Newt Gingrich: Independentista

Last updated on: April 2, 2007 at 4:26 pm By Fred Clark

I knew that Newt Gingrich was contemplating a run for president, I just didn't realize he was aiming for the ticket of the Partida Independentista Portorriqueño. But I can't see what else we can make of the news (thanks, Steve, for the link), that Gingrich advocates official monolingualism: Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich equated bilingual education Saturday with "the language of living in a ghetto" and mocked requirements that ballots be printed in multiple languages. "The government should quit mandating... Read more

Unfreely speaking

Last updated on: April 2, 2007 at 2:15 pm By Fred Clark

I've established a new policy for all slacktivist personnel. In the extremely unlikely event that I or any member of my staff (in the unlikelier event that I hire a staff) should be taken prisoner by a foreign/enemy power and that said foreign/enemy power attempts to film a video of the captive slacktivist personnel coerced into saying false, derogatory, unflattering, unpatriotic, rude or anti-American statements and/or confessing to crimes against the foreign/enemy power, our new policy is this: We... Read more

Worst-case scenarios

Last updated on: March 19, 2007 at 2:11 pm By Fred Clark

Since before the American-led invasion of Iraq four years ago, I have written more than once about possible bad outcomes from this adventure. "Gaza on the Tigris" has come to seem the most apt of these possibilities, but it was not the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario is something more like Rwanda in 1994, about which more in a bit, but first let me clarify something about the meaning of "worst-case scenario." By "worst-case scenario" I mean the outcome I... Read more

L.B.: LPU&B

Last updated on: March 16, 2007 at 4:11 pm By Fred Clark

Left Behind, pg. 256 Unlike Buck, the other journalists present at the United Nations actually file stories on Nicolae Carpathia's speech and press conference, turning the Romanian president into a media superstar: By the time of the evening network news, a new international star had been born. He even had a nickname: Saint Nick. More than sound bites had been taken from the floor of the U.N. and the press conference. Carpathia enjoyed several minutes on each telecast, rousing the... Read more

The Lost Tomb

Last updated on: March 16, 2007 at 9:06 am By Fred Clark

(Consider this a lazy blogger's pre-L.B. Friday open thread.) Read more

The best lack all conviction

Last updated on: March 13, 2007 at 5:18 pm By Fred Clark

MyDD points us to the latest from The Washington Post's Shankar Vedantam, "Disagree About Iraq? You're Not Just Wrong — You're Evil." Here's the nut grafs of the article (which, as usual, Vedantam buries after several introductory paragraphs of misleading "examples"): "We are really bad about putting ourselves in other people's places and looking at the world the way they look at it," said Glenn D. Reeder, a social psychologist at Illinois State University who recently conducted a study into... Read more

Harnessing teachers’ greed

Last updated on: March 12, 2007 at 2:20 pm By Fred Clark

Article in the paper today looks at the popular notion of "performance-based pay" for teachers: "Incentive-based teacher pay unproven." This is from a series of articles exploring the recommendations of something called "Vision 2015" — an ambitious school-reform plan that aims to turn Delaware's schools into the "best in the world" giving students the best education anywhere, ever. Plus a pony. A magical pony. Or something like that. The plan's goals are laudable, but it seems a bit quixotic. It... Read more

The over/under

Last updated on: March 10, 2007 at 1:10 pm By Fred Clark

So I'm re-reading an old favorite, George Orwell's essay "Charles Dickens," and I'm struck by how it compares to another old favorite, Todd Snider's "Conservative Christian, right-wing Republican, straight, white American males." Here's the passage from Orwell that caught my attention: Where [Dickens] is Christian is in his quasi-instinctive siding with the oppressed against the oppressors. As a matter of course he is on the side of the underdog, always and everywhere. To carry this to its logical conclusion one... Read more

L.B.: Conditional election

Last updated on: March 9, 2007 at 4:13 pm By Fred Clark

Left Behind, pp. 255-256 Journalists are calling out questions at Nicolae Carpathia's press conference: "What do you say to people who believe this was the work of God, that he raptured his church?" Somebody has been doing his homework. Buck doesn't ask this question, even though he was clued in to the Rapture theory early on, before he left the airport, and even though his Big Assignment is to identify and evaluate all such theories. This unnamed journalist, by contrast,... Read more

Happy Birthday Meathead

Last updated on: March 6, 2007 at 2:39 pm By Fred Clark

Here's an impressive run: This Is Spinal Tap (1984) The Sure Thing (1985) Stand by Me (1986) The Princess Bride (1987) When Harry Met Sally (1989) Misery (1990) A Few Good Men (1992) Rob Reiner never seems to get included in the list of Great American Directors, but look at that list and tell me he doesn't belong there, even if only for quotability. Looking at Reiner's IMDB page, I also noticed this... Read more