Copyright 2012 The New York Sun Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:02:16 -0500 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss Ira Stoll :: Stories from The New York Sun http://www.nysun.com/authors/Ira+Stoll admin@nysun.net (Seth Lipsky) webmaster@nysun.com en-us IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/editorials/contraception-battle-masks-a-mystery-the-case/87703/ Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:49:20 EST What got President Obama’s contraceptive compromise into the headlines was the religious angle. What deserves to keep it there is the economic angle. After Catholic organizations complained that the federal government wanted to force them to include free contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans, the White House announced a compromise. As the White House described it, “if a woman’s employer is a charity, hospital or other religious organization that has a religious objection to... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/gingrich-meets-the-enemy-and-it-turns-out-to-be/87683/ Mon, 30 Jan 2012 12:49:12 EST Even before polls opened in Florida’s Republican primary, some pundits were trying to explain a potential Newt Gingrich loss there by saying he’d been outspent. Mike Allen’s influential Politico Playbook daily morning email reported Monday, “Newt Gingrich has been outspent on the Florida airwaves by a nearly $12 million margin,” about $15 million to about $3 million. The thought was echoed on Twitter by a political reporter for the New York Times, Nick Confessore, who asked, “Money carrying the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/mannings-law-confounds-the-experts-inviting/87694/ Mon, 6 Feb 2012 12:32:05 EST The victory of the New York Giants in the National Football League’s Super Bowl is the latest in a series of recent news developments that underscore a principle that might be called Manning’s Law, after the Giants quarterback Eli Manning: The predictions of “experts” are often wrong. You can look it up. Sports Illustrated, the venerable, highly profitable jewel of the Time Warner Corporation’s magazine empire, employs a veteran sportswriter named Peter King. The magazine describes him as “one... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/romney-could-hit-problems-at-florida-over-his/87668/ Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:48:52 EST With the Republican presidential candidates headed to retiree-heavy Florida in advance of its January 31 primary, expect the debate about Medicare, the federal health care program for the elderly, to heat up. If voters start focusing on the issue, it’s not going to be particularly helpful for Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Mr. Romney raised the issue twice the other night in a debate on CNN. First, he said, “we do not want a $500 billion cut in Medicare to pay for ‘Obamacare... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/opportunity-knocks-at-north-korea-with-the-death/87616/ Mon, 19 Dec 2011 15:10:43 EST The pictures accompanying the news of the leadership change in North Korea are those of the dead dictator, Kim Jong Il, and his son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Un. But there are some other Koreans whose names and photos, though absent from the front pages, tell the real story. Ri Hyon Ok was a 33-year-old mother of three who was publicly executed by the North Korean government on June 16, 2009, for the crime of giving away bibles. Her husband and children were banished to North Korea’s vast... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/romneys-revolution-wealth-and-politics/87655/ Mon, 16 Jan 2012 16:43:46 EST To understand the presidential bid of the 70th governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, it’s useful to remember the career of the first. John Hancock, like Mitt Romney, was one of the richest men of his time. Hancock had a three-story, 56-foot-wide granite mansion atop Boston’s Beacon Hill, complete with a ballroom and stables. Mr. Romney reportedly has a $12 million beachfront house in La Jolla, Calif., and a $10 million lakefront house in New Hampshire, as well as a Massachusetts... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/expect-to-hear-more-about-the-elder-romney/87643/ Mon, 9 Jan 2012 14:54:40 EST One of the strange things about America — a country founded on a revolution against a hereditary monarchy — is that so many of our politicians seem to inherit their professions. John Adams begat John Quincy Adams. Senator Prescott Bush begat President George Herbert Walker Bush, who begat President George W. Bush. Senator Albert Gore, Sr., of Tennessee begat Vice President Albert Gore, Jr. Governor Brown of California, Sr., begat Governor Brown of California, Jr. Even the ties between Barack... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/editorials/index-of-crony-capitalism-charts-embarrassing/87630/ Mon, 2 Jan 2012 14:43:31 EST Employees who hope to keep their jobs and investors who hope their shares will rise may want to hope their executives avoid President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. When the council’s members were announced February 23, among the concerns raised was that the members would use their status to the advantage of their companies. In fact, what’s happened since then is that the 13 publicly traded companies whose executives were appointed to the council, taken together, have declined in... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-ron-paul-rand-paul-ticket-new-york-times/87621/ Mon, 26 Dec 2011 13:51:18 EST With apologies and thanks to William Safire. 1. The Supreme Court a) leaves ObamaCare in the political realm for now but leaves a future court room to ride to the rescue in 2015 by agreeing with the Fourth Circuit opinion on the Anti-Injunction Act b) upholds Arizona’s immigration law c) strikes down both ObamaCare and the Arizona immigration law, leading to a bipartisan backlash against the “new judicial activism” of the Roberts Court. 2. The nominee for secretary of state awaiting approval at... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/editorials/how-the-once-and-future-gingrich-outshines-his/87606/ Mon, 12 Dec 2011 11:08:39 EST Peggy Noonan calls him “ethically dubious…unreliable….egomaniacal…harebrained.” George Will says he “embodies the vanity and rapacity that make modern Washington repulsive.” David Brooks says he “has every negative character trait that conservatives associate with '60s excess: narcissism, self-righteousness, self-indulgence and intemperance.” And never mind Newt Gingrich’s character — Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry reminded viewers of Saturday night’s debate that Mr. Gingrich once favored a... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/obama-is-played-for-a-fool-by-macarthur-genius/87537/ Mon, 24 Oct 2011 15:11:42 EST The next battle over President Obama’s job-killing regulations may take place on the Atlantic Coast, where fishermen, and the senators and congressmen who represent them, are voicing mounting frustration at the Obama administration’s “catch-share” rules for the fishing industry. The Republican senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, on Saturday stood with fishermen in Gloucester and called on Mr. Obama to fire the administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Jane... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/new-nobel-laureat-warned-against-stimulus-package/87512/ Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:20:12 EST No matter how skeptical one is of the authority of “experts,” it’s hard to avoid paying at least some attention to the people who award the Nobel prize — especially when they give one to someone who tends to support some things one tended to believe already. So it is in the case of Thomas Sargent, the New York University professor who was announced Monday as a winner of the Nobel in economics. An interview of Professor Sargent by the Minneapolis Fed in August 2010 summed up some of his... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/gingrichs-most-important-political-race-may-be/87592/ Mon, 5 Dec 2011 10:41:32 EST The most interesting political race this presidential election season may just be Newt Gingrich versus himself. There is clearly a faction within the Republican Party looking for an alternative to Mitt Romney, for whatever reason, and Mr. Gingrich is the latest to capture their attention. Two polls out over the weekend showed Mr. Gingrich leading the Republicans in Iowa, where the caucuses are a month away. Another recent poll showed him leading in South Carolina, an early primary state. I’ve... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/editorials/owners-of-new-york-times-used-tax-loopholes/87581/ Mon, 28 Nov 2011 12:59:04 EST For sheer hypocrisy masquerading as journalism, it’s hard to come up with as bald an example as the 3,000-word attack on Ronald S. Lauder that ran Sunday on the front-page of the New York Times. Well, maybe the New Yorker’s August 2010 hit piece on Charles and David Koch is a competitor. But it’s a close call. Mr. Lauder was American ambassador to Austria in the Reagan administration, in which he also served as a deputy assistant secretary of defense. He’s been politically active as chairman of... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/usns-medgar-evers/87566/ Mon, 14 Nov 2011 14:54:59 EST Each civil rights leader had his own role to play in the struggle for integration. Thurgood Marshall was the lawyer. Martin Luther King, Jr., the inspiring orator. And Medgar Evers was the martyr. Evers was the field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP. After President Kennedy had given a nationally televised civil rights speech on June 11, 1963, Evers’s wife had let their three children stay up past midnight to wait up for their father, who was returning from a strategy meeting. At about 12:20... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/fomer-tax-collectors-turn-out-to-make-great-free/87419/ Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:38:56 EST A new attack is being aimed at a congresswoman from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, at just about the same time as a new poll that named her as the leading presidential candidate among Iowa Republicans. As a National Journal article put it: “You’ll never guess what Michele Bachmann, the rabble-rousing, tax-reviling, government-bashing idol of America’s tea party movement, used to do for a living. Sue tax scofflaws for the Internal Revenue Service.” The Wall Street Journal followed with its own... