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Big news over the weekend, when "Long Island defense contractor David H. Brooks booked two floors of the Rainbow Room, hauled in concert-ready equipment, built a stage, installed special carpeting, outfitted the space with Jumbotrons and arranged command performances by everyone from 50 Cent to Don Henley to Stevie Nicks to Aerosmith..." Brooks got better talent than the NBC Katrina relief benefit.

For those of you who haven’t seen this morning’s “Meet the Press,” I highly recommend that you do so that you can see William Safire at his best, as well as some great incites from David Brooks. What follows are key statements from the two of them concerning Plamegate, and the events of the week. Though chronological in order, the numbered quotes are separate ideas that did not immediately follow one another: 1. MR. WILLIAM SAFIRE: I think that was an excellent rundown and time line of a complicated series of accusations of a cover-up, but the most important single...

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald did not find evidence to prove that there was a "broad conspiracy to out a covert agent for political gain. He did not find evidence of wide-ranging criminal behavior. He did not even indict the media's ordained villain, Karl Rove," writes David Brooks in Sunday's NY TIMES. "Leading Democratic politicians filled the air with grand conspiracy theories that would be at home in the John Birch Society." "Why are these people so compulsively overheated?.. Why do they have to slather on wild, unsupported charges that do little more than make them look unhinged? Brooks quotes from...

Specter As I was saying, Senator Biden, you have the floor. Joseph Biden Jr. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thought this might be a good moment to give the committee a complete history of my heroic sponsorship of the Violence Against Women Act, but before I do that I'd like to interrupt myself by mentioning that I ride the train every day, often speaking with regular Americans, but before I do that I'd like to interrupt my interruption of myself by asking the chairman to restrain the nominee. During my first round of questioning, the nominee continually interrupted my questions...

Commission makes San Antonio's sweet deal even sweeter By T.A. BADGER Associated Press Writer SAN ANTONIO — Things looked sweet for San Antonio under the Pentagon's proposed base-closure plan. This week's voting made it even sweeter. While the nine-member Base Closure and Realignment Commission voted Thursday to end the military's presence at Brooks City-Base, it overrode the Defense Department's recommendations by keeping one of Brooks' key medical research missions and some 300 jobs in San Antonio. That vote came a day after the commission opted to keep the 800-job Cryptologic Systems Group, which services communications equipment for federal intelligence agencies,...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version May 06, 2005, 8:06 a.m. Filibuster FallacyDavid Brooks distorts the debate. By Peter Augustine Lawler David Brooks, the most conservative columnist for the New York Times, increasingly styles himself a statesmanlike referee between the claims of our evangelicals and our secular humanists. He can't be accused of aiming low: He models his statesmanship on Lincoln's. In his May 5 column, he presents our greatest president as "our guide and navigator. Lincoln had enough firm conviction to lead a great moral crusade, but his zeal was tempered by...

The rink where (Herb) Brooks coached the U.S. Olympic hockey team to its stunning gold-medal victory 25 years ago now bears his name. It was renamed Wednesday night in his honor: 1980 Rink, Herb Brooks Arena. The announcement came 18 months after Brooks was killed in a car accident, which made the moment so very poignant.

Herb Brooks never really grasped the magnitude of what he and a collection of college boys accomplished 25 years ago, Patti Brooks said last week, and he most likely never would have wanted to have the arena where it took place named for him. When the 1980 Olympic hockey team's Miracle on Ice gold-medal performance was selected the sports event of the 20th century, Herb "was almost incredulous," she recalled. "He just kept repeating that he could not believe that. He was really humble about most things, but I remember he was just so shocked at that one. I don't...

The coup d'etat was executed with the precision of a military drill. At 11 o'clock on the morning of April 15, 1874, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Whytock took Brooks' petition filed in protest of the 1872 election, knocked off the dust and without notice to either Baxter or his lawyers, ruled that Brooks was the legal governor. Chief Justice Poker Jack McClure swore Brooks in on the spot, presumably with the same sincerity with which he had performed, the service for Baxter the year before. Within minutes, Brooks, backed by Gen. R.F. Catterson, former commander of the state militia,...

OP-ED COLUMNIST If you want to understand America, I hope you were in Washington on Thursday. I hope you heard the high ideals of President Bush's inaugural address, and also saw the stretch Hummer limos heading to the balls in the evening. I hope you heard the president talk about freedom as "the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul," and also saw the drunken, loud and privileged twentysomethings carrying each other piggyback down K Street after midnight. What you saw in Washington that day is what you see in America so often...

here is a little-known movement sweeping across the United States. The movement is "natalism."All across the industrialized world, birthrates are falling - in Western Europe, in Canada and in many regions of the United States. People are marrying later and having fewer kids. But spread around this country, and concentrated in certain areas, the natalists defy these trends.They are having three, four or more kids. Their personal identity is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating...

