The latest

Sorry for the light blogging, due to jury duty (in D.C. Superior Court) and trips to laptop hospital. Here is my latest Creators Syndicate column, on the apparent (and mild) recovery of Republican fortunes in the 2006 election cycle. Why are Republicans, apparently, doing better? Because, I think, voters are focusing more on the question: Who can keep us safe? The Democrats, with their opposition to NSA surveillance of telephone calls from al Qaeda suspects abroad to persons in the United States and with their opposition to tough interrogations of captured al Qaeda combatants, do not inspire confidence. Check out this dynamite ad for Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson of Connecticut.

Here's another piece of dynamite, an article by Washington lawyer Clarice Feldman in this week's Weekly Standard on Plamegate and special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. This strengthens my conviction that Fitzgerald has perpetrated serious injustices, which have harmed our country. Check out also two other Weekly Standard articles: Stephen Hayes on why the Senate Intelligence Committee's latest report is garbage, and the incomparable Christopher Hitchens's report on Saddam Hussein's attempts to buy uranium in Africa. Hitchens is known for being willing to take a drink from time to time (I have had the privilege, from time to time, of taking one with him). Which raises the question: How does he find the time to read all the things he reads and gather all the information he does, and then present the results to us in inimitably brilliant prose? As Abraham Lincoln said about General Grant ...

Finally, please, please, please read this opinion column by self-described liberal Sam Harris in the Los Angeles Times. Here's an excerpt chosen to tempt you to link to and read the whole thing:

We are entering an age of unchecked nuclear proliferation and, it seems likely, nuclear terrorism. There is, therefore, no future in which aspiring martyrs will make good neighbors for us. Unless liberals realize that there are tens of millions of people in the Muslim world who are far scarier than Dick Cheney, they will be unable to protect civilization from its genuine enemies.

Yup. We're all–liberals as well as conservatives–in this together. They, the Islamist fascists (or whatever you want to call them; Harris says the label is imprecise), want to kill us and destroy our wonderful, prosperous, tolerant, decent civilization. What are we–liberals as well as conservatives–going to do about it? Harris, as he makes plain, isn't disposed to think we have a common cause. But, as he feels compelled by the facts to conclude, we do. As old leftists might say, right on.