All posts by Rand Simberg

Political Commentary

Too Hip

Mark Steyn has more entertaining and trenchant thoughts on John Bolton’s hip handing.

As for the job Bolton’s up for, what would make Barbara Boxer and Joe Biden put their hands on hips? Child sex rings run from U.N. peacekeeping operations? Sudan sitting on the Human Rights Commission while it licenses mass murder in Darfur? Kofi Annan’s son doing a $30,000-a-year job but somehow having a spare quarter-million dollars to invest in a Swiss soccer club? There are tides in the affairs of men when someone has to put his hands on his hips and toss his curls. And, if the present depraved state of the U.N. isn’t one of them, nothing is.

Social Commentary

Walking Eagle

I don’t know if this will be the last word on the subject, but Matt Labash certainly has the best take so far on Lord Minniehaha:

All this anarchism has made me thirsty, so I cross the street to get a Diet Coke, and take a coffee order from Churchill and Saito. All I can find, however, is a Starbucks. When I come back to the fair with two venti something-or-anothers, surly anarchists look like they want to kick my windows in, just like they did the Seattle Starbucks back at WTO ’99.

Churchill, to his credit, doesn’t subscribe to any meaningless “praxis of personal purity,” so he takes his coffee (black) with a shrug and lights a Pall Mall. I ask if he’s an anarchist, and though they have an affinity, he says no. He’s an Indigenist. Not quite sure what that entails, I ask him to explain. He’s a wordy bugger, and goes on for a good while about a “consciously synchronous level of population” and a “latitude of action that is governed in a self-regulating manner” and a “unity in the differentiation that’s consonant with natural order.” I figure this would all go down a lot easier if I’d first eaten peyote.

Media Criticism

Did I Miss It?

The sixtieth anniversary of Franklin Roosevelt’s death was last Tuesday. I’m surprised that the MSM didn’t make a big deal of it, considering that he was arguably the last (and perhaps only) great president that the Democrat Party has issued.

Political Commentary

The Rest Of The Story?

Ten years later, Fox News isn’t letting the Oklahoma City story die.

The government’s story continues to not hold water. For example, check out this strawman:

Editor’s Note: Watch the FOX News Channel on Sunday at 9 p.m. EDT for “The Oklahoma City Bombing: Unanswered Questions.” And check out FOXNews.com on Monday for a story showing how FBI agents are convinced they got the right men.

No one is claiming that they didn’t get “the right men.” The point isn’t about whether or not McVeigh and Nichols did it, though the defenders of the government action would have us believe that that’s the issue in contention. Everyone agrees that they did (as far as I know). The question is whether or not there were others involved, who remain free. And more seriously, if there were foreign governments involved that the Clinton administration would have found politically inconvenient to finger, particular since, if it restricted its investigation to “angry white guys” it could pin it on those evil right-wing Republicans.

As the article points out, the official story remains quite fishy, and there was a disturbing amount of evidence destroyed. And does this make any sense?

Oklahoma City attorney Michael Johnston said the FBI was not given all the tapes from as many as twenty-five cameras that he says were in and around the Murrah Building.