Conservatives deal with facts and reach conclusions; liberals have conclusions and sell them as facts.
This time it doesn't look like a rumor. This time it looks like the real deal: Gen. George W. Casey Jr., Multi-National Force-Iraq Commanding General, announced the death of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi in the following statement during a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
Continue readingNidra Poller writes about an aggressive anti-Semitic group on the rise in France. The whole article is depressing, but I'd like to take special note of the article's conclusion: Outside the ORT school, where the minister met with residents, a dapper gray-haired shop owner said, with dignified regret, “It’s over
Continue readingI hated the movie Pretty Woman. While critics — and my friends — were raving about a charming Cinderella story, I saw a movie that glamorized prostitution and gold digging. Blech. To me, it was a totally amoral story. I was reminded of it today, though, when I read this
Continue readingThe title of this post is the phonetic spelling of the Hebrew phrase "Jersusalem of Gold," a song I grew up hearing. A modern song, yes, but it captures the Jews' three thousand year old emotional connection to Jerusalem. From Psalm 137: By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat
Continue readingThis is a terrible tragedy: U.S. forces killed two Iraqi women — one of them about to give birth — when the troops shot at a car that failed to stop at an observation post in a city north of Baghdad, Iraqi officials and relatives said Wednesday. Nabiha Nisaif Jassim,
Continue readingI've been rather conspicuously silent about the whole Haditha thing. Until facts come out, rather than rumor, I don't really have anything to say. During times of war, even in the best regulated military, soldiers have been known to do some pretty awful things. You can't take young men, arm
Continue readingIt's not uncommon to liken the world envisioned by Islamic fundamentalists to a medieval world, where women are shrouded in heavy draperies and are second class citizens; where beheading and torture are the punishments of choice; and where there is supposed to be one universal religion (with Jews as the
Continue readingMany years ago, when I lived in England, I brought my roommates (or, should I say, flatmates) to convulsive laughter when I announced that the 1960s happened in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district — and nowhere else. In my parochialism, I was completely unaware of the whole "Swingin' London" scene of
Continue readingNever send me an email if you don't want me to take your thoughts for inspiration that ends up in my blog. This weekend, I got the following email from a friend: Check out today's WSJ and the chilling article about Aayan Hirsi Ali, Somali born critic of radical Islam
Continue readingI bet someone — not someone famous, just someone — in your State, town, city or county died a violent death today, or yesterday, or the day before. I bet, too, that the death got local news coverage. But I'm pretty sure that, unless your local decedent lived in Israel
Continue readingIsrael has become the most reviled nation in the world. Israel is also the only nation I can think of that would give $11 million in humanitarian aid to a people that has determined, as its primary goal, the complete destruction of Israel and the slaughter of her people. I
Continue readingImagine a mother. Her child is busily involved in stripping her shelves of every piece of heirloom China she owns, and then hurling the stuff to the floor. The mother is ineffectually fluttering around the child saying, "Stop, please stop." Her neighbor walks in and says, "Why don't you promise
Continue readingHere's the Little Green Footballs story: The creepiest political ad ever made, for Ned Lamont, features Markos Moulitsas “Screw Them” Zuniga sneaking around and peeping through a window as Lamont gives a cut-and-run speech, then bursting into the room with a bunch of weirdly jacked-up progressive pals and grinning into
Continue readingI know some perfectly delightful French people — charming, kind, and intelligent. Indeed, I know many. But there is something about collecting French people in one place that seems to bring out a darker side in them. Many years ago, at a local park used by a French elementary school,
Continue readingThe popular image of the peacekeepers who travel to troubled regions is of a legion of selfless Mother Theresas, putting aside the comforts of their First World lives to aid those most in need. And that image may well be true for the greater number of them. Unfortunately, one of
Continue reading