Monthly Archives: April 2013
April 26, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Well, you know, who needs a 7-quart pressure cooker? Michael Ramirez puts the question into the context of the marathon bombers: I saw a poll where more than 60% of Massachusetts residents said they wished they had a gun when the marathon bombers were on the loose. Really, you wonder why it wouldn’t be 100%. You could be a victim, but why would you want to be? Why shouldn’t dopey
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April 26, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Numbers USA has done, to my knowledge, the first quantitative analysis of the implications of the Gang of Eight’s immigration bill, and the numbers are staggering. The Daily Caller reports: The pending Senate immigration bill would bring a minimum of 33 million people into the country during its first decade of operation, according to an analysis by NumbersUSA, a group that wants to slow the current immigration rate. By 2024,
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April 26, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Lot to get through this week; in fact it almost demands a video, but I haven’t got the time. In any case, we need to start with our friends at The Looking Spoon, who made up this poster to make vivid John’s post the other day on how liberals have trouble with this whole “problem of evil” thingie (beyond, that is, rich people, who are clearly evil if you’re a
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April 26, 2013 — John Hinderaker
The Democrats proposed sequestration as part of a package to secure an increase in the debt ceiling, but they never expected it to go into effect. When it did, they felt double-crossed, apparently because they thought Republicans owed it to them to fold like a cheap suit, as usual. When the Republicans figured out that sticking with the sequester was a pretty good outcome–it represented a modest, but real, restraint
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April 26, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this week, Eric Holder had this to say to the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund: Creating a pathway to earned citizenship for the 11 million unauthorized immigrants in this country is essential. The way we treat our friends and neighbors who are undocumented–by creating a mechanism for them to earn citizenship and move out of the shadows — transcends the issue of immigration status. This is a
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April 26, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Jennifer Rubin argues that Ronald Reagan’s mythical status “has become a burden for the modern GOP.” “The old guard,” she says, “has become convinced that Reagan’s solutions to the problems of his time were the essence of conservatism — not simply conservative ideas appropriate for that era.” As a result, Republicans have lost their ability to connect with average Americans at an emotional level. Rubin is sore that, for the
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April 26, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Just in time for the Weekly Winston comes the fabulous news that the Bank of England has decided to put Churchill on the five-pound note. Now, can we please put Reagan on the twenty, or something? Speaking of Winnie, who according to legend (surely apocryphal) was the inspiration for A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, loyal Power Line reader RS sends along this adaptation of Milne to remind us of why
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April 26, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Age of Leach at the National Endowment for the Humanities now draws to a close. On Tuesday NEH Chairman Jim Leach announced his resignation effective the first week in May. Leach’s resignation calls for some kind of a reckoning. Judith Dobrzynski notes Leach’s resignation here. From inside the world of the arts and the humanities, she tactfully takes the measure of Leach’s tenure and finds it wanting. There is,
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April 25, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Chuck Hagel has announced that the United States believes, “with varying degrees of confidence” that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its people. Taken literally, Hagel’s statement makes no sense. No one — and no entity — can believe something with varying degrees of confidence. What Hagel means, I assume, is that the relevant players within our government believe that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against
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April 25, 2013 — John Hinderaker
That is not a rhetorical question. On the contrary, it is a question to which no one–including the eight members of the Gang–knows the answer. There is reason to believe, however, that we are talking about something like 30 million Mexicans moving to (or staying in) the United States. David Grant writes in the Christian Science Monitor: These may seem like straightforward questions: How many new permanent residents of the
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April 25, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Many commentators have criticized the Obama administration for prosecuting Dzhokhar Tsarnaev criminally, which entailed giving him Miranda rights and providing him with a lawyer. But apart from the wisdom, in principle, of promptly commencing a criminal prosecution in this case, the sequence of events raises obvious questions about what the administration is up to. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured last Friday evening. At that time, his condition was described as critical.
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April 25, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Congress rarely comes together across party lines these days, but bipartisan consensus has emerged over the unsuitability of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges. Politico reports that Congressional leaders in both parties are engaged in high-level, confidential talks about exempting lawmakers and Capitol Hill aides from the insurance exchanges they are mandated to join under Obamacare. The talks are said to involve Harry Reid, John Boehner, other top lawmakers, and the Obama administration.
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April 25, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Modern liberalism is all about “rights”—rights to health care, right to a job, right to food, the right to more rights, and so forth. You know the drill. Of course, these kind of liberal “rights” aren’t rights at all properly understood; they are benefits that require the state to tax or expropriate someone’s property to provide the “right” to someone else. Right now the California state legislature is poised to
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April 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Boston Herald seems to have struck a nerve in its efforts to uncover the public support that sustained Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his family over the years: The Patrick administration clamped down the lid yesterday on Herald requests for details of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s government benefits, citing the dead terror mastermind’s right to privacy. Across the board, state agencies flatly refused to provide information about the taxpayer-funded lifestyle for
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April 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has its roots in the October 27, 1993 conference at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia that was attended by 25 supporters and members of Hamas. The 1993 conference had as its purpose the subversion of the Oslo Accords. Israel had to be destroyed, not accommodated. Among those in attendance was Nihad Awad. The FBI monitored and recorded the meeting. The evidence derived from the
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April 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song. The lady was a remarkable artist. Each period of her long career is rewarding, though she deepened her art as she got older. She excelled in a wide variety of material and in every musical setting. There is an emotional reserve or detachment in her singing, but there is also joy and an irrepressible sense
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April 25, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
A federal judge has found that a suit by federal immigration agents seeking to block President Obama’s deferred-deportation initiative is likely to succeed on the merits. The initiative in question, which was announced by Obama and Janet Napolitano last year, allows a deferral of the deportation of illegal aliens if they came to the country under the age of 16, are in school or have obtained a high school diploma,
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