Entries for January 24, 2006

Canadians yesterday voted to oust the Liberal government and give the Conservative party a chance to form a minority government. Here are the official results (English version), and here is the excellent Wikipedia entry. And here is Ed Morrissey's excellent Captain's Quarters blog. The Minnesota-based Morrissey did yeoman service to Canadian politics last year by making public the Gomery report on the Liberal Party's corrupt practices. Morrissey live-blogged the results last night and attracted so many page viewers that his server at times failed to connect. Check out his live-blogging and his references to Canadian blogs if you like.

Chicago lawyer and blogger Michael Lotus (on www.chicagoboyz.net and anglosphere.com/weblog/), in response to my most recent posting on creating some variant of the Alaska Permanent Fund in Iraq, has made the following excellent points:

Since the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Robert Bork in 1987, Democrats have charged that Republican nominees are "out of the mainstream." Last summer I wrote a U.S. News column predicting that then Judge John Roberts would help create a new judicial mainstream. Now University of Chicago Law Prof. Cass Sunstein, a thoughtful and intellectually honest liberal, concludes from the hearings on Roberts and Judge Samuel Alito that Republican nominees have established a new standard of what is acceptable. Sunstein's point is a little different from mine. But I think we both see the law as set down by the Supreme Court as likely to head in a similar direction—and it's not the direction that liberal law professors or liberal justices like Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg would like.

One of the highest words of praise that could come to a Washington Post reporter from Ben Bradlee when he was executive editor was the hearty phrase, "You're all over the paper!" Well, I guess I'm all over U.S. News this week. I wrote the cover story on American presidents at war and also a column on today's less than pretty politics. I can take a breather now: The current issue is on the stands for two weeks. My thanks to the editors for allowing me to write the cover story, which required some very enjoyable research.