April 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Ken Masugi’s long post about “The Big Bang Theory” (the TV show, not the theory) at the LibertyLaw site deserves more notice than just a link in our Picks section. Do read it; it is philosophical-scientific-cultural criticism at its best, with a special bonus of James Schall. I’ve been meaning to comment on BBT myself, but keep putting it off. BBT is clearly the best TV science fiction comedy since
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April 24, 2013 — Steven Hayward
When even the New York Times calls you “the Solyndra of the electric car industry,” you know you’ve had it. Fisker, another Obamanation that cost taxpayers over $500 million in subsidies and props, was losing more than $500,000 per vehicle. (But I’m sure they made up for it in volume.) I especially like this droll bit of narrative in the Times’ story: “Fisker, with its technical problems, management turmoil and
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April 23, 2013 — Steven Hayward
In my Weekly Standard article out a few days ago (“The Climate Circus Leaves Town”), I predicted: What [Obama] may do is tentatively approve Keystone along with a major policy shift that will please environmentalists and subject Keystone to further and perhaps fatal delays. There is talk that the administration may expand the scope of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to require that proposed projects like Keystone document their
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April 22, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Hey everybody—it’s Earth Day! I know, you can hardly contain your excitement. I’m planning to observe it as I do most sunny days on the coast: by lighting up my carbon-intensive barbecue and roasting some green weenies. I’m behind on a lot of things these days, one of them being the update of my Almanac of Environmental Trends. I have managed to complete an update of the air quality section,
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April 21, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Herewith a second installment of my recent interview with Peter Schramm of the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University, where he discusses the extraordinary effect of Harry Jaffa, how students should be approached and regarded in the classroom, and the Bowdoin report. About 7 minutes long.
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April 20, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I know I’ve posted here before Churchill’s infamous reflections about Islam from the unabridged edition of The River War, but it would seem worth reposting them at the end of this particular week: How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent
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April 20, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Well, it’s pretty obvious what has to dominate a roundup of the best memes, cartoons, and pictures of this week. But there”s lots of other important news this week, including the remarkable admission by Obamacare author Max Baucus that Obamacare is heading for a “train wreck.” One of the mysteries of Washington is why the completely mediocre Baucus commands a reputation as a thoughtful man. And there’s always the gun
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April 19, 2013 — Steven Hayward
While this story continues to unfold in front of us, we have enough information to pose a few questions. A popular theme on the Left (Rev. Wright, etc.) but also among a few on the libertarian Right, is that Islamic terrorism against the U.S. and its allies is “blowback” for our support of Israel, the Iraq War, and so forth. But just what beef do Chechnyans have with America? To
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April 18, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It’s been another terrible, no good, very bad week for the left, and it isn’t over yet. We could still get another Democrat or trade union running for cover over the disaster that is the unfolding of Obamacare. We certainly haven’t seen the last of the left’s bitter clingers complaining about the four Democratic Senators who extended their own right of self-preservation to the rest of us by voting down
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April 17, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It’s long past time to get to Peter Schramm’s place (not to say ranking, which we don’t have anyway) on the Power Line 100 Best Professors in America roster. Schramm, born in Hungary, emigrated to the United States in the aftermath of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 because, his father told him at the time, “We were born American–just in the wrong place.” You can read his account of the
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April 16, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Beating up on California these days is easier than snatching lunch money from the pocket protector of a skinny near-sighted kid. But why should Victor Davis Hanson have all the fun? And besides, now that I’m back in my home state after a decade away, the decay is palpable, like roads suffering from obvious “deferred maintenance” to unfinished housing tracts, etc. So what are the main problems facing California right
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April 15, 2013 — Steven Hayward
There’s no good purpose in adding to the half-informed speculation on the TV news outlets about what has taken place in Boston. So far only the NY Post is reporting a Saudi national in custody, but I recall how the authorities rounded up the first Middle Easterner they could find after Oklahoma City in 1995, not to mention the rush to judgment about Richard Jewell after the Atlanta Olympics bombing.
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April 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
As we contemplate the specter of a reckless North Korea and a fanatical and suicidal Iran both bent on acquiring and using nuclear weapons, the old schemes of deterrence lose their valence. While Churchill thought the deterrence of mutual assured destruction between the superpowers would work (peace would be “the sturdy child of terror”), he was less optimistic about proliferation, as seen in this comment from 1946: In these present
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April 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
We’re never short of Green Weenie Award nominees—in fact we can hardly keep up—but this week’s is so off the chart that we couldn’t have made it up in our worst mescaline-induced homage to Hunter S. Thompson. From The Guardian newspaper in Britain (hat tip to Anthony Watts and his WattsUpWithThat site) comes the news of the ultimate mashup: environmentalism and pornography. So . . . oh what the hell,
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April 14, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I know, a true catalogue of liberal hypocrisy would run longer than War and Peace, before breakfast. But sometimes you need to take note of especially egregious instances. So notice, for example, that while liberals are demanding increased background checks for gun purchases, Obama’s nominee for secretary of labor, Tom Perez, opposes allowing employers with federal contrasts to use background checks for new prospective employees. Ken Masugi is on the
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April 13, 2013 — Steven Hayward
So it’s Saturday, and I’m still in transit back out to the Left Coast after three splendid and full days with my peeps at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University (much more on this in a couple of days), but one thing about long flights is that it’s a great time to catch up on the best memes/pics/cartoons of the week. And so here they are! And finally. . .
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April 12, 2013 — Steven Hayward
I’m not sure how widely it was known that Jonathan Winters, whom Robin Williams thought the best comic of his generation, was a conservative. In any case, I sometimes used to show students in my classes on the American Founding the early scene from “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World” where the whole gang tries to deliberate about how to divide the loot fairly when they finally got to the
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