EdDriscoll.com

Posted 12/21/2002 07:17:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
THIS TIME, IT'S PERSONAL: Bill Peschel, linking to a New York Times article about upcoming war in Iraq reminds us not to forget Al-Qaeda's attack on the Pentagon:

In times to come, historians will call the attack on the Pentagon -- not WTC II, and certainly not WTC I or Oklahoma City -- as the pivotal event in the war on terrorism. Because to the people in Washington, the power movers and shakers, the Pentagon attack made it personal.

Posted 12/21/2002 05:36:03 PM by Edward Driscoll
TUNA SURPRISE: Obviously, Dave Campo is going to be fired as coach of the Dallas Cowboys. Who will replace him? One possibility is this fellow, with whom Cowboys owner Jerry Jones met with earlier this week. UPDATE: Don Banks of Sports Illustrated has some thoughts.

Posted 12/20/2002 10:26:07 PM by Edward Driscoll
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: It's not just gunning for Christmas anymore. The Grinch has stolen Hanukkah as well.

Posted 12/20/2002 05:13:38 PM by Edward Driscoll
HOME OF THE WHOPPERS: California kooks cook up obesity 'crisis'.

Posted 12/20/2002 03:33:24 PM by Edward Driscoll
INTERESTING CONTRAST: Lott voluntary resigned almost four years to the day that Bill Clinton was impeached.

Posted 12/20/2002 02:25:05 PM by Edward Driscoll
WOODROW WILSON, DIXIECRAT: Charles Paul Freund has an excellent essay on the overtly racist 28th president in Reason. Funny, I don't remember learning any of this stuff at the College of New Jersey, when I attended history courses that praised Wilson for his love of big government and parliamentary politics.

Posted 12/20/2002 02:10:56 PM by Edward Driscoll
LAST MINUTE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING: It's not too late to get items before Christmas via Amazon.com--and support this site in the process. Just click here, or on the Amazon button below, and shop away!

If you're done with shopping (lucky you!) then why not drop a few bucks in either of the tipboxes on the left. And in the meantime, we promise not to run any PBS shows to help build pledges!

Posted 12/20/2002 02:08:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
Q&A: Written shortly before Lott actually resigned as SML, Peggy Noonan has an insightful question and answer session on Lott. Here's a sample:

I believe that Trent Lott spoke at the Thurmond birthday party in racial code words. And a man who does that should not, half a century into the modern movements for civil rights, be allowed to continue as the face of a major political party in politics. Q: But come on--Democrat Robert Byrd went on Fox and actually said some people are "white niggers," and he's still in the Senate. Jesse Jackson called New York "Hymietown," and they still call him a leader. Mike Wallace made fun of Mexicans and blacks and he's still on "60 Minutes." Mr. Lott's getting a raw deal. A: If you compare him with others maybe he is, but why compare him with others? Trent Lott is the majority leader of the Senate. That's big. Jesse Jackson is a freelance fraud, he's not a leader, he's not a holder of high office in a great democracy. Bobby Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, who was once a member of the KKK (Tip O'Neill is said to have had a private nickname for him, "Sheets"), is not a leader either; he's a weird throwback. And Mike Wallace doesn't represent the United States; he represents Mike Wallace's ambition.

Addressing the obvious double standard of politics, Noonan writes:

Q: But isn't there a double standard here? Democrats get slapped on the wrist for using racial and religious epithets, but Republicans lose their jobs over it. It's not fair. A: Maybe it isn't fair, but think of it this way: The history of the Republican Party on race is mixed. Yes, that's true of the Democrats too, but Democrats are perceived today as sympathetic to the movements for freedom that have marked the past century, and Republicans are not. This has some implications. It means Republicans have to go out of our way to show that our hearts are in the right place. But there's another thing that is even more important. If we are tougher on ourselves, maybe that's good. Why shouldn't we be tougher on ourselves? If the Democrats all too often treat race as if it were a card to be played in a game, and if the Republicans in contrast attempt to struggle through the issue and be serious and go out of their way to expunge the last vestiges of the old racial ways, isn't that something we should be proud of? History is watching. It will know what we did. What will history think if it sees a new seriousness on race from the Republican Party? I think it will say: Good. And I think that matters.

