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Saturday, Apr 5 2008
Tuesday, June 17 2008 Saturday, June 21 2008 Monday, June 23 2008 Tuesday, June 24 2008 Latest (Thursday, June 26 2008)


...On the Front Page...
Demonizing Canada   —  Editorial
It was the second time Obama tried to cast our friendly northern neighbor as some sort of problem. On Wednesday, he indicated that Canada's prized Alberta oil-sands extractions were "dirty" and his energy adviser called it an "open question" as to whether oil-sands production, already 47% of Canada's output, would be used to resolve $4 a gallon gas at the pump.

Cloaking himself in environmental virtue, he cited global warming. So goodbye Canadian oil-sands — and Canadian oil.

This follows Obama's outrageous statements last February, where he blamed Canada, our No. 1 trading partner, for problems imagined with the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Obama vowed to go after Canada "with a hammer," if it didn't renegotiate the 1994 treaty to his diktat — statements so outrageous and ignorant he had to backtrack on them.  — More


An Energy Plan to Avoid $5 per Gallon Gas
  —  by KT McFarland

Do you find yourself wondering lately WHAT HAPPENED to America? A few years ago we had won the Cold War, were the envy of the world, and the economic superpower. Now we have a collapsing dollar, a record national debt which is increasingly owned by foreigners, skyrocketing food prices, and the price of gas has doubled in just two years. We're fighting a costly and seemingly open-ended war against radical Islam.Much of the world hates us. And every opinion poll shows Americans think things will only get worse. It feels like the wheels have just come off the trolley.  — More


So Wrong, So Often, For So Long, Yet It's Europe We Want To Copy   —  
If anyone suggested that Tiger Woods should try to be more like other golfers, people would question the sanity of whoever made that suggestion.

Why should Tiger Woods try to be more like Phil Mickelson? If Tiger turned around and tried to golf left-handed, like Mickelson, he probably wouldn't be as good as Mickelson, much less as good as he is golfing the way he does right-handed.

Yet there are those who think that the United States should follow policies more like those in Europe, often with no stronger reason than the fact that Europeans follow such policies. For some Americans, it is considered chic to be like Europeans.

If Europeans have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, then we should have higher minimum wage laws and more welfare state benefits, according to such people. If Europeans restrict pharmaceutical companies' patents and profits, then we should do the same.

Some justices of the U.S. Supreme Court even seem to think that they should incorporate ideas from European laws in interpreting American laws.  — More



Israel 'will attack Iran' before new US president sworn in, John Bolton predicts

  —  by Jack Kelly

Opinion polls indicate a large majority now supports drilling for oil off our coasts and in Alaska. That majority is likely to expand and harden as gas prices rise this summer. But Sen. McCain can't fully capitalize politically on this change in public attitude unless he completes his flip flop, and consents to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Commentary editor John Podhoretz fears Sen. McCain's ego will prevent him from doing what is in his, and his country's interest:  — More


From Breadbasket to Basket Case
  —  by Mary Anastasia O'Grady
As the presidential campaign drones on, Barack Obama and the Democrats are fleshing out the promise of "change" with some specific, big-government policy proposals. Many are familiar, perhaps because they already have been tried – in Argentina.

That country has gone from South American breadbasket to world-class basket case. For the long version of how it happened and why Americans might not want to try it, hop on a flight to Buenos Aires. Here's a condensed version:  — More


Query: Do Atheists Know Any Human Women, Human Children, or Human Families?
  —  By Mary Eberstadt
LOSER LETTER VI.
Christianity has been taking a beating for years now, with one tony atheist tome after another rolling off the presses — and still no end in sight.

And so far — with the exception of a Michael Novak here and a Dinesh D’Souza there — believers have largely turned the other cheek.

Now, finally, comes more payback — with THE LOSER LETTERS, a Screwtape for our screwed-up time.

In the latest round over God, Mary Eberstadt turns her attention to the last emo scragglebeard left alive on Lost on National Review Online . . .  — More

Read More LOSER LETTERS  — Here


Obama’s Black Edge   —  By John Derbyshire
Does it help or hurt him?

I think there is more to be said about Obama’s blackness as a factor in people’s voting. There are positives and negatives to it. My rough guess — and I’m the guy who proclaimed that “Obama is toast” when the Rev’m Wright scandal broke, so don’t be running down to the bookmaker with this — my rough guess is that net-net, it’s a positive. Well, let’s see what we’ve got.  — More


Clearing the Kultursmog   —  By R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.
...The way the Kultursmog glorifies its loved ones and spatters on its outcasts is done both by pumping out epithets and practicing neglect -- both benign neglect and malign neglect. It simply does not acknowledge its loved ones' failings (benign neglect) or its outcasts' achievements (malign neglect).  — More

The Mystery of the Missing Communist Party
  —  by Lee Ellis

Have you noticed that the word "Communist" has just about disappeared from our media and our language?I wondered why.

Seeking an answer, I recalled from my detective books that amotto they often used was "cherchez la femme"(look for the woman). This did not seem to apply here. Another, frequently used by Perry Mason, was, "follow the money." I did - with no success.Finally, I asked myself, who is trying the hardest to destroy America's economy as the Communist Party had always done?

Mystery solved? Those purveyors of the myths of global warming (who demanded that America sign Kyoto Treaty but not China, India, or other so-called Third-world nations) seem to be doing what is necessary to break our economy.

The environmentalists also pushed forour forced dependence on foreign oil by blocking us from using the gigantic surplus of oil under America's soil, whether in Alaska's ANWR, Colorado's shale, Montana's coal gasification, or off shore drilling.

Is the Communist Party now masquerading under a new umbrella called "environmentalism"? And is it buying votes with heavy campaign contributions to members of both the Republican and Democrat Parties? — More


What were they thinking!?   —  By Caroline B. Glick

What on earth could have prompted the Israeli government to negotiate the current "cease-fire" with Hamas? What could have brought the government to negotiate with this Iranian proxy group which makes no bones about its intention to use the lull in fighting to expand its arsenal and army ahead of the next round of fighting? What could have motivated Jerusalem to pave the way for Hamas's acceptance as a legitimate regime in the international arena?  — More


A Desperate Man   —  Editorial

In another example of junk science run amok, NASA scientist James Hansen wants oil executives put on trial for giving "misinformation" about his global warming theory. Is this where society is headed?  — More


Saving Us from the Race Card   —  by Wesley Pruden

...Mr. Obama's accusatory speech the other night in Florida sounds and smells like a pre-emptive strike. He plays the race card to save us from the race card, to make the skittish Mr. McCain wary of saying anything bad about his far-left background, to excuse the '60s bomb-throwers and radical friends and preachers from whom the presumptive Democratic nominee took sustenance in Chicago in the 20 years before he discovered to his horror that naughty things were going on upstairs. Mr. Obama is desperate to keep the national conversation away from his record, carefully hidden until now. If he has to play the race card to do it, well, stuff happens.  — More


Anti-Americanism Is Mostly Hype   —  

...We were once loved in Anatolia, but now a mere 12% of Turks have a "favorable view" of the U.S. Only 22% of Egyptians think well of us. Pakistan is crucial to the war on terror, but we can only count on the goodwill of 19% of Pakistanis.

American liberalism is heavily invested in this narrative of U.S. isolation. The Shiites have their annual ritual of 10 days of self-flagellation and penance, but this liberal narrative is ceaseless: The world once loved us, and all Parisians were Americans after 9/11, but thanks to President Bush we have squandered that sympathy.

It is an old trick, the use of foreign narrators and witnesses to speak of one's home. Montesquieu gave the genre its timeless rendition in his Persian Letters, published in 1721. No one was fooled, these were Parisian letters, and the Persian travelers, Rica and Usbek, mere stand-ins for an author taking stock of his homeland after the death of Louis XIV and the coming of an age of enlightenment and skepticism.  — More


Israel's Truce With Hamas Is a Victory for Iran   —  
Proponents of an Israeli-Palestinian accord are praising the cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that went into effect this morning. Yet even if the agreement suspends violence temporarily -- though dozens of Hamas rockets struck Israel yesterday -- it represents a historic accomplishment for the jihadist forces most opposed to peace, and defeat for the Palestinians who might still have been Israel's partners.

The roots of this tragedy go back to the summer of 2005 and the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The evacuation, intended to free Israel of Gaza's political and strategic burden, was hailed as a victory by Palestinian terrorist groups, above all Hamas.

Hamas proceeded to fire some 1,000 rocket and mortar shells into Israel. Six months later Hamas gunmen, taking advantage of an earlier cease-fire, infiltrated into Israel, killed two soldiers, and captured Cpl. Gilad Shalit.  — More


What the Counterculture Has Joined Together
  —  By George Neumayr
"A passionate tumultuous age will overthrow everything, pull everything down," wrote Soren Kierkegaard, "but a revolutionary age that is at the same time reflective and passionless leaves everything standing but cunningly empties it of significance."
...
What the open radicalism of the 1960s sought to accomplish overtly its more circumspect successors achieve subtly, leaving state marriage standing but trivializing and discrediting it. The Golden state that first took a cudgel to marriage with no-fault divorce takes a final swipe with same-sex marriage.  — More


The global warming bubble   —  By Rich Lowry
Rarely has so much hectoring produced so little.

After all the magazine covers, celebrity sermonizing and U.N.-certified-expert hand-wringing, the fight against global warming got a real-world test in the U.S. Senate a few weeks ago in the debate over a proposal to limit carbon emissions through a cap-and-trade system. After a small dose of the argument, supporters of the proposal couldn't wait to drop it. It was leading opponent Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, who declared he'd be happy to talk about cap-and-trade for a month.  — More


The President Has Kept Us Safe   —  

With President Bush-bashing still a national pastime, it's notable how much international terrorism has been forgotten, and how little credit the president has received for keeping Americans safe.

This is a difficult issue for me. I didn't vote for President Bush – twice.
...
Yet I live in Manhattan and I was present on Sept. 11, 2001 – admittedly 100 blocks from the murder scene, but I was here, trembling along with the rest of America. Remember those days?

Everyone on 9/12 and thereafter – here in New York City and in cities across America – was quite certain that the next terrorist strike was imminent.  — More



Derbyshire on Al Sharpton, the Irish rejecting the Lisbon Treaty, toilet politics in Nepal, and much more