June 9, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Well why the heck not? He needs something to do after he retires from the Tonight Show. I think he already owns every classic car ever made. And he certainly seems to be cultivating a constituency with his recent runners about the Obama scandals. I do know that back in the 1980s, before he succeeded Johnny Carson, Leno expressed some occasional libertarian sentiments, such as his opposition to the mandatory
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June 9, 2013 — Steven Hayward
This installment departs a little from the usual criteria for induction into the Power Line 100 Best Professors in America roster, in that we cast our spotlight on Ben Sasse, the president of Midland University in Nebraska. Or perhaps I should say, the Weekly Standard’s Mark Hemingway casts his spotlight on Sasse, whom somehow I had never heard of before Mark’s terrifically interesting profile in this week’s issue. Some of
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June 8, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So the scandals piling up faster than cars on a foggy road are finally starting to take their toll on Obama’s approval rating, but there’s one group of Americans among whom Obama’s popularity is soaring: editorial cartoonists. They haven’t had this much to work with since . . . Nixon. Oops–there’s that unwelcome comparison again. Anyway, the main theme for this week was obvious–so obvious you could spot it without
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June 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
There are two items of interest in the otherwise dreary and repetitive world of climate change in the last few days—one about causation, and the other about potential remedy (if necessary). Let’s take the “remedy” item first, which can be summarized with the image of giving the oceans a really really big Alka Seltzer tablet. Some background: I’ve always been ambivalent about the idea of “geoengineering,” or what is sometimes
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June 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
The cartoon below brings up the question that has been on my mind since the IRS scandal first broke: might this be the opening for tax reform, or better still, a flat tax? The arguments for a flat tax have long been not just simplicity but that it would be more conducive to economic growth. But liberal and defenders of the status quo aren’t interested in economic growth through rational
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June 6, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In its desperation the climate campaign resorted to calling climate skeptics “denialists” for quite a while now, with some going so far as to make an explicit comparison with holocaust deniers, just in case anyone didn’t get the point. Well, who are the “denialists” now? Our friends at CFACT (Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow) are on hand this week at the latest round of UN climate talks in Bonn. What?—you
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June 6, 2013 — Steven Hayward
1. There’s a lot of miscellaneous stories right now that deserve brief notice. Start with this headline: “VP Biden Says Educators Should Learn To Recognize Mental Illness.” Excuse me a minute while I clear out the coffee I snorted all over my keyboard. 2. Did you know that the IRS official who (badly) plays Spock in that infamous Star Trek parody video is named . . . Faris Fink. Now,
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June 6, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I knew John would be first in line to cover the congressional campaign of Erika Harold, but there’s another beauty pageant story breaking today that Power Line will need to un-cover fully: the Miss World pageant, to be held this year in Indonesia, has decided to ban bikinis to—wait for it—avoid Muslim threats: BIKINIS have been banned from this year’s Miss World contest – to ward off Islamic hardliners in
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June 5, 2013 — Steven Hayward
“Ideas have consequences” is a favorite conservative slogan. It comes from, or is embodied best in, Richard Weaver’s book by that title, where he launches a spirited attack on the nominalism that pervades modern science and social science alike, at the expense of humane learning and judgment. In my experience very few conservatives have actually read Weaver’s book—I’ll be interested in hearing from Power Line readers who have to see
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June 5, 2013 — Steven Hayward
With the Obama IRS scandal news and other above-the-fold stories dominating our attention, it is easy to miss some one-offs that deserve notice. Such as the Germans doing away with the longest word in the German language.
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June 5, 2013 — Steven Hayward
A reader of my suggested LGBT wine blends a while ago points to a provocation by our friends over at Riccochet.com about wine criticism and wine rating in general, the point of which is that wine tasting is “all hooey.” (Actually Riccochet cleaned up the original material, which was predictably bovine in origin.) Wine experts disagree and often contradict themselves (unlike other experts?); the point-scale rating system is clearly subjective;
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June 4, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Obviously Princeton’s Robert P. George was going to end up on the Power Line 100, but this seems like the ideal week to do it, since he’s in New Jersey and . . . well, there’s this U.S. Senate seat suddenly open, and if Gov. Chris Christie really wants to send an interesting message that he isn’t about politics as usual, he’d think about sending Robbie to Washington for a
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June 4, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Scott directs our attention to the “chairman of an anti-gay marriage group [who] testified Tuesday that his organization has proof that the IRS leaked confidential donor details last year. . .” That’s not just any old chairman of a traditional marriage group. It’s my old graduate school roommate and fellow Claremont prankmeister John Eastman, and you really owe it to yourself to see the beatdown he delivers on the IRS
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June 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I got to thinking a bit more about the item I posted Saturday on how “Scientists Plan to Reduce Greenhouse Gases by Breeding Fartless Cows,” and it suddenly occurred to me—hey wait a minute: I thought environmentalists were against genetic engineering! As it happens, I’m currently reading the galleys for a fabulous book coming out at the end of this month, Pascal Bruckner’s The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the
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June 3, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Every now and then I get asked to be on panels about the future of energy where you’re supposed to embrace the path of the True and the Beautiful by predicting the brilliant energy prospects of lima bean curd, unicorn flop sweat, dilithium nanoparticulates, or something—anything except the hydrocarbons we use today. I typically like to have fun by saying the future of energy is—coal. Never fails to provoke outrage.
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June 2, 2013 — Steven Hayward
A reader tip brings Gary Saul Morson of Northwestern University to the list of candidates for the Power Line 100 Best Professors roster. Morson is the Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities and professor of Slavic languages and literature at Northwestern University, where, according to one recent profile, he is considered “a throwback,” because “he believes his most important job is to teach undergraduates. His Introduction to Russian
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June 1, 2013 — Steven Hayward
About the only thing worth reading in all those “alternative” free weekly papers that line birdcages and clog recycling bins in every crunchy burgh is the “News of the Weird” feature, syndicated by Chuck Shepherd for the last 21 years. Things like this: Dateline Saudi Arabia: (1) A newspaper in the capital city of Riyadh reported in April that three men from the United Arab Emirates were booted out of
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