Monthly Archives: March 2017

Feel Good Photo of the Week [Updated by John]

Featured image British Prime Minister Theresa May has shown that she is no Ms. Maybe, and has formally triggered the Article 50 timetable for the UK to leave the European Union. Which has produced this most wonderful photo of the week, which really ought not to wait for Saturday: »

Will Dems die on Mount Gorsuch?

Featured image I have been skeptical that the Democrats will force Republicans to invoke the Reid rule to end the filibuster of Supreme Court nominees as as the price of confirming Judge Gorsuch. I’m out of the prediction business, but every day it looks more probable that the Democrats may just do it. Late yesterday afternoon, for example, Elana Schor reported that “Gorsuch needs a straight flush to beat filibuster.” From the »

A Times source outs herself [updated]

Featured image Evelyn Farkas is the former Obama administration deputy secretary of defense — and now an MSNBC analyst. Appearing on air among her friends at MSNBC yesterday, she all but outed herself as a key source for the seminal New York Times story on the Obama administration’s efforts to subvert the incoming Trump administration. The March 1 Times story ran under the headline “Obama administration rushed to preserve intelligence of Russian »

Why Is the Democratic National Committee “Embattled”?

Featured image This is a surprising news story, only because it comes from the uber-Democratic Party news operation, NBC: Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has launched a major overhaul of the party’s organization, which has been stung by recent crises — and the DNC has requested resignation letters from all current staffers. Party staff routinely see major turnover with a new boss and they had been alerted to expect such a »

Leaked DHS Document Is Another Democratic Party Scandal

Featured image At Breitbart.com, Michael Patrick Leahy has what strikes me as an explosive story: “Mystery Surrounds Leaked Leaked Draft DHS Document at Center of Controversial Travel Ban Decisions by Two Federal Judges.” Actually, though, it doesn’t seem to be much of a mystery. On February 24, AP reporters Vivian Salama and Alicia Caldwell published an AP “exclusive”: “DHS report disputes threat from banned nations.” The story was based on an anonymous »

Loose Ends (18)

Featured image • Yesterday I spent a nice 20 minutes with a very sharp undergraduate on Radio Free Hillsdale, which aspires to bring the good sense of Hillsdale beyond the borders of that fine campus (maybe it should be called “Radio Free Michigan” or “Radio Free America”). The topic was a certain recent book that you may have heard about, and in case you haven’t you can listen to the interview below—I think »

Energy Aces

Featured image Everything is coming up aces for energy today. President Trump is using Obama’s pen and phone to put the brakes on the crazy (and ineffectual) climate change schemes of the EPA, and over at the Wall Street Journal Mark Mills writes today about how the inexorable progress of American technology is slowly destroying OPEC: Oil prices started to collapse in 2014 because American shale businesses oversupplied markets. The Saudis responded by »

Off to Japan

Featured image I’ll be in Japan for the next two weeks. I don’t plan to blog during this time. When I get back maybe the Senate will have confirmed Neil Gorsuch; the GOP will have formulated a solid Obamacare replacement plan that can pass the House and the Senate; and the Washington Redskins will have signed Kirk Cousins to a long-term deal. I’d settle for just the Gorsuch confirmation, and probably will »

Is Obamacare an entitlement program?

Featured image I guess so. Medicaid is considered an entitlement program, so Obamacare should be too. However, Obamacare (and Medicaid) differs materially from Social Security and Medicare, the classic entitlement programs. Everyone can get Social Security and Medicare if they reach a certain age. Moreover, because we pay into these programs, there’s a strong case that we are entitled to receive benefits. Obamacare is a welfare program. It provides free health insurance »

Hugh Hewitt strikes PolitiFact

Featured image PolitiFact executive director Aaron Sharockman appeared for the first hour of Hugh Hewitt’s syndicated Salem Radio show this morning. Hugh invited Sharockman on to explore PolitiFact’s drive-by on Hugh himself, noted by us yesterday here and here. Hugh has now posted the audio along with the transcript of his interview. PolitiFact found Hugh falsely to have asserted that Obamacare is in a death spiral. I think this is a matter »

How Much do the Russians Love Donald Trump?

Featured image So much that they are afraid he will launch a nuclear attack against them. This comes from RT, the news source that Democrats tell us is a mouthpiece for Putin’s government: The US’ ABM sites in Europe and on warships patrolling Russia’s borders are creating the potential for America to launch an overwhelming surprise nuclear strike on Russia, the Russian general staff said. “The presence of American ABM sites in »

The case of Yale

Featured image We the Internet has posted the video below under the title “Silence U Part 2: What has Yale become?” (Part 1 is posted here). WTI provides the following by way of background: In 2015, video of Yale’s “shrieking girl” screaming at professor Nicholas Christakis over a Halloween costume email went viral. A year later, Dr. Christakis and his wife Erika had both left their positions. In this mini-documentary We the »

Nikki Haley rocks AIPAC

Featured image AIPAC’s annual Policy Conference opened Sunday in Washington, D.C. and concludes today. The conference home page is here. AIPAC has posted videos here. The posted videos include speeches by Prime Minister Netanyahu, Vice President Pence, former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Senate Majority Leader McConnell, House Speaker Ryan and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy as well as leading Democrats. AIPAC promotes American support of Israel on a bipartisan basis. Yesterday »

I like Ike (and hate the planned memorial)

Featured image Architect and Right By Ike spokesman Sam Roche writes to summarize the case against the planned Eisenhower Memorial on the Mall in Washington, DC. Designed by the atrocious postmodern architect Frank Gehry, it has rightly been called “a monumental shame.” A friend writes to report that GOP Rep. Ken Calvert of California, chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies, says he’s about to fund »

Trump administration blasts Russia’s handling of protests

Featured image This weekend featured anti-government protests in Russia, the largest since 2011. Tens of thousands of people are thought to have participated nationwide. In Moscow, the number probably exceeded 5,000, of whom almost 1,000 were arrested. The size of the protests wasn’t large by Western standards. On the other hand, in the U.S. and Western Europe one does not risk arrest and worse by participating in peaceful protests. The protesters hoped »

Scott Pelley Has Always Been a Democratic Party Hack

Featured image The Washington Post publishes an admiring profile of CBS nightly news anchorman Scott Pelley, heir to the reprehensible Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. Pelley, the Post tells us, is notable for his incessant attacks on President Trump: With the words “credibility questioned” prominent on the screen, Scott Pelley once again is doing what network evening-news anchors generally don’t do: abandoning careful neutrality in favor of pointed truth-telling. He is talking »

Green Weenie of the Week: He’s Baaack!

Featured image I had thought that forever more Al Gore would be ineligible to win another of Power Line’s coveted Green Weenie Awards, since he already has lifetime achievement awards in weeniedom from the Academy of Motion Pictures and the Nobel Self-Congratulation Committee. But no—even Gore has found a way to snag another one. You may have heard that Gore is coming out soon with a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, and »