The detail is this: Of the 13 who died, three were women soldiers: Sgt. Amy Kruger, 29; Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, who was pregnant; and Lt. Col. Juanita Warman.

I raise the point as a shivery indication of how different our human understandings of the male and female roles are from what was the case not long ago. Yes, I hear the answering cry: Hooray, hooray, high time!

Are we sure? Really? Maybe we'd better look before we venture so far down the road we can't...]]> Tue, 10 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 After 10 months of Nancy Pelosi at the helm of the House, Americans could be forgiven for unfurling their umbrellas should the speaker announce the sun was shining. A "historic" vote for "health care," huh? The lady says so.

Let her have her day. She worked hard enough for it -- and in the end, notwithstanding a Democratic margin of 81 votes, prevailed by only five. Thirty-nine Democrats saw through her, as well as President Obama's verbal promiscuity concerning the wonderfulness of a House bill structured so as to remove from Americans the oversight of their own health care.

The Democrats don't want plain, ordinary people -- you and me, say -- making vital decisions. They...]]> Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0600 It makes no sense to see Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, as represented in at least one family account, as the victim of "harassment" by fellow soldiers (and therefore a candidate for "understanding"?) He's an officer. Soldiers don't harass officers.

It makes no sense to suggest he'd been traumatized by narratives he had heard concerning the awfulness of combat in Iraq and therefore resisted the idea of deployment there. He's an Army psychiatrist, not a rifleman. Since when, anyway -- read "The Iliad" for confirmation -- has combat been other than awful?

It makes sense to ponder deeply -- I did not say "conclude," I said ponder deeply -- the possibility that in Maj. Nidal the...]]> Tue, 20 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 One element in last summer's Obama ruckuses -- there's always an Obama ruckus going on, it seems -- was a few placards at tea party rallies comparing the president to a certain A. Hitler. Both the comparisons and the ensuing ruckus they caused were rubbish. Couldn't we all just see Obama heil-ing huge crowds to fury over national enemies and the like? Nope. Not a bit of it.

The business of handling "enemies," nevertheless, needs review and reappraisal at the highest White House level, meaning the presidential level. As White House frustration mounts over criticism of the health care, so unreasoning rage mounts and, unfortunately, finds outlets. The Obamans are fouling their own...]]> Tue, 13 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Plutarch tells us that, back in the fifth-century B.C., when the citizens of Athens were voting on whether to ostracize -- i.e., throw out -- Aristides the Just, one sourpuss explained his emphatic yes vote: "I am tired of hearing him called 'the Just.'"

I hesitate to introduce the comparison. It introduces the possibility -- assuming Jon Stewart and Robert Gibbs know there was a fifth-century Greece -- of saying, see, these people who stick out their tongues at Obama, they're just doing the usual envious bit. Big deal.

Let the peace prize alone. We've laughed enough for now. A larger point needs our attendance. It is the point, what happens when the air starts to seep from...]]> Wed, 16 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 It helps to read history. We know, or should, that American life shows us nothing like the social and political conniptions that Germany experienced in the 1920s, France in the 1790s and the United States in the 1850s.

But something is cooking. Indignant people -- I'm sidestepping the adjective "angry" so as to avoid connotations -- don't mysteriously materialize in the capital city to fulminate and castigate on their own nickels. They have to want to. What might make them want to? I would venture, the sense that something's badly, seriously, woefully out of joint in their beloved homeland.

Note that the "tens of thousands" (general media estimate) or the "million" (Daily...]]> Sat, 05 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 They're all over him -- swarms, flocks, flights of critics taking apart President Obama: his style, his motives, his modus operandi, assuming he has one.

Charles Krauthammer, in a dead-on column, called him "Obama the Mortal." Peggy Noonan, in the Wall Street Journal, sought to close the deal: "Obama has grown boring ... He always has the same stance. There is no humor or humility in it ... He is cold ..." Cries of alarm escaped the mouth of Time Magazine's Joe Klein: "He has to lead, clearly and decisively, starting now." How's he going to restore his sagging popularity and procure enactment of health care reform?

Well, we'll see. There's a lot more out there to look at,...]]> Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The end of Ted Kennedy's long sojourn among us, splendidly splashed by the media, opened the renewed discussion of whether it's time that big government, in the Kennedy mode, came back.

