December 1, 2006
My friend John at Power Line has an interesting look at the Republican contenders for the presidency in 2008, and wonders where the conservatives might turn. It's a little too long to excerpt to any good effect, so be sure...
The Republican Governors Association meeting attracted attention from a wide range of people ... even presidential aspirants who have never served as governor. While many expected the RGA meeting to serve as another platform for outgoing Massachussetts executive Mitt Romney...
The British have a crisis in prison capacity, as their Treasury has refused to finance construction of badly-needed new facilities. Their prison population topped 80,000 in England and Wales, and they have no more cells in which to put new...
Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker asks whether Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will have another corruption issue in caucus leadership. Alan Mollohan (D-WV) served as ranking member of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Science, State, Justice, Commerce and Related Agencies...
We have long since understood that heightened security is a requirement in the post-9/11 world. What we want, however, is effective security, especially at airports, not just silly procedures that do nothing to reveal real threats. Instead of time-consuming and...
Normally I like to do the interviewing, but last week during my vacation I spent a little time with Peter at Hi-Wired .... actually, a lot of time, close to an hour. Peter had asked me some time ago to...
One of the more anticipated films for us this season has been The Nativity Story, which the First Mate had first known from listening to Relevant Radio. New Line Cinema, which produced Lord of the Rings, goes for another epic...
December 2, 2006
The latest story on Mitt Romney has the appearance of an early opposition attack on his presidential hopes, and in this case a rather silly attack. Echoing the travails of Kimba Wood, Bill Clinton's first nominee for Attorney General, the...
The fallout from the US Air decision to bar six Muslims from a flight last week continues. Now local Muslims want Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport to provide them with a room for their prayers in order to keep other passengers from...
The Boston Globe reports that John Kerry has decided to postpone the decision on his expected run for the presidency in 2008. Sources claim that the fallout of calling servicemen lazy idiots has stunned him: Senator John F. Kerry's election-eve...
Mitch and I will be on the air at 1 pm CT for the Northern Alliance Radio Network. We'll be discussing the remarkable reform efforts of the Democrats as they prepare for their new majority status in Congress, the Flying...
My sister flew into town on her way from New York to California for a couple of days, so we spent the day doing Christmas decorating with the Little Admiral. I put together the Christmas tree, always a frustrating business...
December 3, 2006
Many bloggers have written about the leaked Rumsfeld memo published by the New York Times on Friday and confirmed by the Pentagon later the same day, but no one has a better political analysis than Andy McCarthy at NRO's The...
Canada's Liberal Party has chosen its new leader almost a year after its electoral debacle that saw its majority disappear from the Adscam scandal. Instead of selecting front-running moderate Michael Ignatieff, Liberals chose the more liberal Stephane Dion to lead...
December 4, 2006
With my sister in town for the weekend, we decided to really tempt fate and risk our lives yesterday ... shopping at the Mall of America. Actually, we went to two different malls in an attempt to get all of...
Rumors have swirled around HIllary Clinton regarding her presumed run for the presidency in 2008, with some saying that a Barack Obama run will keep her out of the race and that she has not discovered the inner fire for...
As I note below, Hillary Clinton has sucked most of the oxygen out of the discussions over the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 2008, despite some major misgivings. A significant portion of the party wants to find some alternative...
Over the last few weeks, a momentum appears to have built for the deployment of more troops to Iraq within the White House, rather than beginning a withdrawal from the country and its efforts to provide security for itself. The...
Preparations for the annual Bowl Championship Series battle have already gotten under way, as tradition demands, after the final week of college football games. No, I'm not talking about teams strategizing for their opponents and bowl management promoting the matchups....
Two changes in the Bush administration's key foreign policy posts make it appear that the White House has signalled a full retreat on its executive prerogative. Ambassadors John Bolton and Zalmay Khalilizad have tendered their resignations, from the UN and...
The island nation of Fiji has apparently seen its government fall to a military coup, according to its prime minister. The Fijian president dissolved the national assembly and sent the army after Laisenia Qarase, who insists that the move has...
