Copyright 2008 The New York Sun Thu, 25 Sep 2008 05:14:22 -0400 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/R.+Emmett+Tyrrell+Jr. istoll@nysun.com (Ira Stoll) webmaster@nysun.com en-us R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-taranto-principle/86573/ Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST Years from now, in journalism schools, they will call it the "Taranto Principle." At least that is what they will call it, if they still have journalism schools years from now. In the future, the great republic may only have Web log schools, those being schools where students are taught to sit in their underwear in front of their luminescent laptops and pound out semi-literate diktats to an — for the most part — unobservant world. The amalgamation of all this indignation is today called "The... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/pelosis-drilling-ruse/86085/ Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The other night when House Democrats appeared to reverse their long-standing ban on offshore oil drilling, the electorate was again hoodwinked. At least the Democratic leadership hoped the electorate was hoodwinked. In August, Speaker Pelosi was beginning to feel the heat from a citizenry angered by high energy prices, particularly high gasoline prices. Republicans were clamoring for an expansion in drilling. The voters agreed. Thus the speaker relented and notified endangered House Democrats... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/democrats-dont-get-economy/85754/ Fri, 12 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST The campaigning politicians apparently cannot talk accurately about the economy. As I am not campaigning for anything, let me try to describe the economy as it is. The Democrats cannot talk accurately because if they did the average American would realize that the economy under President Bush has not been so bad. Furthermore, the Democrats don't have a clue as to how to improve it. All they would do with their promised tax increases and other extensions of the federal bludgeon onto the market... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/hypocrisy-in-the-kultursmog/85234/ Fri, 5 Sep 2008 00:00:00 EST In this election year, "change" has been the catnip of the liberals. It renders them blissful. Change will put an end to the dominance of American politics by the "Washington insiders." And the instrumentality of that "change" will be a first-term senator of unassailable probity, Senator Obama, who curiously enough began his career a decade ago in Chicago as a cog in the political machine of Mayor Daley. To the critics' charges that Prophet Obama is short on experience his supporters respond... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/meet-the-huckstering-champions/84886/ Fri, 29 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST I believe I made a mistake when I decided not to attend the Democratic National Convention. The consequence of that decision has been that I have had to watch its highlights on national television. There the media gaggle, with few exceptions, has plangently repeated — tediously and cheerlessly — many things that I know to be untrue. The preeminent untruth resounding across the airways is that the Clintons are political geniuses. They are to electioneering what Ludwig van Beethoven was to the... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-other-obama/84315/ Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST It has been a mixed week for Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate. On the one hand, a Reuters/Zogby poll announced that the junior senator's 7-point lead over John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential candidate, has dissolved into a 5-point deficit. Senator McCain now leads him 46% to 41%. On the other hand, the press has discovered Senator Obama's long-lost half brother, George Hussein Onyango (also spelled Owango) living quietly in Kenya. Among the... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. and ALAN SOMERS http://www.nysun.com/opinion/are-nuclear-swimsuits-next/83673/ Tue, 12 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST After decades as ardent fans of Grand Prix racing and of international swimming competition, we have come to the conclusion that in both, sports engineering has become more important than the competitors. In Grand Prix driving it is not surprising that engineering has come to overshadow the talent and gallantry of the drivers. Auto races have involved technology since the first racing car fired up. Today, however, the heroics of the driver matter far less than their cars' technology. The... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-spirit-of-the-olympics-losing-faith/83462/ Fri, 8 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST I see that the Olympics Games are again taking place. Nonetheless, the boycott that I slapped on them a couple of decades back remains in effect. I shall not watch them voluntarily. Perhaps I shall be passing through a room where the games are being boomed and blathered, but I shall avert my gaze. Admittedly the games have suffered no setback since my boycott began. In fact they seem to be tawdrier than ever. But my boycott finally has attracted the support of my old friend, the former... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/brilliant-modest-and-loyal/83246/ Wed, 6 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST STONE HARBOR, N.J. — With some good reading I am lolling along the Jersey shore. The sun is high in the clear blue sky and there is a cool breeze. All of a sudden a hurricane just hit. From my office comes word that Peter Rodman died over the weekend, unexpectedly from the blitzkrieg of a rare leukemia. Of all the writers I have dealt with in 40 years of editing the American Spectator, Peter is at the top of the chop in terms of intellect, character, and literary skill. He served as a foreign... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/what-to-read-this-summer/83029/ Fri, 1 Aug 2008 00:00:00 EST It is vacation time, and this summer millions of Americans are going to take a break from their daily toil. Many will seek out a quiet spot to relax with family members. They will head to the beach or to a campsite, and some will defy gas prices and head for the open road. The summer vacation is a perfect time to read a book, possibly two books. There are all kinds of books available: personal improvement books, how-to books, bad books, very bad books. For some reason the books I have been... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/ave-maria-is-off-to-naples/82615/ Fri, 25 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Something very good has just taken place on a college campus. After a two-year ordeal orchestrated by a group of mutinous faculty members, the Ave Maria Law School has been given a clean bill of health by the American Bar Association and can continue with its work. I spoke on the campus last autumn and departed burdened by gloom. I feared the mutineers might win. They were the typical professorial grumblers, and such unhappy philistines so often have the upper hand on campuses. Truth be known... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-gaffable-prophet-obama/82186/ Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST As I suggested a few weeks ago, Senator Obama is not going to have an easy time of it. For one thing, Senator McCain is a much tougher candidate than has been suspected. Looking over his career, one will note that Mr. McCain learned politics before ever entering politics. As a young Navy liaison to the Senate in the 1970s, he worked effectively with Democratic and Republican hawks to reverse the post-Vietnam military decline. He, having managed the largest fighter squadron in the Navy, has... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/health-care-a-la-adam-smith/81794/ Mon, 14 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST I am back from travels in old Europe and have survived in the pink. Readers of this column will recall that over the last three weeks I have been traveling through France and Britain. Add Scotland to the pilgrimage. In Edinburgh during the July Fourth weekend I participated in the unveiling of an Adam Smith statue, prominently placed near the top of this famous city's Royal Mile. Smith now overlooks much of this city in which he with other members of the Scottish Enlightenment thrived. He is... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/eco-extremism-de-born-abroad/80733/ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST SARLAT, France — I have journeyed to the south of France to continue my researches into the earliest ancestors of America's present-day political exotics. The American scene abounds with bizarre creatures: feminists, militant advocates of identity politics, environmentalist wackos — as Rush Limbaugh's millions call them. I came here to investigate the life of the 12th century troubadour, Bertran de Born, as early an intellectual precursor to the environmental wackos as I have yet discovered... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/awaiting-the-vindication-of-victory/80469/ Mon, 23 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST The stature and repute of our public figures are shaped, as I have written before, by this thing called Kultursmog. It is our political culture, a kultur utterly polluted by politics, left-liberal politics. For instance, it renders the Clintons, as reporter John Harris hymned in a recent hagiography, "the two most important political figures of their generation." It matters not that they are also the most scandal-prone couple in American history or that also numbered among the political figures... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/mccains-flight-status/79950/ Fri, 13 Jun 2008 00:00:00 EST Think of it: Since early 2007 ambitious politicians have cluttered up the news with their campaigns for the presidency. Giants such as Dennis Kucinich, Joe Biden, and Bill Richardson, have tantalized us with the possibility that America could, under their leadership, become the new Athens. Finally, the presidential candidate field is down to two candidates. Usually the last leg of a presidential campaign begins after Labor Day. From all I can tell, the last leg of Campaign 2008 already is under... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-gaffable-barack-obama/78947/ Fri, 30 May 2008 00:00:00 EST As I noted several weeks back, some very bizarre happenings began to haunt the Obama campaign in April. The candidate, taking his breakfast in a Scranton, Pa., eatery, was asked by a reporter for his reaction to a meeting President Carter had just concluded with a thug from Hamas. Clearly annoyed, Senator Obama refused to answer the question. In a word, he waffled. I also cited another bizarre story reported about this time. In San Francisco, which should be safe territory for him, an Obama... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/appeasing-appeasers/76855/ Thu, 22 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Poor Neville Chamberlain. The long deceased British prime minister — remembered through the decades for his policy of appeasement and for the war with Hitler that it hastened — now suffers yet another disgrace. The mere mention of "appeasement" apparently sets off paranoid tantrums amongst members of the political class. Once deemed a very enlightened tool of statecraft, appeasement has become a slur, a hate term. Speaking before the Israeli Knesset, President Bush associated appeasement with... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/four-issues-spread-on-hot-air/76566/ Fri, 16 May 2008 00:00:00 EST Readers of this column will recall that from time to time in covering an election cycle I have referred to a voting bloc that political analysts of more delicate sensibilities would rather not mention, to wit, the moron vote. It is a constituency composed of politically ignorant citizens who nonetheless feel very intensely about political issues once their respective demagogues have notified them of the issues, suitably transmogrified. The moron vote's rank and file might, in point of fact, not... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/boris-for-president/76198/ Fri, 9 May 2008 00:00:00 EST The most momentous political story of the hour is not what you might think. It has to do with an American politician now living in London and his aspiration to become president of America. His name is Boris Johnson. He, an exemplary conservative, has just beaten one of the most rebarbative left-wing reactionaries in Britain to become the mayor of London. Mr. Johnson ran a very fine campaign, an amalgam of high intelligence, sound principle, rollicking good humor, and energy that could be... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/obamas-haunted-campaign/75265/ Thu, 24 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST Anyone who has followed politics studiously over the years is aware that there are gifted politicians who, for whatever reason, eventually find their campaigns haunted. I do not mean haunted by accidental events or by a clod or two at campaign headquarters. I mean haunted. I mean visited by the weird, by supernatural pranksters, by what our Islamic friends call djinni. Clearly, after months of suave upward mobility, Senator Obama is now in this unfortunate condition. The bizarre is his... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/carters-conceit/74922/ Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST In the 1980 presidential election the American people did the best they could with President Carter, given the limitations imposed on them by our Constitution. They retired him from office — 44 states participated in the ceremony. Looking back, however, on how he has abused his retirement, I, for one, wish we could have done better. Perhaps he could have been put in a jar. He has, in the succeeding 28 years since his exit from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, remained almost as ruinous a nuisance out... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/modern-giant/74496/ Thu, 10 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST The other day I was beholding Fox News's beauteous Martha MacCallum on her TV salon, "The Live Desk," when a smudge darkened my otherwise sunny afternoon. Linda Chavez, that perennial conservative talking head, was being interviewed about American politics, when, all of a sudden, she did something quite jarring. She referred to conservative activist Grover Norquist in chill terms suggesting that this Grover Norquist is an obscure figure somewhere out on the margins of politics. Her... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/possibility-of-prosperity/74205/ Fri, 4 Apr 2008 00:00:00 EST Regarding the present economic apprehensions, may I counsel calm and good sense. As for those agitated voices in the chorus, ululating of our dire straits and even of depression and doom, remember they have been out there for years. Generally speaking, they are opportunistic liberals itching for power. It is not so surprising that their lamentations are so frequent but that they are so monotonous, for they have yet to be occasioned by either depression or doom. A pause here, a pause there... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/running-out-of-jokes/73844/ Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST As the Clintons enter their 17th year at the center of the national stage, some Washington pundits are running out of patience with them. My condition is more desperate. I am running out of jokes about these two perennial college kids. History eventually will remember them as the reincarnation of Warren and Florence Harding. For now they come off as two undergraduate b.s.-ers on a protracted spring break. Hillary b.s.-es about her indispensability to the first Clinton administration. Bill... