Monthly Archives: June 2015

Looks Like We Called Greece Right

Featured image Two weeks ago we posted our first ever “Monday Morning Briefing” for Power Line VIP subscribers, which we hastened to add later may not appear always on Monday, and may be closer to “bi-weekly,” since bi-weekly is ambiguous: is that twice a week or every other week?  Just like everything else bi, isn’t it? (And I promised my mom long ago that I’d never be bi-anything. . .) Anyway, our »

After Eight Years of Obama, Will Democrats Be Ready to Stay Home?

Featured image Real Clear Politics reports on a survey carried out by liberal groups and interpreted by Stan Greenberg, a Democratic Party pollster. So you have to start by wading through a lot of spin: Democratic voters are skeptics this summer. They doubt presidential contenders can deliver favored reforms from Washington, no matter how enticing the policy agendas sound. Those doubts depress enthusiasm about next year’s White House contest and could impact »

Down and out in Paris and London

Featured image We know that Paul is on vacation in Paris. I believe that John is on, or about to depart on, vacation in London. I think we may be short on manpower for a while and that our coverage may reflect it. If so, I will post a few literary, musical or otherwise offbeat items from which I would refrain if we were at full strength. I have invited Professor Philip »

Netanyahu’s take

Featured image Israel simply cannot afford the smug self-delusuions with which our pending nuclear agreement with Iran is being negotiated and sold. Its critique of the arrangement reflects a realistic view of the proceedings. Prime Minister’s Netanyahu’s views, expressed most recently yesterday and posted here, represent the Israeli consensus. I find their bluntness refreshing: • “In the nuclear talks, to my regret, what we are seeing are Iran’s increasing demands, and the »

Gay Wedding Etiquette

Featured image We’ve featured the humor of Key & Peele here before (remember “Curse the Brilliant TSA!“), but I’m not sure they can get away with sketches like these much longer–certainly not on a college campus. I especially like “When do we get to sing YMCA?” and “Where do you get the Euros to buy gay gifts?” Enjoy–about 4:30 long: »

Campaign Notes

Featured image So with the entry today of Gov. Chris Christie into the GOP presidential sweepstakes, the field is now complete from the diversity standpoint. Christie means we Hefto-Americans have a candidate, to go along with Cuban-Americans (Cruz, Rubio), Indian-Americans (Jindal), Uterine-Americans and Italian-Americans (Fiorina), Slavic-Americans (Kasich, eventually), Arko-Americans (Huckabee), folically-challenged Americans—or are we “Toupee-Americans?”—(Trump), Phamacolocigal-Americans (Paul), Cheesy-Americans (Walker), and the plain vanilla middle class—better known to academics as the “Bushoisie”—has a »

New York Times: The Ultimate in Hypocrisy

Featured image This is from yesterday’s Twitchy, but, assuming that most of our readers don’t haunt Twitter, it bears repeating here. Following the Charlie Hebdo murders, the New York Times covered the terrorist attack, but declined to print any of Charlie Hebdo’s mocking images of Muhammad. The paper self-righteously declared a policy against showing religious images that may be deemed offensive: “Out of respect to our readers we have avoided those we »

Marilyn Mosby Goes Vogue

Featured image We have been watching, with a skeptical eye, the doings of Marilyn Mosby, the Baltimore States Attorney. Young, inexperienced and politically ambitious, Mosby may have sown the seeds of an unsuccessful–or worse, unjust–criminal prosecution by overcharging six police officers who were involved in the arrest of Freddie Gray. On the other hand, Ms. Mosby is undeniably attractive, a quality that could take her far. Mosby is the subject of an »

Goodnight Vienna

Featured image The parties have returned to Vienna to wrap up the imminent nuclear deal with Iran. Why not Munich? It would be more fitting, but Vienna signifies in its own way. John Lennon contributed the title song to Ringo Starr for Ringo’s 1974 album Goodnight Vienna. As a result, I have come to understand that the phrase Goodnight Vienna is English slang for “it’s all over.” So “Goodnight Vienna” it is. »

Ben Wattenberg, RIP

Featured image Sad news today of the passing of Ben Wattenberg at the age of 81. Wattenberg, who had been an aide to Lyndon Johnson, was one of the “liberals mugged by reality” who created “neoconservatism.” I first read Wattenberg’s late 1960s book (co-authored with Richard Scammon) The Real Majority when I was an undergraduate. The Real Majority wasn’t exactly the inspiration for Nixon’s “silent majority” of putatively conservative voters. Rather, Wattenberg »

Jury Rejects Conservative Law Professor’s Discrimination Claim

Featured image We have written several times–here, here and here–about the case of Teresa Wagner (now Teresa Manning), an “out” conservative law professor who sued the University of Iowa law school for discrimination based on her political beliefs. The facts of the case seemed powerful: The underlying facts of the case are outrageous. They are what made the case important and newsworthy. Professor Wagner sought a full-time legal writing position at the »

Puerto Rico Goes Broke

Featured image Most eyes have been on Greece, where events are coming to a climax. Meanwhile, a less-noticed financial collapse has overtaken Puerto Rico. That commonwealth has racked up debts of $72 billion, which seems astonishing for an island with a population of 3.6 million, not much more than Iowa. Puerto Rico’s governor now says that “the debt is not payable.” That seems to be true of a lot of sovereign debt »

The Decadence of the Liberal Mind in One Sentence

Featured image As the Greek economy continues its predictable slow motion collapse, one of the early WSJ account of the inevitable bank closures and capital controls imposed yesterday has one of the funniest sentences I’ve read in a long time, but which is also fully revealing of the decadence of the liberal mind: “How can something like this happen without prior warning?” asked Angeliki Psarianou, a 67-year-old retired public servant, who stood »

Our false messiah

Featured image President Obama recently denied that he ever promised, if elected, to heal our partisan divides. Referring to our so-called political gridlock, thus spake Obama at a fundraising event at the home of Tyler Perry: “When I ran in 2008, I in fact did not say I would fix it. I said we could fix it. I didn’t say, ‘Yes, I can.’ I said, ‘Yes, we can.’” As David Rutz demonstrates »

Could Gay Marriage Lead to . . . Tax Reform?

Featured image Morningafterwise, we didn’t have to wait long for conjectures like this from Time: Now’s the Time to End Tax Exemptions for Religious Institutions . . .  Rather than try to rescue tax-exempt status for organizations that dissent from settled public policy on matters of race or sexuality, we need to take a more radical step. It’s time to abolish, or greatly diminish, their tax-exempt statuses. Or the New York Times »

Presumed guilty: Duke revisited

Featured image Last week FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff posted the video below on InstaPundit with a link to this post introducing it. The video is also posted on YouTube with this introduction: In 2006, the nation was rocked by allegations that three Duke lacrosse players had raped a woman named Crystal Mangum at an off-campus party. As Mangum’s story began to unravel, the focus of the case shifted from the supposed criminal behavior »

AIPAC enters the fray

Featured image Until now the Obama administration seemed to have domesticated and neutered AIPAC, the proudly pro-Israel lobbying group. Michael Oren’s memoir Ally, published this past Tuesday, confirms this impression. Attending the annual AIPAC Minnesota dinner in Minneapolis last month, however, I was struck by the strong position taken on the imminent Iran deal. AIPAC set forth five criteria for an acceptable deal that would obviously obligate the organization to oppose the »