Roberts: 78-22. Next one, please

John Roberts is the 17th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. After Senate’s confirmation, with 78 votes in favour and 22 against, Roberts sworn in at the White House and became, at 50 years of age, the youngest Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in the last two centuries. Now, United States wait for the next nomination by President Bush. And after the moderate that succeeded to divide the Democrats in the Senate, the conservative wing of Repubblican Party claims its own man. It will be a deathmatch.

MSM: TgCom (italiano), Fox News, CNN, ABC News, Washington Post, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Jurist.
Blogs: Confirm Them (2-3-4), Powerline, Conservative Outpost, Bench Memos, Professor Bainbridge, Michelle Malkin, Libertarian Leanings, Underneath Their Robes, Angry in the Great White North, All Things Beautiful, Viking Pundit, RedState, Blogs for Bush, Outside the Beltway, GOP Bloggers, The Moderate Voice, Protein Wisdom, Right Voices, The Cassandra Page, Wizbang!, The Political Teen, Althouse, The Sundries Shack, In the Bullpen, Stones Cry Out, Barking Moonbats EWS.

Double standard

Just imagine a Republican senator, powerful and white. Just imagine a young (but not too much) lady that has been working in his staff for years. Just imagine that this staffer breaks a couple of federal laws (by her initiative?) to get restricted documents concerning a political opponent of the senator. Just imagine that this opponent one is Democratic and black. Just imagine The New York Times’ headlines on the affair. Print them in your head. Now keep on imagining the same story without changing a single word, but just swapping the names of the two parties. Just imagine that the senator, powerful and white, is the Democrat Chuck Schumer. And that his opponent is the Republican Michael Steele, few months away from a difficult electoral challenge in Maryland. Now try again to imagine The New York Times’ headlines. What do you say? Can’t you imagine them at all? That’s my point.

MSM: New York Post, Washington Times, Washington Post, WBAL, The Hill, RenewAmerica, Newsday, Men's News Daily.
Blogs: Michelle Malkin (2-3) , Hugh Hewitt (2), Radio Blogger, Captain's Quarters, Jack Yoest, The Hedgehog Report, Polipuntdit, Jeff Gannon, Kennedy vs The Machine, GOP Bloggers, Atlas Blogged, David Boyd, The Political Teen, Powerpundit, Gall & Wormwood, Conservative Outpost, Conservative Musings, Scipio the Metafalcon, Politickal, Thoughts Online, The New Editor, Political Fan, Boxer Watch, Swanky Conservative.

Weekend Round-Up/3. Blogosphere (USA)

GOP / RIGHTIES
The Third Republican Revolution?
Ace of Spades HQ
Colin Powell with Clout
Powerline
Not having any fun?
The Anchoress
Roberts’s Answers to Written Questions
Patterico's Pontifications
Judge Roberts’ Litmus Test
California Conservative
RSC takes leadership on fiscal conservatism
RedState.org

DEMS / LEFTIES
A Day Among the Moonbats
Michelle Malkin
The Protest That Wasn't
No Oil for Pacifists
Conspiracy Theories Abound
at Sheehan Antiwar Rally
The Jawa Report
Waiting on Ramsey Clark!
Gateway Pundit
Clinton Criticizes Bush
on ABC's This Week (Yawn!)
A Large Regular
Polarization and the Blogosphere
The QandO Blog
Would the Last One Leaving
Punch Out His Lights, Please?
The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Air America's Odd Pledge Drive
The Radio Equalizer
Democrats on filibuster: Just say no!
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Get the ACLU Off the Taxpayers Dole
Musing Minds
Barbara Boxer on Katrina Lessons
Learned: Only Blame Republicans
Independent Sources

WAR ON TERROR
Battle For Mosul III: Prelude
Michael Yon
Who Is Dr. Preisser?
Captain's Quarters
Hostage Forced to Bash Bush
The Jawa Report
0% of Polled Americans are in Iraq
Say Anything

VARIOUS
Never Pay Retail
JohnTabin.com
Michael Schiavo Speaks at Ethics Conference
Hyscience
The Minute Men & Their Opponents
NY Girl
It takes a disaster
Sisu

ROUND-UPs
Countdown to the weekend
Nif
Breakfast and Lunch
Basil's Blog
Open Trackbacks
My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy
Carnival of the Trackbacks
Wizbang!

