Monthly Archives: December 2015
December 30, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune continues with another round of letters to the editor taking issue with my column “Islam in Minnesota: Can we have some straight talk for a change?” Here are today’s letters: ISLAMOPHOBIA Why should ‘straight talk’ be all Muslim, all the time? To the commentary writer asking if he was crazy for wanting some straight talk about Islam and Minnesota, I would say no, not crazy, but certainly
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December 30, 2015 — Scott Johnson
A reader writes to comment on my pieces here and elsewhere regarding the threat from “Minnesota men.” Citing this Daily Mail article dating from September 2014, he writes: Thank you for your reporting on the security issues at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) and how that relates to Islamic terror. You might recall this is not the first time MSP and Islamic terror have intersected. In 2014 it was reported
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December 29, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
President Obama announced two years ago that he would stop eavesdropping on leaders of U.S. allies, after the world learned the reach of long-secret U.S. surveillance programs. According to The Wall Street Journal, this meant an end to spying on French President François Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders. However, Israel apparently failed to make Obama’s list of true allies. The Journal reports that
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December 29, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
When Richard Nixon’s book Six Crises came out in 1962, a wag said it should have been published in loose leaf form so additional crises (of which there turned out to be many) could be added. I feel the same way about this Politico article by Annie Karni called “6 moments that could haunt Hillary Clinton.” Actually, all the moments are from 2015, and there’s a good chance Clinton will
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December 29, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Paul and I lived through–participated in, I am sorry to say–the first round of madness, decades ago. We never imagined, in the intervening years, that America’s college campuses would sink so low again, without even the arguable excuse of an unpopular war. But in 2015 it happened, and the second time around, it was pure farce. America’s left-wing college students made fools of themselves, along with all too many administrators,
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December 29, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Join me on the Laura Ingraham show tomorrow, from 9 to 12 Eastern. I am not sure yet what the guest lineup will be, but Scott will join me in studio for an extended discussion of the “Minnesota men” whom he has been writing about. I also intend to use Donald Trump’s rather mild comments on Bill Clinton as the occasion for a walk down memory lane with Bill and
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December 29, 2015 — John Hinderaker
President Obama thinks global warming is the biggest threat to the United States. Why? If the climate were one degree warmer–the horror!–more of the U.S. would be prime golfing territory. Most Americans think terrorism is a far bigger problem. How can we get Obama to notice the terrorist threat? Michael Ramirez supplies the answer. Click to enlarge:
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December 29, 2015 — Steven Hayward
The merry pranksters at the Washington Free Beacon clearly have too much time on their hands (and by the way, shouldn’t there be a scandal sheet called the Washington Free Bacon, detailing pork barrel spending abuse?), but they deserve kudos for assembling this three-minute “highlight” reel of Democrats in action this year, adapted to the obvious theme of the moment. Enjoy:
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December 29, 2015 — Steven Hayward
I take a more benign view than most conservatives of some of the dreadful budget compromises of the recent omnibus, because spending packages are always going to contain a lot of give and take. Better to look at the long game, to judge if any small victories or compromises may make possible better outcomes down the road. Such small details are as unsatisfying as cold peas, and often don’t pan
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December 29, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Endorsements by newspapers and politicians used to be a fairly big deal, I think. These days, not so much. Even in New Hampshire, where Republican presidential candidates covet the endorsement of the Union Leader, its value is limited. Only three of the last seven candidates endorsed by the Union Leader in contested primaries — Ronald Reagan in 1980, Pat Buchanan in 1996, and John McCain in 2008 — went on
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December 29, 2015 — Scott Johnson
I reviewed Philip Hamburger’s book Is Administrative Law Unlawful? for National Review last year in “A new old regime” and wrote about it a lot on Power Line, including an interview with Professor Hamburger that is posted here. The book bowled me over. I think it is the most important book I have read in a long time. Not the most pleasurable, but the most important. I have been interested
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December 29, 2015 — Scott Johnson
This past October, in the course of researching the article that became “The threat from ‘Minnesota men,'” I learned of an unnamed former airport employee and terrorist suspect who had been working “on the tarmac” in Minneapolis in 2014. I was advised by a source at one remove from the information that the suspect had luckily been discovered by a member of Minnesota’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (disclaimer: I still
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December 29, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Today’s Star Tribune publishes a letter to the editor criticizing my column on the uses of “Islamophobia” in Minnesota. My column was published on Monday as “Islam and Minnesota: Can we have some straight talk for a change?” Today we have this insanely stupid letter that serves as a marker for others that will seek to restore silence and enforce the taboos governing the subject in Minnesota: ISLAM IN MINNESOTA
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December 28, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
In a recap of “significant success[es]” in 2015, State Department spokesman John Kirby lists “Bringing Peace, Security to Syria.” Talk about a whopper. Even the obnoxious team of Jen Psaki and Marie Harf might have shied away from a claim this preposterous. Here is how Kirby tries to depict our Syrian success story: The conflict in Syria has continued to unfold in tragic ways over the course of 2015. From
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December 28, 2015 — John Hinderaker
I’m always puzzled when government officials say that terrorism has nothing to do with Islam. If that is the case, why are guards at Guantanamo Bay required to wear gloves when they handle the Koran? Why did we give Osama bin Laden an Islamic burial at sea? Somehow, when you investigate terrorism, Islam keeps popping up. The nothing-to-do-with-Islam San Bernardino murderers attended the Dar-al-Uloom mosque in Riverside. The mosque’s spokesman,
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December 28, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
Ian Tuttle at NRO calls attention to the deep thoughts of actor Samuel Jackson. Here’s Jackson’s take on terrorism: We’ve been kind of shielded from what the rest of the world’s been dealing with. I remember the first time I left the country — in 1980 I went to London — I knew a little bit about the Irish and the English and what was happening, and then something blew
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December 28, 2015 — Steven Hayward
I’ve been wanting for a very long time to say something about the Monkey Cage, one of the specialized blogs (along with the Volokh Conspiracy) that the Washington Post has shrewdly embraced. Whereas the Volokh Conspiracy is a libertarian-leaning legal blog, the Monkey Cage is populated by academic political scientists. I haven’t seen an explanation for the name behind the blog (correction: a sidebar cites H.L. Mencken: “Democracy is the
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