Monthly Archives: January 2017

A liberal endorses Judge Gorsuch [UPDATED]

Featured image The nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court has been very well received by conservatives and those on the center right. But he also has an endorsement that should carry weight with Democrats (though it probably won’t). Neal Katyal served as Solicitor General of the United States under President Obama. Now in private practice, he is also Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown »

Confirming Judge Gorsuch

Featured image By nominating Judge Neil Gorsuch rather than Judge William Pryor, the original frontrunner, I suspect that President Trump hopes to avoid a successful filibuster, and thus get his man confirmed without resort to the “nuclear option.” I’m not saying that this was the decisive consideration. It may be that Trump simply preferred Gorsuch — I don’t know. But it seems likely that Team Trump viewed the prospect of confirming Gorsuch »

Green Weenie of the Week: Standing Rock Blockheads

Featured image This news story from Reuters requires no commentary to explain why the pretentious protesters against the Dakota Access Pipeline near Standing Rock deserve a coveted Power Line Green Weenie Award: Clean-up begins at Dakota pipeline protest camp Dump trucks and heavy machinery rolled into the protest camp near the site of the Dakota Access Pipeline on Monday, and crews began filling large dumpsters with garbage that has accumulated, much of »

Free speech on campus, a legislative proposal

Featured image Today at the Heritage Foundation, Stanley Kurtz rolled out and discussed model legislation to promote free speech at state colleges and universities. He was joined by Jim Manley and Jonathan Butcher of the Goldwater Institute and Casey Mattox of Alliance Defending Freedom. I previewed their presentation here. There’s probably no need to persuade Power Line readers that freedom of speech is under siege on America’s campuses. As this whitepaper by »

New Rules? Trump’s Epic Struggle with the Left

Featured image It is evident that the left, with the active cooperation of the news media, wishes to drive Trump from office. Nothing will sate the left or get them to calm down into a recognizably responsible opposition force. And why shouldn’t the left think this can succeed? It has worked before. They bagged two presidents in succession back in the 1960s and 1970s—Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. “In a sense,” Daniel »

Report: It’s Judge Gorsuch

Featured image President Trump will keep another of his campaign promises tonight when he names his choice to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the death of Justice Scalia. Via Independent Journal Review, Ramesh Ponnuru reports that Trump will nominate Tenth Circuit Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Court. Ramesh deems Judge Gorsuch a worthy heir to Justice Scalia. Our own Paul Mirengoff took a highly favorable look at Judge Gorsuch »

Progressives Say: Boycott the World!

Featured image #GrabYourWallet has gotten quite a bit of publicity as the leading organizer of progressive boycotts against companies that are somehow associated with Donald Trump. The boycott effort is doomed to fail, for a couple of reasons: first, social justice warriors are a small percentage of the population; second, social justice warriors who are willing to change their shopping habits are an infinitesimal percentage of the population. So this is mostly »

Supreme Court Showdown: Keep Your Eye on Ed

Featured image With President Trump’s first Supreme Court nomination coming in a few hours, you can expect all hell to break loose from the left. Whoever it is will be portrayed as the worst person since . . . the last person Trump named to something yesterday. (Which is why I don’t think any nominee can be successfully “Borked.”) But in any case as this unfolds everyone should make a regular daily »

Who Knew? Trump’s Immigration Order Is Popular

Featured image The Democratic Party press is trying to portray a spontaneous storm of indignation arising across the country in response to President Trump’s temporary restriction on travel from seven countries. Demonstrations and impassioned speeches by Democrats and left-wing activists are given breathless coverage. If you didn’t know better, you would think that Americans have risen up as one to condemn Trump’s rather mild, if poorly implemented, order. But you would be »

Bad moon rising

Featured image You may have missed the Dems’ big rally at the Supreme Court last night against President Trump’s “travel ban” (as CNN calls it). Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer somehow expressed his opposition to Trump’s executive order without crying even though he did call out the order as “evil.” Really. The rally was full of symbolic moments. The amplification malfunctioned with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi at the microphone seeking »

What’s next?

Featured image You have to wonder what comes next after the hysteria manifested by the Democrat/Media Axis in the first 10 days of the Trump administration. They have turned up the “resistance” to 11, Spinal Tap style. Democrats vow to filibuster Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, whoever he is. The vow should detract from whatever Democrats have to say on the merits of the nomination, but they aren’t exactly held to the same »

Who is Dana J. Boente?

Featured image If you’re a leftist, he’s about to become the devil incarnate for accepting President Trump’s appointment as acting attorney general in place of the disobedient Sally Yates. In reality, Boente is a long-time civil servant who was appointed during the Obama administration to serve as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana and later as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). For years, Boente »

Update on the Quebec mosque shooting

Featured image Last night, soon after it happened, I wrote about the shooting at a mosque in Quebec City. As I warned, some of the information being reported initially was inaccurate — par for the course in these kinds of situations. But the main details turned out to be correct. Here is what it now being reported with reasonable confidence: There was one shooter. He is Alexandre Bissonnette, a 27 year-old political »

Breaking: Trump to Acting AG: “You’re Fired!”

Featured image When I heard earlier today that acting attorney general Janice Yates at the Justice Department, an Obama holdover, had directed Justice not to defend Trump’s immigration executive order because she thinks it is unlawful, I wondered how fast it would take for Trump to re-enact his most famous TV role. Answer: About four hours. I’m wondering how this conversation went down: [On the telephone] Ms. Yates? Yes, this is chief of »

From the Archives: A Power Line Flashback

Featured image Courtesy of one of those time machine widgets on social media, it turns out that today, January 30, is the sixth anniversary of my very first Power Line article, on the subject of monster trucks. I had a look back, and thought it worth reposting, with the caveat that if I’d been more perceptive, I might have recognized a clear sign of Trump’s America taking shape. We all know about »

Russian Influence in American Politics You Say?

Featured image News item: Sierra Club to oppose further natural gas power plants and pipelines. A report produced by the Sierra Club, subject of a Time magazine article on Thursday, revealed the club intends to build an environmental coalition to halt the next wave of the country’s natural gas expansion: over 200 planned natural gas power plants and pipeline projects, the club told Time. . . Many environmental groups—including the Sierra Club—once considered natural gas as part of »

The left’s view of refugees, then and now

Featured image Richard Pollock at the Daily Caller offers this flashback — one that’s not without irony: Despite today’s outrage over President Donald Trump’s refugee executive order, many liberals in 1975 were part of a chorus of big name Democrats who refused to accept any Vietnamese refugees when millions were trying to escape South Vietnam as it fell to the communists. They even opposed orphans. The chorus was led by Jerry Brown »