Month: June 2007

"If we make the obviously incorrect, but nevertheless useful-in-identifying-the-scope-of-the-problem assumption that all jihadists here illegally are among those who came from the Middle East in the past five years, we still have a population of 246,000 within which those hostiles hide… And, yes, that includes Great Britain and France. Illegals from those countries should have to make a positive showing of loyalty to the west and absent a confirming investigation, remain undocumented and subject to deportation. With such a provision, the new law becomes the very useful tool in stopping jihadist attacks within the U.S. that its backers argue it is already.

It isn’t fair to treat "good" illegals from Somalia differently from "good" illegals from mexico – but it is necessary. There is no constitutional bar to doing so, but once the new law passed, there would be likely be challenges to any differential treatment of the 601(h) probationary visa holders," – Hugh Hewitt, upping the ante.

An online collection of his choicest quotes.

A class act, as usual. Or is there more to this?

She did well, it seems to me. There were times when her robo-lecture act began to wear down my ear-drums, but, in general, Senator Clinton bestrode the debate as an authoritative figure. In fact, I’ve never witnessed a U.S. political debate in which a woman clearly dominated as she did tonight. She was hawkish, and I was frankly surprised to hear her state baldly that "we are safer than we were," referring to the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policies. (Truth be told, I don’t really know the answer to that question, but I suspect we are much less safe than we were, say, two years ago. Fueling Jihad with an incompetent, half-assed occupation of a Muslim country is the worst of all worlds for national security.) She also deftly began to criticize the Iraqis for the chaos that the Bush occupation spawned. Well: up to a point. We had a six-month window of opportunity to leverage the removal of Saddam to reboot Iraq but we blew it. And that scarred little girl whose photograph I posted earlier today is not to blame for anything.

Yes, there were the usual knee-jerk responses. Of course, "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" was a mistake, Senator. It doubled the rate of gay discharges from the military. It has denied us critical skills in a dangerous war. But Clinton cannot concede anything critical about someone she called at one point "my dear husband." Yes, I gagged on that one. What a total phony. But an effective, shameless one.

Obama? Not out-classed at all by Clinton. But he has to find a way to break through her armature. He didn’t tonight. He gathered steam toward the end, I thought, and was very effective on the middle class squeeze. It was also good to hear a Democrat speak of fiscal rectitude as a "progressive" value. Yeah, why should big government liberals actually want to waste all the money they’re going to spend on us for our own good? An obvious point, but one not made often enough. Obama has the ability to pitch liberalism to conservatives and independents. That’s a skill the Democrats would probably be wise not to throw away.

Still: she wins this one. It kills me to admit it. But there you are. And as it sinks in, a dreadful specter emerges. Think June 2008. Think Romney vs Clinton. Plastic vs Perma-Freeze. It could happen.

(Photo: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty.)

Matt Yglesias examines neoconservatism in the 1990s, with a little help from Frank Fukuyama. The neocons really do seem just to like war – period. Brings out "national greatness," I suppose.

A reader writes:

I could be more satisfied of people’s reasons for finally disavowing the moron they voted for, the last straw, if the first straw didn’t happen to be the size of a giant sequoia.

An advocate of "curing" homosexuals is Bush’s nominee for surgeon-general.

An excellent essay. Money quote:

Did the Supper at Emmaus really take place? How I hope that it did, but I do not know that it did, in the way that I know a British soldier has recently been flown home dead from Basra or Helmand, or even in the way that I know that another such soldier will soon make the same sad journey.

Many decades have passed since I fancied the story of Adam and Eve was literal truth, if I ever did. Rather more recently I have realised the great warning against human arrogance that is contained in it, the serpent’s silky promise that if we reject the supposedly foolish, trivial restrictions imposed on us by an interfering, jealous nuisance of a God, then we shall be liberated.

As the serpent promises: "Ye shall be as gods." These may be the most important words in the whole Bible.

Take the enticing satanic advice, and you arrive, quite quickly, at revolutionary terror, at the invention of the atom bomb, at the torture chamber and the building of concentration camps for those unteachable morons who do not share your vision of a just world.

And also you arrive at the idea, embraced by Christopher [Hitchens], that by invading Iraq, you can make the world a better place.

I hesitated about mentioning this. Was it unfair, a jab below the belt? No. Much of his book is devoted to claiming that religious impulse drives Man to do, or excuse, or support wicked and terrible things in the name of goodness.

Is this not a perfect description of the Iraq War, which he backed?

Odin, a five year-old White Bengal Tiger dives for a piece of meat thrown to him by a trainer during a big cat show at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom June 1, 2007 in Vallejo, California. Unlike most cats that are afraid of water, Odin loves diving in the pool to retrieve bits of meat fed to him by his trainers. By Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

A Brit bets on freedom winning – in America.