Category: Uncategorized

II Let’s start with the one piece submitted in response to my challenge.  This comes from my former managing editor, Kate Dalton Boyer, who is still harboring some dark feelings about her former boss’s sloppy office. Doggerel for TF I know a man named Thomas, his desk will give you pause. If one inquires the reason: “Tace!” he’ll say.  “Because.” Beneath a Mac his thesis (of Grecian poetry) is propping up his keyboard and in danger from his tea. The office door won’t open –review books in the way– it seems another forty-two have just arrived today. The lamp’s a...

Dear Reader, I would like to announce today that I whole-heartedly agree with the Republican establishment and the American media establishment that Donald Trump owes an apology to all of us for his recent comments on Islamic immigration, but with one caveat: I think Trump should apologize not for what he said about Muslims but for what he did not say. Donald Trump should apologize to the American people for failing to even broach the topic of the Council On American-Islamic Relations’ track record. CAIR is the most visible Islamic organization in the United States, quoted quite liberally by the major media...

Fox News commentators do not often make an intelligent criticism of President Obama’s foreign policy.  They are usually content to point out the obvious—that Obama is misguided—while offering alternatives that would hardly work any better. Nonetheless, the neoconservative establishment was right to express outrage in February,  when then-State Department spokesperson Marie Harf declared on Chris Matthews’ MSNBC program that defeating ISIS in the long-term will require addressing the “root causes” of terrorism, such as lack of jobs and poverty. This statement was palpably absurd, but it also reflected the consensus of the American and European ruling classes, a consensus that...

Answer these questions honestly.  If you score zero, you are rightwing; 5-10 makes you a conservative liberal, while a score of 15 tells you that you have reached the highest plateau of political correctness. 1. I have a nice Muslim friend; therefore ISIS is not Islamic. 2. The vast majority of the world’s “1.6 billion Muslims” are not part of ISIS or al-Qaeda; therefore ISIS and al-Qaeda have nothing to do with Islam. 3. The presence of large Islamic populations in Europe and North America is culturally enriching and intellectually invigorating. 4. Christianity and the Catholic Church have historically suppressed...

Habemus Oratorum Domum? Can Paul Ryan win the support of the House Freedom Caucus, the Republican Study Committee, and the Tuesday Group? If he can, forget the speakership, let’s talk sainthood, because unifying House Republicans counts as his first miracle. E.  Christian Kopff sent me this gem, written by one Jim Geraghty from the NR website.  I don’t read National Review in any form, print, internet, or the original crayon, so I don’t know who Mr. Geraghty is or if he has a whimsical turn of mind or if he is possibly fond of ridiculing the ignorance of learned languages...