Tod Lindberg

The Weekly Standard

There’s no obvious way to measure such a thing, but as a matter of intuition, you’d have to say that the most hated people in America today are sensible Democrats. The hard-core partisans of the Democratic left have never had a bigger megaphone than they now have on the Internet, and while they are united in the view that George W. Bush is public enemy No. 1, with Alberto Gonzales and Karl Rove alternating in the No. 2 slot, what really pumps up the volume is any sign of deviationism on their own side.

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The Weekly Standard

A miniflap recently broke out over a Politico item about a July 9 memo to “Interested Parties” from Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist. Penn’s memo was definitely designed to foster an impression of growing Clinton strength. Politico’s Ben Smith went a step farther in his characterization of the memo, however, saying it implied a Clinton victory was “inevitable.” Penn and Co. disavowed that characterization, and Smith subsequently took out the quotation marks he’d put around “inevitable” in his original post. Thus did the Clinton campaign find itself in the enviable position of having established its humility while pressing the immodest line that the candidate’s “electoral strength has grown in the last quarter and she is better positioned today than ever before to become the next President of the United States.”

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The Weekly Standard

Prague
In January 2005, George W. Bush delivered what will surely go down as one of the most ambitious inaugural addresses in presidential history. He pledged the United States to “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny” in the world through the promotion of “democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture.” In other words, he proposed the eradication of the most consistently recurring character in politics since its misty origins in prehistory, the dictator or ruler or strongman.

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The Weekly Standard

Three weeks ago, when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Bush administration’s firing of several U.S. attorneys and did so to bad reviews even from conservatives, most of official Washington figured he was a goner. When President Bush stepped out at the end of the day to say a good word for his embattled AG, the general reaction was that Bush had demonstrated yet again how out of touch he is.

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Telos 138, Spring 2007 

Download PDF Version: The Oldest Law: Rediscovering the Minos

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In the concluding section of the Minos (318c ff), Socrates praises the oldest law, that given to Crete by Minos, who in Socrates’s characterization obtained this law as a result of his status as confidant of Zeus, Minos’s father (319d–e).The law that is unchanging, permanent, is therefore the best law, and arguably the only law that truly reflects the “lawness” of law, other possible senses of law being incomplete, as the dialogue shows. There is, moreover, something divine about the character of the best law—though this divinity would seem to have little to do with its tenuous relationship to Zeus through Minos. Rather, it is a reflection of its permanence as such: the best law is eternal and therefore divine (not divine and therefore eternal).

The Washington Times

When I came to Washington in 1985, it was with the expectation that I would be spending my life fighting the Cold War.

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The Washington Times

If, as Karl Marx’s adage holds, history repeats itself, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce, what happens when the repetition repeats itself?

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The Washington Times

At what level of giving, if any, would the people who contribute money to political candidates begin to feel overstretched? That’s the question that comes to mind as 2008 presidential aspirants release their fund-raising reports for the first quarter of 2007, the first serious test for candidate viability of the presidential cycle.

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The Washington Times

I would have joined surge supporters in voting against the House supplemental appropriations bill because of the constraints it seeks to impose on whatever ability we may have to get to acceptable conditions in Iraq, especially the arbitrary imposition of a withdrawal timetable regardless of military needs.

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The Washington Times

When I moved to Washington 21 years ago and decided to live in the District rather than Maryland or Virginia, I knew I was voluntarily choosing to forgo something most Americans take entirely for granted, namely, their say in choosing a representative in the House and two members of the Senate. In truth, I was not especially bothered by this lost opportunity for political participation then, nor am I now.

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