December 5, 2006
The British intelligence services have concluded that the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko had to be an operation of the FSB, the successor agency to the KGB. This points the finger directly at Vladimir Putin in the midst of several suspicious...
Remember the Battle of Srebrenica, where the UN set up a sanctuary for Bosnians during the war against the Serbs? The city had been garrisoned by troops from The Netherlands, who provided security for the city as part of the...
... then we will truly have lost the war on terror. Yesterday CAIR issued a statement demanding the removal of Dennis Prager from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council for a matter completely unrelated to the Holocaust. Prager had objected to...
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may have more Western tendencies than we first realized. He has come under fire from the radical Islamists he represents for watching a display of dancing girls in the opening ceremonies of the Asian Games: President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...
Kim Jong-Il has expressed indignation, fury, and even tested a nuclear device in his attempt to get the US to back down from banking sanctions that has put a damper on his counterfeiting ring, one of the few sources of...
One has to wonder what strategy Nancy Pelosi has decided to pursue in the next session of Congress. After a couple of major missteps in the days following the Democratic Party's midterms successes, she has managed to transform what had...
The provincial government in Ontario has a burgeoning corruption scandal making headlines, costing taxpayers millions with little likelihood of recovery. Unlike Adscam, the notorious Liberal Party fraud in the Sponsorship Programme, this appears to have little to do with partisan...
Robert Gates made a bungee appearance at the Senate Armed Forces Committee today for his confirmation hearings to replace Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. Some expected the hearings to provide some fireworks and an opportunity for grandstanding -- but in...
December 6, 2006
Bonjour, mes amis! That may be the first words uttered by the new sensation in Internet news gathering. France 24, Jacque Chirac's long-awaited answer to the BBC and CNN for global news domination, debuts in just a few hours in...
The assassination of Alexander Litvinenko has put Vladimir Putin under a bright spotlight, as the former KGB/FSB agent is only the latest in a series of Putin critics who have died under suspicious circumstances. The British believe that Putin has...
Saddam Hussein has ended his boycott of his trial for genocide against the Kurds of Iraq. However, people can be forgiven if they had not heard of his extended absence from the courtroom, because it started the day before his...
Captain's Quarters has been selected as a finalist for Best Conservative Blog in the 2006 Weblog Awards, the annual readers' poll conducted by Wizbang's Kevin Aylward. I'll have some stiff competition: Ace of Spades Little Green Footballs Hugh Hewitt...
The Democrats scored a front-page hit today with Steny Hoyer's announcement that House members will work a full-time schedule while Congress is in session. The new Majority Leader has designed a schedule that will require members to work from Monday...
The US has made an explicit offer of aid and trade to North Korea in an attempt to get them to verifiably abandon their nuclear weapons program, an effort made outside the stalled six-party talks. The plan calls for assistance...
Debra Burlingame has written on airline security topics ever since her brother, American Airlines Capt. Charles Burlingame, died in the 9/11 attack at the hands of Islamist terrorists. Today she takes on the topic of the "flying imams" of Minneapolis...
The Iraq Study Group released its long-awaited report today, and while it has some important information on the current state of our operation in Iraq, its recommendations descend from some strange Utopian vision of peace and brotherhood that only exists...
I've had more of a chance to look through the ISG report ... and it really doesn't get any better. The fundamental problem with the ISG is to misunderstand the entire war on terror. When we invaded Afghanistan, we did...
This story is just too weird to ignore. A float driver in a South Carolina parade got drunk and led police on a three-mile chase after swerving out of line during the event -- carrying 18 terrified riders on the...
December 7, 2006
The Notre Dame quarterback didn't manage to score an upset against USC last month, but Brady Quinn has an opportunity to score one for the Heisman. The celebrated senior received word that he was selected as one of three Heisman...
The Times of London spells out the consequences of an American withdrawal on the many Iraqis who trusted us to see the mission through to completion. Speaking to several Iraqi Army non-commissioned officers, Ned Parker reports that several of them...
