Monthly Archives: July 2014
July 28, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Jeff Sessions is mounting a heroic campaign to persuade Congress to block President Obama’s apparently imminent decree legalizing, in essence, five to six million illegal immigrants by granting them work permits. The Obama administration has been lawless in many ways, but this is stark illegality even by its standards. This is what the actual law says: INA Sec. 274A– Unlawful Employment of Aliens (a) Making employment of unauthorized aliens unlawful
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July 28, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Democrats are hoping partially to offset the Senate seats they will lose in November by picking up a seat in Georgia. Their vehicle is Michelle Nunn, daughter of popular former Senator Sam Nunn. Nunn is trailing Republican David Perdue in most polls. However, she is running close enough to provide some hope for her beleaguered Party. Since 2007, Nunn has served as the CEO of Points of Light, a charitable
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July 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
Applying the theses explicit and implicit in my “14 Israel-Gaza notes,” I’m going with the IDF statement that Hamas is responsible for today’s attack on Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital. The best account I can find at the moment is the Algemeiner’s, at which Dave Bender reports as follows: he Israeli army said it was not operating in the vicinity of Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza on Monday, where an explosion reportedly
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July 28, 2014 — Steven Hayward
As we note here frequently—like yesterday, on the minimum wage—when it comes to economics liberals suffer from a severe case of cranial-rectal inversion. Liberalism’s latest trip to a tight dark place is over the issue of —irony alert— “inversions,” whereby American corporations buy foreign companies and “relocate” their headquarters to a foreign nation to lower their corporate income taxes. Kind of like what rich northeasterners do when they retire and
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July 28, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
Because of their size and agility, children make good tunnel-diggers. The English knew this when they were digging coal mines during the Victorian era; Hamas knows it now. Thus, the Journal of Palestine Studies (edited by President Obama’s pro-Palestinian friend Rashid Khalidi) reported in 2012 that Hamas uses children to help dig tunnels into Israel. The finding appears in a paper called Gaza’s Tunnel Phenomenon: The Unintended Dynamics of Israel’s
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July 28, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
The Upshot, the New York Times’ successor to Nate Silver’s 538, gives the Republicans a 60 percent chance of winning a majority in the Senate. This assessment is similar to the one Silver rendered in June. Both assessments are based on poll averages. However, the research firm YouGov, in partnership with The New York Times and CBS News, has just released poll results that seem more favorable to the GOP.
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July 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
In the spirit of David Bernstein’s “Some Israel-Gaza notes” at the Volokh Conspiracy, I would like to add my own notes summarizing points I have been making here, some of which Bernstein also makes. 1. Hamas has promoted phony casualty statistics as a propaganda tool and the media have dutifully provided the statistics every day without any reservation. The media fail to report the source of the statistics as anything
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July 28, 2014 — Scott Johnson
My young friend Katie Kieffer is one of two beautiful and conservative Katies with books out this summer. Katie Pavlich is the author of Assault and Flattery:The Truth About the Left and Their War on Women, seeking to corral women to the conservative cause. Katie Kieffer is out with Let Me Be Clear: Barack Obama’s War on Millennials, and One Woman’s Case for Hope, seeking to corral millennials to the
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July 27, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
The baseball Hall of Fame inducted six new members today. Among the inductees were managers Tony La Russa, Joe Torre, and Bobby Cox (the others were Frank Thomas, Greg Maddux, and Tom Glavine). One thing about inducting managers: you don’t have to worry about whether their performance was enhanced by drugs. There was a time, though, when it seemed like La Russa was managing on steroids. That time was the
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July 27, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s not getting much attention, but Ukraine continues to make military progress against rebel separatists. The Washington Post reports that the Ukrainian military has pushed the rebels out of a series of villages and towns in the East, and now has its sights set on Horlivka, a city of about 300,000. If it succeeds in taking Horlivka, the military will be on the doorstep of Donetsk, the separatists’ power center.
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July 27, 2014 — John Hinderaker
In her polemical novel Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand imagines a world in which the most productive citizens–business magnates, mostly, creators of wealth and generators of progress–go on strike. Tired of being blamed for the world’s ills by parasitic liberals in the press, academia, popular culture and government, they quit. The result is chaos and disaster. John Galt is the mysterious figure who inspires the revolt of the wealth creators. On
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July 27, 2014 — John Hinderaker
Matt Drudge is promoting this CNN poll, out today, in which respondents were asked whom they would vote for if the 2012 election were re-run today. Romney beats Obama, when “leaners” are counted, 53% to 44%. And that’s not all: lots of Obama’s numbers are quite poor. In categories like “is a strong and decisive leader,” “generally agrees with you on issues you care about” (43%/56%), and “can manage the
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July 27, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
The World Cup ended two weeks ago, which means that it’s high time for me to offer my World Cup all-star team. But first, a word about the tournament. The consensus among those who covered it is that this was the best World Cup in modern memory. I’ve followed every World Cup since 1978 (ten in all), but my memory of the early ones has become hazy. Certainly, though, this
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July 27, 2014 — Scott Johnson
The IDF has investigated its possible role in the deaths that occurred at the UN school in Gaza. The Times of Israel’s Mitch Ginsburg files this update: An Israeli army inquiry into fighting at a UN facility in Beit Hanoun Thursday found that IDF mortars did not play a role in the killing of 16 people in the school courtyard, dismissing claims that the military was responsible for their deaths.
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July 27, 2014 — Steven Hayward
The New York Times Magazine today carries a cover story about why math is hard, and perhaps that helps explain widespread economic illiteracy. Maybe the Times should do a sequel on this very topic, except that it might expose too many of its premier columnists (not mentioning any names of course). Anyway, most economists will tell you that your attitude about the minimum wage is a test as to whether you
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July 27, 2014 — Scott Johnson
William Henck has worked inside the IRS Office of the Chief Counsel as an attorney for over 26 years. We posted his personal account, including his testimony to a retaliatory audit conducted by the IRS against him, this past February in “Inside the IRS.” We followed up with subsequent posts including, most recently, “Inside the IRS, part 5,” regarding the promotion of Fred Schindler to a senior position within the
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July 27, 2014 — Paul Mirengoff
For decades, diplomats and pundits have been saying that “everyone” — by which they mean their fellow diplomats and pundits — knows what the solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would look like. It would look, they say, like two states with something similar to the re-1967 Israeli border and “security guarantees” for Israel. Lost on this arrogant breed is the fact that if everyone has known for so long what
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