Monthly Archives: March 2012

Paul Ryan Leads the Way

Featured image House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled the House Republicans’ proposed budget for FY 2013 today. You can read the budget document, titled “The Path to Prosperity,” here. We will have more to say about it in the days to come, but here are a few preliminary observations. Ryan’s budget calls for a simpler, fairer income tax system, with lower rates and fewer deductions. Ryan proposes just two marginal rates, 10% »

Obama’s 6/100 of 1 Percent Solution

Featured image Everyone knows that America faces a debt crisis that will crush our children’s futures unless we take decisive action to deal with it. Yet the Democrats refuse even to adopt a budget, because they don’t want voters to see that their plan is to pile up more and more debt until the economy collapses, currently projected to occur in around 15 years. President Obama refuses to adopt a serious attitude »

Desperate Democrats Distract With Smears

Featured image The Democrats’ attack on Rush Limbaugh hasn’t turned out the way they had hoped. The blowback, in the form of conservatives pointing out the outrageous conduct of liberals like Bill Maher and Keith Olbermann, has dwarfed the original reaction against Rush. Worse, the blowback continues. So Democrats are now in the position of trying to shut down the conversation about civility and misogyny that they opportunistically started. Last night on »

Issa’s Oversight Committee Rips Secretary Chu

Featured image It has been a busy day in Chairman Darrell Issa’s House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. This morning, the committee released a report titled The Department of Energy’s Disastrous Management of Loan Guarantee Programs. The report is a devastating indictment of the Obama administration’s “green” energy cronyism. It documents the extraordinary series of shaky (and sometimes shady) loans that DOE has made, often to administration allies. You really should read »

Who Reads Power Line?

Featured image Michael Barone, that’s who: »

“You Want Free Stuff? Vote For the Other Guy”

Featured image Campaigning in Illinois, Mitt Romney took a question from a woman who said, “So you’re all for like, ‘yay, freedom,’ and all this stuff. And ‘yay, like pursuit of happiness.’ You know what would make me happy? Free birth control.” Romney’s answer was, I think, outstanding. The lines are drawn in this year’s presidential election with unusual clarity. Everyone laughed at the woman who said in 2008 that she was »

So, Is Barack Obama Irresponsible and Unpatriotic?

Featured image It’s now official: the national debt has increased more during the three years of the Obama administration than during George W. Bush’s eight years. That makes it a good time to remember what Barack Obama had to say about federal debt during the 2008 campaign: So if Bush was irresponsible and unpatriotic, what does that make Obama? Even if we put aside the fact that spending and debt exploded during »

Forecasting the Obama Collapse

Featured image In my podcast with Ben Boychuk and Joel Mathis the other day, Joel took me to task for describing Obama as our first affirmative action president, as he should as a representative of the blue side of his and Ben’s red-blue tag team.  I parried by saying that I thought it was doubtful that Democrats would have nominated a first-term U.S. Senator with such a thin record if he was »

Spring can really hang you up the most

Featured image There are a few torch songs that lament the coming of Spring. This time of year, if you’re tuned to one of the right stations, you may well find yourself listening to Ella Fitzgerald’s unforgettable rendition of “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most.” The song is a buried treasure on Ella’s 1961 quartet-backed jazz set “Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie!” (I love the Amazon review that rates it »

The Ryan Express

Featured image Paul Ryan is out this morning with an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal previewing the budget plan he will unveil at 11:30 eastern one floor up from my office on 17th Street.  He acknowledges the demagoguery that will soon be coming his way: We assumed there would be some who would distort for political gain our efforts to preserve programs like Medicare. Having been featured in an attack ad »

The Administration’s Anti-Energy Record: Chapter and Verse

Featured image President Obama has undergone something of a deathbed conversion: facing an uphill re-election battle and with gasoline at $4 a gallon, Obama suddenly has proclaimed himself a devotee of Sarah Palin’s energy policy–drill, baby, drill. As always, Obama is counting on ignorance. The American Petroleum Institute shines a light on the administration’s actual policies. To begin with, production is up on private lands, but down on public lands, due to »

29 Days of Persecution

Featured image Raymond Ibrahim of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the Middle East Forum performs the invaluable service of compiling, on a monthly basis, news about the world-wide persecution of Christians. Well, it isn’t quite world-wide, but I’m sure you’ll spot the trend. Ibrahim’s February wrap-up begins: Half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians are gone due to the unleashed forces of jihad, many of them fleeing to nearby Syria; yet, as the »

Coming Tomorrow: Ryan’s Hope

Featured image John already noted (“Can Paul Ryan Save America?”) the first in a series of videos from Rep. Paul Ryan that begins his rollout of the House Republican budget that will, unlike Obama’s shameful and irresponsible and wholly political budget, actually attempt to grasp the problem of runaway government spending.  Surveying Ryan’s steadiness and resolve led Michael Walsh of National Review to ask the question still on the minds of many »

Hill Poll Results Grim For Obama

Featured image Polls are a dime a dozen and it is a mistake to draw too many conclusions from any one survey, but The Hill published a poll by Pulse Opinion Research this morning that will give Obama staffers heartburn. Pulse surveyed 1,000 likely voters, so the results are entitled to some respect. Complete results are here. But first, a caveat: the Pulse poll sampled 36% Republicans, 32% Democrats and 32% independents. »

Eco-Fascists Don Their Jackboots

Featured image I tend not to traffic too much in the “eco-fascist” theme, preferring to stick more narrowly to the substance of particular aspects of particular issues like climate change or air pollution.  But sometimes the jackboot fits, and they should have to wear it. I have noted at some length in the Claremont Review of Books a while ago the openly anti-democratic and pro-authoritarian views of some eco-alarmists, but that only »

Power Line In The News

Featured image One of the explanations I’ve given in radio interviews for why I began my Politically Incorrect Guide to the Presidents with Woodrow Wilson is that I didn’t think readers would be that interested in reading much on forgotten 19th century presidents like John Tyler and Rutherford B. Hayes.  D’oh!  Clearly I underestimated Barack Obama’s genius in stoking public interest in the person who, as Scott’s post yesterday had it, is »

The Church against Obamacare, cont’d

Featured image Last week the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released the statement United for Religious Freedom. The bishops note: One particular religious freedom issue demands our immediate attention: the now-finalized rule of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that would force virtually all private health plans nationwide to provide coverage of sterilization and contraception—including abortifacient drugs—subject to an exemption for “religious employers” that is arbitrarily narrow, and to »