NR PLUS

Magazine November 28, 2011, Issue

NSA Surveillance Transcript

By Rob Long

November 10, 2011 4:00 AM

Document Extract: 11.08.11

GMT 08.93

Begin Extract

UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: Hello?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: Who is this, please?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: Herman? Herman Cain? This is Bill Clinton.

HERMAN CAIN: Bill Clinton? The Bill Clinton?

BILL CLINTON: You got it!

HERMAN CAIN: What can I do for you, Mr. President?

BILL CLINTON: I thought I was returning your call.

HERMAN CAIN: No, sir. I didn’t call you.

BILL CLINTON: Are you sure?

HERMAN CAIN: I think I’d remember that.

BILL CLINTON: Heck, I know. I just wanted to reach out to you. I’ve been reading the papers and whatnot about your current . . . issues. Just wanted to say hey, how’s …

In This Issue

Articles

Politics & Policy

The Church of Grievance

By Anthony Daniels

Protest and violence are like gunpowder and explosion: It is not altogether surprising when one leads to the other. This is especially so when the protest is not the expression ...

Politics & Policy

Cristina’s Whirl

By Andrew Stuttaford

If you want to understand why Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner triumphed quite so conclusively (with 54 percent of the vote against 17 percent for her nearest challenger) in October’s ...

Politics & Policy

What’s New In Baku?

By David Pryce-Jones

Out of the blue, I found myself invited to Baku. Azerbaijan has immense deposits of oil and natural gas, and in a blithe nouveau riche spirit chooses to put itself ...

Politics & Policy

A Hero of Us All

By Jay Nordlinger

Last month, there were reports that Chen Guangcheng was dead. That they had at last killed him. “They”? China’s ruling Communists, who have tormented Chen for years. Other reports said, ...

Politics & Policy

The Great, Tragic Joe Frazier

By James Rosen

‘Don’t you know I’m God?” taunted Muhammad Ali, in the first of the epic trilogy of heavyweight prizefights with Joe Frazier that defined the early 1970s. Ali even took to ...

Features

Politics & Policy

What Is Constitutional Conservatism?

By Yuval Levin

This fall, liberals from the president on down have begun to grasp the scope of the political and intellectual disaster that the past three years have been for the Left. ...

Politics & Policy

The Freeloader Myth

By Ramesh Ponnuru

It began as a retort and became a fear. For years, when liberals would accuse conservatives of cutting taxes for the rich, our main argument was that low marginal tax ...

Politics & Policy

So You Want Debt Relief?

By Kevin D. Williamson

College loans are the big greasy grievance enchilada down at Zuccotti Park, but there’s other debt, too. One young woman was carrying a placard complaining of the $40,000 she owed ...

Politics & Policy

Conservative Foreign Aid

By Elliott Abrams

There is no softer target in GOP primaries than the United Nations and foreign-aid spending. Nonetheless, it is worth asking whether a blanket “Cut this now!” approach really makes sense, ...

Books, Arts & Manners

Politics & Policy

The Eternal Struggle

By Tyler Cowen

‘Keynes vs. Hayek” has turned out to be a more durable theme than could have been expected in the 1930s. As recently as the 1990s, big-time macroeconomic debates seemed to ...

Politics & Policy

Dwight Macdonald (1906–82) was a clamorous figure in 20th-century New York intellectual circles. Simply living here, one absorbed anecdotes about him, by osmosis: that an annoyed Trotsky said he favored ...

Politics & Policy

The Quest for Rules

By Joseph Tartakovsky

There are many ways to experience the joys of overregulation, but friends tell me that one of the finest was a dinner date in Moscow circa 1986. First, you were ...

Politics & Policy

Religious Rights

By Jacob Mchangama

This book is indispensable for anyone seeking to understand the degree to which the freedoms of religion and expression are being violated in Muslim-majority countries, and why this development has ...

Politics & Policy

The Fall

By Ross Douthat

Prosperity has a thousand fathers; economic ruin is an orphan. Few liberals want to acknowledge that our Great Recession was made, in part, in Washington, D.C., by the well-meaning politicians ...

Sections

Politics & Policy

Letters

By NR Staff

The Friedman-Durbin Amendment? In The Week (October 31), the Editors write that the Durbin amendment’s cap on the fees that merchants pay for debit-card transactions prompted banks to “transfer the fee ...

Politics & Policy

The Week

By NR Staff

‐ The headline above an Associated Press story on the 2012 election read, “Obama’s team banks on his ‘regular guy’ appeal.” We’re not in the habit of giving advice to ...

The Bent Pin

The 24-Hour Contempt Cycle

By Florence King

Americans prefer to avoid comparisons with the French lest the subject involve an area in which we could not possibly hold our own. Having already emerged as the laughingstock in ...

The Long View

NSA Surveillance Transcript

By Rob Long

Document Extract: 11.08.11 GMT 08.93 Begin Extract UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: Hello? UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE #2: Who is this, please? UNIDENTIFIED MALE VOICE: Herman? Herman Cain? This is Bill Clinton. HERMAN CAIN: Bill Clinton? The Bill Clinton? BILL ...

Athwart

Lucky Strikes, Then Lucky Charms

By James Lileks

The FDA wanted to put hideous pictures of dead people and gorge-jolting images of disease on cigarette packs, intending to warn us that smoking is bad for you. There’s one ...

Politics & Policy

Poetry

By Jennifer Reeser

GHOST AND GUEST Collapsing on a sleeping friend Upon the couch, I fell Sincerely sorry to offend This guest in my “hotel.” Our customary schedules changed, He lay as if in pitch, No boundaries, his form estranged From ...

Happy Warrior

Treadmarks

By Mark Steyn

Whenever I write in these pages about the corrosive effect of Big Government upon the citizenry in Britain, Canada, Europe, and elsewhere and note that this republic is fairly well ...