The U.S. special-operations mission that killed Osama bin Laden signals that it is time to end U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan, Sen. Barbara Boxer said in an e-mail to liberal activists Saturday.
“Three days after 9/11, my Senate colleagues and I voted unanimously to authorize the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those who attacked us,” the California Democrat said in a message sent to members of the group Democracy for America. “Now, after delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, it’s time to bring that mission to a close.”
The main problem Newt Gingrich faces in his campaign for President is not going to be the number of liberals who don’t like him. It’s going to be the number of conservatives who don’t like him.
Von Drehle quotes John Podhoretz among others, as Gingrich’s rightward opponents. His problem is perhaps not so much that conservatives don’t like Newt — who is now, as always, an extremely articulate critic of liberalism — but that they don’t trust him. He is a distinctly slippery politician, whose ideological commitments are not entirely solid and sound. His 2008 global-warming ad with Nancy Pelosi is a case in point:
If Gingrich could be forgiven for that stunning lapse of judgment, there are yet other lapses to explain:
Callista Bisek’s friends from rural Wisconsin were stunned when, well over a decade ago, she confided that she was secretly dating an older, married man: Newt Gingrich.
Still in her 20s when they met, Ms. Bisek had been raised in a town of 1,500, the only child of a meat packer and a secretary. A churchgoing Roman Catholic, she had attended a Lutheran college where she practiced piano five hours a day. “Is this the wisest course for you to be taking?” Karen Olson, her best friend, recalled asking.
Today, Ms. Bisek is Mrs. Gingrich, married for 11 years, but perhaps best remembered for the six-year affair that contributed to her husband’s political downfall. His critics cast Mr. Gingrich, the former House speaker, as a hypocrite who sought to impeach a president over infidelity while engaging in it himself with Ms. Bisek, who was a Congressional aide. . . .
Set aside your moral outrage over adultery, and focus instead on this Capitol Hill rule: Members don’t date staffers. Period.
Congressional staffers are hired at taxpayer expense to conduct the people’s business, not to serve as “comfort women” to lonely politicians. In the hierarchy of D.C. sins, dating a Hill staffer is not as bad as shagging an intern — interns are absolutely off-limits — but it is still a breach of trust, in part because of its demoralizing influence on other staffers. Granted, the future Mrs. Gingrich worked for Rep. Steve Gunderson, so Newt wasn’t her boss, but still: It simply isn’t done.
Despite all that, however, I feel no need to mount an anti-Gingrich campaign, for the simple reason that I don’t think Gingrich has a realistic chance at winning the nomination. He will be an important voice in the 2012 debate, but I don’t see him sparking a grassroots brushfire of enthusiasm. In fact, at the Georgia state GOP convention, Gingrich was at risk of being overshadowed by another 2012 candidate:
MACON, Ga. — It had all the trappings of a homecoming. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who helped Republicans rise to power in this once-solid Democratic state, returned Friday deliver his first speech as a presidential candidate before thousands of state GOP delegates.
But ahead of Gingrich’s scheduled address Friday evening, party activists were buzzing about another favorite son — Herman Cain.
“He doesn’t talk political,” said Jeanette Bean, a Gwinnett County delegate who was passing out Draft Cain stickers. “He talks straight. He doesn’t mince his words and says it how it is. It’s so refreshing,”
Plenty of other attendees seemed to agree. Kicking off the two-day convention, Republican Sen. Saxby Chambliss gave a shout out to both Georgia natives. “We’ve got Newt Gingrich,” he said, which earned a whistle of approval from one member of the audience.
When Chambliss added, “We’ve got Herman Cain,” loud whoops, cheers and applause were heard.
“People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.”
— Edmund Burke, 1790
In 1964, Sen. Barry Goldwater (a) voted against the Civil Rights Act, and (b) was the Republican nominee for president. Goldwater’s argument against the Civil Right Act was that it constituted an infringement of property rights. Ron Paul made the same argument Friday on Hardball:
I believe that property rights should be protected. Your right to be on TV is protected by property rights because somebody owns that station. I can’t walk into your station. So right of freedom of speech is protected by property. The right of your church is protected by property. So people should honor and protect it. This gimmick, Chris, it’s off the wall when you say I’m for property rights and states rights therefore I’m a racist. That’s just outlandish.
