In Washington, white shirts and dark suites are de rigueur, but rarely do you see the three-piece ensemble—especially in mid-August. The exception is Bob Novak, who a few days ago revealed his reasoning: "It looked better on television to see a vest than a big old belly."
Bruce Bartlett welcomes William Kristol and Kathryn Lopez to the conservatives-in-praise-of-Hillary club.
Meet the First Ladies Club: Jeri Thompson (courtesy of the Post), Judith Giuliani (Vanity Fair), Elizabeth Edwards (the Post), and Michelle Obama (the Times).
"A unique chapter in White House history came to a conclusion last week," writes Fred Barnes. "Call it the Wehner era, as in Peter Wehner, the director of the office of strategic initiatives. The title is misleading. Wehner ran a one-man think tank inside the White House (with a few young research assistants) that brought scholars and thinkers to talk to President Bush and that e-mailed ideas and information to several hundred journalists and writers and intellectuals and policy entrepreneurs. His missives became known as Wehnergrams [link added], but there will be no more of them. Friday, August 3, was his last day at the White House."
But Wehner is no shrinking violet. Now using the byline of senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center (like Rick Santorum), he has already penned a defense of his former boss, chief White House speechwriter Michael Gerson, whom Gerson's colleague, Matthew Scully, pillories in this month's Atlantic.
Friday, August 10, 2007
The Daily Digest
Thursday, July 26, 2007
The Prince of Darkness Can Smile
From a breakfast I attended this morning; write-up to follow.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
The Daily Digest
"The decision to adopt Hillary and drop Clinton has nothing whatsoever casual to it," observes Tod Lindberg.
David Frum notes three elementary mistakes in Bob Novak's memoirs: (1) Novak and Frum lunched, only once, at the Oval Room on November 21, 2001, not at the Hay Adams on September 19, 2001. (2) Frum began work as a White House speechwriter in January, not March, 2001. (3) Frum does not live in Georgetown, which Novak should know because he's been to Frum's house for dinner.
Check out the best of Reagan's TV ads from his 1984 campaign.
Does Daily Kos violate McCain-Feingold? According to a complaint filed with the FEC, "It surely spends at least $1,000 per year in hosting and based on what they charge (and get) for advertising, their support of candidates is certainly worth over $1,000 per year. Lastly, their self-identified purpose is to influence elections in the Democrats favor." David Freddoso draws the appropriate conclusion: "None of this is an argument for regulating Kos, but rather an argument for abolishing the silly campaign finance regime that that the Kos-krazies and their ilk have pushed on us for a generation now."
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
The Daily Digest
Choose your URL carefully. A site called Who Represents, where you can look up agents who represent celebrities, is available at www.whorepresents.com. Looking for a pen? Look no further than Pen Island at www.penisland.net. Need a therapist? Try Therapist Finder at www.therapistfinder.com. More examples here.
Jonathan Martin and Dave Keene read Bob Novak's memoirs so you don't have to.
Is Bill Richardson the much-hyped but little-confirmed libertarian Democrat? Dave Weigel investigates.
Mickey Kaus "hears rumblings" that the NYT will soon scrap its TimesSelect experiment.
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
The Daily Digest
How much money does Bob Novak make?
Of Valerie Plame Wilson, Novak asserts, "I don’t think she was an important person in the C.I.A." Deroy Murdock highlights evidence to the contrary.
Meet Jeremy Lott, my boss when I interned at the Cato Institute and now the Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow at Cato's libertarian sister, the Competitive Enterprise Institute. (He blogs here.)
John McCain was never going to win the Republican nomination for president. As Sean Higgins of IBD argues (and Phil Klein backs up), "McCain's status as a politician with a national following is based solely on a single win in New Hampshire eight years ago that had as much to do with his rivals' mistakes as anything else. He's never demonstrated any ability to win over Republican voters nationally. Given these facts, the question isn't why his campaign is faltering now but why is anyone surprised by this?"
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