Monthly Archives: September 2014
September 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Today is the last day of the quarter, the final FEC deadline before November’s election. So every candidate on both sides of the aisle is bombarding potential donors with emails. I have gotten several hundred today, from both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats are following their invariable playbook: pessimism bordering on the suicidal, until–miracle of miracles!–it turns out that they have out-raised the Republicans by $40 or $50 million, again.
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September 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
While not one of our official Picks, Torrey Westrom, the Republican candidate for the House in Minnesota’s 7th District, is more than worthy of your support. Torrey is challenging Collin Peterson, one of the most senior Democrats in Congress. Peterson has long been entrenched, but this year, he can be had. The 7th is a GOP-leaning district that consistently votes for Republican presidential candidates. Peterson has survived by posing as
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September 30, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
On September 30, 1964, the St. Louis Cardinals completed a three-game sweep of the Philadelphia Phillies. By doing so, they moved into sole possession of first place, as the Cincinnati Reds lost 1-0 to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 16 innings. The Reds-Pirates game was a classic. Jim Maloney pitched 11 innings of three-hit, shutout ball for Cincinnati. Bob Veale held the Reds in check for twelve and a third. Alvin
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September 30, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
A federal district court in Oklahoma has ruled that the Obamacare statute means what it says: subsidies may not granted to people obtaining their health insurance through the federal exchange. In Pruitt v. Burwell, Judge Ronald White of the Eastern District of Oklahoma followed the reasoning of the panel in Halbig v. Sebelius, a ruling that the full D.C. Circuit, having been packed by the Democrats, recently vacated. The Oklahoma
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September 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Secret Service Director Julia Pierson testified today before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee about the security breach that allowed an intruder to enter the White House. The episode was a fiasco on multiple levels, and Ms. Pierson endured a sustained grilling that was somewhat bipartisan. One fact that has emerged is that the intruder, Omar Gonzalez, got much deeper into the White House than the Secret Service originally
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September 30, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Forget the pod people of Invasion of the Body Snatchers: it seems the plastic people have taken over California government. Think of it as Invasion of the Body Politic Snatchers. Today Gov. Jerry Brown, who never found a goofy environmental idea he didn’t like, signed the bill to outlaw “single-use” plastic bags in California. Which prompts the following 45-second video rant from me about how it is going to reduce
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September 30, 2014 — Steven Hayward
I’m in the throes of doing a close analysis of Reagan’s famous 1964 “Time for Choosing” speech for a lecture I’ll be giving next month on the 50th anniversary. I rather like this line: “We have so many people who can’t see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one.” Reminds me
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September 30, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Peter Baker and Eric Schmitt of the New York Times destroy President Obama’s attempt to shift blame to the intelligence community for his lack of focus on ISIS: By late last year, classified American intelligence reports painted an increasingly ominous picture of a growing threat from Sunni extremists in Syria, according to senior intelligence and military officials. Just as worrisome, they said, were reports of deteriorating readiness and morale among
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September 30, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Republicans are optimistic about the Senate these days, on account of recent polls that show their candidates pulling ahead, or pulling even, in a number of battleground states. Oddsmakers are now saying there is a strong probability the GOP will re-take the Senate in November. However, there is a catch: as usual, the Democrats’ fundraising this cycle has vastly outpaced the Republicans’. And the Democrats are focusing their resources where
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September 30, 2014 — Scott Johnson
This past week the Heritage Foundation convened a panel of conservative intellectuals to discuss the future of liberalism in America. I became aware of the Heritage program through Andrew Evans’s Free Beacon article covering it, “Liberalism in America.” The Heritage Foundation promoted the event with this invitation: Twenty-five years ago, marriage meant what it had always meant, Madonna was considered risqué, and liberals worried about mass immigration, threats to religious
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September 30, 2014 — Scott Johnson
We’ve got a problem in the Twin Cities that is based in our large and still growing population of Somali immigrants. Somalis have been immigrating to Minnesota for more than twenty years now. They have taken advantage of all the services that our state and local institutions offer. They have been welcomed with open arms, in Minnesota’s characteristic style. Yet Minnesota’s Somali community — a/k/a “Minnesotans” — is the most
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September 29, 2014 — Steven Hayward
In my Forbes.com column today, “Climate Change Jumps the Shark,” I take aim at the old “no-enemies-on-the-left” mentality that will extend a free pass to the lunatic rantings of Naomi Klein and “Little Bobby” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. So when a liberal does step up and object strongly to this kind of infantile leftism, it is worth noting and praising. No surprise that it comes from our center-left friends at
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September 29, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Joni Ernst and Bruce Braley held their first debate last night. Immigration was front-and-center, which is probably not a bad thing for Ernst. Braley tried, however, to spin the issue into an advertisement for his “bipartisanship.” He invited Ernst to “join John McCain and Marco Rubio in calling on Speaker Boehner to bring this immigration bill to the floor of the House so we can pass it.” Ernst declined the
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September 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
With the dissolution of the Obama administration’s foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere, President Obama is talking as fast as he can. Obama set some kind of a land speed record for double-talk in his interview with Steve Kroft on 60 Minutes last night, highlighted by Obama’s passing the buck for his misunderestimation of ISIS to the Director of National Intelligence et al. That hasn’t gone down too
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September 29, 2014 — John Hinderaker
It isn’t quite true to say that the science is settled–climate science is in its infancy, and we have only a poor understanding of the Earth’s climate. Just about every proposition is controversial. But we are very close to being able to say that, as to global warming alarmism, the debate is over and the alarmists have lost. (I mean, of course, the scientific debate, not the political one, which
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September 29, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu addressed the United Nations this afternoon (video below). The prime minister’s office has posted the text here. As is just about always the case, everything he has to say is worthwhile. In part his speech responds to Mahmoud Abbas’s imputation of “war crimes” and “genocide” against Israel in the same forum this past Friday. Of most interest, however, is Netanyahu’s discussion of Iran in the context
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September 29, 2014 — John Hinderaker
As Scott wrote here, TV comedian Bill Maher decided to try to flip one Congressional district from the GOP to the Democrats this year. And, as Scott put it, of all the gin joints in all the towns in the world, Maher chose our district–Minnesota’s Second–to try to unseat a Republican incumbent. That incumbent, of course, is our friend John Kline, who, before Maher’s money entered the picture, appeared to
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