Monthly Archives: March 2014

Time and Western Man

Featured image Pardon me while I intrude on Scott’s turf as Power Line’s official literary studies director.  Time and Western Man is the title of an obscure Wyndham Lewis book that I’ve always found impenetrable despite several attempts to struggle through it.  A more approachable book on the theme of time is Gary Saul Morson’s Narrative and Freedom: The Shadows of Time.  (Morson, the Frances Hooper Professor of the Arts and Humanities »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured image Our old friend Susan Vass has had a productive career in stand-up comedy making people laugh for a living. I’m not sure if she’s still working, but she still thinks funny thoughts. She has forwarded current meditations under the pseudonym Ammo Grrrll in columns she calls “Thoughts from the ammo line.” Ammo Grrrll writes: A few years ago, I moved from a blue to a red planet. No, wait, I »

The selling of Obamacare

Featured image Reality has been outrunning satire for a while in the Age of Obama, but the folks at Saturday Night Live seem to think they can pull it off. As we approach the shifting deadline for Obamacare enrollment on Monday, Obama adviser “Mike” (he looks an awful lot like Obama flack Dan Pfeiffer) and social media expert “Mara” are featured talking Obama into taking promotional photographs that are guaranteed to go »

Support for Obamacare dips to 26 percent

Featured image A new survey by the Associated Press-GfK survey finds that only 26 percent of Americans support the so-called Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. In April 2010, shortly after the law passed, 39 percent supported it. The most significant change since that time has been in the number of Americans who neither support nor oppose the law. That percentage has shot from 10 percent to 30 percent since April »

World Cup preview — The champions impress

Featured image Spain is the reigning World Cup and European Cup champion. Its string of successes — Euro 2008, World Cup 2010, and Euro 2013 — is unprecedented in the history of international soccer. But Brazil roundly defeated Spain in Brazil last year. That result, coupled with other recent successes and the fact that the 2014 World Cup will be played in Brazil, means that the Brazilians are justifiably favored to win »

The Washington Post/Keystone Scandal on Fox & Friends

Featured image As advertised, I was on Fox & Friends early this morning to talk about the Washington Post/Keystone scandal, with some observations on Harry Reid thrown in. Like most people, I shudder when I see myself on television, but here it is anyway. In four minutes we could barely scratch the surface, but I think we laid out a pretty good summary of the scandal so far. And we closed with »

Climatistas Double Down on Stupid

Featured image When a liberal says it’s time for you to shut up, it usually means they’re losing an argument.  When they want you arrested and prosecuted, well. . .  Two weeks ago I noted here that the climatistas were getting so desperate that they were starting to call for climate skeptics to be arrested and prosecuted, because, like the Inquisition, the climatistas are in possession of the complete truth, so shut »

Standing Up to the Commie Thugs In Venezuela

Featured image In Venezuela, a popular uprising threatens to sweep Nicolas Maduro, the heir to Hugo Chavez, from power, along with his brutal, corrupt, viciously anti-American socialist regime. The magnitude of anti-Maduro demonstrations in Venezuela has not been adequately or consistently reported in the American press. Millions have taken part. To take just one example, this aerial photograph of an anti-government demonstration in Chacao last week, conveys some sense of the magnitude »

The Week in Pictures: Spring Climate Change Edition

Featured image With Monday’s release of the next harem-scarum IPCC climate change report, we’ll have more of our yummy coverage here later today and tomorrow.  But the other news out this morning is that Putin and Obama have spoken by phone again, and oh goody!–Secretary of State Neville Chamberlain John Kerry will meet in a few days with Russia’s foreign minister to work out a “diplomatic solution.”  This is sure to end well. And »

When hell was in session

Featured image Admiral Jeremiah Denton died yesterday at the age of 89. Admiral Denton served seven-and-a-half years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi during the Vietnam War. Denton’s name should be known by every American. In captivity he gave something beyond the last full measure of devotion, if that is possible. His is a story of almost unbelievable endurance, courage and patriotism. Here is a short course courtesy of the Denton »

Should John Kerry be surprised that history has given us a back-kick?

Featured image Fareed Zakaria attacks those who criticized John Kerry’s assertion that changing borders by force, as Russia has done and may well do again, is 19th century behavior. Zakaria relies on statistics showing that wars between nations resulted in border changes more frequently in the 19th century than in the 20th, and have done so infrequently during the second half of the 20th century. He also points out that the occurrence »

Democrat Desperation

Featured image Every day, it seems, there are signs of the Democrats’ increasing desperation. They obviously don’t like what they see in the polls and are worried about November. But what to do about it? It would be hard to ratchet up their customary hysteria much higher, so they are reaching deeper into their bag of tricks. One of which–everything old is new again!–is demagoguing Social Security. It is a tried and »

Young man Reid

Featured image Sinclair Lewis wrote an interesting short story — “Young Man Axelbrod” — about an old gent who matriculates at Yale at age 65. The story was originally published in the Century magazine in 1917. I read it in high school and it has stayed with me over the years. “With a longing for music and books and graciousness such as the most ambitious boy could never comprehend,” Lewis writes of »

“Like Treating a Cold with Chemotherapy”

Featured image No sooner do I post last night’s item about the walkbacks coming in the next IPCC report on the impacts of climate change due out Monday than I come across Matt Ridley’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal saying much the same thing.  Some highlights: The forthcoming report apparently admits that climate change has extinguished no species so far and expresses “very little confidence” that it will do so. There »

Why dropping health insurance is no solution for Hobby Lobby

Featured image Long-time Power Line reader Michael McConnell, a (if not the) leading scholar of the Constitution’s Religion Clauses, analyzes the four serious legal issues presented in the Hobby Lobby case. The issues are: (1) Could Hobby Lobby avoid a substantial burden on its religious exercise by dropping health insurance and paying fines of $2,000 per employee? (2) Does the government have a compelling interest in protecting the statutory rights of Hobby »

The Democrats: They’re Not a Party, They’re a Crime Wave!

Featured image A lot of Democrats have been making the news lately, and not in a good way. Of course, if you are not an obsessive news junkie, you could have missed it: newspapers (to say nothing of TV network news) tend to go easy on reporting criminal behavior by Democrats. Howie Carr provides an excellent roundup: Last Friday, it was the speaker of the Rhode Island House of Representatives, Gordon Fox, »

“So God made a trial lawyer”

Featured image Lest there be any chance you miss this today, let us note that America Rising has released a new Web ad featuring Iowa Democratic Senate candidate Bruce Braley making his recent remarks regarding the popular Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley. The ad puts Braley’s remarks in a fitting context, playing on Paul Harvey’s famous “So God made a farmer” commentary. If Iowa Republicans come up with a credible candidate, this just »