Tancredo’s threat

The Washington Times

When he was a little boy, Tommy Tancredo must have wanted to be controversial when he grew up. Fourth-term House Republican Tom Tancredo of Colorado has made his biggest mark in Congress as a hard-line opponent of illegal immigration and the president’s plans for immigration reform. As if that button were not hot enough, he recently mused on a radio program that in response to a terrorist nuclear detonation in the United States, the American government ought to consider a retaliatory nuclear strike against Muslim holy sites.

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Hubbub on the blogs

The Washington Times

I don’t have a new theory to add to the mix in the Plame Game, but the speculation on the Web has been immensely entertaining and interesting. The exchange between Cliff May on National Review’s Corner and David Corn of the Nation and davidcorn.com has been rich. My old friend John Podhoretz’s interventions, also at the Corner, de-centering the action from the Bush White House to the media players, have been similarly fascinating.

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Terrorism and the markets

The Washington Times

By the time of the stock market close in New York on July 7, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up a little, notwithstanding the bombs in London. The next day, the Dow closed at 10,449, up 144 points. The FTSE 100, the main London index, dropped 1.4 percent the day of the attack but the next day more than recovered the loss, closing at 5232, or about five points off the 52-week high.

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Africa and human rights abuses

The Washington Times

In a speech Thursday in anticipation of this week’s G8 summit in Scotland, President Bush laid out an agenda for greater U.S. engagement in what remains the single greatest challenge to a sense of common humanity: stopping the killing, stopping the dying, and starting in earnest a process that will bring the benefits of the modernized, developed world to the people of Africa.

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A test for “Europe whole and free”

The Washington Times

There’s an important election next Sunday, one that may make a significant difference not only to the prospects for consolidating a democratic transition, but also to regional peace, security and stability, and to the question of whether “Europe whole and free” still has meaning after the failure of the EU Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands. It’s in Albania. That’s right, Albania.

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A Fix on Downing Street

About that supposed smoking-gun memo.

View this article at The Weekly Standard

AS LEAKED GOVERNMENT DOCUMENTS GO, the “Downing Street Memo” is pretty sexy. Not actually a memo but the official notes of a July 23, 2002, meeting in the British prime minister’s office, the document reproduces the thoughts and concerns about Iraq of Tony Blair and his key advisers, including his foreign and defense secretaries, his attorney general, and “C”–code for Sir Richard Dearlove, the head of MI6, Britain’s foreign intelligence service, recently returned from high-level meetings in Washington. Rarely do you find an open window on such a high-level discussion, especially on a matter that will take a country to war a scant nine months later.

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