May 16, 2012 — John Hinderaker

What To Do If You Live In Arkansas

Featured image One of the under-reported stories of the year is the resistance that many Democrats have manifested toward the Obama administration during the primary process. Obama has no meaningful opponent for his party’s nomination, yet in a number of states, Democrats have rebelled against his policies by casting votes for anyone-but-Obama. In Oklahoma, a motley crew of opponents got 43% of the primary vote against the president’s 57%. In Massachusetts, Obama »
May 16, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Epistemic Closure at the Atlantic? No, Just Ignorance

Featured imageI virtually never respond to attacks by liberals, because 1) I hardly ever see them, and 2) when I do, they are rarely worth the trouble. But this piece by Conor Friedersdorf in the Atlantic is worth noting because through its ineptitude, it inadvertently reinforces my point. Friedersdorf’s article is titled “A Textbook Example of the Right’s Epistemic Closure.” (By the way, I have actually studied epistemology, and in my »
May 16, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Obama calls debt ceiling fight “not acceptable,” whatever that means

Featured imagePresident Obama today warned congressional leaders that a replay of the debt ceiling fight of last summer is “not acceptable” and that he will not tolerate it. Obama added that he expects a “serious bipartisan approach” to tackling the budget and growing federal deficit this year. House Speaker John Boehner said yesterday that he was prepared for another debt ceiling fight, if that’s what it takes to force action to »
May 16, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Senate Democrats Achieve a New Standard of Irresponsibility

Featured imageThe Senate voted on five budgets today, at the insistence of Republican senators. The result was revealing: no Senate Democrat voted in favor of any budget. This is consistent, of course, with the fact that the Democrat-led Senate has refused to adopt a budget, in violation of federal law, for the last three years. Still, it is a little shocking to see that not a single Democrat was willing to »
May 16, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Boehner seeks action on debt reduction

Featured imageSpeaker John Boehner is calling on Congress to deal with the issues of budget reductions and the Bush tax cuts before the election. And he is threatening to block an increase in the federal debt ceiling unless significant new cuts occur. The case for tackling these issues now is straightforward. If they are put off until the lame duck session, there will be little time to avoid the train wreck »
May 16, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

An upset in Nebraska

Featured imageIn Nebraska, State Senator Deb Fischer has upset Jon Bruning, the state’s attorney general, to win the Republican nomination for the Senate seat held by Democrat Ben Nelson, who is retiring. Late returns had Fischer leading Bruning by 40-36. She will face former Senator Bob Kerrey. Until recently, Bruning had been leading in the polls. Fischer had been running third, behind Don Stenberg, the state’s treasurer, who was endorsed by »
May 16, 2012 — Steven Hayward

The Last Lion at Long Last

Featured imageLots of good books out right now deserving comment and reflection, including Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind (spent the day with him last Friday), Jonah Goldberg’s The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, and Jim Manzi’s Uncontrolled: The Surprising Payoff of Trial and Error for Business, Politics, and Society (Jim is another pal, and maybe one of the two or three most incandescently brilliant people »
May 16, 2012 — Steven Hayward

Van Jones Cops a Plea

Featured imageA sharp-eyed Power Line reader directed us to this C-SPAN video featuring Van Jones, President Obama’s short-lived “green jobs” czar, admitting around the 19:14 mark what is plain to anyone who pays attention, namely, that the environmental movement is basically an adjunct of the Democratic Party: “I’m critical of myself, first, and the environmentalists.  When the oil spill had happened in the spring of 2010, there was another moment to say, »
May 15, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Who is the reality-based presidential candidate? Part Two

Featured imageYesterday, I asked which presidential candidate – Mitt Romney or President Obama – is, by training and background, more “reality-based” and which is less driven by ideology. In claiming that Romney is more reality-based and less driven by ideology, I showed how his education and decades of work at Bain and Bain Capital focused heavily on diving into, and finding answers in, data, with no real reference to ideology. Let’s »
May 15, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

What is judicial activism and do we need the concept?

Featured imageToday, I attended a debate sponsored by the Federalist Society about “judicial activism” between our friend Ed Whelan and Prof. Jeffrey Rosen. At the heart of their debate was a disagreement over the definition of judicial activism. Ed defined judicial activism as a form of legal error – the type that occurs when a court wrongly decides that a statute is unconstitutional. Rosen defined it as the judicial overturning of »
May 16, 2012 — John Hinderaker

George Zimmerman’s Defense

Featured imageABC News has obtained a copy of a doctor’s report on a visit by George Zimmerman the day after the Trayvon Martin shooting. The report discloses that Zimmerman had a broken nose, two black eyes, two cuts on the back of his head, bruising on the upper lip and cheek and lower back pain. This revelation obviously bolsters Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense and sheds light on why local authorities initially »
May 16, 2012 — Scott Johnson

In Larson’s Garden: Ten notes

Featured imageErik Larson’s In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin, just out in paperback, is the best book I’ve read since Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption. In truth, I’m afraid it may be the first book I’ve read front to back since Unbroken, but still… When I finished Unbroken I offered 10 notes on Unbroken in »
May 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker

“You Should Know Better When Politicians Make Promises”

Featured imageOne of the funny things about Barack Obama is that his supporters seem to think that he is somehow different from the usual politician, whereas his record, and his own statements, demonstrate that if he differs from the average politician, it is only in being more cynical. This is one of the points that emerge from the new biography of Obama by Edward Klein, The Amateur. I haven’t yet read »
May 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Who’s the Bully?

Featured imageThe Washington Post’s effort to portray Mitt Romney as a teenage bully is laughable on several levels. One that deserves mention is that the Democratic Party media itself is one of the more belligerent, arrogant, bullying institutions in our society. A point which Michael Ramirez makes with characteristic panache: So far, though, it seems that the bullying Democratic media may have met their match in the Romney campaign’s ability to »
May 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker

The High Cost of Regulation

Featured imageRemember when President Obama said that his policies would cause the cost of electricity to skyrocket? Well, the cost has skyrocketed, but not only because of Obama. In February, Robert Bryce of the Manhattan Institute released a study of the cost of renewable energy mandates. In most states, regulatory authorities have required utilities to obtain a specified portion of their power from renewable sources–wind, solar, and so on. Those energy »