May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Eliana Johnson reports on Rand Paul’s visit to Iowa, which soon will be followed by visits to New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. As Eliana’s report makes clear, outreach to social conservatives was a main purpose of Paul’s trip to Iowa. The front page of today’s Washington Post also contains a story, albeit less insightful, about Paul’s outreach efforts. Paul exaggerates, but is on to something, when he says “politics
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May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Victor Davis Hanson makes a point that I forgot to include in my most recent post about Hillary Clinton’s “what difference does it make” rant. Clinton testified: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it
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May 12, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
England’s FA Cup — the oldest soccer competition in the world and open to something like 700 teams — gains its romance from victories by “minnows” over footballing powerhouses. This occurs a time or two almost every year in the early rounds. But in these days of vast financial disparities between clubs, it almost never happens in the Cup final. Indeed, from 1996 until this year, only Portsmouth had broken
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May 12, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
At a Senate hearing in January, Hillary Clinton responded to questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson about the nature of the Benghazi attack with this rant: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? Given
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May 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
On May 12, 1963, Mickey Lolich made his major league debut for the Detroit Tigers. He pitched two scoreless, hitless innings of mop-up relief against Cleveland Indians, striking out the first two batters he faced — Max Alvis and Sam McDowell. He was 22 years old. Lolich went on to win 217 games, 207 of them for Detroit. And in 1968, he won three World Series contests. Nineteen sixty-three was
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May 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Team Obama has come up with its excuse for converting the Benghazi talking points into a false narrative. It was a purely bureaucratic matter, you see. The CIA and the State Department disagreed about what happened, and the White House simply wanted to make sure the talking points represented all viewpoints. The White House has been suggesting this excuse for a few days. Today, the Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” Glenn Kessler,
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May 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
This week, Sir Alex Ferguson surprised the soccer world by resigning as the head man at Manchester United. During his remarkable 26 years at Man U, he led the club to 13 English championships and two European ones. At age 71 Ferguson was known to be close to retirement. But few expected he would retire this year. Almost immediately, Man U ended speculation over his replacement by naming David Moyes,
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May 10, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Steve Hayes takes a detailed look at the scenario that led to the scrubbing of the CIA’s Benghazi talking points to delete terrorism references and focus on the “non-event” video. Hayes’ rendition is consistent with what we’ve been saying for some time now — the State Department pushed for the talking points to be changed to cover up its pre-Benghazi malfeasance and the White House concurred, presumably to help re-elect
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May 10, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
On May 10, 1963, Tony LaRussa made his major league debut at the age of 18. Playing for the Kansas City Athletics, LaRussa appeared as a pinch-runner for Chuck Essegian. Pinch-running would be LaRussa’s role for the next three months. It wasn’t until August 15 that he recorded his first plate appearance, after coming on as a “caddy” for Jerry Lumpe in a rout of the A’s by Detroit. He
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Raymond Maxwell was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Maghreb (North Africa) Affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs from 2011-2012. He also one of the three Deputy Assistant Secretaries removed due the fallout over Benghazi. Maxwell has written the following poem about his experience at the hands of “the Queen’s Henchmen”: The Queen’s Henchmen request the pleasure of your company at a Lynching – to be held
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Mark Sanford apparently was outspent three or four to one and, of course, carried considerable baggage. But, as this memo from Sanford’s pollster explains (full disclosure, my daughter works for him) good campaigners tend to beat not-so-good campaigners and genuine fiscal conservatives tend to beat fake fiscal conservatives in conservative districts. Oh, and debating a cardboard cut-out of Nancy Pelosi helped change a conversation that needed to be changed.
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing provided important information about the cover-up that occurred following the attack, and the leading role of Hillary Clinton in that cover-up. We already knew that the talking points Susan Rice used on five Sunday talk shows had been changed to provide false information about the Benghazi attack. Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s number two man in Libya when the attack began, confirmed yesterday that there was no
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing tended to confirm my view that, looking back, the four Americans who died during the attack (which occurred in two distinct phases) were doomed due to the inadequate security provided by the State Department. In other words, there probably was nothing we could have done once the attack commenced that would have saved them. However, the hearing also confirmed that the U.S. declined to take actions that,
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, I watched the replay of the House Oversight Committee hearing on Benghazi. The hearing enhanced my knowledge of key events before, during, and after the attack. This post focuses on events before the attack. We already knew that the embassy in Libya had requested that the State Department beef up security, and that, instead, the number of people providing security had been slashed. And we already knew that
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May 6, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
When it first became clear that the CIA’s Benghazi talking points had been altered, many of us viewed the White House as the prime suspect. After all, it served President Obama’s political purposes to claim, at the height of a political campaign in which he was taking credit for the fall of al Qaeda, that the death of a U.S. ambassador was down to spontaneous outrage over a video, rather
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May 6, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The Heritage Foundation has released its long awaited study of the cost to American taxpayers of legalizing the current population of illegal immigrants. The study, available here, estimates the cost at $6.3 trillion, at a minimum. Andrew Stiles at NRO does a good job of summarizing the study’s methodology and findings: The study seeks to calculate the total amount of taxpayer-funded benefits and services illegal immigrants would, if given legal
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May 6, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Mark Krikorian shows how the Schumer-Rubio immigration reform bill falls short of what Sen. Rubio promised when he touted it in advance on conservative Talk Radio. Here are some of the particulars Krikorian presents: 1. Rubio emphasized that to gain legal status, immigrants would have to pay their back taxes. But the bill Rubio helped write requires only that applicants “satisfy any applicable federal tax liability” that has previously been
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