Monthly Archives: July 2011
July 21, 2011 — Scott Johnson
We continue with our exclusive preview of Tim Groseclose’s Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, published this past Tuesday. Professor Groseclose is a distinguished scholar — he is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA, holding a joint appointment in the departments of political science and economics — and this is an important book. We have previously posted the preface, the introduction, chapter 8
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July 21, 2011 — Steven Hayward
The budget conversation for quite a while now has tended to bore in on Social Security and Medicare for the very sensible Willie Sutton Principle (“because that’s where the money is”), but there are some other large pots of dubious spending that ought to get some primary attention. The four largest federally funded poverty programs—Medicaid, food stamps, housing subsidies, and supplemental income programs like the Earned Income Tax Credit—cost $650
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July 20, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Mark Steyn delves into ancient history: Here’s a newspaper headline from a yellowing cutting I found up in the attic: U.S. Budget Deficit Hits Record $438 Billion For Year Boy, those were the days! Flappers in rumble seats, wind-up victrolas, and deficits you could measure in billions. A more innocent age, lost in the mists of time. Gosh, you’d have to be pushing, oh, 12 even to remember it. That
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July 20, 2011 — John Hinderaker
…just in case, here is Contessa Brewer of MSNBC–that apparently is her name, not a title–interviewing Congressman Mo Brooks. She assumes he is stupid because he is from Alabama–she was born in Maine–so she commits the classic mistake of asking a rhetorical question to which she does not know the answer:
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July 20, 2011 — John Hinderaker
We have written before about the fact that earlier historical eras seem remote from us in part because we see them (assuming we see them in photographs at all) in black and white. The absence of color creates a distance that can be hard to bridge. Thus, it can seem revelatory when one finally sees in color views that before had been available only in shades of gray. Today, the
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July 20, 2011 — John Hinderaker
The Daily Caller’s story on Michele Bachmann’s allegedly “incapacitating” migraine headaches fell well below that paper’s usual standard. While the piece’s tone was sensational, the actual facts alleged were a good deal less so: Bachmann suffers from migraines; she takes medication for them; and she has been briefly hospitalized three times in recent years (it is not clear that any of those “hospitalizations” lasted for longer than a few hours).
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July 20, 2011 — Steven Hayward
Posts from me may be a little light over the next 10 days. I am away tonight to the UK, where I am a speaker on the Young America’s Foundation Reagan Centennial cruise around the British Isles, along with fellow speakers Karl Rove, Ed Meese, Walter Williams, and YAF’s intrepid leader Ron Robinson. I’ll try to send along some dispatches, perhaps on the unfolding Morlock, I mean, Murdoch scandal, but
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July 20, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Republicans in Washington are gamely trying to prevent the debt ceiling debate from spinning out of control and becoming a defeat for the party. Currently there are two large-scale efforts on the table to resolve the immediate debt crisis. The first is the still-amorphous Gang of Six plan. It is nearly always wise to be wary of proposals negotiated behind closed doors by bipartisan groups of Senators; the Gang of
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July 20, 2011 — Scott Johnson
We continue with our exclusive preview of Tim Groseclose’s new book Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind. Although he wears his learning lightly, Professor Groseclose is a distinguished scholar — he is the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at UCLA, holding a joint appointment in the departments of political science and economics — and this is an important book. We have previously posted the preface,
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July 19, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Per Michael Ramirez: Actually, though, I think hope and change are drawing a heck of a lot closer today than they were in 2008.
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July 19, 2011 — Steven Hayward
A couple of weeks ago I took notice here of the trial balloon coming out of the White House about how the debt ceiling might be unconstitutional, based on a strained reading of a clause in the 14th Amendment, and therefore simply ignored by President Obama and the Treasury Department. Lots of lefty law profs rushed in to give the idea credence, several Democrat senators declared the idea “intriguing,” and
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July 19, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Demonstrating that leftists are crazed by hate in the United Kingdom as they are in the United States, a young man attacked Rupert Murdoch this afternoon as he was testifying before a committee of Parliament. Here is the video; it will probably be choppy, for now, as about a million people are watching it at once:
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July 19, 2011 — Steven Hayward
The Wall Street Journal editorial page notes today that Republicans will try to force votes today on a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, but that like all such efforts since the 1930s, it is unlikely to succeed. And even if it did pass, it is no sure thing that three-fourths of the states would ratify it, since many may assume that a balanced federal budget will entail lower federal subventions
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July 19, 2011 — Scott Johnson
With Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind, officially published today, Tim Groseclose has written an important book. Professor Groseclose measures media bias with social-scientific methods and concludes that: (i) all mainstream media outlets have a liberal bias, and (ii) while some supposedly conservative outlets—such as the Washington Times or Fox News Special Report—do lean right, their conservative bias is less than the liberal bias of most
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July 19, 2011 — Scott Johnson
A long-time reader sends his thoughts about a wild weekend of soccer: I’m sure many Power Line readers watched the agonizing defeat of the U.S. women at the hands of Japan, on penalty kicks, in the final of the Women’s World Cup on Sunday. Despite coming up a tiny bit short, the team did itself and the sport proud, combining the fierce competitive spirit of the top-level men’s game with
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July 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
The liberal media are in full-spin mode, trying to promote President Obama’s position in his battle with Congressional Republicans over the debt limit. That assumes, of course, that Obama has a position. The only tangible proposal he has put forward was his FY 2012 budget, which was greeted with snickers and failed to garner a single vote in the United States Senate. But that is a subject for another day.
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July 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Our effort in Afghanistan is complex and daunting. Our troops there have done great service, but Afghanistan itself is almost unimaginably primitive. I, along with many others, have had mixed feelings about a strategy that sometimes seems to mortgage the success of our often-heroic efforts to the ability of the Afghans to create a decent society. So, when our friend Pete Hegseth told us that he was assigned to go
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