China
September 30, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley
Sen. Dianne Feinstein has departed this life at the age of 90. The California Democrat can be remembered in several ways, especially as the American politician most faithful to the People’s Republic of China. In April of 2020, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit charging that Chinese Communist officials are “responsible for the enormous death, suffering, and economic losses they inflicted on the world, including Missourians.” For Sen.
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September 29, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s most recent column is “Reading the UNGA tea leaves” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power
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September 23, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In John Updike’s short story “Bech in Czech” (collected in Bech at Bay), Updike’s fictional alter ego is sent to Czechoslovakia on a cultural exchange program through the United States government in 1986, while the country is still Communist. Bech attends a party of dissident writers, one of whom had been imprisoned. Bech reflects: Jail! One of the guests at the party had spent nearly ten years in prison. He
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September 22, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Clifford D. May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s most recent column is “Martyrs — and newsmen — for freedom” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column
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September 15, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Earlier this week House Committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (Select Subcommittee on the Permanent Select Committee on Coronavirus Pandemic) and Mike Turner (Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) released issued a press release that reads as follows: Staff on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence have heard testimony from a whistleblower alleging that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) offered six analysts significant monetary incentives to
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July 31, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Local authorities in Reedley, California uncovered a warehouse lab that “they suspect was home to an illegal, unlicensed laboratory full of lab mice, medical waste and hazardous materials.” NBC News covers the story here. The CDC tested substances on hand and detected at least 20 potentially infectious agents, including coronavirus, HIV, hepatitis and herpes. The NBC News story buries this nugget and leaves it hanging: Officials were unable to get
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July 22, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
At a Jan. 26, 1998 White House event, with wife Hillary by his side, then-President Bill Clinton wagged his finger at reporters and said, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” If not for the stains on Monica Lewinsky’s infamous “blue dress,” he would have been happy to leave it at that. But called upon to provide a blood sample for DNA testing that summer, Clinton
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July 12, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday I noted the unsealing of the indictment of Gal Luft. Reading the indictment, I could only imagine what the government might have done with Hunter Biden and the Biden family business if it had been so inclined. Luft himself anticipated my guilty thoughts in this pointed tu quoque in the video he released to the New York Post last week: “Why am I being indicted … for ghostwriting an
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July 9, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The position United States Secretary of the Treasury is exalted. It has been held by eminent officials in Democratic and Republican administrations. As Secretary of the Treasury, Janet Yellen degrades the office she holds. She revealed herself as a political hack with her toeing of the administration’s “inflation is transitory” line. She toes every aspect of the administration’s line, including its humanly destructive abortion line and its economically destructive green
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June 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
A veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor at the New York Times and other publications, Clifford May is the founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He writes a weekly column for the Washington Times that is cross-posted at the invaluable FDD site. Cliff has given us standing permission to publish his column on Power Line. This week Cliff writes “Yes, Xi Jinping is a dictator, and
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June 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In the matter of the Biden family business — CBS News has covered the testimony of IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley. This is a significant development. The story is posted under the headline “IRS whistleblower in Hunter Biden probe says he was stopped from pursuing investigative leads into ‘dad’ or the ‘big guy.'” I have posted video of the segment below. Something is happening here. The New York Times has confirmed
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June 22, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Over the past weekend President Biden discussed the Chinese spy balloon that captured our attention earlier this year. “I don’t think the leadership knew where it was, and knew what was in it, and knew what was going on,” Biden told reporters as he headed to Philadelphia for his first campaign rally of the 2024 election. “I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.” I attributed Biden’s description
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June 21, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Defenestration of Prague (1618) is not to be confused with the defenestration of Jan Masaryk in Prague (1948). It means throwing someone out a window. In Communist China, they do these things differently. They throw someone off a roof. If we had a word for it akin to defenestration, it might be detectation. I prefer to think of it as defenestration, Chinese style. Consider the case of the Wuhan
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June 20, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Students of ancient history may recall that when Secretary of State Dean Acheson spoke to the National Press Club in January 1950, he addressed America’s “defensive perimeter” in Asia. He defined the American “defensive perimeter” in the Pacific as a line running through Japan, the Ryukyus, and the Philippines. Acheson left South Korea and Taiwan outside it. Observers immediately decried Acheson’s speech as giving North Korea the “green light” to
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June 18, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The New York Post reports on President Biden musing to the press before he boarded the plane to hit the campaign trail in Philadelphia yesterday. The White House has helped us along with a transcript. Here we have a pure case of projection, Biden style: President Biden kicked off his first day of campaigning for re-election by making excuses for communist China — saying that President Xi Jinping never meant
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June 12, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In Friday’s Wall Street Journal Warren Strobel and Gordon Lubold broke the story “Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S.” (in the newspaper: “China plans spy base in Cuba”). According to Strobel and Lubold: “China and Cuba have reached a secret agreement for China to establish an electronic eavesdropping facility on the island, in a brash new geopolitical challenge by Beijing to the U.S., according to U.S.
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June 6, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The AP reports on the the Shangri-La Dialogue, “an annual forum bringing together top defense officials, diplomats and leaders.” Secretary of Defense Austin attended, as did General Li Shangfu, China’s State Councilor and Minister of National Defense. I gather he is is Austin’s Chinese counterpart. Despite the “dialogue” advertised in Shangri-La, Li Shangfu let China’s Navy do the talking in the Taiwan Strait over the weekend of the conference (the
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