The late senator's eulogists -- in politics and the media, not to mention at the funeral -- tended to nod their heads enthusiastically. We needed the big ideas and projects of the senator's legacy for the sake of justice and the future. It was time to get wealth controlled, poverty vanquished and health care extended to all. The latter we had to do (so West Virginia's Sen. Robert Byrd assured us) as a memorial to the senator, who made universal health care the cause of causes.

Anyone in the...]]> Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 If the left wing of the left wing of the left wing in American life doesn't control most of the Obama farmstead's best and richest acreage, it could be time for new spectacles -- since things surely look that way.

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to go after the CIA has all the earmarks of policy designed to make left-wing hearts palpitate. What other purpose could it possibly serve? Not that of national security or common sense.

I have written deliberately "go after the CIA," notwithstanding the demurral of newly appointed special prosecutor John Durham, which concerns the supposedly "preliminary" scope of his investigation into alleged abuses perpetrated by CIA...]]> Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Did!

Didn't!

Did, too!

Didn't either!

Oh, what a wondrously enlightening health care debate we're having. Democratic hotshots, from the White House on down, blame the throngs protesting at town hall meetings. Baloney. It's the hotshots who are most to blame.

The hot shots see, or profess to, nothing in the least remarkable about rearranging a sixth of the American economy -- the part representing health care -- with just a few casual hearings on Capitol Hill, some presidential rhetoric and, poof, off to the races!

President Obama's strategy and tactics overthrow all known counsels of prudence and good sense. You can say if you want to, mercy's...]]> Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0500 You can't make this stuff up. First, the name of the program -- Cash for Clunkers. Then the origin, the fountainhead -- to wit, the U.S. Congress. Then the results: unexpected demand for participation, unanticipated shortages of cash, bureaucratic unresponsiveness, public and congressional consternation.

Many of the politicians who designed Cash for Clunkers want now to re-design the American health care system. Oh, yeah?

The private sector of the economy, manned as it is by fallible humans, has its faults and shortcomings. Yet, when it comes to stumbles and misfires, nothing exceeds government, with its built-in immunity to pressure from the operations of the marketplace....]]> Wed, 29 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 According to a recent poll by Political Strategies Inc./POLITICO, only a quarter of Americans "trust" Nancy Pelosi.

Mrs. Pelosi, reacting to a question about the poll, replied, "I don't care." The reporter with whom she was speaking said she was "laughing heartily."

Now for today's topic: democracy.

Say what you will about it, and there's plenty to say on both sides, democracy is the system that holds leaders accountable for performance, assuming the voters take the time and trouble -- as increasingly, to Mrs. Pelosi's chagrin, and the president's -- has become the case with health care.

Leading Democrats have bleated like sheep over Congress' inability,...]]> Tue, 07 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Sarah Palin wants to run for president? Quick -- get the butterfly net. Who in his -- or her -- right mind would want to strut into the economic Hiroshima that the Democratic Congress and White House seem bent on precipitating? What a fine mess!

Someone of course has to come along eventually and clean it all up: someone maybe with a little more experience than a former half-term governor of our most northerly state. At that, the job will be formidable and terrifying, unless the coalition of Frank, Waxman, Pelosi and Franken, with the president at the steering wheel, somehow fails to run the economy off the cliff.

Come to think of it, the whole national government appears...]]> Tue, 30 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 There was symmetry in the news that barraged us one day last week -- Michael Jackson, not to mention Farrah Fawcett, had died, and the governor of South Carolina had made a nitwit and a creep out of himself over a woman in Argentina.

Politics, entertainment -- you can't tell where one leaves off and the other takes up.

The weirder, the better, as with the late Mr. Jackson and the politically late Mark Sanford. We eat it all up with big spoons: on TV, on the Internet, in the papers. Have you heard .? If one hasn't, one soon will. Life as Freak Show is the life we lead, due to the expertise of the mass media in satisfying our lust for the worst. It was probably ever thus, but...]]> Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 While Congress labors and sweats over health care reform, let us turn to larger matters, pertaining to the ways we live together. Pertaining, specifically, to the question of what you do when you notice someone Twittering or Blackberrying in your presence rather than according you the attention you rightly deserve.

Do you shout, stomp, throw a water glass, or just sigh and accept the implied insult to your humanity, sad in the knowledge that Progress has deal another blow to civilization.