Weekend Round-Up/2. New Media

Katrina Recovery (pdf)
Newt Gingrich, Newt.org
Hurricane Tracker
Msnbc.com
The Communist Menace Reappears in South America
A.M. Mora y Leon, RealClearPolitics
The Matter with Kansas Can Be
Understood at Woolworth's
Lee Harris, Tech Central Station
“Oh No, the BBC!”
Rich Lowry, The Corner
The Technorati Candidate
Dominic Basulto, Tech Central Station
Can Bloggers Strike It Rich?
Adam L. Penenberg, Wired News
Warren Beatty: Schwarzenegger “Fascist”
NewsMax.com
Left-wing Monsters: Arafat
David Meir-Levi, FrontPageMagazine
Israel: Al-Qaida likely in Gaza
Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily.com
New Florida Poll: Gov. Jeb Bush
Could Capture U.S. Senate Seat
NewsmMax.com
Jimmy Carter: Gore beat Bush in 2000
Joe Kovacs, WorldNetDaily.com
Rush Limbaugh Named 'Personality of the Year'
NewsMax.com
Press Corps "Stuck on Stupid" Questions
RushLimbaugh.com
Google builds an empire to rival Microsoft
Elinor Mills, CNET News.com

Weekend Round-Up/1. Mainstream Media

Goodbye to All That.
Is this the end of “compassionate conservatism”?
Jonah Goldberg, National Review
Back to Basics
William Kristol, Weekly Standard
Whatever It Takes
Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
Judiciary Committee approves Roberts
Charles Hurt, Washington Times
The Wrong Battle
Eleanor Clift, Newsweek
For '08 Dems, a tough choice lies just ahead
Jonathan Allen, The Hill
Roberts vote presents dilemma for Senate Democrats
Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor
President Bush Is ‘‘Our Bull Connor’’
Meghan Clyne, New York Sun
New Orleans disaster highlights
the failure of the welfare state
Rich Lowry, Salt Lake Tribune
Snubbing Democracy
Ralph Peters, New York Post
The Reporters Who Didn't Bark
Hugh Hewitt, Weekly Standard
Long Run. Unfortunately, Kerry Isn't Giving Up
Michael Crowley, New Republic
Dr. Wolfowitz, I Presume
Paul A. Gigot, Wall Street Journal
Castro's Web
Investor's Daily Business

Blogs, the Free Market of Ideas

There are at least two obligatory readings for the ones that want to try to understand, though with a little delay, the revolution that is shaking the roots of the world information system. The first one is "Blog", written at the beginning of this year by American Hugh Hewitt, right-wing talk radio host, blogstar and emerging author of the new conservative publishing trade. The second one is "Blog Generation", by Italian Giuseppe Granieri, one of the main Italian experts on communication and our country's digital cultures (he writes, among other media, for "Il Sole 24Ore") and early-blogger who defines himself a "reasonable progressive". We are talking about two books very different one from the other but which - notwithstanding the ideological extraction of their authors - get to a surprisingly similar conclusion: the love story between public opinion and traditional media is over. And something else - you can call it blogsphere, if you wish - is gradually filling this trust-vacuum. (continues on Ideazione.com)

Happy Birthday to The Right Nation! :)

On September 21, 2004, with this post, came to life The Right Nation, whose name was at that time "Usa 2004. Ideazione.com’s electoral blog". After the hot campaign ended up with President Bush’s victory – and after an endless night that we will not forget so easily (also because our forecast was this) – came to birth the Right Nation you know today. It has been a very long, difficult and exciting year that let us make a huge amount of friends (real friends) and that witnessed the birth of a virtual creature that is still moving his first steps but looks destined to run for a long time in cyberspace’s prairies. Many best wishes to ourselves, and thousands of days as this one! :)

Same Face, Same Race

A wonderful post by Mariniello puts some light on the alarming similarities between italian extreme left and extreme right. Thirty years ago, with the due proportions, the situation was not very different.

