March 31, 2010

Obama's attempt to impose peace on Israel

Looks like President Obama is applying the same logic to Mideast peace talks that he used for health care reform: if the wood's too hard to drive the nail, get a bigger hammer.Foolish observers (like me) thought that Obama had understood, late last ...

March 13, 2010

Will passing Obamacare jolt us into reality?

If the Democrats succeed in passing ObamaCare next week, they could indeed usher in a new era - but not the one they want.The conventional wisdom (which President Obama and I apparently share) is that any entitlement bill, no matter how bad, will rem...

February 24, 2010

Problem solved?

President Obama and the Congressional leadership, in trying to ram through their version of health care reform, presumably want to shore up their base in the left of the Democratic party, while demonstrating more broadly that they can produce a ...

February 2, 2010

Getting down to work

For all the talk of an Obama pivot or other policy switch calculated to regain the trust and support of voters, no one seems to be talking about the actual changes he would have to make in how he does business.As Byron York pointed out here,Obam...

August 10, 2009

Notes of a Puzzled Wannabe Mobster

OK, I haven’t actually attended a town hall meeting (like many conservatives, I’m very hard to mobilize).  I have, however, been following the debate from the privacy of my home (although if my emails are forwarded to the White House...

June 26, 2009

The old double standard

Imagine the outcry if a conservative, white politician in the space of just a few months (1) ended the school voucher program in the District of Columbia and (2) recommended federal funding for abortions in the District.  Not only would he be ac...

June 22, 2009

When America's Enemies Experience Domestic Unrest

In 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a joke circulated in Warsaw:  "What's the difference between Afghanistan and Poland?  Answer:  Afghanistan begins with an "A" and Poland with a "P".  ...

April 28, 2009

Obama as the new FDR - unfortunately

At first I thought I had mistaken my catch-up reading for the morning paper.  In the passage I was reading, the American president understood that the proposed new program would run out.  As he himself put it: “Ah, but this is th...

December 7, 2008

Bosnia and global jihad

Christopher Deliso, The Coming Balkan Caliphate:  The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West.  (Westport, CT:  Praeger Security International, 213 pp., 2007)Schindler, John R. Unholy Terror:  Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Ris...