Monthly Archives: March 2013
March 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Secretary of State (remember?) John Kerry took a detour to Baghdad on his current trip to the Middle East. He sought to persuade the government of Prime Minister Maliki to stop Iran from flying arms across Iraqi territory to support the Assad regime. The United States has more or less abandoned Iraq, Iraq lacks an air force, and Iran is filling the vacuum created by our withdrawal. The New York
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March 24, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
When Ted Cruz raised with Dianne Feinstein the question of the constitutionality of legislation she was proposing, the Senator from California reacted testily, stating that she is not a sixth-grader. I would have thought that, if anything, Cruz’s attempt to engage her in a discussion about the Constitution showed respect for Sen. Feinstein. Too often, Feinstein (a non-lawyer) has marginalized herself as a Judiciary Committee member by opting to play
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March 24, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Barry Rubin argues that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu did not really apologize to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara incident. He reasons that Netanyahu did not meet the demands Erdogan set forth for an apology. I’m a fan of Rubin’s work, but in this case his argument rests on a fallacy. The fact that Netanyahu’s statement doesn’t met Erdogan’s specifications doesn’t prevent it from being an apology. Rubin acknowledges that the
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March 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Over at City Journal, Heather Mac Donald calls out the New York Times: It takes determination to out-demagogue New York City’s anti-cop advocates, but the New York Times has done just that. A front-page article in Friday’s print edition announces: BRONX INSPECTOR, SECRETLY TAPED, SUGGESTS RACE IS A FACTOR IN STOPS. The story goes on to claim in its lead paragraph that a secretly taped recording “suggests that, in at
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March 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The Power Line 100 Best Professors in America roster is necessarily going to tend toward the humanities, because it’s closer to our knowledge base and the humanities are more accessible to the general public as well as closer to the political issues that are the lifeblood of this site. But we certainly want to sweep up distinguished professors in the sciences and technical fields, too. A reader tip directs me
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March 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Reader EC advises: We interrupt this forum for a special bulletin: *****NPR HAS GONE ROGUE***** They just broadcast an hour-long episode of “This American Life,” which was a devastating critique of the disability program. Devastating. They called it the new default welfare program, pointing out that it costs the taxpayers vastly more than all other welfare programs put together. They went on and on and on and on and on
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March 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The President of the United States had some incredibly foolish things to say during his trip to the Middle East. Some of them were said during his press conference with Mahmoud Abbas, the Chairman of the PLO and the President of the Palestinian Authority, now serving out the ninth year of his four-year presidential term. The Wall Street Journal has posted a transcript of the press conference here. Standing under
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March 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Let’s see, another week, another load of pictures, cartoons, and memes (“regression to the meme”??). Breaking news: not only is the Obama-Feinstein gun control agenda going down in flames in the Senate, but late word today is that the Senate has voted to pre-emptively reject the UN Small Arms Treaty that we wrote about here months ago. So good times.
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March 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Benjamin Netanyahu took to Facebook to explain his apology to Turkey over the Mavi Marmara incident. Netanyahu does have some explaining to do. As, I argued here, it is Turkey that owes Israel an apology. Moreover, even after receiving the apology, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has not agreed fully to restore diplomatic ties with Israel or to drop his case against the Israeli generals accused of being responsible for the
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March 23, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
If waterboarding, a procedure we inflicted on our own troops, can be considered torture, I suppose that almost anything one doesn’t approve of can be so deemed. And given the proven effectiveness of throwing the term torture around, the temptation to apply it to anything one doesn’t approve of must be difficult for the intellectually dishonest to resist. Thus, sure enough, we find U.N. bureaucrats attempting to define “torture” in
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March 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So, it turns out even Jay Leno has taken note of my forthcoming sojourn at the University of Colorado. But his job description isn’t quite right. In loco parentis is one thing, but it’s really not my thing. Still, next stop The Daily Show?
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March 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Peggy Noonan poses the question today, “Can the Republican Party Recover from Iraq?” If the article is behind the paywall, here’s a relevant sample: Did the Iraq war hurt the GOP? Yes. The war, and the crash of ’08, half killed it. It’s still digging out, and whether it can succeed is an open question. . . It ruined the party’s hard-earned reputation for foreign-affairs probity. They started a war
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March 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It’s been a while since I inflicted my dubious throwback enthusiasm for progressive rock on indulgent Power Line readers, but I somehow came across the video below of Francis Dunnery, with whom I’m totally unfamiliar though I gather he has a following, performing a live cover of “Back in NYC,” a neglected tune from the B-side of the old Genesis classic album “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.” (The terrific
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March 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In the new issue of the Weekly Standard, Jay Cost argues that Obamacare isn’t forever. After a big windup, Jay delivers a changeup. He doesn’t foresee Obamacare going away any time soon; it has too big a constituency for its benefits. He postulates that the health-insurance exchanges that will be established under Obamacare provide a mechanism for modulating Obamacare in some beneficial (if unspecified) respect. According to the Washington Post’s
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March 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Earlier this month Paul Kengor and others brought to our attention the 30th anniversary of Reagan’s famous “evil empire” speech, which was, keep in mind, chiefly a domestic policy speech where Reagan slipped in the evil empire reference that his foreign policy apparatus had managed to strip out of previous foreign policy speech drafts. But there was no getting around the objections of both the State and Defense Departments to
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March 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Reza Kahlili is the pseudonymous former CIA operative who penetrated Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and told the story in A Time to Betray. Kahlili has now published two columns on disclosures he attributes to a high-ranking Iranian intelligence officer: one here in the Washington Times and one here at WorldNetDaily. Using Google Earth, Kahlili briefly summarizes the contentions of his Iranian source in the video below.
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March 22, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu apologized today to Turkey for an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla. The apology is, of course, the handiwork of President Obama. Indeed, Netanyahu made the call during an airport meeting with Obama shortly before Obama mercifully left Israel. The apology is a humiliation for Israel, which had nothing for which to be sorry. Netanyahu’s statement — which he wisely resisted making for three years —
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