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• May 29, 2007 (word)

• May-29-2007-(pdf)

More on the new French foreign minister. This time from Christopher Hitchens.

… I suppose there is some irony to be found in the fact that, while such a person takes command of the foreign policy of France, the only apparent test of liberalism in the United States is the speed with which it proposes to abandon the Arabs and Kurds of Iraq once again.

 

Volokh posts on attempts by New South Wales Islamic Council to interfere with Hirsi Ali’s visit to Australia.

 

Amnesty International has become an organ for the anti-American left. Joshua Muravchik posts in Contentions.

… Today, it may be that some U.S. actions in the war on terror are questionable or blameworthy. But such derogations are trivial in comparison with what is at issue between us and the terrorists. No one genuinely devoted to human rights can be blind to this. Those who ignore it are using the lingo of human rights to pursue some other agenda.

 

Before we start with today’s immigration debate offerings, the Captain jumps off a Richard Cohen column to a great post; Bush, the Liberal.

Richard Cohen makes the case that Republicans have noted for the last six years — that the Bush administration has not been conservative at all, but rather an exercise in big-government, liberal action. Calling Bush a “neo-liberal”, Cohen hits some convincing points in his argument that Bush resembles a cross between Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson …

 

And he has a gracious send-off for Cindy Sheehan.

 

Mark Steyn on immigration from National Review.

 

The immigration debate is joined by someone who should know a few things. He is Kris W. Kobach, professor of law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. As counsel to the U.S. Attorney General, 2001-03, he was the attorney general’s chief adviser on immigration law. His op-ed piece was in the NY Post.

 

Kris Kobach’s article spawned Corner posts from Krikorian, Steyn, Derbyshire, and Levin.

 

While at the Corner you’ll want to read this moving post by Michael Ledeen.

 

Pickerhead admitted to a weakness for Richardson’s candidacy. John Fund says nothing doing.

 

Thomas Sowell shows how words are important.

… The Constitution says that government can take private property for “public use” if it compensates the owner. The Supreme Court changed that to mean that the government could take private property just to turn over to others, so long as they called it a “public purpose” like “redevelopment.”

 

Politicians are experts at rhetoric, especially if that is all that is needed to justify seizing your home and turning it over to someone else who will build something that pays more taxes. …

 

Carpe Diem posts on the failures of Canadian health care.

 

Andrew Sullivan posts on the unending sickness of Michael Moore.

 

A WSJ review of Michael Barone’s “Our First Revolution.”

… Everything that flowed from the Whig victory of 1688–limited government, the Bank of England, tradable national debt, triennial Parliaments, mercantilism, free enterprise, an aggressively anti-French foreign policy, the union with Scotland, eventually the Hanoverian Succession and the Industrial Revolution–combined to make the English-speaking peoples powerful. Mr. Barone proves beyond doubt how much the Glorious Revolution inspired the Founding Fathers to launch their own, with Virginia gentlemen farmers seeing themselves as the heirs of England’s revolutionary aristocrats. The 1689 Bill of Rights in Britain thus unquestionably paved the way to the American Bill of Rights of 1791.

 

To comprehend how America’s birth pangs came about–and why its title deeds were drawn up in the way they were–it is therefore crucial to understand the ideals and passions of 1688. The very best introduction is this well-researched, well-written, thought-provoking book.

 

The Spine finds a cartoon.