Monthly Archives: March 2010

March 13, 2010 — Scott Johnson

The job locker

Rachel Maddow’s long interview with Nancy Pelosi is full of the idiotic talking points that support Obamacare. My favorite: “Right up until now, being a woman is a preexisting medical condition.” (Translation: Women purchasing individual health insurance might be charged more than men because they incur higher health care expenses.) But Pelosi didn’t confine herself exclusively to idiotic talking points. In the presence of a like-minded interlocutor (Maddow: “That’s the »
March 12, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

The problem with artificial deadlines — an object lesson

Preliminary election returns from Iraq bring relatively good news. First, Prime Minister Maliki’s party appears to have prevailed in two southern provinces over its nearest rival in that region, the more pro-Iranian Iraqi National Alliance. Second, former Prime Minister Allawi’s party is winning in two Sunni provinces. Allawi is, by the standards of Iraqi politics, considered a secularist, and his solid showing increases the likelihood that will be influential in »
March 12, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Buy Gold

President Obama has appointed Janet Yellen, President of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, as Vice-Chairman of the Federal Reserve. Reuters reads the tea leaves: Yellen would replace Donald Kohn, a 40-year veteran of the Fed who announced earlier this month that he would retire on June 23. … She is considered one of the most “dovish” members of the central bank’s policymakers, meaning she is seen to lean toward »
March 12, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

The shape of things to come

Hanns Kuttner, at NRO’s Critical Condition blog, offers a reasonably accessible explanation of how the Democrats plan to enact Obamacare. Kuttner says the House Dems will attempt to adopt a “self-executing rule” that, in one vote, passes the Senate health-care-reform bill and a reconciliation bill. If the Dems prevail on that one vote, the Senate health-reform bill would then be sent to the president for his approval. The reconciliation bill »
March 12, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Stupak’s lament

In case you’re inclined to relax in expressing your opposition to the nationalization of health care, pay heed to the words of Bart Stupak, via Robert Costa’s report: Sitting in an airport, on his way home to Michigan, Rep. Bart Stupak, a pro-life Democrat, is chagrined. “They’re ignoring me,” he says, in a phone interview with National Review Online. “That’s their strategy now. The House Democratic leaders think they have »
March 12, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Jeffrey Goldberg considers the Daily Ditch

The Daily Ditch is my preferred name for Andrew Sullivan’s Atlantic blog. Sullivan’s almost unbelievable ignorance of history was my central theme in “Obama veers into the Daily Ditch.” Now comes Atlantic national correspondent Jeffrey Goldberg to note that “Andrew Sullivan revises history (again).” The topic sentence of Goldberg’s lead says it all: “Andrew Sullivan should be thankful that The Atlantic’s fact-checking department has no purview over the magazine’s website.” »
March 12, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Forgetful Eric

Senator Jon Kyl is skeptical of Attorney General Eric Holder’s claim that forgetfulness explains his failure to inform the Senate of his role in a brief supporting the position of terrorist Jose Padilla. Kyl asks: “Are we expected to believe that then-nominee Holder, with only a handful of Supreme Court briefs to his name, forgot about his role in one of this country’s most publicized terrorism cases?” It’s not an »
March 12, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Despicable

Howie Carr’s column on Rep. Patrick Kennedy asks a question that crossed my mind regarding Kennedy’s rant on the House floor this week: “Is it perhaps time for the House of Representatives to install Breathalyzers in front of the podium?” In his rant Kennedy called out the national press as “despicable” for paying insufficient attention to Dennis Kucinich’s goofy antiwar resolution. Carr has a serous point. He also asks: “[I]n »
March 12, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Tracking Jihad Jane

ABC News gets around to telling the story of the investigation of the recently indicted Jihad Jane (Colleen LaRose). Where are the rest of the mainstream media? It’s an inspirational story. The Jawa Report tells the story in the first person, where I originally read about it, in “I turned in Colleen ‘Jihad Jane’ LaRose.” The ABC story also links to YouTube Smackdown and Quoth the Raven, which provide additional »
March 12, 2010 — John Hinderaker

A City Gone Mad

That would be Washington, D.C., as the Democrats continue their frenzied effort to ram government medicine down the throats of the American people. Michael Ramirez envisions Nancy Pelosi as the Mad Hatter; click to enlarge: Actually, he had several Alice in Wonderland characters to choose from. »
March 11, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Epic Stupidity

This is one of the most appalling news stories I’ve seen in a long time. It’s from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and it isn’t a parody: “Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5.” The “study” apparently was done by the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, based in Oakland, California, with an assist from another Oakland outfit, the Closing the Gap Initiative. So blame them, not me, for »
March 11, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Some Remarkably Cool Photos

New York and Las Vegas, from the air at night, by photographer Jason Hawkes, via InstaPundit. Hawkes used a helicopter. I really like this one; click to enlarge: Here’s another: From the sublime to the ridiculous, some would say, but hey: I like Las Vegas: Here’s one more, of New York, taken by one of my nephews who is about to embark on a career as a photojournalist. He didn’t »
March 11, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Different profession, same line

Voting has commenced in this year’s Dartmouth trustee elections. The alumni are electing two trustees. One of them will be Morton Kondracke, who is running unopposed. The other will be either Joe Asch or John Replogle. In this post, I argued that Asch is an outstanding choice for trustee and Replogle a poor one. Since Kondracke has no opponent, it doesn’t matter much whether we vote for him. However, I »
March 11, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Courage and Consequence

Tomorrow afternoon I’m going to interview Karl Rove about his new book, Courage and Consequence. We’ll play the interview on our radio show on Saturday; you can listen on the web here. I’ve just started the book today, but it’s a fascinating and substantial work. It is well written and copiously annotated; not a casually tossed-off memoir, but a book intended as a serious historical document. The chapters on Rove’s »
March 11, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

A very big “miss”

The Justice Department has admitted that Eric Holder failed to tell Congress during his confirmation process that he had contributed to a legal brief which argued that the President lacks authority to hold Jose Padilla, a U.S citizen declared an “enemy combatant,” indefinitely without charge. The Justice Department has also acknowledged what is obvious — that “the brief should have been disclosed as part of the confirmation process.” DOJ contends »
March 11, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Is Wilders wrong? Roger Simon’s take

Our friend Roger Simon examines the criticism leveled against Geert Wilders by Glenn Beck and Charles Krauthammer, which I addressed here and here. Roger agrees with my pro-Wilders take. He believes that Wilders makes us uncomfortable because “if Wilders is correct, and the line between Islam and Islamism is as blurred as the Dutchman posits, then we in the West are in very deep trouble indeed.” Wilders also makes many »
March 11, 2010 — Scott Johnson

When Obamacare met Obama-ed

Peter Wood is the prominent anthropologist and president of the National Association of Scholars. He is also the author of the invaluable Diversity: The Invention of a Concept. At the NAS site, Professor Wood describes how the Democrats now seek to marry Obamacare with Obama-ed. We earlier linked to Lamar Alexander’s excellent Washington Post op-ed column on the nationalization of the student loan business; Professor Wood does likewise. Both Obamacare »