Read the whole thing.

Posted 12/20/2002 11:16:13 AM by Edward Driscoll
AXIS OF EQUIVALENCE: Senator Patty Murray (Democrat from Washington, by way of Afghanistan), anti-American idiot. I remember in the late 1990s and as recently as July of 2001, when, in a case of unwittingly updating Godwin's Law for the 21st century, several people (not the least of which were Bill Mahr, the host of Politically Incorrect and NAACP chairman Julian Bond) made cracks about "The Taliban wing" of the Republican Party. But I don't recall even Trent Lott praising Osama bin Laden, unlike Murray. I'm only surprised she didn't make her speech from Baghdad.

Posted 12/20/2002 11:01:30 AM by Edward Driscoll
VIRGINIA POSTREL HAS some first thoughts on Lott's resignation as SML, and several excellent links, as well.

Posted 12/20/2002 10:39:37 AM by Edward Driscoll
LOTT'S OUT: He's stepped down as SML, but remaining as Senator from Missouri. Bill Frist is next in line to replace Lott as senate majority leader.

Posted 12/19/2002 04:44:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
NEW MEDIA, NEW POWER: Duane Freese of Tech Central Station zeroes in on how Trent Lott's remarks about Strom Thurmond and the Dixiecrat Democrats of '48 were disseminated:

the real heat in the Lott affair has been generated by new media. Some of that has come from the left, in particular liberal blogger Josh Marshall, who zeroed in on Lott's remarks at the start. But what gave the story currency beyond another left-of-center smear was the focus upon the issue by the likes of libertarian InstaPundit Glenn Harlan Reynolds; conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan, and National Review Online, in particular Jonah Goldberg and David Frum. And the conservative news and information center, Town Hall online, has provided a forum for the most thoughtful, and most scathing, commentary. The fire generated in those places simply has not allowed Lott to get away with saying what he did about a Thurmond victory in 1948, failing at first to apologize for it, and then trying to pass off his remarks as simply a poor choice of words. Such excuses ring hollow when, with a little exploration on the Drudge Report, you can find that Lott withdrew from an event a couple months ago honoring Harry Belafonte after the singer and liberal activist publicly called Colin Powell a "house slave." In light of that recent event, Lott's own past and Thurmond's historic record, it boggles the imagination that he could even "wing" words about a Thurmond presidency being preferable for the nation only because he wanted to be nice to the old man. But perhaps the most important element of the Lott story is the way in which conservatives used the Net and new media in order to hold a leader to account - something that would have been impossible just a few years ago.

The result is a badly wounded Lott--who may be in worse shape than anyone anticipated...

Posted 12/19/2002 04:29:27 PM by Edward Driscoll
WILLIE HORTON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: The New York Times reports that inmates are going free to help states reduce deficits.

Posted 12/19/2002 04:19:01 PM by Edward Driscoll
COMPARE AND CONTRAST these two stories on Canada...and then shed a little tear its citizens, whose economic future has just been sold up the river by "based on a 'gut feeling'" by their prime minister. (The dreaded Blogger archives are screwing up again, so scroll down to the very appropriately titled "MY FAVORITE MARTIAN RUNS CANADA".)

Posted 12/19/2002 03:51:16 PM by Edward Driscoll
STEVE, BARRY AND PAT--are all going to meet down at the Krauthammer Ranch!

Posted 12/19/2002 03:47:09 PM by Edward Driscoll
SIX DEGREES DEPARTMENT: Virginia Postrel links to this Lawmeme brief that seeks an exception from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act so that reviewers such as those at Blogcritics can use DVD clips to illustrate their points. Go to page 15 of the brief...and see who's quoted!

Posted 12/19/2002 02:07:52 PM by Edward Driscoll
DAVID FRUM ON WARD CONNERLY: A must read.

