Category: Politics

Iran says it will stop enriching uranium, and will allow unlimited inspections of its nuclear program. (Let’s wait to see whether it follows through.) The U.S. has been pressuring Iran to do these things for months, and according to this AP story, the winner here is…France.
Do you think Iran changed its mind because of the 130,000+ Coalition troops on their border? Or the tens of thousands of courageous Iranians demonstrating against the repressive thugs who run their country? Nope — it’s all because of France, not to mention good, soothing, multilateral dialogue.
If you believe that words alone are enough to ensure peace in the world, you’d probably believe anything.

Hey, Pete, what does this mean for moral conservatives? Here are the headlines, and commentary from NRO and the NaPo.

I don’t always agree with her, she is manifestly a bomb-thrower, and her language and reasoning sometimes go off the rails. But damn do I love Ann Coulter’s columns sometimes. She’s in fine form as she rails against Rush Limbaugh’s detractors:
“In liberals’ worldview, any conservative who is not Jesus Christ is ipso facto a ‘hypocrite’ for not publicly embracing dissolute behavior the way liberals do.”
Judging from their reaction to Rush’s predicament, many liberals’ souls are black with hatred, spite, and envy. That’s a far worse problem than a chemical addiction or buying medication without a prescription.

Good. Thanks, John. Let me be the first to say that I’m glad Gray Davis is going down hard. True, his replacement will be a pro-abortion nominal Catholic, like him. However, his replacement has never had a spokesman publicly rebuke a bishop for daring to teach the faith.
Other people have lost, too, including
• The Los Angeles Times. They just happened to finish its dirty story on Arnold a few days before the election, which didn’t exactly lend credibility to their tales.
• Feminists. Even Maureen Dowd says that feminism died in 1998 when Gloria Steinem defended Bill Clinton’s dalliance with a subordinate. They tried to make a stink about Arnold’s boorishness…but who listens to them now? And speaking of Clinton…
• Former president Bill and his lovely wife Bruno. Showing the political acumen that lost the House and Senate to the Republicans for at least a decade, the Clintons campaigned hard for Gray Davis and he still took a dive. As opposed to 2000, when Algore lost, and 2002, when most of the Senate candidates they supported lost. Yet people still praise their “political skills,” which demonstrably don’t extend past their own self-promotion.

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-Camelot) has found something about which to disagree with Governor Howard Dean (D-Berkeley). The issue, oddly, is guns. Dean doesn’t mention it much, but in order to win statewide office in Vermont you have to be pro-gun, and he’s received top NRA ratings throughout his tenure as governor.
To a Democratic primary voter, this is almost as bad as running as a pro-lifer. Recall that the 100%-pure pro-abortion Algore attacked the 100%-pure pro-abortion Bill Bradley in 2000 for being insufficiently zealous about the abortion license. Dean doesn’t mention his pro-gun past, but expect that to come up more often if it looks like the establishment Dems are going to lose.
Kennedy — one of the dimmest members of an overhyped family — comes up with this tasteless attack on Dean:

“This is a personal issue with me, and I’m very disturbed at the fact that people are not paying attention to Dr. Dean’s record” on guns, said Kennedy, nephew of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert, both of whom were assassinated by guns.

I wonder if he considers statutory rape to be a “personal issue” with him, since his late campaign manager/brother admitted to sex with a babysitter over five years, beginning when she was 14 (though to be fair, after five years she was no longer underage.) This is the Kennedy equivalent of “waving the bloody shirt” — trotting out the corpses of John and Robert Kennedy to remind the public of the Kennedys’ “sacrifices” for their lowly subjects (that’s us).
The extended Kennedy family has homes scattered around North America, all guarded to keep the cruel world at bay. What kind of weapons do the guards carry? Sharp sticks, perhaps?