Monthly Archives: June 2014
June 23, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Hillary Clinton’s book tour has not gone well. In interviews, she has been flustered by the most foreseeable of questions about her record. She whined about how she and Bill emerged from the White House “dead broke,” earning ridicule from, among many others, Mad Magazine: When the backlash struck, Hillary dug the hole deeper by explaining to the Guardian that, with a fortune of a mere $100 million, and delivering
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June 23, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Today’s Supreme Court decision in Utility Air Regulatory Group v. EPA is potentially a huge setback for the climatistas and the Obama administration’s recent proposal to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act, though it is a complicated opinion and will take a while to unravel. It is a typical 5 -4 ruling along the usual lines, but in some ways appears to be a 9 – 0 vote
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June 23, 2014 — Steven Hayward
This story is just too fun not to pass along: Greenpeace Loses $5.2M on Rogue Employee Trading Greenpeace has suffered a 3.8 million-euro ($5.2 million) loss on an ill-timed bet in the currency market by a well-intentioned — if reckless — employee in its finance department. The environmental group, which is based in Amsterdam, said Monday the employee — who had bet the euro would not strengthen against other currencies
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June 23, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday on FOX News Sunday Chris Wallace invited Washington superlawyer Cleta Mitchell and reptilian Democratic hack Julian Epstein to discuss the IRS scandals in the context of the “lost” IRS emails. More than one scandal inheres in the events, including Obama’s declaration of innocence regarding those involved; I therefore refer to the IRS scandals. The video of the FOX News Sunday segment is below and is worth a look if
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June 22, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Rand Paul said today on Meet the Press that he does not blame President Obama for the instability in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East; instead he blames President Bush. Paul told an undoubtedly delighted David Gregory: What’s going on now I don’t blame on President Obama. Has he really got the solution? Maybe there is no solution. But I do blame the Iraq war on the chaos that
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June 22, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Is America already experiencing Hillary fatigue? Clinton’s hour-long town hall style interview with CNN barely edged out MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” in the 5 p.m. television ratings. CNN must have suspected that the event might lack energy. The Washington Post’s Erik Wemple reports that “CNN deployed an enthusiastic stage director who coached the audience to applaud at various points throughout the broadcast.” In addition, the producer ran the audience through
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June 22, 2014 — John Hinderaker
A few days ago my wife walked into our kitchen and said, “Wow, look at this catalog that just got delivered.” The package, delivered by UPS, was from Restoration Hardware. Weighing in at 12 pounds, it turned out to contain nine separate catalogs: Restoration Hardware apparently anticipated that many would find the delivery of a 12-pound package odd, and some would consider it objectionable. Why? The environment, of course! So
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June 22, 2014 — John Hinderaker
It has emerged over the last few days that at the time of Lois Lerner’s hard drive crash, the IRS had a contract with a company called Sonasoft (“Email archiving done right.”) Sonasoft promoted its relationship with the IRS in 2009: “If the IRS uses Sonasoft products to backup their servers why wouldn’t you choose them to protect your servers?” So why doesn’t that solve the problem of the missing
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June 22, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Two old remarks come back to mind as we survey the fraying foreign policy of Barack Obama. The first is Henry Kissinger’s description of the achievement of Jimmy Carter, circa 1980: “The Carter administration has managed the extraordinary feat of having, at one and the same time, the worst relations with our allies, the worst relations with our adversaries, and the most serious upheavals in the developing world since the end
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June 22, 2014 — Scott Johnson
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen turned in a memorable performance before the House Ways and Means Committee on Friday morning. I wrote about it here. Koskinen looks like he was sent by central casting to front for the Democrats in the IRS scandals. Indeed, he reminds me of the character actor Percy Helton, whom you would have seen in dozens of movies and television shows if you are anywhere near my
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June 21, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Ed Klein, author of The Amateur, an unflattering account of Barack Obama’s presidency, has a new book coming out. It promises to be fun. If you thought the Hatfields and McCoys didn’t like each other, just wait until you read about the Clintons and the Obamas. The New York Post has an excerpt: “I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who
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June 21, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Henry “Hank” Paulson, President Bush’s hapless treasury secretary who undoubtedly made the panic of 2008 worse by his own public flop sweat over the collapse of Lehman Brothers (he had been known at Goldman Sachs more as a pure salesman than as an analyst or nitty-gritty dealmaker), takes to the pages of the New York Times today to draw parallels between the panic and crisis of 2008 and . .
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June 21, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Carl Levin is widely, and I think correctly, credited with inspiring the IRS to go after conservative non-profits. But Levin’s initiative may have been attributable (along with partisan animus, obviously) to his own failure to understand the applicable law. This March 2013 New York Times article is revealing. Written by Joe Nocera, it is a paean to Levin’s supposedly wonderful service in the Senate. But note how the article concludes:
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June 21, 2014 — Steven Hayward
Apparently there is a statute that gives the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office the legal authority to revoke a trademark it deems to be “immoral” “scandalous” or “disparaging,” and the Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to regulate copyrights and patents (Article I, Section 8, clause 8), so the federal government’s revocation of the Washington Redskins name appears legal on the surface, though I can imagine a number of avenues for
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June 21, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Kim Strassel’s Wall Street Journal column yesterday took a look at the “lost” IRS emails. Strassel’s column is behind the Journal’s subscription paywall but easily accessible via Google. If you missed it, however, Walter Olson extracted this nugget: According to Strassel’s column today, the contents of Lois Lerner’s hard drive were wiped out by forces unknown “about 10 days after the Camp letter arrived,” that is to say, a letter
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June 21, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Phillips discovered the story of Marine Corporal Jason Dunham during one of his four embeddings with Third Battalion, Seventh Marines in Iraq. A few weeks after Dunham’s death in 2004, Michael learned that Corporal Dunham had been attacked by a black-clad Iraqi who leaped out of a car and grabbed him around the neck. As they fought hand to hand, the Iraqi dropped a hand
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June 21, 2014 — Steven Hayward
The Week in PicturesTM is wondering when the U.S Patent and Trademark Office will get around to reviewing other potentially disparaging trademarks such as “Harry Reid,” which clearly disparages the U.S. Senate, let alone “Democratic Party,” whose disparagement of democracy goes back at least to Andy Jackson. And don’t even get me started on the trademarks “Jesse Jackson” and “Al Sharpton.” Meanwhile, where was the IRS when I needed an
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