THURSDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2008

WHY YOU NEED US.  Mark Steyn thinks you should support NRO because we are …
… your one-stop shop for a narrow doctrinaire tightly defined brand-new moderate centrist extremist fundamentalist neo-theo paleo-Palin transnational isolationist Beltway-elitist swamp-dwelling country-club oogedy-boogedy RINO-squish redneck girlyboy gun-nut big-tent wide-stance reform conservatism we believe can sweep the nation.
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UNION MEN.  David Freddoso observes that union bosses spent $110 million electing Democrats this year, and that should worry the rank-and-file:
With…increased transparency and a tripling in the number of audits of union books, OLMS has not only been able to give workers a much better picture of how unions spend their money, but it has also been able to refer many large-scale cases of embezzlement by union officials to the Justice Department. Unions have recovered $57 million in embezzled funds in the last four years — which is obviously good for the unions themselves. In the last four fiscal years of the Clinton administration, OLMS was recovering just $3.3 million per year, on average.

You’d think that OLMS’s success in thwarting inappropriate uses of union workers’ dues would have pleased the Left, but it did not. In fact, it resulted in congressional Democrats cutting the OLMS budget in 2007, amid complaints that they had too much money and too many investigators. The budget cuts were followed by dramatically smaller recoveries of embezzled funds in fiscal 2008.
LISTEN UP, OBAMA.  Victor Davis Hanson enumerates the four lessons we can take away from the Mumbai atrocities.

DO THEY EXPECT US TO TALK?  No, Clifford D. May reminds us, the Mumbai terrorists expect us to die.

IMAGE CONSULTING FOR THE GOP.  Jason Lee Steorts cautions that we need to learn from the president’s mistakes.

LUKEWARM MILK.  Mark Hemingway warns: Be prepared for the veneration of St. Harvey of San Francisco.

BILLION-DOLLAR BABIES.  Last month, it was $25 billion. This month, it is $34 billion. The Editors would rather just give the automakers bankruptcy. Kevin D. Williamson asks: Why invest in losers?

GO FOR THE GOLD.  Lewis E. Lehrman and John D. Mueller tell us how to lift the reserve-currency curse.

WE AREN’T LAUGHING, FRANKEN.  Scott Johnson finds Al Franken’s defensive antics in the Minnesota Senate recount anything but funny.

SPEAKING OF THE SENATE…  Kathryn Jean Lopez would be happy if Jeb Bush ran for Mel Martinez’s open seat in Florida.

CHOLER AND CHOLERA.  Roger Bate reports that disease — and unrest — is spreading in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

IRAN NEWS ROUNDUP.  Michael Rubin gathers the latest headlines from Iran.

UNCOMMON KNOWLEDGE.  Peter Robinson talks with Peter Thiel on how the credit crisis of 2008 has nothing to do with the free market.

Go BETWEEN THE COVERS with John J. Miller as he talks with Jonathan Brent, author of Inside the Stalin Archives.

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