...Ms. Roy has just been awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.... Ms. Roy made an appeal to people to "become the Iraqi resistance," adding that activists "need to understand that Iraq is engaging in the frontlines of empire and we have to throw our weight behind the Iraqi resistance." Now it cannot have escaped Ms. Roy's attention that the "resistance" of which she speaks -- and which she exhorts the world to "become" -- kills innocent Iraqis daily, by bomb, by gun and by cutlass. Beheading people -- Iraqi and Western, Muslim and infidel -- is the macabre signature of this...

Kerry's Cast of Thousands By DAVID BROOKS Across the wine-dark sea they come, honing Kerry's message. They come from Harvard, K Street and the studios of CNN. "Once more into the breach!" they cry, as they join the conference call of thousands. Look at them, these great, unhuddled masses, yearning to wear White House badges. They are consultants, flacks, spinners, strategists, Knights of the Palm lunch table. And yet they come as one, from all corners of the Democratic world, to figure out what John Kerry, age 60, should believe and say. Into the valley of hope ride the 600,...

<p>Oakland County Republican precinct delegates voted this week to condemn a memo by County Executive L. Brooks Patterson critical of conservative Christians in the Republican Party.</p> <p>In a Nov. 23, 2003 memo to elected county Republicans, Patterson endorsed a political column by Dick Morris titled “The GOP Should Terminate the Christian Right.”</p>

Workers in the Shadows By DAVID BROOKS Imagine a person 10 times as determined as you are. Picture a guy who will wade across rivers, brave 120-degree boxcars and face vicious smugglers and murderous vigilantes — all to get a job picking fruit for 10 hours a day. That person is the illegal immigrant. Let's call him Sam. This whole immigration debate is about him, the choices he faces and the way he responds. One thing we know about Sam: he will get here. Between 1986 and 1998, Congress increased the Border Patrol's budget sixfold. Over that time the...

WASHINGTON (AP) - California Rep. Jane Harman's 1994 campaign for Congress benefited from $21,000 illegally funneled from a Hughes Aircraft Co. fund-raising event, newly released documents show. The records were made public by the Federal Election Commission this week after being discovered during a review of closed enforcement cases, a commission spokesman said.Harman, now the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, was never punished because a federal judge said her campaign didn't commit deliberate or serious violations.At issue was an Oct. 29, 1993, fund-raiser Hughes held for Harman at its El Segundo, Calif., headquarters. Corporations are prohibited from donating...

Going Native for 2004 By DAVID BROOKS To: Tom DeLay From: A Concerned Conservative Dear Tom, This week I read that you have abandoned plans to house Republicans safely on a cruise ship off the island of Manhattan during the G.O.P. convention in New York this summer. Have you paused to consider what this will mean? It will mean that instead of spending time in a secure environment offshore, kind, decent Republicans will be wandering innocently among packs of inflamed New York liberals. They'll be subjected to long harangues that rely heavily on the words "multilateral," "Kyoto" and "John...

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. -- A high school assistant coach sentenced in March to three years for having sex with two students was ordered released on time served Monday. Jennifer Joy Brooks, 28, will still not be allowed to coach, teach or have any contact with minors and will serve seven years of sex offender probation. She also must undergo psychological treatment, cannot get involved romantically with anyone who has children and cannot have contact with the victims. Brooks had been held after pleading no contest to unlawful sexual activity and committing a lewd and lascivious act. The victims were on...

Anti-abortion mailing splits Oakland County Republicans The Associated Press 11/3/2003, 2:07 a.m. ET FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. (AP) — Postcards bearing a graphic description of an abortion procedure and diagrams of an abortion in progress are at the center of the latest rift among Oakland County Republicans. Republican Oakland County Commissioner Tom McMillin says he spent $1,000 of his own money to print and send the mailers, which target state Rep. Aldo Vagnozzi, D-Farmington Hills, and state Sen. Deborah Cherry, D-Burton. The cards attack Vagnozzi's and Cherry's stance on the dilation and extraction abortion procedure, known as partial-birth abortion to its...

Hummers to Harleys By DAVID BROOKS f I had any brains I'd make a big investment in Mack Trucks, because Mack now has an opportunity to extend its brand into all sorts of hugely profitable product lines. I foresee a chain of Mack Trucks tapas restaurants, Mack Trucks brand tub tea and Mack Trucks exfoliating sponges for men. There may even be growth possibilities for the trucks themselves, for what else are people going to buy when they start feeling cramped in their Hummers? I had this insight when I realized that we now have this huge population of...