Posted 12/19/2002 02:01:11 PM by Edward Driscoll
HEY, REMEMBER WHEN MICHAEL JACKSON dangled his baby off of a balcony? look who was below them...

Posted 12/19/2002 12:52:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
PUT ME DOWN FOR THIS ONE AS WELL.

Posted 12/18/2002 02:07:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
DOES SADDAM HUSSEIN READ ROBERT HARRIS? Charles Johnson writes, "Saddam Hussein is ordering the murder of scientists (and their families) involved in his WMD programs, to get rid of the evidence". This was almost exactly the plot of Fatherland. And here I thought Hussein was strictly a Stalinist!

Posted 12/18/2002 01:24:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
LOOKING FOR BIG MO: Jay Bryant finds curious parallels between the timing of the Trent Lott debacle, and the dustup over Newt Gingrich's contract with HarperCollins, eight years earlier, "almost to the day". There's much truth to Bryant's column--of course it didn't help, as Bryant himself writes, "Ol' Trent throws them a gopher ball, right down the middle". But Bryant believes that Republicans can get momentum back on their side again.

Posted 12/17/2002 10:48:32 PM by Edward Driscoll
STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN: Wow--what a movie! Nina and I saw it at the Camera Three in San Jose, with a very small audience of die-hard Motown fanatics. If this film is playing near you, and you care at all about the wonderful music released on the Motown label, you owe it to yourself to check it out. Here's Roger Ebert's review of the film, and here's Eric Olsen's. Particularly recommended to fans Motown's late, legendary bassist, James Jamerson. UPDATE: And here's an article about one of Motown's recording engineers, Bob Olhsson.

Posted 12/17/2002 03:48:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
YOU TALKIN' TO ME? Orrin Judd puts Taxi Driver into a historical context:

If Taxi Driver is a great film--and I think it probably is one--it's that visceral way in which we identify with Travis Bickle's need to explode that makes it great. What with the Guiliani years, the Disneyfication of Times Square, and the after effects of 9-11, many folks, especially younger ones, may not recall what a Godforsaken place, in a nearly literal sense, New York City was in the '70s. But it was a place that made you think, at least a couple times a day, about lashing out senselessly. Youngsters trying to understand why Ronald Reagan holds such a singular place in conservative affections might want to think of Taxi Driver in these terms: it not only captured the spirit of a certain time and place but seemed quite possibly predictive of the American future. That's not to say that it isn't anymore, just that we've been given a chance to avoid it.

Somehow I doubt that Scorsese is much of a fan of Rudy Guiliani, but he unwittingly gave him a huge compliment on morning TV a couple of years ago when promoting his then current movie, Bringing Out the Dead. He said (and this is not an exact quote), "The film is set in the early 1990s, and we had to put more trash on the streets to make it historically accurate." Guiliani, for whatever his faults, left New York a far safer city than the one he inherited. It will be interesting to see what shape it's in when Mike Bloomberg is done with it.

Posted 12/17/2002 03:29:46 PM by Edward Driscoll
READ IT FOR THE ARTICLES: I have no idea who Simone Koo is, but she's had the excellent taste to link to this site. ...Oh, and did I mention that she has a pretty snazzy photo page as well?

Posted 12/17/2002 02:48:45 PM by Edward Driscoll
LAST MINUTE CHRISTMAS SHOPPING: It's not too late to get items before Christmas via Amazon.com--and support this site in the process. Just click here, or on the Amazon button below, and shop away!

If you're done with shopping (lucky you!) then why not drop a few bucks in either of the tipboxes on the left. And in the meantime, we promise not to run any PBS shows to help build pledges!

Posted 12/17/2002 02:19:28 PM by Edward Driscoll
"GONE IN DAYS": US News reports:

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, under pressure from colleagues and the White House to give up his post instead of face a January vote of confidence, may give in as soon as this weekend, predict key Senate Republican aides. In fact, they're already discussing Lott's post-majority-leader career, suggesting that he might be handed the chairmanship of a key committee for "doing the right thing," says one aide.

