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Mark Steyn has a Monica week. He starts us off with something he wrote ten years ago for The Spectator, UK.
… Clinton’s presidency now resembles a deranged version of La Ronde, in which he staggers from one girl to the next without ever managing to shake off any of their predecessors: if his aides hadn’t stupidly revealed her identity, Paula Jones wouldn’t have sued; if she hadn’t sued, he wouldn’t have had to give a sworn deposition admitting to the affair with Gennifer Flowers; if he’d settled the suit, her lawyers wouldn’t have taken testimony from Kathleen Willey, the woman who says he groped and fondled her on the day her husband committed suicide; if his lawyer hadn’t trashed the reputation of Mrs Willey’s corroborating witness Linda Tripp, Miss Tripp wouldn’t have set about getting her revenge; if the President had only managed to keep his hands off Monica Lewinsky, they wouldn’t have had to move her to the Pentagon, where she became friends with Miss Tripp; if he’d been able to steer clear of Shelia Lawrence, Miss Lewinsky wouldn’t have become jealous….
The more worldly commentators bemoan the fact that America isn’t like France, where M. Mitterrand was buried with both his wife and mistress in attendance. But, if Mr Clinton’s funeral applies the same admission criteria, it’ll be the biggest windfall for the nation’s charter buses since the Million Man March. Mrs Clinton has done her best to surround her husband with only the most fearsome specimens of the fairer sex, from Madeleine Albright to Janet Reno. But you could nail a government health warning to the White House door – `Abandon hope all ye who intern here’ – and some impressionable young coed would always break through. …
Kathryn Jean Lopez with a Corner post on what Rush is up to lately.
Rush issued a warning about Huckabee and McCain: “I’m here to tell you, if either of these two guys get the nomination, it’s going to destroy the Republican Party, it’s going to change it forever, be the end of it. A lot of people aren’t going to vote. You watch.†…
According to Peter Wehner, things are getting personal in the Dem race.
… It’ll be interesting to see how Obama’s “politics of hope†responds to those who have perfected the Politics of Personal Destruction. Will he be able to respond persuasively and aggressively without getting himself filthy in the process? Will he be able to turn the chapter on the divisive politics of the past–or will he merely add to what we have seen before?
Regardless of the results, after this nomination process it may be a lot harder for either Clinton or Obama to put forward the argument that they are figures who can bring America together, especially if they succeed in driving various constituencies within the Democratic Party apart. The politics of unity aren’t, apparently, as easy as people think.
Captain comments on Clinton and the current baby boomlet.
IBD editors remind the Civil Rights Act was passed in 1967 because of the GOP.
Hillary Clinton gives credit for the 1964 Civil Rights Act to President Lyndon Johnson, while Barack Obama accuses the wife of the “first black president” of rewriting history. Actually, they both are. …
The Times hiring of Bill Kristol has the paper roiled. Gabriel Schoenfeld comments for Real Clear Politics.
Was it wrong for the New York Times to install William Kristol as an op-ed columnist? The move to put an outspoken neoconservative in such a visible position is roiling the newspaper, inside and out. First, a hailstorm of hate mail arrived at the paper for hiring a “war criminal”–one of the milder epithets hurled in Kristol’s direction by some 700 letter-writers, all of whom but one were venting against the appointment. Then, taking note of this groundswell of reader opinion under the headline, “He May Be Unwelcome, But We’ll Survive,” the newspaper’s own ombudsman, Clark Hoyt, called the decision a serious mistake: not because Kristol is an “aggressive unapologetic champion” of the war in Iraq–but for something else.
That something else is remarks uttered by Kristol on Fox News Sunday in June 2006. “I think the attorney general has an absolute obligation to consider prosecution” of the New York Times is what Kristol told a television audience shortly after the newspaper splashed details of the highly classified Terrorist Finance Tracking Program on its front page. …
John Stossel writes on the folks who hate free markets.
Why are so many people so hostile to free markets?
Markets provide miracles that we take for granted. Clean, well-lighted supermarkets sell 30,000 products. Starvation has largely vanished from countries where private property and economic freedom are permitted. Free markets have rescued more people from poverty than government ever has.
And yet, when innovators propose extending this benign power, people shriek in fear.
This was clear reading The Wall Street Journal not long ago.
The “Letters” section led with complaints about Bob Poole’s column on well-maintained private highways that keep traffic moving. One writer complained that such highways exist for “the privileged … who can afford surprisingly large … fees … to drive a very boring 45 minutes around metropolitan Toronto. Highway 407 is certainly a great success — for its bondholders.”
Surprisingly large fees? Only if you are clueless about what you pay for “free” roads. And why is success for the bondholders a bad thing? Is the writer envious? If the ride is boring, he doesn’t need to take it. No one forces anyone to use a private highway. Why do so many begrudge the successes that voluntary private exchanges bring? …
Walter Williams caught up to light bulbs and thermostats.
Last December, President Bush signed an energy bill that will ban the sale of Edison’s incandescent bulb, starting with the 100-watt bulb in 2012 and ending with the 40-watt bulb by 2014. You say, “Hey, Williams, what’s wrong with saving energy, reducing our carbon footprint and stopping global warming?” Before you get too enthused over governmental energy-saving efforts, you might ponder what’s down the road.
The California Energy Commission has recently proposed amendments to its standards for energy efficiency (www.energy.ca.gov/2007publications/CEC-400-2007-017/CEC-400-2007-017-45DAY.PDF). These standards include a requirement that any new or modified heating or air conditioning system must include a programmable communicating thermostat (PCT) whose settings can be remotely controlled by government authorities. A thermostat czar, sitting in Sacramento, would be empowered to remotely reduce the heating or cooling of your house during what he deems as an “emergency event.” …
Amity Shlaes visits the Panama Canal.
… One glimpse of the light as I arrived at the Miraflores Locks, and I forgot all of that darkÂness. Visitors coming to inspect the canal expect to see a generous stretch of blue through which ships move majestically. They are imagining the way liners navigate New York Harbor. And there are parts of the canal that look like that. Here, however, you find a narrow line of green-blue water through which a ship is pulled forward, like a sedated whale through a tight tank. Only a foot or two of water stands between the ship and the lock chamber’s wall. The ship moves into the holding area and the gate shuts; when the water level is high enough, toy-like locomotives pull the ship out the other side.
The best news of the day came in a press briefÂing after the Miraflores inspection: the new locks that can accommodate larger container ships will be opening in 2014. Just before my visit, the Canal Authority had celebrated the groundÂbreaking of the locks. If the U.S. Congress approves the FTA, the canal will be better able to serve the superstores of the East Coast.
One of the best parts of infra-tourism is the lexicon. “Panamax†is the designation for the biggest ship that can fit through Panama’s locks. I learn that the new locks that will serve a larger class might be called “Maxipan.†A guide gave us the figures for the Panamax class and I wrote them down in my notebook: 965 x 105 feet.
Around these proportions, the world once configured itself. Within a decade of the canal’s opening in 1914, 5,000 ships a year were passing through Panama. Annual toll revenues soon ran in the millions. …