findings in today's web trawler and some lingering observations...

6/22/04

[Streetsweeper] Opinion Tuesday
llegal Immigrant Drivers' Licenses: Here We Go Again Jennifer Nelson Last year, one of the hot-button issues that prompted the voters to throw Gov. Gray Davis out of office was his signing of a bill to allow illegal immigrants to receive California driver's licenses. Californians voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger as Davis' replacement in part because the challenger promised to have the measure repealed before it took effect.
So, why is the state Legislature once again moving a bill that would allow illegal immigrants to obtain a California driver's license?

6/21/04

[Streetsweeper] Opinion Monday
Putin for Preemption Jacob Laksin While parrying partisan attacks on its decision to eject Saddam Hussein from power, the Bush administration last Friday received surprise support from one of the Iraq war's staunchest foes: Russian president Vladimir Putin. // Speaking at a summit in Kazakhstan, Putin served up a shocker. According to Russian intelligence, he said, the Ba'athist regime had been developing plans to strike at the United States, as well as American interests overseas. Putin claimed he took these plans so seriously that he had warned the United States several times after 9-11 about the looming danger posed by Iraq.Europe vs. America

Germany edges out Arkansas in per capita GDP Editors WSJ The growing split between the U.S. and Europe has been much in the news, mostly on foreign policy. But less well understood is the gap in economic growth and standards of living. Now comes a European report that puts the American advantage in surprisingly stark relief. // The study, "The EU vs. USA," was done by a pair of economists--Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag--for the Swedish think tank Timbro. It found that if Europe were part of the U.S., only tiny Luxembourg could rival the richest of the 50 American states in gross domestic product per capita.

6/18/04
A Collaborative Big Lie George Neumayr The left's denial of the Iraq-Al Qaeda link is the Big Lie that has hardened into dogma. To cement the lie, liberals will even trust the testimony of terrorists over the words of the president of the United States. They don't believe George Bush's evidence for the link but they do believe Al Qaeda's denial of it. The 9/11 Commission, for example, takes this denial from professional liars and killers at face value in its attempt to disprove the link. "Two senior bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq," the Commissioners write. Notice the phrase adamantly denied, as if the intensity of the terrorists' denial lends credence to it. Do judges treat the testimony of terrorists as unimpeachable evidence when its "adamant"?

Calmer times in Israel? Charles Krauthammer While no one was looking, something historic has happened in the Middle East. The Palestinian intifada is over, and the Palestinians have lost. // For Israel, the victory is bitter. The last four years of terrorism have killed almost 1,000 Israelis and maimed thousands of others. But Israel has won strategically. The intent of the intifada was to demoralize Israel, destroy its economy, bring it to its knees and thus force it to withdraw and surrender to Palestinian demands, just as Israel withdrew in defeat from southern Lebanon in May 2000. // That did not happen. Israel's economy was certainly wounded, but it is growing again. Tourism had dwindled to almost nothing at the height of the intifada, but tourists are returning. And the Israelis were never demoralized. They kept living their lives, the young people in particular returning to cafes and discos and buses just hours after a horrific bombing. Israelis turned out to be a lot tougher and braver than the Palestinians had imagined.

6/16/04

[Streetsweeper] Opinion Wednesday
Estranged No More George Neumayr When Maureen Reagan, an opponent of her father's pro-life policies, considered a run for the U.S. Senate in 1982, reporters asked Reagan: Is she serious? Reagan's reply: "I hope not." Reagan's brother, Neil, supported Maureen Reagan's opponent. // The press used to revel in noting that the liberal Reagan children didn't understand, much less support, their father's conservative philosophical views. Now the press treats the children as an authority on his views and custodians of his ideological legacy. "Reaganite by Association? His Family Won't Allow it," headlines a New York Times story about the Reagans' rejection of George W. Bush as an ideological heir to Ronald Reagan. By "family" here, the New York Times means the Reagans who agree with its editorial board. The Times makes sure to ignore Michael Reagan's support for Bush's policies.

Reagan, Iraq, and Neoconservatism Peter J. Wallison There are several major deficiencies -- even logical gaps -- in the Halper-Clarke thesis that Ronald Reagan would not have invaded Iraq ("Neoconservatism Is Not Reaganism," TAS, April 2004, and posted yesterday as "Would Ronald Reagan Have Attacked Iraq?"). The first and most obvious is that the authors fail to deal with the realities that faced President Bush immediately after the attacks on September 11, 2001. // It is difficult enough to demonstrate that one president would have acted differently than another under roughly the same circumstances; it is virtually impossible when the circumstances are so different as to be without precedent. Suffice it to say that Ronald Reagan never saw a day as president in which the United States was attacked on its own soil, by suicidal maniacs, in service of a lunatic ideology. Reagan, like all his post-war predecessors, faced in the Soviet Union an expansionary bureaucratic state which could be deterred by military power and persuaded to negotiate by well-understood principles and incentives of national interest. On this basis alone, the Halper-Clarke analysis of Reagan should be dismissed.

6/10/04
[Streetsweeper] Opinion Thursday
Liberalizing His Legacy George Neumayr The sustained adulation for Ronald Reagan leaves liberals in a state of stupor and perplexity. Scrambling for the proper spin, some liberals reduce Reagan to a mere personality, a Santa Claus who voiced bipartisan platitudes. Other liberals, figuring they can't beat Reagan but don't want to join him as a conservative, solve their populist problem by reinventing Reagan as a liberal like them. With increasing frequency they cast him as an enlightened "divorcee" who deep down agreed with them but for political reasons had to throw a few bones to his primitive conservative followers...

6/9/04

[Streetsweeper] Opinion Wednesday
Estranged No More George Neumayr When Maureen Reagan, an opponent of her father's pro-life policies, considered a run for the U.S. Senate in 1982, reporters asked Reagan: Is she serious? Reagan's reply: "I hope not." Reagan's brother, Neil, supported Maureen Reagan's opponent. // The press used to revel in noting that the liberal Reagan children didn't understand, much less support, their father's conservative philosophical views. Now the press treats the children as an authority on his views and custodians of his ideological legacy. "Reaganite by Association? His Family Won't Allow it," headlines a New York Times story about the Reagans' rejection of George W. Bush as an ideological heir to Ronald Reagan. By "family" here, the New York Times means the Reagans who agree with its editorial board. The Times makes sure to ignore Michael Reagan's support for Bush's policies.

Reagan, Iraq, and Neoconservatism Peter J. Wallison There are several major deficiencies -- even logical gaps -- in the Halper-Clarke thesis that Ronald Reagan would not have invaded Iraq ("Neoconservatism Is Not Reaganism," TAS, April 2004, and posted yesterday as "Would Ronald Reagan Have Attacked Iraq?"). The first and most obvious is that the authors fail to deal with the realities that faced President Bush immediately after the attacks on September 11, 2001. // It is difficult enough to demonstrate that one president would have acted differently than another under roughly the same circumstances; it is virtually impossible when the circumstances are so different as to be without precedent. Suffice it to say that Ronald Reagan never saw a day as president in which the United States was attacked on its own soil, by suicidal maniacs, in service of a lunatic ideology. Reagan, like all his post-war predecessors, faced in the Soviet Union an expansionary bureaucratic state which could be deterred by military power and persuaded to negotiate by well-understood principles and incentives of national interest. On this basis alone, the Halper-Clarke analysis of Reagan should be dismissed.