Monthly Archives: April 2016
April 27, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Ted Cruz has named Carly Fiorina as his running mate, should he buck the odds and receive the Republican presidential nomination. In my opinion, Fiorina was not the optimal choice either for purposes of halting Donald Trump or winning the general election. Marco Rubio and John Kasich strike me as the best bets for the first purpose. For the second, Rubio and Kasich would be better than Fiorina, as would
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April 27, 2016 — Steven Hayward
Ted Cruz is making a “major announcement” at 4 pm eastern time today in Indiana, and speculation is turning to whether he may name a running mate—perhaps Carly Fiorina. Possible, but more likely he’s finally borrowed a page from Trump’s playbook, and looking to shake things up after last night’s terrible showing the way Trump has made news the day after his middling showings (which haven’t happened for a while)
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April 27, 2016 — Steven Hayward
As everyone over the age of six knows (that excludes Sanders voters obviously), one of the first things you run out of in a socialist economy that attempts price controls is toilet paper. But with Venezuela’s hyperinflation, you could always swap out the worthless paper currency for the Charmin. Except: Venezuela Doesn’t Have Enough Money to Pay for Its Money Venezuela’s epic shortages are nothing new at this point. No
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April 27, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Almost exactly one year after Baltimore broke out in rioting, voters had to decide who the city’s Democratic nominee for mayor will be. Considering the overwhelming advantage Democrats possess in Baltimore, this decision is tantamount to electing a mayor. The big question was whether Democrats would turn their back on the ugly past (which, whether they realize it or not, has been brought to them by Democrats). Things got off
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April 27, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Folks take their leftism seriously in the Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C. where I live. It outweighs celebrity, money, and race/ethnicity. That’s why the race for the Democratic congressional primary in the Eighth District was always going to favor leftist law professor Jamie Raskin. One of his opponents — Kathleen Matthews, wife of Chris and for years a local news anchor — had celebrity (okay, mini-celebrity) status in her favor.
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April 27, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Getting the chance to interview Ayaan Hirsi Ali at the 2012 Presidential Conference in Jerusalem was one of the highest of the many highlights I’ve had writing for Power Line over the past (nearly) 14 years. (I posted a photo of her with me after the interview along with my retrospective on the conference even though the contrast was…not to my advantage.) I admire her intelligence, her eloquence and her
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April 27, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton is a phenomenon. Twelve years after its publication in hardcover, it’s number 2 on this week’s New York Times nonfiction paperback bestseller list. Yet there is nothing dumbed down about it. It is a work of popular history, to be sure, but it is a lengthy tome for serious readers on one of our most challenging founders. Lin-Manuel Miranda was one such serious reader.
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April 26, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this month, I wrote about the Democratic Senate primary in Maryland. It pitted Rep. Chris Van Hollen, a close ally of Nancy Pelosi, and Rep. Donna Edwards, an African-American running to Van Hollen’s left. The race turned pretty bitter. I viewed the dust-up between a cautious white leftist and a black radical as a sign of things to come. In another sign of things to come, Edwards touted her
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April 26, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Today, five primaries were held, all in the so-called Acela corridor. The contests are in Connecticut, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. Donald Trump is expected to win all five primaries, and has already been declared the winner by Politico in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. In Maryland, this declaration apparently is based on exit polls. As I understand it, the actual vote won’t be counted until 9:00 Eastern Time because
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April 26, 2016 — John Hinderaker
This short video from Prager University, featuring Burt Folsom, a historian at Hillsdale College, is titled “Why Private Investment Works & Govt. Investment Doesn’t.” It does an excellent job of reminding us–and no doubt teaching some for the first time–that whether you are spending your own money or someone else’s makes a big difference:
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April 26, 2016 — John Hinderaker
Roger Clegg at The Corner spotted this one: I’m not sure, but I suspect that once upon a time “juvenile delinquent” was a liberal euphemism for “young criminal.” As often happens, however, eventually even the euphemism is thought to be too harsh, and so a better one has to be found. And so one has: This Obama-administration press release yesterday talked a lot about “justice-involved youth.” And so it does:
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April 26, 2016 — Steven Hayward
Patriot radio host Seth Leibsohn in Arizona often has us on his terrific radio show, and yesterday he and his regular Monday guest Chris Buskirk, who curates the DownStreamPolitics website, were on the air discussing my post from over the weekend about Harry Jaffa and how “The Cold War Never Ended.” Seth and Chris were actually present for the lecture that I quoted from, the lucky guys. Before going to
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April 26, 2016 — Steven Hayward
We and others have great fun tracking the duplicitous corrections at the New York Times, but the correction of Nick Kristof’s column last Saturday, “Is Hillary Clinton Dishonest?“, sets a new Olympic record. Kristof’s column, as it reads online right now, relies on an evaluation by PolitiFact in the following way: PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site, calculates that of the Clinton statements it has examined, 50 percent are either true or
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April 26, 2016 — Scott Johnson
Edward Jay Epstein is in my opinion our greatest living journalist. Given his three books on the Kennedy assassination, I don’t think there is anyone who knows more about the subject than he does. As I saw what Hollywood did with Rathergate in the film Truth this past fall, and how credulous reviewers took it at face value, it occurred to me to ask Ed what he made of Hollywood’s
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April 26, 2016 — Scott Johnson
If you, like me, are looking for something completely different today, you may want to check out the second installment of Bill Kristol’s conversation with former world chess champion and human rights activist Garry Kasaparov (video below, first installment here). In Bill’s second conversation with Kasparov, Kasparov reflects on Russia and the United States since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The conversation runs some 80 minutes; it is broken
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April 25, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff
Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reports that President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are “soul mates.” Why? Because Obama “disdains. . .needy, showboating allies and [Merkel] is neither.” That’s hilarious. Who on the world stage is more of a showboater than Barack Obama — he of the speech in front of Greek columns, the shockingly pretentious Cairo lecture to Muslims, and the receding ocean tides? Obama’s “disdain” for
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April 25, 2016 — John Hinderaker
A couple of decades ago, I had a VHS tape titled “The Greening of Planet Earth” that expounded on the virtues of more CO2 in the atmosphere. I lost it somewhere along the way, but the point is evergreen, so to speak. Carbon dioxide is plant food, as those who studied photosynthesis in junior high school know. More CO2 means more plant life. This basic truth has now been admitted
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