South Carolina GOP Debate

UPDATED - Full Debate Wrap-Up From Bill Bradley:

The moderators asked short, well-researched questions that weren’t designed to draw attention to themselves. As entertaining as I find Chris Matthews to be, while he moved the Reagan Library debate along, he also obscured some of the candidates themselves.

Sanity Squad: Rabbi Shmuley & Conspiracy Psychology
Part one of this week’s podcast focuses on conspiracy theories, and their origins in fear and denial. In part two, author, and marriage and family therapist Rabbi Shmuley Boteach of the hit TLC series “Shalom in the Home” joins the Squad as a special guest to discuss the breakdown of family life, the need to make judgements about right and wrong, and when to hate our enemies.

The Moral Left Victor Davis Hanson on the benefits of $4 gasoline: “Right now I worry more about how Hector Rosales is going to pay the extra cost for his 1983 Ford 150 to get to north Fresno to mow lawns than Laurie David Gulfstreaming to her Martha Vineyard’s second home, while on break from her LA enclave.”

And channeling Hillary: “After we withdraw from the quagmire of Iraq, we look forward to working again with the governments in Baghdad, Mosul, and Basra that will emerge to manage their own affairs. The demonization of Iran and Syria is over, and it is critical that we enter into a serious dialogue with both, without either preconditions or prejudices, to hear their novel and constructive ideas about regional stability.”

Read it all @ Works and Days

Time For a Little Chat

by Jules Crittenden

Still Missing: The Gateway Pundit profiles the soldiers now missing in Iraq, presumed held captive by terrorists.

Ancient Battlefield: The Moor Next Door describes Middle Eastern superpower politics in an age before the coming of Islam, featuring the Christianized Arab for Byzantium — “our most pious and Christ-loving kings” — versus the vassals of the Shah.

War Czar: Captain’s Quarters and Midtopia look at President Bush’s new nominee for the post of “War Czar”, coordinating the efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At Nature's Feet: Peer recognition at last, says Tim Blair as Christians, Muslims, Jews invite the Australian Green Senator Bob Brown to an interfaith dialogue.

Republican Candidates Debate: Glenn Reynolds has a roundup of links to bloggers covering or commenting on the Republican presidential candidate’s debate.

Washington Power Politics: Ashcroft versus Gonzales versus the NSA. Eugene Volokh has links to the transcript seemingly right out of Hollywood of a dramatic hospital room debate over whether the DOJ would get to control an NSA surveillance program.

Self-Inflicted Wound: The Angry Arab News Service says the Jews are behind the internecine clashes in Gaza. Meanwhile Israpundit believes disgust over the Palestinian civil war has helped Israel dismantle the PA security apparatus among Arabs in Israel. To counter, Israelly Cool notices that groups in Gaza have resumed firing rockets into Israel “to distract the Palestinians from killing each other”.

Stopping Iran's Centrifuges: Danger Room thinks recent reports that Iran is ramping up uranium enrichment to be “Chicken Little” talk. Former Spook thinks the only chickens in the story are in the diplomatic corps and the UN.

Evaluating the Surge: Max Boot reviews the Surge, notes that it is working, but slowly. He argues the benefits of success will come slowly, but the wages of a defeat will come very soon indeed.

Fred Thompson responds to Michael Moore [video] “The confrontation over Cuba continues. Michael Moore has challenged Fred Thompson to a health care debate. At issue — Moore’s trip to Cuba and Thompson’s criticism of that trip. Moore noted Thompson’s evident favor for Cuban cigars as a possible violation of the trade embargo. Now, Thompson responds. Cigar in hand.” (Breitbart Video Exclusive)

A brilliant move, says Bob Krumm.

“I don’t know what’s the best part of this video response to Michael Moore’s publicity stunt: the cigar, the appropriate disdain, the lecture, the humor, or the quickness of the response, but what I do know is that Fred Thompson is the first politician anywhere to understand how the speed of the internet can change politics.”

The Case for Bombing Iran: “…the irony is that Ahmadinejad’s dreams are more realistic than the dismissal of those dreams as merely insane delusions.” (Norman Podhoretz @ Commentary)

Feeling Lonely in Your Home Office? Embarassed when your clients hear a dog barking, or a baby crying in the background when you’re on the phone? Worry no more: just play a recording of office noises. (TechCrunch)

Jerry Falwell Dies: “Falwell was hospitalized in “gravely serious” condition after being found unconscious Tuesday in his office at Liberty University, a school executive said earlier.

