Excerpt from Part 1 of The Day Reality Hit Home: In the end I reached the conclusion that 11 September had already brutally confirmed: there were other forces, far more malign than America, that lay in wait in the world. But having faced up to the basic issue of comparative international threats, could I stop the political reassessment there? If I had been wrong about the relative danger of America,

My son Brendan returned from his trip to Germany via Scotland, where he got to visit my mother-in-law, who’s a very bright lady of whom I’m very fond. Returning home, he announced on several opportunities that his views are more “Liberal” than mine. Personally, I have no problem with this, as he is 16 and it’s not my business, even as his father, to prescribe what he thinks. However, he

I have much to do today, so here are a few links to get you through the existential emptiness brought on by my absence. 1. John Stephenson at Stop the ACLU wants your opinion on FOXNews’ coverage of Fred Thompson in Iowa. “Fair and balanced”? Or do I need to break out another installment of the adventures of RoboShep? 2. “Professors on the Battlefield.” And no, I’m not talking Ward

From the Olympian: U.S. Rep. Brian Baird said Thursday that his recent trip to Iraq convinced him the military needs more time in the region, and that a hasty pullout would cause chaos that helps Iran and harms U.S. security. “I believe that the decision to invade Iraq and the post-invasion management of that country were among the largest foreign-policy mistakes in the history of our nation. I voted against

You’ve heard all this before from me, so let’s use our Friday creatively and hear it instead from a Democrat — albeit from an inauthentic Democrat, according to the Czar of the New American Center. From the WSJ: Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar is today fond of quoting a famous Lyndon Johnson line: “You know the difference between cannibals and liberals? Cannibals only eat their enemies.” [Hector Cuellar] Mr. Cuellar would

Given the steady drumbeat of defeatism that has defined the Iraq narrative over the past several years, this is, as Jules Crittenden argues, nothing short of miraculous. Of course, CNN is not so much interested in what Americans believe about the kind of progress being made in Iraq as it is with gauging just how effective the anti-war media campaign has been at poisoning the epistemic well in advance of

From the AP/Breitbart: Jose Padilla was convicted of federal terrorism support charges Thursday after being held for 3 1/2 years as an enemy combatant in a case that came to symbolize the Bush administration’s zeal to stop homegrown terror. Padilla, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi face possible sentences of life in prison if convicted of all three charges in the case. The three are accused of being part

And if that doesn’t work, forced conversion is always an option. After all, nothing says “tolerance” quite like a good old-fashioned unconditional religious surrender. From MSNBC: A Roman Catholic Bishop in the Netherlands has proposed people of all faiths refer to God as Allah to foster understanding, stoking an already heated debate on religious tolerance in a country with one million Muslims. Bishop Tiny Muskens, from the southern diocese of