM by Edward Driscoll
WHEN DOES "NO" MEAN "MAYBE"? When it's Saudi Arabia, who are starting to waffle on their previous decision not to allow the US to use their bases to attack Iraq.

Posted 11/8/2002 11:42:07 AM by Edward Driscoll
IF ALL THE HYPE REGARDING THE MICROSOFT TABLET PC is making you dizzy, you might want to check out the spiffy new Apple alternative. They really do know how to make the complex simple. Very simple!

Posted 11/8/2002 11:38:52 AM by Edward Driscoll
15 TO 0: (No, I'm not predicting the score of the Seahawks/Cardinals game this Sunday.) "By a 15-0 vote Friday morning, the United Nations Security Council adopted a resolution authorizing U.N. arms inspectors to resume their search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction -- without conditions or limitations." Stephen Green has some brief, initial thoughts.

Posted 11/8/2002 11:21:38 AM by Edward Driscoll
I LOVE THE SMELL OF NAPALM IN THE MORNING! (Sorry about going all Robert Duvall on you, but I had to work one of my favorite movie lines in there somehow.) Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now, based on Joseph Conrad's literary classic Heart of Darkness, was chosen by a panel of 50 British critics and film writers. Group Captain Mandrake has the details. We have rather mixed emotions about Apocalypse Now. For our take, see our recent entry in Blogcritics.

Posted 11/8/2002 01:00:22 AM by Edward Driscoll
NOONAN NAILS IT: The strategy du jour to salvage the Democrats is "go left young man" (actually, "go left young hermaphrodite" would probably closer to their rococo spirit, but it just doesn't have the same historic alliteration). But that could leave the Democrats out in the wilderness for a very long time. Why? Peggy Noonan nails it:

The Democrat's base is left-wing. It is a worse problem for the Democrats than the Republicans' base is for them. The Republican base is simply essentially conservative; Republicans in power are conservative too but less so; they live in what they call the real world. They achieve what they can, explaining to the base what is possible. Sometimes the base gets balky, but mostly it follows. After all, they're all conservatives together. The problem the Democrats have with their base is that it isn't liberal in the way the Democratic leadership in general is liberal. It is left-wing, and some parts of it are way left-wing. The last socialists are there, the warriors of race and class; there are environmentalists who want to set loggers on fire, people who think George W. Bush killed Paul Wellstone, activists whose only concern in the world is abortion rights, and people who support capital punishment for only one crime, smoking in public. Soon they will demand the death penalty for smoking in private. (Are there radicals and nuts in the Republican base? Sure. But 20 years of observation tells me there aren't as many and they don't have the same clout. Moreover, Republican candidates are somewhat protected from them. The protection comes from the media, which hate nutty right-wingers more than they dislike Republicans.) Reporters rarely ask Democratic candidates about the price their base extracts, but it is big. The base determines primary outcomes. The base changes the shape of policy.

This is fundamentally a very conservative country--it may be balkanized in terms of social policy as a result of the sexual revolution and other trends that developed in the 1960s and '70s, but there's a reason the country as a whole isn't as screwed up as Europe has become. Why gun control was a dud of an issue. Why (unlike say, France) we take the war on terrorism seriously. And while going to the far left will help gin up that Democratic base, it's going to alienate far more people on the other side than Ronald Reagan did when he ran for president in 1980. There were lots and lots of Reagan Democrats, especially in '84. Just imagine a constituency of Hillary or Pelosi Republicans. To paraphrase a famous icon of the hard left--it's not easy if you try!

Posted 11/7/2002 11:33:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
FLASH! ScrappeFace's sources have leaked the actual wording of the UN's Iraq Resolution. We're happy to see our Russian allies cooperating with us by supplying the drinks necessary to write such a hard-hitting resolution!

Posted 11/7/2002 10:40:20 PM by Edward Driscoll
ARE THE BUSHES A NEW DYNASTY? Larry Sabato, political scientist with the University of Virginia, seems to think so.

