As I Please has had a pretty good run, but recently I've grown dissatisfied with the format. Take a look at the "Topics" list and you'll see what I mean. With so much going on, AIP has come to suffer from from a decided lack of focus.

Over the next couple of weeks, therefore, I plan to phase out AIP, replacing it with two or three new blogs. Tentatively, one will deal strictly with politics and foreign policy, one will deal with what may broadly be described as the liberal arts, and one will deal with the movies (an abiding interest of mine).

As the new blogs are established, announcements will appear here. The new politics blog will probably be founded first. Watch this space for the link.

Posted by tmg110 at 7:10 AM CDT

Updated: Monday, 19 March 2007 7:22 AM CDT

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Malicious, cowardly, stupid—these three little words sum up the decision by the Nevada Democratic Party to pull out of a presidential debate broadcast agreement with Fox News.

Malicious because it represents an ugly little assault on the freedom of the press

Cowardly because it shows that the Democratic Party is afraid to have its presidential candidates face tough questions

Stupid because it prevents large numbers of people from hearing what the Democratic presidential candidates have to say

With each passing day, I find myself feeling better about GOP prospects in 2008.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:52 AM CST

Updated: Saturday, 10 March 2007 10:03 AM CST

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The Scooter Libby trial was a disgrace, plain and simple. No one comes out of it looking good—not the bungling defense, not the monomaniacal prosecutor, not the hate-Bush opposition, not the Bush Administration itself. As for Libby himself, his life has been ruined by a blatantly partisan process whose objective is the criminalization of political differences.

If President George W. Bush doesn’t pardon Scooter Libby—and soon—that’s the end of his presidency as far as I’m concerned. A man who would permit such a crying injustice to stand has no claim on my continued support.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:06 AM CST

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According to that true man of the people, former Senator John Edwards, Americans just suck: "I think that Jesus would be disappointed in our ignoring the plight of those around us who are suffering and our focus on our own selfish short-term needs. I think he would be appalled, actually."

What he really means to imply, of course, is that Jesus, were he alive today, would be a progressive supporter of higher taxes, universal health care, alternate energy, affirmative action, the fairness doctrine etc., etc.

It's always amusing when a liberal Democrat tries to get God on his side. In Edwards' case, it's plain hilarious.

Posted by tmg110 at 6:47 AM CST

Updated: Tuesday, 6 March 2007 12:35 PM CST

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A thought on the Walter Reed scandal (with apologies to George Bernard Shaw): The American soldier can stand up to anything except the American politician.

Knowing the Army as I do, I was totally unsurprised by the news that wounded soldiers at Waller Reed Army Medical Center were being poorly treated in some respects. I could easily image what had happened: the hospital's resources swamped by an influx of combat-wounded troops, housing shortages, budget difficulties, bureaucratic buck passing. No one intended to do wrong by the troops, not really, but people were still operating on peacetime assumptions. "It's not my problem," they told themselves, and kicked the can down the road. This is no excuse for what happened, but it's the reality of life inside an enormous bureaucracy.

We have leaders, civilian and military, to cut through the bureaucratic red tape when action is urgently needed. That's what these people are paid to do—and they utterly failed to do it in this instance. Kudos to President Bush and Secretary of Defense Gates for taking immediate forceful action when the scandal came to their attention. But why, why, did it take so long for the Commander-in-Chief to get the message? Were I the President, with the responsibility for ordering men into battle, I'd be taking a personal, daily interest in the welfare of the wounded. George W. Bush didn't do that. Presumably he trusted the bureaucrats to do the right thing. Really, Mr. President, you should have known better. And this scandal will remain as a deserved blot on your record.

Posted by tmg110 at 6:32 AM CST

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I’m surely not the first person who has wondered about this, but still it’s a point worth pondering.

In the wake of the Taliban suicide bombing in Afghanistan, which the enemy claimed was aimed at Vice President Dick Cheney, the lefty blogosphere erupted into a perfect storm of vicious hatred—against the Veep. At the Huffington Post it got so bad that they had to close the relevant discussion thread, and this morning I see that they’ve deleted most of the ugly comments.

That Dick Cheney is the evil mastermind of the quasi-fascist Bush Administration is, of course, a staple of progressive blog commentary. In the lefty fever swamps, you can’t swing a copy of the Nation without hitting someone who’ll grab you by the sleeve and scream in your ear that the nefarious Cheney planned the 9/11 attacks—doubtless with the undercover assistance of the wicked Jews. But how many angry progressives actually believe all that sort of stuff?

I suspect not many. Oh, they’re angry, all right—but what gets them all hot under the collar is plain old reality. The world simply refuses to arrange itself in the way that progressives prefer. So they get mad. And all that anger needs a target. So they invent bogeymen, e.g. Chimpy McBushitler.

The dishonesty of contemporary progressivism is a broad-spectrum phenomenon: not only intellectual, but emotional as well. Which is a fancy way of saying that all that anger radiating from the lefty blogosphere is as phony as a Clinton crying jag.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:51 AM CST

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