FLICKERING PLAME
Re: Enemy Central’s Gulfstream and the Jaguar:
Talk about 15 minutes of fame. I’d already forgotten about Joe Wilson and his Mrs., and then you had to go and remind me. Dang.
— Deborah Hendrick
STATE DIVIDED
Re: Patrick Hynes’ Don’t Tell Us What to Do:
It appears the one thing people from New Hampshire are consistent at is voting for eventual losers. One more reason the New Hampshire primary is becoming irrelevant.
— Bruce Peek
I just finished reading Patrick Hynes’ article regarding the NH Primary and Dean’s lead.
Good read. Probably the biggest indicator of NH’s libertarian Multiple Personally Syndrome is the Libertarians’ picking NH as their destination their One State project.
Thanks for letting all the world know what a great place NH is. We natives are trying to discourage migration here, as a whole, but your conservative readership is welcome as a buffer to the influx of MA tax/regulation refugees.
The one reason why Dean will not fall in NH is that he is not being propped up by his party’s establishment, as Dole and then Gov. Bush were. NH Dems are in the enviable position of voting for both a front-runner and the red-headed stepchild of the party.
Good news for Republicans. Just as the economy continues not only to recover but grow, the $250M Bush/Cheney juggernaut gets the whipping boy they want not only to carry the White House, but to pick up 20-30 seats in the House and 3 or 4 Senate seats, à la ’72 and ’84.
Viva Dean!
— Ryan Hansen
Milford, New Hampshire
AMERICAN SAFETY
Re: Paul Beston’s The NFL’s Lonely Hero:
Thank you so much for the update on the Tillman brothers. Since this was first reported, I have wondered how they have faired (I think they are both heroes). This will go into my personal “History Book,” now three two-inch binders, that I started on 9/11/01. I want to pass this incredible time we are living along to my children and grandchildren.
— Martha Larsen
Oklahoma
Outstanding article!
— Phil Barhight
DADDY’S GIRL
Re: David Hogberg’s Tricky Dick’s Winning Hand:
I was driving home from the BWI airport listening to C-SPAN Radio after returning from a business trip. I believe it was just before 6:30 EST on Thursday Dec. 4. The segment was a press conference of sorts with Gephardt’s daughter (Amy?) at somebody’s house party in one of the states about to have a primary. She was answering reporters questions.
At the end, the last question was something like “What is the one thing you wish everyone knew about your dad?”
She started off fine, but quickly veered into oblivion. My memory has “… I wish they knew his sense of humor. I call him ‘cheezy’ … he’s so corny. He does all of the goofy stuff any dad does… like on vacation, he drives off and leaves my sister at a gas station. One time on a camping trip, he forgot the tent. The neighbor had to FedEx it to us. And that’s just the kind of president he would be.”
The reporters all loved it. I was horrified at the thought of a president that couldn’t remember to pack the tents for our soldiers, or would forget daughters in gas stations. That sure doesn’t sound like a “no child left behind” to me. It’s more like the left behind is the butt of this joke.
What a hoot! Get the tape and have your own laugh. No editing required, she just lays her dad out as a buffoon who will be a buffoon president, and she loves it.
— Newton Love
Annapolis, Maryland
SHOW TIME
Thanks for William Tucker’s Queer Eye for a Great Guy. Nicely written.
— Anne Burkart
LEFTISTS IN OUR TIME
Re: P. David Hornik’s Geneva Blues:
Your last paragraph could be entitled “leftists in our time.”
As a conservative WASP I am astonished at the virulent anti-Semitism spreading around the world, and I am appalled at the fact that many American Jews still lick the hand that would crush them.
I read that there are only a few million Jews worldwide. The next holocaust could result in extermination if the Islamic A bomb doesn’t do it first. Israel and Judaism don’t need to side with Democrats and anti-Semitic African Americans. As with Bush and Teddy Kennedy, no concession will make him like Republicans, and neither will subservience to Islamic extremists make any Jew haters relent.
— G.B. Hall
Montgomery, Alabama
LORD BLACK
Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s Black Marks:
Bob, we hardly knew you.
Once the castigator of the elite, in the past 12 months you have turned on Mencken when his reputation needed you, because of your unique position, the most, and now you are wasting space to ‘exonerate’ a foreign press mogul.
I don’t know who this “Bob Tyrrell” is or what you did with the Friend of Taki and the Friend of Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, but I want the old Bob Tyrrell back. That Bob wrote about the murder of Jerry Parks and published the reports on Loral selling out the country to the Chi-coms (now that I think about it, wasn’t Loral “bailed out” by Conrad’s buddy Richard Perle?)
I liked your old friends better than your new ones, anyway.
A concerned friend,
— C. Bowen
THE LIVING DEAD
Re: Paul J. Cella II’s >Democracy’s ‘Friendly Critics’:
It would seem that G.K. Chesterton is well known and honored in Chicago.