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/negotiating-without-benefit/73393/ Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST On the evening of March 6 in Jerusalem, a heavily armed Palestinian terrorist from nearby East Jerusalem entered the Mercaz Harav yeshiva and opened fire on the unarmed teenaged students studying there. Eight died, and 11 were badly wounded before another student and an off-duty soldier shot the terrorist. The atrocity ignited wild celebrations in Gaza. If you thought that the celebrations were anomalous, you might want to know about recent findings just published by the Palestinian Center for... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/secure-president/72509/ Fri, 7 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST In the aftermath of Senator McCain's capture of the Republican nomination, allow me to offer a quiz. When Mr. McCain was being dismissed in the press last summer as a has-been, who laid down the following observation in his/her syndicated column: "Call me a contrarian if you will, but the gloomy media mood surrounding the McCain candidacy is a reflection of the unseriousness inherent in the presidential campaign at this point in the news cycle." Okay, it was I, and, by gum, I ought to be big... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/stupendous-american/72026/ Thu, 28 Feb 2008 00:00:00 EST WASHINGTON — William F. Buckley, Jr. who died yesterday, appropriately enough in his study, was one of the most stupendous educated Americans of the twentieth century. He was among the founders of the American conservative movement that crept out of the New Deal years advocating market economics, traditional social values, and aggressive resistance to communism. Such ideas were viewed disdainfully by the reigning orthodoxy, liberalism, but by the 1980s Buckley's positions had pretty much... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/something-missing/69715/ Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST With the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination charging each other with racial bigotry, I think it is safe to observe that 2008 will not be a progressive year in the Democratic Party. Increasingly the Clinton campaign puts me in mind of presidential campaigns waged by the late segregationist George Wallace. Senator Clinton even has Wallace's surly style. When the fur ceases to fly over these racial charges, I think it will be clear that Hillary is not nearly the bigot Wallace was... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/time-to-stop-disturbing-the-peace/68692/ Fri, 28 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST Christmas is over, and fortunately no one was hurt. Every year it seems the holiday becomes more divisive, which seems odd. More than 80% of our fellow Americans consider the holiday a holy day, the day on which Jesus was born. It is supposed to be a time of peace. Yet for many years now it has become a time for wrangling over what decorative symbols are allowed in what public settings. I have followed these disputes assiduously and watched an ever wider array of Christmas decorations become... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/on-waterboarding-unnecessary-oversight/68018/ Thu, 13 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST I can understand why the CIA destroyed tapes back in 2005 showing its agents "waterboarding" notorious terrorists. My guess is that the tapes would reveal them all having a lot of fun. In them, the Reverend Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the September 11 attacks, would be seen waterboarding like mad, his baseball hat turned backwards, his eyes alight with excitement. There Mr. Abu Zubaydah can be seen having an equally exciting time, possibly gurgling a bit, but riding his waterboard to... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/business/conrad-black-unbroken/67803/ Tue, 11 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST CHICAGO — Conrad Black, the Canadian-born creator of what was once one of the English-speaking world's greatest newspaper chains, stood before U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve, his knuckles pressed on the bar of her desk, and accepted her 61/2-year sentence, silently, politely, but unbowed. The federal prosecutor had argued, on this cold gray day, for a more onerous sentence, citing Black's lack of remorse. The press baron's lead defense lawyer, Jeffrey Steinback, protested that an... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/like-lincoln-like-bush/67702/ Fri, 7 Dec 2007 00:00:00 EST As with the late Lincoln, so with the present Bush — once the right general was found and the right strategy adopted, victory became possible and a beleaguered president's fortunes were restored. Doubtless President Bush is aware of the parallel, and, perchance, he will avoid Ford's Theatre. A curious inhibition shared by both Bush '41 and Bush '43 is to downplay their interest in reading. Actually both are hearty readers, certainly as compared with the general public. Earlier this year I... