Monthly Archives: September 2015
September 29, 2015 — Scott Johnson
I took a look at Hillary Clinton’s performance on Meet the Press this past Sunday here (video and transcript are posted at the link). Meet the Press host Chuck Todd carefully circumscribed the scope of his questions, avoiding anything that touched on Clinton’s exposure of classified information to hostile foreign governments on an insecure private server. Instead, Todd sought Clinton’s reassurance to Democrats that the “drip, drip, drip” would stop.
»
September 28, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
On September 28, 1965, the Los Angeles Dodgers moved into sole possession of first place in the National League for the first time since September 6. The Dodgers were hot, having won ten straight games. However, the San Francisco Giants had started off the month of September by winning 18 of 21 before finally cooling off to the tune of 2-4 in their most recent games. Diabolically, the schedule-makers had
»
September 28, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post reports that Iraq plans to set up a joint-intelligence-sharing hub with Syria, Iran, and Russia to fight ISIS. The center is expected to be operational within a matter of weeks, according to a spokesman for the Iraqi Defense Ministry. The Post’s Loveday Morris explains the meaning of this move: The deal is the latest indication of expanding Russian influence in the region as Moscow embarks on a
»
September 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Last month I took note of the curious fact that many people find Friedrich Hayek’s classic 1945 essay “The Use of Knowledge in Society” difficult or opaque at first, including even economic geniuses like Thomas Sowell and Russ Roberts. This month happens to be the 70th anniversary of the publication of that essay, and our friends at the Fraser Institute in Canada have begun a video series starring Don Boudreaux
»
September 28, 2015 — Scott Johnson
President Obama spoke before the United Nations General Assembly today (video below, transcript here). The video runs about 43 minutes. Listening to it, I would have estimated a Castroite 4 hours and 43 minutes. It is excruciating. The tone is professorial, patronizing, obnoxious, and unmanly. Obama challenged, and was followed by, Vladimir Putin. Putting the merits of their presentations to one side, the contrast was not to Obama’s advantage. At
»
September 28, 2015 — John Hinderaker
This Pew Report quantifies the explosive impact that immigration, legal and illegal, is having on the United States. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Ted Kennedy-inspired Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. This simple chart shows the consequences of the unprecedented wave of immigration that followed passage of the act: The Pew report notes that the impact of the 1965 act was not widely foreseen: At the time,
»
September 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
As I watched Vladimir Putin run circles around Obama last night on 60 Minutes, I got to realizing why Donald Trump may be the only person who can match up to Putin. Trump is the only candidate who can match Putin’s macho, chick-magnet act. Here’s Trump, for example, with his prospective national security council: And here is the posse described as “Putin’s Army”: But can Trump match this hacktastic music
»
September 28, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Yesterday on Meet the Press, Chuck Todd trotted out the Democrats’ talking points against Carly Fiorina. She clubbed him repeatedly, smiling all the while. By mid-way through the 11-minute segment, Todd looks shell-shocked. The Planned Parenthood point is an interesting one. Carly is mistaken, in that no CMP video released so far shows a live baby pre-killing. The body parts that we see being collected for sale are from already-aborted
»
September 28, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Hillary Clinton’s disregard for cyber-security at the State Department, and hence for the national security, is manifest from her use of a private email server. But the wreckage Clinton left behind in State’s main digital information security office arguably demonstrates her disregard even more starkly, and probably posed an even greater threat to national security. Richard Pollock of the Daily Caller provides the details. He cites scathing audits issued by
»
September 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
One of the first pre-requisites for being a socialist is having no sense of humor. I’d really love to see a reporter ask Bernie Sanders to name his favorite standup comic, and watch him default to “Who has time to laugh when the middle class is being decimated by Wall Street! Socialist lives matter!” That’s why lefties won’t get this old bit from The Onion: Marxists’ Apartment A Microcosm Of
»
September 28, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday on Meet the Press Madam Hillary answered questions put to her by Chuck Todd about her private email arrangement as Secretary of State. The video is below (12 minutes, transcript here, NBC News story here). Todd didn’t ask her a single question about the classified information that passed through her insecure account. Rather, he sought her reassurance to Democrats that the “drip, drip, drip” would come to an end.
»
September 27, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
No, but he could be within a month or two. The Washington Post reports: Jeb Bush is entering a critical phase of his Republican presidential campaign, with top donors warning that the former Florida governor needs to demonstrate growth in the polls over the next month or face serious defections among supporters. . . . The warnings from top donors come as Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s exit from the race
»
September 27, 2015 — John Hinderaker
We have written many times about the fact that the temperature data used in the alarmists’ global warming models are not original data as measured by thermometers. Rather, they are “adjusted” numbers, consistently changed to make the past look cooler and the present warmer, so that more billions of dollars will flow from the world’s governments to the climate alarmists who serve government’s cause. This is, in my opinion, the
»
September 27, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
The College Board’s 2014 framework for teaching AP U.S. History was a thoroughly leftist document. Under fire, the College Board issued a new framework in 2015. Unfortunately, as I argued here, the new version, though better, is not a great improvement. John Fonte and our friend Stanley Kurtz illustrate the problem through a detailed look at how the 2015 framework treats the history of immigration in this country. Few will
»
September 27, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The story of Ahmed Mohamed is one of the most revealing of our time. Ahmed, a 14-year-old Texas student whose father keeps running for president of Sudan, took apart a clock and stuck the clock’s workings in a case with a lot of wires, dummied up to look like a suitcase bomb. (I assume everyone understands that such bombs use timers, i.e., clocks.) He claimed to have invented or built
»
September 27, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
John Boehner’s resignation has sparked another round of claims from the mainstream media that the Republican party is hopelessly divided and incapable of governing. These claims, one suspects, are presented more in delight than in sorrow. There’s no question that there deep divisions exist within the party about tactics and, to a much lesser degree, policy. But the MSM’s spin on Boehner ignores the possibility that his problems as Speaker
»
September 27, 2015 — Steven Hayward
One thing that that has puzzled a lot of people since the selection of Pope Francis two years ago is how a left-leaning Pope could succeed two very serious conservative Popes—John Paul II and Benedict XVI—who you would have thought had stacked the ranks of the Cardinals with clergy that would perpetuate their theological and philosophical outlook. Was Benedict hounded out of office by some kind of internal Vatican scandal
»
