Monthly Archives: May 2012
May 22, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday the University of Notre Dame filed a lawsuit against HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other high ranking officers of the Obama administration. The complaint is available online here. I urge readers to check it out for themselves. It is a document of great interest. In this post I offer a few observations. 1. It was only three years ago that the University of Notre Dame invited President Obama to
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May 22, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The satirists at The Daily Mash had fun with the European financial crisis a few days ago with some schtick on “Greeks Apologize With Huge Horse”: THE nation of Greece said sorry to the European Union with a present of an enormous wooden horse. Left outside the European Central Bank in the dead of night, the horse has now been moved into the ECB’s central lobby where it is proudly
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May 21, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
Today, as Scott Johnson noted in an earlier post, multiple Catholic Dioceses and organizations filed lawsuits in federal courts around the country challenging the Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious organizations to provide coverage in their health care plans for drugs (contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs) and procedures (sterilization) that are in direct conflict with their religious beliefs. Twelve Archdioceses or Dioceses are participating, each in a
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May 21, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Oh, great: a 9/11 “truther” is the front-runner in Egypt’s presidential race: Abdel-Moneim Abolfotoh, formerly a leading figure in the Muslim Brotherhood, led the field of 13 candidates with 32 percent of the vote in a survey released Monday by the Washington-based Brookings Institution. Mr. Abolfotoh expressed his views on the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in an interview last year with Egypt
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May 21, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
On May 29, Texas Republicans will vote on who should fill the Senate seat currently held by Kay Bailey Hutchison. A new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll has Lt. Governor David Dewhurst leading Tea Party favorite Ted Cruz, the State’s former Solicitor General, by 40 to 31. Former Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert is in third place with 17 percent. The Dewhurst-Cruz race is an interesting one. Dewhurst has been endorsed
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May 21, 2012 — John Hinderaker
On May 12, the New York Times published a deeply contemptible op-ed by someone named William Deresiewicz, described as “[a]n essayist, critic and the author of ‘A Jane Austen Education.'” Titled “Capitalists and Other Psychopaths,” the op-ed led with a reference to a study purporting to document the pathological nature of “capitalists”: There is an ongoing debate in this country about the rich: who they are, what their social role
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May 21, 2012 — John Hinderaker
Today President Obama was asked about his campaign’s attacks on Mitt Romney’s years with Bain Capital and whether Cory Booker was right in suggesting that he should back off on that theme. Instead of backing off, Obama doubled down, telling the questioner that Romney’s Bain experience “is not a distraction, this is what this campaign is gonna be about.” No, Mister Obama: this campaign is going to be about your
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May 21, 2012 — Scott Johnson
In a story we’ve been following for several months now, Terry Jeffrey reports today’s development: The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by
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May 21, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
It is “a source of pain” for Jesse Jackson.
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May 21, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
I have enormous respect for Karl Rove. So I was disappointed to hear him say, on Fox News Sunday, that it is “stupid” for Republicans to raise questions about Barack Obama’s association with Rev. Wright because “the issue was litigated four years ago by John McCain deciding not to litigate it.” Litigated by virtue of not being litigated? This is lawyer talk; the language of Barack Obama. It’s not the
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May 21, 2012 — Scott Johnson
Over at Breitbart, Michael Patrick Leahy asks “Will Harvard Law School condemn Elizabeth Warren for Pow Wow Chow plagiarism?” Well, I can answer that question. More importantly, drawing on his background as publisher of Times Books, an optimistic Tom Lipscomb writes to comment on Leahy’s post: A fine piece. Pierre Franey was my author and did the best-selling cookbook THE 60 MINUTE GOURMET…he was Craig Claiborne’s partner. We published it
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May 21, 2012 — Steven Hayward
Last week in a post about “punitive liberalism” I offered the view that “it is possible that [Eduardo] Severin [the Facebook co-founder who renounced his citizenship] will actually pay more in taxes to the U.S. by leaving the country than if he’d stayed for a simple reason. If he’d stayed, he’d only owe taxes on his Facebook wealth if he sold his Facebook stock. If he never sold much of
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May 21, 2012 — Steven Hayward
The biggest problem with vegetarians, and their most Puritan variation—Vegans—is not so much their holier-than-thou attitude (after all, most enthusiasts, from fitness freaks to fundamentalists, have the same attitude), but the barely concealed will to power to impose veganism on the rest of us. It is another form of the totalitarian temptation. Social science is catching up with this perception. A new study in the journal Social Psychology and Personality
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May 20, 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 the United States, a threat to sovereignty means a threat to democracy — to the ability of Americans to govern themselves. In
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May 20, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post has obsessed over an incident in which Mitt Romney allegedly cut the hair of a fellow high school student. The mainstream media paid plenty of attention to George W. Bush’s “irresponsible youth,” and speculated about whether he had used cocaine. Yet, the MSM has essentially ignored Barack Obama’s admission in his autobiography of cocaine use, of attending Socialist seminars while in college, and of being drawn as
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May 20, 2012 — John Hinderaker
That’s the headline on yesterday’s Associated Press story by Charles Babington. The headline appeared on the main Yahoo page, which is far more heavily trafficked than any newspaper, and was picked up, based on a Google News search, by several hundred newspapers. The article doesn’t conclude that Republicans are deliberately hurting the economy, of course. That wasn’t the idea: the idea was to attribute plausibility to what is in fact
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May 20, 2012 — Steven Hayward
It’s only Sunday, but this week’s hands-down, slam-dunk winner of the coveted Power Line Green Loser of the Week Award has already been determined: the Finnish writer Pentti Linkola (doesn’t that sound close to the name of the villain in Thor and The Avengers?), whose unhinged rantings about exterminating humanity in the interest of saving the planet have gotten wide distribution on the Interwebs the last few days, especially the
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