"The people’s tribunal decided to put an end to the sinister work of Francesco Coco and sentenced him to death. Now this sentence was executed and the people’s torturers can be sure that if proletariat has an infinite patience it also has an astonishing memory, and that at the end nothing will remain unpunished. The judiciary, police, carabinieri, jails make up by now a single block, they are the basic articulations of a same military front that the multinationals’ state is lining up against proletariat. The only power alternative is the armed struggle for communism. It will be needed to sharpen the regime’s crisis, aiming the attack to the state’s heart, it is needed to give strength to the armed proletariat’s power building the fighting party". (June 8, 1976 – Red Brigades: claim of the homicide of Genoa’s general attorney, Francesco Coco)

"The bourgeois justice gets up to the life jail sentence, revolutionary justice goes beyond. A special tribunal has judged Vittorio Occorsio and found him guilty to have, for career opportunism, served democratic dictatorship, persecuting Ordine Nuovo’s militants, the ideas of which they are bearers. The inquisition’s attitude kept by the system’s serf Occorsio does not deserve any clemency. The fury used by him in hitting the “ordinovisti” degraded him to the level of a executioner. Also the executioners die. The sentence emitted by the tribunal of the political movement Ordine Nuovo is one of death, and it will be executed by a special operative nucleus. Forward for thwe new order!" (July 10, 1976 - Ordine Nuovo: claim of the homicide of Roma’s general attorney, Vittorio Occorsio)

* Note for American Readers: Red Brigades (extreme left) and Ordine Nuovo (extreme right) were terrorist groups operating in Italy in the 70's/80's.

Freedom Fighters/3

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free". (Ronald Reagan, 1984)

Freedom Fighters/2

"Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue". (Barry Goldwater, 1964)

Freedom Fighters/1

"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub". (Grover Norquist, 2001).

Don't Panic!

At a first sight, it looks like there cannot be no doubts: US citizens are fed up with George W. Bush. Less than a year from his triumphant re-election, the White House tenant is crushing in all the public opinion polls, in some cases even sliding below the “fatal threshold" of 40%. In Newsweek’s poll, as an example, the President doesn’t go beyond an embarrassing 38%. And Bush’s image is put under heavy pressure also by the polls of FoxNews (41%), CBS News and New York Times (41%), NBC News and Wall Street Journal (40%), ABC News and Washington Post (42%), Pew Research (40%), Time (42%). So, is it all true? Are finally right (for once) the media that – on both shores of the Atlantic Ocean – keep shooting at the Republican administration? The question is more complicated than it looks to be. Because at least two pollsters, in the last days, have been drawing an after all reassuring scenario for the American right in sight of 2006 mid-term elections. And we are dealing with polls that, for a series of very sound reasons, we have to keep in the highest consideration. Gallup’s figures (for CNN and Usa Today), which since decades are considered the most reliable index of job-approval of a President, for instance, show Bush in growth at 46%. While Rasmussen Reports (that is the source of the above graph) sees the President swinging around 47% from the beginning of September, without never getting below 44%. It’s interesting to note how Rasmussen, differing from all remaining pollsters, keeps on measuring job approval on a daily basis since the start of 2004, using a broader sample than his competitors and summing the data related to a time span of three day to minimize the influence of “statistical noise”. Well, without background noises, Bush’s figures are by far less ugly than newspapers tell us. Without counting that the most faithful supporters of the President can find a further reason not to surrender to defeatism. Do you know who was, last November, the pollster that - while Zogby fussed with numbers (literally) – forecast with the closest precision the outcome of the presidential elections and of the individual challenges of House, Senate and Governorships? We provide you a hint: his name starts by Rasm and ends by Ussen.

Shattered Germany

Merkel lost. Schröder lost. Germany lost.

Chicken Flu

Catwalk

(ANSA) NEW YORK, 16 SET- At Bill Clinton’s counter-summit is programmed a speech by Hillary: the New York State Senator will talk about global climate change. Many other political VIPs are expected to participate to what just yesterday Clinton called “not a catwalk, but a forum where concrete engagements are signed”: among them Romano Prodi, leader of the Unione (editor’s note: the coalition of Italian leftist parties), scheduled for a panel on religion as a source of conflict but also of reconciliation.

(AP) NEW YORK, 16 settembre, 6:24 PM EDT – If it's a conference on global issues, there must be celebrities. The ever-so-hot trend of famous faces showing up at what would seem to be policy wonk heaven was in full effect at the Clinton Global Initiative conference, organized by the former president. Singer Elvis Costello was spotted chatting with Clinton at a late-night party Thursday, and media mogul Oprah Winfrey attended a session on poverty. Actors Brad Pitt and Chris Tucker and hip-hop entrepreneur Sean "Diddy" Combs went to a luncheon on Friday.

