One would want to have sympathy for Adrienne Pine, anthropology professor at American University in Washington, DC, who apparently offended someone by breastfeeding her daughter in her class. One would feel sympathy from just about anyone who received an email from a student reporter like the following (taken from the professor’s lengthy online account): Hello…
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George Will, tying himself in knots, yet failing to score a touchdown
I find myself agreeing with George Will more often than I like. We are a one on free trade, for example, as well as campaign “reform” (aka incumbent protection and First Amendment reduction). I also admire his early criticism of President Obama’s decision to expand the war in Afghanistan, although his massive silence on civil…
Bad History Week at Robert Samuelson’s
There was a time—in the early days of the Clinton Administration, perhaps—when Robert Samuelson’s column on economics was worth reading, on a consistent basis. But the times, well, they changed a long time ago. Recently, Bob took note of the fact that, economically, things are pretty shitty these days, and the only people with a…
Alan Vanneman, Percipience Personified
Mere hours ago, I wrote, of Supreme Court Justice Antonine Scalia’s furious, even frumious, dissent in Arizona v. United States, “One can even hope—and this is probably nonsense, and will probably be exposed as nonsense at 10 o’clock this morning—that his fulmination was sparked in part by frustration over his brethren’s refusal to overturn the…
Is it “I Hate Condoleezza Rice Week” already?
How time flies! But the calendar doesn’t lie, does it? And neither do Daniel “Rice Is a Uniquely Poor Choice for VP” Larison or Jennifer “The silliest VP suggestion of them all” Rubin, not to mention Bret “Anyone But Condi” Stephens. One can almost feel sorry for Condi, but not really. She spent the first…
Leon Panetta: Less than inch from being a douchebag
U.S. troops film themselves urinating on corpses in Afghanistan. U.S. and allied troops burn copies of the Koran. A U.S. soldier goes berserk and murders 16 innocent Afghans. U.S. troops pose for photographs holding severed hands and legs. U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, we learn, has been flying home every weekend, to visit his…
The Obama Administration: Once the failure of our policy in Afghanistan becomes obvious to the American people, they’ll be more willing to pretend that it’s a success
Yes, that seems to be thinking around the White House these days, if you can believe the New York Times—and on this occasion I can. According to Mark Landler “The killing of two American servicemen and the eruption of deadly anti-American protests in Afghanistan confronts President Obama with a potential political weakness in a foreign…
Michael Novak on Joe Paterno: So what if he ignored an eyewitness report of his assistant raping a ten-year-old boy?
Yes, that’s the position of Michael Novak, Catholic paleo-con windbag at the National Review, bemoaning the “injustice” done to “Great Man” Joe Paterno. “One of America’s greatest moral teachers for three generations gets a raw deal,” whines Mike, outraged by the fact that board of trustees at Penn State ousted Paterno without giving him an…
Mitch Daniels, Man of Steel
Is there anything more pathetic than a liberal like myself, who sees “his” President, Barack Obama, as the tool of both Wall Street and the CIA? Well, apparently there is, the fate of big-city conservatives like Ross Douthat and Bill Kristol, who are wetting their collective worsteds over the prospect of either Newt or Mitt…
For the children, goddamnit, for the children
In a recent posting in the NYT, bible thumpin’ Ross Douthat warns the Christian right to stay the fuck away from Newt Gingrich: “It isn’t just that he’s a master of selective moral outrage whose newfound piety has been turned to consistently partisan ends. It’s that his personal history — not only the two divorces,…