How Liberals Lost A Liberal
Dennis Prager (Jewish World Review)
The Democratic Party's preoccupation with the question of when America will leave Iraq rather than with how America will win in Iraq reminds me of how and why this nearly lifelong liberal and Democrat became identified as a conservative and Republican activist. I have identified as liberal all my life. How could I not? I was raised a Jew in New York City, where I did graduate work in the social sciences at Columbia University.

A Living Lie
Thomas Sowell (National Review)
Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them." Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far Left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the Left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.

Obama’s Anger At The U.s.
David Limbaugh (WorldNetDaily)
One of the silver linings of the mostly dismal presidential campaign has been that Democrats have finally come to see -- perhaps admit is a better word -- that the Clintons are pathological and ruthless power addicts. But that late-coming epiphany looks increasingly irrelevant, as the ascendancy of Barack Obama delivers a whole new set of deeply troubling concerns.

Already Guilty at 6
Mark Steyn (New York Sun)
Is American public education a form of child abuse? A week ago, The Washington Post's Brigid Schulte reported on a student named Randy Castro who attends school in Woodbridge, Virginia. Last November at recess he slapped a classmate on her bottom. The teacher took him to the principal. School officials wrote up an incident report and then called the police.

The Holocaust Declaration
Charles Krauthammer (National Review)
On Tuesday, Iran announced it was installing 6,000 more centrifuges -- they produce enriched uranium, the key ingredient of a nuclear weapon -- in addition to the 3,000 already operating. The world yawned. It is time to admit the truth: The Bush administration’s attempt to halt Iran’s nuclear program has failed. Utterly. The latest round of U.N. Security Council sanctions, which took a year to achieve, is comically weak.

Ahmadinejad’s Smile
Caroline Glick (Jerusalem Post)
The regime-affiliated Iranian Fars news agency published a sensational story this week. According to the Fars report, Saudi Arabia and Israel collaborated in killing Iranian terror-master Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February. The story is important regardless of whether it is true. It is important because it says something important about the nature of Iran's relationship with Syria.

National Security Is The Issue
David Limbaugh (WorldNetDaily)
While there is plenty of room for robust debate about Iraq, what concerns me is that the direction of this discussion has, ironically, taken our eyes off the real ball, which is our national security. Don't get me wrong. I believe the Iraq war has everything to do with our national security.

From King to Mugabe
Bret Stephens (Wall Street Journal)
In 1986, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst awarded Robert Mugabe an honorary degree. This was several years after Zimbabwe's anticolonialist "liberator" had deployed his notorious Fifth Brigade -- trained by his North Korean allies -- to murder an estimated 20,000 members of the Ndebele people. Mr. Mugabe is tribally Shona.

Things Are Looking Up In Iraq, Which Is Why The Democrats Have Forgotten About Benchmarks
Frederick W. Kagan (Weekly Standard)
The last time General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker reported to Congress on the state of the Iraq war, "benchmarks" were all the rage. Congress had established 18 criteria in early 2007 both to pressure the Iraqis and to keep score on their progress. And in September, Congress faulted the Iraqi government for failing to meet many of those measures.

Where Have All the Liberals Gone?
Victor Davis Hanson (National Review)
These days, Democrats are not sounding very liberal. Classic liberals, after all, would support free markets, internationalism, and the universal desire for constitutional government, while downplaying racial affinity. But the following examples highlight how far from these ideals today’s liberals are. Campaigning earlier this year in recession-prone Ohio, both Democratic candidates trashed the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Dreams From My Father, Lame Excuses From My Grandfather
Ann Coulter (WorldNetDaily)
Since a Chinese graduate student at Columbia University, Minghui Yu, was killed last Friday when black youths violently set upon him, sending him running into traffic to escape, I think B. Hussein Obama ought to start referring to the mindset of the "typical Asian person." As of Wednesday, police had no motive for the attack, and witnesses said they heard no demand for money or anything else.

The Genocide Loophole
Jonah Goldberg (National Review)
Last week, Russia’s lower house of parliament passed a resolution insisting that Josef Stalin’s man-made 1932-33 famine -- called the Holodomor in Ukrainian -- wasn’t genocide. Not even the Russians dispute that the Soviet government deliberately starved millions. But the Russian resolution indignantly states: "There is no historical proof that the famine was organized along ethnic lines." It notes that victims included "different peoples and nationalities living largely in agricultural areas of the country."

Nothing Succeeds Like Success
Victor Davis Hanson (Commentary Magazine)
Americans have regularly changed their minds in the midst of their ongoing wars--and not just once, but often. War is a volatile enterprise. Tactics, strategies, and commanders must be sorted out amid death and destruction before the proper combination is found to defeat the enemy. In the meantime, the reasons for going to war, the manner in which the war is fought, and the objectives for which it is waged are constantly being weighed at home against the costs of conducting it.

It’s 3 A.m. -- Do You Know Where Your Campaign Is?
Mark Steyn (National Review)
In the Clinton scenario, the 3 A.M. sleeplessness is caused by the presidential hotline on the nightstand alerting her to some sudden global crisis. In her first three-o’clock-in-the-morning ad, the phone was ringing because of a national-security emergency: al-Qaeda had hijacked nuclearized passenger jets or some such heading our way. Who do you want answering the 3 A.M. call?

Hillary’s Waterloo
Charles Krauthammer (National Review)
Hillary Clinton met her Waterloo at Tuzla. She’d been regaling audiences with tales of a dangerous landing under sniper fire in Tuzla 12 years ago and then running for cover. None of this occurred. When CBS provided the tape, she was forced to admit to "a misstatement." Now, confabulation is a fairly common psychological phenomenon. We all have internalized childhood stories so oft repeated by elders that we come to falsely "remember" the actual experience.

Obama’s Dime Store "Mein Kampf"
Ann Coulter (WorldNetDaily)
If characters from "The Hills" were to emote about race, I imagine it would sound like B. Hussein Obama's autobiography, "Dreams From My Father." Has anybody read this book? Inasmuch as the book reveals Obama to be a flabbergasting lunatic, I gather the answer is no.

No One Left to Lie To
Mark Steyn (National Review)
About this business of Hillary coming under intense sniping, I have some sympathy. The Clintons got away with this sort of thing for so long that you can’t blame them for wondering how they missed the memo advising that henceforth the old rules no longer apply. Bill, being warier, was usually canny enough to set his fantasies just far enough back in time that live cable footage was unlikely to be available -- his vivid memories of entirely mythical black church burnings in his childhood, etc.