David Frum's Blog, page 84

Forging a Sword for Game of Thrones

Five minutes of awesome for people with an interest in hobbywork and history. (H/T Buzzfeed)

Obama's Job Policy Flat-Lines on Twitter

The Washington Post looked at the issues discussed at last night's State of the Union and created a "Twitter Pulse by Topic" to see which issues garnered the most tweets during the speech. The results were interesting:

Fool's Gold

I've been warning for years against the Goldwater myth: the claim that the GOP defeat of 1964 was a blessing in disguise because it opened the way to Ronald Reagan's victory in 1980. Here's a piece from 2009:

Hamas' Suppression of Human Freedom

A new report by the Interpress Service news agency details the steady suppression of human freedom by the Hamas regime that rules Gaza.

State of the Union

Will be delivered at 9 pm EST. I'll have an open thread available for comments. From what I've heard, the speech will be over an hour (although we're not sure how much is dedicated applause time).

Turkey's Anti-Western Backlash

Daniel Pipes offers a short history of modern Turkey as revealed by the uniforms of flight attendants at Turkish Airlines. In half a century, it has proceeded from this:

Gun Violence Just Hit My Campus

Literature's Moral Limits

Teju Cole, writing for the New Yorker, is baffled that someone as well-read as President Obama could (would?) make the moral choices to use drone strikes and other tough tactics in the War on Terror.

An Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood Idea for Dealing with Israeli Jews

I missed this end of year internal debate within Egypt's ruling Muslim Brotherhood about how to deal with Israeli Jews. Expel them from Palestine and re-subject them to Islamic rule in Egypt and other adjoining countries? But that implies living next door to them - perhaps even compensating them for stolen property - which is plainly unthinkable. It's amusing to be reminded that not even anti-Semitism is a monolith, that even this retrograde prejudice also contains its fierce intern...

It's Time for a Lab to Win Westminster

Buzzfeed calls our attention to a major national scandal: in 136 years, no Labrador Retriever has ever won the Westminster dog show, in progress now in New York City.