Marc Comtois
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A senior U.S. Marine Corps general who said it was “fun to shoot some people” should have chosen his words more carefully but will not be disciplined, military officials said on Thursday. Lt. Gen. James Mattis, who commanded troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and is slated to be portrayed by star actor…
Heck, may as well pile on. . . For those of you who drop by my Ocean State Blogger site, I thought I’d prepare you for a new site design. (Nothing big, but it’s an improvement). Secondly, over at OSB I’ve announced another new “niche” blog, called Spinning Clio. Thanks!
I previously endorsed a call for more troops championed by Sen. Jack Reed. Now, an open letter from a bi-partisan group (really!) has done the same. An excerpt: The United States military is too small for the responsibilities we are asking it to assume. Those responsibilities are real and important. They are not going away.…
A Letter to the Ed. in today’s ProJo calls to mind another example of polemics over scholarship. William Beeman is a Professor of Anthropology and Theatre, Speech and Dance as well as the Director of Middle East Studies at Brown and a long time critic of President Bush’s policies. He has been accused of having…
To dot an “i” and cross a “t”, the Lincol School System has reinstated the Spelling Bee that was once presumed to conflict with the No Child Left Behind Act. School officials, who said last week Lincoln wouldn’t participate in the state spelling bee this year, were eating their words yesterday. Lincoln’s four elementary schools…
At the risk of trying the patience, or interest, of some, I offer one last (I promise) analysis on President Bush’s Inaugural Address. Today, the Providence Journal’s Philip Terzian succinctly encapsulated what Bush’s speech was all about. : George W. Bush declared that “the great objective of ending tyranny is the concentrated work of generations.”…
Peggy Noonan has responded to those critical of her Inaugural critique. In short, she stands by her original thoughts and essentially believes that we Americans have enough on our plate now and don’t need to worry about larger goals at this time. This seems to contradict some of her earlier writings, though. We cannot leave…
Austin Bay has offered perhaps the most pragmatic reason for heeding the President’s call to spread freedom. Bay writes : Idealism, however, isn’t the sole spine of “the democracy strategy.” The strategy seeks to address a very concrete issue: technological compression. Technological compression is a fact of 21st century existence — and it is the…
In an interview yesterday, Senator Jack Reed managed to offer a backhanded compliment to the Bush Administration while setting up and knocking down a straw man. Reed called a recent Pentagon pledge of a long-term military presence in Iraq “helpful prudence.” And he deemed it a welcome change from Bush administration skimping on Army troop…
Terry Moe of the Hoover Institution and a Stanford University political-science professor (and winner of the Thomas B. Fordham prize for distinguished scholarship in education) has written an important piece explaining the motivation of Teachers’ Unions. The most important point is that the unions aren’t inherently “bad,” but that they are merely looking out for…
