Monthly Archives: June 2012

In Which I Poach On Scott’s Popular Music Beat

Featured image Much of what I know about music I learned from Scott, so I am reluctant to intrude on his popular music territory. Still: what the heck, why not? What is popular music for, if not to empower every ill-informed listener to have an opinion? So here goes. I had never heard of Gavin DeGraw until a couple of months ago when he played a concert at Gustavus Adolphus College, from »

ATF’s Fast and Furious Coverup Exposed

Featured image Darrell Issa and Charles Grassley have been releasing documents that they have obtained in connection with the Fast and Furious investigation. I have not yet seen a site where the documents are actually published, so we have to rely on news accounts of them. If any of our readers are aware of a location where we can read them for ourselves, we would appreciate hearing about it. In the meantime, »

The Hinderaker-Ward Experience, Beer and Ammo Edition

Featured image Brian Ward and I recorded our biweekly (more or less) podcast this morning. Before we got to the very big news of the day, we had news of our own: our podcast is now sponsored by Audible.com. Needless to say, the revenue isn’t much, but as I said on the podcast, I calculate that it will almost exactly equal my monthly consumption of beer and ammunition. The news, of course, »

The Weekly Winston: On Youth

Featured image Like 1.5 million or so of my fellow citizens of the Beltway (perhaps Paul, too?), I am without power or Internet since the sudden monster storm blew through late last night.  I blame Chief Justice Roberts; this is clearly Mother Nature’s revenge.  (So how am I doing this post?  I went to the airport four hours before my flight to Frankfurt to seek some a/c, power for my mobile devices, »

Environmentalists Peddle Scientific Illiteracy

Featured image Hey, it’s not just polar bears. The oysters are suffering, too. The Portland Oregonian tells the sad story: For 30 years, the crew at Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery on Netarts Bay had been growing oyster larvae to supply oyster growers around the world. But one day in 2008, they were ready to walk away and give it all up. … That’s when they got together with scientists at Oregon State »

Little Wing

Featured image Let’s pause for a moment and add some music to our day with Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing.” The song is an inventive ballad showing a side of Hendrix that he mostly kept under wraps. One of his biographers says the song is about Hendrix’s mother, who died when he was 10. “When I’m sad, she comes to me,” Hendrix sings, “with a thousand smiles she gives to me free.” Whoever »

The McCaskill miasma, cont’d

Featured image We’ve been following the case of the mysterious missing Democrats from the party convention in Charlotte that will renominate Barack Obama as its standard bearer this fall. Prominent among the Democrats who hope to help the voters forget what they have seen with their own eyes is one Claire McCaskill, the Democratic Senator and formerly proud Obama supporter from Missouri. Oh, and did I mention that she’s running for reelection »

Hitler finds out Obamacare upheld

Featured image It had to happen. It was inevitable. In the video below, Hitler finds out that Obamacare has been upheld by the Supreme Court. He’s not any happier about it than we are, though for reasons that remain bubbling under the surface. UPDATE: I’m taking the liberty of deleting the video. The humor is a little bit more obscure than usual in this genre. If you want to take a look, »

What did Castro know and when did he know it?

Featured image Edward Jay Epstein is the author of several fascinating books on the Kennedy assassination and related intelligence issues. Among these books are Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Deception: The Invisible War Between the KGB and the CIA. Also related to the subject are his ebooks Killing Castro and James Jesus Angleton: Was He Right? as well as his classic 1992 New Yorker article, “Epitaph for Jim »

“Shame On You, Barack Obama”

Featured image Hey, I didn’t say it. Hillary Clinton did. The Romney camp is touting the fact that various fact-checkers have criticized Obama’s attack on Romney’s Bain Capital record. As we have written more than once, Obama’s attacks on alleged “outsourcing” are both economically ignorant and factually false. The Romney campaign has released this ad, which is playing in some of the battleground states. It is simple and good, I think: »

Minnesota Is Up For Grabs

Featured image I have learned from multiple sources that two recent polls, conducted by independent polling firms, show that Minnesota will be in play in this year’s presidential race. Even in blue Minnesota, Obama can’t get to 50%. Accordingly, watch for substantial amounts of money to flow into the state to try to close the small gap that currently exists and win it for Mitt Romney. »

The Blind Sheikh and the blind president

Featured image Tom Joscelyn informs us that the new Egyptian president, Mohamed Morsi, told a fired-up crowd in Tahir Square that he will work to free Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, aka the “Blind Sheikh.” Rahman is currently serving a life sentence in a U.S. prison for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a follow-on plot against New York City landmarks. Tom’s article includes some of Morsi’s other greatest »

Did deeming the individual mandate a tax promote the democratic process?

Featured image Chief Justice Roberts found the individual mandate in Obamacare constitutional because he concluded that the mandate could be considered a tax, and that Congress has the power to tax the decision not to purchase health insurance. As we have discussed, Roberts didn’t find that the mandate is most accurately viewed as a tax. Rather, he found that it is “fairly possible” to view it that way. The “fairly possible” test »

Mission accomplished, liberal law professors momentarily embarrassed

Featured image In a post below, Steve quotes law professor Randy Barnett as follows: We won. All the arguments that the law professors said were frivolous were affirmed by a majority of the court today. A majority of the court endorsed our constitutional argument about the Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause. I have enormous respect for Professor Barnett, and he deserves major credit for shaping and advocating the legal »

The Political Battle Is Joined

Featured image In the wake of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision, conservatives lost no time in taking the political battle to the Obama administration. The Romney campaign released this video, titled “Day 1, Job 1: #Full Repeal.” This video, titled “Obamatax,” is not official. It comes from Ben Howe and illustrates how Republicans will pound on the fact that the mandate has been held to be a tax, contrary to President Obama’s assurances: »

I Heart Obamacare!

Featured image Now that Obamacare is definitively on the agenda for the 2012 election, the Democrats have grasped the nettle, so to speak, and are trying to make the best of their unpopular program. Contributors to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee will be the lucky recipients of this bumper sticker: Watch for them in your neighborhood. I’ve got a feeling that even most contributors to the DCCC will quietly slip their “I »

The Aftermath, Continued

Featured image Add strange bedfellows George Will and the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein (wasn’t he the young naïf who made that idiotic comment a while back about the Constitution being hard to understand because it was over 100 years old?) to the camp saying Roberts’ opinion is actually a conservative victory.  Says Will: Conservatives won a substantial victory on Thursday. The physics of American politics – actions provoking reactions – continues to »