Probably the latter is what you do, according to a recent New York Times report.

Yes, probably so. Manners don't seem to matter much these days. The Times says more than a third of...]]> Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0500 It's only money, we like to say, when we know we shouldn't be pulling out our wallets, but.

The 'but' is a big one when it comes to health care reform: huge, immense, Himalayan. So big we're not going to do it, I'll bet you money. Not this year we're not, because we've barely started to think this thing through. We're not ready as a country, as a people, to have President Obama and his congressional minions shove down our throats a new, costly, coercive plan for reordering the way we care of ourselves, or for that matter don't care.

The Democratic-controlled Congressional Budget Office -- no aerie of Reaganite stool pigeons -- says health care reform a la...]]> Wed, 27 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The coming contest, fight, whatever, over Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to our country's top court gains context from the California Supreme Court's 6-2 decision the same day.

The California jurists said voters last year were within their rights to pass a proposition barring the state from authorizing same-sex marriage.

The decision can be read as a victory for good morals: an approach with which I would not take issue. There's more, nevertheless. The Californians held back from imposing on voters an ideology -- same-sex marriage as perfectly fine for those who like it and, as for those who don't like it, tough.

A decision of that character and thrust would...]]> Wed, 06 May 2009 00:00:00 -0500 The President wants an empathetic jurist to replace David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court. He will likely get such a one.

What the country will get in that event is one more senator or cabinet member -- as straw boss, head knocker, high and mighty arbiter of high and mighty matters. A sort of modern Roman consul, exhibited to us as on a balcony, awaiting our cheers or boos but enjoying inner serenity all the same; the serenity that comes of knowing -- yaaah, yaaah, yaaaah -- can't touch me, I'm the judge. Though I do feel your pain.

As Barack Obama, who will send the new lawgiver's name to a Democratic Senate for automatic ratification, gave us to know last week,...]]> Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Such is the supposed effect of the Iowa Supreme Court's declaration last week that gays and heterosexuals enjoy equal rights to marital bliss. Nope. They don't and won't, even if liberal Vermont follows Iowa's lead.

The human race -- sorry ladies, sorry gents -- understands marriage as a compact reinforcing social survival and projection. It has always been so. It will always be so, even if every state Supreme Court pretended to declare that what isn't suddenly is. Life does not work in this manner.

The supposed redefinition of the Great Institution is an outgrowth of modern hubris and disjointed individualism. "What I say goes!" has...]]> Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0500 Now an ideology isn't the same as a philosophy: It's a structure of pure ideas that someone or other has concocted out of thin air to suit himself. Lenin was an ideologue. Hitler was an ideologue. Get the idea?

Those who regard the destruction of human embryos as equivalent to the destruction of people have made up this stuff -- see? Just spun it out of cotton candy. No "people" there! Just -- you know -- embryos. That's according to the Obama administration's fantastical account.

The President has things precisely backwards. In a stem cell context, the "ideology" is that Science, the great abstraction that only really smart people understand, trumps competing...]]> Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Our leader wants the country to be run by its national government. "Run by" isn't the same as "owned by. " The latter is inessential. A pliant Democratic Congress needs only direct the federal bureaucracy to direct states and private companies to act in particular ways -- to do particular things, to spend their money in particular ways. Theoretically the Constitution restricts government to the performance of particular duties. Alas, no one pays attention to the Constitution anymore, thanks mostly to the permissive U.S. Supreme Courts of past decades.

We approach, under Obama-ism, centralization of a sort unattempted here since, under infinitely grimmer economic...]]> Wed, 28 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 Proponents of the idea that an "intelligent design" informs the universe breathed more easily when the board voted to allow arguments having to do with the "sufficiency or insufficiency" of gaps or contradictions in the fossil record. The Times wondered, "how that differs from the old language of 'strengths and weaknesses.'" And so on. And so on ..

What we all intuit about the debate, to the degree it really is one, rather than a shouting contest, is what our Victorian forbears intuited: that evolution is less about fossil records and genetic adaptations than it is about the Lord God Almighty. It's the great religious controversy of our times: Did He or...]]> Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 We'll see how it goes. For conservatives some pleasant surprises could lie ahead, for liberals some frustration and disappointment (and thus, for conservatives, more pleasant surprises!).

The "we'll see" factor in all this means that time spent prognosticating about economic recovery, or nuclear weapons in Iran, or Medicare, or Supreme Court appointments doesn't make much sense. The best thing about prognostications is that few who hear them remember them. No one really knows, though media sages -- especially those on the cable channels -- often seem to know everything.

A point worth noting, in precisely this context, is the comparative...]]> Thu, 15 Jan 2009 00:00:00 -0600 On MSNBC's Morning Joe, an editor for the Financial Times can't see why there's any problem with showing how moral we are by going after those connected with the waterboarding of terrorists. Congressman John Conyers of New York, chairman of the House Rules Committee, is whomping up an inquiry into the Bush administration's interrogation and confinement policies for terrorists. Michael Ratner, president of something called the Center for Constitutional Rights, is the party who says he has evidence for war crimes trials.

What fun -- show the world what a nutty place America really is: executive and congressional power changes hands, and it's off to the...]]> Tue, 30 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 A popular cliché has it that "history will judge" whatever at a given moment requires judging. On that expectation the whole flap about Bush and his merits may impress the next generation as just plain weird. Bush hasn't by any means been the greatest chief executive since Washington, but then Keith OIbermann isn't the most astute commentator since Socrates.

In assessing the Bush stewardship we need to calm down -- get a grip. As president, as commander in chief, Bush might have performed better. So might Ronald Reagan. So might John Kennedy. Errare humanum est.

Where did Bush err? Well, clearly, in the weighting of causes to invade Iraq....]]> Tue, 23 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 Merry Christmas and Holy Christ-Mass, to the formal discomfort of many on both sides of the equation, seem entangled beyond efficient separation, although the year 2008 affords a fair range of opportunities for at least a certain degree of mental and emotional disentangling. A "merry" Christmas it won't be for many in the Dickensian sense of comfort and joy.

When you've lost your job, or your stock market funds have fallen by half, and when economic landmarks like General Motors seem barely able to stagger along, and a kind of reverse Santa named Bernie Madoff sneaks down the chimney to help himself -- under sorry circumstances like these -- the times...]]> Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 The UAW, whose sit-down strikes had already overwhelmed General Motors' and Chrysler's resistance to unionization, wanted Henry Ford on the dotted line. Three years later they got him. The plight of the car companies wasn't born at the precise moment Walter Reuther fell down the steps, but you could see the mythology shaping up.

Or perhaps not. As the '40s ended, the mythology changed from urban struggle to suburban dream. Organized labor, while hardly forgetting the dirty, bitter going of the '30s, bathed in the transcendent radiance of hope and opportunity. Everything, going forward, was going to be spiffy. Got that -- spiffy! In 1948, Reuther wrung from...]]> Tue, 09 Dec 2008 00:00:00 -0600 There comes to mind a cautionary slogan I first heard in the '60s: He who pays the piper calls the tune. Indeed, and why not? Is government, in the end, a philanthropic entity? For what it does, it wants a return. Taxpayers should expect no less.

The auto bailout is setting up the auto industry... for what? Probably the reverse of success. Possibly its marginalization by Toyota and Honda and Nissan and Daimler Benz and Volvo. This is for sound reasons originating in that piece of wisdom about the piper and his tune.

The auto rescue bill sent to the White House for review on Monday predictably -- and you might say properly -- sets the...]]> Wed, 26 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 How did we get where we are and what does it mean? The second question is, likely, the more troublesome of the two. What next? The terrifying word "depression" crops up even in news accounts by no means suggesting the possibility of such.

Thanks for what? It takes a little rubbing of the temples to consider, nor would a crackling fire on a cold afternoon come amiss. Thankful for the deep things, the rooted realities may be the partial answer. Memory is key to unlocking the door on gratitude.

There were times when a sentence such as that could go anywhere. There were times when new settlers on new shores coped with hunger and disease and bitter New...]]> Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 The voters of California, Florida and Arizona on Nov. 4 saw no such reasons. They enacted formal bans on so-called gay marriage. Thus, the scattered if occasionally sizable protests of a few days ago. The protesters don't like the old marriage norms -- one man, one woman. They want new norms, insisting on love as the only thing that matters.

End of debate. We want -- so give it to us. Now. Very post-1950s American, don't you agree?