Ron Godwin, the university’s executive vice president, said Falwell, 73, was found unresponsive around 10:45 a.m. and taken to Lynchburg General Hospital. Godwin said he was not sure what caused the collapse, but he said Falwell “has a history of heart challenges.” (AP/Breitbart)

Techno-Doping? “Legless sprinter Oscar Pistorius wants to participate in the Beijing Olympics. However, the I.A.A.F., the governing body of track and field sports has disqualified him. Why? Because amputee Pistorius uses high-tech carbon fiber blades known as Cheetahs. His time in a recent relay race might qualify him to participate in the Summer Olympics if he had legs.” (Ronald Bailey @ Reason)

Can an American Lead the French? A malaise-ridden France just elected the most pro-American president in its history. But Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory doesn’t mean the French are eager to see their socialist perks disappear in a flurry of Anglo-Saxon reforms. (Patrick Belton @ Foreign Policy)

The Real Fashion Police

At This Rate, Congress Will Kill To Have Bush's Approval Numbers: “Congress Approval Down to 29%; Bush Approval Steady at 33%” (Gallup poll)

Losing Your Head in Saudi Arabia: Six beheadings took place Monday in the desert kingdom that operates under strict Islamic law. The beheadings were carried out with a sword in a public square. (Kuwait Times)

Four Myths About America-Bashing in Europe Debunked. (William Drozdiak @ WaPo)

Anthropogenic Global Warming Meets Religious Camp! Eric Scheie -actually, one of his friends- takes a look at the latest Vanity Fair issue. (Classical Values)

World Bank Jobbery: Two more leaked memos -yes, anyone can play the game- of August 2005 show that the meeting that will decide Wolfowitz’s fate is little more than a “kangaroo court,” according to an OpinionJournal editorial. It suggests a successor too in case he’s ousted. A job cut out for him.

What It's Like Going Home One Day and Find You're Banned From an Indian Reservation: well, sort of, because it’s not yet clear if Rob Port @ Say Anything has been effectively banned or it’s some manoeuvering by his critics, all for an article he wrote. An article, incidentally, that was plagiarized in a Canadian newspaper: when he called them on that in a letter, he got a rude reply.

Hyperbole Watch: Roger Kimball channels Hilton Kramer in a reconsideration of the legacy of David Halberstam. (Armavirumque)

Iranian-American Scholar Imprisoned in Iran: “Haleh Esfandiari, who works for the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, was jailed in Tehran’s Evin prison May 8 after being prevented from leaving the country for several months…. Iran has officially confirmed that it is holding Esfandiari, a grandmother born in 1940, and that she faces the potentially serious charge of harming national security.” (MEN)

Deconstructing Hillary's Iraq Stance. Dick Morris (who else?) translates the NY junior senator “for those who are too obtuse to understand Sen. Hillary Clinton’s simple and clear position” on Iraq… (NY Post)

American Feminism Feckless? Yes, when looking at the subjection of Islamic women (Christina Hoff Sommers @ Weekly Standard, via Advice Goddess)

Wanted - New TV Show Ideas: Mark Cuban’s trolling for TV shows for his HDNet television project. But he doesn’t want anything obvious: “99pct of the time the idea is a derivative of something that is already being done, or something so obvious its an insult that they are pitching it.” So be original. We note that Cuban’s HDNet is the home of “Dan Rather Reports.” (Blog Maverick)

The Bar Mitzvah From Hell: It happened in Montreal, in a room rented from a municipal cultural center that, unfortunately came with a drunken janitor and resulted in a $22,000 court settlement.

Exactly how much damage can one drunken custodian do?

A Madrassa Grows in Brooklyn: Daniel Pipes thinks the idea of a New York public school teaching Arabic is a fine idea in principle, but worries it will be problematic in practice. He writes in the New York Sun, which has several more articles on the issue here.

Now All the Terrorists Need to Know Is the Rows The Cops Are Seated In: Gateway Pundit slams ABC News for jeopardizing security by reporting the increased number of air marshals on U.S.-bound flight from airports in Frankfurt, London and Manchester, England due to terrorism fears.

Judith Weiss, meanwhile was not thrilled to read the news from an airport as she was about to board a Frankfurt-NY flight. (Kesher Talk)

He's Got a Bigger Role to Audition For: Despite the fact that “Law and Order” escaped being cancelled, NBC producers don’t expect Fred Thompson to return to the show this fall. (Wilshire and Washington)

Reuters is Sold -- Journalists Are Worried: After they go public with their discomfort by the new merger deal with Thomson, the question arises whether this is, “the news journalists fretting that they could become the forgotten minnows within such a mega-business information corporate, or are the wire services simply past their sell-by date and such an unflattering ending an inevitability?” (EURSOC)