It is encouraging to see more and more honest conservatives asking themselves hard questions about the candidacy of Sarah Palin and its dumbing down of their party and movement. Some are more honest than others, of course. Clearly David Brooks understands why Palin could be a "fatal cancer" for the Republican Party, but for publication he can't quite muster the bracing forthrightness of the City Journal's Heather Mac Donald (h/t to the Daily Beast). Poor Heather simply can't bear to listen to the hockey mom any more:

"I know, it’s elitist to expect a candidate for president or vice president to speak like an adult.  read more »

As the economy sours, ever-rising construction costs seem to be an in-vogue subject: Last night, the New York Building Congress released a report on the topic; the Manhattan Institute put out recommendations for controlling cost escalations earlier this month; and, on Monday, the Bloomberg administration announced a set of initiatives to lower costs of city projects.

The basic problem--costs have been going up at least 10 percent annually for the past few years--doesn't seem to have any easy solutions, as the reports (both of which involved consultation with the same firm, Urbanomics) recommended a broad array of changes that could lower costs to varying degrees.  read more »

Rudy Giuliani returned on April 25, 2006, from his first, unofficial forays on the presidential campaign trail to accept an award from the heterodox, New York-based conservatives who made him.

“It’s like coming home,” Mr. Giuliani told the members of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.  read more »

I just got a copy of the prepared remarks Michael Bloomberg delivered this morning in midtown to the Manhattan Institute, the conservative think tank that recently was in the news for providing Rudy Giuliani inaccurate data about cancer rates for a presidential campaign ad.

From the prepared remarks, which I haven't checked against actual delivery:

"By fundamentally re-thinking how we use our land, we’ve been able to disprove the conventional wisdom that you just can’t get big projects done anymore. When the West Side Sports and Convention Center didn’t win State approval, it was popular to say that the conventional wisdom was right. But it wasn’t."

Bloomberg also boasted of being able to keep the city "moving forward in directions that the Manhattan Institute has pointed the way on."

The full (prepared) speech is after the jump.  read more »