The protesters use the language of civil rights. To quote the chant at a rally last weekend in Washington, D.C.: "Gay, straight, black, white; marriage is a civil right."

No, it's not -- not in...]]> Tue, 11 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 3. The exercise of power tends to sober. It sobers conservatives; it sobers liberals. Barack Obama will find in due course he doesn't even want to enact the whole mysterious and wonderful agenda he outlined to us over so many months, on grounds that said agenda looks in some ways less desirable or realistic than when originally advertised: for instance, the promise to spend untold billions on universal health care.

4. One positive consequence of defeat is the opportunity it presents to the defeated: namely, to fall back and rethink. Obviously something went wrong. What? I like Gen. Joseph "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's assessment of the circumstances under which the Japanese...]]> Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0600 What is with us anyway? Wiped out and stomped on, we somehow smile. It is a bit like St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians -- "as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." Or like Dr. Johnson's schoolboy pal who, as Boswell relates, threw over his desire to become a philosopher on finding that "cheerfulness was always breaking in." It must be dispositional.

Is money the crucial factor -- Republicans, overall, having more of it than Democrats? How, in that case, to explain Warren Buffet, George Soros and the hedge fund managers, software developers and TV stars who impale landscaped front lawns in high-property-tax neighborhoods with...]]> Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Say this for McCain in the comparative experience department: He's been around long enough to do a few things and think a few thoughts. Compare him to Barack Obama. What Obama has done besides push himself forward, what he thinks about besides his own duty to go forward . I don't know.

It is an extraordinary thing: We stand on the verge of handing the world's most powerful secular office to a man about whom we know comparatively little. We know so little because his life has no narrative thrust except in terms of his constant thrust to . to what? Lead? Yes, but if we admit that, another question arises: Lead where, and to what end? And how well?

...]]> Tue, 21 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 It becomes harder every day to envision circumstances in which McCain wins this one. To be sure, you never can tell; but, secretly, you know already. You know you're going to become very, very, very well acquainted over the next few years with Mr. Obama: his rhetoric, his methods of operating, his advisers, his plans, his programs, even his shortcomings.

"Obama" and "shortcomings" are two words radically disassociated this year. You suspect in the nature of things he must have a deficiency or two, but you rarely hear about them, and when you do it's generally in terms of censuring unadvised friendships. Bill Ayers comes to mind. The fates have conspired, in...]]> Tue, 14 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 It's what officers do. It's what McCain is in this thing for in the first place -- to lead. It's his last hope -- to be seen leading at a time of stress.

At Virginia Beach on Monday, McCain acknowledged what Republicans and conservatives have been saying for days. "We have 22 days to go," he said. "We're six points down. The national media has written us off."

Well, why not? Hardly had the McCain-Palin campaign launched at the GOP presidential race than it sprang leaks. Soon it was low in the water. As the stock market sagged, then plummeted, the most McCain could find to say was that the chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission...]]> Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0500 He's got the notion, from talking to Muslim spokesmen, and pointing to acts of Muslim terrorism, that attachment to the supernatural dimension of life leads to bigotry at best, war at worst. It's the modern style you know -- fire both barrels, take no prisoners, disclaim interest in nuances, laugh your opponent out of the room.

Brother Bill seems to be one of these ex-Catholics -- he quit the church at 13 -- who never got over Sister Intractable ruler raps on his young knuckles. He has no faith in Faith, no belief in Belief. As for those who actually do -- hmmpphf! Dr. Frances Collins, the Nobel laureate and Christian, gets only seconds to defend in...]]> Tue, 30 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 If I correctly read human nature, I see my fellow Americans as ready for a brand-new version of the same-old same-old. I see them ready, that is, for "change." For anything but news accounts about the crash of companies and the shredding of retirement accounts and stock portfolios.

The most sensible editorial page on the planet, the Wall Street Journal's, saw the bailout bill as generally, under the anguished circumstances, OK. That gave some hope. Yet the House went ahead and shot the thing down. I have the sense that Americans, whatever their view of the proposed bailout, are sick of the whole sideshow. They want it to go away. But it won't. So they hope...]]> Tue, 23 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Anyone notice there's a presidential election going on? Both parties desire credit for resolving the present financial mess. Certain members of both parties actually desire such an outcome for its own sake. They're probably outnumbered by those who just want to win the election, but let's give credit where it's due.

