McCain's Courage: A rare American politician. --National Review Online

McCain's Courage: A rare American politician.


Whether you agree with him or not, Senator McCain’s actions demonstrated the qualities we rarely see in Washington — courage, character, honor, and dignity.


--Senator Tom Coburn, National Review Online

Of Tax Cuts and Terror: New York's former mayor makes his case to be Reagan's heir. --The Wall Street Journal

Of Tax Cuts and Terror: New York's former mayor makes his case to be Reagan's heir.


Among many other things:

Speaking of justice, Mr. Giuliani has been more circumspect than some of his rivals on whether he would pardon I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. And he repeated again that he wouldn't pardon Mr. Libby "right now." On the other hand, Mr. Giuliani advanced a pretty good argument that he should never have been tried. "Perjury has to be material--it has to relate to what you're investigating," he offered. "If someone goes in front of a grand jury and tells a lie about an insignificant fact, it's a lie but it isn't perjury. There's all kinds of lying that isn't criminal . . . If the investigation is about a non-crime, when you know who did it, how could anything be material to it?" That sounds an awful lot like an argument for a pardon, even if Mr. Giuliani seems to think the time may not be right.


--Brian Carney, The Wall Street Journal

American Power: Still Number 1 --The Economist

American Power: Still Number 1

It is hard to deny that America looks weaker than it did in 2000. But is that really due to a tectonic shift or to the errors of a single administration?...

If America were a stock, it would be a “buy”: an undervalued market leader, in need of new management. But that points to its last great strength. More than any rival, America corrects itself. Under pressure from voters, Mr Bush has already rediscovered some of the charms of multilateralism; he is talking about climate change; a Middle East peace initiative is possible. Next year's presidential election offers a chance for renewal. Such corrections are not automatic: something (a misadventure in Iran?) may yet compound the misery of Iraq in the same way Watergate followed Vietnam. But America recovered from the 1970s. It will bounce back stronger again.

--The Economist