The American Spectator, led by magazine founder and editor in chief R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr., publisher Alfred S. Regnery and managing editor Amy K. Mitchell, will celebrate its 40th anniversary tomorrow evening with a politically star-studded black-tie gala at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel.
The honorary dinner chairman will be Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, and best-selling author Tom Wolfe is lined up to be keynote speaker.
Last but not least, on hand to receive the 2007 Barbara Olson Award for Excellence & Independence in Journalism will be Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Charles Krauthammer, considered by many of his peers to be "the most influential commentator in America" today.
Invisible soldiers
The global war on terrorism is not your father's or grandfather's war. Thus, says CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, U.S. military manpower like that stationed in Iraq is not nearly as important as the potential intelligence that can be gathered against the enemy.
Speaking to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs last week, Gen. Hayden explained that during the Cold War "the Soviet Union's most deadly forces — its [intercontinental ballistic missiles] and tank armies — were relatively easy to find, but hard to kill. Intelligence was important, but overshadowed by the need for sheer firepower.
"Today, the situation is reversed. We are now in an age in which our primary adversary is easy to kill, but hard to find. So you can understand why so much emphasis in the last six years has been on intelligence."
'Imperial radicals'
For those who don't subscribe to cable TV, allow us to confirm that former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was extremely critical of the Republican Party while appearing with his wife, Valerie Plame, the outed CIA operative, on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" this past weekend.
Not that his criticism of the Republican leadership is surprising, given the couple's "current events" of the past couple of years, not to mention the fact that Mr. Wilson, who has moved with his wife and children to Santa Fe, N.M., recently endorsed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, New York Democrat, for president in 2008.
Nevertheless, here is what the outspoken Mr. Wilson said: "I think that this brand that runs the administration and runs the RNC [Republican National Committee] are not real Republicans. They are radicals who have taken the Republican Party and used it as a vehicle to impose their own radical solutions that are not democratic. They are un-American; they are imperial instead of Republican."
Sprinting home
When he was not busy this year advising presidential candidates or conducting political polls, Frank Luntz authored the best-selling book "Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear."
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