Monthly Archives: July 2012

Learning from Seyed Mousavian

Featured image Seyed Hossein Moussavian is a former Iranian nuclear negotiator now setting up shop as Research Scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Jay Solomon provided the background on Mousavian’s departure from Iran in a 2010 Wall Street Journal article, but I first heard of Mousavian in a Journal book review last weekend by Robert Bartley Journalism Fellow Sohrab Ahmari. Despite falling out with a powerful »

Mulling Over Muller

Featured image The climateers are making a big deal out of Berkeley physicist Richard Muller’s supposed “conversion” to a climate alarmism in today’s New York Times, “The Conversion of a Climate Change Skeptic”: CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I »

Our enduring alliance

Featured image The Romney campaign has released excerpts of Governor Romney’s speech this afternoon in Jerusalem. They are, as you might expect, excellent. Here they are: Our two nations are separated by more than 5,000 miles. But for an American abroad, you can’t get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel. We’re part of the great fellowship of democracies. We speak the same »

What the IOC teaches us

Featured image Friday’s opening ceremony at the London Olympics proceeded without any moment of silence for, or other tribute to, the Israeli athletes who were murdered at the Munich Olympics by Palestinian terrorists 40 years ago. There was, however, a moment of silence for the victims of the two world wars and other international conflicts. Thus, IOC President Jacques Rogge was lying when he claimed that the decision not to honor the »

On To Israel

Featured image Mitt Romney is in Israel now, continuing his three-nation foreign tour. Here are Mitt and Ann en route: YNet headlines: “Romney can expect warm Israeli reception.” I am sure that is true, for reasons that our readers know well. No doubt Romney was glad to get out of London, and away from the negative news stories that dogged him after he took seriously a question about London’s readiness for the »

Analyze this

Featured image The AP story on Israel’s purported intelligence threat to the United States — a story that is linked on Drudge — reads to me like an assault on Israel emanating from the upper reaches of the Obama administration and like minded supporters. According to the AP, with attribution to “current and former US officials,” Israel is the “number 1 counterintelligence threat” to the CIA’s Near East Division. If the AP »

The Pelosi/Hunt tag team

Featured image In Nancy Pelosi’s interview with Bloomberg’s Albert Hunt, Pelosi purported to explain Republican support of Israel, with an assist from Hunt himself: HUNT: Do you think he’ll do as well with the Jewish vote this time as he did last time? PELOSI: The election will tell us that. HUNT: What do you think? PELOSI: But I – I think that he will. I think that he will, because the fact »

The Weekly Winston: Special Relationship Edition

Featured image In light of the salience of the “special relationship” that Obama has no use for, it is fitting for the Power Line Weekly Winston to recall some of his thoughts on the matter.  To be sure, about America Churchill did once say “toilet paper too thin, newspapers too fat!,” but we’ve solved that problem.  (Has anyone noticed, for example, how thin the Los Angeles Times is these days?) So here’s one »

Over and over again

Featured image It’s always silly season when Nancy Pelosi deigns to address the peons. But what are we to make of this? Bill Kristol writes: Daniel Halper has called attention to Nancy Pelosi’s remarkable interview with Al Hunt on the topic of Barack Obama and Israel. I’d note one comment in particular: Pelosi’s claim that President Obama “has been there [Israel] over and over again.” Wow. I’m involved with the Emergency Committee »

Green Weenie of the Week: NPR

Featured image Although there’s no rule against winning the coveted Power Line Green Weenie Award more than once, we think it’s a little cheeky to win it two weeks in a row, so Bill McKibben can’t have it again because of his ridiculous anti-fracking protest going off today in Washington (though it is tempting to give a group GW Award to the usual gang of pecksniffs supporting the protest).  Instead, this week’s »

Busted

Featured image One wonders if the Obama public relations team is on the verge of a nervous breakdown, whether Charles Krauthammer is inside their head, or whether Krauthammer has put them on the verge of a nervous breakdown. (Perhaps Dr. Krauthammer can draw on his psychiatric training to opine on that question.) In his weekly Washington Post column yesterday Krauthammer noted that “Obama started his presidency by returning to the British Embassy »

A gold medal for hypocrisy

Featured image Reader Jason Mart writes regarding the story of the Greek triple jumper that John Hinderaker explored here: I keep waiting for someone to point out the hypocrisy that is the London Olympics and the IOC… Paraskevi Papachristou — a young and, it would seem, not very politically correct) triple jumper from Greece — is expelled for a childish and stupid re-tweet about Nile virus mosquitoes being able to acquire “homemade »

Barack Obama — so much more than a “pragmatic liberal”

Featured image David Maraniss has written a biography of Barack Obama (of which I have read only excerpts) which shows that Obama’s autobiography, Dreams From My Father, takes important liberties with the truth. But Maraniss apparently isn’t very upset that the president of the United States failed to write a truthful autobiography. Instead, he directs his ire against those who doubt claims about Obama’s life that Maraniss finds to be true. According »

Another Olympic Athlete to Watch

Featured image On Saturday, Steve did a post on an early favorite for the 2016 Olympics, Australian hurdler Michelle Jenneke, who actually isn’t competing this year in London. But if you haven’t already seen the video, skip the rest of this post, follow the link and check it out. If Steve was perhaps premature, I’m a little late, since Paraguayan javelin thrower Leryn Franco has already competed in the 2004 and 2008 »

How Barack Obama “Pays Down the Debt”

Featured image Contrary to popular belief, politicians are not, as a rule, particularly dishonest people. But there are exceptions. On the current scene, it would be hard to find another politician as dishonest as Barack Obama. Currently, he is running an ad that says he has a plan to “pay down the debt in a balanced way.” He also tries to justify his call for a tax increase on the ground that »

Economy headed in the right direction, says Obama’s top economist

Featured image We noted earlier that real GDP growth declined in the second quarter from 2.0 percent to 1.5. In the final quarter of 2011, GDP growth was 4.1 percent, according to the latest adjustment. Alan Krueger, chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, had this to say about the latest economic news: “While the economy continues to move in the right direction, additional growth is needed to replace the jobs »

No Rob Portman?

Featured image Beth Myers is in charge of the Veep vetting process for Mitt Romney. There have been rumors that Romney might announce his selection sooner rather than later (not, obviously, when he is overseas). So a little while ago, Myers did the following tweet, which the Romney campaign says “may have given a few hints”: Assuming this is intended as a list of Vice-Presidential finalists, there is one surprising inclusion–Newt Gingrich–and »