McCarthy Was Right

The fact that Joe McCarthy liked to choose his own targets has never been a mistery. At least since the marines in Guadalcanal base decided to call him “Tail Gunner Joe”, beause he liked to fire from the back machine guns of Helldivers bombers during his patrol missions in South Pacific. The accuracy of his aim, however, would have been unknown for many decades, until the partial disclosure of KGB in Moscow and the declassification of the Venona Project that were to render justice to his anticommunist battle. The only ones to know the truth, up to that moment, were just his enemies.

On Ideazione.com, in addition to recent op-eds by Giuliano Ferrara and Paolo Guzzanti on the same subject, the four (long) articles on McCarthy’s life written by myself in January-February of this year for Il Foglio. "The true McCarthy’s story" (not the one told by George Clooney, just to be clear) is divided into four chapters: 1) The Senator that came from nowhere; 2) McCarthy’s first move; 3) Tail-Gunner Joe goes to war; 4) The sunset of the red-hunter.

9/11

Tribute to America

"This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States. When the franc was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there... I saw it! When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, war-mongering Americans. I'd like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplanes. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don't they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon - not once, but several times - and safely home again. You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft-dodgers are not pursued and hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don't think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I'm one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high".
(Gordon Sinclair, June 5th 1973)

What Lies Beneath/2

There is somebody even more guilty than New Orleans' Mayor, in this tragedy. We are talking about the democratic Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco. Up to the last moment, and against any common sense, Ms Blanco kept on denying her authorization to evacuate the city. And we had to wait Fox News to learn about the very rough quarrel between the Mayor and the Governor on this subject. As it's pointed out by Hugh Hewitt and The Corner of The National Review, moreover, Ms Blanco inhibited Red Cross to deliver foodstuff and other relief materials into Superdome after the transit of the hurricane (and just before the flooding), with the purpose to "oblige" people to leave New Orleans. The same people for whom she had inihibited the forced evacuation. If you don't believe to the usual Fox News (here is the video, via The Political Teen), you can check directly in Red Cross' website. On the contrary, if you have healthy brains, you can also read the transcript of the radio interview by Hewitt to the reporter (Major Garret) that broke the news. The Mudville Gazette, lastly, gets into the embarassing details of a political confrontation between the Mayor and the Governor that is taking place since April 2003. As Glenn Reynolds writes, "many politicians will regret starting up the finger-pointing operations so soon". Nearly all of them are Democrats. (italian version)

What Lies Beneath/1

(click to enlarge the picture)

A blast of resounding news overturns, abruptly, the crossfire of accusations between Democrats and Republicans on the dredful management of Katrina's emergency in New Orleans. Here is the first one. As it appears dramatically in the above picture (click here to get an enlargment), taken by a NASA satellite on August 31 at 10 AM, a big bridge on Mississippi river (the Crescent City Connection) and his entrance ramps were still accessible from downtown. In at least four areas not yet reached by water one can observe very well about 500 buses, that could have been used to remove people "detained" by Mayor Nagin inside Superdome or Convention Center. Exactly the same number of buses Nagin revealed to have asked for to the Bush administration, charging it not to have gotten into action on time. And they were available four days before evacuation from Superdome (source: Rambling's Journal via Protein Wisdom). Back on September 3, thanks to Google Earth, JunkYardBlog had discovered 146 buses parked at less than a mile from the stadium. Clearly, explains Newsmax, Mayor Nagin did not settle for a worn yellow school-bus, but was looking for Greyhound's unmatched comfort.

Charles Murray: Human Accomplishment

Defining and measuring the topology of excellence in the arts and sciences over a span of some three millennia, Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment scales the alpine peaks of human achievement and then plumbs their foundations. In a world of cultural relativism and sentimental diversity. he dares expound a theory of hierarchy founded on enduring structures of thoughts and objective ideals. [...] Joining the titans he celebrates, Murray's tome displays both the "intellectual structure" and the "transcendental gods" that mark a work of genius. (George Gilder, on Charles Murray's Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts and Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950) (italian version)

