THE CONTINUING CRISIS

...Whatever the motive, in Colerain Township, Ohio, hidden cameras filmed two young men as they assaulted a 12-foot Frosty in three brutal nocturnal attacks carried out so methodically as to suggest that the assailants had undergone prior military training, possibly in Special Ops...

...Saddam when he made his last crack...

...mented on it...

...A broken leg is tolerable, but life under an avalanche is nasty, brutish, and short—as the philosopher once put it...

...Reffell is 54...

...As many as two million Muslims died during their martyred leader’s reign, none as well dressed as Mr...

...Miss Sheehan is 76...

...Hussein adieu, or the Sunnis, who seemed to think Allah highly esteemed Mr...

...Paul Reffell...

...An investigative team at the incomparable New York Sun has found a typographical error in the Statue of Liberty’s famed bronze plaque proclaiming “Give me your tired,” etc., and a French court has ruled that a far-right political group may continue to offer pork soup to the homeless despite police reports that the gruel is racist...

...Robert Gates as Secretary of War, and on December 4 United Nations Ambassador John Bolton announced his plan to resign 16 months after President George W. Bush appointed him despite congressional Democrats’ warnings that he had an unpleasant personality and dreadful temper...

...Charlie Gibson, Mr...

...The London School of Economics awarded a graduate degree in social psychology to Miss Monica Lewinsky, whose thesis was “In Search of the Impartial Juror,” a search that has become a lifelong pursuit for her White House boyfriend, dubbed by her as The Big He...

...Jeane Kirkpatrick, President Ronald Reagan’s dauntless first United Nations Ambassador and an equally dauntless member of the Board of Directors of this magazine...

...Special units of the Royal Canadian Mounties were called in, and you can be sure they will be on the alert in the weeks ahead when the Easter Bunnies are in season...

...Nor were the Yuletide icons always on the receiving end...

...Gurbanguly (this is only his first name) Berdymukhammedov...

...Critics argue that the group’s “hate kitchens” are biased against Muslims who do not eat pork, but French Muslims are always free to burn the soup kitchens down and kill everyone in sight...

...Supreme Court Justices were seen entering their chambers wearing Hawaiian beach shirts and flip-flops...

...On December 6, the Senate confirmed Mr...

...Jack Kevorkian has won a June parole...

...Good news on the suicide front...

...It is not known if the former president participated, but the massive energy jolt rolling out of California was but a burp when it arrived in Tehran, and not even that when it got to the Holy City of Qom where Islamic holy men went quietly about their business, pounding their heads on the pavement and chewing squat or whatever they call it...

...The event was characterized by traditional Iraqi interdenominational repartee over who might have Allah’s ear, the Shiites, who bid Mr...

...Once again Americans celebrated the increasingly controversial holiday of Christmas...

...The Winter Solstice turned out to be a bore despite the idealistic efforts of two Californians, Miss Donna Sheehan and Mr...

...This time the controversies spread from the usual sectarian violence over displays of nativity scenes (with or without ethnically mixed figures) to wrangles over the presence of Christmas trees on publicly owned properties, over Santa Claus (his authenticity and religious significance), and even over Frosty the Snowman— though precisely why the epicene “snowman” should engender violence remains unexplained even by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union...

...We grieve her passing...

...Yet now consider the challenge he faces when forced to read the name of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad...

...Clinton is 60...

...Hopes for lowering Medicare costs brightened upon news from a New York stable where Mr...

...Numbers beyond 999 have defeated him, and any word with more than three syllables has elicited beads of sweat on his gnarled brow no matter how much makeup is cepolice reports that the gruel is racist...

...Justice Antonin Scalia wore Bermuda shorts under his judicial robes...

...And incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, anticipating an even more torrid January, returned from California with a month’s supply of sunblock...

...Hussein’s many years of state-sponsored Arab population control...

...Clash of civilizations, indeed...

...Saparmurat Niyazov (whose forename nearly brought Katie to tears), with Mr...

...It is estimated that not one of the aforementioned anchors will be able to pronounce the full name without being interrupted by a commercial break...

...Don Karkos, 82, who has been blind in his right eye for 64 years, suddenly had his eyesight almost completely restored after being head butted by a local thoroughbred, My Buddy Chimo...

...Saddam Hussein was dispatched with flare on a gallows constructed in one of his own fabulous prisons...

...All was the salubrious consequence of Global Warming, at least until one traveled to the far Midwest and to Denver, Colorado, where blizzards of prodigious heft and frigidity stranded motorists and cattle, and gave even ardent skiers cause to rethink their favorite winter recreation...

...Brian Williams, and perky, pretty Miss Katie Couric...

...and in December Turkmenistan, a nation possessing a fifth of the world’s natural gas supply, replaced its deceased leader, Mr...

...The two, funded perhaps by a grant from the William J. Clinton Foundation, predicted that on December 22—the Winter Solstice—as many as two billion people worldwide would promote world peace by copulating madly, with their ensuing synchronized orgasms effecting “positive change in the energy field of the Earth through input of the largest possible surge of human energy...

...He was wearing a black overcoat, highly polished black shoes, and a noose tied in what looked like a quadruple Windsor...

...Bolton leaves with a spotless record and no assaults, 1 0 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 R . E M M E T T T Y R R E L L , J R . though he was known to delight in squeezing the hand of the French Ambassador M. Jean-Marc de la Sablière in lightning quick spurts of machismo and once making him squeal...

...R . E m m e t t Ty r r e l l , J r . T H E C O N T I N U I N G C R I S I S December passed into history sunning itself luxuriantly, at least for the denizens of America’s east coast...

...In Washington, D.C., it was among the ten warmest Decembers on record...

...For God’s sake the name takes a full column width in major newspapers...

...In Vancouver, British Columbia, as many as 100 raucous Santas struck terror among shoppers in the posh Metrotown Mall after they took aboard what police termed “a pungent mix of holiday cheer” from a gasoline container carried by their leader...

...Death claimed the life of Mrs...

...A French court has ruled that a far-right political group may continue to offer pork soup to the homeless despite In Florida and California the death penalty was for all intents and purposes suspended, owing to the botches of incompetent executioners, a problem that was not repeated in Baghdad at the end of the month where Mr...

...among those producers who have to prepare the evening news reports for such airheads as Mr...

...Kevorkian is also a vociferous opponent of all forms of tobaccos and of trans fats...

...Actually it was the temper that commended him to many of us, and it is with great disappointment that we report that Mr...

...December witnessed the arrival on the world stage of one more unpronounceable surname, a trend that is causing growing alarm in American newsrooms F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 7 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 1 1...

...Through Clinton administration attacks on us and cowardly moments by some of our writers she was our Iron Lady...

...For years, Mr...

...Williams has had a dreadful time pronouncing foreign words...

...In Michigan, longtime advocate of assisted-suicide Dr...