Another Step Towards a Dictatorship?
By Laura Kiesel09/28/2006
In considering today's Senate vote on a detainee interrogation bill, which passed 65-34, I have to wonder: is Congress bent on making itself obsolete?
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President Bush & Iraq
By Philip Mella09/26/2006
In a prototypically liberal analysis, E.J. Dionne argues that President Bush doesn't have the kind of "silent majority" that was invoked by President Nixon as a rebuttal to Vietnam protesters. He further argues that our problems in Iraq are due not to liberals but to the "civilians in a conservative administration," who find themselves "under increasing fire from leaders of the military and intelligence services for bad planning, flawed analysis and unrealistic expectations." From there, Dionne predictably links Iraq's problems with the minuscule portion of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was leaked over the weekend.
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Islam, Religion, & Politics
By Philip Mella09/19/2006
No sooner had Pope Benedict XVI given his speech at the University of Regensburg in Germany than Islamic extremists worldwide condemned him and demanded everything from an apology to his death.
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How Today's Administration and Congress are Threatening our Society
By Laura Kiesel09/18/2006
It was not until I arrived in D.C. over a year ago that I became a news junkie, forsaking my hardcover classics and dog-eared volumes of poetry for the terse, fact-laden sentences of the AP, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post and the Chrisian Science Monitor. As an undergraduate I studied literature and only minored in journalism, and now have had the privilege to study environmental science on the graduate level. As such, I also developed a habit of reading relevant journals, such as Science and Nature.
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Cold War & Islamic Jihadist Comparisons
By Philip Mella09/13/2006
In an ostensibly thoughtful but ultimately unpersuasive article in Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria draws an historical comparison between the Cold War and our war with Islamic terrorism. His premise is that not unlike the Cold War, our enemy in this war is not monolithic and President Bush's comparisons to our erstwhile foe are strategically ill-advised.
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Bin Laden Won?
By Philip Mella09/12/2006
Glimpsing the world through the kaleidoscopic world of liberalism, Richard Cohen of The Washington Post asserts that due to "the totally unforeseen incompetence of the Bush Administration," Osama bin Laden has won. Mr. Cohen's analysis is at once a masterful misappraisal of our enemy, an ignorant and politically charged preoccupation with with capturing bin Laden, a gross distortion of our accomplishments in Afghanistan, and a uniquely cynical comment on the vital work the U.S. and its coalition allies are performing in Iraq, which he calls "for naught."
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President Clinton & the Nature of Truth
By Philip Mella09/08/2006
It's now been confirmed that ABC executives made the decision to redact and revise a number of scenes in its upcoming mini-series "The Path to 9/11." The pressure exerted on ABC from former President Clinton, Madeleine Albright, et al, has been in direct proportion to their fear that their legacies would be tarnished by evidence about which most Americans are unaware.
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The Formula for Victory in the Fall Elections
By Philip Mella09/05/2006
An editorial in The American Spectator suggests that the predicted surge in Democratic campaigns and their chances of a major victory in November should be recalibrated. Several key races have moved to within the statistical margin of error, lending credence to the argument that smug conclusions concerning either party's chances are premature and therefore ill-advised.
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Published Letter
By Philip Mella09/05/2006
ClearCommentary's response to an editorial in the Colorado Springs Gazette by E.J. Dionne was published today. It outlines some of the more egregious intellectual and moral deficits in modern liberalism.
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