Monthly Archives: April 2012
April 27, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Utah Republicans nominated the impressive Mia Love to run against incumbent Democratic Rep. Jim Matheson in the newly created Fourth Congressional District. John Fund covered the story for NRO. Ms. Love Love, the 37-year-old daughter of Haitian immigrants and the mayor of Saratoga Springs, a community of 18,000 outside Salt Lake City, was the Tea Party candidate in the Republican field for the nomination. Fund writes: Love’s presence in Congress
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April 26, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Romney campaign has hired Michael Biundo, who managed Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign. Biundo will be deputy national director of coalitions. His task will be to help unite tea party activists, evangelicals and other conservatives behind Mitt Romney. By all accounts, Biundo did a fine job of working with these groups on behalf of Rick Santorum. One might have hoped that would rally around Santorum sooner than they did (the
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April 26, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Matthew Kroenig is an assistant professor of Government at Georgetown University and a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From July 2010 to July 2011, he was a Fellow at the Department of Defense, where he worked on the development and implementation of U.S. defense policy and strategy in the Middle East. In an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Kroenig argues that the time is now
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April 26, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Perhaps the defining failure of Barack Obama’s administration has been his ill-fated investment in “green energy.” Much of this investment was rushed through Congress as part of the “stimulus” program with little or no scrutiny, but we can now see where the money went. As this devastating Americans For Prosperity video shows, a lot of it went overseas to create jobs in foreign countries: This video is radioactive; if most
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April 26, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Lately the Democrats have tried, somewhat weirdly, to adopt Ronald Reagan as one of their own. Reagan, they tell us, couldn’t get nominated by today’s “right wing” Republican Party. The idea that contemporary Republicans are radical is one that the Democrats push at every opportunity; for example, in a fundraising email that DNC Executive Director Patrick Gaspard sent out on Earth Day: In the 1970s, the President passed [sic] the
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April 26, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Vice President Biden has attacked Mitt Romney as “fundamentally wrong” and “totally out of touch” on foreign policy. That’s rich coming for Biden, who has been wrong on virtually every important foreign policy issue as far back as anyone can remember. Biden had the wrong line on the Cold War, as we’ll see below. He also opposed the successful Gulf War, while supporting (at the time of decision) the much
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April 26, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Our friend Susan Vass is a gifted comedian who grew up, if I recall correcly, in Alexandria, Minnesota. She forwards a column with the explanation that “to keep my head from exploding about Israel, I wrote this to amuse myself.” She files her comments under the heading, “This Is the Last Straw.” She writes: In Woody Allen’s last amusing picture, Bananas (1971), the insane banana republic dictator decrees after attaining
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April 26, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Sen. Richard Lugar trails conservative challenger Richard Mourdock by a margin of five points – 44 to 39 – according to a new poll by Wenzel Strategies. The poll was conducted for Citizens United, a group that supports Mourdock. According to the poll, self-described Tea Party conservatives back Mourdock by 63 to 24. This cohort represents 36 of those polled. Lugar leads among those in the remainder of the sample.
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April 26, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The Claremont Review’s Charles Kesler once quipped that “Social Darwinism” is the only kind of Darwinism that liberals oppose, and there is a lot to this, starting with the fact that, as I argued here a few days ago, liberals are the true Social Darwinists of modern times. Eldon Eisenach, one of the more interesting historians to have written about Progressivism in recent decades, noted in the early 1990s that
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April 26, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Too bad he’s such a lousy president. That is the message of this video, produced by American Crossroads: after four years of a celebrity president, how are we doing? Not so well:
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April 26, 2012 — Steven Hayward
With the slow fade of the climate change issue toward political oblivion, the green authoritarians need a new bandwagon to jump on and flog. And so this headline in Scientific American online is manna from heaven: “World Governments Establish Biodiversity Panel.” It’s clearly from the “if-at-first-you-don’t-succeed-at-the-UN-try-try-again” school: Governments from more than 90 countries have agreed to establish an independent panel of scientists to assess the very latest research on the
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April 26, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Before leaving the subject of the 60 Minutes hatchet job on Israel, I would like to draw attention to Dexter Van Zile’s excellent CAMERA essay, “60 Minutes smears Israel for Christian exodus from Holy Land.” Supplement Van Zile’s essay with Raymond Ibrahim’s latest report on the status of Christians in the Middle East, “Muslim persecution of Christians: March, 2012.” March was an eventful month for Christians in the Middle East:
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April 26, 2012 — Steven Hayward
While we wait to see whether and how far the Supreme Court might move toward restoring a more principled constitutionalism with its decision in the Obamacare case, there is good news for readers looking to step up their game on constitutional literacy: The Heritage Foundation has posted its fabulous Heritage Guide to the Constitution online. The Heritage Guide is a clause-by-clause commentary on our great charter, and it is extremely
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April 25, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Lt. Gen Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief of staff, doubts that Iran will build a nuclear bomb. Gantz expressed his doubts in an interview with Haaretz. Gantz’s view will receive much attention, as it should. That’s why it’s important to look carefully at the conclusion Gantz reached and at the stated reasons for his conclusion. MSM reports like this one by the Washington Post trumpet Gantz’s conclusion without looking at
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April 25, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Some years ago, I worked on a big case in Alaska and spent a lot of time there. At that time, the local bar was buzzing about a lawyer who had a really bad day in court: he was kicked to death by a moose in the parking lot of the federal courthouse in Anchorage. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli didn’t have that bad a day today in the U.S. Supreme
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April 25, 2012 — Scott Johnson
The Artest formerly known as Ron is now known as Metta World Peace. There is a joke or two in there somewhere. World Peace plays in the NBA for the Los Angeles Lakers. World Peace is not only a thug, he is a recidivist in his thuggery. Paul wrote about World Peace’s latest on-court assault, on the Oklahoma City Thunder’s James Harden this past Sunday, here. Paul’s friend Bill Otis
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April 25, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama has given an interview to Rolling Stone Magazine (more evidence, if you had any doubt, that Obama is really cool). During the interview, he discussed his reading habits. It turns out that Obama reads every single New York Times columnist, and considers Paul Krugman “obviously one of the smartest economic reporters out there.” In addition, Obama reads Andrew Sullivan, and finds that he provides thoughtful analysis. Obama also
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