Monthly Archives: February 2012
February 17, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Well not really, but it makes for a good headline. My old sometimes pal Tevi Troy, lately of the Hudson Institute, recently took to the pages of the jaunty National Affairs journal with an especially jaunty article entitled “Devaluing the Think Tank,” in which he wonders whether the independent research institutes like the Heritage Foundation, my AEI, and the Center for American Progress on the left, have tilted the balance
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February 17, 2012 — John Hinderaker
If you are a regular reader of this web site, you know a lot about President Obama’s FY 2013 budget, which he unveiled earlier this week. You know that the budget proposes to increase federal taxes, spending and debt and does nothing, or virtually nothing, to address the looming federal debt crisis. You know that the claims the administration has made about $4 trillion in debt reduction are false. You
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February 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Minneapolis’s City Pages is a free weekly tabloid with a strongly left-wing bent. You know the type. But This week’s featured story by Gregory Pratt — “The truth behind TiZA” — is a first-rate piece of journalism on Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy, the (public) suburban St. Paul charter school that was brought down by our friend Katherine Kersten and the lawsuit she inspired. I have frequently commented here that you
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February 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Below John writes about the testimony of Treasury Secretary TurboTax Tim Geithner before the Senate Budget Committee yesterday. As he had previously with Acting OMB Director Jeff Zients, Senator Sessions sought to elicit a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. Does Obama’s FY 2013 budget increase spending over the levels provided under current law? Geithner evades the question. For some mysterious reason, he prefers to talk around it. What’s going
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February 17, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In his third post on Obamacare in the light of the HHS “preventive care” mandate, Paul Rahe considers whether it is a mistake or a portent. He concludes: [T]here can be only one reason why Sebelius, Pelosi, and Obama decided to proceed. They wanted to show the bishops and the Catholic laity who is boss. They wanted to make those who think contraception wrong and abortion a species of murder
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February 16, 2012 — John Hinderaker
This chart tells you just about everything you need to know as you prepare to vote in 2012. Prepared by the Republican Study Committee, it depicts the percentage of Americans in the labor force from January 2005 (commonly known as the “good old days” through January 2012. The decline in the number of working Americans is staggering. And note that Barack Obama became president in January 2009, about 3/4 of
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February 16, 2012 — John Hinderaker
On Tuesday, Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, asked acting OMB Director Jeffrey Zients a simple question: Does President Obama’s FY 2013 budget–the matter on which Mr. Zients had come to the Senate to testify–increase spending compared with current law (most recently, the debt ceiling compromise that was reached last summer). For some reason, Zients was utterly stumped. He was never able to come up with a
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February 16, 2012 — Scott Johnson
It’s hard to escape the feeling that events are building toward a cataclysm in the Middle East. Iran appears to have engaged in three or four assassination attempts against Israelis in foreign countries this week — in New Delhi, in Bankgkok, in Tbilisi, and in Singapore (this last one reportedly denied by Israel). The bombs fit a pattern. Iranian denials of involvement are a little bit hard to square with
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February 16, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In my post below on nascent NBA star Jeremy Lin and Linsanity I link to two recent columns by my favorite sportswriter, the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay. Gay returns to the subject — it’s a good one, especially for a writer with an irrepressible sense of humor — today for the third time in “The delivery guy who saw Jeremy Lin coming.” This is a terrific column that adds
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February 16, 2012 — Steven Hayward
John is extra busy with his day job this week, so I’m filling in a bit on his cheesecake beat, but it fits with my energy-environment beat. How so? Stay tuned. I’m sure you won’t have any trouble given the photos here. For a long time conservatives have wondered how Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton, otherwise a fairly orthodox conservative, could ever have sponsored that stupid ban on incandescent light
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February 16, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Who doesn’t love the story of Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks player who has created a national mania in the past couple of weeks? Having averaged around 13 points a game (16 points a game as a senior) as an Ivy League player for Harvard, he bounced onto and off of a couple of NBA teams including his hometown Golden State Warriors. The Knicks picked him up — who
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February 16, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Why me, in fact–in USA Today, that is, with a column on why presidents might be more popular if they shut up more often. Some day, it might occur to a president that one secret of preserving public support is to talk less. Before the 20th century, presidents spoke publicly very seldom, and then usually in the most general terms. Rare appearances Our first 25 presidents gave an average of
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February 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker
On winter weekends, I wear a heavy baseball jacket with a Republican theme: it has big “GOP” graphics on the front and back and an American flag and another GOP symbol on one arm. I generally forget that I am a virtual billboard unless someone comments on the jacket, which happens occasionally. A month or so ago, at the height of Newt Gingrich’s surge, I was doing some target practice
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February 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Or both? No one dramatizes the grotesque fiscal irresponsibility of the Obama administration like Michael Ramirez. President Obama’s FY 2013 budget prompted an outburst of creativity–not just one cartoon, but two. Here Ramirez satirizes Obama’s budget as a work of fantasy: Who are the ultimate screwees of Obama’s fiscal policies? Our children and grandchildren, of course. Another $9 or $10 trillion in debt? No problem! Steal it from Junior: Ridicule
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February 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Acting OMB Director Jeff Zients is making the rounds defending President Obama’s FY 2013 budget, taking flak wherever he goes. This morning he is testifying before the House Budget Committee. Chairman Paul Ryan began the hearing with this opening statement, which should be read in full: Welcome all, to this important hearing. I’d like to thank our witness today, Mr. Zients, for coming to us under difficult circumstances. With the
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February 15, 2012 — Steven Hayward
We could fill up this space every day with new items about the latest environmental idiocy or green energy madness. I keep meaning to comment on a couple of the more notable ones, and highlight some good recent analysis on the issue from my pal Ben Zycher, but the greenfail news stacks up so fast in my in-box that I can’t keep up. But here’s a few recent stories of
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February 15, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Below John writes about the testimony of Acting OMB Director Jeff Zients before the Senate Budget Committee yesterday. Senator Sessions manfully sought to elicit a straightforward answer to a straightforward question. Does Obama’sFY 2013 budget increase spending over the levels provided under current law? Conn Carroll has a good account of the exchange in this Washington Examiner post. Carroll points out that Zients not only refused to answer the straightforward
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