Free Republic

Peter Beinart, Editor of The New Republic, deserves a modest amount of praise for attacking head on the problem of the Democratic Party's present crisis: its incoherence, its inability to win elections, its consequent minority status, and its dim prospects for electoral victory any time soon. Additional modest praise is due Beinart for attempting to analyze the problem by looking into the ideas that have propelled it off course. My polite but restrained applause is directed at Beinart's long article in TNR, An Argument for a New Liberalism. A Fighting Faith. (shortened and partly rewritten by him for the New...

When I set out to learn something about Harry Belafonte's condemnation of Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice, I began by googling Belafonte Powell Rice, had no trouble finding the original text, part of a radio interview in San Diego in October of last year. Before the election, you see. A quite strange outburst, it seemed to me, Belafonte referring to those eminences as house slaves. Grotesque. How similar his language to that of Amiri Baraka, once the poet laureate of the entire State of New Jersey but now, evidently, his domain emeritus has been reduced to the City of Newark...

I had planned to devote this Conning Tower to a declaration of Abuse Hillary Week, an appropriate response to her putrid performance at Trinity Baptist Church in the Bronx on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. It'll wait, that declaration. You can start without me, if you want. You might want to read the account of that woeful event in the New York Sun. I'll catch up as soon as I can. The text for today is the Peace March on the Mall in Washington, DC last Saturday. I can tell you I doubted that it would attract a huge crowd....