Posted 11/7/2002 08:51:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
NOT ON THE CHEAP: Patrick Ruffini has some thoughts on the Democrats moving to the hard left as a result of Tuesday's elections. As he writes:

There's something politically stupid about these developments, and it's not just the folly of alienating the sensible center just because it hasn't been tried before. Rather, it's the notion that you can build a Democratic majority on the cheap — ratchet up the rhetoric a little, get that Gore + Nader vote out, and win. While this strategy seems to be the most explosive, in fact, it's the most passive and intellectually self-abnegating the Democrats could adopt. It's mirrored by Judis & Teixeira's recent book, which calls for Democrats to bide their time, and simply trust that the electorate will catch up with their base voters.

"Majorities are never made by such narrow tactical maneuvers", Ruffini writes, and explains just what they are made of.

Posted 11/7/2002 07:41:59 PM by Edward Driscoll
INFORMATION UNDERLOAD: In an excellent post, Steven Den Beste says that one reason why Saddam Hussein makes such poor decisions is that, like Hitler near the end of WWII, his generals are feeding him distorted information, to save their own skins.

Posted 11/7/2002 03:36:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHY BILL SIMON LOST: More thoughts from National Review Online.

Posted 11/7/2002 01:34:25 PM by Edward Driscoll
IN A SILENT WAY: Miles Davis knew how to make silence work for him as a musician--by carefully choosing when not to play, he made what he did play that much more eloquent. George W. Bush seems to understand that that can work equally well for politics. Orrin Judd writes:

While everyone's focussed on the performance of George W. Bush in the days leading up to Tuesday, there ma be more to be learned about him by his performance since. First of all, here's the difference between W and the two men who dominated the American political scene in the '90s: we didn't even see him yesterday. Think about that. Now try to imagine those two fat egomaniacal onanists, Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, staying out of the limelight on Wednesday. You can't can you? They would have made it all about themselves.

Precisely--although they each deserve credit for revitalizing their parties for a time, their desire to tan in the limelight afterwards ultimately did their parties more harm than good.

Posted 11/7/2002 11:27:16 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE DEMOCRATS' RACE PROBLEM: Rod Dreher has some thoughts.

Posted 11/7/2002 10:53:08 AM by Edward Driscoll
MEET NANCY PELOSI, quite possibly the Democrats' next House minority leader. Orrin Judd explains where she stands on the issues. Something tells me that CSpan's ratings--not to mention sales of Alka Seltzer--are about to double come January. UPDATE: CNSNews.com says that Pelosi's chief competition for the job, House Democratic Caucus Chair Martin Frost (D-Texas) has come out swinging, calling Pelosi's approach "too liberal" to lead the DNC into the majority in 2004. The election to replace Gephardt will be held Thursday, Nov. 14.

Posted 11/7/2002 02:25:34 AM by Edward Driscoll
OFF THE RECORD: Scott Ott interviews a voter who doesn't want to be named. And it's easy to see why...

Posted 11/6/2002 11:21:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
GREAT KID, NOW DON'T GET COCKY: That's the underlying message to President Bush and the Republicans in John Fund's latest column:

So while Republicans continue to pop the champagne corks, they would do well to sober up soon. John Judis and Ruy Teixeira, two liberal analysts, have written a response to Mr. Phillips's 1969 book. It's called "The Emerging Democratic Majority" [Read Patrick Ruffini's take on it--Ed], and while Tuesday's results leave room to question its central thesis, it still makes valuable points. White-collar professionals such as teachers, lawyers, doctors and engineers are trending Democratic, and they are turning formerly conservative strongholds like Phoenix into competitive territory. In 1988, President Bush's father carried Phoenix's Maricopa County with 65% of the vote. In 2000, his son won it by two percentage points. This past Tuesday, Republican Matt Salmon carried it by an even smaller margin and the GOP apparently lost a governor's race in the Grand Canyon State for the first time in 20 years. As significant a victory as the Republicans have achieved, this is still the closely divided nation that political analyst Michael Barone describes. Republicans again have control of both houses of Congress, but by narrow and potentially precarious margins. Once the celebrations die down, the party would be well advised to focus attention on where it is losing votes as well as where it is gaining them.

