May 24, 2012 — John Hinderaker

How Meritorious Are the Catholic Lawsuits?

Featured image We have written several posts about the lawsuits by dozens of Catholic institutions against the federal government that seek to invalidate the HHS mandate requiring them to violate their religious precepts by providing employees with contraceptive and certain abortion services. It strikes me as obvious that the HHS mandate violates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment, but this is not an area in which I am an expert. »
May 24, 2012 — Steven Hayward

Alan Simpson, Unplugged

Featured imageI haven’t always been a fan of former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson, but do not miss his recent letter to a greedy geezers lobby group in California.  Politico has the whole story, but here’s the complete text of Simpson’s letter, which is, shall we say, “candid,” even for a westerner: To Whom It May Concern: Erskine Bowles and I thoroughly enjoyed our time on the West Coast and received an »
May 24, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Pakistan deems it treason for Pakistani to help the U.S. find bin Laden

Featured imageA Pakistani court has convicted a doctor who helped the CIA find Osama bin Laden of treason. According to this report in the Washington Post, the doctor, Shakil Afridi, apparently tried to obtain DNA samples from bin Laden’s compound through a vaccination program. He failed to get the samples, but U.S. officials have acknowledged that the doctor did contribute to our intelligence operation against bin Laden. Pakistan shouldn’t have prosecuted »
May 24, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Some of what the Obama administration told Hollywood about Pakistan

Featured imageAccording to a Washington Post report, the U.S. is working to improve relations with Pakistan. Among other things, it hopes that Pakistan will re-open a supply route to Afghanistan. In a post just below, I argue against trying to improve the relationship, particularly in light of Pakistan’s conviction of a Pakistani doctor for treason in connection with the assistance he provided us in the search for bin Laden. But if »
May 24, 2012 — Steven Hayward

Why Scientists Have Squandered Public Trust

Featured imageI have commented before about the political problems of the scientific community, which are typically being turned around against Republicans.  In a post last month I recalled the 2004 remark by Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin in the New York Review of Books that “Most scientists are, at a minimum, liberals,” and the caution of MIT’s Kerry Emanuel about the dangers of “group think” and the “shocking lack of political diversity »
May 24, 2012 — Scott Johnson

E.J. Dionne against the Church

Featured imageAs Quin Hillyer observed a while back, E.J. Dionne has made the descent from a thoughtful liberal columnist into a left-wing hit-man and, finally, a flagrantly dishonest left-wing hit-man. From his Washington Post column on the 12 lawsuits filed around the country by 43 Catholic institutions against the Obamacare “preventive services” mandate, one will learn precisely nothing except what a shill he is. In my notes on University of Notre »
May 23, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Barack Obama, Skinflint?

Featured imageI ran across this piece by Rex Nutting on Market Watch today. Nutting’s thesis is aptly summed up by the title: “Obama spending binge never happened.” He begins: Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree. … Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our »
May 23, 2012 — Scott Johnson

The legacy of Vidal Sassoon

Featured imageRobert S. Wistrich is one of the world’s foremost scholars of anti-Semitism. Witness his monumental history A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism From Antiquity to the Global Jihad. See also the squib below. In this column, Professor Wistrich remembers Vidal Sassoon, who died on May 9: I first became aware of Vidal Sassoon’s rise to prominence about 45 years ago as a young student at Cambridge University. It was the age of »
May 23, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Obama administration ignores its own warnings, opens up to Hollywood on bin Laden raid

Featured imageJosh Gerstein at Politico reports that just weeks after Pentagon and Central Intelligence Agency officials warned publicly of the dangers posed by leaks about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, top officials at both agencies and at the White House granted Hollywood filmmakers unusual access to those involved in planning the raid and some of the methods they used to do it. Gerstein bases his report in part on »
May 23, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Stories from the Obama Economy [Updated]

Featured imageThe Romney campaign’s newest web video keeps the focus where it belongs. Titled “Stories from the Obama Economy,” it begins with a clip of President Obama saying in a press conference earlier this week that Bain Capital is what the campaign is all about. “No, Mr. President, it’s about this,” the ad says, followed by shots of Americans talking about the hardships of the Obama economy: It’s a good ad, »
May 24, 2012 — Scott Johnson

CRB: Dungeons and Dragons

Featured imageThis morning we conclude our preview of the new (Spring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books (subscribe here and get immediate online access). It is, as usual, an incredibly rich issue; I have sought to select pieces conveying the breadth and depth on display. The issue is chock full of essays and reviews on contemporary politics and constitutionalism, political philosophy, literature and culture. In the latter category, for example, »
May 23, 2012 — Steven Hayward

Paul Fussell, RIP

Featured imageScott normally covers the literary as well as the music beat here on Power Line, but if I can horn in on Paul’s sports desk, I may as well beat Scott to the notice of the death of Paul Fussell at the age of 88.  Fussell is a little bit like Scott Fitzgerald—a great writer with many worthy titles, but one looms above all: The Great War and Modern Memory. Fussell »
May 23, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Media Alert [Updated With Video of Show]

Featured imageI haven’t been doing much cable TV news for a while, but tonight I will be on the Larry Kudlow show on CNBC at 7:50 Eastern time, talking about the debt, the deficit and the implications of the debt for the 2012 election. It should be fun; please tune in if you can! UPDATE: Here it is, for better or worse. I actually thought it went OK, although we never »
May 23, 2012 — John Hinderaker

An Evening with Charles Krauthammer

Featured imageLast night, the Center of the American Experiment held its Annual Dinner at the Hilton in downtown Minneapolis. For, I believe, the seventh year in a row, I was privileged to be the master of ceremonies for the event. It’s a great role–the less you do, the better people like it. Our keynote speaker this year was Dr. Charles Krauthammer. He was insightful as always, analyzing the Obama administration as »
May 23, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Some thoughts on Tom Cotton’s victory

Featured imageLet’s begin by looking backwards and sparing a thought for the pathetic leftists who, when Tom first appeared on Power Line (writing to us from Iraq), claimed that he didn’t exist. The idea that a Harvard educated lawyer would leave a top-flight law firm to fight for his country was simply too alien for these poor souls to accept. This level of patriotism didn’t compute. We feel sorry for them. »