Monthly Archives: April 2010

April 22, 2010 — Scott Johnson

The Downfall…of fair use

Tim Cavanaugh has a funny account of the removal of Youtube videos exploiting the HItler rant from The Downfall. Cavanaugh explains that the German producer (Constantin Films) of the 2004 film from which the Hitler rant derives has instigated the removal, if I understand correctly, by making a copyright infringement claim to Youtube. Cavanaugh states that the legal merits of Constantin’s argument are clear: “They do not exist.” For those »
April 22, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Michael Steele channels Al Sharpton

I understand that the Republican party is too gutless to pull the plug on RNC chairman Michael Steele. And I doubt that, as bad as he is, Steele will be able to stem the Republican tide this November. But it won’t be for lack of effort on Steele’s part. In the past week alone, we have learned the following: * The RNC spent more than $340K at a semi-annual meeting »
April 22, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Donny, we hardly knew ye

Actually, I don’t know who Donny Deutsch is, period. Not even a little. Now I know him as the former advertising man and talking head wannabe whom our friend Hugh Hewitt helped get fired from MSNBC. Serving a one-week replacement stint for David Shuster, Deutsch’s firing offense was insufficient reverence toward Keith Olbermann while Deutsch was instructing his audience in the true meaning of civility in public discourse. The New »
April 21, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Just say no

It has been about a month since President Obama reportedly presented a list of demands to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, but Netanyahu has yet to respond. It would be delightful if Netanyahu did not respond at all, particularly given the shabby treatment associated with Obama’s presentation of the demands. But there’s probably no chance that Netanyahu will blow Obama off to that extent. So how will he respond? It appears »
April 21, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Goodbye to all that

Aaron David Miller was a devout believer in and diplomatic practitioner of the so-called Israel-Palestinian “peace process” promoted by the United States for lo, these many years. In a timely personal essay, Miller now renounces “The false religion of Mideast peace.” Miller gets rolling in these three paragraphs: Like all religions, the peace process has developed a dogmatic creed, with immutable first principles. Over the last two decades, I wrote »
April 21, 2010 — Scott Johnson

A look at the Pentagon’s Iran report

Yesterday the Pentagon released its unclassified 12-page report on Iranian military power and strategy. The report covers Iran’s force structure and nuclear program as well as its active operations against the armed forces of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon has posted its own story on the report, although it does not appear to have posted the report itself. The Washington Times has posted a copy of »
April 20, 2010 — John Hinderaker

The Pen Is Mightier Than the Teleprompter

Michael Ramirez is widely recognized as a top-notch editorial cartoonist, but I think he deserves more. Political cartooning has been a mostly liberal art, one more media realm in which conservatives, with a few notable exceptions, have been left flat-footed. But Ramirez beats the liberals at their own game. In my opinion, he is not just the best political cartoonist now working, but one of the most effective spokesmen for »
April 20, 2010 — John Hinderaker

Regulate Us–Please!

Scoop Jackson used to be known as the Senator from Boeing; maybe Barack Obama should be called the President from Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs executives and employees contributed more money to Obama’s 2008 campaign than a single company has raised for any politician since the dawn of campaign finance reform. Does Goldman regret its unprecedented support for Obama and the Democratic Party? Not at all. Tim Carney explains the facts »
April 20, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Credibility gap?

I concluded a recent post about the Arkansas Senate race by suggesting that Arkansas voters are too center-right to re-elect Blanche Lincoln — provided that the Republicans nominate a credible candidate. But are the Arkansas Repubs likely to nominate such a candidate? They will not nominate a big-name candidate, that’s for certain. To my knowledge, the only big name Republican in Arkansas these days is Mike Huckabee, and he has »
April 20, 2010 — Scott Johnson

Rebel without a cause meets rebel with a cause

Ronald Reagan first came to work for GE in 1954. When he joined GE, Thomas Evans explains in The Education of Ronald Reagan, his principal role was to host the General Electric Theater on television. Evans writes that GE Theater soon became the country’s top-rated Sunday evening prime time television program, and one of the reasons for the show’s popularity was the stars it was able to attract, in large »
April 20, 2010 — Scott Johnson

An unusual tribute to Jon Kyl

Is Arizona Senator Jon Kyl an indispensable man in the United States Senate? Reading inside the hard copy of today’s Wall Street Journal, one discovers an unusual tribute to the role played by Senator Kyl in successfully opposing the passage of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty during the Clinton administration. Journal reporter Peter Spiegel quotes an internal postmortem prepared at the time for the Clinton administration: “Sen. Kyl’s two staffers »
April 20, 2010 — John Hinderaker

NASCAR, Guns and Barbecue

I can think of few ways to spend an afternoon more painful than watching cars race around a track. Over and over again. If there is one person I would have sized up as even more motor-sports averse than me, it would be Roger Simon. Yet Roger has just returned from a weekend of NASCAR, guns and barbecue with Texas Governor Rick Perry, and he seems to have enjoyed the »
April 20, 2010 — Scott Johnson

An interview with Moshe Ya’alon

The Jerusalem Post has published an extremely interesting interview with Israel’s Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe “Bogie” Ya’alon. Ya’alon is the former head of Military Intelligence, Israel Defense Forces OC Central Command, and chief of the IDF General Staff. Jerusalem Post interviewers David Horovitz and Herb Keinon point out that Ya’alon speaks about Israel’s current challenges vis-à-vis the Palestinians, Iran and the Obama administration from a position of knowledge and experience. »
April 20, 2010 — Scott Johnson

The energy policy morass

The current issue of the Weekly Standard features a cover story written by my friend Steve Hayward. Steve is the author of books including the two-volume Age of Reagan, The Real Jimmy Carter. He is also the author of the annual review that he calls the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators. In the current Weekly Standard cover story Steve turns his attention to energy policy, a subject that spans the »
April 19, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

Goodwin Liu flunks the mainstream test, Part Two

Over the weekend, I offered my impressions of Goodwin Liu’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary. The portion of Lui’s testimony I was able to watch convinced me that the nominee was affecting a rather dramatic “confirmation conversion.” Ed Whelan, having read the entire transcript, offers additional detail about Liu’s mock conversion. The nominee testified that judges should be “impartial, objective and neutral arbiter[s] of specific cases and controversies that come »
April 19, 2010 — Paul Mirengoff

It’s easy to be energized if you’re running against the left this year

In early March, I wrote about the challenge that Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln faces from the left of the Democratic party in the form of the state’s Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. I suggested that, although Halter would be well-funded by out-of-state leftists, he probably didn’t pose much of a threat to Lincoln. Arkansas Democrats are a pretty moderate lot, I noted, and “the usual leftist suspects — lawyers, labor union »
April 19, 2010 — John Hinderaker

A Post I’d Rather Not Write

One topic I would prefer not to write about is the recent flap over whether Elena Kagan, apparently a front-runner for the next Supreme Court nomination, is an “out” lesbian. This is the kind of story we’d rather not touch with a stick. Personally, I couldn’t possibly care less about Kagan’s romantic life. So we’d like to avert our eyes from the controversy. Unfortunately, it isn’t that simple. The story »