Part of me thinks it could happen before Friday, if only because Friday is the traditional day to dump news you don't want widely disseminated. Republicans are going to want Lott's resignation as incoming senate majority leader to heard loud and clear. ...Or we'll hear about it Friday at 5:30 p.m. Your guess (unless your last name is Lott, Nickles, Rove or Bush) is as good as mine.

Posted 12/17/2002 01:05:55 PM by Edward Driscoll
PIPES ON PBS: The taxpayer-supported network will be showing a documentary titled "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet" during the Christmas holidays. Daniel Pipes writes:

The U.S. government should never fund a documentary whose obvious intent is to glorify a religion and proselytize for it. Doing so flies in the face of American tradition and law. On behalf of taxpayers, a public-interest law firm should bring suit against the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, both to address this week's travesty and to win an injunction against any possible repetitions.

He's right. Read the whole thing.

Posted 12/17/2002 12:57:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
USEFUL IDIOTS: Roger D. Carstens on Iraq and Sean Penn:

I am all about learning about strategy, policy, and the regional implications of war against Iraq. I just think that the wrong place to do that is in Baghdad. Being led about by duplicitous Iraqi authorities will not bring one to a series of satisfactory conclusions about the use and efficacy of diplomacy and military force. In visiting Iraq, was Penn allowed to visit the torture cells, where countless prisoners spent their last painful moments on earth? Was he brought to the sites where young girls were raped before their fathers as a form of political punishment and intimidation? Was he flown to the Kurdish villages, where thousands perished in Saddam's chemical attacks against his own citizens? Of course not. In truth and fact, Penn's sanitized trip was devoid of the things that he really needed to see.

Too bad Penn didn't take Dan Hanson's advice. Off course, all of this could have been avoided, had he simply paid more attention in Mr. Hand's class.

Posted 12/17/2002 12:44:26 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE SUREST SIGN OF A PROPER DOG: AP photo caption reads, "President Bush grabs his dog Barney after it came into the room and frightened area children as Bush participated in the White House children's story hour, Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2002, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington." Barney wouldn't be a real dog if it didn't frighten the odd kid. I was so proud of my dog Willie--at age 16 and a half, and only a couple of weeks before we had to put him to sleep, he frightened a little child on a walk. (I don't know about Barney, but the worst Willie would actually do was lick the kid to death.) Besides, Barney's a Republican dog. He's supposed to scare little kids and old people--it's in his contract!

(Willie recovering from a run in with a Volkswagon Rabbit at age 2. He lived a long, healthy and incredibly crazed life once the cast came off.)

Posted 12/17/2002 01:09:08 AM by Edward Driscoll
HOW IMPORTANT IS ONE WORD? Noah Shachtman writes in Tech Central Station that "there's been a quiet, important shift in U.S. national security policy, from defending against 'probable' threats to defending against 'describable' threats, regardless of how likely they are. The emphasis on high-tech terror is part of this shift, which began in the early days of the current administration, and has only accelerated during the war on terror". Shachtman quotes John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, who says, "These are not James Bond movie villains, imagining the most complex means to an end. They look for the simplest plan." Read the whole thing. We may be out-thinking the enemy when it comes to anticipating his next move.

Posted 12/16/2002 10:16:37 PM by Edward Driscoll
RIGHT ON THE MONEY: Excellent post by Andrew Sullivan on Trent Lott, the Democrats and race. Too many good points make it too long to post in its entirety here, so read the whole thing.

Posted 12/16/2002 08:00:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
"POLITICAL PHYSICS": Matt Drudge has a sneak peak at a New York Times article that says:

"One outside adviser with close ties to the administration said Lott had become a "walking pinata" and that the Mississippi Republican's departure from the Senate leadership had now become inevitable. "Political physics has set in -- it's only a matter of time," the adviser said. "The best scenario is for Lott to come to the obvious conclusion himself and avoid a painful confrontation."

