Monthly Archives: December 2012

A big hand for the little lady

Featured image Maria Bartiromo cuffed Senator Ben Cardin (D., MD) about the ears when he turned up on her show to peddle the party line on the fiscal cliff negotiations. Having unsuccessfully explored alternatives to raising tax rates with him, she commented: “That’s all you want to do. That’s it. It’s your way or the highway. Raise the rates on the rich. No other way. Your way or the highway. That’s it. »

David Gregory under fire for violating D.C.’s gun law

Featured image Daniel Halper at the Weekly Standard alerts us to a petition on the White House’s website calling for charges to be filed against NBC’s David Gregory for breaking Washington, D.C.’s gun laws. On Meet The Press, Gregory held up an assault rifle magazine, possession of which is illegal in Washington, D.C. where the show took place. The title of the petition is: “Press charges against David Gregory for possession of »

Green Weenie of the Year: “Final Solution” Proposed for Climate “Deniers”

Featured image Sometimes an environmentalist will go above and beyond the guidelines and do something so egregious that a Green Weenie of the Week isn’t sufficient recognition.  So we’ve reserved a special Green Weenie of the Year for Outstanding Achievement in Environmental Demagoguery. I was certain for a while Earth First’s “assassination hit list” of people deserving direct action, such as Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon, for the apparent sin of delivering »

Merry Christmas…

Featured image …to our Christian readers and friends, and Happy Holidays to all. We have been enjoying a mellow–some might say lazy–Christmas season. All of our kids are home for the holidays except my middle daughter, who texted Christmas greetings from the beach at Nice. So I’ve been offline. Tomorrow it’s back to the office, both real and virtual. Until then, it’s peace on earth and good will toward men. Even liberals. »

Blogging vs. borking

Featured image Writing in the Wall Street Journal, L. Gordon Crovitz asks whether another “borking” could succeed in the internet age. He notes that “there was no Internet [back in 1987] to correct the record —- no legal blogs such as today’s SCOTUSblog, AbovetheLaw, Volokh Conspiracy and Overlawyered.” The blogs cited by Crovitz are all good. However, the best work I saw during the confirmation battles waged against conservtive nominees during the »

From the IDF

Featured image Found on the IDF Twitter feed: »

Let’s not forget knife control

Featured image One of my 2013 predictions — coming soon! — is that rifles will trail knives as murder weapons of choice in the coming year as they have in the most recent five-year period for which statistics are available. Magical thinking underlies the calls for gun control in the wake of the slaughter of the innocents at the Sandy Hook school, but a relentless logic is at work in this anecdote »

EPL Team of the half year

Featured image With the English Premier League season just about half way completed, why not name an EPL all-star team? Petr Cech Chelsea Rafael Manchester United Leighton Baines Everton Jan Vertonghen Tottenham Hotspur Ryan Shawcross Stoke City Yaya Toure Manchester City Santi Cazorla Arsenal Juan Mata Chelsea “Michu” Swansea City Luis Suarez Liverpool Robin van Persie Manchester United Only two English players in the lot. I was unhappy to name Shawcross because »

The wrong man

Featured image Tom Cotton is Rep.elect from Arkansas’s Fourth District and a friend of Power Line. On Sunday he appeared on Fox News to reiterate the gist of his Wall Street Journal column on Chuck Hagel — that Hagel is the wrong man for Secretary of Defense. Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Buzzfeed reports that “Chuck Hagel loses altitude.” Zeke Miller observes: “Former Sen. Chuck Hagel’s chances of being Barack Obama’s »

Merry Christmas, Baby

Featured image “Merry Christmas, Baby” is the kind of secular Christmas song to which Dave Marsh and Steve Propes devoted an entire book of the same title. (The subtitle of the book is Holiday Music From Bing to Sting.) “Merry Christmas, Baby” is a smoldering blues love song with a Christmas theme. Great line: “I haven’t had a drink this morning/But I’m all lit up like a Christmas tree.” The song was »

A Merry Power Line Christmas

Featured image I’ve always thought the “War on Christmas” meme that some populist conservatives (and a certain TV network that I’ll just skip over for now) like to pound on during the holidays was silly and trivializing.  Not for being wrong, mind you, but for being too narrowly focused.  The aggressive secularization of the Left operates 24/7 all 365 days a year, and is not just rolled out like crèches during the »

The Hinderaker-Ward Experience, Episode 39: All I Want For Christmas

Featured image This morning Brian Ward and I recorded Episode 39 of the Hinderaker-Ward Experience, a special Christmas Eve edition. This is how Brian described the show on Ricochet: The Hinderaker Ward Experience (HWX) returns for a very special Christmas Eve podcast. John Hinderaker of Power Line and Brian Ward of Fraters Libertas conspire as they dream by the fire at the nexus of Christmas and politics. They begin with a review »

Renewable Energy: Still Breaking Wind

Featured image The federal budget is not the only thing looking at dropping off a fiscal cliff.  One of the loose ends caught in the whole mess is the renewal of the “production tax credit” (PTC) for wind power, a supposedly “temporary” measure to help the industry get on its feet, but which, like wartime rent control, somehow becomes a permanent necessity to “save jobs” now.  The wind industry is currently lobbying »

Half a “cliff” may be better than none

Featured image Over the weekend, I suggested that we should go over “half of the fiscal cliff.” In that scenario, the deadline for avoiding the cliff would pass, Congress would subsequently grant retroactive tax relief for the vast majority of Americans, and the mandatory spending cuts would remain (though hopefully with relief for the Defense Department). The “half of the cliff” scenario is far from ideal. It would mean that some tax »

Hagel’s prospects may be fading

Featured image Michael Hirsh of the National Journal reports that the White House is having second thoughts about nominating Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense: Besieged by criticism from right and left, and considerable skepticism from his former Senate colleagues, Chuck Hagel appears to be following the path of Susan Rice as a trial-balloon nominee who finds himself quickly losing altitude in Washington. And as happened with Rice, the White House is »

The Gregory doctrine

Featured image Glenn Reynolds is still awaiting answers from gun-control advocates Rupert Murdoch and Michael Bloomberg about the guns used by their security details in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook massacre. The silence is telling, for the political and media hysteria whipped up in the wake of the killings is mixed with equal parts bad faith and magical thinking. A healthy dollop of misinformation is overlaid on the bad faith. The »

They Can’t Argue With Arithmetic

Featured image Most people think that Barack Obama is winning his argument with John Boehner. That is probably true, since Boehner has barely engaged in public debate, preferring to pursue the fool’s game of secret negotiations. The same thing is happening around the world, as demagogic politicians lie to voters, assuring them that the status quo is sustainable. Just vote for more government, and the money will magically appear. Somehow. American voters »