Even though this is, as Paul says, “ancient history” — liberal Chris Matthews ginning up a moot controversy to smear a Republican — it troubles me that conservatives have become so intimidated by the Left’s constant cries of “raaaaacism” that no one is willing to defend the position advocated by Barry Goldwater in 1964.
“Oh, well, it’s just that wacko Ron Paul,” they say. “Who cares?”
Yeah? Well, it’s also Ronald Reagan, my friend. If you’re willing to let Ron Paul be smeared as a bigot over this, then I guess you might as well throw the Gipper under the bus while you’re at it. Continue reading Whatever Happened to AuH2O? →
I asked myself — “Of all melancholy topics, what, according to the universal understanding of mankind, is the most melancholy?” Death — was the obvious reply. “And when,” I said, “is this most melancholy of topics most poetical?” From what I have already explained at some length, the answer, here also, is obvious — “When it most closely allies itself to Beauty: the death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world . . .”
— Edgar Allen Poe, “The Philosophy of Composition”
Benin is one of the poorest countries in the world. With a per-capita GDP of $1,600, Benin is poorer than Pakistan, Sudan, Cambodia and even North Korea. So if an idealistic young person wanted to help poor people, Benin would be a good place to start.
Wedged into the Atlantic coast of west Africa between Togo and Nigeria and home to about 10 million people, Benin ranks 187th among the world’s nations in life expectancy, while ranking 30th in infant mortality. A host of terrible diseases contribute to this high death rate: bacterial and protozoal diarrhea, hepatitis A, typhoid fever, malaria, yellow fever and meningococcal meningitis.
Public sources about the leading causes of death in Benin, however, don’t rank murder among them.
I’ve been in Mazar-i-Sharif for a couple of weeks. Camp Marmal, as it’s called, is on the east side of town. The Germans actually run this, and it’s highly international. Which means a lot of weird little rules, and lousy internet connectivity.
After three tries, I finally found a card that logs me onto something that, you know works. Unfortunately, as the Ops/Sustainment/Training/Force Protection/Whatever guy, my discretionary time to add my voice to the Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Chorus is limited.
Things may improve. Seeing Stacy’s post about Osama’s porn stash, and having a bit of twitter access, I managed to get re-tweeted by the New York Times ‘bot:
So, I have some connectivity. Still no electricity, and sitting on the steps for a couple of hours is hard on the bottom.
The good news is that the deployment is half over.
Cain hit all of the major issues, coming out strong for border security in this border state (“Instead of suing Arizona, they should have gotten a prize!”), hammering away at liberal politicians and policies (“The problem with liberals is, they can’t handle the facts!”), race (“I am black, but I happen to be an American first.”) and his conservatism (“I escaped the Democrat plantation and I’m not going back.”) Cain closed with a simple call to what makes him an optimist, and what makes him believe he can win, as well as what he tells his grandkids when they ask for his advice: “Believe in God, believe in yourself, and believe in the greatest country in the world, the United States of America.”
Sam Foster at the Lonely Conservative was the first to predict that the “treasure trove” of electronic data discovered at Osama’s Pakistan compound would turn out to include computer porn. Now Reuters reports:
A stash of pornography was found in the hideout of Osama bin Laden by the U.S. commandos who killed him, current and former U.S. officials said on Friday.
The pornography recovered in bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, consists of modern, electronically recorded video and is fairly extensive, according to the officials, who discussed the discovery with Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“Three days after 9/11, my Senate colleagues and I voted unanimously to authorize the president to use all necessary and appropriate force against those who attacked us,” the California Democrat said in a message sent to members of the group Democracy for America. “Now, after delivering justice to Osama bin Laden, it’s time to bring that mission to a close.”
