Monthly Archives: November 2009

November 25, 2009 — John Hinderaker

A Caveat

I’ve written a lot about the East Anglia emails, here, here, here and here. I think the emails and other documents are damaging to the cause of the partisans of anthropogenic global warming, mostly because they stand exposed as exactly that–partisans, engaged in a political rather than scientific enterprise. However, while I did mention it in the first post linked above, I haven’t emphasized the email that has gotten the »
November 25, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Abe Pollin, RIP

Abe Pollin, owner of the Washington Wizards and former owner of the Washington Capitals, died yesterday at age 85. Pollin brought basketball and hockey to Washington, DC. He also built two arenas with his own money, the Capital Center in the 1970s and the MCI (now Verizon) Center in the 1990s. The latter gym cost more than $200 million. The city of Baltimore offered to build Pollin a new arena »
November 24, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Nuclear power surges, but the U.S. continues to lag

The lead story in today’s Washington Post is called “Nuclear Power Regains Support.” Unfortunately, though, the story’s focus is not on the U.S. The dateline is London, as the Post chronicles how the “commander” of a group of Greenpeace activists who stormed a nuclear plant in Britain a few years ago became an advocate of lifting the British ban on nuclear plant construction. He and many other former opponents of »
November 24, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Cleaning house — if the Dems won’t do it, maybe the voters will

A few years ago, we wrote a series of pieces about Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WVa) who in 2006 became the target of ethics inquiries. The inquiries stemmed from the fact that between 2000 and 2004, Mollohan’s net assets increased from $562,000 to at least $6.3 million. During that same time, he steered $250 million in earmarks to nonprofit groups, some of whose leaders had business relationships with him. In some »
November 24, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Tune In to the Bill Bennett Show…

…tomorrow morning at 8:05 eastern, when I’ll be on. We’ll talk about the recent indictments in connection with the Minnesota/Somalia pipeline, the East Anglia climate email scandal, and canned cranberry sauce. All I can say is, I hope they hold me over for two segments! There are lots of places where you can listen on the web, including here. »
November 24, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Poll Data

Current poll data are brutal for the Democrats. In the Rasmussen survey, President Obama’s approval index, the difference between those who strongly approve and strongly disapprove of his performance, has hit a record low of -15. Overall, voters disapprove of Obama by 54-45%. That’s no doubt in part because voters have also turned decisively against the Democrats’ health care proposals, opposing them, currently, by 56-38%. Meanwhile, voters now favor Republicans »
November 24, 2009 — John Hinderaker

A Sickening Story

You could call this pre-September 11 thinking, except that there never was a time when it would have been sane: Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com. … Ahmed »
November 24, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

False choice or false alternative?

President Obama said at a news conference today that he will “finish the job” in Afghanistan: After eight years, some of those years in which we did not have, I think, either the resources or the strategy to get the job done, it is my intention to finish the job. Obama added that he plans to announce his new course of action for the war after Thanksgiving. The rumor is »
November 24, 2009 — Scott Johnson

The Blind Side

I spent a long weekend at Dartmouth visiting my daughter Deborah. On Saturday night she played in the fall concert of the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra. The concert featured Shostakovich’s deeply disturbing Cello Concerto No. 1 and Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. It was a terrific concert, conducted with style by Anthony Princiotti. (Princiotti’s program notes are accessible in PDF here.) My classmate and friend Dr. John Floberg also attended the concert to »
November 23, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Judgment day approaches at Dartmouth

Oral argument is set for Dec. 4, 2009, at 9:00 a.m., on the DartmouthTrustees’ motion for summary judgment in a lawsuit filed by several Dartmouth alumni against the College for violating its 1891 Agreement with Dartmouth’s Assocation of Alumni. The Agreement mandated parity on the Board between Charter Trustees (handpicked by the President and the Board’s five-person Governance Committee) and Alumni Trustees (voted on by the alumni). Readers may recall »
November 23, 2009 — John Hinderaker

A Different Perspective on Obama’s Bows

From Michael Ramirez; click to enlarge: »
November 23, 2009 — John Hinderaker

More From the East Anglia Archives

We’ve written about the leaked emails and other documents from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Center here, here and here. Another intensely interesting email thread, which doesn’t seem to have gotten much notice, relates to the fact that the last decade, contrary to the alarmists’ predictions, has tended to get cooler, not warmer. At the end of 2008, the scientists at East Anglia predicted that 2009 would be »
November 23, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

Getting the mullah’s message out — an inside look at NIAC and its think-tank cronies

The email correspondence of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) continues to provide valuable insight into its efforts to “mainstream” the pro-mullah line. Jennifer Rubin has posted correspondence between the NAIC and Karim Sadjadpour (of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and Afshin Molavi (of the New America Foundation). As she points out, Sadjadpour and Molavi are treated by the MSM as independent experts about Iran. But their email correspondence »
November 23, 2009 — Paul Mirengoff

More soccer exceptionalism

Last night, I wrote about the hand-wringing that has resulted from France cheating its way into the World Cup via a blatant handball. I suggested that this reaction would not occur under comparable circumstances in American sports. Today comes news that the players for Wigan in the English Premier League have said they will personally refund the ticket price to fans who made the trip to North London to witness »
November 23, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Support for Dem Health Care Proposals Plummeting?

That’s what today’s Rasmussen survey says. Rasmussen finds that likely voters oppose the Democrats’ health care “reform” plans by a record margin, 56%-38%. It will be interesting to see whether these numbers remain stable or whether, perhaps, today’s result is an outlier. One thing we know for sure: the Democrats’ polling must be showing something similar. Otherwise, House members wouldn’t have competed for permission to vote against it, Senators wouldn’t »
November 23, 2009 — John Hinderaker

Inconvenient Timing

Al Qaeda says that Said Ali al-Shihri, who was released from Guantanamo Bay a year ago, it now its number two man in Yemen. To comment on this post, go here. »
November 23, 2009 — John Hinderaker

“Everyone Wants Respect, But Hardly Anyone Is Willing to Pay for It”

In an article titled “Obama’s Nice Guy Act Gets Him Nowhere on the World Stage,” Der Spiegel sums up President Obama’s Asian trip as a complete failure: Barack Obama looked tired on Thursday, as he stood in the Blue House in Seoul, the official residence of the South Korean president. He also seemed irritable and even slightly forlorn. The CNN cameras had already been set up. But then Obama decided »