— Jim Hickey
COURT COSTS
Re: George Neumayr’s Frank Federalism:
George is correct in his critique of this absurd notion of gay marriage rights as creatures of state law in opposition to the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The appropriate controversy will arise quickly, particularly since marriage is the linchpin of most state law created property rights in the context of federal bankruptcy and creditors rights, i.e., property held by a married couple in many states is held as “tenants by the entireties” and consequently can not be reached by creditors absent a judgment against both spouses.
The creditor in a federal bankruptcy court proceeding involving a “married” gay debtor where the creditor wants a judgment against the “family home” will argue the Defense of Marriage Act cracks the tenancy by the entirety — see you in Bankruptcy court! This form of asset protection traditionally accorded via state law property rights to heterosexual couples is based on a desire to insulate the marital home containing young children (the progeny of the married couple) from assault by creditors where only one spouse is subject to a judgment. I’m not convinced that gay couples should be accorded the same protection.
— Mark Wisniewski
Conceptually Mr. Neumayr is spot on. However, there is a problem with the timing. To exercise a marriage amendment will take at least three years if not more if we have to go through the state by state ratification process. In the meantime, the Mass. decision will most likely spread to other states as recognitions of same sex marriages cross state boundaries per interstate agreements. Quite a conundrum.
— John McGinnis
Arlington, Texas
KENNEDY LEADERSHIP
Re: Rod Martin’s Remembering JFK: A Postscript:
Congratulations to Rod Martin on a great evaluation of John F. Kennedy. As a political neophyte who came of age during the Kennedy campaign, I have always felt he did “get this country moving again” and there was nothing to regret in the inspirational value of most of his campaigns. The Peace Corps — great idea. Civil Rights — he was cautious but supportive. The Cuban Missile Crisis — pure backbone. It showed Khrushchev who was boss. I’m not one of those who fantasizes that Kennedy would have gracefully avoided the problems of Vietnam, but then I don’t think anybody yet knows what we could have done.
The core of the early 1960s awakening was correct. There was basic self-help ethos in early the Civil Rights effort. Many of the people who went to Mississippi in 1964 were married couples. People who stayed on help found successful small businesses. Yet you could feel the drifting away as government expansion took over. I remember sitting in a public meeting in Boston in 1966 hearing a group of neighborhood activists plead for more government programs and thinking, “All we’ve really taught these people is a sophisticated form of begging.”
I don’t see any discontinuity between Kennedy and Reagan. Both were men of the world who knew their stuff. In fact I’ve always known in the back of my mind that Kennedy was something different. That’s because all the truly radical people of the 1960s always thought he was a “phony” and a “sellout” who was just bamboozling people with his charm. There was another President accused of that too, wasn’t there?
— Bill Tucker
Good for Rod Martin, and the “Prowler” for running him. As a center-right neocon, I admired Kennedy for the same reasons I voted for Reagan, and now support the younger George Bush.
— Noemie Emery
Little Rock, Arkansas attorney and writer Rod D. Martin states John F. Kennedy’s standing as a president continues to be debated and that “the memory of Kennedy resonates with virtually all Americans — not merely those on the left — and with reason; indeed, reasons his brother’s acolytes would rather forget.”
As a Vietnam vet, it certainly resonates with me.
Mr. Martin notes America marked the 40th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination last month. One of the interesting facets of that event is often overlooked. In the wake of the Kennedy-ordered “removal” (assassination) of RVN President Ngo Dinh Diem — a malign, intrusive act that plunged South Vietnam into a politically weakened defense posture at the very time forces directed by the Hanoi Politburo were increasing — Diem’s sister-in-law, one Madam Nhu (whose husband was also assassinated) swore this vile act would not go unpunished and that Kennedy himself would suffer. A bit more than two months later, Kennedy was indeed the target of an assassin’s bullets.
Kennedy’s impetuous yet indecisive nature routinely got him (and his country) in trouble. After a razor thin “victory” over his opponent (by a margin that many still believe was purchased with the wealth amassed by JFK’s rich bootlegger daddy), Kennedy was barely in office two months before he characteristically flinched at the Bay of Pigs. He suddenly and cravenly backed away from the combat support commitment given to the people we had trained and equipped for this very difficult amphibious assault. Because of JFK’s indecisive cowardice, thousands perished and Nikita (“We will bury you”) Khrushchev must have rejoiced in the discovery he was dealing with a punk kid screw-up who was in way over his head.
It has long been my belief that was the instant Khrushchev decided to install nuclear armed MRBM’s in Cuba with targeted ground zero coverage over much of the continental U.S.
Eighteen months later these chickens came home to roost. Had JFK not cut a carefully hidden eleventh hour back channel deal via the attorney general (his brother) with the Soviets in October 1962 — a deal in which we promised to remove our missiles from Europe and promised never again to attempt an invasion of Cuba — we would very likely have been incinerated in a full up arsenal exchange with the Soviets. Even Kennedy’s nitwit, bean counter Secretary of Defense, Robert (“body count”) McNamara, has recently admitted we were much closer to the brink of nuclear annihilation than most people realized. Of course deceiving the American public day in, day out was essential to sustaining the Kennedy Camelot mythology….
— Thomas E. Stuart
Kapa’au, Hawaii
