Back in the day, back in 1987, when the facts of what became known as the Iran-Contra scandal first hit the fan, wide-eyed Reaganite Andy Sullivan was appalled. Ronald Reagan’s White House secretly sold weapons to Iranian terrorists and used the money to finance Nicaraguan “freedom fighters” (aka “terrorists”), an activity specifically banned by the…
Author: Alan Vanneman
Iraq now must be seen as the Republicans’ Vietnam
Well, it was a long time coming, but now it’s here. Heresy-speakers Donald Trump and Ted Cruz walked away with the most recent Republican debate. Both Trump and Cruz have repeatedly and explicitly rejected the regime change meme that has been the foundation stone of Republican foreign policy since 9/11. And will no one notice…
Avishai Cohen—“Criss Cross”
Avishai on bass and Nitai Hershkovits on piano. Check out Avishai’s site here
Very clever, those North Koreans? Well not really
Joel S. Wit is a senior fellow at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University and founded the website 38North. I am neither of those things, but I found his recent opinion piece in the New York Times, “How ‘Crazy’ Are the North Koreans?”, thoroughly off-putting. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I take my…
One reason Obama has problems
In his state of the union address, remarking about the lack of collegiality in DC, the president said “I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide, and I guarantee I’ll keep trying to be better so long as I hold this office.” It’s remarkable…
Cartoon: Hepcat’s diary
Hepcat: Okay, what’s goin’ down here? One cat’s got a hatchet, the other one’s stealing a bicycle. This will not end well. Seriously, what is the deal here? Are these guys working together? So what, they’ll cut down a tree and carry it off on the bicycle? Okay, that does not make any sense….
Running on empty: The liberalism of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and William de Blasio
President Obama wept while announcing his new executive actions that will supposedly protect Americans from guns, demonstrating that honest emotion is often the poorest of guides to both good politics and good policy, a lesson that today’s liberals are notably loath to learn. There was a time when liberals were smart about gun control. They…
House Speaker Paul Ryan: “I’m a Republican, not a legislator!”
Remember when newly minted House Speaker—and self-described policy wonk—Paul Ryan promised that “Our No. 1 goal for the next year is to put together a complete alternative to the left’s agenda”? Well, that was a whole month ago, and, you know, times change. Oh, they’ll have an agenda, definitely, like, you know, “progress” and “lower…
Thelonious Assault—“Skippy”
Thelonious Assault at Opus Concert Cafe in Cedar Rapids, Iowa on September 6, 2013. Peter Hart and Lynne Hart, saxophones; Anthony Catalfano, piano; Jim Fudge, bass; Jim Stroehle, drums. Posted by Richard Rauch
Does North Korea have a hydrogen bomb?
I’ve spent a lot of time over the past several years pooh-poohing the dire warnings that periodically emerge from the mouths of American big-shots regarding the peril posed by North Korea, so that state’s claim to have tested a hydrogen bomb doesn’t come as a pleasant surprise. If North Korea in fact doesn’t have a…