I think he's absolutely right. I've been reading volume one of The Age of Reagan for a review in Blogcritics, and Steven F. Hayward does an excellent job of describing in detail the hubris--and it was staggering--of the Democrats of the 1960s, a time when they controlled all three bodies of government. While Republicans are unlikely to make the same enormous mistakes and overreaching that the Great Society Democrats did, hubris on a grand scale can also alienate a large percentage of the people who are skeptical of both parties--or those who don't like what the Democrats have become, but don't yet feel comfortable with conservatism. The fact that Bush instituted a "no gloating" rule for his staffers is a good first sign that he understands that as well--and bodes well for the next two, and possibly six years of governance by a man consistently underestimated by his critics. UPDATE: Stephen Green makes a similar point.

Posted 11/6/2002 10:27:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
GLENN REYNOLDS HAS SOME AN INTERESTING NEW AVENUE FOR BUSH TO PURSUE with his newly reconstituted majority.

Posted 11/6/2002 09:18:51 PM by Edward Driscoll
MORE OUTHOUSES THAN TiVOS: Eric Olsen has a humerous post on Blogcritics that reflects the fact that currently, America has more outhouses than personal video recorders, such as TiVos and ReplayTVs. For some of the reasons why PVRs have been such a hard sell, check out my recent article in Tech Central Station I also have an article on the same subject in the November issue of Home Automation magazine that goes into even greater detail but unfortunately, isn't available online. As to the continued sales of outhouses in quantity, I'll check my sources, read a magazine or two, and get back to you.

Posted 11/6/2002 08:19:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
NATIONAL AIRLINES GOES BELLY UP: AP reports "National Airlines, which flew tourists to the nation's gambling capital, planned to cease operations Wednesday after nearly two years in bankruptcy court." It couldn't have happened to a nicer bunch of folks: my wife and I flew back to New York in early October of last year on National, only a couple of weeks after regular flights resumed after being grounded as a result of September 11th. During a period where airlines should have been going out of their way to make passengers feel welcome and comfortable, the stewardesses were uniformly rude, inhospitable to special requests, and one actually said "with our rates, we don't have to take anything from anybody", meaning, sit down, shut up, and strap yourself in." We even upgraded to first class for the flight back, just because it had to be better than coach. (National's steerage made sitting in coach in American seem luxurious and sleek by comparison.) Fortunately, it was. But we vowed never to fly National after that debacle--and evidently, so did a lot of other folks.

Posted 11/6/2002 07:55:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
FOOL'S GOLD: James Morrow of Reason asks, "hasn't New York City suffered enough?" Does it really need the Olympics to increase its miseries?

Posted 11/6/2002 07:41:53 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT WENT WRONG IN CALIFORNIA? Some thoughts from Ken Masugi in National Review Online.

Posted 11/6/2002 11:22:25 AM by Edward Driscoll
DISCONNECT! Compare and contrast these two Democratic strategists:

"Tonight was a good night for Democrats" Terry McAuliffe, DNC Chairman on CNN Larry King 11/05/02

And James Carville:

And then there's Tom Daschle, who says "‘This is the worst night I have had":

Terry--time to check in with your shrink, my man. Or not, as Glenn Reynolds notes.

Posted 11/6/2002 01:06:11 AM by Edward Driscoll
SEC CHAIRMAN RESIGNS: Harvey Pitt is gone. As someone noted (if I can track down whom, or if someone emails me, I'll link to it), it was a smart move for the Bush administration to bury this under the election news.

