In a recent post, Try harder, Mr. Beinart,1 I subjected Peter Beinart to brief ridicule for perpetuating now ancient myths from John F. Kennedy’s half-forgotten “New Frontier” when he expressed the wish, in a column for the New York Times, that more Republican senators would present “profiles in courage”, so to speak, and vote the…
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Please, Mr. Beinart, try harder
Over at the New York Times, Peter Beinart has a column, “Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators?”, which takes as its text—well, in its first half, anyway—John F. Kennedy’s “famous” book, Profiles in Courage, citing two profiles, “two legendary Southerners, Thomas Hart Benton and Sam Houston, who a century earlier had become pariahs for…
U.S. Bombing Raids: American War Crimes or Commie Propaganda? Or both?
George Blake, a British spy for the Soviet Union whose information apparently led to the deaths of many operatives for British and American espionage agencies, is dead at 98. Blake, who was employed by the British as a spy, was turned by the Soviets after being captured during the Korean War. But, according to his…
Linda Greenhouse, a few bricks shy of the truth
It never hurts to have a friend in the White House, does it? In what amounts to a love letter to Joe Biden, New York Times Supreme Court gal Linda Greenhouse tells us how the steel entered Joe Biden’s soul during the confirmation hearings for Judge—and not to be Justice—Robert Bork. Up until that time,…
Ramesh Ponnuru sincerely wishes that Donald Trump would stop farting so loudly. Particularly when he’s sitting on Mr. Ponnuru’s face
Well, he does. In a recent post, “Trump’s Record on Clemency”, written before the president’s most recent (to date) rogue’s gallery of releases, Mr. Ponnuru acknowledges that, well, the president can do anything he goddamn pleases when it comes to pardons, including pardoning a bunch of murders and corrupt political pals whenever the mood strikes…
Barack Obama, still not getting it after all these years
I confess that I have not read President Obama’s recent memoir, A Promised Land, nor am I likely to, because I have convinced myself that the political pressures on American politicians make it impossible, or at least exceedingly unlikely, for them to ever write anything that resembles an honest book. I would say that this…
Political Notes From All Over, Volume II
Barack Obama and the Ministry o’ Truth Oy vey, mon president! In a recent interview with the BBC former President Barack “if you like your health care plan you can keep it” Obama complains about the lack of truthiness currently available in the USA: There are millions of people who subscribed to the notion that…
Yes, Donald Trump is destroying American democracy and the Republican Party is helping. Surprised? You shouldn’t be.
Only eight years ago—how time flies!—Republicans were actually embarrassed by the fact that since 1988 their nominee for president had won more votes than his opponent only once, compared to five second-place finishes. Now if you ask a Republican “strategist” about the fact that it’s now one out of eight, he’ll explain to you genially…
Back to “Normal” in 21? We should be so lucky.
There’s been a meme floating around for the past several years, pushed perhaps most assiduously by the New York Times’s Ross Douthat, and given another shove in his recent column “There Will Be No Trump Coup”, picturing that man in the White House as a “noisy weakling, not a budding autocrat”, an embarrassment rather than…
Freedom OF Speech or Freedom FROM Speech? Emily Bazelon is confused
And confusing. Over at the New York Times, Emily Bazelon has a humongous take on freedom of speech in the era of “Big Tech”, though working my way through umpteen thousand words of vaguely authoritarian liberal hand-wringing over what we should do about people who say things Ms. Bazelon doesn’t want to hear (and doesn’t…