Month: June 2004

CommentaryPage.com, an opinion site run by one of my colleagues, posted an article written by me about the origin of the Washington Post’s shoddy Iraq coverage. The main culprit is Rajiv Chandrasekaran, a 31-year-old reporter who heads the Baghdad bureau. He’s twisted the facts from the beginning to suit his “America will fail” meta-narrative, and I saw it with my own eyes in Iraq. He’s looking to make his name on helping to break American will, and I wanted to open people’s eyes to that fact.
Michelle Malkin, mother, Catholic, columnist, author of books and all-around total badass, has already linked to it.

That is the sound of the economy, and with it the increase in Consumer Confidence.
More news like this and Michael Moore will be forced to make sequels to F/9-11 that feature conspiracy theories about the Bush landslide in November.

The First Amendment fetishists — whose views usually triumph in the Supreme Court — have scored another victory. Pornographers can still market their filth to children, according to our judicial masters. More precisely, they can market their filth, and the authorities can do nothing to stop them.
I haven’t read the majority opinion, and I won’t venture one of my own until I do, except to point out that “free speech” trumps practically every other consideration (except when it comes to abortion-clinic protests, smoking ads, or other things that disgust the Supreme Court).
Some people think that America will continue to slide down into a moral swamp until we’re mired in depravity. I disagree. In typical American fashion, we won’t choose a moderate path of tolerating that which we cannot eradicate, and discouraging evil. We will say “anything goes!” until the consequences of the evils are too great. Then we will scream “ZERO TOLERANCE!” and make war on the fruits of our vices. Careening from one extreme to another is one of the great flaws in our national character.

Pete hasn’t popped in yet with any comments on the Canadian election result, so I’ll fill in for the moment. While the newly merged Conservative Party failed to win a majority, it picked up seats: current CBC figures give them 99. The Liberals and the socialist NDP together got 155 seats in Commons, the bare minimum required to control the House, so they’ll see a Liberal minority government up North for a while. Then if and when some by-election shifts a seat to the Conservatives or the Bloc Quebecois, giving them the magic 155, we may get to see a Con-Bloc coalition. They wouldn’t agree on federalism vs. separatism, but they’d probably have some common ground on devolution. It appears that Canada has developed a lot of the same polarization as the US, with the Left carrying cities and conservatives stronger elsewhere.
I’m looking forward to Lifesite’s take on the results. My guess is that the mild Conservative gain is a mild pro-life gain, judging by the opposition they evoked from pro-aborts before the election.