(Late) Weekend Round-Up

Late Round-up, this week, but with many irons in the fire. But let’s proceed with order, starting from the beginning of last week. ►Burtonia Blogs (via The Corner) restores the truth about geografic distribution of American casualties in Iraq, after the usual notorious ones had been talking really big (did somebody say “jackals"?). ►The ones, as ourselves, who always undertood little about “Able Danger’s case”, could find a useful guide in The Strata-Sphere’s round-up. ►ThinkDude’s time-line on Air America scandal is a masterpiece. In the meantime Brian Mahoney and Michelle Malkin keeep on hitting tough. ►George Trefgarne, on The Daily Telegraph, has no doubts: flat tax is on his way to the United Kingdom. No matter if Gordon Brown wants it or not. ►Interesting editorial by Robert L. Pollock, from The Wall Street Journal, on Ahmed Chalabi’s return into iraqui political scenery. ►Who showed more incompetence on Sheehan’s case, Bush administration or mainstream media? The answer provided by McQ on Qando Blog doesn’t leave room to other replies. ►When Jay Nordlinger, The National Review’s managing editor, writes a new Impromptus is always an big event. But the last two series of his column (one and two) are truly spectacular. ►Libertas has something to say to George Clooney. ►NYgirl points out a study by the Georgetown Law Journal that analyses the contributions to political parties, in the last 11 years, from the professors of the best Us Universities. The gap between democrats and republicans is impressing: 81% versus 15%. As Brian C. Anderson often wrote on The City Journal, campuses are the next wall that the Right Nation is going to crush. Other details on this subject, in this article by John Braeman on The FrontPage Magazine. ►In Hollywood movies, nowadays, the ones that smoke are just the losers. Usually, the good guys shoot up and burn the flag. ►The latest round-ups by Basil and Nif are, as usual, much better than mine (even though TJ was getting over one of his hangovers!). ►Fom The Jawa Report, a good news: american hostage Roy Hallums was fred in Iraq by the coalition forces. ►bRight and Early is a great place to watch the war being fighted between republicans and democrats for the Supreme Court. It’s enough to give a look to its posts filed in the category Scotus. Whoever is interested to more technical details should often make a jump to The Supreme Court Nomination Blog. ►Let’s end up with the tragedy caused by Katrina hurricane. Instapundit publishes an impressing list of blogs that activated themselves to collect funds for the victims (we just point out also the wonderful initiative by Lisistrata). In the meantime, the roughly 2000 blog that participated to the Blog Relief Weekend of The Truth Laid Bear collected almost 8 million dollars. Brendan Loy, author of The Irish Trojan's Blog, reported as anybody else did – minute after minute – the devastating arrival of Katrina to Us shores. If you have still any doubt over the fact that New Orleans’ Mayor, Ray Nagin, FEMA chief, Michael Brown, and, above all, Louisiana’s Governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, are the three real responsible for the carnage, read - in reverse chronological order – the posts published on his blog (here the ones before August 30, and here the following ones). Or keep put the charge on Bush, as the 13% of Americans are doing (but wasn’t it supposed to be the final blow to his presidency?). Wuzzadem.com (via My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy) tells us, with a strong dose of black humour (first and second part), how media have faced the catastrophe. We’d better laugh about it. (italian version)

Braveheart Clooney

Luca Perego, on Il Solitario, reports that the newspaper Repubblica defines George Clooney "a brave man" because he directed a movie about Edward R. Murrow (the movie was presented yesterday af the Venice Film Festival). Murrow was the host of See It Now, a CBS (yes, the Dan Rather's one) program that became famous after a special edition broadcasted in march of 1954 which basically destroyed Senator Joe McCarthy's political career. We totally agree with Luca's post on his amazing blog. And we only dare to add a brief extract (with translation, because the book was never published in Italy) by Arthur Herman's "Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America's Most Hated Senator", one of the best biographies written about Tail-Gunner Joe in the United States.

[...] Host Edward R. Murrow had spent two months putting together what he described as a "report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy". Murrow and his staff had meticulously cut and edited film clips to put McCarthy in the worst possible light. The result was appalling [...] Despite CBS's pretentios, "See It Now" was not a report at all but a full-scale assault, employing exactly the same techniques of "partial truth and innuendo" that critics accused McCarthy of using. [...] However, most liberals loved it, and Murrow became a hero. (italian version)

Hurricanes

"Katrina has nothing to do with global warming. Nothing. [...] But environmental extremists do not want to be bothered with the facts. Nor do they wish to mourn the destruction and death wreaked on a glorious city. To their everlasting shame, they would rather distort and exploit". (James K. Glassman) (italian version)

Disgusting

James K. Glassman, on Tech Central Station, explains how environmentalists are exploiting the tragedy caused by Katrina hurricane in Louisiana to advance their political agenda. Glassman uses the most fitting word: "disgusting". Just like Kos (at least he's not a Kennedy, though). (italian version)