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/revisionists-on-american-revolution-brooding/87408/ Tue, 28 Jun 2011 09:34:48 EST This July 4, while most Americans are celebrating Independence Day, a growing number of revisionists will be brooding. It’s an interesting phenomenon, because it isn’t restricted to the hard left, which has long cast aspersions on America’s founding revolutionaries as a bunch of white male slaveholders. Encounter Books, a conservative publisher funded largely by the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, recently published a book called Treason of the Heart. It lumps one of the heroes... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/nbc-cable-business-news-channel-cnbc-emerges-as/87360/ Tue, 24 May 2011 15:54:15 EST Think of right-of-center news or opinion in America, and what spring to mind are talk radio, Fox News Channel, some magazines, the Wall Street Journal editorial page. But probably not NBC. That network is known for, if anything, a left-wing tilt on MSNBC, where Rachel Maddow holds forth, as did, until his recent departure, Keith Olbermann. Somewhat under the radar, though, the Peacock network’s cable business news channel, CNBC, is emerging as a hotbed of free-market ideology. It started in... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/netanyahus-man-in-washington-offers-a-preview/86868/ Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:40:27 EST Reports that Prime Minister Netanyahu will appoint Michael Oren as ambassador to the United States had guests at last night’s dinner in New York of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America listening especially carefully to Mr. Oren’s keynote address. If it was intended as a preview of how Mr. Oren will conduct himself as the top Israeli diplomat in America at a time when many are predicting tense relations between Mr. Netanyahu and President Obama, than at least this... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/scapegoating-speculators/87348/ Tue, 17 May 2011 10:13:25 EST Here’s a word you can expect to hear quite a bit between now and the 2012 election: speculators. The way President Obama has been using the word recently, it means, “the guys — not me! — who made your gas prices go up.” In a speech over the weekend, Mr. Obama put it this way: “we’ve launched a task force led by the Attorney General that has one job: rooting out cases of fraud or manipulation in the markets that might affect gas prices, including any illegal activity by traders and speculators.”... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/the-jtas-bizarro-attack-on-neo-cons/86873/ Fri, 3 Jul 2009 08:21:44 EST The Washington bureau chief of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Ron Kampeas, has posted a screed against neoconservatives on that organization's Web site. "For eight years we in Washington lived in a bizarro world where the most obvious conclusions were not just ignored, but mocked, actively suppressed and made akin to treason," he said. Now, "neoconservatives are losing," because of "their failure, or their abject inability, to say 'I was wrong.'" He writes, "The Bush administration had not... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/in-cobble-hill-a-battle-of-the-scoop-sales/81958/ Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 EST Under the hot summer sun, an ice cream war is breaking out in the unlikely venue of Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. First, Sweet Melissa Patisserie, a coffee and pastry shop, expanded into the building next door and opened what it called Sweet Melissa Cremerie. Then, right across the street, The Chocolate Room opened, promoting its own homemade ice cream. Both are siblings of Park Slope establishments, though neither the Seventh Avenue Sweet Melissa nor the Fifth Avenue Chocolate Room is known for ice... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/the-foundation-of-democracy-natan-sharanskys/78699/ Wed, 28 May 2008 00:00:00 EST To the ear of Americans educated on college campuses where African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Hispanics, women, Jews, and gays have their own academic studies programs, dormitories, student centers, and advocacy groups, the notion that "identity" needs defending may seem quaint, a relic of the melting pot era. Identity politics need not to be defended, but to be reined in, goes this view, which is reinforced not only by Balkanized college campuses, but by the violence between Iraqi Sunnis and... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/alleged-spy-says-he-met-mrs-clinton/73799/ Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST A Michigan man facing federal criminal charges of illegally working for Saddam Hussein's Iraqi Intelligence Service says he met with Hillary Clinton at the White House in May 1996. In a 1997 interview with this reporter, Muthanna Hanooti said that at the meeting, Mrs. Clinton was "very receptive" to his request for an easing of the American sanctions on Iraq that were in place at the time. He said Mrs. Clinton "passed a message to the State Department" about the need to implement the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/bring-forth-the-tar-and-feathers/72671/ Tue, 11 Mar 2008 00:00:00 EST In the first episode of HBO's "epic seven-part miniseries event" "John Adams," one of the most riveting scenes occurs at Boston Harbor, when a customs inspector or informant challenges John Hancock (Justin Theroux) for evading the taxes imposed by the British. "Teach him a lesson, tar the bastard," Hancock commands a mob, which proceeds to do exactly that to the poor accessory of the crown. This being HBO, there's a glimpse of full frontal nudity that is promptly drenched with hot tar. Hancock... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/front-lines-of-manhattan/61637/ Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST The journalistic category of war correspondence evokes images of dashing young men in flak jackets and muddy combat boots, dodging bullets and hitching rides in jeeps. It is a measure of how different the current war is that one of our finest war reporters turns out to be a 77-year-old grandfather who does most of his reporting in Manhattan rather than from Kabul or Baghdad. It's not that Norman Podhoretz hasn't seen attacks firsthand. The morning of September 11, 2001, he was serving jury duty... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/two-professors-fail-to-clean-up-their-act/61485/ Wed, 29 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST Professors John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen Walt of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government burst onto the national scene in March of 2006 with a Harvard "working paper" in which they wrote of the "unmatched power of the Israel Lobby." They charged, "Were it not for the Lobby's ability to manipulate the American political system, the relationship between Israel and the United States would be far less intimate than it is today.... AIPAC, which is a de facto agent for a... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/journey-to-ice-cream-row/59598/ Wed, 1 Aug 2007 00:00:00 EST We New Yorkers know from the lighting district, the flower district, the garment district. But an ice cream district? For that you have to leave the city and head to Martha's Vineyard. The island off Cape Cod in Massachusetts is famous as a summer vacation destination for President Clinton, but it also just may be home to the country's densest concentration of ice cream shops. Within the area of about one city block in the town of Oak Bluffs, there are no less than five separate stores whose... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/cheneys-chance-2007-07-24/58996/ Tue, 24 Jul 2007 00:00:00 EST Of all the editorials The New York Sun has run, the one that attracted the most response was the one under the headline "Cheney's Chance." The editorial, suggesting that Vice President Cheney would be an attractive presidential candidate who would bring a lot to the race, caused a furor in the blogosphere and led to the production of an entire segment on CNN. It also led to several dinner party conversations of friends or relatives of the editorial writer devoted to whether the writer had... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/national/rod-paige-warns-of-a-death-grip-by-unions/52666/ Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00:00 EST President Bush's first-term education secretary, Rod Paige, is sitting in his office on the 75th floor of the Empire State Building, the leather of his black cowboy boots creaking beneath the cuffs of his pinstriped suit, and talking about the "death grip," the "stranglehold," that teachers' unions have on public education in America. His new book is titled "The War Against Hope: How Teachers' Unions Hurt Children, Hinder Teachers, and Endanger Public Education." The unions, he writes, are... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/israels-lieberman-calls-for-tougher-stance/45120/ Wed, 13 Dec 2006 00:00:00 EST The deputy prime minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman, is calling for a tougher stance toward Israeli Arabs. Mr. Lieberman outlined his views at a luncheon session in New York yesterday organized by the Middle East Forum, and afterward in an interview with The New York Sun and other journalists. "The conflict includes not only the Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and the Gaza Strip, but Israeli Arabs also," Mr. Lieberman said. "The linkage between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli Arab... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/nypds-falkenrath-aims-to-keep-ny-safe-day-by-day/43295/ Fri, 10 Nov 2006 00:00:00 EST The new deputy commissioner for counterterrorism at the New York Police Department, Richard Falkenrath, is one of the people responsible for keeping 8 million New Yorkers safe. It's a stressful job. Mr. Falkenrath said that when he wakes up every morning at 6:20 a.m. and heads into the office for his 9 a.m. meeting with Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly and the deputy commissioner for intelligence, the CIA veteran David Cohen, he assumes "today is going to be the day." By that, he means today... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/chalabi-outlines-steps-to-save-iraq-from-ruin/42557/ Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST LONDON — The former deputy prime minister of post-Saddam Iraq, Ahmad Chalabi, is warning that widespread "sectarian cleansing" could overtake the country, resulting in hundreds of thousands of casualties, unless a series of steps are taken that he says could improve the situation. In remarks here yesterday to a group including journalists and members of Parliament, Mr. Chalabi offered a dire description of the situation in Iraq. He said 1 million Iraqis have already become displaced by... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/europe-is-in-crisis-of-civilizational-morale/42285/ Thu, 26 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST Europe, especially Western Europe, is suffering from "a crisis of civilizational morale," author George Weigel said in a speech to hundreds of New Yorkers gathered for the Manhattan Institute's annual Wriston Lecture. Mr. Weigel mentioned what he described as an attitude of "appeasement toward jihadist terrorism," but he said "the most dramatic manifestation of Europe's crisis of civilizational morale is the fact that Europe has depopulated itself." By the middle of this century, Mr. Weigel... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/poland-abruptly-cancels-a-speech-by-local-critic/40911/ Wed, 4 Oct 2006 00:00:00 EST The government of Poland, moving to avoid getting embroiled in anti-Israel politics, last night abruptly canceled a scheduled speech by a professor at New York University who has become hostile to the Jewish state, just hours before the event was to have taken place at Poland's consulate here in New York. The decision to cancel the speech, which was billed as being about "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy," is a signal of the quickening entente between free Poland and Israel, a... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/israel-lobby-caused-war-in-iraq-september-11/40629/ Fri, 29 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST A tenured professor at the University of Chicago last night blamed the "Israel Lobby" in America for both the Iraq war and the attacks of September 11, 2001. Speaking to a crowd of hundreds at the Cooper Union, he was met mostly with support from two other professors, Tony Judt of New York University and Rashid Khalidi of Columbia. "The Israel lobby was one of the principal driving forces behind the Iraq War, and in its absence we probably would not have had a war," said the University of... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/like-father-unlike-son/40427/ Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST The phone rang the other day and it was the president of the Reform Party of Syria, Farid Ghadry. I've known him now for years. He has visited the offices of The New York Sun, he's contributed to our oped page, and he has been a steady and significant, if sometimes lonely, voice in Washington calling for bringing freedom and democracy to Syria. When I think of the sacrifices of Arab fighters for democracy, mainly I think of the threat of assassination. Other Arab democracy advocates I know... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/invoking-the-almighty/40317/ Tue, 26 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST "These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." These lines from Thomas Paine's 1776 essay "The American Crisis" have resonated through American history. John Kerry's... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/hospital-leaders-help-fund-effort-to-aid-democrats/39741/ Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST Since Senator Grassley launched an investigation of not-for-profit hospitals, a political action committee funded by the hospital's trustees and executives has given tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to try to regain a Democratic majority in the Senate, which would have the effect of ousting Mr. Grassley from his post as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. The hospital claims that the political action committee is independent of it. "The PAC is independent of... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/israeli-mp-says-sanctions-may-defeat-iran/39739/ Fri, 15 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST The best way to deal with the problem of Iran would be with sanctions that could help topple the government there, an Israeli member of parliament said yesterday. Ephraim Sneh said Iran imports 40% of its gasoline and that cutting off the flow "may help the Iranian people to overthrow the regime." "They don't like their regime," he said. "The easiest, the cheapest thing to do to solve the problem is to do what the Iranian people want to do, what they should do." America and Israel have both... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/taiwan-will-try-new-approach-to-joining-united/39691/ Thu, 14 Sep 2006 00:00:00 EST After being rejected the 14th year in a row in its bid for membership in the United Nations, Taiwan will try a new approach, its president, Chen Shuibian said yesterday. Rather than applying for readmission as the Republic of China, whose seat Taiwan held until 1971, Taiwan will consider applying as a new member under the name "Taiwan." "After 14 consecutive years of frustration, we must seriously consider a different strategy," Mr. Chen said. He said polls in Taiwan showed nearly 80% of the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/brooklyn-bridge-rusts-awaiting-its-first-paint/38747/ Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:00:00 EST The Brooklyn Bridge, the 123-year-old span between Brooklyn and Manhattan that to this day is a treasured tourist attraction, landmark, and transportation workhorse, is rusting under a coat of paint that hasn't been refreshed since 1991. The city's most recent annual report on the condition of bridges and tunnels, just out, rates the Brooklyn Bridge's condition as a 3.15 on a scale of one to seven, with one as "potentially hazardous" and seven as "new." A three rating is used to indicate that a... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/santorum-time-to-get-tough-with-iran/36456/ Fri, 21 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST WASHINGTON — The third-ranking Republican senator, Republican conference chairman Rick Santorum, is calling for a tougher line against the government of Iran, saying Iranian diplomats are "regularly" asked to leave America after being caught photographing bridges and subway stations in New York City. He accused the Islamic Republic of having Revolutionary Guard officers at the controls of the missiles being launched at Israel, and said Iranian scientists were present in North Korea for... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/hundreds-of-iranian-troops-fighting-in-lebanon/36326/ Wed, 19 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Hundreds of Iranian Revolutionary Guard personnel are on the ground in Lebanon fighting Israel, security sources say. "I have no doubt whatsoever that they are there and operating some of the equipment," an Arab diplomatic source told The New York Sun yesterday. Another foreign source, based in Washington, said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps contingent in Lebanon is based in Beirut and in the Bekaa Valley. He said the troops usually number a few dozen, but that the size of the force... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/mccain-does-manhattan-by-the-issues/36187/ Tue, 18 Jul 2006 00:00:00 EST Add the Manhattan Institute to Iowa and New Hampshire on the list of early proving grounds for presidential candidates — at least the Republican ones. Senator McCain visited New York City yesterday to offer his views on Israel, government spending, Charles Darwin, and campaign finance and in so doing became the latest of the 2008 presidential hopefuls to address the city's conservative think tank, which has also heard recently from Mayor Giuliani and from Governor Romney of Massachusetts. In Mr... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/line-forms-in-madison-square-for-the-newest-ny/33117/ Mon, 22 May 2006 00:00:00 EST It was on a recent sunny day, when I bit into the 'Shroom burger with a deep-fried, cheese-filled portobello mushroom between the lettuce, tomato, and burger bun, that it hit me: The Shake Shack, the burger and milkshake stand in Manhattan's Madison Square Park operated by famed restaurateur Danny Meyer's Union Square Hospitality Group, is the quintessential New York institution. If you want to understand the city's cultural anthropology, go spend a lunch hour standing in line there for a $3.23... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/opinion/murdochs-message/32504/ Wed, 10 May 2006 00:00:00 EST Why would Murdoch do it? That's the question for us Fox News Channel watchers, New York Post and Weekly Standard readers, loyal customers of Rupert Murdoch's right-of-center - I mean, "fair and balanced" - news and commentary empire, having received the news that the chief executive of News Corp. will host a campaign fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Mr. Murdoch's outside spokesman, Howard Rubenstein, referred the question to Mr. Murdoch's inside spokesman, Gary Ginsberg, himself a veteran of the... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/arts/whats-wrong-with-harvard/32460/ Wed, 10 May 2006 00:00:00 EST Derek Bok, who served as president of Harvard from 1971 to 1991, recalls that after he was named to the job but before he took office, he was taken aside by "an older man of wide experience who had held high posts in Washington, had served on boards of trustees, and now headed an academic institution of considerable reputation." The sage had a suggestion for a bold move by Mr. Bok: "While you are still in your honeymoon period and people are reluctant to be critical, why not announce your... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/new-york/giuliani-touts-senates-comprehensive-approach/31699/ Thu, 27 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EST Mayor Giuliani is wading into the debate over America's immigration policy with the argument that the comprehensive approach being pursued by the Senate is better for American security than what he called the "punitive" approach being pressed by the House of Representatives. President Bush and Senator McCain have been pushing what they call a "comprehensive" approach to immigration law that would step up enforcement of the borders but also provide a path to citizenship for illegal aliens and... IRA STOLL http://www.nysun.com/foreign/talks-with-tehran-spell-danger-professor-warns/30505/ Thu, 6 Apr 2006 00:00:00 EST Iran today is like the Soviet Union in the era of Leonid Brezhnev, who died in 1982, less than 10 years before the Communist superpower ceased to exist, a professor at the National University of Iran told a New York audience yesterday. Iraq's current leadership "requires low-grade conflict with the West" as a justification for maintaining the security and military apparatus that keeps it in power, the Iranian professor, Mahmood Sariolghalam, told the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr...