Informed Speculation

Leaking classified information is illegal, whatever the reason, okay? Stipulate that up front. That’s number one. Number two, if your own moral and ethical scruples convince you to leak classified information regardless, because whatever you’re leaking is too important to stay unknown (at least to you), then you have to be prepared to face prosecution [...]

…there’s a good, if longish, piece in the WaPo on the rapid rise and sad downfall of Claude Allen, the key Bush advisor who recently was implicated in bizarre fraud/shoplifting allegations. I have no ideological spin to put on this, and since the man is no longer in government service, I simply wish him the [...]

…we can sure compartmentalize! Collectively, we hate the President, hate the Congress even more, hate the war in Iraq, are paying far too much at the gas pump…and consumer confidence is the highest in four years… Capitalism…you gotta love it…

…of a spam attack of epic proportions. You can’t see it, but I’ve been deluged with some 2,000+ spam comments over the last 10 hours or so. What it does mean is that I can’t possibly monitor my spam right now to make sure that legitimate comments aren’t getting scooped up, as happens from time [...]

John Fund of the Wall Street Journal blasted Yale yesterday for its plan to hire one Juan Cole: Yale faces a new challenge. In the next few days the university may hire Juan Cole, a history professor at the University of Michigan, to fill a new spot as a professor of contemporary Middle East studies. [...]

CNN is reporting that Tony Snow is a done deal for the new White House Press Secretary. I’m not enamored of the choice – it seems to me that it doesn’t do anything for the credibility of either Fox News or the White House. However, if he is the choice, I’ll wish him well and [...]

Why so many United 93 posts? Two reasons: (1) I love movies, and (2) this appears to be a respectful, well-made movie about the defining (public) event of my lifetime. David Denby of the New Yorker just flat-out raves: Greengrass’s movie is tightly wrapped, minutely drawn, and, no matter how frightening, superbly precise. In comparison [...]

Christopher Hitchens is willing to accept the justification put forth by Mary McCarthy and her supporters that she only leaked illegally from the best motives, largely from his own experience at her willingness to clobber Clinton over his ‘wag-the-doggery’ in the midst of Monicagate. He does, however, wonder why the appointment of a special prosecutor [...]

Newsweek asks of United 93: is this film necessary? It’s the wrong question; one may as well ask, was Picasso’s Guernica necessary? Did we need any of the multitude of World War II movies, or the soul-searching art post-Vietnam? Art will commemorate and mythologize and mask and reveal history – it’s no use asking of [...]

From Reuters: Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said on Monday that the nuclear program being pursued by Iran was the most serious threat faced by Jews since the Nazi Holocaust. …”Of all the threats we face, Iran is the biggest. The world must not wait. It must do everything necessary on a diplomatic level in [...]

Good piece in the New York Times that attempts to assess what we do and don’t know about global warming, a condition taken as a given by most liberals but still seen as contentious by a lot of conservatives: Between the poles of real-time catastrophe and nonevent lies the prevailing scientific view: without big changes [...]

…about the new chief of staff: The comment heard in Washington’s power circles last week after the newest phase of George W. Bush’s slow-moving reconstruction of his administration was that, finally, the president had a “real” chief of staff. That was not clear until Josh Bolten moved Rob Portman into the budget office and Karl [...]

The RINOs, that is…hosted for this installment by our good friend AJ…as always, check ‘em out…

From the Associated Press: Sen. John Kerry dismisses as “absolutely ridiculous” the notion that his support for Iowa and New Hampshire’s prominent roles in the presidential nomination process means he thinks only the votes of white people count. Many Democrats complain that the two early nomination elections winnow out candidates based on votes from small [...]

Just watched A&E’s Biography program on Albert Einstein – few hours in my life have been spent less profitably. Of the hour, a good twenty minutes were devoted to his love affairs – this, for the Man of the Century! At the end, viewers were assured by two prominent Einstein specialists that the legacy of [...]

It will come as no surprise to anyone that the poor tend to vote Democratic. One doesn’t need to resort to stereotypes or racial profiling to explain this – the Democrats have done a good job over the years in convincing the less-well-off that their best hope is governmental assistance, and the types of programs [...]

Okay, now, honestly – did Doyle really deserve to die in Sling Blade? I know he was a jerk and all, but if being a first-class a**hole when you’re drunk is a killing offense, I don’t think me and my friends would have made it out of college… I’m just saying, that’s all…

From the spring meeting of the Democratic National Comittee in New Orleans: Dean said that Democrats will fight for a six-point plan that includes raising the minimum wage, tax “fairness” for the middle class, “a complete ban on gifts and travel from lobbyists,” the inspection of all cargo coming into U.S. ports, fixing the Medicare [...]

There is so much chocolately goodness in this roundup by Tim Blair that I can really only say one thing: what are you waiting for?…

Investor’s Business Daily manages to deftly praise the movement towards a long-awaited unity government while deriding those who would use the progress to move the same agenda that motivated their condemnation of the setbacks: a view of our goal in Iraq as the removal of U.S. troops, and not victory: Can Americans handle good news [...]