The new Liberal Party leader has found himself at the center of a new controversy that might impact his national standing. Stephane Dion has dual citizenship in Canada and France through his mother and refuses to renounce it. That will...
At least two presidential aspiranta have publicly opposed the Iraq Study Group and its linkage of the situation in Iraq with the Palestinian conflict. Rudy Giuliani called some of the ISG's recommendations "useful", but told Dennis Prager that leaving Iraq...
Earlier today, the Jerusalem Post ran a story on Hamas' smuggling efforts to avoid the sanctions placed on the Palestinian Authority since they came to power. They have successfully imported $66 million, but that wasn't what caught the eye of...
Today the First Mate has an angiogram/heart cath procedure that moves us one step further in the transplant process, and so I'm working from the hospital for at least part of the day. We're hoping that she has had no...
The Democrats came back to the majority in both chambers of Congress in good part due to their ability to tie Republicans to lobbying scandals and petty (and not so petty) corruptions. Nancy Pelosi promised to "clean up Congress" as...
Somehow the national crisis of Mary Cheney's pregnancy escapes me. The news that Vice President Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter is expecting her first child has activists across the political spectrum in a strange dither: Conservative leaders voiced dismay Wednesday at...
About this time 65 years ago, Imperial Japan conducted a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in their bid to knock America out of the Pacific. Japan actually intended to give Cordell Hull their declaration of war an hour prior to...
I had the opportunity to participate in a conference call with Senators Larry Craig and Ron Wyden regarding the Cleanse The Code project, a tax reform effort to simplify the ungainly regulations that currently exist. I've taken notes of the...
Thanks for all of your e-mails and comments today in support of the First Mate. She wanted me to pass along her thanks to all of you as well. She's doing well, resting comfortably after the insertion of the stents,...
December 8, 2006
... please be sure to drop by the 2006 Weblog Awards and cast a vote for Captain's Quarters as Best Conservative Blog. It looks like Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs is running away with this category, and it's hard...
After narrowly losing his race for governor, most of us expected Mike Hatch to take an extended vacation and then go into private practice. Instead, his replacement as Attorney General has suggested that Hatch could work for her and help...
The Iraq Study Group played well inside the Beltway yesterday, but it tanked on the road, according to the Times of London. If James Baker and Lee Hamilton expected swoons of delight from abroad, then they will have to prepare...
Earlier, I wrote that the Iraq Study Group proposal bombed with the nations most directly involved in its recommendations, especially with Iraqis. The report seemed to fare much better inside the Beltway, but it turns out that even there people...
... Hamas insists that it will never recognize Israel nor abide by previous agreements of the Palestinian Authority. It's hardly breaking news; Hamas has said this repeatedly even before winning control of the PA early this year. However, their latest...
Six months ago, the FBI took down a ring of wannabe jihadis with large aspirations for terrorism and small mental capacities to conduct it. Apparently, they discovered another benighted aspirant to radical Islam in the person of Derrick Shareef, whose...
December 9, 2006
Oh, no one knows what goes on behind closed doors ... I'm old enough to remember the old Charlie Rich ballad when it was a huge crossover hit. While the song talked about private love, the new session of the...
Mitt Romney has worked to position himself as a conservative alternative to John McCain and an ideological opponent of the more liberal Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 Presidential sweepstakes with Republican voters. He has successfully challenged both enough to get...
Iran has decided that it will help the US retreat from Iraq -- as long as we are willing to pay the price. So far, the opening will require us to forego opposition to their nuclear program, but that's only...
The thorny issue of Iraqi oil revenues appears closer to resolution, although it may still take more negotiations to finalize. The Kurds may find themselves on the short end of this debate as a result: Iraqi officials are near agreement...
Nancy Pelosi has struggled through a headache of her own making ever since tossing Jane Harman out of the House Intelligence Committee chair. She attempted to place Alcee Hastings into the slot, even though Hastings got impeached from the federal...
Mitch and I will be on the air at 1 pm CT for the Northern Alliance Radio Network. We'll be discussing the ISG report, Silvestre Reyes' appointment as House Intel chair, the new closed-door approach of Harry Reid, and much,...