It looks like the total relief package, when all is said and done, is going to be around $200 billion dollars. Yes, that’s billion with a “b”.
So where is Bush going to get the money?
In response to Peggy Noonan’s call for a debate over conservatism, Andrew Sullivan tears into Bush’s fiscal policy with this caustic, [...]

Marc at “American Future” reprints key passages of Bush’s and Blair’s U.N. speeches today one after the other, for comparison. Blair is stellar as always, in his choice of words and the cadences of his sentences, but also in the way he seems to clearly “get it.”

This terrorism that today again has claimed the lives [...]

And by the way, so do I. Much, much more on that soon…
But first, it is indeed THAT Bill Kristol. The editor of The Weekly Standard, arguably one of the most influential right-wing magazines in existence.
From the World&Nation
“The more one learns about him,” Republican commentator William Kristol said on Fox News, “one is surprised that [...]

Wow.
Let me say that again…wow.
I NEVER expected this move from Powell, but I’m glad he’s speaking out now. Many on the left decried his speech at the U.N. even when our media trumpeted it as an open and shut case. Now he’s saying it was a low point in his career.
In any event, [...]

He’s an anchor on CNN, and he says that this relief effort is the most badly bungled job that he’s seen in his lifetime. As I read more and more and watch thousands stranded without food or water, I’m beginning to agree with him.
He also reads a recent editorial, on air, from the conservative [...]

A new article from the LA Times digs into the life and times of Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico.
Why? Well, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that he has presidential designs on 2008, and he might just have the honesty and ideas to beat Hillary for the nomination.
In the last 2 1/2 years, he has [...]

U.S. philosopher Sidney Hook (1902-89) is one of the spiritual ancestors of the neo-Conservative movement (in a class with Lionel Trilling and Reinhold Niebuhr). He was a lifelong Marxist, yet a democratic socialist, who resented the Stalin-embrace of the radical Left; he came to see the fundamental division in the world as one of totalitarian [...]

The ever readable Christopher Hitchens talks about the Iraq war, its possible failure and the consequences of not intervening.
Another request in my in-box, asking if I’ll be interviewed about Iraq for a piece “dealing with how writers and intellectuals are dealing with the state of the war, whether it’s causing depression of any sort, if [...]

Johann Hari advises fellow British citizens to question authority — even if the authority’s issue is multi-culturalism, and even if you don’t trust the motives of some of the other people who question it. Hari speaks from a particular perspective:

I am the child of an immigrant myself, and I believe we should take more immigrants [...]

Yes, yes and yes again. Joe Gandelman with an excellent piece on the embattled columnist/commentator.
And not that this is “new” news, but Novak has had ties with Rove for some time.

This editorial from Joan Vennochi is so spot on I wish the Dems would reprint it and distribute it among the faithful. Especially sections like this:
Democrats continue to fight the last campaign, while Republicans are planning for the next two. While the Democrats are busy bashing Bush — a second-term president who is not running [...]

Ross Eisenbrey has a piece at The American Prospect online edition on the medical malpractice issue. He suggests that rather than focus on tort reform, it may be more useful to look at…
…the way doctors and hospitals practice medicine and the millions of things some of them do wrong each year that lead [...]

For Tunku Varadarajan, a features editor at the Wall Street Journal, profiling is a personal issue.
After the terrorist bombings in London, and the revelations that many of the perpetrators were of Pakistani origin, I find that I am–for the first time in my life–part of a “group” that is under broad but emphatic visual suspicion. [...]

Or so says The LEO Test, a highly entertaining and well-informed blog about political ideologies and how they’re defined.
Also be sure to check out some of the other posts like The Political Spectrum and its Limitations, Case Study: John Kerry and Case Study: George Bush. All are fascinating reads.

Security expert Bruce Schneier writes about the use of profiling and why certain types of profiling (e.g. racial profiling) don’t work. It’s well worth the read:
Schneier on Security: Profiling
[Found via the comment section at Philosoraptor.]

Michael Yon’s latest post from Mosul is up. And truly, in a rare convergence of cliche and truth, journalism is the rough draft of history.
Perhaps fueling his distress was the well-known but little mentioned tendency–some might say emerging trend–for some Iraqi police to release prisoners for bribes. This catch and release program has the same [...]

“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone who asks, stand up for the stupid and the crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to [...]

This comes from an outstanding commentary on Islam by the author of “The Trouble with Islam Today.”
“Why is it that in diverse societies, those who oppose diversity of thought often feel more comfortable getting vocal than those who embrace it?”
Here’s still more wisdom from the article:
Why do we Muslims hang on to the mantra that [...]

Debra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:
Imagine, as I’ve written before, if anti-abortion terrorists began killing innocent civilians and said they would stop only if the government outlaws abortion. (After all, if terrorism wins for Islamic extremists, why shouldn’t U.S. extremists adopt it?) The Left would not fault pro-abortion policies. The Left would not [...]

If you haven’t read them, here are the links to part I, part II and part III.
Now then, Caroline leaves a response to part III that I had to promote because it’s basically what we’re talking about in the first place. And while I don’t think the situation is as dire as she thinks it [...]