Monthly Archives: July 2010

Ishmael Jones: On the Russian swap

When the United States rounded up the Russian spy ring operating in the United States, the countries set some kind of a land speed record to arrive at a swap. The swap maintained a lot of secrets on both sides. What gives? Harvey Klehr and John Earl Haynes are distinguished scholars of Communism; they put the swap into the appropriate historical context. But what happened in this case? Perhaps no »

NAACP’s Glass House

The NAACP has tried to make itself relevant again by casting aspersions on the Tea Party movement. But if we’re looking for actual racism, as opposed to the fabricated kind, we need look no farther than the NAACP itself. Big Government posted this video of U.S. Department of Agriculture official Shirley Sherrod, speaking an an NAACP Freedom Fund dinner in Georgia earlier this year. Her speech, which was greeted with »

Alvin Greene speaks

Alvin Greene is the South Carolina Democratic party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate. Readers will recall that Greene, despite running virtually no campaign, easily defeated the candidate supported by South Carolina’s Democratic establishment. He then withstood a challenge to the election and calls that he withdraw due to his arrest on a felony charge of showing obscene photos to a college student. The Washington Post reports that Greene has finally »

Who Benefits?

That question is often asked in the context of criminal investigations. Ken Haapala, Executive Vice President of the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), applies it to the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act (APA): Although the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act (APA) appears dead, Senator Reid announced he will introduce yet another version of cap-and-tax this month by any other name. But both the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and EPA have produced »

The One-Party Media

University of San Diego School of Law Professor Maimon Schwarzschild was my classmate in Mrs. Mullenbein’s Temple Beth El pre-k class in Fargo back in 1955 or so. Even then his smarts made him stand out. Over at The Right Coast, Maimon draws the big picture that emerges out of the fabricated tale of the congressmen and the phantom n-word: The usual disillusioned phrase is “mainstream media” or MSM. The »

Christian Counter-Attack?

I’ve lamented the fact that Christians in America and elsewhere don’t seem to care about the oppression of fellow Christians around the world. Ralph Peters, however, thinks a backlash is coming–in Africa: The Islamists have it wrong: Islam isn’t the world’s fastest-growing religion. By birth numbers and convert tallies, it’s Christianity. … The bombings that recently butchered World Cup fans in Uganda were just the latest in a long line »

Obama’s dangerous game in Arizona

My friend Ray Hartwell, writing in the Washington Times, argues that Arizona could lawfully take much stronger action than it has thus far to bring order to the border. Ray points to Article I, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution which provides that “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of »

An open letter to Matt Bai

In connection with “Matt Bai repeats the big lie,” reader Steve Robbins asked us to forward the message below to New York Times reporter Matt Bai. I asked Steve if we could post it as an open letter to Bai on Power Line. Slightly edited, here it is: Dear Matt Bai: I read your strange July 17, 2010 piece in the New York Times entitled “Beneath Divides Seemingly About Race »

The New Black Panther Party case — my final(?) look

I spent part of this past weekend reading documents and cases related to the Justice Department’s voter intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) and the party itself. My conclusion is that the decision to drop the case against all defendants except the one who carried a weapon at the polling station is defensible. Whether the decision was made for defensible reasons or instead was motivated »

Myths of Obamacare

Romneycare affords us a glimpse into the not very distant future if Obamacare is not repealed. Employers are dumping their health care plans. The governor is essentially attempting to impose price controls on insurers. If the governor is successful, insurers would just throw in the towel. When that happens under Obamacare, we will take our nationalized medicine straight. Just about every talking point Obama used to peddle Obamacare is a »

Matt Bai repeats the big lie

New York Times reporter Matt Bai is writing for readers who get their news from, well, the New York Times. So he feels free to regurgitate this: The question of racism in the amorphous Tea Party movement is, of course, a serious one, since so much of the Republican Party seems to be in the thrall of its activists. There have been scattered reports around the country of racially charged »

Looking for that big wave

Tom Schaller takes a look at Republican prospects for taking control of the House. He considers two scenarios: (1) the “regular wave” scenario in which both parties hold all of their “likely” and “leaning their way” seats, but the Republicans pick up all of the toss-ups and (2) the “big wave” scenario in which the GOP wins all of the toss-ups plus the races that lean Democratic. In the first »

Union Goons In Action

This footage was shot at a pro-Democratic Party union rally in California. If those shirts were brown instead of pink, the video would have a disturbingly retro feel: It’s funny how the political class is always wringing its hands about the potential for violence at Tea Party rallies, while 100% of the actual violence and intimidation that take place at political events is committed by union goons. »

A RINO in name only

Back in June, Sarah Palin made the interesting decision to endorse Joe Miller who is running against incumbent Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary. A year earlier, Palin had contributed to Murkowski’s campaign. After she endorsed Miller, Palin explained that she had previously contributed to Murkowski campaign in “an attempt to reassure the senator that I, as Alaska’s governor, had no intention of jumping into the race.” She »

Is This the Best They’ve Got?

On its web site, the NAACP promotes its resolution accusing the Tea Party of being racist: The resolution came after a year of high-profile media coverage of attendees of Tea Party marches using vile, antagonistic racial slurs & images. Really? The NAACP’s blog post is accompanied by seven photos, all of which are credited to Think Progress, a far-left web site. These photos evidently comprise the best evidence the NAACP »

Annals of Government Medicine

Doctors at the South London Healthcare Trust say that cash flow issues have resulted in vital equipment being unavailable, compromising patient safety: A cash crisis in the NHS has left patients lying on the operating table before doctors realised vital equipment had not been ordered, according to a leaked report. Women in labour have been forced to wait while epidural equipment was borrowed from other hospitals, while other patients have »

The New Black Panther Party case: Just blow it

Paul Mirengoff has been deliberating over the proper weight to be accorded the story involving the dismissal the case against the New Black Panther Party in Philadelphia by the powers-that- be in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department. I’m one of those who thought it was a big story, not so much because of the dismissal per se as because of the rationale underlying it. According to whistleblower »