Obama administration
May 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
I’m attending the two-day Upper Midwest Employment Law Institute in St. Paul this year. It’s a great program that attracts leading practitioners from all around the country. I have attended several times in years past, but this year I’m here because I need the continuing legal education credits (including Minnesota’s offensive get-your-mind right elimination-of-bias requirement) before June 30. The institute program draws a large audience which begins with plenary sessions
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May 2, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday the FBI posted images of three suspects captured by surveillance cameras on the grounds of the U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi, Libya, when it was attacked on September 11, 2012 — the attack that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Why has it taken the FBI eight months to get around to releasing the images if they need the help? That’s
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April 30, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Victor Davis Hanson borrows the concept of the Borg from Star Trek (“the fictional alien race that appears as recurring antagonists in various incarnations”) to capture the Obama administration’s groupthink reformulating the war on terror. The Obama Borg, as Hanson dubs it, dissociate Islam from terrorism. The denial has reached absurd proportions with results that would be laughable if they weren’t so serious and pathetic. We are all familiar with
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April 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Reflecting upon developments in Cyprus, where bank savings accounts were to be taxed to pay for an IMF bailout. Glenn Reynolds suggested that some enterprising GOP member of the House or Senate introduce a bill to make such shenanigans illegal — and dare the Democrats to oppose it. At Reason, Nick Gillespie has seconded Glenn’s motion: I think Reynolds is on to something, though I’d be happy to see legislators
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April 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
Any port in a storm: the Obama administration would rather talk about anything other than the economy. Understandably. So it’s one damn thing after another. Michael Ramirez notes the administration’s most recent preoccupation:
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April 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
As we have noted many times, Jeff Sessions has become the Senate’s indispensable man on the our ruinous federal debt and deficit. In January Senator Sessions took a look at the role played by then OMB Director Jack Lew in the Obama administration’s stage management of the related public relations issues. Not pretty. Lew is not a man constrained by hidebound notions of veracity. Lew proved his worth to President
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April 11, 2013 — John Hinderaker
One of these days I will get around to writing about President Obama’s proposed budget; Paul has already done so here. In the meantime, here is a humorous video produced by the Free Enterprise Alliance titled “You May Already Be a Loser.” I think that if people really understood what the federal government is doing to them, there would be a run on tar and feathers: Now for the unintentional
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April 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the White House finally released its proposed budget. The media promptly touted it as a major step forward, one that can produce a grand bargain on deficit reduction if only Republicans will respond in kind. The gushing first paragraph’s of the Washington Post’s story (by Lori Montgomery) are typical. But Obama’s proposal cannot serve as the basis for a grand bargain. Although it contains some useful steps forward on
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April 9, 2013 — Scott Johnson
In one of his routines on the justice system dating back to the early 1970′s, comedian Richard Pryor commented sarcastically (in language rated XXX): “You go down there looking for justice, that’s what you find: Just us.” Pryor was referring to the racial composition of the players involved in the administration of justice. Times have changed substantially in that respect, but reading Ben Shapiro’s account of President Obama’s gun control
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April 8, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Katrina Trinko wonders whether Tom Perez, President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Labor, will face the kind of stiff opposition in the Senate that Chuck Hagel encountered. He certainly should. Indeed, he should be filibustered. Trinko notes that in 2009, 22 Republicans voted against Perez’s confirmation to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. Since then, Perez has done plenty to warrant more robust opposition. Consider: Perez is under congressional
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April 6, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
The White House, through economist turned flack Alan Krueger, wasted no time in blaming yesterday’s lousy jobs report on the sequester. It’s a ridiculous claim. As we observed, government employment held steady, and the sequester is too recent to have affected the private sector. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s, who is frequently cited by the Obama administration, agrees that the sequester is not yet in play. Zandi told CNBC:
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April 5, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Wall Street Journal published a book review by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey yesterday. Judge Mukasey (as I will refer to him here) is one great American. He was the trial judge in the case of the Blind Sheikh and a man who answered the call of duty by resigning from the bench to take the position of Attorney General for the last two years of the Bush administration.
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April 4, 2013 — John Hinderaker
President Obama ran as the candidate of hope and change, but his regime has been one of unemployment and poverty. How a president with such a record could be re-elected is a mystery that historians will try to unravel for many years to come, but in the meantime, Michael Ramirez comments on the shocking fact that nearly one in six Americans is now living in poverty, courtesy of Obamanomics. Our
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April 2, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Last week I pored over the magnificent new (Winter, just in time for Spring) issue of the Claremont Review of Books. The CRB is the flagship publication of the Claremont Institute and my favorite magazine. I want to persuade you to subscribe to it, which you can do here for the ridiculously low, heavily subsidized (don’t feel guilty!) price of $19.95 a year and get immediate online access thrown in
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April 1, 2013 — Scott Johnson
When USMC General John Allen’s retirement was announced in February, our friend Hugh Hewitt called on Victor Davis Hanson to answer the question whether such a drain of military talent — the retirements of Generals McChrystal, Petraeus, Mattis and Allen, in that order — had ever previously occurred in our country’s history over so short a period of time (30 months) because of retirement. “That they occurred during wartime,” Hugh
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March 31, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John Podhoretz argues in the editor’s note of the new issue of Commentary that it’s time for conservatives to get serious about Obama, or begin taking him seriously on his own terms. John takes Obama to be a conventional liberal and chides conservatives for painting him as an extremist, an exaggeration which proves to be to Obama’s advantage. If Obama is a conventional liberal, however, liberalism has moved to the
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March 26, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Thanks to Andrew Johnson and NRO’s Corner for drawing attention to the highly entertaining Anderson Cooper/Drew Griffin report on “Obama’s high-speed rail boondoggle.” Johnson writes: “Cooper and investigative reporter Drew Griffin reported that, while the administration sold its $12 billion in projects as high-speed rail, the funding has spent has largely been used to make existing trains slightly faster. In Washington State, for instance, $800 million have been used to
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