Dianne Feinstein, Centrist?

Featured image Dianne Feinstein died last night. She cast a Senate vote earlier in the day. Tributes to her are pouring in, which is natural and appropriate. But check out how the Washington Post described her: I think it is true that Feinstein was not as crazy as some of her Democratic colleagues, but is there any plausible sense in which she was a centrist? The American Conservative Union rates members of »

The Daily Chart: More “Racist” Test Results

Featured imageSeparately we’ll savor the schadenfreude of the completely predictable and expected implosion of Ibram X. Kendi, and especially how the identity-politics left is turning on him. Hopefully the equally fraudulent Robin DiAngelo will be next. But for now, take in a revealing bit from one of Kendi’s black critics just now, Tyler Austin Harper of Bates College, who wrote candidly in the New York Times back in June: Nearly every »

Annals of senescence

Featured imageAlex Thompson reports that President Biden is working on a critical project for his re-election bid: Make sure he doesn’t trip. Thompson’s Axios scoop runs under the headline “Biden team’s don’t-let-him-trip mission.” The Biden team is worried that one more public tumble might convince voters that Biden is not up to the job. I believe that voters already come to that view, and with good reason. The physical manifestation of »

What Government Shutdown?

Featured imageIt is still not clear whether we might have a “government shutdown” because of dissent among House Republicans on our mangled budget process, but it is worth repeating something that has been pointed out before: the hysteria over a “government shutdown” is overdone. Think back to past government shutdown: Were your local schools still open? Did your local police still patrol the streets, and were your state and local courts »

Reading the UNGA tea leaves

Featured imageClifford 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 »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured imageThinking through the case against New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, Ammo Grrrll has formulated PERFECTLY LOGICAL REASONS TO HAVE GOLD BARS AND HALF A MILLION IN CASH HIDDEN IN YOUR HOUSE! She writes: Do we have THE best “Parliament of Whores” (hat-tip the late, great P. J. O’Rourke) that money can buy, or what? Sure, some might see the words “Bob Menendez” and “New Jersey” and think there must be »

A Comment on Last Night’s Debate

Featured imageI didn’t watch last night’s GOP debate, which, based on the accounts I have read, including Scott’s, was a good decision. Many morning-after accounts have focused on the fact that Fox included a liberal Hispanic reporter as one of the moderators, and, in addition, the nominally Republican moderators asked many challenging if not outright hostile questions. See, for example, Ed Morrissey, who quotes some of the questions. I will reproduce »

The Daily Chart: Biden’s Strategic Incompetence

Featured imageOil prices are spiking right now, which is somewhat odd since the European economy is slowing along with China, and America’s economy is sluggish. The chief reason is thought to be discipline by Saudi Arabia and some other producers (Russia?), but one factor that should be included is Joe Biden’s relentless hostility to domestic oil production. This hasn’t stopped the domestic oil industry from achieving near record production just now »

After last night

Featured imageThe Republican candidates for president assembled minus President Trump for an event televised on the Fox Business channel last night. The event was held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum in Simi Valley. The debate was moderated by Dana Perino, Stuart Varney and Ilia Calderón. Who is Ilia Calderón and what was she doing there? She posed hostile questions in heavily accented English. “Why have you fleeped?” she »

Footsteps gettin’ louder, cont’d

Featured imageYesterday the House Ways and Means Committee posted a press release headed “Bombshell: Ways and Means Releases New Documents Revealing Hunter Biden Selling Access to White House, Investigators Blocked from Pursuing Evidence Related to President Biden.” The newly released documents are accessible online here. The press release includes highlights from the newly released documents. What’s it all about? New York Post columnist Miranda Devine is the go-to journalist on the »

New York Times, Home of Misinformation

Featured imageLiberals love to talk about misinformation. They also love to disseminate it. A case in point is New York Times health and science reporter Apoorva Mandavilli. She grotesquely exaggerated the impact of covid on children, apparently for the purpose of supporting school shutdowns, one of the worst policy fiascos of modern times. And her claims were not, remotely, in the ballpark: Reporter who wrote in NYT that 900,000 children had »

Big Hunka Nazi

Featured imageVolodymyr Zelensky is a man on the move, and on September 22 the Ukrainian president addressed the Canadian Parliament. Also appearing was Yaroslav Hunka, 98, hailed by Speaker Anthony Rota as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero, and we thank him for all his service.” The members cheered, but there was a problem. Yaroslav Hunka served under Nazi command with the Waffen-SS Galicia Division, a voluntary unit also known as »

A Nation of Illegal Immigrants?

Featured imageWhen I was a kid we were taught in school that America is a nation of immigrants. It was seen as something to be proud of, even if it arguably left out Native Americans. But now the phrase is taking on a whole new meaning, as illegal immigrants threaten to take over from childbirth as our main source of population growth. Via InstaPundit: Without the mass deportation of tens of »

Hoodies Banned From the Hood

Featured imageAn interesting news story. Make of it what you will: The Senate passed a bipartisan resolution Wednesday to restore the formal dress code in the upper chamber following blowback over the loosening of the unofficial rule. Under the resolution, which passed unanimously, senators will once again be required to wear business attire on the floor. Does that mean Fetterman voted for it? Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who publicly split with »

Loose Ends (231)

Featured image• Missed the GOP debate since it went off in the middle of the night over here in central Europe, but I have caught a couple of highlights on Twitter that have me amused. First, this from Vivek Ramaswamy: Zero-based budgeting? Where have I heard this idea before? Oh that’s right—it was a centerpiece of Jimmy Carter’s 1976 campaign. And he got nowhere with it once in the White House. »

On Human Rights

Featured imageMy assignment early this week was to offer some comments on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) at a day long conference at Mathias Corvinus Collegium, featuring a distinguished international cast of academics. Nowadays we see all around us the promiscuous claims that any good thing a liberal can dream up is asserted to be a “fundamental human right,” and while the »

Hillary Can’t Let Go

Featured imageHillary Clinton was at the State Department yesterday for the unveiling of her official portrait as Secretary of State. She was ungracious as usual: Returning to the State Department for the unveiling of her official portrait, Mrs Clinton also used the occasion to display distaste for the policies of Donald Trump, the Republican former president, who defeated her in the 2016 United States presidential election. Mrs Clinton, the former US »