Columnist.
Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in history. "After eight years of delay," he intoned, "those allegedly responsible for the attacks of September 11 will finally face justice. It is past time to finally act." Where to begin? The claim that the Bush administration was somehow dilatory sets a new standard for gall, particularly coming from Eric Holder.
"U.S. Homeland Security officials are working with groups around the United States to head off any possible anti-Muslim backlash following the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas." The Department of Homeland Security is in good company in its confusion.
Picture this: It is midnight on Nov. 4, 2009. The previous day's elections in Virginia, New York's 23rd congressional district, and New Jersey have all been won by Republicans. Health reform is stalled. The latest employment numbers are still dismaying. President Obama cannot sleep. He paces the halls of the White House and comes upon a portrait of Warren Harding. Since President Obama is nothing if not a receptacle of received understanding, he would probably snort "Harding! What a disaster he was! Cronyism. Laissez-faire economics. Corruption. Incompetence."
The air was thick with hypotheticals at the Supreme Court last week as the justices considered whether a law designed to outlaw videos depicting cruelty to animals was constitutional. Because there is no floor to human decadence, so-called "crush videos" depicting women in high heels crushing small animals to death enjoyed a certain popularity. Congress outlawed them. Most of the justices appeared to think that the law ran afoul of the First Amendment and they let fly with a quiver full of theoreticals. "What if I'm an aficionado of bullfighting who wants to promote his passion about the noble fight of man versus beast by selling videos?" Justice Scalia asked.
Strangely, chatter about the "death of conservatism" is circulating this fall. I say "strangely" because we are in the midst of the greatest left/liberal moment in living memory. Liberal policies are careening out of Washington and mowing down innocent bystanders. This is the greatest opportunity since the Carter administration to illustrate to voters why conservatism is to be preferred. So it's downright weird that at this moment, we are being asked to ponder how far we have fallen from the glory days of William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman. "How awful for you," say those who never sympathized with conservatism, "that you have been reduced to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity."
There is nothing that makes some members of the chattering class more jumpy than the idea that women may be choosing to stay at home with their children. Still evidently shaken by a 2003 New York Times piece on female Princeton grads who elected to stay home and raise children, the Washington Post let out a nearly audible sigh of relief as it headlined a story on Census Bureau data "Most Stay-at-Home Moms Start That Way, Study Finds: Many Are Younger, Less Educated, Hispanic."
