Month: June 2007

Their two leading candidates, Giuliani and Romney, are among the least qualified foreign policy candidates to run for the presidency since … well, George W. Bush in 2000. But we’re at war now. Why would we trust two men who have been completely unable even to articulate a policy on Iraq and whose views on Islamist terror are so crude and ill-informed (they both believe that the Shia and the Sunnis are interchangeable with respect to U.S. foreign policy) that we’d be running a huge risk in electing them? I can’t stand Clinton, but in terms of her foreign policy homework, she is in a different league of professionalism than Romney or Rudy. For the first time in my lifetime, with the proud exception of McCain, the GOP is clearly less serious about national security than the leading Democratic candidates.

Why would Giuliani still employ a priest credibly accused by a Grand Jury of abusing boys, described as "cautious but relentless" in pursuing child victims in 2003, a man who was also integral to the conspiracy to protect child abusers from justice or accountability in the upper echeleons of the Catholic church? Because he was Giuliani’s childhood friend, best man at his first wedding, baptized his son, smoothed the way for his divorce annulment, and buried his mother. In Giuliani’s world, family is family. Loyalty is loyalty. And the children can go to hell. The full story is at Salon. Marc Ambinder provides all the crucial background you need to know. I don’t think a defender of a credibly accused child-abuser should be the Republican nominee. That he would keep such a guy on his payroll is an extremely notable insight into Giuliani’s character. Or what passes for it.

(Photo: Nicholas Roberts/AFP/Getty.)

Senator James Inhofe is certifiable, so anything he may have "overheard" being discussed by Senators Boxer and Clinton is highly suspect. But the lead Drudge story, combined with the Clinton sister-circle story in the Washington Post yesterday, is fuel for the far right. It’s a reminder of what we will be coping with if the Democrats are crazy enough to nominate Clinton. There is only one person who can revive the conservative coalition, jump-start the faletering Christianist movement, bring talk radio decisively back into the role of rallying the GOP base to the polls – and it’s the junior senator from New York. Without doing anything, she will increase GOP turnout in 2008 exponentially.

The latest in Romney news.

His support skews young, and the young have many fewer landlines than the old. We now have actual evidence of the distortion in polling this can create. Josh Claybourne worries here. But, of course, the young have historically not turned up at the polls in large numbers either. I think that’s changing, though. One more thought: I wonder if libertarians are more likely to have cell-phones than others?

Brooklyn, New York, 9.50 am.

For a visual trip through many windows in New York City, click here.

Or why Americans are still happier than Europeans.

For the second time, the Rhode Island legislature has over-ruled the Republican governor’s veto of a medical marijuana law. This time the over-ride was even more overwhelming: 58-11 in the House and 29-4 in the Senate. There are now eleven free states which allow the sick to use the medicine they want. The decisive Rhode Island vote is encouraging for a looming congressional vote preventing the feds from interfering in state marijuana laws.

Not an encouraging story about the New Yorker star’s anonymously sourced reporting. Taguba was on the record, of course.

It’s one of my favorite German words and captures roughly how I feel going into any department store. No I never got the shopping gene. I have one aim entering any kind of shop: to get out as fast as possible. But online shopping can be just as overwhelming:

A few weeks ago, I decided to get a new pair of flip flops. I dutifully went to Zappos (free shipping!) and looked in the "casual sandals" section. There were 1590 options. Just for men. In my size. So then I searched for "casual sandals" that were between $39.99 and $69.99. I had narrowed down the list to 652 items. I did a wee bit more narrowing, scrolled through the pages, and, after a few minutes, decided to get the flip flops at my local shoe store. The endless number of online options was aversive.

And no he hadn’t stumbled onto Mitt Romney’s website by accident.