Monthly Archives: February 2015

Power Line at 10,000 Feet

Featured image If we ever start doing a regular video show in addition to our semi-regular online broadcasts, I think we might have to use this short segment as our show opener: As it happens, I’m going to be out in Palm Springs next weekend videotaping a long interview with a significant writer and thinker, which will be edited into several segments for Power Line.  Stay tuned for details. And then there are »

The Mullahs: Still Crazy After All These Years

Featured image Barack Obama intends the centerpiece of his foreign policy legacy to be a de facto alliance with Iran–a stroke so brilliant that only he could think of it. The U.S. will set Iran up as the dominant regional power in the Middle East, in part by allowing it to develop the nuclear capability for which its rulers have long yearned, and in exchange, Iran will keep the peace and subdue »

Anti-Semitism at UCLA

Featured image Is anti-Semitism alive and well on America’s college campuses? In the video below, UCLA’s student council deliberates over the application of Rachel Beyda for a position on the university’s judicial board. Ms. Beyda is acknowledged to be “qualified, for sure” and “a great candidate, obviously.” Yet there is a problem. “I just worry about her affiliations.” She is “a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community.” The student »

Goodbye to Eric Holder, With One Question

Featured image Eric Holder is on his way out, thankfully. In a farewell interview with Politico, he demonstrated again why he was unfit to be Attorney General. He trashes his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales: I had to take a Justice Department that was in shambles, you know, when I got here: political hiring, political firing, exclusion of career people from decision making for political reasons. Someone in Gonzales’s Justice Department tried to bring »

When All You Have Is a Hammer. . .

Featured image You almost have to have some sympathy for Rep. Raul Grijalva, given that he’s a slave to the crudely Marxist reductionist view that economic interest determines everything. It has been the fundamental driving principle of the left for a very long time. When all you have is a hammer. . . By coincidence, as Grijalva was rolling out his Climate Blacklist this week, I happened to be rereading portions of »

Netanyahu’s moment

Featured image The coming deal with Iran represents folly of a Chamberlainite proportion. One can easily see it in the administration’s prebuttal of Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech, reported in today’s New York Times story by David Sanger and Michael Gordon. I hear the voice of Susan Rice in the unnamed administration official quoted by the Times. Whoever it is speaks out of the love that dare not be identified with his or her »

The Week in Pictures: #FreeTheGrijalva7 Edition

Featured image Really, I haven’t had this much fun since Climategate (which, incidentally, I’ll be revisiting in the next couple of days).  But if you really want to see what a theater of the absurd the environmental world has become, check out the story about Sharon Stone being sued for backing out of an anti-Chevron protest in Eucador.  Seriously?  Sharon Stone is your protest headliner?  What—Leo DiCaprio wasn’t available?  Anyway, this week’s »

Are Washington Republicans Incompetent?

Featured image It is almost unbelievable how badly Congressional Republicans have botched their opposition to President Obama’s illegal executive amnesty and the funding of the Department of Homeland Security. The House, under John Boehner’s direction, did the right thing: it passed a bill that fully funded DHS, but barred spending to implement the amnesty that has now been declared illegal by a federal court. The action then moved to the Senate, where »

The Obama Administration’s AR-15 Ammo Ban: What’s It All About?

Featured image The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms has unveiled a new “Framework For Determining Whether Certain Projectiles Are ‘Primarily Intended For Sporting Purposes.'” Under that rather bland rubric, ATF says that it will prohibit the sale of ammunition using the M855 bullet, which includes some of the most common types of ammunition used in AR-15 rifles. This gets rather technical, but briefly, what we are talking about here is the »

More Blowback

Featured image The American Meteorological Society, regarded as a mainstream science organization, has issued a strong statement critical of Rep. Grijalva’s “investigation,” whose central point is the same as mine yesterday.  You can find a PDF link at the top of the AMS website, but here’s the complete text of the letter (with a facsimilie below): Dear Representative Grijalva: Science and jurisprudence have in common the practice of the careful and critical »

Blowback Against Democrats’ McCarthyite Investigation Continues

Featured image We have written here, here and here about House Democrats’ purported investigation of seven climate realists. Steven Hayward is proud to be one of the Magnificent Seven, and I interviewed him on the Laura Ingraham show this morning about the investigation. Pushback against the Democrats’ witch hunt is taking place on a variety of fronts. Yesterday a reporter from Politico, Alex Guillen, contacted Scott and me via email. Guillen said »

From the mixed-up files of Ms. Hillary

Featured image Although it has had to file a Freedom of Information Act to get it done, Judicial Watch has succeeded in extracting a portion of Benghazi-related emails from the State Department. Judicial Watch had sought “Any and all records concerning, regarding, or related to notes, updates, or reports created in response to the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S, Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This request includes but is not limited »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured image Ammo Grrrll titles this one LET ME GIVE YOU SOME ADVICE…She writes: I don’t care if you are a sane person who understands that there are two, and only two, “genders,” or more accurately, “sexes” (M & F), or if you are convinced that there are dozens of genders or none at all. It is – more or less – a free country except on college campuses, and you can »

Punch Back Twice as Hard

Featured image Our pals at the Energy and Environment Legal Institute issued the following press release today, which I post here in full: For Immediate Release: February 26, 2015 Contact: Craig Richardson [email protected] 703-981-5553 Following Rep. Grijalva Inspiration, E&E Legal Files FOIA Request with the University of Delaware Seeking Records Relating to the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Washington, D.C. — Today, the Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), in »

Murdered By a Dreamer: Do Black Lives Matter?

Featured image Jamiel Shaw, Jr. was murdered by an illegal alien–a “dreamer”–the day after the dreamer was released from jail after a trivially short sentence for assault with a deadly weapon, and left to roam the streets rather than being deported. There have been many such stories; Jamiel Shaw’s story only came to light because his father, Jamiel Shaw, Sr., was called to testify before an Oversight Subcommittee hearing. His heartbreaking testimony »

Author, Blogger, Philosopher Avijit Roy Murdered by Jihadists [Updated With Photograph]

Featured image Avijit Roy, a native of Bangladesh, was an engineer by training, an atheist, the proprietor of a web site, and the author of a number of books. Recently, he has lived in the United States, but has been threatened with death by radical Muslims because of his religious and social views. His wife, Rafida Ahmed Bonna, was raised as a Muslim but supported Roy’s work as an atheist. Earlier today, »

Is MSNBC Giving Up on the Hard Left?

Featured image Chronically low ratings have led to a major shakeup at MSNBC. The network announced a week ago that it is canceling the shows hosted by Ronan Farrow and Joy Reid. Variety now reports that those programs will be replaced by a two-hour show called “MSNBC Live With Thomas Roberts.” Variety says: Beset by significant ratings declines, MSNBC has been emphasizing reports on breaking news, rather than the issues-based discussion for »