Politics

FRIDAY SHOULD BE INTERESTING….Hans Blix’s folks have confirmed that missiles currently in Iraq’s arsenal exceed UN limits (they have a range of 114 miles instead of the allowed 90 miles). In the great scheme of things this probably wouldn’t matter much except for this: Council diplomats said Mr. Blix seemed to be moving toward demanding […]

GENEALOGY UPDATE….One of the great services that the Mormon church provides to the world is its enormous collection of genealogical information. They have been collecting and microfilming anything they can get their hands on for over a century, and they are a tremendous resource for researchers. That’s where I was this afternoon: at my local […]

THE RIGHT WING….Patrick Ruffini thinks there ought to be a conservative version of The West Wing and has posted a bunch of episode summaries at his site. It’s pretty amusing, but this episode caught my eye: 1.05. No Private Company. [President] Prescott travels to Chicago for a HUD event and is confronted by angry public […]

ET TU, COLIN?….Mark Kleiman notes that we now know Colin Powell was, um, stretching the truth when he claimed that Osama bin Laden said he was “in partnership with Iraq” in his taped message. His comment: A note to the warhawks: This sort of stuff makes it really, really hard for those of us who […]

STEPHEN GREEN HATES GERMANY TOO….ARE THERE ANY EUROPEANS LEFT THAT HE DOES LIKE?….Stephen Green says: Coming of political age during the ?80s, I loved and respected Germany. I?d read of Konrad Adenauer and his successful efforts to integrate West Germany fully into western Europe, creating a peaceful state that was nevertheless willing to defend itself […]

WARTIME LOYALTIES….Chris Bertram has a terrific post today about wartime loyalties. The bottom line? During the Falklands War America’s support was tepid at best, while in many ways “Mitterrand and the French were our greatest allies.” Our petulant demands that everyone support our wars wholeheartedly would be a little more credible if we were willing […]

NORTH KOREA UPDATE….Here’s an interesting pair of articles. First, the director of the CIA testified today that, yes, North Korea has missiles that could reach the U.S. This was the reaction from the White House: [Intelligence] officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Tenet’s and Jacoby’s statements were based on the same information that […]

TIA IS DEAD….OR AT LEAST SERIOUSLY ILL….Patrick Nielsen Hayden reports the welcome news that Congress is on the verge of killing the “Total Information Awareness” program ? or at least severely restricting it. And a big part of the reason is that they don’t trust the head of the project, Iran-Contra liar-in-chief John Poindexter. Good […]

A LOOK AT THE BIG BANG….This is cool: the first comprehensive map of the early universe from MAP, the Microwave Anisotropy Probe. It pins down the age of the universe as 13.7 billion years old and confirms that ordinary matter makes up only 4% of the mass of universe. What’s even cooler, I think, is […]

POST-WAR IRAQ….Yesterday I complained about the Bush administration’s inability (or unwillingness) to articulate their goals for a post-Saddam Iraq. Since suspicion of our motives is a big reason for European resistance, this silence seemed to be yet another example of the contempt for allies and world opinion that’s characterized Bush’s administration since its first day. […]