Monthly Archives: February 2010

February 22, 2010 — John Hinderaker

The Moth Returns to the Candle

After months of leaving the drafting of a health care bill to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, President Obama stepped into the breach today with his own proposal–or a summary of a proposal, anyway. You can read the summary on the White House web site. Obama’s proposal (not yet a bill) tries to “bridge the gap” between the Senate and House versions. It offers a cornucopia of goodies: health insurance »
February 22, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Remembering the indispensable man

Today is the anniversary of the birth of George Washington. Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington’s greatness was the rarest and the most needed. At this remove in time, it is also the hardest to comprehend. Take, for example, Washington’s contribution to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington’s mere presence lent the undertaking and its handiwork the legitimacy that resulted »
February 21, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Investigate this, Part Two

Yesterday, in connection with a post about the Obama-Holder Justice Department’s decision that former Bush administration officials John Yoo and Jay Bybee should not be disciplined over the “torture memos,” I referred to a letter written by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey about the matter. Actually, the letter was co-authored by Mukasey and Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip. Both are former United States district court judges. The invaluable Andy McCarthy obtained »
February 21, 2010 — John Hinderaker

How to Tell When the Government Is Broken

Democrats can’t get their bills passed. George Will nailed it this morning on ABC: TERRY MORAN, HOST: There’s a sense that something is broken in Washington summed up this week by Senator Evan Bayh (D-Ind.) who announced his retirement. I think it’s fair to say he’s leaving in disgust. Here’s what he had to say. SENATOR EVAN BAYH, (D-IND.): I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating »
February 21, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

The case against Rashad Hussian, a closer look

Daveed Gartnerstein-Ross, an expert on counter-terrorism, is Vice President of Research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the organization that the estimable Cliff May runs. Gartnerstein-Ross is himself estimable and he performs yeoman’s work as an opponent of Islamism. Gartenstein-Ross has come to the defense of Rashad Hussain, the White House attorney who is under fire ( including ours) for, among things, statements he made attacking as a “politically »
February 21, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Mossad Under a Microscope

We’ve written several times about the apparent killing of Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. The London Times has been all over the story; its latest report, based largely on “Israeli sources,” is interesting if true. The Times story, which is in part a profile of Mossad chief Meir Dagan and appears to have been leaked by his enemies, claims that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu personally approved the killing. It »
February 21, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Spain, Down the Drain

At Pajamas Media, Soeren Kern chronicles the sad case of Spain under the leadership of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. The hapless Zapatero presides over Europe’s second-worst economy, with nearly 20 percent unemployment and a crumbling GDP. Zapatero and his minions have blamed the collapse on anything other than their own socialist policies, including–I’m not kidding–George W. Bush. (Hey, if it’s good enough for Barack Obama, why not »
February 21, 2010 — John Hinderaker

The Nanny State In Twilight

If you are of sub-par intelligence and need someone to micro-manage your life, we, like most other Western nations, have just the government for you. On the other hand, when it comes to dealing with hostile nuclear powers, you’re on your own. Mark Steyn draws the contrast: If you’re minded to flip a pancake at speeds of more than four miles per hour, the state will step in and act »
February 21, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Chonicles of CAIR, cont’d

We’ve written a lot about the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) over the years. CAIR holds itself out as a civil rights group. For those with eyes to see, however, the mask has long since fallen from CAIR. Even such stalwart Democrats as Senators Dick Durbin and Charles Schumer have come to recognize CAIR’s “association with groups that are suspect,” its “ties to terrorism” and its “intimate links with Hamas.” »
February 21, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Mission accomplished…anyone care?

Gabriel Ledeen served two tours in Iraq with the 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment. He is now studying at Stanford Law School. He writes to ask his friends to “read this article, written by decorated combat veteran and author David Bellavia. It is an almost perfect expression of what it feels like to be a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom (now concluded), trying to assimilate back into a society that »
February 20, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Are the Democrats Coming After Your Savings?

Beginning around 40 years ago, the federal government implemented one of the wisest domestic policy initiatives of modern times. In an effort to equalize the tax treatment of employees and self-employed individuals, a series of statutes permitted self-employed persons to save pre-tax money for retirement and to accumulate funds in retirement accounts that are not taxed until money is withdrawn post-retirement. Those programs have been broadened over the years to »
February 20, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Pee-Wee for President?

Ron Paul has won the CPAC straw Presidential vote with 31 percent of the total. This is dismaying, to the extent one takes it seriously. Ron Paul is the crazy uncle in the Republican Party’s attic. He is not a principled libertarian like, say, Steve Forbes. Rather, as I noted in this post, where I likened him to Pee-Wee Herman, Paul has a rather sinister history as a hater and »
February 20, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

When excellence is its own reward

I’ve been writing a lot lately about Wayne Rooney and Landon Donovan, but three far less heralded players stole the headlines in Everton’s 3-1 victory over Manchester Untied. The three were goal scorers Dan Gosling and Jack Rodwell (both substitutes) and Russian winger Diniyar Bilyaletdinov. Gosling scored the go-ahead goal. The seldom-used 20-year old also scored the winner against Liverpool in the FA Cup quaterfinals last year. He thus cements »
February 20, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Investigate this

The Obama-Holder Justice Department has concluded that the Bush administration lawyers who wrote and signed the so-called torture memos will not face discipline. The Department finds, however, that these lawyers “exercised poor judgment.” The investigation was ill-conceived, to put it as kindly as I can. To put it less kindly, the investigation was a politically-motivated witch hunt. The incoherence of the Justice Department’s exercise can be gleaned from this statement »
February 20, 2010 — Scott Johnson

The case of Rashad Hussain, part 2

Rashad Hussain is the deputy associate White House counsel who is Obama’s recently designated representative to the Organization of the Islamic Conference. We wrote about his appointment here, noting his 2004 expression of support for convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian. Al-Arian was the North American head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Anyone who bothered to read al-Arian’s 2003 indictment would see that al-Arian was a long-time, active supporter of PIJ’s terrorist operations. »
February 20, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Return of the John Birch Society?

In his history of National Review, former NR senior editor Jeffrey Hart notes one consequence of the 1964 election at the magazine. “The odor of the John Birch Society had been so strong and so intolerable, and so damaging to Goldwater,” Hart recalls, “that National Review decided that for the future of American conservatism, decisive distance had to be laid down irrevocably between the magazine and the society.” That distance »
February 20, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Looking for a few good fellows

Our friends at the Claremont Institute are again recruiting fellows to participate in their Publius program. Every summer since 1979, the Claremont Institute has brought together a select group of young conservatives for the Publius Fellowship. These Publius Fellows meet with the Institute’s Senior Fellows and other distinguished visiting scholars to study American politics and political thought. In intensive daily seminars and relaxed evening symposia, fellows discuss great American readings-from »