Bookworm Room

Tweet There’s been a lot of upset in the conservative blogosphere about Obama’s drone strike policy.  The way the administration phrased it, as “legal,” “ethical,” and “wise,” got a lot of hackles up, especially when Michael Isikoff let slip how little oversight there is — including oversight over decisions to kill American citizens. A lot [...]

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Tweet I’m guessing that a majority of Americans (a slim majority, but still a majority) know that America entered WWII because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.  What few stop to consider is why we ended up fighting, not only the Japanese who had just bombed us, but the Germans as well, since they, after all, [...]

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Tweet John Hinderaker caught a very funny statement from Jen Psaki, who is one of the president’s official spokesmen. She was responding to a reporter’s question regarding the fact that PBS asked the Democrats to take down an add using Big Bird (emphasis mine): We have received that request [from PBS]. We’re reviewing it. I [...]

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Tweet I’ve got an amazing array of links, all of which indicate that, with three weeks before the election, America and the Middle East aren’t static.  Instead, there are a lot of things that are suddenly coming to the boil in ways that make me pray very hard that Mitt Romney wins. A lot of [...]

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Tweet As I’ve mentioned just a few times, I just read, and was very moved by, Marcus Luttrell’s Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10.  A liberal I know flipped through the book’s first few pages and had a very different reaction.  The following passages bugged [...]

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Tweet My liberal friend is a headline reader.  That’s why we had a ridiculous conversation in which he wondered about the Fort Hood shooter’s motives.  To the reader who scans, headlines that say “motives a mystery” trump even those articles that add, under the headline, little facts such as Muslim death cries (“Allahu Akbar!”), radical [...]

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Tweet I just copied the following from Drudge: Possible Swine Flu Outbreak At NYC Prep School… Most fatal flu victims aged between 25-45… Swine flu could infect trade and travel… Schwarzenegger has ‘rigorous’ plan… WHO ready with antivirals… The mysterious respiratory illness… CDC says too late to contain… 60 DEAD: Mexico City launches huge vaccination [...]

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Tweet Drudge‘s headline:  Trash Talk:  Al-Qaida Insults Obama In New Message. The underlying story, here, explains that: Al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader used a racial epithet to insult Barack Obama in a message posted Wednesday, describing the president-elect in demeaning terms that imply he does the bidding of whites. The message appeared chiefly aimed at persuading [...]

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Tweet I must work, but I have to give you a couple of quick links, one of which you may want to act upon and one of which is just nice to know. On the “you might want to act” (by contacting your representatives in D.C.), Right Wing News offers useful information about the expiration [...]

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Tweet Britain’s Telegraph has three interesting articles, and the London Times one: Read about the vast difference between Britain’s and France’s socialized medicine. I’d certainly like to know what accounts for the difference before I start making changes to the American system. Color me skeptical, but I bet Obama, who shows himself to be remarkably [...]

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Tweet WARNING: British bloggers — do not write about this story. In England, a convoluted case played out in which the government froze funds in British banks that were to be sent to Al Qaeda, the funds’ owners challenged that action, and the court held against the government. As a result of this successful court [...]

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Tweet Niall Ferguson, whose book Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World Order and the Lessons for Global Power was an excellent primer about the virtues of the British Empire (a tough argument in an anti-imperialist age), has written a rave review about Philip Bobbit’s newest book, Terror and Consent : The Wars [...]

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Tweet I will never again complain about having to throw away my unfinished drink before going through airport security: A gang of alleged British Muslim fanatics plotted to cause “carnage on an almost unprecedented scale” with simultaneous suicide bombings on up to 18 transatlantic airliners, a court has heard. Bombs made from hydrogen peroxide liquid [...]

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Tweet Dr. Rusty Shackleford has carefully examined the “new” Bin Laden video that Al Qaeda released on the War’s 5th anniversary and he concludes that Bin Laden’s voice is coming from the grave.  You can see the video and Rusty’s analysis here.  If this is indeed the best Al Qaeda has to offer, I too [...]

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