Monthly Archives: April 2012
April 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
We learn that Occupy supporter, Harvard Law Professor and Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren claimed minority status based on her purported Native American ancestry. Funny, she doesn’t look Siouxish. Our friend Susan Vass is not an amateur punster, but rather a professional comedian. She writes to ask: “Could Ward Churchill and Elizabeth Warren marry and franchise a chain of Forked Tongue Casinos for other fake Indians?”
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April 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Don’t think the Democrats will give up on their silly “war on women” theme. On the contrary, as long as they think there are still some voters dumb enough to be duped, they will keep it up. Thus, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz sent out this email to the party faithful a little while ago: This week, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. Here’s how the vote went:
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April 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
I am en route home after a couple of days of board meetings at Dartmouth. Hanover was beautiful as always, but unseasonably cold. When I was on campus last fall, I noted a small “occupy” presence in the form of a tent next to Hanover’s main intersection. This visit, I was pleased to see that the local occupiers had closed up shop for good, leaving behind this permanently unoccupied tent:
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April 28, 2012 — Steven Hayward
. . . Joe Biden. Not sure why. Maybe someone can explain in the comments section why the synapses would fire in this particular way. (Courtesy PawNation.)
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April 28, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
No sooner do I finish my post about President Obama and Israel than I learn, via Andy McCarthy, that Obama has decided to provide $192 million to the Palestinian Authority. This despite Congress’s freeze on PA funding. The administration claims it is pouring in the funds to ensure “the continued viability of the moderate PA government.” It also claims that the PA has fulfilled all its major obligations, such as
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April 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In the new issue of the Weekly Standard out this morning, John Bolton favorably reviews Jay Nordlinger’s Peace, They Say in “Mysteries of Oslo” (the review is behind the Standard’s subscriber wall). Calling the roll of a few of the Nobel Peace Prize’s most ludicrous recipients, Bolton comes to the 1995 award: In 1995 Joseph Rotblat and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, an antinuclear moveable feast established
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April 28, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
As the election draws near, team Obama has been attempting to convince American Jews that, despite the evidence of the past three years, the president is a great friend of Israel. As Jonathan Tobin notes, this effort will not completely undo the damage his antagonistic approach to Israel has done to his popularity with Jews here (our gullibility has its limits), but it will keep him well above water with
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April 27, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
In a post about the defeat of moderate Pennsylvania Democrat Tim Holden by a liberal challenger, I stated that the challenger, Mark Cartwright, was supported by “lefty groups such as the Campaign for Primary Accountability.” I’ve been reliably informed that the Campaign for Primary Accountability (CAP) is not leftist and my research (which I should have peformed before posting) confirms this. The main folks behind CAP are conservative rather than
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April 27, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Laura Ingraham has been talking regularly about Barack Obama’s campaigning on the public dime. Toby Harnden covers the story in the Daily Mail under the headline “Is the taxpayer funding Obama’s reelection campaign?” The answer is clearly yes, and it’s an extremely interesting story. Jake Tapper of ABC News and Mark Knoller of CBS News asked a few pointed questions on the subject last week, and Jay Carney shed his
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April 27, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Although Florida remains a swing state, Republicans have, at a minimum, become the “first among equals” in the Sunshine State in recent years. For this reason, and because they seemed to have found a solid candidate in Connie Mack, hopes are fairly high that Republicans will capture the Senate seat held by Democrat Bill Nelson this fall. However, a new Rasmussen poll should temper such optimism. According to that poll,
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April 27, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
French unemployment has risen to 2.88 million, the largest number of unemployed since 1999. The unemployment rate rose to 9.3 percent. This is the eleventh consecutive months in which the unemployment rate increased. Although it could be worse, Spain’s unemployment rate is 24.4, the French jobs picture seems dire enough to ensure the defeat of President Nicolas Sarkozy. Nor is this the only bad economic news. French household spending fell
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April 27, 2012 — Scott Johnson
If you have any interest in the 60 Minutes hatchet job on Israel broadcast this past Sunday, you really have to read Ben Smith’s report at Buzzfeed: When the venerable CBS newsmagazine “60 Minutes” aired a segment critical of the Israeli treatment of Palestinian Christians last week [sic], correspondent Bob Simon repeatedly suggested that Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren had crossed a line by contacting the network’s top executive in advance
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April 27, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The House Republican leadership has given the go-ahead to proceed with a contempt citation against Attorney General Holder over his refusal to comply with a subpoena for information about DOJ’s Fast and Furious program. A draft contempt resolution reportedly is being prepared. The subpoena at issue calls for the Justice Department to produce approximately 80,000 pages of material regarding Fast and Furious to which the DOJ Inspector General had access.
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April 27, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Since I was a couple days late with last week’s helping of Winston, I might as well do this week’s a day or two early, especially since I was reading the source material for this one just this morning—WSC’s 1937 essay about Franklin Roosevelt. Obama (and Buffett the Buffoon) ought to read this warning, one of several, that Churchill offered about the New Deal: A second danger to President Roosevelt’s
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April 27, 2012 — John Hinderaker
It’s been a banner 12 months for Justin Folk. Last summer, he won the $100,000 Power Line Prize with his animated video The Spending Is Nuts. In January, he was part of the team that won the $1 million Doritos Super Bowl commercial prize, for the hilarious commercial Sling Baby, starring Justin’s young son. Now, Justin’s company has collaborated with Bill Whittle and Andrew Klavan on “Barack Obama, the Road
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April 27, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of only 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012, according to the Commerce Department. This represents a decline from the 3.0 growth experienced in the final quarter of 2011. On the plus side, consumer spending increased to 2.9 percent in the first quarter. Because consumer spending tends to drive the economy, analysts expect this improvement to result in job growth which,
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April 27, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Some while back I included here the comments of a prominent legal scholar characterizing the arbitrary nature of antitrust regulation in the pre-Reagan era, in which the writer compared antitrust to the tradition of the frontier sheriff: “He did not sift the evidence, distinguish between suspects, and solve crimes, but merely walked the main street and every so often pistol-whipped a few people.” That writer, if you happen to recall
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