Jay Rosen wrote a good article about the way the MSM deal with elections. It’s nice to know that Mitt Romney has pulled ahead in New Hampshire, seven months before the primary voting. Thanks, Bill Schneider! Let me ask you something: Who’s ahead in addressing a broken health care system? It’s fascinating to realize that Hillary Clinton, a woman, is ahead among women. Thanks, Washington Post. In the race to protect the people against terrorism and maintain a free and open society,...

In an ironic turn of events, Harry Reid called General Peter Pace incompetent during a conference call with some leading progressive bloggers. The Politico reported about this yesterday already, but the bloggers involved all said they did not remember Reid saying this. So, I decided to wait for more information. We’ve got it: Reid, indeed, called Pace incompetent. The defense of those involved is now that one should look at the context in which it was said. When I look at the context I can...

Kevin Sullivan believes that it is time for Fred Thompson to join those of us who live in 2007 instead of in 1896. Get out there and campaign Fred!

Senator (of Massachusetts) John Kerry published a post at The Democratic Daily (where I’m helping out Pamela) about energy. Be sure to read it. I disagree with Senator Kerry on quite some issues, but energy is not one of them. Excerpt: It’s amazing to me that some people still refuse to see the gravity of the situation staring us in the face, with the best science telling us we may only have a decade to act before the climate crisis reaches a dangerous tipping point. But there are the...

Mike Huckabee talked to the Pew Forum about “the fate of social conservatives and how he sees religion playing out in 2008 and beyond.” He also talked about “how he has witnessed religion impacting public affairs in his roles as a pastor and governor, and how his own faith guides his public life.” No, he did not just talk about religion: he also talked about other issues such as the nature of the political debate in America, foreign policy, health care, etc. I encourage all...

Michael Stickings accuses conservatives who now break with Bush of adhering to a new kind ideology: convenient conservatism. Competition or Monopoly, that is the question at Booker Rising Justin Gardner introduces a new moderate blog. I agree with Justin, Kevin Sullivan is a fine blogger. Also read this post by MW at Donklephant. David Adesnik: smart women support HillaryObama? Lastly, Pete Abel believes that Fred Thompson might be more centrist than people give him credit for.

Stuart Taylor Jr. wrote a fascinating article for The Atlantic (over a week ago). For it, he talked to Philip Zelikow. Zelikow is, of course, a former State Department official. As Stuart points out, Zelikow has opened “a window into how the Bush administration’s antiterrorism policy-making process went wrong.” The years of revelations about White House pressure on the Justice Department to concoct far-fetched legal rationales for physically tormenting terrorism suspects, for...

A couple of days ago I announced that I am trying to do something completely new with my blog: instead of asking people to become co-bloggers, I am trying to surround myself with great columnists. Rich Horton agreed and published his first column today: “In Praise of Incivility.” The idea of having ‘columnists’ is that I – and I am sure some of you as well – get tired of constantly reading (and writing) about the latest (breaking) news. Thoughts are often best...

Watch The Atlantic’s Matthew Yglesias and conservative author Ramesh Ponuru diavlogging about a wide range of issues: from immigration to Barack Obama, from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton and from Hillary Clinton to John McCain; from John McCain to Rudy Giuliani, and from Rudy Giuliani to Iraq. Oh, and they also talk about Gore and “how the right’s lost its centrality.” I think that Ponuru has a point when he says that Republicans probably fear Obama more than they do Clinton;...

More news from Palestine: - Nine Palestinians killed in Hamas-Fatah gunfights in Gaza. Hamas seems to have a ‘hit-list’ of Fatah officials it wants to kill. “The top name on the list is PA National Security Adviser Muhammad Dahlan, who is currently in Egypt.” The fighting has, reportedly, also spread to the West Bank. - Human Rights Watch says that “armed Palestinian groups have committed serious violations of international humanitarian law during recent fighting in...

Get ready for today’s Center of Attention! Chuck Butcher wrote a great post about what truly matters in life. Is it all about ‘success,’ or is it about doing what one believes to be right, even if there are no immediate rewards? It seems that America beats dictators in how many of its citizens it locks up. Not exactly something to be proud of. Was Bob Woolmer killed or not? According to Jamaican authorities, he died due to natural causes. The only problem: they are not saying...

Three cheers for Tony Blair. In a speech today, he called the British press a “feral beast.” The NYT’s Alan Cowell wonders: “was it justified, as Prime Minister Tony Blair did today, to call the press a ‘feral beast’?” Of course it was, mostly because it is true. The press often treated Blair in a ridiculous manner. Certain British newspapers passionately opposed the Iraq War and did their best to emphasize the mistakes / attacks / deaths as much as possible....

Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder explain that conservatives and centrists are, essentially, inventing problems, in this case an immigration problem: We have a simple solution to the immigration debate. But first, why do we talk about the immigration problem? We have an immigration problem when people fight to get out of a country, not to get into a country. What we have here is something between “a condition” like when your mother-in-law has bursitis, and a “situation” like...

Does capitalism cause moral depravity? What role does the media play? What about popular culture? I wrote a post about this subject at my blog. The conclusion: It is not capitalism that causes moral depravity; it is the idea that moral values are of no importance and only relative. The media actively encourage this kind of thinking. Read the entire post here.

It seems that Dan Rather attacked Katie Couric / the “Evening News.” After saying that he ‘likes’ Couric, Rather went on to say: You know, she tried to change networks, which is always difficult and change the programs at the same time. They’ve done all of the usual things. They changed the set. They changed the executive producers. They changed the graphics person, lately, forced out a guy who had been there, Ned Steinberg, for many, many years. They make all those...

Kevin Sullivan, who is an assistant editor at the Real Clear Blog now has a moderate / centrist blog of his own. I strongly urge all of you to check his blog out. For a sample of his work, I’d say go read this post about John Edwards.

Mike Huckabee is one of my favorite Republican candidates: sure, I do not agree with him on everything, he’s too socially conservative for my taste, but he sounds like a reasonable man, who knows what he is talking about. Now, however, he said something quite stupid: I know it’s become a symbol of what’s wrong. I visited Guantanamo just about a year ago. My sense was, because I visited every single prison in the Arkansas prison system, and I can tell you most of our prisoners...

For quite a while, I have been thinking about how to improve this blog. Quite some bloggers decide to ask people to become co-bloggers when they want to revive their blogs: fresh blood, new discussions, new insights… in short, several people joining forces. That, of course, is a great way of raising one’s blog to a higher level. Although this was certainly an option, I have decided to do something completely new: I will ask several people, either readers, friends, or other bloggers to...

I had no idea, but it seems that carrying a sign that says “Equal Rights for Robots” can get you arrested: On April 18th, I was arrested. This normally wouldn’t be big news, but the situation arround which I was arrested brings up serious questions. I was arrested at Kutztown University, where I am a student, because I decided to try to liven the mood after the Life and Liberty Ministries began to upset students. They came on campus with signs that featured aborted fetuses, lists...

According to a gallup poll, the majority of Republicans does not believe the theory of evolution to be true. Quite remarkable, one could say, is that “even among non-Republicans there appears to be a significant minority who doubt that evolution adequately explains where humans came from.” Funny enough, “about a quarter of Americans say they believe both in evolution’s explanation that humans evolved over millions of years and in the creationist explanation that humans were...

The AP has a fascinating article up about the death penalty. As those who read this blog for several months (and read my contributions to TMV) know, I am an opponent of the death penalty, mainly for two reasons: - I find the death penalty to be immoral. I would say that we – in the West – are above an eye for an eye - I do not want to give the power to the government to kill its own people Of course there is a third reason: many people, including myself, believe that the death penalty...

One of the greatest political (/conservative) thinkers of the last century William F. Buckley, wrote a column for National Review in which he calls on Bush to pardon Libby. Buckley essentially argues that although Libby broke the law, he should be pardoned, because, here it comes, he caused no real harm and he is not a bad guy. O, and the ones who say that Libby should go to jail do not care about justice, they simply want to “damage the Bush administration.” Of course, all of the above...

Matthew Yglesias explains why Hillary Clinton is “a bit too neoconnish” for his taste. In short, one of Clinton’s major financial backers is Haim Saban. Saban said that Ahmadinejad reminds him of Hitler (“When I see Ahmadinejad, I see Hitler. They speak the same language”), that it is clear what drives Ahmadinejad (the return of the Mahdi by annihilating Israel) and that, therefore, Iran cannot be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Now, I don’t know about Matthew...

Andrew Sullivan checked Tagg Romney’s MySpace site out yesterday. Tagg Romney, of course, is one of the sons of Governor Mitt Romney. Wondering why I chose “The Apple Doesn’t Fall Far From The Tree” as headline? Go read Andrew’s post. Is scientology a religion?

Two posts I published at my own blog: Kill… With Manners: The New York Times published a fascinating article about informal Jihadi rules of conduct, also known as “Jihad etiquette.” There are six basic rules. Two of them: - You can kill bystanders without feeling a lot of guilt: This is the “let-God-sort-them-out”-line of thinking: in essence it means that God knows who of the bystanders deserved to die and who did not. Those who did not deserve to die will go to heaven...