Tag Archives: National Review Online

Banning “Jihad” at Al Jiz

Looks like an Al Jiz story finally is going to get traction.

Make that a National Review story about Al Jazeera English, the Quatari network that is, as Breitbart News puts it “the proverbial tree in a forest no one hears fall.”

Until now. Al Jiz America has lately been leaking internal emails like the Titanic did seawater. A new one shows management has banned its reporters’ use of the words terrorist, Islamist and jihad in most cases.

Banning words is a characteristic of a third-rate news organization. Nice to have that cleared up.

Via National Review Online.

Cop’s right, veteran’s wrong: open carry is restricted in Texas

I admire most of what I find in National Review. There aren’t that many good conservative publications in America which is swamped with Leftist newspapers and magazines that only pretend to be impartial.

But National Review is just as capable of screwing up. And such is NR’s championing of a belligerent veteran who lives near Temple, which is just up the road from the rancho: “Texas Soldier Arrested for Rudely Displaying Weapon.”

Seems to me the self-described soldier is the rude one, smarting off to a cop who questioned his presumed right to carry a loaded AR-15 on a hike with his young son out in the countryside. He reportedly told NR: “I was legally exercising a right, especially in Texas where we have a right to carry weapons openly….”

That is not true and it’s really lazy journalism to publish it unquestioned and base much of a story on it. NR ought to know better than to publish any assertion of law without a simple Google verification.

Open carry is not legal in Texas, except when hunting or in a sporting event or on your own property. And arguing with a cop (legally called a “peace officer” in Texas) is pretty stupid behavior anywhere at any time no matter how dumb or venal the officer seems to be. It sets a really bad example for a child.

Via Instapundit.

The Ammunition Myth

I’m not getting excited about all those chain emails I’ve been getting shrieking about reports of federal ammo buying—hundreds of thousands of rounds here, millions of round there—because I know something more important.

Which is that while federal agents may feel free to push around the occasional unlucky individual, they aren’t crazy enough to take on even ten percent of the population. A very well-armed population.

So I wasn’t surprised to see this pretty good explanation of the phenom:

“And why does the USDA need 320,000 rounds? Because it runs the Forest Service, which covers ‘155 national forests’ and ’20 national grasslands’ on a total of ‘193 million acres of land.’ As well as agents in the field, the outfit has a law-enforcement unit based in Washington, D.C., whose responsibility it is to enforce federal laws and regulations. In context, those 320,000 rounds look a lot less threatening: ….for an organization that covers an area the size of Pakistan (or twice the size of Japan or Germany).”

If concern is keeping you from your beauty sleep, you should read it all here.

Via Instapundit.

The Sarah Palin administration

Super good idea to quash her seriousness deficit. I especially like John Bolton as secretary of state. Nobody takes Hilarity seriously, but everybody would pay attention to Bolton. Also Petraeus as secretary of defense.

And so on. Let them address the policy questions the overpaid, blow-dry journos like to pretend they understand. One thing seems dead certain to me. No matter how bad Barry is between now and then, no white guy is going to beat him in 2012. But a woman could.

Suck-ups

"Sucking up to a black politician does not mean that you are colorblind," says the subhead on this delightful analysis at National Review Online, a conservative publication the Dems’ proposed assault on conservative talk radio will not affect, unless they try to repeal the First Amendment.

Indeed, we’ve been through this before. In the 1980s when Jesse Jackson ran for the Dem nomination, and again about ten years later when Gen. Colin Powell was touted by insiders for the Rep nomination. Jackson lost, Powell declined to run (and now we know why, he wasn’t a conservative).

Not to mention the Rep appointment of two black secretaries of state, though only Powell was celebrated. Condoleeza Rice was villified even by some American Africans (my preferred locution).

It’s touching to see some American Africans get emotional at Barry’s election. But Big Media’s claim that only now could a black man have been elected is the usual liberal blather. I wish that Barry was descended from American Africans, as Jackson, Powell and Rice are. Instead he’s the first Kenyan-American elected president (his Kenyan father never became a citizen). That’s not nearly the same thing as an election finally resolving America’s racial past and continuing combustion, as Barry’s cult would have us believe. It’s also sad that the first black man elected president is a dishonest radical more skilled at speechifying, breaking campaign finance laws, and promoting vote fraud than anything else.

Two points is “a solid lead”?

According to the propagandists at Associated Press, anyhow, who set a new standard for bias.

UPDATE:  Meanwhile, Mac gives Letterman-the-bore his biggest audience in three years. WUWT?

Iraq update

Not the gloom and doom narrative you find in the MSM, in fact rather opposed to their view:

"[M]orale among our guys is very high. They not only believe that they are winning, but that they are winning decisively. They are stunned and dismayed by what they see in the American press, whom they almost universally view as against them. The embedded reporters are despised and distrusted."

Interesting look at the overall tactical situation in Iraq by Cliff May at The Corner at the conservative National Review Online–a magazine few media subscribe to, altho they all get The [liberal] Nation. Worth a read.

UPDATE  Well I was fooled and I don’t appreciate it one bit. I have emailed The Corner to see what they have to say about this, although I don’t see any effort on their part to claim it is new, when it is more than a year old, but they didn’t point out that it was old, either. Thanks a bunch, NRO.