Monthly Archives: March 2012

Slacker Tornadoes?

Featured image Certain skeptical readers of Power Line may be surprised to find out that I am actually a dues-paying member of an environmental organization, the Society for Conservation Biology (I’m also a board member of a foundation that does land conservation projects in the Midwest), because the SCB studies ecoystems and biodiversity issues, which are to my mind the most legitimate environmental issues we don’t have a handle on, rather than »

Another Echo of the Carter Years

Featured image Another respect in which the Age of Obama resembles the Jimmy Carter years has started to emerge. As it has become clear that the economy will not rebound dramatically by Election Day, the media are going to Plan B: telling us that an era of diminished expectations and relative poverty isn’t really so bad, once we get used to it. If the president is a Republican, $4 a gallon gasoline »

Did Everyone Take Stupid Pills This Week?

Featured image There seems to be a concerted effort this week to prove that the Republican Party really is the Stupid Party.  There were lots of people Tuesday night saying that they hoped that after the convincing win in the Illinois primary, Mitt Romney would avoid saying something stupid the next morning to blunt his momentum.  So instead of doing it himself, like any good private sector executive that I hear he »

Obama’s Energy Strategy: Delay, Deny and Deceive

Featured image Today Barack Obama continued his fraudulent energy tour in Cushing, Oklahoma. The purpose of his visit to petroleum-producing areas is to convince the American people that he is a pro-energy, pro-development president. Today Thomas Pyle, President of the Institute for Energy Research, released this statement in response to Obama’s speech in Cushing: President Obama wants to deceive the American people into believing that he’s somehow responsible for the southern segment »

You Have The Right to a Good Lawyer

Featured image I’m running behind today on reading the newspaper and everything else, chiefly because I’m finishing a piece for the Weekly Standard that was due yesterday on gasoline issues.  (I hope Bill Kristol isn’t reading Power Line today, or he’ll wonder why I’m not getting the piece nailed down. . .)  But I just now noticed the front page story in the Post about yesterday’s Supreme Court decision that says criminal »

Hush Rush Campaign Gears Up

Featured image Media Matters is taking its campaign to drive Rush Limbaugh out of business to a new level by investing $100,000 on radio ads in eight cities: In one of the anti-Limbaugh ads, listeners are urged to call the local station that carries Limbaugh to say “we don’t talk to women like that” in our city. Ad time was purchased in Boston; Chicago; Detroit; Seattle; Milwaukee; St. Louis; Macon, Ga.; and »

One less guy named Mo

Featured image Mohammed Merah’s standoff with the French police outside his apartment in Toulouse has ended with his death. The Telegraph’s live coverage takes readers through the shootout with police. It has a “come an’ get me, copper” feel to it. Merah proclaimed his pride in killing a rabbi, three Jewish children and three French paratroopers in three separate motorcycle shooting attacks. The AP story peddles the “lone wolf” theme that is »

Has Joe Biden Lost His Marbles?

Featured image Sure, he’s always been known as a loose cannon. And he was never one of the brighter bulbs on the Senate’s rather dim Christmas tree. But, still: at some point, don’t you have to wonder whether something has gone seriously awry? Scott wrote this morning about Biden’s wacky tribute to the bin Laden raid–the most audacious act in 500 years! And it had only a 48% chance of success!–but that »

Obama Lies About Oil AGAIN!

Featured image Barack Obama has repeatedly embarrassed himself by lying about America’s petroleum resources. He loves to tell audiences that we need to invest billions in “green” energy because we only have 2% of the world’s oil reserves, and consume 20% of the oil. We and many others have called Obama on this misrepresentation many times. His fibbing has been so persistent that even the Washington Post has called him on it. »

Who Reads Power Line?

Featured image Bill Kristol, that’s who.  And you should tell all your friends to read it, too: »

Bow Low Before Tebow

Featured image As the person supposedly responsible for covering the sports beat here on Power Line (but obviously really really poorly), I have to confess that I don’t understand the Broncos dumping Tim Tebow.  I can see taking a flyer on Peyton Manning, but even if his neck is fully healed (risky assumption all around, I’ve heard several doctors say), how many more seasons can Manning be expected to play at the »

Why Won’t the Democrats Adopt a Budget?

Featured image The United States hasn’t had a budget for three years, because Senate Democrats won’t pass one. Last night on Fox News, Bret Baier asked David Axelrod point-blank why the Democrats refuse to adopt a budget. It is entertaining to watch Axelrod first prevaricate–he tries to suggest it is somehow the Republicans’ fault–and then squirm: »

500 years

Featured image There must be a good (Allan) Shermanesque parody buried in Joe Biden’s tribute to the boss: “You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there,” Biden said at a fundraiser in New Jersey. Five hundred years, five hundred years, five hundred years, five hundred years…It takes a man with »

A Good Night For Romney

Featured image Mitt Romney’s winning margin in Illinois turned out to be a solid twelve points, and he reportedly won at least 41 of the 54 delegates at stake. It strikes me that Romney is coolly and methodically going about the business of winning the GOP nomination. Some are calling on his rivals to stand aside, but I don’t see any reason for them to do so. Rick Santorum sees value in »

Iran: What Would Winston Do?

Featured image The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reports this week of rising optimism among Israel’s strategists that an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations is not only doable, but would succeed, and moreover that Iran’s retaliatory capabilities are overestimated.  It gets better: to the contrary of the view that an attack would unify the Iranian people behind their crackpot regime, Israel thinks it might well have the opposite effect, and give a boost to »

Power Line’s Ryan Highlight Reel

Featured image This will be my last Paul Ryan post for at least the next 15 minutes (lest Ryan’s office seek a restraining order against me), but here’s a short exclusive Power Line highlight reel from his talk at my office yesterday.  It’s only about 3 minutes long.  If you want to see more excerpts of the speech, go here. »

Another guy named Mo

Featured image At the American Thinker, Jack Cashill writes that the open speculation by European talking heads was that the killer sought for the shootings at the Jewish school in Toulouse was a Neo-Nazi, thus someone on the “extreme right,” a possibility that energized the media. Cashill titles his post “A neo-Nazi named ‘Muhammed’?” Cashill doesn’t actually name the suspect. Murray Wardrop is covering the siege that has been laid to the »