Copyright 2009 The New York Sun Sat, 04 Jul 2009 14:10:42 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ira Stoll :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Ira+Stoll istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/netanyahus-man-in-washington-offers-a-preview/86868/ Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:40:27 EST Reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu will appoint Michael Oren as ambassador to the United States had guests at last night’s dinner in New York of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America listening especially carefully to Mr. Oren’s keynote address. If it was intended as a preview of how Mr. Oren will conduct himself as the top Israeli diplomat in America at a time when many are predicting tense relations between Mr. Netanyahu and President Obama, than at least this... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-jtas-bizarro-attack-on-neo-cons/86873/ Fri, 3 Jul 2009 08:21:44 EST The Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas, has posted a screed against neoconservatives on that organization's Web site. "For eight years we in Washington lived in a bizarro world where the most obvious conclusions were not just ignored, but mocked, actively suppressed and made akin to treason," he said. Now, "neoconservatives are losing," because of "their failure, or their abject inability, to say 'I was wrong.'" He writes, "The Bush administration had not... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/in-cobble-hill-a-battle-of-the-scoop-sales/81958/ Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Under the hot summer sun, an ice cream war is breaking out in the unlikely venue of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. First, Sweet Melissa Patisserie, a coffee and pastry shop, expanded into the building next door and opened what it called Sweet Melissa Cremerie. Then, right across the street, The Chocolate Room opened, promoting its own homemade ice cream. Both are siblings of Park Slope establishments, though neither the Seventh Avenue Sweet Melissa nor the Fifth Avenue Chocolate Room is known for ice... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-foundation-of-democracy-natan-sharanskys/78699/ Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 EST To the ear of Americans educated on college campuses where African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, women, Jews, and gays have their own academic studies programs, dormitories, student centers, and advocacy groups, the notion that "identity" needs defending may seem quaint, a relic of the melting pot era. Identity politics need not to be defended, but to be reined in, goes this view, which is reinforced not only by Balkanized college campuses, but by the violence between Iraqi Sunnis and... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/alleged-spy-says-he-met-mrs-clinton/73799/ Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996. In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was "very receptive" to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton "passed a message to the State Department" about the need to implement the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/bring-forth-the-tar-and-feathers/72671/ Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST In the first episode of HBO's "epic seven-part miniseries event" "John Adams," one of the most riveting scenes occurs at Boston Harbor, when a customs inspector or informant challenges John Hancock (Justin Theroux) for evading the taxes imposed by the British. "Teach him a lesson, tar the bastard," Hancock commands a mob, which proceeds to do exactly that to the poor accessory of the crown. This being HBO, there's a glimpse of full frontal nudity that is promptly drenched with hot tar. Hancock... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/front-lines-of-manhattan/61637/ Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST The journalistic category of war correspondence evokes images of dashing young men in flak jackets and muddy combat boots, dodging bullets and hitching rides in jeeps. It is a measure of how different the current war is that one of our finest war reporters turns out to be a 77-year-old grandfather who does most of his reporting in Manhattan rather than from Kabul or Baghdad. It's not that Norman Podhoretz hasn't seen attacks firsthand. The morning of September 11, 2001, he was serving jury duty... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/two-professors-fail-to-clean-up-their-act/61485/ Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government burst onto the national scene in March of 2006 with a Harvard "working paper" in which they wrote of the "unmatched power of the Israel Lobby." They charged, "Were it not for the Lobby's ability to manipulate the American political system, the relationship between Israel and the United States would be far less intimate than it is today.... AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/journey-to-ice-cream-row/59598/ Wed, 1 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST We New Yorkers know from the lighting district, the flower district, the garment district. But an ice cream district? For that you have to leave the city and head to Martha's Vineyard. The island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts is famous as a summer vacation destination for President Clinton, but it also just may be home to the country's densest concentration of ice cream shops. Within the area of about one city block in the town of Oak Bluffs, there are no less than five separate stores whose... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/cheneys-chance-2007-07-24/58996/ Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Of all the editorials The New York Sun has run, the one that attracted the most response was the one under the headline "Cheney's Chance." The editorial, suggesting that Vice President Cheney would be an attractive presidential candidate who would bring a lot to the race, caused a furor in the blogosphere and led to the production of an entire segment on CNN. It also led to several dinner party conversations of friends or relatives of the editorial writer devoted to whether the writer had... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/rod-paige-warns-of-a-death-grip-by-unions/52666/ Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST President Bush's first-term education secretary, Rod Paige, is sitting in his office on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building, the leather of his black cowboy boots creaking beneath the cuffs of his pinstriped suit, and talking about the "death grip," the "stranglehold," that teachers' unions have on public education in America. His new book is titled "The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education." The unions, he writes, are... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/israels-lieberman-calls-for-tougher-stance/45120/ Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST The deputy prime minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, is calling for a tougher stance toward Israeli Arabs. Mr. Lieberman outlined his views at a luncheon session in New York yesterday organized by the Middle East Forum, and afterward in an interview with The New York Sun and other journalists. "The conflict includes not only the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, but Israeli Arabs also," Mr. Lieberman said. "The linkage between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Arab... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/nypds-falkenrath-aims-to-keep-ny-safe-day-by-day/43295/ Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST The new deputy commissioner for counterterrorism at the New York Police Department, Richard Falkenrath, is one of the people responsible for keeping 8 million New Yorkers safe. It's a stressful job. Mr. Falkenrath said that when he wakes up every morning at 6:20 a.m. and heads into the office for his 9 a.m. meeting with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the deputy commissioner for intelligence, the CIA veteran David Cohen, he assumes "today is going to be the day." By that, he means today... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/chalabi-outlines-steps-to-save-iraq-from-ruin/42557/ Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST LONDON — The former deputy prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, is warning that widespread "sectarian cleansing" could overtake the country, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties, unless a series of steps are taken that he says could improve the situation. In remarks here yesterday to a group including journalists and members of Parliament, Mr. Chalabi offered a dire description of the situation in Iraq. He said 1 million Iraqis have already become displaced by... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/europe-is-in-crisis-of-civilizational-morale/42285/ Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST Europe, especially Western Europe, is suffering from "a crisis of civilizational morale," author George Weigel said in a speech to hundreds of New Yorkers gathered for the Manhattan Institute's annual Wriston Lecture. Mr. Weigel mentioned what he described as an attitude of "appeasement toward jihadist terrorism," but he said "the most dramatic manifestation of Europe's crisis of civilizational morale is the fact that Europe has depopulated itself." By the middle of this century, Mr. Weigel... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/poland-abruptly-cancels-a-speech-by-local-critic/40911/ Wed, 4 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST The government of Poland, moving to avoid getting embroiled in anti-Israel politics, last night abruptly canceled a scheduled speech by a professor at New York University who has become hostile to the Jewish state, just hours before the event was to have taken place at Poland's consulate here in New York. The decision to cancel the speech, which was billed as being about "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," is a signal of the quickening entente between free Poland and Israel, a... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/israel-lobby-caused-war-in-iraq-september-11/40629/ Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST A tenured professor at the University of Chicago last night blamed the "Israel Lobby" in America for both the Iraq war and the attacks of September 11, 2001. Speaking to a crowd of hundreds at the Cooper Union, he was met mostly with support from two other professors, Tony Judt of New York University and Rashid Khalidi of Columbia. "The Israel lobby was one of the principal driving forces behind the Iraq War, and in its absence we probably would not have had a war," said the University of... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/like-father-unlike-son/40427/ Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST The phone rang the other day and it was the president of the Reform Party of Syria, Farid Ghadry. I've known him now for years. He has visited the offices of The New York Sun, he's contributed to our oped page, and he has been a steady and significant, if sometimes lonely, voice in Washington calling for bringing freedom and democracy to Syria. When I think of the sacrifices of Arab fighters for democracy, mainly I think of the threat of assassination. Other Arab democracy advocates I know... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/invoking-the-almighty/40317/ Tue, 26 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." These lines from Thomas Paine's 1776 essay "The American Crisis" have resonated through American history. John Kerry's... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/hospital-leaders-help-fund-effort-to-aid-democrats/39741/ Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST Since Senator Grassley launched an investigation of not-for-profit hospitals, a political action committee funded by the hospital's trustees and executives has given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to try to regain a Democratic majority in the Senate, which would have the effect of ousting Mr. Grassley from his post as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The hospital claims that the political action committee is independent of it. "The PAC is independent of... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/israeli-mp-says-sanctions-may-defeat-iran/39739/ Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST The best way to deal with the problem of Iran would be with sanctions that could help topple the government there, an Israeli member of parliament said yesterday. Ephraim Sneh said Iran imports 40% of its gasoline and that cutting off the flow "may help the Iranian people to overthrow the regime." "They don't like their regime," he said. "The easiest, the cheapest thing to do to solve the problem is to do what the Iranian people want to do, what they should do." America and Israel have both... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/taiwan-will-try-new-approach-to-joining-united/39691/ Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST After being rejected the 14th year in a row in its bid for membership in the United Nations, Taiwan will try a new approach, its president, Chen Shuibian said yesterday. Rather than applying for readmission as the Republic of China, whose seat Taiwan held until 1971, Taiwan will consider applying as a new member under the name "Taiwan." "After 14 consecutive years of frustration, we must seriously consider a different strategy," Mr. Chen said. He said polls in Taiwan showed nearly 80% of the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/brooklyn-bridge-rusts-awaiting-its-first-paint/38747/ Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST The Brooklyn Bridge, the 123-year-old span between Brooklyn and Manhattan that to this day is a treasured tourist attraction, landmark, and transportation workhorse, is rusting under a coat of paint that hasn't been refreshed since 1991. The city's most recent annual report on the condition of bridges and tunnels, just out, rates the Brooklyn Bridge's condition as a 3.15 on a scale of one to seven, with one as "potentially hazardous" and seven as "new." A three rating is used to indicate that a... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/santorum-time-to-get-tough-with-iran/36456/ Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST WASHINGTON — The third-ranking Republican senator, Republican conference chairman Rick Santorum, is calling for a tougher line against the government of Iran, saying Iranian diplomats are "regularly" asked to leave America after being caught photographing bridges and subway stations in New York City. He accused the Islamic Republic of having Revolutionary Guard officers at the controls of the missiles being launched at Israel, and said Iranian scientists were present in North Korea for... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/hundreds-of-iranian-troops-fighting-in-lebanon/36326/ Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Hundreds of Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel are on the ground in Lebanon fighting Israel, security sources say. "I have no doubt whatsoever that they are there and operating some of the equipment," an Arab diplomatic source told The New York Sun yesterday. Another foreign source, based in Washington, said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps contingent in Lebanon is based in Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley. He said the troops usually number a few dozen, but that the size of the force... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mccain-does-manhattan-by-the-issues/36187/ Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Add the Manhattan Institute to Iowa and New Hampshire on the list of early proving grounds for presidential candidates — at least the Republican ones. Senator McCain visited New York City yesterday to offer his views on Israel, government spending, Charles Darwin, and campaign finance and in so doing became the latest of the 2008 presidential hopefuls to address the city's conservative think tank, which has also heard recently from Mayor Giuliani and from Governor Romney of Massachusetts. In Mr... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/line-forms-in-madison-square-for-the-newest-ny/33117/ Mon, 22 May 2006 00:00:00 EST It was on a recent sunny day, when I bit into the 'Shroom burger with a deep-fried, cheese-filled portobello mushroom between the lettuce, tomato, and burger bun, that it hit me: The Shake Shack, the burger and milkshake stand in Manhattan's Madison Square Park operated by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group, is the quintessential New York institution. If you want to understand the city's cultural anthropology, go spend a lunch hour standing in line there for a $3.23... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/murdochs-message/32504/ Wed, 10 May 2006 00:00:00 EST Why would Murdoch do it? That's the question for us Fox News Channel watchers, New York Post and Weekly Standard readers, loyal customers of Rupert Murdoch's right-of-center - I mean, "fair and balanced" - news and commentary empire, having received the news that the chief executive of News Corp. will host a campaign fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Mr. Murdoch's outside spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, referred the question to Mr. Murdoch's inside spokesman, Gary Ginsberg, himself a veteran of the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/whats-wrong-with-harvard/32460/ Wed, 10 May 2006 00:00:00 EST Derek Bok, who served as president of Harvard from 1971 to 1991, recalls that after he was named to the job but before he took office, he was taken aside by "an older man of wide experience who had held high posts in Washington, had served on boards of trustees, and now headed an academic institution of considerable reputation." The sage had a suggestion for a bold move by Mr. Bok: "While you are still in your honeymoon period and people are reluctant to be critical, why not announce your... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/giuliani-touts-senates-comprehensive-approach/31699/ Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EST Mayor Giuliani is wading into the debate over America's immigration policy with the argument that the comprehensive approach being pursued by the Senate is better for American security than what he called the "punitive" approach being pressed by the House of Representatives. President Bush and Senator McCain have been pushing what they call a "comprehensive" approach to immigration law that would step up enforcement of the borders but also provide a path to citizenship for illegal aliens and... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/talks-with-tehran-spell-danger-professor-warns/30505/ Thu, 6 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EST Iran today is like the Soviet Union in the era of Leonid Brezhnev, who died in 1982, less than 10 years before the Communist superpower ceased to exist, a professor at the National University of Iran told a New York audience yesterday. Iraq's current leadership "requires low-grade conflict with the West" as a justification for maintaining the security and military apparatus that keeps it in power, the Iranian professor, Mahmood Sariolghalam, told the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/75000-start/30419/ Wed, 5 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EST When Governor Weld first floated his proposal to eliminate the state income tax on those earning less than $75,000 a year, it met with a rough reception. This newspaper reported some of it in a front-page news article headlined "Tax Plan of Weld Is Called 'Perverse.'" And it's true, the plan as outlined by Mr. Weld, who is running for the Republican nomination for governor, wasn't exactly what Steve Forbes, Lawrence Kudlow, Amity Shlaes, Milton Friedman, Jack Kemp, and Stephen Moore would have... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/reckoning-with-god-in-american-history/30139/ Fri, 31 Mar 2006 00:00:00 EST As a Harvard student, Theodore Roosevelt used to carry the Bible along on camping trips. As president, Woodrow Wilson once said, "My life would not be worth living if it were not for the driving power of religion." In August 1941, Franklin Delano Roosevelt met secretly with Winston Churchill for a Sunday morning service and afterward remarked, "We are Christian soldiers." President Eisenhower said, "Our form of government is founded on religion." These are just some of the many fascinating... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/faith-of-an-atheist/29144/ Wed, 15 Mar 2006 00:00:00 EST Encountering a pro-American European journalist who writes passionately and in chilling detail of the threat to the West from the rise of Islam in Europe, one is tempted to be supportive. But in her new book, "The Force of Reason" (Rizzoli, 307 pages, $19.95), Oriana Fallaci strains the good will of even the most sympathetic reader. Never mind the eccentric way this volume has been published by Rizzoli, which seems not to have English language typesetting software in house. (In the first few... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/loyal-to-the-legacy/27612/ Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:00:00 EST The publisher's press release promoting Bruce Bartlett's new book, "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy," reports that after the author was fired from his $161,000-a-year job at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank, "Doubleday moved the publication date from April to February." Too bad. The book might have benefited from another two months of editing. After wading through this book that attacks Mr. Bush for being both too... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/if-i-speak-in-the-arab-world-i-will-be-shot/27435/ Mon, 13 Feb 2006 00:00:00 EST Khaled Abu Toameh used to work for a Palestine Liberation Organization newspaper. Now he writes for the Jerusalem Post and for Mortimer Zuckerman's U.S. News & World Report, and he's so critical of the PLO that two pro-Israel advocacy groups, StandWithUs and Hasbara Fellowships, recently brought him on a speaking tour to North America. Nonie Darwish grew up in Gaza City, where her father was the head of Egypt's armed resistance to Israel known as the fedayeen. Now she worries about the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/iraqs-wmd-secreted-in-syria-sada-says/26514/ Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed. The Iraqi general, Georges Sada, makes the charges in a new book, "Saddam's Secrets," released this week. He detailed the transfers in an interview yesterday with The New York Sun. "There are weapons of mass destruction gone out from Iraq to Syria, and they must be... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/business/nobel-prize-winning-economist-discusses-true/25852/ Fri, 13 Jan 2006 00:00:00 EST The 2005 Nobel laureate in economics, Robert Aumann, has a wispy beard of gray trending toward white, a brown tweed sport jacket with a Hebrew University lapel pin, and a knitted yarmulke perched on the left side of his head. He was introduced over lunch yesterday in Manhattan as a grandfather of 18, which he gently corrected to 19, along with two great grandchildren. For a Nobel laureate he began on a humble note. "I don't know anything about the markets," he said. He said the Talmud says... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/business/greenberg-lashes-out-at-spitzer-defends-his-role/24545/ Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST The ousted chairman of American International Group, Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, lashed out yesterday at Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and offered an impassioned defense of his own stewardship of both the world's largest insurance company and one of New York's largest private foundations, the Starr Foundation. Mr. Spitzer this week accused Mr. Greenberg of taking advantage of the Starr Foundation in a series of transactions that happened 35 years ago. Mr. Greenberg, in an interview with The New... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/saddams-wmd-moved-to-syria-an-israeli-says/24480/ Thu, 15 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST Saddam Hussein moved his chemical weapons to Syria six weeks before the war started, Israel's top general during Operation Iraqi Freedom says. The assertion comes as President Bush said yesterday that much of the intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was incorrect. The Israeli officer, Lieutenant General Moshe Yaalon, asserted that Saddam spirited his chemical weapons out of the country on the eve of the war. "He transferred the chemical agents from Iraq to Syria," General Yaalon... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/spielbergs-munich-is-criticized/24301/ Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST A Steven Spielberg movie about the aftermath of the massacre of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics is shaping up as the next battleground for debating the politics of the Middle East. The film doesn't open in New York theaters until December 23, but it is already drawing criticism from commentators who are sympathetic to Israel. Yesterday, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Israel's consul general in Los Angeles, Ehud Danoch, denounced the movie as "superficial" and... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/broadcast-kerrys-speech/24223/ Fri, 9 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST How can President Bush boost his approval ratings? Here's an idea: buy an hour in prime time television and use it to broadcast Senator Kerry's speech yesterday at the Council on Foreign Relations. The speech was devoted to criticizing President Bush, so it might seem self-defeating for Mr. Bush or his supporters to want it to be seen widely. But think about it - the president's popularity has been dropping steadily ever since last year's presidential election, when Mr. Bush stopped splitting... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/right-debate-about-the-war/23745/ Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST When an advance copy of the book "The Right War?" (Cambridge University Press, 264 pages, $19.99) landed on my desk a couple of months ago, I put it aside. At that moment, a collection of warmed-over magazine and newspaper columns from the previous year and a half about Iraq did not seem like the most pressing volume to attend to. Little did I know that the coming months would bring an indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, in a case that served, among other... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/chalabi-thanks-america-warns-syria-in-sun-visit/22967/ Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST The deputy prime minister of Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, is thanking America and President Bush for liberating his country and is urging Syria to stop providing a safe haven to terrorists. Mr. Chalabi made his remarks Friday during a visit to The New York Sun, where he met with the newspaper's editors. The comments may provide a boost to Mr. Bush, who has come under attack from Democrats for his handling of Iraq. They may also increase pressure on the regime in Damascus, which Mr. Bush said Friday... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/1996-all-over-again/16268/ Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:00:00 EST One day shortly after the Sun began publishing, the phone rang in my office. At the other end of the line was the president of the Manhattan Institute, Lawrence Mone. He wanted to bounce a name off me as part of his search, he said, for a person to write a book that would do for the debate about health care what Charles Murray's 1984 landmark "Losing Ground" had done for the debate about welfare reform. There's been plenty of good work done since then on health-care issues, some by the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/nobel-laureate-emerges-as-critic-of-america/13849/ Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 EST PALO ALTO, Calif. - The Iranian human rights lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize blamed American foreign policy for increasing terrorism. Speaking yesterday at the Stanford Law School graduation, Shirin Ebadi offered no criticism of the government of Iran, which the State Department calls the leading sponsor of international terrorism. She did, however, offer a series of critical remarks about the Bush administration. "As we can see, the foreign policy of the United States in the Middle... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/legacy-of-arthur-hays-sulzberger/12177/ Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST On the editorial page of today's New York Times - and of yesterday's, and tomorrow's - is a list of former publishers of the paper. At the top of the list is Adolph Ochs, the famous patriarch of the Ochs-Sulzberger clan that has controlled the newspaper for more than a century. At the bottom is Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, who was publisher from 1963 to 1992 and who is famous as the father of the modern Times. Sandwiched between them is Arthur Hays Sulzberger, father of Arthur Ochs Sulzberger and... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/cheney-would-meet-with-chalabi-though-hes-not/11578/ Mon, 4 Apr 2005 00:00:00 EST Vice President Cheney, in a wide-ranging meeting with the editorial board of The New York Sun, extended a friendly signal to Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, whose relations with Washington had appeared frayed. Mr. Cheney made his comments Friday during a meeting with the editors at the Plaza Hotel. During the 45-minute session, he also expressed optimism about winning Democrats over to support the administration's plans for personal accounts as part of Social Security. The vice president was... Ira Stoll http://www.nysun.com/opinion/unanswered-questions/8766/ Fri, 4 Feb 2005 00:00:00 EST Listening to President Bush in the State of the Union speech and again yesterday speaking about Social Security, and listening to the Democrats respond, one gains the clear sense that the debate over this issue is still at an early stage. Here are some questions that policymakers will need to answer - or at least, ask themselves- if the program is to be changed for the better. For President Bush: On Wednesday night you said "Social Security was a great moral success of the 20th century." What... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/meet-the-frenchman-who-aims-to-deny-new-york/7608/ Thu, 13 Jan 2005 00:00:00 EST PARIS - For Philippe Baudillon, the former French diplomat who heads up Paris's effort to outmaneuver New York and win the 2012 Olympic Games, it's difficult to escape America's shadow. A street named after President Wilson runs by the front of his office, where a traffic island holds a statue of George Washington, sword raised, astride a horse. The public-relations firm keeping track of the Paris bid's image, Weber Shandwick, is part of the Interpublic Group, which has its world headquarters...