The article says, "Another sign of Lott's growing political problems were private discussions among some of his colleagues to find an alternative position for Lott, other than his current leadership role. Such a position, such as a committee chairmanship, might help keep him from resigning his seat in the event he is dislodged as leader, the paper claims in its lead story." But if he does resign, Jonah Goldberg has details on how Lott's successor would be picked. I didn't--couldn't--watch Lott on BET. But from everything I've read, it sounds like Lott did an excellent Gary Condit impersonation.

Posted 12/16/2002 04:07:49 PM by Edward Driscoll
SURVIVING THE THIRD RAIL: Donald Luskin says the election gives new life to privatizing Social Security:

Most Republicans who backed Social Security reform in their campaigns won � often by surprisingly large margins, and against opponents who were violent reform opponents. Most who came out against Social Security reform lost. How significant is this win in the "referendum on Social Security"? Quite simply, the debate will never be the same again. As NRCC spokesman Steve Schmidt told the Washington Post last September, "In order for there to be an honest debate on Social Security, Democrats have to lose this election. Only after they've lost another election where they've put all their chips on the Social Security issue will honest-minded Democrats step forward to work on the issue." Indeed. We recently saw two Social Security reform breakthroughs that would be been unthinkable a month ago. First, the left-leaning Washington Post editorial page opined that "this may be the last chance to talk calmly about Social Security for a long time, and it shouldn't be squandered." Warning against "ideology and politics" on both sides, the Post noted that all reform solutions have huge costs, but warns that there are "huge costs to the preservation of the status quo." Then former president Bill Clinton addressed a Democratic Leadership Council event in New York, saying "If you don�t like privatizing Social Security, and I don�t like it very much, but you want to do something to try to increase the rate of return, what are your options? Well one thing you could do is to give people one or two percent of the payroll tax, with the same options that federal employees have with their retirement accounts; where you have three mutual funds that almost always perform as well or better than the market and a fourth option to buy government bonds, so you get the guaranteed social security return and a hundred percent safety just like you have with Social Security." If that sounds familiar, it should � Clinton's vision is virtually identical to the first of the three proposals put out by the President's Commission.

Between the Post's and Clinton's remarks, Luskin says that "the conventional wisdom has completed a tectonic shift".

Posted 12/16/2002 01:50:21 PM by Edward Driscoll
PAGING DR. ORWELL: AP reports that:

Secretary of State Colin Powell is assuring the Arab world the Bush administration's demand for regime change in Iraq aims at disarmament, not ousting President Saddam Hussein. "If he cooperates, then the basis of changed-regime policy has shifted because his regime has, in fact, changed its policy to one of cooperation," Powell said in an interview with a London-based Arab newspaper released Monday by the State Department. Powell said the policy of regime change in Baghdad was inherited from the Clinton administration by the Bush administration.

Maybe that explains the Orwellian parsing of words here. Although I suspect this is simply Powell doing his usual role of good cop to Bush's bad cop in the Middle East. (With good and bad being relative, and often interchangeable terms, of course.) UPDATE: Steven Den Beste recently had some comments on the enigma that is Powell. (Incidentally, I linked to the above AP report because it showed up on my Yahoo home page. Now that Drudge has linked to the same article from the Washington Post, expect the usual hell to break loose.)

Posted 12/16/2002 10:40:24 AM by Edward Driscoll
WE'RE GONNA PARTY LIKE IT'S 1969! Steve Den Beste Fisks Boston Review's New Democracy Forum, whose purpose is to "foster politically engaged, intellectually honest, and morally serious debate about fundamental issues of the day -- both on and off the agenda of conventional politics -- and to say something about how we might better address them." All of which of course is stuck in rhetoric straight out of the 1960s.

