Don't think that the Powerline philosophers, who have gone without notice here for awhile, have given up on defending the indefensible. The truth is that a cursory trip through their recent posts always makes me feel like taking a shower, so during the winter months, when my skin is dry, I stay away. But the humid season is back upon us, my morbid fascination is upon me, and I have punched in their URL so you won't have to. Herewith a report.
On May 20, in "The Real Bush Record," John Hinderaker, my personal favorite of the philosophers, defends the record of the current occupant. It's not that there isn't anything to criticize. The Administration has been spending money like the mistress of an NBA star (the colorful simile is mine) and has taken a wrong, left turn on immigration. Since he's willing to admit these shortcomings you can believe Hinderaker when he announces that everything else is shipshape. Torture, extraordinary rendition, and the Bush record on job creation come in for special praise.
Of course we continue to ride a wave of glory in Iraq. As Paul Mirengoff notes in "Iraqi Troops Take Charge of Sadr City" (May 21), al-Qaeda has been "pretty much routed" and only the Congress, or possibly Barack Obama, appear "capable of reversing the current virtuous cycle in Iraq." For those who might worry that this is just wishful thinking, consider the Powerline record on Iraq. When have they, or the Administration, ever been wrong about anything?
In "Edward Kennedy's America," posted on May 21, the oleaginous Scott Johnson takes proper advantage of the senator's bad medical diagnosis by quoting Wordsworth along the way to flaming the liberal lion for having opposed, more than twenty years ago, the nomination of Robert Bork to be an associate justice of the Supreme Court. I guess when a political foe is dying decency requires that you reach back in the record to beslime him. I once spent a half hour in a book store easy chair with Bork's Slouching Towards Gomorrah and, though it would not have occurred to me to formulate it in quite this way, came away grateful to be living in Edward Kennedy's America.
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