Posted 11/6/2002 12:03:00 AM by Edward Driscoll
GO LEFT YOUNG DEM: Orrin Judd says that "Democrats are probably going to look at tonight as a repudiation of the Clinton New Democrat/Third Way ideology and the party is extremely likely to jag to the Left":

This has the "advantage" of suiting where the activists would like the Party to be anyway, but the disadvantage of putting them at odds with the nation. To get some sense of where this leads them, just imagine how much uglier tonight would have been if instead of "conservative" Democrats--Shaheen, Bowles, Pryor, Cleland, etc.--running as kind of softer versions of Republicans, you'd had full-throated liberals running on genuine Democrat positions, like raising taxes and opposing the war. It could not possibly have helped, but that's what their '04 campaign may well look like.

There's going to be lots of fascinating stuff written about this election--and what's to come next. Stay tuned.

Posted 11/5/2002 11:03:15 PM by Edward Driscoll
DRUDGE HEADLINE: GOP TAKES SENATE.

Posted 11/5/2002 10:19:04 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMPUTER PROBLEMS TODAY: My wife's computer, which doubles as our main Internet connection via our cable modem, had several viruses (virae?) today, which meant a lot of downtime, a lot of time on hold with tech support, and a lot of time spent debugging (literally!) things. Stephen Green is burning the midnight oil blogging the election tonight, so stop on by there if you've got a political itch that needs scratching. And National Review's The Corner Weblog is being updating fairly regularly, as is Matt Drudge. And I'm sure Andrew Sullivan will have some commentary later tonight. UPDATE: Kirean Lyons is following the California gubernatorial race with regular updates on both voting and drinking. UPDATE: Sullivan's take is up.

Posted 11/4/2002 10:29:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE DNC WILL HAVE A SECRET WEAPON TOMORROW...

Posted 11/4/2002 10:03:06 PM by Edward Driscoll
GODFATHER MEETS THE PUNK: Pete Townshend reviews Kurt Cobain's journals.

Posted 11/4/2002 10:01:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
QUOTE OF THE DAY: A reader of Steven Den Beste's USS Clueless writes:

Europe really does not understand America. I remember a scene from a biography of Theodore Roosevelt (I think it was from that source) where an Englishman was out West and went to a ranch and asked a ranch hand "Where is your master?", to which statement the ranch hand replied "That sumbitch ain't been born yet."

Posted 11/4/2002 08:13:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
DRISCOLL AFTER DARK: I have two articles in the November Home Automation, including a piece on using the X10 home automation standard and motion detectors to help make a home safe at night. The article includes a few photos of Chez Ed after dark. The text of the article is online, but you'll have to actually buy the magazine to see the photos (besides this one, of course!)

Hopefully my neighbor will buy a copy--God only knows what he thought when he saw me taking photos of my garage and front door at 9:00 on a Saturday night with my digital camera, running into the house (to check them on the PC) and then coming back out to shoot some more. Thank God for digital cameras: there are only a few photos in the piece, but I ended up shooting 20 or 30 shots and experimenting with exposures, fill lighting from the house lights combined with flash, trying the shots with no flash, trying to use the lights from the car as additional lighting, and just generally experimenting. There's no way I could have done night photography like this with a conventional flash, and have to wait until the next day to see the results--I would have wasted far more film and time. And the digital image appears to me to have far more usable exposure range within a single image. (Compare the first three photos in my recent Napa Valley Wine Train article to the three after that: the first three are digital images, the next three are scanned prints. I had to really manipulate the scanned prints to balance the indoor lighting with the bright sunlight. The digital prints required much less manipulation before they were ready to be uploaded.) Incidentally, my other article in Home Automation, which is not available online, is all about choosing the right PVR, which actually makes a nice companion to my interactive TV article in today's Tech Central Station. Buy a couple of boxcars worth of Home Automation magazine today!

