Liberals
February 21, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Massachusett’s Democratic Rep. Edward Markey is currently a front-runner to succeed John Kerry in the Senate from the Bay State, and he’s perhaps the only candidate who can make Elizabeth Warren seem intelligent and probative by comparison. I’ve always thought Markey’s advocacy of low-wattage light bulbs is obviously congruent with his low-wattage intellect, and who can resist thinking of him as Rep. Malarkey? He’s one of those kind of politicians
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February 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Daniel Henninger devotes his weekly Wall Street Journal column to the mind-boggling letter sent by Democratic Senators Feinstein and Levin along with their friend John McCain (Republican, I probably don’t need to remind you) to Sony Pictures protesting the film Zero Dark Thirty. “Zero Dark Thirty is factually inacurrate,” these solons write, “and we believe that you have an obligation to state that the role of torture in the hunt
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February 19, 2013 — John Hinderaker
John Cochrane of the University of Chicago and Stanford said it succinctly: Once upon a time, the minimum wage, like free trade, was a basic test of whether you were awake in the first week of econ 1. We put a horizontal line in a supply and demand graph. Minimum wages increase unemployment of poor people. Yes, that fact was once considered so obvious that, if I recall correctly, both
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February 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Wall Street Journal’s Weekend Interview feature this past Saturday sent Journal editorial board member Matthew Kaminkski in the direction of the author of the screenplay of Zero Dark Thirty, Mark Boal. While he has teamed up with director Katheryn Bigelow, Boal is also a reporter who has written for such reliably left-wing outlets as The Village Voice, Rolling Stone and Mother Jones. With his screenplay for the Zero Dark
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February 17, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
I confess to watching Downton Abbey, the glorified soap opera that PBS runs on “Masterpiece Classic.” (By the way, what was the last true masterpiece to appear on Masterpiece Theatre/Classic, I Claudius?) My excuse is that I got hooked before I realized how flawed the show is. A better excuse, albeit of the after the fact variety, came briefly to mind when I saw, via Forbes Magazine, that some among
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February 14, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, during a time-out in the Wizards-Pistons game (that’s NBA basketball, albeit at a low level), I heard Bill O’Reilly agree with one of Fox News’ house liberals that all of the small-ball programs advocated by President Obama is his SOTU address are worthwhile, assuming we could afford them. O’Reilly’s comment confirms that he isn’t a conservative. But it also helps show that conservatives are unwise if they laugh
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February 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, Jonah Goldberg dared to write on Twitter that “the rote insistence that Jill Biden be referred to [as] ‘Dr. Jill Biden’ is kind of silly.” I also ridiculed the “Dr. Jill Biden” reference in President Obama’s speech, asking to be reminded what she’s a doctor of. I knew, and Goldberg later pointed out, that Jill Biden holds a doctorate in education. This means, said Goldberg, that she isn’t
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February 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Is it over yet? On a feels-like basis, the length of the speech was Castroite. And not just the length! (Note to self: Remember to frame your observations in the form of a question.) Did the lady who stood in line for six hours to vote in Florida have a flashback during the speech? Here’s a question for conservatives: How come we didn’t realize during the Clinton administration how good
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February 12, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Not just Democrats, but Michelle Obama, along with a number of others, as the Daily Caller reports. Not only that, the Democrats are bending the usual rules governing SOTU guests that are otherwise enforced by the House Sergeant at Arms. Normal SOTU guests–that would be you or me–have to provide Social Security numbers. The Democrats, including Michelle Obama, have apparently forced a waiver of that requirement so that they can
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February 11, 2013 — Steven Hayward
You knew this was coming–a parody of the Paul Harvey Super Bowl Ad, “So God Made a Farmer.” I’m sure this won’t be the last. Let the good times roll!
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February 10, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Global warming: is there anything it can’t do? CNN anchor Deb Feyerick accomplished a remarkable two-fer yesterday, when, in the space of a few seconds, she suggested that global warming may be causing both 1) blizzards and 2) asteroids: “Global warming” has evolved into one more form of magical thinking on the part of liberals. Via Newsbusters.
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February 10, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Machiavelli in Hell is the title of Sebastian De Grazia’s intellectual biography of the infamous Florentine philosopher that tends toward the current conventional view that Machiavelli was a misunderstood republican, which I think is not only mistaken but which drains much of the life and profundity out of Machiavelli’s complex and ambitious teaching. This was the subject of discussion in my graduate class at Pepperdine University on a recent Tuesday,
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February 8, 2013 — John Hinderaker
In northern France, one of that country’s most famous paintings, Delaxroix’s “Liberty Leading the People,” was defaced yesterday by a young woman who wrote across the painting, in black marker, “AE911.” What does that mean, you ask? It stands for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. The woman is a truther. Truthers claim that the September 11 attacks were an inside job, carried out by the Bush administration. There is
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February 7, 2013 — Steven Hayward
It is natural, and useful as well, that most politically engaged people dwell on the defects of their own camp while overestimating or failing to perceive the problems in the other camp. In the aftermath of the election result, conservatives are notably downcast, reflective, and at times vindictive against the factions (Tea Party, RINOs, etc.), candidates (Romney, Akin, etc) and key individuals (Karl—cough, cough—Rove) they believe are responsible for the
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February 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In writing the first volume of The Age of Reagan, covering the period 1964-1980, Steve Hayward had an inspired idea. He decided to tell the liberal’s side of the story partly from the perspective of Daniel Patrick Moynihan — “the thinking man’s liberal” — whose career spanned the entire period in view. It is one of many great things about the book. Moynihan’s heroic moment came in his brief representation
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February 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Will Floyd Corkins become the poster boy for gun control? He certainly deserves the honor. Corkins pled guilty today to firearms, terrorism and assault charges in Washington, D.C. Corkins shot and wounded one man in a terrorist attack last August, but he admitted in court that he had intended to kill as many as possible. He was carrying a loaded 9 mm handgun and had in his possession two additional
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February 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I’ve known David Horowitz for more than 20 years, from the time he came through town with Peter Collier talking about their invaluable book Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the Sixties. As Jay Nordlinger has written, David was a leader of the New Left who became a leader of the fighting Reaganite Right: “He is a thinker and a doer, an intellectual and an activist. His mind ranges widely, and
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