Monthly Archives: November 2015
November 26, 2015 — Steven Hayward
As usual I’ve got a huge inventory of cartoons, pics, and memes for Saturday, so I thought a Thanksgiving-themed preview is in order. One of these reminds me of an old Reagan line about Detente with the Soviet Union: “Detente—isn’t that what a farmer has with the turkey—until Thanksgiving?” Yup. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. And finally. . . Oh what the heck, why not:
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November 26, 2015 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about the supposed hate crime that has roiled Harvard Law School: someone put small pieces of black tape over the portraits of black law professors that hang in Wasserstein Hall. This incident is somehow related, we are told, to the fact that the law school’s crest includes three sheaves of wheat, taken from the arms of a man named Isaac Royall, a slaveowner who donated money with
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November 26, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
John Sears, Ronald Reagan’s one-time campaign manager, once said “discipline is nine-tenths of politics.” And, as Tevi Troy reminds us: Candidate Reagan put Sears’ dictum into action, running a relentlessly focused communication operation that kept to its message of the day, often to the consternation of the reporters following the campaign. This approach continued into Reagan’s presidency. As the authors of All the President’s Spin put it: “Ronald Reagan’s administration
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November 26, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Over the past few months I’ve been researching law enforcement issues related to Minnesota’s large community of Somali immigrants. The Paris massacres and Syrian refugee crisis have given the issues a renewed timeliness. I turned some of my research to use in the article just published by the Weekly Standard: “The threat from ‘Minnesota men.'” Please check it out! I am grateful to Standard managing editor Richard Starr and his
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November 26, 2015 — Scott Johnson
We pause to give thanks for Sarah Josepha Hale, the 74-year-old magazine editor who wrote a letter to Abraham Lincoln on September 28, 1863, urging him to have the “day of our annual Thanksgiving made a National and fixed Union Festival.” She explained, “You may have observed that, for some years past, there has been an increasing interest felt in our land to have the Thanksgiving held on the same
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November 26, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Oh, good grief. The New Yorker is trying to give the New York Times a run for its money as the most pathetic attempt to put The Onion out of business: Why a Climate Deal Is the Best Hope for Peace By Jason Box and Naomi Klein . . . The connection between warming temperatures and the cycle of Syrian violence is, by now, uncontroversial. As Secretary of State John Kerry said
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November 25, 2015 — Steven Hayward
The New York Times editorial page (insert guffaws here) has just discovered, a few days after the brightest and best at Princeton, what conservatives have known for decades: Woodrow Wilson was a racist! They still haven’t been able to connect the dots between Wilson’s racism and his progressive ideology, nor grasp the irony that Wilson was merely aiming to provide blacks with a “safe space,” as we say nowadays. We
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November 25, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Regular readers know that I am a huge fan of cartoonist Michael Ramirez. Not only that, we are close personal friends on Facebook, which speaks for itself. I love Michael’s cartoons (if I can call him that, being FB friends and all), and have posted lots of them here. Steve has posted many more in his The Week In Pictures feature. I like today’s cartoon, obviously released in anticipation of
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November 25, 2015 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about a former journalist named Gary Gilson who libeled me in a letter to the editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. That post included my email exchange with Mr. Gilson, in which I requested a retraction and apology. (Gilson’s letter responded to Scott’s review of the movie Truth in the same paper. Scott commented on that aspect of Gilson’s letter here.) Mr. Gilson has now apologized to
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November 25, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Rep. Mike Pompeo has elicited the letter below from the Department of State explaining the nature of the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran. What manner of deal is this? According to Assistant Secretary of State Julia (“If that really is your name”) Frifield, the deal is not a treaty. The deal is not an executive agreement. The deal is not even a document signed to represent the
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November 25, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Run, don’t walk, to take in Jonathan Haidt’s latest article at his splendid new site HeterodoxAcademy about how the trouble on college campuses is inculcated at the high school level. Remember that Haidt is a liberal, but one chastened by reality. The whole thing is worth taking in, but here is a sample about his recent experience delivering a talk at a high school in California: [The discussion period] was the most
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November 25, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
A distinguished alumnus of Princeton comments on the University’s long descent into leftism and its disturbing practice of pandering to infantile race-mongers: The recent events at Princeton University are the culmination of the leftist takeover of Princeton that began in the late 1960s with the rise of people like William Bowen (Provost 1967 to 1972, President 1972 to 1988), Shirley Tilghman (long-time professor, President 2001 to 2013), and many others
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November 25, 2015 — Scott Johnson
As President Obama enters the stretch run on his second term, he is dedicating himself to sealing his reputation as the worst president in American history. He long ago blew by President Carter. He’s blowing by President Buchanan. He’s taken the lead and he’s putting distance between himself and the rest of the field. Yesterday he deepened his hold on the laughingstock element of his performance in office. How to
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November 24, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Avis has apologized for not renting a car this past weekend to Dov Bergwerk, an Israeli business executive and frequent Avis customer. I described Avis’ refusal here. Avis issued the following statement: We have investigated the denial of a rental that recently occurred in Manhattan. We have found that we have been inconsistent in applying our policies with respect to documentation requirements with this customer, who has rented from us
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November 24, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Good news for John Kerry and Bernie Sanders. It turns out that global warming caused Hitler and Nazism! Since I’ve already done my “Hitler Learns About. . .” video for this month, I’ll just have to throw to Steven Goddard’s Real Science, which dug up this gem from the Mason City Gazette in 1941: Goddard has more at the link above, including how the CIA in the 1970s said global
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November 24, 2015 — Steven Hayward
Back in early July I took to the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times to analyze the phenomenon of Donald Trump, placing him in the context of business-protest candidates past like Ross Perot, and predicting confidently at the end that “He’ll be gone by Thanksgiving.” With turkey carving 48 hours away (mine is brining peacefully right now), it doesn’t look like my prediction is going to come true. I
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November 24, 2015 — John Hinderaker
For more than a week, Black Lives Matter protesters have camped outside the 4th Precinct police station in Minneapolis, as a result of an incident on November 15 in which a young black man was shot and killed by a policeman, apparently in an altercation that began when he tried to interfere with paramedics who were attempting to treat an assault victim. The “victim” of the police shooting, Jamar Clark,
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