Posted 11/4/2002 07:51:18 PM by Edward Driscoll
"WHEN PARANOIDS GET LAZY": Jesse Walker looks at the conspiracy theorists who believe that Paul Wellstone's plane crash wasn't simply the result of a combination of small plane and bad weather. Somehow it's not surprising that Barbra Streisand is among them.

Posted 11/4/2002 03:41:50 PM by Edward Driscoll
THROUGH A CRASS EYE: Robert Kagan has France's number:

The debate over Iraq, though, has been a special godsend. Seen through French eyes, the world is suddenly a wonderful place, at least for France: There is the United States, the rogue colossus. There is Tony Blair, America's poodle. There is Schroeder, impaled -- internationally if not domestically -- upon his unilateralist, "German way" pacifism. And then there is France, tougher-minded than the Germans, prouder and more independent than the British and, because of its seat on the Security Council, the only modern, civilized power in the world able to tame and civilize the American beast. It is a mission worthy of a great country. Who would ever want to wake from such a dream? The real world of terrorists, tyrannical aggressors and weapons of mass destruction is a much less accommodating world for France than the legalistic, one-country, one-vote world of the Security Council or the postmodern paradise of the European Union. If the United States ever does invade Iraq, the French must either stand by helplessly or take their place by America's side, and that is not nearly as enjoyable. It's more fun to play Don Quixote, tilting at American windmills. And who knows? If France can prolong the game for a few more months, as Powell suggests, Bush's chance to remove Saddam Hussein will have passed and the Iraqi leader will be safe again. What a triumph that will be for France's vision of a just international order. What a triumph that will be for France's vision of a just international order. And then only the American people and all of Iraq's many neighbors will have to stay awake, waiting for the next catastrophe to strike.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 11/4/2002 02:17:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
US KILLS AL-QAIDA AIDE IN YEMEN: AP reports that Qaed Salim Sunian al-Harethi, "a top associate of Osama bin Laden", was "traveling by car in northwest Yemen when a Hellfire missile struck it Sunday, killing him and five others". AP believes it was a CIA operation. Add this to the other recent successes we've had against al-Qaida. UPDATE: al-Qaida reports a slightly different cause for the explosion...

Posted 11/4/2002 02:11:10 PM by Edward Driscoll
IS MICHAEL POWELL ABOUT TO BLOW IT as chairman of the FCC? Jim Glasman thinks so:

Powell is becoming the worst sort of out-of-control regulator, adding uncertainty and instability to an industry that needs precisely the opposite. He's set to roll over the traditional authority of the states and introduce the same kind of government-led industrial policy that Republicans campaigned against in the 1980s. If he continues on the present course, the White House will suffer. It's surprising the administration didn't take Powell to the woodshed long ago. The truth is that the chairman of the FCC does need to take decisive action, but, instead of destroying a law passed overwhelmingly by Congress (including every leading conservative legislator), the chairman needs to reaffirm it. After years of waffling, he should say, loud and clear, that he will enforce the Telecom Act and aggressively defend it in the courts and on the Hill. After all, the law is finally working - and benefiting consumers and small businesses with lower rates and higher quality through competition. Going into the mid-term elections, the Bush Administration has a success on its hands. The states where reforms have produced the best results are important vote-rich political battlegrounds like Michigan, Ohio, Illinois and New York. The White House would be nuts if it did not exert some not-so-subtle persuasion to divert Powell from taking a reckless and damaging step.

Posted 11/4/2002 12:23:31 PM by Edward Driscoll
MAKE DAVID HOROWITZ THE HEAD OF THE RNC? That's what Kathryn Jean Lopez suggests. Sounds good to me--Horowitz takes politics as war seriously, something sorely lacking in the GOP.

Posted 11/4/2002 11:46:37 AM by Edward Driscoll
CHAOS AT SJO YESTERDAY, as a suspicious bag--which was allowed through after testing positive for explosives forced the evacuation of three planes at Norman Mineta's namesake airport.

