National Review endorses Romney

Romney reels in a big one, and the timing couldn't be better with Huckabee surging. Here's what the editors of National Review had to say -

"Many conservatives are finding it difficult to pick a presidential candidate. Each of the men running for the Republican nomination has strengths, and none has everything — all the traits, all the positions — we are looking for. Equally conservative analysts can reach, and have reached, different judgments in this matter. There are fine conservatives supporting each of these Republicans.

"Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization — none of the major candidates has — he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction ..."

Follow this link to read the endorsement in its entirety.

Jacoby keeps it real on Iran

Great column by the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby on Dec. 9 under the headline, "No reason to relax on Iran" -

Jacoby writes, "Now that the new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear intentions has had a few days to cool off, how does it look? A few reflections:

"1. Iran's nuclear program is alive and well. Yes, I know - the very first of the NIE's 'key judgments,' the one that launched a thousand headlines, is that 'Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program' in the fall of 2003. But what that first sentence giveth, a footnote to that sentence taketh away: 'By 'nuclear weapons program,' explains footnote 1, 'we mean Iran's declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

"But that's a distinction without a difference, since the accumulation of enriched uranium is by far the most important component in developing nuclear weapons," Jacoby writes (emphasis added. "Iran's 'civil' uranium enrichment - those 3,000 centrifuges spinning at Natanz - continues unabated, in defiance of Security Council resolutions ordering that it stops. Whether the nuclear-fuel program is labeled 'civilian' or 'military' is irrelevant. The more uranium the mullahs enrich, the closer they are to getting the bomb."

First recipient of Mike Malloy Golden Moonbat Award

Who better to receive the first such award than its namesake, the unhinged and exceedingly angry radio host Mike Malloy for this timeless rant on Friday that contained no less than four - count 'em - four lies about 9/11:

" ... airplanes crashing into the Pentagon that didn't exist, buildings collapsing that couldn't collapse, a total shutdown of the North American Air Defense Command, nobody doing anything while four, five, six, seven commercial jetliners are hijacked!"

Better yet, Malloy is yelling while making these claims -- way to go, Mike!

Malloy's show, broadcast from Atlanta, is carried by several dozen stations nationwide and XM satellite radio. He was fired last year by Air America, as he's mentioned on the air, for apparently being too unhinged even for the hardcore comrades there.

Happiness is a bodyguard with a warm gun

John Lennon retreated to the Dakota in 1975 to raise his newborn son and didn't come out for the next five years.

And when Lennon did, the world had changed, and not for the better.

So observed a writer in Esquire magazine several years ago in an article entitled, "The Case for Guns."I didn't save the article, but something about it stayed with me. The author asked - why didn't Lennon have a bodyguard?

Turns out Lennon had been asked the same thing, the author wrote, and the former Beatle cited the example of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro.In March 1978 Moro was kidnapped by Red Brigades terrorists, who killed all five of his bodyguards. Two months later, Moro's lifeless body was found in the back of a car.

What's the point of hiring bodyguards if we all end up dead, Lennon asked.Which was completely in character for Lennon, and still painfully naive.

Given the circumstances leading to Lennon's death, any bodyguard worth his or her salt would have been wary of Mark David Chapman, the man who killed Lennon.Even the mere presence of a bodyguard might have been enough to deter a hollow shell like Chapman. That Chapman hung around for hours after Lennon signed an album jacket for him, waiting until Lennon and Yoko Ono returned home around 11 p.m., would have made most any bodyguard suspicious.

If someone was going to die outside the Dakota on the night of Dec. 8, 1980, it should have been Chapman instead of Lennon.

And Ono spared the agony of seeing her husband shot five times from behind.

And the couple's 5-year-old son growing up with his father still alive and hearing a briefly reunited Beatles sing "In My Life" at the young man's wedding.

Did Iran suspend its nuclear weapons program because of the invasion of Iraq?

According to the NIE released Monday, Iran suspended its illicit nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003.

About six months after the US-led invasion of Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. And only two months before Libya decided to abandon its pursuit of nuclear arms.

Did the war with Iraq prompt Iran to suspend its nuclear weapons program? Maybe, maybe not. The timing begs the question, but what's odd about the media coverage over the last few days - and I've read a half-dozen stories on the NIE in the New York Times, the Boston Globe and on the CNN website - I have yet to see a single reference to even the possibility of a connection.

But what if the NIE had reported that Iran initiated a covert nuclear weapons program six months after the invasion of Iraq - think we'd hear about a connection then? We'd be hearing of little else.

They're baacckk .... and boy, are they ever

... and a hat tip to wavemaker for this one ...