Monthly Archives: January 2013
January 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
People often refer to the whole renewable energy sector as a “racket,” as it depends on subsidies and mandates to make money. Hence the essentially corrupt deals cut in Washington to keep the subsidies in place. Well guess what: it really is a racket. A police sting in Italy recently revealed heavy Mafia involvement in renewable energy projects. From yesterday’s Washington Post: PALERMO, Italy — Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a
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January 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I think it would be a serious mistake to ignore or fail to attend closely to President Obama’s second inaugural address. It speaks to his ambition, his assault on the founding principles, and his attempt to realign the electorate on a misreading or misinterpretation or misrepresentation of the meaning of the founding principles. Attention must be paid. See, e.g., Yuval Levin’s “Obama’s second inaugural.” As R.J. Pestritto has demonstrated, the
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January 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Claremont Institute’s American Mind series with host Charles Kesler kicks off in earnest with an interview of Bill Bennett. The American Mind seeks to deliver the insights, ideas, and perspectives of our brightest conservative thinkers, writers and political philosophers, in a monthly series of intimate conversations hosted by Professor Kesler, editor of The Claremont Review of Books. We previewed the interview last week with its first segment. The interview
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January 22, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Brother Mathis has done it again. Not content with provoking me to discourse on the nanny state last week, on Monday Joel produced a column about Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama. Our mutual pal Ben Boychuk suggested on Facebook that our pieces represented a good Right-Left counterpoint about MLK, as Joel’s account mostly follows the conventional liberal narrative, though with caveats that it’s “complicated.” (Isn’t everything “complicated” for liberals?)
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January 22, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The Governor of Nebraska, Dave Heineman, has approved a new route for the long-delayed Keystone XL pipeline. But now the State Department is slow-walking the final decision as long as it can. State has the say on Keystone because the pipeline will cross a national boundary. This is actually good news, since State has to deal with Canada directly about many matters, unlike the EPA, which can disregard Canadian interests.
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January 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
As I wrote here, after the Sandy Hook murders I felt compelled to do something, even if it was only symbolic. So, last month, I joined the NRA, the nation’s most effective civil rights organization, for the first time. It turned out that 250,000 others had the same idea, so the organization was backed up for a while. But a few days ago I got my free NRA range bag,
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January 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Liberals are feeling triumphant these days, but in the backs of their minds there must be a sense of foreboding. They won this year by demonizing Republicans and by bribing various demographic groups with government largesse. But the Left’s tactical victory can’t conceal the fact that its ideology is bankrupt. The left’s real enemy isn’t Republicans, it is arithmetic. Welfare states are collapsing all around the world. Ours is on
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January 22, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Proponents of the anthropogenic global warming theory rely on global temperature data over a period of centuries that purport to be accurate to within a tiny fraction of one degree. Common sense warns us to be skeptical of such spurious certainty. But the truth is much worse: climate alarmists have systematically fudged the historical record by changing past temperature data to make it look as though the earth is warming,
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January 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Following up on John’s post on Michele Bachmann, I want to draw attention to Caroline Glick’s post “The left’s new campaign to destroy a friend of Israel’s.” Like most of Caroline’s columns and posts, it is long and worthy of your attention in its entirety. Having heard Michele testify in person many times to her deep personal attachment to and support of Israel — she has appeared to speak more
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January 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In what Middle East country do Arabs enjoy the greatest civil liberties? That is a question worthy of the investigation of the Middle East correspondents of the New York Times, the Washington Post and others who bring us the news from the region. Freedom House conducts a widely respected annual survey that goes a long way toward answering the question. It has just released its 2013 report, explaining its methodology,
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January 21, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Only the issue of most concern to Americans: the economy and jobs. Liberals are swooning over President Obama’s second inaugural speech, with some going so far to call it Lincolnesque. But when Lincoln was inaugurated after his 1864 re-election, he spoke exclusively about the great issues that were then before the country: the Civil War and the eradication of slavery from the Democratic South. Today, in contrast, Obama acted as
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January 21, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Welfare has become a major political issue in the United Kingdom. During the 13 years when Labour was in power, it seems not to have occurred to most Britons that Labour’s open-door immigration policy, combined with the U.K.’s liberal welfare benefits, were likely to lead to abuse. Now, people are starting to notice. The Sun, a tabloid published in London, is the U.K.’s largest-selling newspaper. It focuses mainly on soccer
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January 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
President Obama’s second inaugural address is now available online. It provides a roadmap to the expansion of the administrative state that Obama intends to accomplish in his second term. The work of the speech is to assimilate his now permanent campaign into the founding principles of the United States. It is therefore not as forthright as the Second Bill of Rights promulgated by FDR in 1944, but Obama is picking
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January 21, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Washington Post reports today that al Qaeda’s successful attack on the Algerian natural gas plant has greatly boosted al Qaeda’s prestige in Africa. Along the way, the Post notes rather casually: The assailants were well-trained and armed with what appear to have been weapons from the late Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi’s arsenal. The overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi has turned out to be a terrible blunder. It has empowered radical
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January 21, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I’m confused. I hear there is some kind of celebration of a black leader going on in Washington today, Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday, except that it’s somebody else. I think I’ll skip whoever this poser may be, and celebrate Dr. King instead for his conservative principles. Scott writes movingly below about King’s prophetic gifts and courage, and rightly so. I appended a brief note about how King’s “Letter from
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January 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
When Martin Luther King, Jr., brought his nonviolent campaign against segregation to Bull Connor’s Birmingham, he laid siege to the bastion of Jim Crow. In Birmingham between 1957 and 1962, black homes and churches had been subjected to a series of horrific bombings intended to terrorize the community. In April 1963 King answered the call to bring his campaign to Birmingham. When King landed in jail on Good Friday for
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January 20, 2013 — John Hinderaker
As we contemplate another four years of Barack Obama, a sense of doom has settled over the nation. It is easy to imagine man-caused disasters from which the United States cannot recover. So perhaps it helps to be reminded how consistently doomsayers have been wrong over the years. Anthony Watts has an entertaining post titled “Great Moments in Failed Predictions.” An excerpt: * In 1865, Stanley Jevons (one of the
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