May 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Listeners want to know from John: did Justice Clarence Thomas let us down with his ruling in this week’s 7 – 2 decision upholding the unique independent funding structure of Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB), which she designed intentionally to avoid congressional control as much as possible? John says no, and makes a persuasive three-part case for why Thomas’s opinion is thoroughgoing originalism, and good history to boot.
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May 18, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Trump trial has descended into farce faster than expected. Cohen be goin’ anyone? Biden keeps inflating his mental capacities with made-up claims about inflation. Harrison Butker delivered a butt-kick to political correctness by embracing traditional Catholic doctrine at—shocker!—a Catholic college! What next? MPGA—Make Pronouns Great Again perhaps? And why, oh why, did King Charles choose that portrait artist? And is he a direct descendant of Graham Sutherland? Headlines
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May 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward
This classic-format, ad-free episode features me in a one-on-one conversation with with Jeremy Carl, author of a dynamite (almost literally) new book entitled The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart. Jeremy commits heresy in this book, offerng statistics that you aren’t supposed to mention, and truths that, in an earlier age, might have got you burned at the stake. In publishing this book Jeremy joins the ranks with
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May 17, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Our contributor Lloyd Billingsley wrote a book back in 1990 about the leftwing politics of the National Council of Churches, From Mainline to Sideline: The Social Witness of the National Council of Churches, detailing how the mainline Protestant churches that compose the NCC had swung far left. Maybe time for an update, as recent surveys find that the long-term decline of mainline Protestant denominations in America has reduced the number
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May 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward
With some Democratic Senators up for re-election running ads attacking President Biden over our open border (both Jon Tester of Montana and Sherrod Brown of Ohio say they “have fought President Biden over the border” in TV spots), there are rumors that Biden is considering an executive order that would shut the southern border every day after 4,000 people have crossed. What a tough guy! It’s amazing how Democratic presidents
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May 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Not long ago I had the occasion to check in with my old pals at the Ashbrook Center at Ashland University in Ohio to talk with their director, Prof. Jeffrey Sikkenga, about energy and environmental topics as a part of their regular series called “The American Idea.” I go over some of my greatest hits on environmental progress, and some new material on our current energy madness under President Biden.
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May 15, 2024 — Steven Hayward
With reports that Joe Biden is once again considering taking oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve because of the national crisis of his flailing re-election campaign (and with oil prices today yo-yoing considerably), our pals at the Committee to Unleash Prosperity remind us of the long-term effect of markets and liberated production, as we saw after Reagan decontrolled the price of oil on his first day in office in 1981:
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May 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward
• I thought it was not possible to exceed the embarrassment of then-secretary of state John Kerry bringing James Taylor with him to a meeting in Paris to sing “You’ve Got a Friend” to the French, but I underestimated the capacities of Antony Blinken. On a visit to Kyiv, Ukraine, he picked up his electric guitar and performed one of Neil Young’s lamest offerings, “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free
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May 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Our first look today displays which college majors lead to higher earning potential, and there are no surprises here: Unfortunately this survey doesn’t break out (because perhaps they couldn’t ask) gender studies majors and other politicized “studies” fields. A separate survey notes that support for the proposition that violence is justified to stop a campus speech from someone who is disliked runs strongest among the “studies” fields:
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May 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Last Friday evening I had the occasion to team up in Los Angeles with Dean Pete Peterson of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy (where I just finished a very congenial semester filling the large shoes of the late Ted McAllister) to discuss the state of higher education before an audience of about 90 citizens alarmed at the current scene. Our conversation was unscripted and spontaneous, but here are some
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May 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Vice President Kamala Harris is apparently at last unburdened by what has been, and has reached what can be, speaking today before the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Relations, and it apparently involves kicking and breaking a lot of things, followed by cackling: Harris at @APAICS Summit: "We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won't, and then
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May 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward
As everyone who follows the financial markets knows, the Federal Reserve is trying to walk a fine line, hinting that they’d like to start cutting interest rates, but still worried that inflation is proving too persistent to do it just yet (never mind whether real inflation is actually higher than the official headline rate because of how we measure inflation these days). Further rate hikes seem to be ruled but,
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May 12, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Babylon Bee—”America’s newspaper of record,” as Glenn Reynolds likes to put it—has established itself as a premier humor and political satire site of our time. They’ve pretty much put The Onion out of business, though one reason for this is The Onion slowly succumbed to wokery, and hence has trouble in the humor department. (Check it out if you want; it’s pretty weak these days.) The Babylon Bee’s proprietors
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May 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
John Yoo hosts this week’s episode from exile in Austin, Texas, where he humors me and Lucretia with our extra-legal views on the Trump trials and tribulations in a Manhattan courtroom, and speculate how Trump’s “Letter from the Rikers Island Jail” would read (though it will be more likely in the form of Tweets or TruthSocial posts). Have we discovered a trial judge who seems to have no judgment at
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May 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Great moments in presidential campaign immolation: George Romney confessing to being brainwashed; Howard Dean screaming like deranged Burlington street person; Hillary Clinton declaring half of America to be “deplorable;” Rick Perry saying “oops.” And now Kristi Noem shooting a dog—and maybe RFK Jr. confessing having his brain eaten by a worm, though I thought Kennedys preferred whisky to tequila. Speaking of dogs, over at the Trump trial this week. .
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May 10, 2024 — Steven Hayward
Matthew Yglesias, a progressive-leaning writer with a popular Substack site, reflected recently on how his views about climate change have departed from progressive orthodoxy. He writes: “I’ve come to see the mainstreaming of this fairly extreme approach to climate change as probably the central error of the contemporary progressive movement. . . Voters don’t care that much about the Democrats’ top priority.” Maybe, just maybe, we have reached and passed
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May 9, 2024 — Steven Hayward
I still argue that the only good thing that happened during the Obama years was all-day breakfast at McDonalds, and COVID took that away from us. Which is when I started saying that COVID won’t be truly over until we get all-day breakfast at McDonalds back again. And it looks like that isn’t going to happen. One reason might be that consumers can’t afford it: Part of a general pattern
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