Monthly Archives: August 2015
August 30, 2015 — Steven Hayward
The most salient feature of what I and others call the “Administrative State” is its relentless logic that virtually every aspect of life should be subject in principle to regulation, and sooner or later in practice, too. Hence the crackdown on little kid lemonade stands and amateur magicians who keep rabbits, which I’ve commented upon previously. Call it the theory of “total regulation” if you like that better than the
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August 30, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Actually, I got nuthin’. So I’ll just post a funny video below of Darth Vader as rendered by Arnold Schwarzenegger. (Hat tip: JZ.) But other people have thoughts. S.E. Cupp argues that it not the weakness of the GOP establishment that explains Trump’s success, but rather the fact that he stands up to liberalism more robustly than anyone has for a long time (which is, again, a variation of Angelo
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August 30, 2015 — Scott Johnson
After John Walters wrote a Weekly Standard article on President Obama’s commutations of incarcerated drug offenders, I asked him to take a look at Michelle Alexander’s dreadful but influential book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. I noted the Walters article and discussed Alexander’s book in the post “Meet the new Jim Crow, same as the old BS.” Now Mr. Walters has turned his attention
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August 29, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
A brand new Bloomberg-Des Moines Register poll of likely Republican caucus-goers in Iowa finds Donald Trump in the lead with 23 percent. Ben Carson runs second with 18 percent. Carson is the second choice of 14 percent; Trump ranks second for 9 percent. In three polls taken earlier this month, Trump led Carson by an average margin of almost 8 points. Thus, Carson has gained on Trump. But Trump will
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August 29, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Today, the St. Paul Black Lives Matter organization marched on the State Fair to protest alleged brutality by the St. Paul police department. The march was long-awaited and something like 900 participants had been expected, but nowhere near that many turned out. The protesters closed down streets and highways on their way to the fair. The main entrance to the fair on Snelling Avenue was closed down, which must have
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August 29, 2015 — Steven Hayward
I can’t decide whether Trump is an agent of disruption recruited by the Clintons (a story that has been making the rounds for a while) or the best thing that could possibly have happened to Republicans for the 2016 cycle, though none of the other candidates, with the partial exception of Ted Cruz, seem to get it. First, note that all the early predictions that Trump would go the same
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August 29, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Glenn Reynolds links to a Daily Mail article highlighting usage notes issued by a gay rights official at the University of Tennessee, where Glenn teaches. The university official has advised staff and students to stop using “he” and “she” – and switch to “xe,” “zir,” and “xyr” instead. The idea is to avoid any implication that mankind is divided into men and women. This is discouraged as “binary” thinking. In
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August 29, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Yeah, I know, it isn’t anywhere near February 2, but I go away for two weeks and I expect that some things might have changed while I was away. But no: the news is still: Trump, Trump, China, Trump, Hillary emails, Trump, the stock market, Trump, Biden??, Trump, Trump, NFL pre-season, Trump, and the Kardashians, whoever they are. Trump-Kardashian 2016? Or how about Trump-Jenner? And finally. . .
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August 28, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
It seemed like a good idea at the time. Hillary Clinton would be coronated by the Democrats, so there was no need for many debates. Keep the number of them low — six in total, with only four before the Iowa caucus — and thereby minimize the risk that Clinton will look bad before a large audience. It’s less clear now that this is a good idea. The many Democratic
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August 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
One of my fellow cruisers on the Baltic Sea last week was Seth Lipsky of the New York Sun, who wrote a terrific column about 10 days ago for the New York Post arguing that since Democrats are giving up on Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson (because, at bottom, Democrats dislike and/or are ashamed of America’s history), Republicans ought to steal Jefferson away from them. Of course, Lincoln already did
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August 28, 2015 — John Hinderaker
There are several reasons why Donald Trump is popular with Republicans, even though he probably isn’t a Republican himself, and certainly is not a conservative. One of them is the way he stands up to left-wing media. This is a classic, from earlier today: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said “CNN is terrible” after one of its reporters asked him about protesters outside his press conference in Norwood, MA on
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August 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
So what happens when a politician says, “I am, you know, adamantly against illegal immigrants”? Oh wait, the person who said that was Senator Hillary Clinton, to WABC Radio’s John Gambling in a 2003 interview. Whatever. Today Hillary trumped (heh) her suggestion yesterday that Republicans are the moral equivalent of Islamic terrorists by suggesting the GOP are Nazis too, because “some” on “the other side” want to round up illegal immigrants
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August 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Last year we reported on the case of John Beale, the career EPA employee who was busted for fraud for claiming to be a covert CIA operative while bilking the EPA for years as one of its highest paid employees, who was spending his time at home figuring out how to, in his own words, “modify the DNA of the capitalist system…” Because government bureaucrats like Beale are just so
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August 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Over at Commentary today Noah Rothman raises a great question: by tacking left to reflect the current center of gravity in the Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton is essentially repudiating the policy orientation of her husband’s presidency: Does Hillary Clinton believe her husband’s presidency set the Democratic Party back? . . . Hillary Clinton has been compelled on a variety of occasions to renounce her husband’s greatest achievements. In the wake of
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August 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
The Energy Institute at the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley has posted a working paper entitled “The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits.” The paper is a devastating indictment of who’s getting Cecil the Lion’s share of the tax credits. If this were any other cause than “green energy,” the Left would be screaming about the redistribution of income from the middle
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August 28, 2015 — John Hinderaker
That’s what Democratic Senator Chris Murphy says: I think change is going to happen. I just don’t think that democracy can work with when you have 90 percent of the American public that want changes in our gun laws and Congress not responding. This is sheer fantasy. In fact, only a minority of Americans want stricter gun laws. A majority want either to keep gun laws as they are, or
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August 28, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Jeffrey Goldberg is a trusted interlocutor of President Obama and a hand-wringing supporter of the Iran deal. Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a scholarly critic of the deal. Goldberg has posted Satloff’s 10 questions for President Obama on the deal. Satloff has also posted the questions here at WINE’s site. These are his questions: 1. You have argued that the Iran
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