Monthly Archives: January 2015
January 31, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Dartmouth’s president Phil Hanlon has announced several significant measures designed to curb student alcohol abuse, improve the College’s culture, and make it a more academically serious institution. The student newspaper summarizes them here. Not surprisingly, though, the best discussion can be found on Joe Asch’s Dartblog. The most publicized element of Hanlon’s plan is an on-campus ban on hard liquor. Hanlon, who impresses me as a data-driven guy, found that
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January 31, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The Boston Globe has a long article on Jeb Bush’s high school years at Andover. The Globe piece has been picked up by many other news outlets; the Hill’s headline is typical: “Jeb Bush was a pot-smoking bully, say former classmates.” The Globe article is actually rather interesting. It is as much about Andover as Bush. Bush’s high school years were from 1967 to 1971, and most of what the
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January 31, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Mitt Romney delivered two gifts to the Republican Party on Friday. The first was his decision not to run for president. Unlike many, I believe Romney would have been an okay nominee. However, the GOP may well need better than “okay,” and there are some in the potential field who seem better equipped to take advantage of what I perceive to be Hillary Clinton’s weaknesses. This leads to Romney’s second
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January 31, 2015 — Steven Hayward
We took note here last summer of the feebleness of New York Times columnist Charles Blow, and now he’s offered up another howler for our instruction. Last week he wrote to complain about the harassment young black males receive from police, and this time it was personal because his son, a Yale student, had been briefly detained at gunpoint on the University’s grounds. Blow’s son’s account went as follows: “I
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January 31, 2015 — Steven Hayward
A faithful reader passes along the snapshot of a high school world history textbook that notes the “fantastic economic results” of Stalin’s management of the Soviet economy back in the glory days of the successive Five Year plans. No wonder people fall for Elizabeth Warren. Here’s the text in case you can’t make out the photo: These forceful means of making the Soviet Union a modern industrial nation took a
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January 31, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The Obama administration has dragged the Pentagon into its clown show on the Taliban and terrorism. Megyn Kelly devoted a segment to the swap of Bowe Bergdahl for the Taliban Five as well as the proper categorization of the Taliban last night on her FNC Kelly File show (full video below, eleven minutes long). Pentagon spokesman Admiral John Kirby appeared to respond to Kelly’s questions. As to the Taliban, Kirby
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January 31, 2015 — Scott Johnson
NRO’s Brendan Bordelon reports: In the latest round of verbal gymnastics over the Taliban, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki refused to categorize the murder of American civilians at Kabul International Airport an act of “terrorism.” The Taliban claimed responsibility for that attack on Friday, which killed three civilian contractors working for the U.S. government and wounded one other. The gunman was reportedly a member of Afghan security forces who turned
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January 31, 2015 — Scott Johnson
In a note to his readers Andrew Sullivan has declared that he is packing it in. Having written for one iteration or another of The Daily Dish for 15 years, he says he’s had enough. (It appears that the current iteration of his site is just The Dish.) Sullivan didn’t put a date certain on the retirement of his site — he put it “in the near future” — but
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January 31, 2015 — Scott Johnson
When he ran for president in 2008, then-Senator Obama castigated the Bush administration for taking his eye “off the ball.” “The ball” was the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Looking back on the campaign, Obama noted: “I talked frequently during this campaign that we took our eye off the ball when we invaded Iraq. And now it’s done. My job is to withdraw in a responsible way from Iraq
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January 31, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Everybody got their munchies locked and loaded? I say Seattle by a fair margin, like last year. New England looks distracted by all the deflated footballs silliness. Speaking of playing with deflated footballs, Obama . . . oh never mind. You know where that was going. And finally. . .
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January 30, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Fifty years ago today, a sold-out Cole Field House at the University of Maryland hosted what is probably the most famous high school basketball game ever played. It featured Lew Alcindor’s Power Memorial of New York City against DeMatha of Hyattsville, Maryland. DeMatha won, 46-43. The Washington Post has a good article about the game that draws on the recollections of key DeMatha participants. Alcindor (now Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), accommodating as
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January 30, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Leamsy Salazar was the head of security for Hugo Chavez and, after Chavez’s death, for Diosdado Cabello, the leader of Venezuela’s National Assembly and second-in-command of the Socialist Party. Salazar has defected to the United States and unleashed some explosive allegations against his former bosses. Salazar says that Hugo Chavez died in December 2012, not March 2013 as was claimed by his successor, Nicolás Maduro. Salazar says that Maduro and
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January 30, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The Rose Monday parade is the highlight of the Carnival season in Cologne. A million or more people line the streets to see floats–generally political, mostly satirical, often scatological–go by. This year’s parade is scheduled for February 15, but there has been a change in plans: A German carnival has dropped plans to build a “Charlie Hebdo” float with a cartoonist forcing a pencil into the barrel of a terrorist’s
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January 30, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama’s decision, now essentially official*, to appease Iran by doing nothing to help thwart the Assad regime has dire consequences for Syria. Tens of thousands of Syrians will continue to be slaughtered, many of them by barrel bombs dropped by planes the U.S. could have stopped from flying. Samatha ( “A Problem From Hell”) Power, call your office. On second thought, don’t waste your time. Israel also faces serious
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January 30, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Mitt Romney announced to his supporters this morning that he will not seek the GOP’s 2016 presidential nomination. His reasons are a bit murky; he said that he wanted to “go out on top,” and, currently leading in the polls, feels that he has done that. Whatever. It is a good decision and I applaud him for it. The only times in recent history when one of our major parties
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January 30, 2015 — Steven Hayward
So Obama has had to abandon his plan to tax 529 college savings plans to pay for his “free” community college proposal, because lo and behold lots of middle class people are 529 savers. But Republicans could still enable Obama to pay for this proposal with a tax that actually hits the genuine rich: a surtax on large private college endowments—say on all endowments that are more than something like
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January 30, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll returns to share A COUPLE OF THINGS I KNOW FOR SURE ABOUT SEX. She writes: One: If you get caught on a plane called “The Lolita Express” or on a boat called “Monkey Business” (is there a train called “The Appalling Old Degenerate”?), you should have to wear a hat emblazoned with “Somehow My Weenie Ate My Brain!” Two: In the endless, tedious discussions about “rape culture,” over
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