Interestng News - 28 January 2008

The spirit of Voltaire makes an appearance north of the border, where the Toronto Star disagrees with all that Ezra Levant has to say, but has decided to defend his right to say it. The Covenant Zone has the story.

Ich bin ein cynic. If Caroline Kennedy sees any substantive parallels between the hard line liberal dove Obama and her father, she fails to articulate any of them. But then again, so does conservative columnist Rees-Mogg across the pond. Et tu, Rees-Mogg, et tu? Has there ever been a less serious candidate given more of a free and total pass on all issues of concern to our country?

And Obama is about to get the Ted Kennedy stamp of approval. As Washington Post reporters Shailagh Murray and Anne E. Kornblut put it in their article today, this is "one of the most sought-after prizes of the Democratic nomination battle." I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that transcends mere grotesque overstatement.

Has Obama given us a whole new subcategory of discourse, if not even a new vocabulary? When things like the following make it into a Roger Cohen opinon piece in the NYT, I think so: "Obama rightly mocks those who dismiss him as a naïve "hopemonger" and say he has to be "seasoned" in order to "boil all the hope out of him." This war-stretched, recession-menaced country is confronted by ‘the fierce urgency of now,’ . . ." I don’t know, but the utter meaninglessness and sophistry of it all has me completely obamished.

A week or so ago, I took Obama to task for allowing the race card to be played on account of innocuous statements and criticisms by Bill and Hill. I was correct when I wrote that, but events have made it no longer viable. The Clintons have in fact started playing racial politics, seeking to affirmatively define Obama as the "black" candidate. And it may be working. Joshuapundit crunches the numbers in the South Carolina Democratic primary, and pronounces Hillary the winner.

George Habash is dead. Soccer Dad mulls the life and legacy of this terrorist in a very interesting post. Meanwhile, Done With Mirrors ponders the life and mixed legacy of Suharto.

Wiki dot gov? If it works . . . and it does seem to be doing that.

Arthur Chrenkoff at PJM crunches the numbers on media coverage of Iraq, then and now, looking also at the ratio of positive to negative stories. The results – and ratios - are completely predictable. What is of interest is the effect that this agenda journalism has had on people’s views about the veracity of our MSM.

Quite often, we have no idea that we have seen an important moment in history until after the fact. I think that the case with Bush and decision to undertake the surge. I will link to Classical Values post whch links to the original post on the Weekly Standard as I think it adds to the understanding.

It makes sense that the multiculturalists who abhor their own history would try to wipe away any vestiges of it. I think they are about to accomplish that in a major way with passage of the Treaty of Lisbon.

The Whited Sepulchre ponders the banality of evil in our politically correct world.