Still, the market's Monday sinking spell -- just when we thought we'd heard a bugler blowing "charge" -- was occasioned largely by doubts that the good old Democrats are going to stand by and let the White House claim credit. No, the Democrats are talking about what the Wall Street Journal styled "a regulatory crackdown," with a role for partial...]]> Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Bush-hatred -- the operative emotion on the political left -- is going to fix on, who else, George W. Bush as the unique source of our discombobulations. You know -- tax cuts for the wealthy, capitalism run wild. The temptation will prove irresistible, if it hasn't already, to demand that the federal government go in and clean house: teach the plutocrats a lesson.

Calls for tighter regulation will increase, as will demands to reverse, in the short run, almost everything the Bush administration has done since 2001 -- cut taxes, promote free trade -- everything, perhaps except spend wildly on Medicare prescription programs and increase the federal deficit,...]]> Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Womanhood? With some voters, yes -- that's the answer. It was time for a woman on a national ticket. That doesn't explain, nevertheless, the raptures into which men have fallen concerning Sarah Palin -- only partly because of how she helps the ticket.

There's religion, too. She's a strongly evangelical Christian. There's her commitment to the defense of unborn life. There's the exotic Alaskan milieu: moose and guns and wilderness. The political marketplace was ready for this lady because she offers what? Normality?

Granted, no politician above the pay grade of school board member is "normal." Least normal of all are those who want to be president,...]]> Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0500 I am especially eager to see how the Obama camp plays the issue of experience. On Friday the 29th, the day of the Palin selection, Obama acolytes knew for a fact that, "This destroys McCain's ability to question Obama's credentials."

That's a canard. If a 44-year-old Alaskan governor lacks experience to be vice president, what does that deficiency say about the credentials of the a 47-year-old sometime community organizer in Chicago and one-term U.S. senator to actually lead the nation and, by inference, much of the world? Nothing very hopeful, is what it says.

I'd extend that argument. To know that Sarah Palin is a corruption-fighting...]]> Wed, 27 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Old political hacks -- the type Joe Biden typifies to a T -- just keep running for president, or, failing that, hang around Washington to annoy us by their unwillingness to leave the taxpayer-supported binge that never winds down, on which the lights never go out.

This season, Biden, for all that Democratic voters blunted his renewed presidential ambitions, threatens now to become vice president -- prized as he is by a new mentor, Barack Obama, for his experience and seasoning. What seasoning means, in Biden's case, is a serious case of political careerism that has kept him in the U.S. Senate since January 1973. He won't go away. He's having too much fun. Possibly...]]> Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 When, over the weekend, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced she was ready to let the House consider expanded offshore drilling, she had to do so in the context of whamming the Bush administration, which, she alleged, "has increased our dependence on foreign oil, damaged our economy and left consumers paying record prices at the pump."

We all may be assured of one thing: The speaker herself isn't interested in finding oil. Her recent claim -- "I'm trying to save the planet" (by keeping drillers away from offshore waters) -- has less to do with securing stable energy supplies than with helping guide the Democrats to absolute control over Washington, D.C. The nation's need for...]]> Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 "Change" came to Georgia with a bang: a huge, destructive series of bangs that threatens the very existence of a cordial American ally.

Americans may be awaking to a new reality about presidential politics: To wit, you want a leader who recognizes danger the instant he sees it, who knows, too, the perils inherent in papering over cracks in facades.

I wouldn't for a second assert that Obama isn't such a leader. He might be. On the other hand, he might not. What we chiefly know of Obama, despite the cheerful and constant companionship to which he has treated us, is that he's big on "change" and "hope." Is he big on resolve and determination, not to mention intuitive grasp of...]]> Tue, 05 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0500 Give us a break. At a moment of immense challenges to the national well-being, there must be, conservatively speaking, about 5,000 things more urgent than the ability to spread a spreadsheet and hammer out e-mail. Yet the rap goes on: If the guy can't do computers, blah, blah, blah ...

Well, horsefeathers! retorts a man on the slightly younger end of the McCain generation.

The computer is a welcome addition to our communications toolbox. The whole toolbox it ain't and, what's more, never will be.

Let me attempt a note of sobriety in this giddy debate over McCain's non-computer prowess. No invention ever changes the world...]]>