This issue: September 28, 2015 (Vol. 21, No. 03)

Obama’s Intel Scandal

BY STEPHEN F. HAYES

Earlier this summer, we learned the Pentagon’s inspector general is investigating allegations that the intelligence on ISIS was manipulated. Analysts at U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Florida, formally complained to the IG that analysis contradicting the Obama administration’s narrative on ISIS was routinely challenged, rewritten, or disregarded. The administration was eager to sell the story that the campaign against ISIS was going well; much of the intelligence made clear it wasn’t. That intelligence was buried, and the happy talk continued.

We’re encouraged that the inspector general is taking seriously these reports of intelligence manipulation. To understand the problem, however, the IG will have to expand its investigation, because precisely the same thing happened before.

From 2011 through 2013, top Obama administration and intelligence officials downplayed and ...

Europe Gets Borders

Hungary’s Orbán cancels Merkel’s invitation.

BY CHRISTOPHER CALDWELL

Until mid-September, the half-million migrants who had been marching northwards into central Europe seemed like the Old World equivalent of Hurricane Sandy survivors. Families uprooted by the war in Syria were seeking safety, according to this view of things. It was sad to see little girls sleeping by the side of the road, but inspiring to see European volunteers, with their clipboards and their bags of snacks, their water bottles and Port-a-Potties, showing such compassion and logistical expertise. 

German chancellor Angela Merkel never seemed prouder. Her announcement in mid-August that Germany could accept 800,000 refugees—vastly more than anyone had assumed possible—gave momentum to the mass migration. This was the new Europe, one not afraid of showing brotherly love to its Muslim neighbors. “To be honest,” Merkel said, “if we reach the point where we need to apologize for lending a helping hand in ...

Goodbye to the Shade Tree Mechanic

Cars are, like, so yesterday

BY GEOFFREY NORMAN

Though I am an Apple user—phone and laptop—and happy with both, the tepid response to the latest Apple dog and pony show left me feeling a bit of schadenfreude. The digital revolution is pushing other technologies into the grave, and like a lot of people, I mourn that—in the way, probably, that an ardent lover of the old clipper ships resented the arrival of coal and steam. Something was being lost. Something beyond the mere ships.

From a recent Washington Post article, one learns that

Americans drive fewer miles per year—down about 9 percent over the past two decades. The percentage of 19-year-olds with driver’s licenses has dropped from 87 percent two decades ago to 70 percent last year. Most teens now do not get licensed within a year of becoming eligible. 

As a police officer and driving instructor, interviewed for the ...

Dr. Johnson’s Friend

Francis Barber and the Great Cham.

BY EDWARD SHORT

In his memorable poem “At the Grave of Henry James,” W. H. Auden apostrophized the novelist to make a useful point:

Master of nuance and scruple,

Pray for me and for all writers living or dead;

Because there are many whose works

Are in better taste than their lives, because there is no end

To the vanity of our calling: make intercession

For the treason of all clerks.

Since there are, indeed, many writers “whose works are in better taste than their lives,” when we happen upon those about whom this is not the case, we naturally welcome biographies that confirm why they elude ...

Words Fail Me

David Skinner finds his voice.

BY DAVID SKINNER

Dear reader, don’t take this personally, but sometimes I think of pursuing another line of work. It’s not you, it’s me. Writing is just so hard. The words don’t seem apt, sentences come loose, a draft seems more deserving of the delete button than your readerly attention. 

In my experience, nothing is so likely to rob a middle-aged writer of modest accomplishment of the feeling that he was meant to be a writer as the act of writing itself. Want to know what does make him feel like a writer? A tumbler of scotch, company, and a good story to tell about something already written. In the glow of former triumph I always feel like a writer; when writing is still going on, I feel like a schmuck.

I once met a novelist who told me that when her work is going well, she feels a great sense of wonder at what just came out of her. Sometimes, she added, it brings tears to ...

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