April 27, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Yale history/classics professor Donald Kagan is a great old-fashioned scholar and teacher. The author of a classic four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War, he has written many other books of distinction including Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy and On the Origins of War: And the Preservation of Peace. Professor Kagan is retiring from his position at Yale. He gave his last lecture on Thursday afternoon to a
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April 27, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Intending to smooth the waters over its cancellation of classes in lieu of a full day of left-wing indoctrination served up to placate a small number of protesters, Dartmouth College has sent out an email blast to alumni under the name of board chairman Stephen Mandel. Interim president Carol Folt is responsible for the disgraceful production defended by Mandel, but Folt is on her way out. She has been named
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April 26, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Age of Leach at the National Endowment for the Humanities now draws to a close. On Tuesday NEH Chairman Jim Leach announced his resignation effective the first week in May. Leach’s resignation calls for some kind of a reckoning. Judith Dobrzynski notes Leach’s resignation here. From inside the world of the arts and the humanities, she tactfully takes the measure of Leach’s tenure and finds it wanting. There is,
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April 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Boston Herald seems to have struck a nerve in its efforts to uncover the public support that sustained Boston bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev and his family over the years: The Patrick administration clamped down the lid yesterday on Herald requests for details of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s government benefits, citing the dead terror mastermind’s right to privacy. Across the board, state agencies flatly refused to provide information about the taxpayer-funded lifestyle for
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April 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has its roots in the October 27, 1993 conference at a Marriott Hotel in Philadelphia that was attended by 25 supporters and members of Hamas. The 1993 conference had as its purpose the subversion of the Oslo Accords. Israel had to be destroyed, not accommodated. Among those in attendance was Nihad Awad. The FBI monitored and recorded the meeting. The evidence derived from the
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April 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Today is the anniversary of the birth of Ella Fitzgerald, the First Lady of Song. The lady was a remarkable artist. Each period of her long career is rewarding, though she deepened her art as she got older. She excelled in a wide variety of material and in every musical setting. There is an emotional reserve or detachment in her singing, but there is also joy and an irrepressible sense
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April 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The powers that be at Dartmouth College have canceled classes for all-day left-wing indoctrination today. Like the warden in Cool Hand Luke, they mean to get the students’ minds right. Where can I go to get the pro rata portion of my daughter’s tuition back? Dartmouth senior Blake Neff hasn’t answered that question, but the same issue is on his mind and he has kindly responded to our request for
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April 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Boston Globe has been engaged in serious damage control on behalf of the Cambridge mosque attended by Tamerlan Tsarnaev. In “About that mosque,” we noted the mosque’s well known Islamist flavor. There’s a story there, and Oren Dorell glimpses it in USA Today’s “Mosque that Boston suspects attended has radical ties.” Dorell’s article is must reading in its entry. One highlight is the purported refutation of its thesis by
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April 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Gang of Eight immigration bill is an adjunct and analogue to Obamacare. Claims by proponents on its behalf lack veracity. Indeed, the operative assumption should be that the opposite of such claims is closer to the truth. Heather Mac Donald cuts through a lot of blather in “The real risks of amnesty.” It sounds like 1986 all over again, only worse. She writes: Mickey Kaus has demolished the Senate
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April 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Daily Mail has a colorful report on the release of Elvis impersonator Kevin Curtis from custody for sending the ricin-laced mail to Senator Roger Wicker and President Obama: Charges have been dropped against a Mississippi man charged with sending ricin-laced poison letters to President Barack Obama, a U.S. senator and a state judge after his lawyer argued that he has been framed by a former friend. “I’ve never heard
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April 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In a New York Post column Ralph Peters draws five “Lessons of Boston,” all of them worthy of discussion. Lesson no. 3: “Our immigration system is one of terrorism’s best allies.” Victor Davis Hanson elaborates at length in the course of his NRO column “Obama’s psychodramas.” Analyze this: The checkered immigrant family of the two Boston bombers is a tragic advertisement of almost everything wrong with our current immigration policy.
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April 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Singer/songwriter Richie Havens died today at the age of 72. Havens grew up in Brooklyn singing with a choir in church and with doo wop groups on street corners. He crossed the river to figure out how to make a go of it in Greenwich Village as a performer until he signed a recording contract with Verve. In 1967 Havens seemed to materialize out of nowhere with Mixed Bag, a
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April 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A knowledgeable reader writes from Boston: You may already know this, but the ISB mosque in Cambridge referenced in your Power Line post has a long history, and the group I belong to has been part of it. You can learn more at this Web site. It will be very interesting to see what turns up from various investigations, including our own. As for the Boston Globe, they have responded
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April 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I first became aware of the Gosnell case through Joseph Bottum’s February 2011 Weekly Standard article “To live and die in Philadelphia” and Clarke Forsythe’s January 2011 Weekly Standard online column “The Supreme Court’s back alley runs through Philadelphia.” Bottum’s and Forsythe’s pieces were based on the grand jury report in the case, which has now gone to trial. The Standard takes another look at the Gosnell case today, not
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April 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Roger Simon comments regarding the Marathon bombers: [W]e have the worst possible president to deal with the situation. And even after an event as heinous as Boston, he is supported by a media desperate to preserve his narrative at all costs. It’s already started. On Saturday the Boston Globe published an article titled — I kid you not — “Islam might have had secondary role in Boston attacks.” (Don’t look
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April 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In his five years with the Minnesota Twins, David “Big Papi” Ortiz struck me as a player with awesome potential who persistently underperformed, partly as a result of injuries and partly as a result of poor coaching. The Twins sought to turn him into a singles hitter. As he put it, “They tried to make me hit like a girl!” There’s actually a lot of that going around. Regardless of
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April 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
President Obama’s statement last night on events in Boston (with postscript on the Texas catastrophe) conveys at its heart the obligatory multicultural teaching: Obviously, tonight there are still many unanswered questions. Among them, why did young men who grew up and studied here, as part of our communities and our country, resort to such violence? How did they plan and carry out these attacks, and did they receive any help?
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