Monthly Archives: May 2012
May 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Haaretz gives us the text, which appears to have been altered slightly since it was originally posted: Earlier Tuesday afternoon, Obama and White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew met about 20 Conservative Jewish community leaders. … “I not going to tell you again how I even feel about Israel, but why [are] we still talking about it,” Obama said, reminding his guests that all his friends in Chicago were
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May 30, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Jake Tapper reports that President Obama offended our Polish friends with his reference to a “Polish death camp” in his remarks yesterday awarding Jan Karski the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (The Nazi death camp, incidentally, would have been Belzec.) Karski was the incredibly brave courier who brought the West word of the Holocaust in 1942. Karski emigrated to the United States, earned a Ph.D. at Georgetown after the war and
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May 30, 2012 — Steven Hayward
I mentioned here yesterday that President Obama has gone silent about climate change, and is not currently planning to attend the Rio Earth Summit next month, which is the 20th anniversary of the Earth Summit that started the who UN climate change circus and bestowed on us the infamous Kyoto Protocol, which I have elsewhere described as the most feckless diplomatic product since the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 that promised
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May 30, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Last week I noted the passing of Paul Fussell, and especially his famous article, later turned into a book, entitled “Thank God for the Atom Bomb.” That article originally appeared in The New Republic, back in the early 1980s when TNR was an iconoclastic publication that often challenged liberal orthodoxy. Fussell wrote a number of pieces for TNR back in those days. Jeremy Lott, blogging over at Patheos, notes the
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May 29, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
With about 7 percent of precincts reporting, David Dewhurst leads Ted Cruz in the Texas Republican Senate primary. Dewhurst has 47.5 percent of the vote; Cruz has just under 31 percent. Steve and I expressed our clear preference for Cruz here. We’ll keep an eye on this race as the night goes on. UPDATE: Dewhurst is maintaining the same basic lead with around 20 percent of precincts reporting. Here’s how
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May 29, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Fearing (as he should) that he is danger of losing in November, President Obama reportedly plans a no-holds-barred campaign designed to vilify Mitt Romney. According to one report, Team Obama will “maul [Romney] for being a combination of Jerry Falwell, Joe Arpaio, and John Galt on a range of issues…” If Obama follows through on this strategy, then, as Peter Wehner notes, he will have breached his promise of 2008
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May 29, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Several of us, Scott in particular, have written about the lawsuits filed by dozens of Catholic organizations, in 12 different actions, challenging Department of Health and Human Services regulations implemented under Obamacare that would require most health insurance plans to include in the preventive services they cover all FDA-approved forms of contraception, including contraceptives that sometimes operate as abortifacients. The lawsuit alleges that the regulations violate both the First Amendment
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May 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Earlier today, White House press secretary Jay Carney was asked about Solyndra. He responded that the government made a number of “green energy” investments; some of the companies failed, but most haven’t (not yet, anyway). So an alert reporter asked Carney how that is any different from Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital experience, which has been so bitterly attacked by Barack Obama. As Romney has often said, Bain made many investments,
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May 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Green energy seems to be the topic of the day. Those who have been following the story know that the real issue is cronyism–the Obama administration’s practice of rewarding its donors and political allies with taxpayer money. Of course, the line between cronyism and outright corruption is a fine one, at best. Accordingly, Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, and Darrell Issa, Chairman of the House Committee
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May 29, 2012 — John Hinderaker
This new Romney ad is absolutely sensational. Titled “Not Even Half,” it reviews the Obama administration’s failed “green energy” giveaways. It is beautifully produced, but what I like about it is that it highlights not just the waste but the cronyism of the Obama administration. That is the real key to the “green energy” issue. Cronyism hurts legitimate businesses and damages our economy even–maybe especially–when the companies that benefit from
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May 29, 2012 — Steven Hayward
So the tech bubble burst a decade ago, and the housing bubble five years ago. The higher education bubble is swelling to the bursting point, but it is the green energy bubble that is bursting loudest at the moment, and as usual environmentalists are slow to see that they’re about to get run over by a revival of the hydrocarbon economy. Those old dinosaurs may have been big lumbering animals,
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May 29, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Cunning Stunts is the title of a fictitious play in Vladimir Nabokov’s late novella, Transparent Things. It’s the only thing I remember about that book, but it came to mind reading the New York Times editorial on the 12 lawsuits brought by 43 Catholic institutions seeking to invalidate the “preventive services” mandate promulgated (and to be promulgated) under Obamacare. The Times opines regarding the filing of the 12 lawsuits: “It
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May 28, 2012 — John Hinderaker
In New York Magazine, Joe Hagan tells one part of the story of the decline of the New York Times as a company and as a newspaper. Hagan focuses on the personal: publisher Pinch Sulzburger’s relationships with long-time CEO Janet Robinson, now departed; his recent girlfriend, Claudia Gonzalez, a Mexican marketing executive who formerly worked for the World Economic Forum in Davos; and other members of the Sulzburger-Ochs family. The
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May 28, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
I’ve been off the E.J. Dionne beat for years and rarely even read his columns these days. However, I decided to check an article of his that appeared in the Sunday paper. It’s about how, you guessed it, conservatives have changed –- and not for the better. Dionne utterly misstates the nature of American conservatism. His piece is either dishonest or ignorant. If Dionne is as well-read in the conservative
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May 28, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
No aspect of the modern leftist project poses more danger than the left’s approach to international law. By definition, international law is in tension with national sovereignty, but the “transnationalist” approach to international law advanced by leftists threatens to run roughshod over sovereignty. And, in the case of democracies, a threat to sovereignty means a threat to the ability of citizens to govern themselves. One of the most acute threats
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May 28, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
On Saturday, I wrote about Al Kaline’s great, win-preserving catch against the New York Yankees on May 26, 1962 at Yankee Stadium. Kaline broke his collar bone making the play. It turns out that Bill Kristol was at the game, sitting with his father near right field, where Kaline made the play. He recalls the catch here, and provides a great link to sports writer Bill Dow’s recollection of it,
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May 28, 2012 — Scott Johnson
On Memorial Day 2007 the Wall Street Journal published a brilliant column by Peter Collier to mark the occasion. I don’t think we’ll read or hear anything more thoughtful or appropriate to the occasion today. Here it is: Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said of the men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, for our
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