Archive: 2008

From Lawrence Auster, about the “warm embracing response of Christian conservatives to the Bristol announcement”: Over and over, there’s no disapproval at all of Bristol’s pregnancy. To the contrary, there…

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I have now read the Inspector General’s report, which can be examined here. As with the other reports that have recently emanated from Fine’s office, it is well crafted. I…

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Joe Lieberman really knows how to heap on the praise: “He is a blessing to the United States senate, to America and to our shared hopes for a better, safer…

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John McCain’s camp is attacking the media for having the audacity to question Sarah Palin’s foreign policy experience, even though — as the GOP talking points go — her stellar…

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Jeremy Miller is the author of “Tyranny of the Test,” the September cover story. The article, which explains how No Child Left Behind has changed the structure of our schools–and…

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Quite a few news stories and op-eds about the pregnancy of Sarah Palin’s teenage daughter have touched on the issue of the alleged “hypocrisy” of the G.O.P. vice-presidential nominee. But…

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Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine has released another report, this one looking into allegations that former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales mishandled classified materials. The actual text of the…

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From ABC News: As residents of New Orleans were fleeing Hurricane Gustav, top Republican party officials donned pink boas and swigged vodka shots at a wild whirl of corporate and…

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One million people fled New Orleans to avoid Hurricane Gustav, which landed in Louisiana as a weakened category-2 hurricane and caused relatively little damage. Mississippi officials ordered people still living…

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From James Wolcott: Jake Tapper asks: “What would the response be if Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, and his wife Michelle had a pregnant unmarried teenage daughter?” I can answer that.…

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That is no country for old men. The young In one another’s arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,…

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During the 2008 campaign the beliefs of various candidates’ spiritual mentors has attracted a great deal of attention, especially those of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and to a lesser extent…

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We can succeed only by concert. It is not “can any of us imagine better?” but, “can we all do better?” The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to…

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Last week, Arthur Krystal suggested in our discussion that contemporary culture now suffers from a dearth of great art. Krystal quoted Eliot’s statement about Yeats—“He was one of those whose…

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I was making my way onto the convention grounds late Wednesday afternoon when I saw an unusually large congregation of black-clad riot police. I noticed as well that a technician…

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No more than a few hundred Hillary marchers were winding their way toward the Pepsi Center Tuesday morning, a few hours before their champion would sweep to the podium. Having…

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“The westerly excrescence of the continent of Asia, which we call Europe, came to dominate the world during the course of the second millennium AD.” This sentence begins a book…

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Politics has never been severed from pageantry, and it cannot be. It was for good reason that kings and pashas installed their thrones in high-ceilinged rooms covered in gilt and…

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A drama from Fox News. The scene: the Pepsi Center, site of the Democratic National Convention, last Sunday afternoon. Fox News Reporter Griff Jenkins: (Wading into crowd of protestors) What’s…

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Ken Silverstein is traveling. Washington Babylon will return next week.

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Barack Obama announced Joe Biden, the senior senator from Delaware, as his running mate, even though Biden voted for the war in Iraq and for NAFTA and once said that…

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Last weekend, Die Zeit published scans of four notecards from the 138-notecard-manuscript of Vladimir Nabokov’s final, unfinished work, The Original of Laura. Composing on notecards allowed Nabokov to set down…

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As word of Barack Obama’s vice presidential pick got out, the media, in lockstep, seized upon Senator Joseph Biden’s legislative experience and his knowledge of the inner workings of Washington.…

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From the New York Times: During the years that Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. was helping the credit card industry win passage of a law making it harder for consumers…

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Gil Troy, a professor of history at McGill University and Visiting Scholar at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), writes: In his Washington Babylon item of August 18), Ken Silverstein wonders…

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Remember those stories last month about how the Bush administration seemed to give Hunt Oil a wink before it signed a controversial deal in Kurdistan? “Bush administration officials knew that…

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Change a few names and places, and this wonderful piece in the Weekly Standard by Andrew Ferguson is just as perfect in August of 2008 as it was when he…

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