"It's a Management Tool"

...so, does that mean he's going to bill the city?

Sarkozy Ahead!

After their televised and widely watched debate this week, Nicholas Sarkozy has extended his lead over Ségolene Royal in the French presidential election. The scuttlebutt is that Royal imploded in the debate, but Sarkozy kept his cool throughout.

The election is Sunday. Go Sarkozy!

More Tag Clouds

The Republicans this time.

Desert Island Debate

Hard-hitting stuff. I can't believe how lame so many of the answers are. The four front-runners all said "books."

Pithiest answers: Brownback, Tancredo.

Tag Clouds

A fascinating way to follow the debates.

HT: Althouse.

Go Hillary!

I'm liking her more and more....

Al-Qaeda's the Problem in Iraq

...and Harry Reid's the problem here.

A Thought

So now that the Dems are in control of the Senate, will Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens resign? Having been appointed by Ford, and being a Republican himself, the liberal jurist has apparently said he would prefer to have his successor appointed by a Republican president. With the Senate in Democratic hands, however, any misgivings Stevens might have about his replacement's philosophy being sharply divergent from his own would be assuaged somewhat. And it's anyone's guess, at this remove, what party will hold the White House beyond 2008.

So is a retirement coming down the pike?

Le Pen's Offices Destroyed

There was a riot. It got ugly.

Hat tip: Joe.

Spousal Unions in New Hampshire

The House of Representatives in the Granite State - the third-largest legislature in the English-speaking world, incidentally - overwhelmingly approved a bill that would create "spousal unions," its own version of civil unions. If approved by the Senate and the governor, it would give gay couples all the rights of marriage, while retaining for straight couples only the moniker itself. The bill would also allow for recognition of lawful civil unions and marriages from other states as well.

This is typical New Hampshire: tolerant, fair-minded, and above all sensible. This is the spirit that makes me love the state. (Here's the bill, appropriately laconic.)

I hope it passes. It should make for some interesting questions once the presidential hopefuls start to stump there in earnest! Mitt Romney, in particular, should come out looking like a Gordian knot, as is his wont.

Shilling for Tehran?

What is Nancy Pelosi doing?

Reagan's Eloquence

Watch him give a master class.

Prospects for a McCain Rebound

The Weekly Standard has an optimistic diagnosis.

Something to Consider

It's worth pausing to think about what the numbers on the dismissals in the Justice Department actually tell us. The Economist has some considerations. So what were the figures from the Clinton era?

Bush's Tax Cuts are "Social Darwinism"?

That's what Obama said. Not to be outdone on outlandish remarks, Hillary had this to add:

Clinton said she wanted to return to a time when the country and its leaders had big goals and achieved them—like improving civil rights or sending a man to the moon. She said she wished President Bush would have used the opportunity of a unified nation after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to make the country energy independent or provide universal health care.

Hmm. What a revealing statement. So Hillary's advice was to use the goodwill of the country in the aftermath of 9/11 to pursue legislation with, at best, a tangential connection to the source of that goodwill? She really is just naked, raw, pure reflexive political ambition, isn't she?

UPDATE Mind you, I'm not being naive here. Bush certainly did use his political capital to pursue issues that had nothing to do with the War on Terrorism. Every politician does it. But for Hillary to be so gormless and to put it so bluntly.... One wishes that her political instinct would match her political ambition.

More Straight Talk Express

McCain is back to doing what he does best. Bloggers are such a natural target for McCain, I don't know why he's waited so long to woo them. Especially when there's a lot of ground for him to make up in the conservative blogosphere.

The Dangers of Email

The latest in a never-ending series. This woman's a nut, and that guy seems outrageous too (though to a much lower level)....

Caracas' Creeping Socialism

Not so creeping anymore. I guess McCain's concerns seem more and more justified.

Barack O'Bama

He has Irish ancestry, RTE reports. Go an, ya bye, ya!

I wonder if he's from Kilkenny?

McCain on Socialism in the Western Hemisphere

This obviously targets the Cuban vote in that crucial state of Florida. But I wonder if it mightn't become a theme of his campaign throughout the rest of the country as well. Until 1991, anti-communism was the glue that held together the disparate strains of the conservative coalition - social conservatives, religious conservatives, libertarians, neo-cons, etc. Perhaps McCain feels that opposing the odious left-wing regimes of Castro and Chavez can perform something of the same function. After all, none of the current contenders for the GOP nomination seems to have the edge in cross-constituency appeal; what worked in the past might work now, for him, albeit to a greatly reduced extent.