Monthly Archives: November 2011
November 19, 2011 — Scott Johnson
The Federalist Society — are you now or have you ever been a member? — held its 2011 National Lawyers Convention last week. One of the (many) highlights of the convention must have been the debate on the constitutionalilty of Obamacare between Harvard’s Carl M. Loeb University Professor Laurence Tribe and former United States Solicitor General Paul D. Clement of Bancroft PLLC. This is an excellent debate, must watching straight
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November 19, 2011 — Steven Hayward
I’m back in the saddle after my quick out-and-back trip to the Left Coast, which means I spent most of the last two days on airplanes that did not, alas, have live internet up and running yet. During the last 72 hours Newt Gingrich has jumped into the lead in several polls, which made a nice set-up for the opening of my remarks to the O’Donnell, Clark and Crew annual
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November 19, 2011 — Steven Hayward
John beat me to the story of the Obama Administration’s totally explicable decision (that is to say, totally political decision) to delay the leasing of shale gas fields in Ohio. Obama and his Chu toy seem really to believe the green energy nonsense that we’re only a few years away from scaling up wind and solar and pixie dust and other phantasms to replace fossil fuel. More importantly, it is
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November 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
I can’t figure out whether it is due to malice or incompetence; all I know is, if you wanted to hurt America’s economy, you would do pretty much everything the Obama administration does. Energy policy is the absolute worst. First Obama delayed (and perhaps killed) the Keystone pipeline. Michael Ramirez sums up that decision, which can be explained only as an economically irrational attempt to shore up the president’s liberal
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November 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
In parts I and II, I wrote about the “environmental justice” initiative in the Obama administration’s Environmental Protection Agency. Briefly, I argued that there is no legislative authority for the EPA to enforce a regimen of “environmental justice,” and there is a danger that the agency will misuse its permitting authority to coerce companies subject to its regulation to comply with extra-legal demands. Voluntarily, of course. In Part II, I
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November 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
In September, the Touro Institute and the Hudson Institute co-sponsored a conference in New York that was a counterpoint to the U.N.’s Durban III. One of the speakers was Shelby Steele. His speech, titled The Narrative of Perpetual Palestinian Victimhood, has now been posted online. It is, I think, excellent. Here are some excerpts: The Durban conferences, the request for UN recognition of a unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood, and
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November 18, 2011 — Scott Johnson
Patrick Hynes draws attention to a small item in a larger story about President Obama’s changing position on some EPA regulations in light of his reelection strategy. “It appears,” Hynes writes, “that EPA administrator Lisa Jackson – who as I write this is attempting to push through new regulations in the name of public health that will cost America hundreds of thousands of jobs – was recently driven four blocks
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November 18, 2011 — John Hinderaker
From today’s New York Times Corrections section: And a map with the article mislabeled, in some editions, the state in the upper left corner of the contiguous United States that is considered solidly Democratic. It is Washington, not Oregon. (Though the outcome of some races may be in doubt, one thing is for certain: Oregon will always be solidly under Washington.) Scott and I have been critiquing the Times for
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November 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
We are nearing the end of my investigation into NPR’s disgraceful three-part series on South Dakota’s Department of Social Services. NPR alleged that the state agency “kidnaps” Indian children from Indian reservations, and places them in white foster homes because it profits by doing so, and because this kidnapping scheme financially benefits South Dakota’s current governor, Dennis Daugaard. I deconstructed these absurd accusation here, here, here and here. NPR’s story
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November 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Which was, I suppose, their purpose in declaring today a “day of action.” In various cities across the country, Occupiers set out to make trouble. New York was the main center, of course; protesters battled policemen at multiple points around the city, and generally came out on the short end: Hundreds of Occupiers were arrested, some when they tried to block the Brooklyn Bridge: Lots of working New Yorkers pushed
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November 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
I wrote yesterday about the Obama administration’s push for “environmental justice.” The Environmental Protection Agency under Lisa Jackson has made the movement a priority, even though the agency has no statutory authority to enforce standards of environmental justice, assuming that such standards could even be defined. The danger, of course, is that the EPA will exercise powers it doesn’t legally possess by threatening companies that are subject to its regulations
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November 17, 2011 — John Hinderaker
If we were to choose three of Barack Obama’s words to sum up his failed presidency, it would be “spending equals stimulus.” Obama naively believes that any government spending–it scarcely matters on what–has a positive impact on our economy. He completely fails to understand (or, at any rate, to acknowledge) that wasteful spending destroys wealth and, in the long run, kills jobs. Thus, even though the Democrats’ $800 billion-plus stimulus
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November 17, 2011 — Scott Johnson
The White House press corps actually asked President Obama two good questions at his APEC press conference in Hawaii (“here in Asia,” according to el presidente) earlier this week. Obama’s answers to the questions are worth a look. AP reporter Ben Feller led off the press conference with this question: Q I’d like to ask you about Iran. Did you get any specific commitments from Russia or China on tightening
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November 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
Peter Schweizer disclosed this “green” boondoggle in his new book, Throw Them All Out. Big Government has the story. It has to do with a “green energy” company called BrightSource Energy Inc., which develops solar energy products (or intends to someday, anyway). In 2010, BrightSource was in deep trouble. It was $1.8 billion in debt and was losing money hand over fist–a $71.6 million loss on a mere $13.5 million
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November 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
In 1994, President Clinton issued Executive Order 12898, which directed each federal agency to “make achieving environmental justice part of its mission….” Not too much damage was done during the Clinton administration, and the initiative happily languished under President Bush. But under Lisa Jackson’s leadership of the Environmental Protection Agency, environmental justice is back with a vengeance. The EPA has promulgated Plan EJ 2014 as its implementation of Executive Order
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November 16, 2011 — Steven Hayward
So I’m away tomorrow morning to Portland, Oregon, where I’m speaking at the annual dinner of the Portland law firm of O’Donnell, Clark & Crew, which means with plane flights and all I’ll be observing blogging silence most of the day. O’Donnell, Clark & Crew a smallish boutique firm that does a lot of fun stuff–like suing the government in defense of property rights–and also some not-so-fun stuff, like child
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November 16, 2011 — John Hinderaker
We have all heard a lot about the filthy and degraded conditions in which the left-wing Occupiers have been living in various cities around the world. From New York, a report on the conditions that finally caused Mayor Bloomberg to sweep the Occupiers out of Zuccotti Park: An administration source insisted that Bloomberg gave the go-ahead to roust the protesters because of “an accumulation of things” — including concerns that
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