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Power Line posts on a Journal op-ed we’d previously ignored.
Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal published a powerful column by the former Romanian intelligence officer Ion Mihai Pacepa. The subject of Pacepa’s column was the destructive effect of the left’s intemperate attacks on the president. Buried in Pacepa’s column is this intriguing paragraph:
During the Vietnam War we spread vitriolic stories around the world, pretending that America’s presidents sent Genghis Khan-style barbarian soldiers to Vietnam who raped at random, taped electrical wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies and razed entire villages. Those weren’t facts. They were our tales, but some seven million Americans ended up being convinced their own president, not communism, was the enemy. As Yuri Andropov, who conceived this dezinformatsiya war against the U.S., used to tell me, people are more willing to believe smut than holiness. …
Ion Pacepa’s column is here.
During last week’s two-day summit, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown thanked President Bush for leading the global war on terror. Mr. Brown acknowledged “the debt the world owes to the U.S. for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism” and vowed to follow Winston Churchill’s lead and make Britain’s ties with America even stronger.
Mr. Brown’s statements elicited anger from many of Mr. Bush’s domestic detractors, who claim the president concocted the war on terror for personal gain. But as someone who escaped from communist Romania–with two death sentences on his head–in order to become a citizen of this great country, I have a hard time understanding why some of our top political leaders can dare in a time of war to call our commander in chief a “liar,” a “deceiver” and a “fraud.”
I spent decades scrutinizing the U.S. from Europe, and I learned that international respect for America is directly proportional to America’s own respect for its president. …
The New Editor posts on Gingrich’s description of the presidential campaign ‘verges on insane.’
Contentions introduces Peter Wehner, a new contributor.
Mr. Wehner with his first post for us. His subject is the phony candidate.
Matt Drudge has posted this headline on his site: “Editor For SC Largest Paper: Edwards Is ‘A Big Phony.’†That claim may qualify as the understatement of the political year. John Edwards has gone from what U.S. News & World Report describes as “the happy-face centrist†to the Candidate from the World of Kos. Has any ’08 candidate traveled so far (to the left), so fast, and in such a transparently false manner?
There are the predictable flip-flops. Today Edwards says the Iraq war was a mistake; in 2002, he insisted that “Saddam Hussein’s regime represents a grave threat to America and our allies. . . . [W]e must be prepared to use force, if necessary, to disarm Saddam Hussein, and eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction once and for all.â€
Having been an early supporter of the war on terror, he now refers to it as a “bumper sticker.†John Edwards is now a passionate critic of NAFTA—after having had nice words to say about it just a few years ago. …
Jim Lileks with eminent domain thoughts.
Thomas Sowell on collapsing bridges.
… It is not just the people but the incentives that are responsible for the neglect of infrastructure, while tax money is lavished on all sorts of less urgent projects.
In other words, when there is a complete turnover in political leaders over time, the same problem will remain because the same incentives will remain when new leaders take over.
Some people claim that the problem is how much money it would take to properly maintain bridges, highways, dams and other infrastructure. But money is found for other things, including things far less urgent and some things that are even counterproductive.
The real problem is that the political incentives are to spend the taxpayers’ money on things that will enhance politicians’ chances of getting re-elected. …
Jeff Jacoby on scalping laws.
I’M NOT a sports fan; never have been. Maybe that’s why all the atmospherics surrounding ticket scalping raise more questions in my mind than they answer.
For example: Why is someone who sells tickets to a Red Sox fan outside Fenway Park for a heavily inflated price called a “scalper,” while someone who charges the same fan $4 for a bottle of water inside the stadium is called a “concessionaire”?
Another question, admittedly not germane to the transaction itself: How can people who shudder with revulsion when Atlanta Braves fans do the “tomahawk chop,” or who find Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians’ cheerful emblem, politically offensive, refer so disdainfully to the resale of tickets as “scalping”?
But what I really don’t understand about the scalping brouhaha is why anyone thinks the government should be involved in deciding how much a willing buyer can pay a willing seller for tickets to a lawful entertainment event. …
Sports Illustrated tells us about the latest case for our friends at Institute for Justice.
Carlos Barragan and his son Carlos Jr. don’t torture dogs, don’t inject ‘roids and don’t bet on sporting events they ref. They’ve never run from the law or the tax man or a grand jury.
What they do run is a little boxing gym for kids in National City, Calif., between the Mexican border and the San Diego barrios.
So why is the city trying to shut them down?
Luxury condos, that’s why.
David Brooks gets us up to date on baby names.
NY Times reports on the next thing ethanol mandates are screwing up.
DEKALB, Ill. — While much of the nation worries about a slumping real estate market, people in Midwestern farm country are experiencing exactly the opposite. Take, for instance, the farm here — nearly 80 acres of corn and soybeans off a gravel road in a universe of corn and soybeans — that sold for $10,000 an acre at auction this spring, a price that astonished even the auctioneer.
“If they had seen that day, they would have never believed it,†Penny Layman said of her sister and brother-in-law, who paid $32,000 for the entire spread in 1962 and whose deaths led to the sale.
Skyrocketing farmland prices, particularly in states like Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, giddy with the promise of corn-based ethanol, are stirring new optimism among established farmers. But for younger farmers, already rare in this graying profession, and for small farmers with dreams of expanding and grabbing a piece of the ethanol craze, the news is oddly grim. The higher prices feel out of reach. …
Slate tells how sunscreen SPF is established.