Archive for September, 2008

A NON-APOLOGY APOLOGY from Alcee Hastings. Toddlers and impeached judges needn’t apologize, because no sensible person takes their view seriously anyway.

BARACK OBAMA AND RESTORING ROTC AT COLUMBIA: Is lifting the ROTC ban change we can believe in?

In a forum on public service on campus earlier this month, Mr. Obama (Columbia ’83) and John McCain (Annapolis ’58) were both asked about the ROTC ban. When Mr. McCain predictably called on Columbia to “re-examine” the ban, he was predictably booed by a crowd of several thousand students who were watching the debate on a giant TV screen on campus.

The question was later put to Mr. Obama. “I think we’ve made a mistake on that,” Mr. Obama replied. “I recognize that there are students here who have differences in terms of military policy, but the notion that young people here at Columbia aren’t offered a choice or an option in participating in military service is a mistake.” The same students who had so lustily booed Mr. McCain, reported the New York Times, were “largely silent” when Mr. Obama gave the same answer.

Well, good for him. I hope that the powers-that-be at Columbia will listen.

DEAN ESMAY COULD USE SOME HELP. If you enjoy his blog, you should consider donating. Eric Scheie has some more reasons.

IS SARAH PALIN QUALIFIED? A poll at PBS. It’s been running for over three weeks and it’s an even split.

UPDATE: Fred Thompson casts his vote. “Governor Palin’s every comment was scrutinized by the media and judged against what Jefferson or Lincoln might have said. Never mind that her counterpart, the 30-year-Washington-veteran Joe Biden, apparently is unaware that America relies upon coal for a lot of its electricity or that he recently referred to a top level U.S. official’s visit to Iran that never happened. That’s just Joe being Joe – protected by the sheer number of his gaffes and the fact that he is Barack Obama’s running mate.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Re-debunking the rape kit smear.

Heck, even Slate has shot that down.

MORE: Reader Peter Sterne emails:

Democrats are questioning whether Sarah Palin is qualified to be Vice President while Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker-In-Tongues-of-the-House is two heartbeats (and one with issues) away from the Presidency. Nancy Pelosi is proving herself completely unqualified to lead anything. I wouldn’t trust her to lead a troop of Girl Scouts. At a time when she should have been, umm, actually, leading the House (BTW, that means the entire House … both aisles), she morphed into House Majority Leader Pelosi, made a vicious partisan attack on Republicans, and derailed the $700B bail out.

I’ll leave the parsing of her motivations to more connected observers, but I suspect it was based on partisan calculus, since the only leadership Pelosi has ever shown is in her capacity to attack the opposition.

That’s her.

HMM: Unlike Clinton, Biden Gets Pass for Saying He Was ‘Shot At’ in Iraq. “When Hillary Clinton told a tall tale about ‘landing under sniper fire’ in Bosnia, she was accused of ‘inflating her war experience’ by Barack Obama’s campaign — but the campaign has been silent about Joe Biden telling his own questionable story about being ‘shot at’ in Iraq.” Pointing it out with Hillary helped Obama; pointing it out with Biden doesn’t help Obama.

A EULOGY FOR THE NEW YORK SUN, from James Taranto. It has now gone where all newspapers seem to be headed, but I was honored to have a piece in the very first issue.

UPDATE: More on The Sun here.

COMING FROM SAMSUNG: An 8-Megapixel cameraphone. Nice, but I’d rather see better lenses.

SHORT MEMORIES:

Remember a few months ago when oil was heading ever higher, gasoline reached unheard of prices, and Americans were essentially hysterical? Remember when Americans demanded, actually screamed in the politicians’ ears that we wanted to drill in our offshore areas? . . .

Well, the politicians apparently don’t remember it at all.

Short memories, big mouths.

RERUNS BUT NOT RENEWAL FOR SWINGTOWN, and worries about how The Sarah Connor Chronicles is doing. I’ve watched the first two episodes this season and the show’s as good as last year. It’d be a shame if it were cancelled.

BONNIE & NIXON: A new episode of Silicon Graffiti.

NOT A SIGN OF A HEALTHY CIVILIZATION:

At the recent European Science Open Forum conference in Barcelona, for example, I was strolling through exhibits aimed at — please don’t gag — science outreach. The underlying theme of all these displays seemed to me to be: since their schooling actually teaches many ordinary people to be discomforted by — if not to actually fear and loath — science, let’s see if we can’t do something in these venues to get people to hate science a little bit less.

(Via Classical Values, where there are more thoughts).

READER RAYMOND ECKHARD writes that this is creepy. Yes. Roger Simon finds it disturbing, too. “It is the kind of exploitation of children that reminds me of Young Pioneer Camps I saw when visiting the Soviet Union in the Eighties.”

UPDATE: “Daddy says if we sing well enough, we might get an extra flour ration!”

Plus, more happy singing children!