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/news-barometer/67303/ Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Have you noticed that over the past few days that Britney Spears has completely vanished from the news? For that matter, Paris Hilton has too, and she has been absent for an even longer period than the intriguing Ms. Spears. Possibly their significance to our nation was not as great as the press space accorded them would suggest. For that matter, perhaps the significance of our war in Iraq has been exaggerated also. It too has vanished from the news. There was a wire story on November 27 that... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/kerry-vs-pickens/66945/ Mon, 26 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST Most informed Americans have heard about "anger management counseling." It is a widely prescribed therapy for those who lose their temper uncontrollably in public or in private or while watching Rep. Henry Waxman pretend to be the late Andrei Vyshinsky, prosecutor at the Moscow Show Trials. Well, during the last week I have been following Jean-Francois Kerry's controversy with billionaire investor and environmentalist Boone Pickens, and I believe I am in need of "laughter management counseling... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/norman-mailer-love-him/66500/ Thu, 15 Nov 2007 00:00:00 EST 'I like Norman," my old friend Malcolm Muggeridge used to exult when for whatever reason his mind fixed on Norman Mailer, the great American writer who has now bitten the dust. Malcolm was himself a great British writer whose two volumes of autobiography are among the best in English in the 20th century and whose prose Tom Wolfe has placed in a league with Mencken and Orwell. Muggeridge was also an original, which in part must explain his fondness for Norman. Norman, too, was one of a kind. I... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/seven-things-about-clinton/65354/ Fri, 26 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST This week it was reported in the authoritative Capitol Hill newspaper, The Hill, that Don Van Natta Jr. and Jeff Gerth included some unsavory news about Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in "Her Way," their recent book on her. Mrs. Clinton during the 1992 presidential campaign, "listened to a secretly recorded audiotape of a phone conversation of Clinton critics…." Washington observers appeared shocked. Where have they been all these years? The Clintons have engaged in brute behavior for decades... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/let-speech-be-free/64474/ Fri, 12 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST I should have expected it. There is an effort being made to get talk-show host Don Imus back on the air. Citadel Broadcasting, owner of 243 radio stations as well as ABC Radio Networks, is reportedly negotiating to bring him back in December, presumably for the Christmas season. Possibly Christmas has nothing to do with it. Possibly it is just that Citadel's executives recognize that there is a substantial audience of macho fellows out there who consider themselves somewhat intellectual... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/olympic-ideal-of-amateurism/63995/ Fri, 5 Oct 2007 00:00:00 EST The death this week of Al Oerter, four-time Olympic gold medalist in the discus throw, prompts some thoughts on the great generation of field-event athletes that is now passing. Oerter is the only Olympian to win four gold medals in his event, 1956, 1960, 1964, 1968, with an Olympic record every time. Sprinter and long-jumper Carl Lewis won golds in four straight Olympics but he did not set Olympic records in each win. And Lewis, though one of the greatest athletes of his era, competed in a... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/one-last-look-at-mccain/61689/ Fri, 31 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST I ead four newspapers a day, occasionally more. I watch television news and listen to radio news. The press fascinates me. Many times the press suffers a collective mood swing that is more important than the facts it reports. Supposedly news stories are based on facts, but often more significant than the facts — pocked as they are with error and biased selection — is the mood. Now the mood coloring the coverage of Senator McCain's presidential candidacy is bleak. For weeks the news stories... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/preventing-a-nightmare/61236/ Fri, 24 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST For well over three decades now thoughtful Americans have lived in wonder at the enduring spectacle of the environmentalist. How, these thoughtful Americans ask, can a group of people continue to fetch the attention of the nation after being so thunderously in error year after year? "The end is nigh," our environmental Jeremiahs have told us over and again. Yet, over and again, when nigh arrives it generally arrives very decorously and passes uneventfully. Does the environmentalist's failed... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/returning-to-reaganite-ideas/60845/ Mon, 20 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST It is indicative of the bias that gusts through our press that when the most successful political strategist in memory, Karl Rove, retires from his powerful position in the Bush White House, the press reports his departure tsk-tskingly. Somehow Mr. Rove's departure must suggest his failure and disgrace. Or as some nitwit anchoring the midday CNN news broadcast, "Your World Today," put it when I was walking past a television monitor, "Does that mean the Bush Administration is essentially over?"... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/woodstock-for-sale/60255/ Fri, 10 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST The infallible Washington Times reports that up for sale is one of the most famous scenes of infantilism in the 20th century, "Woodstock." Actually what is on the block is the late Max Yasgur's New York farm, 38 acres of which were used for the 1969 Woodstock music festival that hagiographers for the "1960s Generation" have ever since boomed as a pivotal event in American history. Such rock singers as Jimi Hendrix and Richie Havens got together before a stupefied crowd of some 500,000 eternal... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/smog-of-oblivion/59568/ Wed, 1 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST James Taranto, the very clever Wall Street Journal writer and editor of opinionjournal.com, has a thesis regarding our political culture. He believes that the liberals are victims of their own cultural hegemony. They say things that are quite inaccurate. Their inaccuracies are repeated by their intellectual look-alikes throughout the culture. They reread their inaccuracies and are roundly confirmed in their ignorance. Conservatives think the liberal opposition is composed of liars or suave... R. EMMETT TYRRELL Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/superficial-debate-and-real-questions/59218/ Thu, 26 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Tonight I watched the Democratic presidential candidates participate in what they presumed to call a "debate," I wondered anew about the failure of one of my political coinages to catch on. The debate was sponsored by CNN and what is called YouTube, which is essentially an agglutination of home videos filmed for and by that preposterous mass of shut-ins who sit in their underwear day and night glued to the Internet. More than a dozen of these sad sacks filmed their mainly ignorant questions... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/dems-quixote/58816/ Fri, 20 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST It looks like a death wish to me. The Democrats' recent all-night debate to confect legislation for pulling our troops out of Iraq immediately if not sooner suggests that they are, en masse, afflicted with a death wish — and if their retreat gets more of our troops killed while transforming Iraq into bloody anarchy, they do not seem to care. Hysteria has seized them. Not long ago most of them were prepared to give General Petraeus's new strategy a chance. After all, the Senate returned him to... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/flying-the-union-jack/58394/ Fri, 13 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST There seem to be two fundamental political issues here this summer: how much more tightly to entoil Great Britain with the European Union and how to defeat Islamist terror, much of it home grown. The first issue is not easily apprehensible to a Yank visitor. If London's ties to the EU get much tighter Great Britain will no longer be an independent country, and its special relationship with America will be but a memory. The ordinary British citizen probably opposes further integration in the EU... R. EMMETT TYRRELL JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/let-the-people-speak/57941/ Fri, 6 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST At first, some of the Democrats were coy about reports that they wanted to impose government control on talk radio. When it was reported that Senator Clinton had discussed the matter with Senator Boxer, both denied it. That is characteristic. They lied to the public. Now the Democrats admit to this assault on the First Amendment. There was no point in continuing to lie when it was time to take action against the Rush Limbaughs of this world. Washington's newspaper covering the federal... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fashion-faux-pas/57512/ Thu, 28 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Stuffy old London is all jitters about a new craze in woman's fashion, the niqab. It is a black gown that covers the ladies from head to toe. Even their arms are covered. Two slits, somewhat reminiscent of the slits in armored personnel carriers, allow the ladies to see out. There are no openings for the nostrils. How the ladies breathe is a mystery. Perhaps they carry oxygen packs. The heavy black garment is generally worn only by British Muslims, though possibly non-Muslim British ladies are... R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. http://www.nysun.com/opinion/pardoning-libby/57133/ Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 EST Currently I find myself in unusual company, and I am always so careful about the company I keep. Nonetheless, here I am arguing on the same side as Washington Post columnist, Richard Cohen, and ritualistic liberal, Christopher Hitchens. At least Mr. Hitchens, a columnist for Vanity Fair and Slate, is an independent man of the left. Yet here I am on their side arguing for leniency for Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby. Having been found guilty of lying under oath, he...