Monthly Archives: June 2014
June 30, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Spain’s quick elimination from this year’s World Cup brought pronouncements that their style of play — known as tiki-taka, which features short passing and maintaining possession around the perimeter of the opponent’s goal — is dead. This article in the Wall Street Journal, proclaiming the triumph of “fast break” soccer, is a good example. But it may that taki-taka isn’t dead, but has just moved north — specifically to Germany.
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June 30, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
What are the implications of today’s Hobby Lobby decision for challenges by non-profit religious institutions, such as the Little Sisters of the Poor, to Obamacare’s mandate that they facilitate the free distribution of contraceptives and abortifacients to any of their employees who desire them? Professor Mark Rienzi, who together with the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty has been litigating these sorts of religious liberty cases against the Justice Department, offers
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June 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
My nominee for the silliest op-ed of recent weeks is this Bloomberg View piece by Nick Hanauer and Eric Liu, titled “Libertarians Are the New Communists.” Seriously: the authors’ thesis is that libertarianism is just like Communism. It isn’t worth a lengthy deconstruction, but it stands out because it pioneers a new concept–the straw straw man. A few excerpts: By radical libertarianism, we mean the ideology that holds that individual
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June 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
The bodies of Gil-Ad Shaer, Naftali Fraenkel and Eyal Yifrah were found today near Hebron. The Times of Israel reports that authorities believe the three teenagers were murdered shortly after they were kidnapped by Hamas operatives on June 12: The prevailing assessment within the defense establishment is that the kidnappers, at least at first, only saw one of the hitchikers, perhaps Yifrach, who did not know Shaar and Fraenkel. Only
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June 30, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Conservatives hoped that the Supreme Court would take the opportunity presented by Harris v. Quinn to strike down a 1977 decision holding that full-fledged public employees “who choose not to join a public-sector union may nevertheless be compelled to pay an agency fee to support union work that is related to the collective-bargaining process.” The Supreme Court did not do so. This does not mean, however, that the 1977 decision
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June 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
As Paul and I have already noted, the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision is carefully circumscribed and may or may not ultimately amount to much. (“Meaningless,” is now appellate lawyer Mark Arnold described the decision.) But that hasn’t stopped lefties (hardly any of whom have actually read the opinion, of course) from going crazy. The funniest reactions so far have come from lefties responding to the SCOTUSblog’s Twitter feed. These
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June 30, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
The Supreme Court today issued its final two decisions of the term. One of them constitutes a clear defeat for the left. The other looks like a minor defeat. In the Hobby Lobby case, the Court held that closely held corporations cannot be required to provide contraceptive coverage to their employees. The five center-right Justices formed the majority for that proposition. In Harris v. Quinn, the Court, again with the
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June 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Today the Supreme Court issued its last two opinions of the term. Justice Alito delivered both opinions, and both were decided on 5-4 votes. Both decisions were eagerly awaited. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Court ruled that as applied to closely held corporations, the the contraceptive mandate imposed on employers by Obamacare violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. In Harris v. Quinn, the Court held that the First Amendment
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June 30, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Last week when I commented on the downward revision of the already weak First Quarter GDP numbers, several commenters wrote in to ask: what is keeping the stock market so high? Great question, with the best answer being ZIRP, the Federal Reserve’s “zero interest rate policy,” now matched by many other central banks (with some actually now employing negative interest rates). I’ll leave for another time whether the risk of
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June 30, 2014 — Scott Johnson
In writing here about New York Times reporter James Risen yesterday, I linked to a January 2006 column that I wrote for the Weekly Standard on Risen’s first big story blowing a critical national security program during the Bush administration. The Standard headlined the column “Exposure” and it is still accessible online, but errors crept into the formatting when the Standard redesigned its site. I am taking the liberty of
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June 29, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
James Kirchick compares the foreign policy records of Barack Obama and Jimmy Carter. He finds that President Obama’s is worse. I agree with Kirchick. As he explains, Carter eventually saw the error of his weak ways and changed course, though it took a series of major setbacks for him to accomplish this. With Obama we have had the serious setbacks — e.g., the Benghazi attacks, the rise of al Qaeda
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June 29, 2014 — Steven Hayward
For a while now we’re heard that the steadily dropping level of the Great Lakes is yet another sign of—wait for it now—global warming . . . er, climate change . . . er, climate “disruption,” or whatever we’re supposed to call it this week. The hotlink to “Great Lakes drop” on The Warmlist has gone dead, and by the way, is there still some snow and ice in the
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June 29, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Writing in American Thinker about Megyn Kelly’s forthcoming interview with Bill Ayers, Karin McQuillan recalls something that I wrote in 2008, which I had completely forgotten. She refers to Ed Lasky; the first quote is McQuillan’s, the second is Lasky’s, and the third is mine: Ed Lasky’s many articles, including this one predicting an Obama Ayer’s-style radical assault on education (think Common Core) and another with the prophetic 2008 quote
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June 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Lois Lerner attorney William Taylor III appeared on CNN this morning and among the items up for discussion was the “loss” of two-years’ worth of Lerner’s emails in the epidemic of computer crashes plaguing the IRS. As for the crashes, according to Taylor, we don’t know the half of it. As for the “loss” of Lerner’s email, it was just one of those things. Taylor omits the rest of the
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June 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
New York Times reporter James Risen has excellent sources in the intelligence community. If you are a disgruntled intelligence officer or official and want to preserve your anonymity while undermining a top secret program or aiding the enemies of the United States, Risen is your go-to guy. Risen’s accomplishments in this area have been overshadowed by the emergence of Edward Snowden, but Risen should not be forgotten. We know of
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June 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Nancy Pelosi has been on the Southern border, trying to demagogue the tragic influx of tens of thousands of Central American minors, largely unaccompanied. She gave a press conference today. Breitbart reports: Saturday at a press conference from the Rio Grande Valley, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) discussed her tour of a border holding facility and addressed the humanitarian crisis of thousands unaccompanied minors flooding across the U.S.-Mexico border, which she
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June 28, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Ahmed Abu Khattala, believed to be a ringleader of the Benghazi attacks, was brought today from a Navy warship to the federal courthouse in Washington, D.C. He entered a plea of not guilty to a single conspiracy charge. Abu Khattala was captured on June 15. He was not immediately read his Miranda rights, but did receive them “days ago,” according to two law enforcement officials. The two officials say that
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