Posted 12/16/2002 10:13:15 AM by Edward Driscoll
GANGS OF NEW JERSEY: The Asbury Park Press (yes, the town named itself after Bruce Springsteen's first album), reports that it's a serious phenomenon:

It pits "supergangs," such as the Bloods and Crips and the Chicago-based Latin Kings, against a growing army of Garden State gang investigators, task-force members and intelligence gatherers. Law-enforcement officials stress the gravity of the struggle: The gangs, whose members number more than 10,000, according to the State Police, have established a beachhead in New Jersey. These gangs, some of them supergangs that germinated in the New Jersey prison system a decade ago, have spread not just to the cities, but to suburban towns and even schools. "The gang problem in New Jersey is rampant and growing," former Union County Prosecutor Thomas V. Manahan said earlier this year before leaving for a post with the state police. "You're not saved by your address. Just because you live in a sleepy little community doesn't mean it isn't percolating below the surface." Living in denial Gang investigators say they are working to prevent gangs from blending further into the fabric of New Jersey's municipalities as they have in Los Angeles and Chicago, where gangs boast tens of thousands of members. But the challenge appears daunting. The Internet has allowed the tentacles of the supergangs to extend deeper into suburban neighborhoods, according to Keith Bevacqui, a New Jersey State Police detective sergeant and gang investigator. But there is something else that has fueled their emergence. "There's a lot of denial of gang activity," said Sgt. William Paglione, deputy commander of the Middlesex County Violent Gang Task Force. "Nobody wants to admit we have a problem, and the truth is every town in America has a problem," said Assistant Middlesex County Prosecutor Cindy Glaser. "It's everywhere. It's just that epidemic of a problem."

Of course, as one of Glenn Reynolds' readers comments about growing crime rates in general, the growing trend to make law enforcement PC probably isn't helping matters. Although, considering the tone of New Jersey's "poet laureate", these guys should feel right at home.

Posted 12/16/2002 01:37:45 AM by Edward Driscoll
LOTT'S A GONER, says Virginia Postrel, adding, "This is the end. Don Nickles is too canny to call for Lott's ouster unless he knows Lott can't win a vote of Senate Republicans."

Posted 12/15/2002 11:57:42 PM by Edward Driscoll
RADICAL CHIC, THE NEXT GENERATION: Meet Chesa Boudin, Rhodes scholar. His parents are in jail. Why? Because they were members of the Weather Underground:

Boudin's parents are Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert, who were members of the violent 1960s radical group the Weather Underground. They are in prison for their part in the murder of two police officers and a guard as the result of a robbery of a Brinks armored car in New York at the late, unradical date of 1981. The Times, while having space to describe the origin of Chesa's unusual name�Swahili for "dancing feet"�apparently didn't have room for the names of the men murdered. They were Sgt. Edward O'Grady, police officer Waverly Brown, and Brinks guard Peter Paige. You can read more about them at www.ogradybrown.com. Nor does the Times mention the obvious point that the nine children left fatherless that day�the youngest was 6 months old�have also missed the pleasure of having their fathers see their accomplishments over the years.

Does Boudin disavow his parents' actions? Quite the contrary:

"We have a different name for the war we're fighting now�now we call it the war on terrorism, then they called it the war on communism. My parents were all dedicated to fighting U.S. imperialism around the world. I'm dedicated to the same thing."

Disgusting--but read the whole thing (it gets worse). As John Ellis (from whose blog I found Boudin's story) says, "The Values of The New York Times--It's not often that they are so perfectly captured."

Posted 12/15/2002 11:16:17 PM by Edward Driscoll
OK, LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT: Hi-tech arms could finish off the war in Iraq in a week, remove a tyrannical dictator from office, bring peace and freedom to his former subjects, many of whom are oppressed women and gays, and create a nuclear-free zone in the process. And someone has a problem with this??

Posted 12/15/2002 09:55:43 PM by Edward Driscoll
ASTONISHING: Rich Lowry writes that "On the CNN program Early Edition, Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, said his party would have acted by now had one of its leaders been at issue. "If Tom Daschle or another Democratic leader were to have made similar statements, the reaction would have been very swift," Mr. Dodd said. "I don't think several hours would have gone by without there being an almost unanimous call for the leader to step aside." These three folks should be out of a job by tomorrow then.