Posted 11/4/2002 11:08:51 AM by Edward Driscoll
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Bill Bennett looks at the symbolism of the 1978 funeral of Hubert Humphrey compared to the 2002 funeral of Paul Wellstone, and observes what they each imply about the health of our political system.

Posted 11/4/2002 11:03:23 AM by Edward Driscoll
PALESTINIANS REACT TO HRW REPORT. Charles Johnson reports on Human Rights Watch finally labeling suicide bombings by the Palestinians as war crimes:

To nobody’s surprise, the HRW report has provoked a reaction from the Palestinians that exhibits the winning combination of raging paranoia, murderous intent, and propensity for outrageous lying that has endeared them to so many Europeans and NGOs: PA rejects rights group report about suicide bombers. The Palestinian Authority says everything is Israel’s fault.

Johnson also has some thoughts on Israeli checkpoints worth reading.

Posted 11/4/2002 10:55:14 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS POLLSTER JOHN ZOGBY A FRAUD? Patrick Ruffini has some thoughts.

Posted 11/4/2002 10:40:34 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE BENGALS' GUARANTEE PAYS OFF: Bengals 38, Texans 3

Posted 11/4/2002 10:37:08 AM by Edward Driscoll
IS THERE LIFE AFTER TV? My latest Tech Central Station piece, on interactive TV, is up today. Here are my previous TCS articles as well, in case you missed one. Click in early and often there!

Posted 11/4/2002 10:33:47 AM by Edward Driscoll
THE SIMPSONS ON GUN CONTROL: Pretty amazing stuff for a mainstream TV series: I watched it last night, and couldn't believe how pro Second Amendment it was. Apparently, neither could a lot of people.

Posted 11/4/2002 12:23:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
JONAH JUDGES THE JUDGES: Jonah Goldberg takes a look at the judicial nomination process, and finds both Republicans and Democrats lacking, both for slowing down the process, and for building up the power of judges. He's right--particularly when it comes to the latter.

Posted 11/3/2002 11:45:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
THOSE SCHIZOPHRENIC CANADIANS--they just can't make up their minds as to how they feel. Orrin Judd has the details.

Posted 11/3/2002 11:19:34 PM by Edward Driscoll
SPEAKING OF NEW YORK, my latest review is online at Blogcritics: the new box DVD set of Law & Order's first season.

Posted 11/3/2002 03:07:12 PM by Edward Driscoll
"TAVERN ON THE GREEN!!" "ART! ART! ART!" "T-REX!! T-REX!!" Is everyone as sick of the tourism commercial that shows whacko NFL fans let loose in New York as I am? It's run multiple times during just about every pro football game this fall. What on earth were they thinking when they created it? Doesn't New York City have enough louts and loonies already, without adding to its problems?

Posted 11/3/2002 02:49:48 PM by Edward Driscoll
ANDREW SULLIVAN'S CONSTANT ATTACKS on the New York Times are finally starting to get results...

Posted 11/3/2002 12:36:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU DON'T SAY: "Saudi: Kingdom Won't Help Vs. Iraq" Didn't we go over this back in early August? UPDATE: Group Captain Mandrake has some thoughts on this as well. UPDATE: As does Steven Den Beste.

Posted 11/3/2002 12:25:00 PM by Edward Driscoll
RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE, WEST COAST DIVISION UPDATE: My wife and I spent much of yesterday afternoon wandering around Westgate Shopping Mall, a fashionably upscale shopping mall in San Jose that was packed with shoppers (and the parking lot was packed with their eeeeeevil (nudge nudge, wink, wink) SUVs. I don't know if it was the nice weather (no nicer than it's been all fall here; "the monsoon season" hasn't started yet), or people getting an early jump on Christmas shopping. My wife needed some new business duds, I picked up some new shoes, we both did our bit to jump start the economy. Later that night, we discovered that Eulipia, one of our favorite downtown San Jose restaurants was packed as well. For an East Coast report, click here. Nice to see lots of positive leading economic indicators!