Scrapping with Glenn Beck and the Club for Growth back to back isn’t the smartest way to bolster one’s conservative credentials during primary season, but that’s exactly what Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee did this week. (more)
When news broke that Vivian Schiller was “stepping down” as National Public Radio’s CEO, media reporter David Folkenflik was the first to (forcefully) confirm that the scandal-ridden boss had, in fact, been forced out. (more)
Everyone seems to agree that Rep. Steve Cohen’s comparison of conservative Republicans with Nazis is abhorrent. But there are still some people who think that although Cohen’s remarks went too far, there is, nonetheless, some truth to what he said. (more)
When the audience gathered for a Book TV discussion of Jonah Goldberg’s new book, “Proud to be Right,” they got more than your average CSPAN fare. (more)
Proud to Be Right: Voices of the Next Conservative Generation (more)
There are few sights in modern life more ridiculous and sickening than watching a journalist try and explain why people hate him and his profession. When asked why this is so, the journalist will breathe in deeply, adjust his mien to express both noble victimhood and self-righteousness, and explain that he is disliked because he tells the truth. Sometimes people don’t like to hear the truth. (more)
In the aftermath of the 2008 election, the writer Sam Tanenhaus published a small book entitled The Death of Conservatism. It was an excellent encapsulation of the conventional wisdom that conservatism had expended itself in the second Bush term. By the time the book was published in mid-2009, its thesis had already been disproven. What brought conservatism back to life so quickly? The answer is that there was a concerted effort to reconstruct the conservative movement that began in the late Bush years and has the potential to make conservatism more influential than ever before. (more)
Editor’s note: Bloomberg reporter Ryan Donmoyer wanted readers to know the context in which he wondered whether tea party members “parallel” Nazis. Below is the full thread in which the quote occurred. (more)
The Journolist scandal, wherein a group of “journalists” were caught conspiring to influence the media in a way that would help liberal politicians and liberal causes, has almost run its course. But there is one crucial and obvious question that should be explored. And after exploring it, I want to provide a chance at some healing. (more)
For anyone who has paid attention to the continued conflict in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the model of this newest conflict – the Israeli Navy’s boarding of the “humanitarian” flotilla – is too familiar. Conservatives praise Israel as a maligned underdog or a misrepresented hero, and liberals (including the United Nations) are quick to decry what they claim to be a recurrence of the country’s history of systematic human rights violations. (more)
When you work as a TV news anchor you are sometimes subjected to “coaching” by consultants to improve your delivery. When I first started out in this business, I once hired my own—a highly respected coach in New York who had worked with the best. (more)
I’d like Ed Gillespie, the Republican strategist, to give me some money. Actually, Bill Kristol, Roger Kimball and the Heritage Foundation can chip in as well. (more)
What an awesome week for all kinds of crazy. If aliens had landed on our planet, they would have watched as: the world’s most celebrated movie stars snored through a bizarre, seventeen-hour interpretive dance at the Oscars; Rep. Patrick Kennedy lost his effing mind on the House floor; Glenn Beck and Eric Massa out-crazied each other over some exotic birth ritual called “kill the old guy;” and a Pennsylvania woman opened a dating service for lonely jihadists. Slip into a straight jacket and follow me into this padded room, Crazy, because you just had the best week ever! (more)
Reliable sources on Capitol Hill say the House ethics report on Eric Massa will be damning. Obamacare opponents, like Glenn Beck, might want to think twice before indulging Massa and letting this Democratic creep become the posterboy of Obamacare opposition. (more)
Abstract: What do conservatives want? To be free, to live virtuous and productive lives, to be secure from threats beyond and within our borders, and to live in a society that sustains and encourages these aspirations: freedom, virtue, safety–goals reflected in the libertarian, traditionalist, and national security dimensions of the conservative movement and coalition. But to achieve these perennial goals, conservatives must communicate in language that connects with the great majority of the American people in all stations of life. Virtually all conservatives hold in common the conviction that there is indeed an "eternal meaning." The recent past has been unsettling to American conservatives, but in the words of William F. Buckley Jr. nearly 50 years ago, "the wells of regeneration are infinitely deep." (more)
