The Washington Times

During the closing years of Bill Clinton’s presidency, from the time the story of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky broke, the presidential job-approval rating in the polls became, seemingly, all-important. Although Americans were inclined to disapprove of Mr. Clinton personally, they kept support levels for his performance in office fairly high. This is turn served as the principal bulwark against those who thought he ought to pay the price of the presidency for lying under oath about his relations with Miss Lewinsky.

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The Washington Times

When you see your opportunity, you take it. The death of Abu Musab Zarqawi was such a moment, and the Bush administration made the most of it, putting together the best three weeks politically the president has had since his reelection.

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The Washington Times

Every so often appears a piece of writing that just takes your breath away for the way in which it encapsulates the vacuous self-centeredness and resentment into which our world of unprecedented convenience and comfort invites the human personality to dissipate. Such was The Post’s “Outlook” piece Sunday, “What Happens When There is No Plan B?”  

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Hoover Digest

What to do about Iran’s nuclear ambition is a problem whose complexity we are all busy admiring.  It is already clear that no approach to the problem comes without significant costs and, besides which, offers no guarantee of success.  And if there are any optimists out there, as there were before the Iraq war, I haven’t run into them.

Here’s the problem in a nutshell: If it’s “unacceptable” for Iran to get a nuclear weapon, or to be no more than the turn of a screwdriver away from one, and if at the same time the Iranian regime is determined to obtain one or to get that close under cover of the nonproliferation treaty’s terms for “peaceful” nuclear programs, then you have to (1) change Tehran’s mind, (2) rescind your view and accept a nuclear Iran, or (3) stop the program by force.

No one likes these choices.  Writing in the Washington Post, Ivo Daalder and Philip Gordon of the Brookings Institution set out a proposal for the hardcore sanctions involving an oil embargo and a ban on foreign investment in Iran.  If Russia, China, and India won’t go along, they say, the United States and Europe still have the capacity to turn Iran into an isolated North Korea-like pariah state.

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