Monthly Archives: February 2012
February 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
CNN is currently headlining: “Ticker: Romney’s Big Stumble.” Wow. What was the big stumble? CNN explains: Mitt Romney’s campaign scrambled to clean up another unforced error by their candidate… Another! Got that? …Wednesday after he came out against a controversial amendment pushed by Senate Republicans that would allow employers to opt out of health care coverage they disagree with on moral grounds. Romney’s statement, which came in an afternoon interview
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February 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Barack Obama came into office as an anti-petroleum crusader. He made no bones about the fact that he wanted gas prices to rise; likewise, his Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, explained that he wanted U.S. gas prices to rise to European levels. In those days, global warming alarmists were riding high, and the Obama administration accepted the idea that to prevent climate change, it should suppress production of domestic oil
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February 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Pro-lifers have long argued that it is a slippery slope from abortion to infanticide; in the case of partial-birth abortion, the distinction is slim at best. Ridiculous, liberals have long replied. Who could confuse abortion with infanticide? Ethicists, maybe. No, this is not a parody: “Killing babies no different from abortion, experts say.” Parents should be allowed to have their newborn babies killed because they are “morally irrelevant” and ending
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February 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In the new edition of Uncommon Knowledge, Peter Robinson welcomes his Hoover Institution colleague Condoleezza Rice. It’s a suitably extended edition of the show, running over an hour, occasioned by the publication of Rice’s memoir of service in the Bush administration, No Higher Honor. I should add that in her warm family memoir, Extraordinary Ordinary People — also necessary reading — Secretary Rice recalls her parents and her upbringing in
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February 29, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Among the many things Rick Santorum has said recently that is raising hackles is that President Obama is a “snob” for saying everyone should go to college. How uncouth of the ex-Senator with a working class background! The Senator deserves a defense, however, though probably not on the grounds he had in mind. First let’s brush aside the surface arguments on this issue, which are two: first, Obama can be
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February 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Since this past fall Glen Campbell has been on a self-declared farewell tour following on the announcement of his struggle against Alzheimer’s disease. Aaron Goldstein caught Campbell’s show in Boston last week and filed this report (including a link to tour dates). We customarily salute Campbell in conjunction with our annual celebration of the birthday of songwriter Jimmy Webb. “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” (number 2, 1967) and
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February 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Mitt Romney won easily in Arizona today, and various sources are calling Michigan for him as well. From my own review of the voting in Michigan, which is reported here, it seems that Romney’s lead should increase through the evening, as he is winning big in the heavily populated counties around Detroit. This despite the fact that, according to exit polls, around 10% of the voters in the GOP primary
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February 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
As a lawyer, I am generally happy to see my fellow lawyers make money. But do they really need help from the government to do it, in the form of “stimulus” payments? I didn’t think my opinion of Obama’s “stimulus” program could fall any lower until I saw this: An international law firm, which gave substantial political donations to President Obama and fellow Democrats over the last three campaign cycles,
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February 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
We have written repeatedly about the fact that the Senate Democrats are not just being irresponsible when they fail to adopt a budget, they are breaking the law. The Budget Act of 1974 requires the House and Senate to meet certain deadlines, culminating in the adoption of a budget resolution. The Republican House has obeyed the law, but the Democratic Senate has thumbed its nose at the statute, illegally refusing
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February 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In “Weirdest correction of the day,” John noted the frequent triviality of New York Times corrections. In the case under discussion last week the Times set the record straight on the photo accompanying the Times article on cat wrangling: “Because of an editing error, a caption on Saturday with an article about the service Catch Your Cat, Etc., a for-hire pet-cat catcher, described incorrectly a picture of the cat Vivian
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February 28, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The Gleickgate hits just keep coming. (Or is it Fakegate, as Heartland is calling it, or Gleick-Out, as I’ve called it? Doesn’t matter.) First, Gleick has taken a leave of absence from his post as president of the Pacific Institute in California, which had initially issued the McGovern-like statement that they were 1,000 percent behind Gleick. Maybe that lasted until they began to notice how much damage Gleick had done
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February 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Act of Valor opened last weekend to an enthusiastic response from moviegoers–it topped all films with a $24.5 million gross–but a less enthusiastic reaction from liberal critics and pundits. A common theme was that Act of Valor is propaganda. Thus, the Washington Post headlined: “‘Act of Valor’ with real-life SEALs: new breed of war movie or propaganda?” Ann Hornaday wrote: But the surprising, if not unprecedented, use of so many
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February 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
In his column today, the ever-optimistic E. J. Dionne makes the absurd claim that “If the election were held right now, President Barack Obama would likely win by about the same margin that propelled him into office in 2008.” Today, coincidentally, Scott Rasmussen, the only pollster, to my knowledge, who is sampling likely voters this early in the cycle, found Mitt Romney leading Obama 45-43, while Ron Paul also leads
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February 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
John Boehner’s web site has posted this nice interactive chart that reminds us of some of the many actions the Obama administration has taken to suppress energy production, even as the price of gasoline at the pump continued its steady rise. If you hover the dots on the chart, an explanatory pop-up appears:
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February 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
The Obama administration backed off its opposition to the Keystone pipeline today, at least in part: the administration now says that it supports construction of the southernmost portion of the pipeline, from Cushing, Oklahoma to Texas. The move will allow the administration to muddy the waters on the pipeline for political purposes in an election year, but it won’t do anything to bring new oil in from Canada, as the
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February 27, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Obama and his choir are taking credit for the unexpected rise in domestic oil production, even though any sentient being knows this is horse manure. Today Greenwire, a New York Times specialty publication (subscription required unfortunately) reports that in 2011 oil production on federal lands fell by 100 million barrels in 2011 from 2010. The increase in domestic oil production is occurring on private and state land, such as North
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February 27, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So we’ve finished the 20th, and one hopes the last, of the GOP candidates’ debates. With only a few intermittent and wholly inadequate flashes, there has been little substantive reference to or discussion of the Constitution. I don’t think even once did one of the media morons ask the candidates for their opinion of whether Obamacare’s individual mandate violates the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Yes, Ron Paul tries to
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