The great Mark Twain wrote, in one of his pithiest and most insightful aphorisms: History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Not all the rhymes of history are beautiful poetry, of that we can be sure. Case in point: … Continue reading →
The International Red Cross has said that Israel’s response in Lebanon violates the “proportionality” principle of the Geneva Conventions (see this for my views on proportionality). The group has also issued the following statement about the terrorist group Hezbollah: Hezbollah … Continue reading →
Dr. Sanity has this to say on the most recent spilling-of-the-national-security-beans by the MSM (see this for Jeff Goldstein’s take on the story, as well). For those of you who may have missed it, back in early May I posted … Continue reading →
I haven’t written about Haditha yet. I know that we don’t yet know what happened there, or why. So all we can do is speculate, and to me the speculation seems rather obvious: if innocent civilians were murdered by the … Continue reading →
[Part I] [Part II] [Part III] Under what circumstances should a national security employee decide to disclose classified information, and to whom should he/she disclose it? Should the leaker be met with penalties for these actions, and, if so, what … Continue reading →
The ongoing carnival of the Moussaoui trial has introduced still another act: the main character turning the tables on his defense team (and himself) by a spectacular in-court confession during the sentencing stage of his trial. This gesture of Moussaoui’s … Continue reading →
After I made my flip comment in today’s Petrov post about undeserving Nobel Peace Prize winners, I decided to actually look up the list of recipients over the years. And they haven’t been as uniformly bad as I thought. Take … Continue reading →
I added the following as a comment to the original post on the subject, but I thought I’d highlight it here as well, since it’s a response to points made by many readers in the comments section. This post doesn’t … Continue reading →
Dean Esmay wrote a short post with the following statement that caught my eye: …I still note with some mild annoyance that apparently it’s okay to loudly proclaim for “a woman’s right to choose,” and evil and wicked and oppressive … Continue reading →
I’ve been a bit puzzled as to why neocons have been accused so often of being motivated by fear in taking the policy positions they do (see this, for example). When I’ve written here about the evolution of my own … Continue reading →
The controversy over yesterday’s David Irving conviction, and the more general question of whether Holocaust denial should be a criminal offense, seem on the surface to be no-brainers, easily resolvable by saying that the principle of free speech dictates that … Continue reading →
I haven’t written yet about the controversy over government wiretaps designed to eavesdrop on conversations with terrorists. That’s partly because so many have covered the story already, and partly because I like to do a lot of reading on a … Continue reading →