Monthly Archives: November 2014

Erdogan Unbound

Featured image Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave a speech in Istanbul yesterday that included a crazed denunciation of the West: “The only condition to overcome the crisis in the Islamic world is unity, solidarity and alliance,” he said. “Believe me, we can resolve every problem as long as we are united.” Erdogan says there is no use counting on help from the Western world. “I speak openly, foreigners love oil, gold, »

The Holidays: A Great Time To Spend an Hour With the Power Line Show

Featured image If, like most of us, you have a little spare time between now and Monday, consider spending an hour with the Power Line Show. Here is Episode 2, featuring the whole PL crew, together with Senator-elect Tom Cotton and Bill Voegeli, author of The Pity Party. The president’s amnesty order and multiple email mysteries were the main topics of the day. And, hey, if you have two hours to spare, »

Why did the New York Times say where Darren Wilson lives?

Featured image On Monday, the day when the grand jury declined to indict Darren Wilson and rioting ensued, the New York Times published a story that provided the name of the town and the street where Wilson lives. The Times gave out this information in the context of reporting that Wilson married a fellow police officer Barbara Spradling in a “quiet wedding” last month, and that the two own a home together. »

Quotations from Chairman Barry

Featured image I still have my old copy of Quotations From Chairman LBJ. The book was inspired by Quotations From Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (“the little red book”). Compiled by Jack Shepherd and Christopher Wren and published by Simon and Schuster in the annus horribilis of 1968, the book consisted of supposedly laughable quotes attributable to President Johnson. It was popular enough to go through multiple printings. My copy derives from the third »

Down the Road: Amnesty for Gitmo Detainees?

Featured image We all remember how Bill Clinton left office with a flurry of pardons to dozens of dubious people, from fugitive financier Marc Rich (represented by an attorney named Eric Holder), to an obscure figure in Arkansas who had been jailed for rolling back automobile odometers.  Touching how far Clinton’s pain-feeling extended. How can Obama top this?  Easy: if you think granting de facto amnesty to millions of illegal aliens was »

EPA Lost in the Ozone, As Usual

Featured image Just one day after the Supreme Court granted cert to review the EPA’s ridiculous mercury regulations, the EPA announced that it would lower the ozone standard to .06 parts per million, from the current .075 parts per million. This is the same regulation that President Obama cancelled in 2011 because, as the New York Times described it, “Mr. Obama said the regulation would impose too severe a burden on industry »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured image This week Ammo Grrrll returns with thoughts on AMTRAK AND ME. She writes: Mussolini, it is asserted – undoubtedly falsely – made the trains run on time. Benito would have hanged himself if tasked with running Amtrak. Several years ago, when we were still wintering in Palm Springs, I decided to make the annual journey south into a four-day “Bucket List” train trip adventure. Pat, a fellow writer and Certified »

Why the Gallup Poll Means Deep Trouble for Hillary

Featured image Gallup headlines: Obama Approval Drops Among Working-Class Whites. Here, “working class” includes all non-college graduates, some 60-65% of the adult white population. Gallup’s chart shows President Obama’s approval rating among white college graduates and non-college graduates from the beginning of his administration to the end of October. His 27% approval rating among non-college graduates is indeed striking: But perhaps more important is Obama’s steep decline within that demographic. Since he »

Yes, the process in Wilson’s case was unusual, but it didn’t favor Wilson

Featured image Because the evidence seems to support the grand jury’s “no bill” ruling in the Darren Wilson case, critics and protesters have focused on the grand jury procedure. They argue that it was highly unusual, and they are right. Normally, prosecutors try to guide a grand jury towards an indictment. Almost invariably, prosecutors succeed. Hence the cliche that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. In »

America’s first socialist republic

Featured image We provided the platform launching Professor Paul Rahe into the blogosphere. He is one of the country’s most distinguished scholars, but he has also proved to be a natural blogger as well. He now posts at Ricochet. In view of his study of Republics Ancient and Modern, Professor Rahe is the academy’s foremost authority on the history of republics. Although his more recent work on “soft despotism” (cited below) was »

Lincoln’s Thanksgiving

Featured image Lincoln’s famous Thanksgiving Proclamation of October 3, 1863, was drafted by William Seward and signed by Lincoln. The Union’s victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg lay in the background; the Gettysburg Address was to come the following month. The proclamation pronounced the last Thursday of November “a day of Thanksgiving and Praise.” In it Seward seems to have reached to capture Lincoln’s thought; the proclamation strikes several Lincolnian themes. A copy »

White Thanksgiving [Updated]

Featured image Here in Minnesota, we don’t have any worries about a white Christmas. It’s been white for quite a while. Cold, too: early this morning, my car thermometer read zero degrees. It’s beautiful if you are looking at it from indoors: As always, weather aside, we have much to be thankful for this year. No doubt you do too. So, to all of our readers who are celebrating the usual holiday »

U.S. air support minimal as ISIS pushes deep into Ramadi

Featured image ISIS has intensified its push to capture Ramadi, a city of nearly half a million people and the capital of Anbar province: Islamic State fighters on Tuesday penetrated to the core of Ramadi, the provincial capital of Iraq’s largest province, prompting local security officials to warn that the city was on the verge of falling to the extremists. Such a gain would be the Islamic State’s most significant victory in »

Who would be Obama’s Secretary of Defense?

Featured image Not Michèle Flournoy. She has ruled herself out. Reportedly, her goal is to be Hillary Clinton’s Defense Secretary. In theory, holding the position under President Obama doesn’t preclude holding it under Clinton. Moreover, it is far from certain that Clinton will ever be in a position to offer Flournoy the job. But she must believes that running Obama’s Pentagon is a toxic gig. Not Sen. Jack Reed, another frequently mentioned »

Dr. Schumer’s weak, retrospective prescription

Featured image Chuck Schumer has caused a bit of a stir by stating that the Democrats erred in pushing through Obamacare. “Unfortunately,” said Schumer “Democrats blew the opportunity the American people gave them [in the 2008 election]. We took their mandate and put all our focus on the wrong problem — health care reform.” According to Schumer, Democrats should have focused on aiding the middle class in order to build confidence among »

#Shirtgate explained

Featured image The feminist establishment has gone completely around the bend. I’m not sure when it happened.; I doubt it is a recent development. In her prescient 1972 book The New Chastity and Other Arguments Against Women’s Liberation, Midge Decter examined the second-generation literature of feminism and found it rotten at the core, if not rotten to the core. I haven’t kept up with the literature. My impression, however, is that the »

The Telos of the Liberal Mind?

Featured image Remember the old joke from the 1960s about the liberal cleric who told his congregation that he had been mugged, but that he sympathized with his mugger, because injustice, etc. . . Whereupon an elderly lady in the back of the pews mutters loudly, “Mug him again.” The joke has come to life in Georgetown, where a student who was recently mugged at gunpoint has written an article justifying the »