Free Republic

<p>'Tis the season for political pretzels. Only yesterday a presidential candidate's Roman Catholic faith was poisonous stuff. John F. Kennedy stopped just short of hitting the sawdust trail to prove he wasn't a lackey of Rome. John F. Kerry is stopping just short of taking holy orders to prove to Protestant evangelicals that he is, too, as Catholic as the pope.</p>

<p>We can't be sure where Saddam Hussein's prison cell may be. The U.S. command won't say. We can be sure that it's not at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison, but that's probably where Saddam himself would like to be.</p> <p>Walking around in a dog collar or in ladies' step-ins, though not exactly Arab high fashion, is preferable to the mercy of his Iraqi enemies. This mercy, the quality of which is not likely to be strained through a fine screen, is what Saddam has told his CIA interrogators he fears most. He's a wise man.</p>

<p>The lot of the no-account eastcoast libsnob longhaired artsyfartsy slagpunk francophile comsymp is not a happy one. Not this week.</p> <p>All of America and much of the world is celebrating the life of a man who actually changed the course of history, and, for once, for the better. But not quite everyone.</p>

The lot of the no-account eastcoast libsnob longhaired artsyfartsy slagpunk francophile comsymp is not a happy one. Not this week. All of America and much of the world is celebrating the life of a man who actually changed the course of history, and, for once, for the better. But not quite everyone. Ronald Reagan's body is not yet mouldering in the grave, and already the tattered remnants of the counterculture are crying tears of baffled frustration that the passage of only a little more than a decade has begun to confer universal recognition of greatness on the 40th president of...

<p>Great events usually march to the beat of the presses of the great newspapers (and the cycle of the 11 o'clock news programs). Today's sensation wraps tomorrow's fish.</p> <p>But not if there's a little sex. Sex has legs.</p> <p>Both the giants and the dwarfs of "the media" (the name we give ourselves because we think "media" exalts us in the way that "the press" never could) understand sex. Or we think we do. A lot of husbands and wives might have another view.</p>

<p>There's boomer noise for John Kerry, too. Over these past few days, in the wake of the worst month any president has had since Jimmy Carter (pick any month), you could almost hear Monsieur Kerry humming along with the Rolling Stones: "I can't get no satisfaction."</p>

<p>What did our important (just ask them) members of Congress know about the abuses at Abu Ghraib Prison, and when did they know it?</p> <p>Several congresspersons conceded yesterday that they knew about the abuses months ago, sort of, when the Pentagon first put out the news that the abuses were under investigation. But they didn't get excited until they saw the network television technicians arrive on the Hill and start unpacking their cameras.</p>

<p>George W. Bush is entitled to think the rats are running out on him. First the Spaniards, then the Hondurans, then the Dominican Republicans. Even some of our British cousins -- though not the doughty Tony Blair -- are showing the first faint signs of going wobbly.</p>

<p>Look, Charlie, who are you gonna believe, John Kerry or your own eyes?</p> <p>The great white Democratic hope set out early yesterday to clear up the 33-year-old question of what did he do with his medals from Vietnam and when did he do it?</p>

The lesson missed in the graveyard - Wesley Pruden - April 23, 2004 http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | There's a little graveyard on the outskirts of Washington where, amongst rusting Prince Albert tobacco cans, Win With Willkie buttons and rotting hulks of '57 Edsels half-hidden in the weeds, the dreams and ambitions of hundreds of Republican politicians lie beneath the sod, unmourned in the cold, cold ground. There's only one marble marker in the entire boneyard, a cenotaph with the inscription barely visible beneath years of moss and mould, but a visitor can make it out with a little effort: "Here lie the...

<p>Britain, alas, may one day be part of the European Union, but the good news is that you probably can't make Europeans out of Englishmen.</p> <p>The spaniels nip at Tony Blair's ankles just the way the terriers scratch at George W.'s shins, and the prime minister stands fast, demonstrating anew why we regard our English cousins as "the old reliables."</p>

<p>The interlocutors of the 9/11 Chowder Society and Uptown Minstrel Show got their turn on national television yesterday and were unexpectedly disappointed. Condoleezza Rice got all the good lines.</p> <p>The Democrats who only last week complained that they couldn't get answers from the White House were reduced yesterday to kvetching that Miss Rice should keep her answers short to give them more time on camera.</p>

<p>War can bring out the best in a man, but sometimes men who excel in war are flops — even flip-flops — when peace falls across the land.</p> <p>John Kerry, for example. He didn't stay in Vietnam long, but long enough to shoot up a hooch, collect three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. For this he rightly earned the nation's gratitude, which is more than a considerable number of politicians of both parties earned for their draft dodging, bobbing and weaving.</p>

<p>War can bring out the best in a man, but sometimes men who excel in war are flops — even flip-flops — when peace falls across the land.</p> <p>John Kerry, for example. He didn't stay in Vietnam long, but long enough to shoot up a hooch, collect three Purple Hearts and a Silver Star. For this he rightly earned the nation's gratitude, which is more than a considerable number of politicians of both parties earned for their draft dodging, bobbing and weaving.</p>

<p>Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come, unless it's the current that washes an idea past its prime out into a sea of forgetfulness big enough and deep enough to swallow a lot of ideas past their sell-by date.</p>

<p>Maybe it's true that "hell hath no fury like a woman scorned," but William Congreve, the 17th-century playwright who thought he had seen everything, never met a Washington bureaucrat.</p> <p>Richard A. Clarke, who was employed by a succession of presidents to offer advice on how to deal with international terrorism, has entertained Washington this week with his attempt to get even with George W. Bush for (a) not taking his advice, (b) not giving him a job with a more-important sounding title or (c) both.</p>

<p>Sheik Ahmed Yassin, good riddance. No R.I.P. for this gravestone. The ghosts of hundreds of Jews would tell you that he lived only too long.</p> <p>This is what nearly everyone is thinking this morning, but few want to say so. Speaking ill of the dead is not a Judeo-Christian thing to do, even when we're glad that the old scoundrel is at last with Ol' Scratch.</p>

Queen Latifah may or may not be the only "foreign leader" to actually endorse John Kerry, but it's clear that the Democratic campaign so far is working better abroad than it is at home. Monsieur Kerry, the rage of Paris, the toast of Berlin, sprouting in Brussels and boffo in Brittany, continues to insist that a lot of world leaders have endorsed him, but only privately. He told one citizen with an inquiring mind the other day in Pennsylvania that it was none of his business who those world leaders are. Officials of the governments of France, Germany, Russia, Canada...

<p>The Spanish voters did the world a favor with their Sunday surprise: These are the Europeans that John Kerry wants to depend on when the going gets tough.</p> <p>America deserves better, even if John Kerry doesn't think so.</p> <p>The new government in Madrid can't wait to join France and Germany in the axis of weasels: "It's not that Spain is going to surrender against terror," Miguel Angel Moratinos, who is regarded as the likely foreign minister in the new Madrid government, said in an interview yesterday. "We're not going to surrender, but we want to be much more clever, more sophisticated and more efficient in order to defeat them. Of course we have to return to Europe. We have to return to the hard-core of Europe. We have to re-establish confidence between Spain, France and Germany. ..."</p>

<p>You never can tell what Bill Clinton is up to, since little boys in Hot Springs learn early to mark the cards. When the ex-prez sounds honest, forthright and statesmanlike, a cautious man consults his darkest suspicions.</p> <p>Mr. Clinton told his fellow Democrats the other day to give George W. Bush a break. He doesn't think the Bush administration will meet its June 30 deadline for transferring political control of Iraq to a native government, but he warns that throwing rocks at George W. isn't helpful.</p>