Author Archive

If you can’t spend idle time speculating about the 2008 presidential race, then you’re not really doing much with that idle time. I caught this conglomeration of recent “What-if” presidential polls that puts Giuliani at or near the top of a number of them, competing with John McCain and, to a lesser extent, Newt Gingrich. Sure it’s over two years away, which is an eternity in politics. And these exercises are little more than popularity contests at this point. But... Read More→

It can never be said that liberals would let good taste get in the way of their politics. At yesterday’s funeral service for Coretta Scott King, Jimmy Carter and Rev. Joseph Lowery used their speaking opportunities to berate President Bush for the response to Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq. Topics worthy of national debate, I guess, but definitely not in the context of this woman’s funeral. Much like the memorial service held for Paul Wellstone after his untimely death in 2002,... Read More→

Ordinarily, when a group that feels slighted by a bit of off-color humor gets all riled up and calls for a boycott or a formal apology on behalf of all mankind, I look askance. Some people are sensitive (read uptight) and they take some things in life very seriously (generally intangible things that ironically make for the best off-color humor). I give them their space and sometimes the benefit of a doubt, because I cannot usually relate. I’m a white anglo-saxon male raised in a relatively... Read More→

John Boehner beat Roy Blunt by a relatively modest 122-109 votes to become the new Republican Majority Leader in the House today. I was pulling for John Shadegg personally, because he was a fresh face with a proven track record of fiscal conservatism. But in retrospect, Boehner wasn’t a bad choice. Blunt, for all his experience, was unapologetically and unabashedly connected to Tom DeLay. And if the Republican Congressional caucus expects to garner any respect with the electorate this November,... Read More→

Nick, I know you’ve read The Economist’s take on Alan Greenspan’s legacy, which certainly demystifies the man who was Planet Earth’s economic guru for nearly two decades. I just wanted to post it to give the blog some more background. Whatever opinions others may hold of him, I don’t believe anyone else could have shepherded America’s economy into this era of globalization as smoothly as Alan Greenspan. We live in a world now where threats to economic stability... Read More→

There’s no dearth of bad news that is reported from Iraq. Many of the field reporters who give us up-to-the-minute updates are never at a loss to report how many Americans were wounded or killed today, or how many IEDs (improvised explosive device) were blown up, or how many Iraqi civilians were killed. We never see any stories about how many bad guys got bagged this past week, or how a new electrical power station or water treatment plant went online. We’re never bothered by those trite... Read More→

Billionaire entrepreneur and all around political upstart Tom Golisano has decided against chasing after the Republican, Conservative, and Independence party endorsements for NY State Governor in 2006. He ran against George Pataki in ’94, ’98, and ’02, all the while slinging as much mud as he could toward our Governor and the Republican Party. When Golisano announced back in October that he was considering pursuing the Republican line for Gov, there were many Empire State pachyderms,... Read More→

Fred Barnes, Executive Editor of the Weekly Standard and co-host of FNC’s Beltway Boys, will be the featured speaker at the New York Young Republican Club’s February general meeting. Barnes is the author of Rebel in Chief: How George W. Bush Is Redefining the Conservative Movement and Transforming America. The meeting will be held on Thursday, February 16 at the Union League Club, 38 East 37th Street, New York, NY. The meeting will begin promptly at 7pm. Business attire required  Read More →

A brief look at this year’s Oscar nominations helps explain why 2005 was a sub-par year at the box office. There are a couple of gems here and there, but overall it’s a pretty paltry selection of nominees. And for the first time ever, a Star Wars film was not nominated for Best Visual Effects. Doubt I’ll even watch the bloated, overblown, underfunny Academy Awards show knowing that.  Read More →

After President Bush gives his State of the Union address Tuesday, the next item of interest coming out of the Swamp will be the House Republican leadership elections. And as good pachyderms, we should all be following this one closely, because it could signify a significant change in the way the GOP caucus operates in Congress’s lower chamber for at least the rest of this session. The contenders for House Majority Leader are Roy Blunt, the current interim leader and Majority Whip, John Boehner,... Read More→