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Fred Thompson does a number on Harry Reid.
… The problem is that every one of Reid’s comments I’ve noted here has also been reported gleefully by Al Jazeera and other anti-American media. Whether he means to or not, he’s encouraging our enemies to believe that they are winning the critical war of will.
Richard Cohen, liberal at WaPo, is the latest to defend Scooter Libby.
… With the sentencing of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker — Richard Armitage of the State Department — but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off. …
Byron York posts at The Corner on Libby’s chances.
Power Line on the Rushdie knighthood.
Michael Barone looks at a divided nation.
Listening to the recent debates among the candidates, monitoring their Websites and reading the poll numbers, one gets the impression that the Republican and Democratic primary electorates are living in two different nations — or the same nation that faces two very different threats.
The Republicans want to protect us against Islamist terrorists. The Democrats want to protect us against climate change. Each side believes the other’s fears are largely imaginary. …
… He who defines the issues tends to determine the outcome of the election. When pollster Peter Hart asked a bipartisan focus group which candidate could best protect the nation, several people mentioned Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, one mentioned Barack Obama, and no one mentioned Hillary Clinton. Evidently these people, unlike international elites, see the threat as Islamist terrorism and not climate change.
We know which seems more threatening to Republican and Democratic primary voters. But what about independents, who favored Republicans in 2002 and 2004 and Democrats in 2006? The answer may tell you which side wins in 2008.
The Tennessean thinks hair cuts and houses are a problem for John Edwards.
When it comes to big houses, how big is too big? The answer apparently is 28,000 square feet, which is the size of John Edwards’ North Carolina home.
If Edwards wants to continue being in the top tier of Democratic presidential hopefuls, he may well have to put a “For Sale” sign on his behemoth of a house and move into ordinary rich man’s digs, like, say, a 12,000 square foot mansion.
The house, for the mill worker’s son, has become a millstone around his neck. People are talking about it even more than his $400 haircuts. …
Adam Smith gives us, through the Economist, a short look at The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan.
More on the million dollar pants suit from WSJ.
Power Line posts on the CNN channels that won’t go away.
New Editor finds lots of economic ignorance among activists and, or course, in congress.
Samizdata’s Quote of the Day introduces three items exploring training and education of boys.
Christina Hoff Summers reviewed The Dangerous Book for Boys for the NY Post.
PARENTS and educators are wringing their hands over the poor academic performance of boys. Girls are better readers, earn higher grades and are far more likely to go to college. America does a much better job educating girls than boys. But now, out of nowhere, comes a book that may hold the secret to male learning.
“The Dangerous Book for Boys,” written by two English brothers, Conn and Hal Iggulden, violates all the rules of political correctness – and males between the ages of 8 and 80 are reading it in droves.
Already a major best seller in Great Britain, the book is now topping the lists in America. Its appeal is obvious – it goes directly for the pleasure centers of the male brain.
“The Dangerous Book for Boys” is all about Swiss Army knives, compasses, tying knots and starting fires with a magnifying glass. It includes adventure stories with male heroes, vivid descriptions of battles and a history of artillery. Readers learn how to make their own magnets, periscopes and bows and arrows. It gives rules and tactics for poker and marbles – and secret moves for coin tricks. …
WSJ gets in the act this weekend.
… There’s more than a little irony in the fact that I have three sons. I’m not what you’d call a master of the manly arts. I can’t start a fire without a match, or track a deer, or ride a horse. I don’t know how to fix cars, and my infrequent forays into home repair usually necessitate medical attention. But these are the things little boys want to learn — I remember wanting to learn them myself. Or maybe it’s that boys yearn to do things with fathers, and those things usually involve a little danger. A new wildly popular book of essential boy knowledge recognizes this in its title: “The Dangerous Book for Boys.” My oldest has dog-eared nearly every page. …
Cooking helped our brains grow? That’s what we learn in Technology Review.
… Now Harvard University’s Richard Wrangham has provided some evidence that the very distant ancestors of America’s top chefs indeed may have learned to cook their antelope and rabbit. Cooking makes both plants and meat softer and easier to chew, providing more calories with less effort. What’s more, human teeth got smaller and duller at around this time, which is the opposite of what would have happened if people had had to rip and chew lots of raw meat. …
The federal government collects statistics from 1,221 temperature stations throughout the country. How’s that working, you ask? It’s the government, so you guess. Neal Boortz with the story.
… Believe it or not, Steigerwald and his followers have found temperature measuring stations sitting right next to barrels where trash is burned. Some are sitting directly in front of air conditioning vents. Others are located near the tarmac on parking lots and at airports. Still others are found surrounded by high buildings. Believe it or not, he even found one official temperature measuring station sitting directly behind an airport ramp where it can be routinely subject to jet blast! Just what do you think the locations of these official government temperature measuring stations might mean to all of these temperature measurements that are being used by OwlGore and others to convince us of global warming! …
Dilbert notes sturgeon in northwest Florida are jumping into boats where people are severely injured. He thinks it might be a conspiracy engineered by the sturgeon general.