Monthly Archives: March 2013
March 31, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I think I’ve figured a few things out. Among other things, I can dump all my Jared Diamond books now.
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March 31, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Marco Rubio, a key member of the Gang of 8 that is working on comprehensive immigration reform legislation, says that, although he’s “encouraged” by progress in talks on such legislation, “reports that the bipartisan group of eight senators have agreed on a legislative proposal are premature.” Rubio’s statement follows word that, with big business and big labor having agreed on a guest worker program, proposed legislation will soon follow. In
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March 31, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I would like to think that the internal contradictions of Islamism will bring down regimes such as that of Egypt’s Mohammed Morsi. Today the New York Times reports on Egypt’s shortages of food and fuel, a story that David Goldman has cornered for quite a while. If only we were to impose appropriate conditions in return for the financial aid that we provide — and if only we sought to
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March 31, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Since we’re on the subject of climate change here in recent days, herewith Churchill’s musings about climate and technology from his essay “Fifty Years Hence,” published in the late 1920s and available now in Thoughts and Adventures. Part of this passage is a tolerably good anticipation of “geoengineering,” or “solar radiation management.” The discovery and control of such sources of power [such as nuclear] would cause changes in human affairs
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March 31, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
As of late last week, an impasse between business and labor over work visas appeared to be all that stood in the way of a Senate bill on comprehensive immigration. And, as we noted, since this dispute pertained only to dollars and cents, not principles, resolution seemed likely. Now, it has occurred. “Labor and business reach deal on immigration issue” reads the headline of this article in the New York
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March 31, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John Podhoretz argues in the editor’s note of the new issue of Commentary that it’s time for conservatives to get serious about Obama, or begin taking him seriously on his own terms. John takes Obama to be a conventional liberal and chides conservatives for painting him as an extremist, an exaggeration which proves to be to Obama’s advantage. If Obama is a conventional liberal, however, liberalism has moved to the
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March 31, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Last year the New York Times Magazine featured a cover story by Tom Robbins (not that Tom Robbins) on one of the fanatic leftists who participated in the infamous Brink’s robbery in New York. As George Russell recounts in “The other Rosenberg case,” the October 1981 robbery, which ended in a careening series of car chases and a bloody shootout, left two policemen and an unarmed Brink’s employee dead and
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March 30, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Following the 2012 election, the Republican National Committee commissioned a group of Republicans to study the results of that election and make recommendations as to how the GOP can do better in future cycles. The resulting report, which you can read here, has been roundly criticized by many conservatives, sometimes unfairly, in my view. I wrote about the report’s recommendations on immigration here. But as far as I know, no
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March 30, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In this third installment of our conversation with Charles C. Johnson, author of Why Coolidge Matters, we turn our conversation to his current work-in-progress, which is about Barack Obama. This four-and-a-half minute segment discusses the centrality of Obama’s education, which the mainstream media assiduously avoided (like everything else.) As I’ve said before, keep your eye on Johnson. You’re going to hear a lot from him for a very long time.
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March 30, 2013 — John Hinderaker
A reader who heads an investment group came across this disclosure in a prospectus issued in connection with the recapitalization of a family-oriented restaurant chain. This isn’t a political statement, it is a legally-mandated disclosure to prospective investors, which renders the issuer liable if it isn’t true: Although [XXX] already offers health care, there is expected to be an increase in costs associated with the affordable health care act (“ACA,”
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March 30, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The 2012 election, in which nearly every traditional rule about presidential politics was broken, showed that we have entered a new era. One feature of this new era is the permanent campaign. Until now, there has always been some respite–growing shorter over the years, admittedly–between the end of one campaign and the beginning of the next. The Democrats have now obliterated that gap; the 2014 Congressional campaign began on the
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March 30, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Time for our weekly–or increasingly semi-weekly (I hesitate to use the phrase “bi-weekly” right now, because I don’t like to use the prefix “bi-” for anything just now, and not because I can’t decide whether “bi-weekly” means twice a week or every other week)–look at the memes, themes, cartoons, and revealing pictoids of the moment. Meanwhile, I’m keeping watch out for North Korea’s Kim Jong Un to turn up in
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March 30, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In an excellent Wall Street Journal column James Taranto holds out hope that the Supreme Court is on the verge of ending the regime of racial discrimination that it has licensed in higher education. I hope Taranto is right, but I think pessimism is warranted. I’m taking the liberty of reiterating my own observations on the subject below. The principle of equal treatment without regard to race is one that
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March 29, 2013 — John Hinderaker
If you are a regular reader, you probably have noticed that I have been gone for a while. I was on vacation with my wife and the ever-dwindling cohort of children who are still at home and still get a spring break, which is to say, my youngest daughter. We left a week ago tonight and just returned home. Our vacation included two days with my brother in Charlotte, three
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March 29, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The aging and fading comedian Jim Carrey apparently wants to act out in real life his role in “Dumb and Dumber,” with recent tweets attacking gun ownership. Says a person who has armed bodyguards. You’d think these Hollywood-Washington liberals wouldn’t be completely tone-deaf to hypocrisy. But this only compounds Carrey’s perfidy. His public opposition to childhood vaccination, along with other worthless celebrities like Robert F. Kennedy Jr (would anyone care
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March 29, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Don’t count Sen. Jeff Sessions among those Republican legislators who support comprehensive immigration reform as a service to business interests. In fact, Sessions doesn’t even favor the expanded guest worker program so dear to business. He states: One of the most important concerns — and too little discussed — is the economic impact. The last time Congress considered a comprehensive immigration bill, unemployment was 4.5 percent. Today, it’s nearly 8
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March 29, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In my Weekly Standard cover story about the fallout from the “Climategate” email scandal three years ago, I offered the following question by way of prediction: Eventually the climate modeling community is going to have to reconsider the central question: Have the models the IPCC uses for its predictions of catastrophic warming overestimated the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases? The article then went on to survey emerging research (U.S. government funded!) casting
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