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What Should Britain, the U.S., and Europe Do About Iran?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2007 Comment (1)Two interesting pieces from the London papers yesterday on this question, with recommendations you might not expect. In the Times, Gerard Baker says that Britain is doing pretty much all it should do at the moment. He reminds us that Margaret Thatcher's response to the seizure of the Falkland Islands by Argentina was not as immediately bellicose as we remember, nor did the Reagan administration immediately support Britain. Our memory of recent history tends to elide over long moments of hesitation and agonized indecision. Not everyone responded as rapidly as Franklin Roosevelt did to Pearl Harbor–and remember that we weren't able to do much after Pearl Harbor, except watch as the Philippines, Singapore, and the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) fell to Japan. The Doolittle raid over Tokyo, mostly done for morale reasons, didn't take place until four months after Pearl Harbor, the marvelous victory at Midway not till six months after, the mostly botched landings in North Africa not till 11 months later. Some things take time. Here's his recommendation:
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Thursday Roundup
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2007 CommentGeorge Will has weighed in on the bill to give the District of Columbia voting representation in the House. He's against it, for the sound constitutional reason that Article I, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that the House should be made up of representatives "of the several states," and the District is not a state. Will believes the Democrats see this as the first step in giving D.C. two seats in the Senate. I don't think that's the motive of all the supporters of the bill, including Northern Virginia Republican Tom Davis, who came up with the idea of adding a seat for the District and one for the state entitled to the 436th seat under the redistricting formula, which after the 2000 Census just happened to be Utah, the most Republican state in the Union.
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Some Recent Memoirs
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2007 CommentCANCER
I haven't blogged yet on the terrible news that Elizabeth Edwards received last week and that Tony Snow received yesterday. Of course, all my sympathies are with them. They both want to keep on doing the work they've been doing, and I applaud them for doing so. I just want to share a post by blogger G. M. Roper (linked via Instapundit), which I found very moving. Roper is a cancer survivor who reprints the E-mail Tony sent him.
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Long-Term Political Balance
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2007 Comment (1)University of Virginia Professor Larry Sabato in his Crystal Ball blog takes a look at demographers' predictions of the political effect of the reapportionments following the censuses of 2010, 2020,and 2030. Bottom line: The Bush 2004 states will gain 17 electoral votes; the Kerry 2004 states will lose 17 electoral votes. (Sabato assumes that the District of Columbia will gain 1 electoral vote; I disagree.) According to these projections, Florida will gain 9 electoral votes, Texas 8, Arizona 5, California 3, Nevada and North Carolina 2 each. New York will lose 6 electoral votes, Ohio and Pennsylvania 4 each, Illinois 3, Massachusetts and Michigan 2 each. The lineup of electoral votes will look very different from today, and very different from what prevailed in the 1960 election (which was determined by the 1950 census), the first election I followed closely. Consider the figures below for what are projected to be the dozen largest states:
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The Latest Religious Faith
Tweet Share on Facebook March 30, 2007 CommentMy Creators Syndicate column this week is on Al Gore and his crusade against global warming: crusade, because for Gore the issue seems to be one of religious faith. Here's a comment by blogger Betsy Newmark. Here's another at Neocon Express.
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The Latest on Net Internal Migration
Tweet Share on Facebook March 26, 2007 CommentTwo months ago, I blogged on net internal migration–the number of nonimmigrants moving into or out of major counties from 2000 to 2005.
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Will the District of Columbia Get Another Electoral Vote?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 22, 2007 CommentYes, assumes political guru Larry Sabato, in a post where he takes a look at which states will likely gain and lose House seats and therefore electoral votes in the reapportionments following the 2010, 2020, and 2030 Censuses. Here is his analysis on this point:
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Midweek Roundup
Tweet Share on Facebook March 21, 2007 CommentHere's the text of Bernard Lewis's lecture on being awarded the Irving Kristol Award by the American Enterprise Institute on March 7.
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A Look at the Polls of Mid-March
Tweet Share on Facebook March 21, 2007 CommentLet's take a look at the polls for the two parties' nominations and for the general election as of mid-March, based on the compilations in realclearpolitics.com.
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Beginning-of-Week Roundup
Tweet Share on Facebook March 19, 2007 CommentFor starters, here's my Creators Syndicate column. Thesis: The default assumption that so many high-minded Americans bring to public events leads them to, in Jeane Kirkpatrick's words, "always blame America first." Here's a fascinating piece that advances a similar idea, by Oleg Atbashian, who grew up in the Soviet Union. Tantalizing hint: He attributes the default assumption to those who prefer John to Paul as a musician and John to Ringo as a philosopher.
