Obama administration
March 24, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Reader EC advises: We interrupt this forum for a special bulletin: *****NPR HAS GONE ROGUE***** They just broadcast an hour-long episode of “This American Life,” which was a devastating critique of the disability program. Devastating. They called it the new default welfare program, pointing out that it costs the taxpayers vastly more than all other welfare programs put together. They went on and on and on and on and on
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March 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Investigative reporter/editor Tom Lipscomb is a Senior Fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future (USC) and the founder of Times Books. He broke stories on questions about the military records of both John Kerry and George W. Bush in the 2004 election in the Chicago Sun-Times and the New York Sun. Tom argues that the media’s allegiance to the Democratic Party is suppressing news: In one of the
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March 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Wall Street Journal has devoted an excellent reported editorial to Thomas Perez, Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Labor. The editorial is tightly focused on the lengths to which Perez went to induce the City of St. Paul into withdrawing its appeal of the fair housing lawsuit that raised the viability of claims based on disparate impact. The City of St. Paul’s petition for Supreme Court review had
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March 18, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
That the sequester has thrown the Obama administration for a loop is understandable. President Obama, riding a long winning streak, may well have believed that Republicans would back down in the face of his threats to demagogue the issue. And he almost surely believed that, if he demagogued the issue, a clear majority of the public would take his side. So naturally, when things didn’t work out that way, the
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March 18, 2013 — John Hinderaker
We wrote extensively about Tom Perez during his scandal-ridden tenure at the Department of Justice, and Paul has written about him here, here and here in the context of President Obama’s nominating Perez to be Secretary of Labor. There are many good reasons to oppose Perez’s nomination, but perhaps the most fundamental is that Perez stands in opposition to the founding purpose of the Department of Labor. The legislation authorizing
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March 11, 2013 — John Hinderaker
There are a couple of topics on which I still intend to do substantial posts, but the one just below on the Second Amendment and sugary drinks burned up much of my evening. Not only that, the second episode of Vikings awaits on my iPad. The first episode wasn’t great, in my opinion, maybe 55 on a 100-point scale, but the Vikings are my forebears so I’m not giving up
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March 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Mackubin Thomas Owens served as an infantry platoon leader in Vietnam, where he was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart. He now serves on the faculty of the Naval War College while also also serving as the editor of Orbis, the quarterly journal of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He is a scholar of civil-military relations, as evidenced his book, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain.
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March 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
By now, I think it’s clear to everyone who follows politics that President Obama’s domestic policies are fixed around one objective. That objective is gaining control of the House of Representatives in the 2014 election so that his final two years at the White House will bring a bang, not a whimper. Flush with his success in November, Obama initially believed he could achieve this goal via the same means
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March 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
As North Korea announces the nullification of the 1953 armistice, so notes my daughter, this report arrives via the Boston Globe (not the Onion): CAMBRIDGE — America’s top military officer in charge of monitoring hostile actions by North Korea, escalating tensions between China and Japan, and a spike in computer attacks traced to China provides an unexpected answer when asked what is the biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific
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March 10, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The word is that President Obama has settled on Thomas Perez as his nominee to be Secretary of Labor. That nomination would continue the trend of atrocious, in-your-face, leftist nominees that has characterized Obama’s second term. We first wrote about Perez when Obama nominated him to head the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. As I explained on Power Line and in a Wasington Times op-ed, Perez had
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March 10, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Were it not for a a single post at the Weekly Standard, Michelle Obama and John Kerry would have presented the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim on Friday afternoon. This despite the fact that Ibrahim is a raging anti-Semite and celebrant of 9/11, including the Islamist observation of the anniversary at the American embassy in Cairo this past September. In Washington for the ceremony, Ibrahim first pleaded
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March 9, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Civil War officers used to say that you can’t lead from the rear. Thousands of them gave their lives, leading their men the only way they knew how. No one asks Barack Obama to give up more than an occasional game of golf, but he still can’t bring himself to lead. In one of his administration’s many low moments, a White House aide explained Obama’s style as “leading from behind,”
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March 9, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The New York Times reports: Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law of Osama bin Laden who once served as a spokesman for Al Qaeda, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on Friday morning in federal court in Manhattan, where he was charged with conspiring to kill Americans. Now you may be wondering what is going on here. “Mr. Abu Ghaith” as the Times refers to him, is charged with conspiracy to
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March 8, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John Brennan took the oath on his swearing in as DCIA today on a draft of the Constitution. The photo is below. Commentators on the photograph make something of the fact that the draft Brennan swore on lacked the Bill of Rights. Has anyone bothered to read the Federalist lately? Publius (Hamilton) in Federalist 84 makes the case that a bill of rights is unnecessary and perhaps even dangerous to
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March 8, 2013 — Scott Johnson
This afternoon Michelle Obama and John Kerry were scheduled to present the International Women of Courage Award to Samira Ibrahim and nine other women who have shown leadership in advocating for women’s rights around the world. Ibrahim was included in recognition of her battle against the Egyptian army’s infamous “virginity tests.” Ibrahim was in Washington for the award ceremony today. Writing at the Weekly Standard on Wednesday, Samuel Tadros performed
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March 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
What’s wrong with Rand Paul’s filibuster of Brennan? The filibuster appears to be something of a pretxt for Senator Paul to raise the national security issue that troubles him. As I understand it (and I may be mistaken), the pretextual nature of the filibuster isn’t in dispute. The filibuster seems to me to distract from understanding the trouble with Brennan. The trouble with Brennan is his willful blindness to the
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March 6, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Rand Paul has electrified conservatives nationwide and much of official Washington with his old-fashioned filibuster of President Obama’s nomination of John Brennan to head the CIA. Paul is a libertarian, and his filibuster is a protest against what he views as the Obama administration’s unconstitutional usurpation of power. He is right about the broader point: the Obama administration has a long history of lawless disregard of the Constitution and federal
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