Posted 12/15/2002 09:47:33 PM by Edward Driscoll
HAZY REASONING: Jacob Sullum looks at Nurse Bloomberg and his proposed ban on smoking in New York City bars and restaraunts:

It's an odd judgment in a country where miners, fishermen, lumberjacks, and boxers are still permitted to risk injury and death, judging for themselves whether the compensation they receive is adequate. Just as there is a demand for coal, fish, wood, and prizefights, there is a demand for smoker-friendly bars and restaurants. To insist that no one be allowed to fill it is arbitrary and tyrannical. In a free society, there ought to be room for bars and restaurants that welcome smokers, staffed by employees who are willing to tolerate the smoke in exchange for higher pay, better tips, or otherwise superior working conditions. By ruling out such voluntary arrangements, Bloomberg is forcibly imposing his one best way on a city famous for its diversity. This smoke-free fanaticism is spreading. Pioneered in California, comprehensive smoking bans are expected to be adopted soon in Boston and Chicago as well as New York.

Sullum says, "Personally, I won't miss the smoke, but I'll miss the freedom that made it possible." Exactly.

Posted 12/15/2002 07:34:19 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHY HAVE THE SERBS become the stock villains of choice for Hollywood? Tim Cavanaugh of Reason explains why, in a dead-on essay.

Posted 12/15/2002 06:52:40 PM by Edward Driscoll
HASN'T THIS GUY EVER HEARD OF GODWIN'S LAW? "A respected Saskatchewan Indian leader said Friday Hitler did the right thing when he 'fried' six million Jews during the Second World War." Oh, Canada!

Posted 12/15/2002 05:06:22 PM by Edward Driscoll
THE BELLESILES-LOTT CONNECTION, as discovered by Glenn Reynolds.

Posted 12/15/2002 04:59:41 PM by Edward Driscoll
NICKLES CALLS FOR VOTE ON LOTT: Sen. Don Nickles of Oklahoma, the outgoing GOP whip who nearly challenged Trent Lott for Senate leader in this fall, has called for new leadership elections. Perhaps finally seeing the handwriting on the wall, Lott told Newsweek that "My term runs through 2006. I intend to serve it, whatever happens." I hope something happens.

Posted 12/15/2002 04:14:54 PM by Edward Driscoll
WHAT WOULD IT TAKE TO BUILD A DECENT ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT? Sgt. Stryker has some thoughts. Sarge writes:

The first and most important step is to unload the Boomers and the baggage they bring to the table. They had their day and it's time to put them out to pasture. This is a new generation fighting a new war and it's time to bring new ideas appropriate to the world as it is, not as it was. The Boomers have had a stranglehold on the philosophies and ideas propagated throughout the anti-war movement, but what they're saying are merely variations of the same things they were going on about almost forty years ago and have nothing to do with the world today. How much history has passed and how much has the world changed since the 60's? Then why cling to their old, tired and irrelevant ideas? If the anti-war movement is ever going to get moving, then it needs to release itself from the ideas the Boomers have straight-jacketed it with for all these years. This is the 21st Century. We face a world far more complex and are dealing with issues far outside the desiccated worldview of the Boomers. Until the anti-war crowd realizes this, it will remain an anachronism.

I don't know--given that many of those same Boomers are now teaching college, it will be quite some time before their ideas are "released". Vietnam is doubly instructive here--it was the high-water mark of the anti-war movement, which gained traction because the US military was ineffective in Vietnam, partially due to using tactics developed 25 years earlier in World War II. (And yes, that's a gross simplification, and Robert McNamera, Westmoreland, and Johnson's rules of engagement didn't help things. But you get the idea.) But each component of the military radically changed its tactics after Vietnam. The anti-war movement is still stuck in a 30 year old timewarp. And it's got to feel strange for them, to find the military's thinking more modern than theirs. UPDATE: This crowd isn't helping them much.