Monthly Archives: October 2017

Uzbek NYC terror suspect entered U.S. under Diversity Visa Program

Featured image ABC-7 in New York reports that Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, the truck driving, ISIS supporting terrorist who killed at least eight people in New York City today, came to the U.S. seven years ago from Uzbekistan under what is called the Diversity Visa Program. The program offers a lottery for people from countries with few immigrants in America. The idea behind this program, which I became aware of only when Tom »

Protests in Iran

Featured image Portions of the Iranian émigré community in the U.S. and France are buzzing about reports of protest activity in Iran. Some are relying on reports from family and friends in Iran; others on various news outlets. Last week, Fox News reported that more than 2,000 people protested outside the country’s parliament. It relied on a report and video from an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran »

Midnight madness

Featured image Why is the World Series like Italian neo-realist cinema? Because both have produced classics that too few Americans got to see. This year’s World Series, between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Houston Astros, has produced two classics so far — Game 2 and Game 5. Houston won Game 2 in eleven innings by a score of 7-6. The Astros got the game to extra innings by scoring one run »

Today’s attack reminds me

Featured image Today’s terrorist attack in Manhattan serves as something of a reminder. It feels like an injection of reality into the fabricated partisan hysteria over collusion that otherwise suffocates us. It shoves the nature of the war in which we are engaged in our face where it cannot be ignored for the moment. It reminds us to be grateful for the bravery and readiness of our first responders. It also reminds »

Democrats to White Males: You’re Not Wanted Here

Featured image The Daily Wire has obtained an internal Democratic National Committee email listing several open IT positions that openly says that it does not want white males. Here’s the email—note the underlined sentence at the end: The sentence reads: “I personally would prefer that you not forward to cisgender straight white males, since they’re already in the majority.” So much for being an “equal opportunity employer” I guess. Just curious: what’s »

Remy: Halloween Trigger Warning

Featured image Trying to decide what is the more frightening costume to wear tonight: a conservative white male, or a Hollywood producer? In any case, just in time for Halloween, Remy comes along with “Trigger,” reminding us that one of the ratchets in college craziness came out of Yale a couple years back when someone suggested that maybe, possibly, people might just chill a bit about potentially “offensive” Halloween costumes. There’s some »

The collusion confusion

Featured image Last week I tried repeatedly to make these points, but they bear repetition and here is Marc Thiessen making them from inside the great fog machine of the Washington Post itself: Here’s the bottom line: We have congressional testimony, under oath, that Clinton hired the same firm to smear Trump that Putin reportedly used to smear Magnitsky. Moreover, we also know that the Fusion GPS dossier relied on senior Russian »

The Rick Gates indictment

Featured image Rick Gates was an associate of Paul Manafort. Yesterday, he was indicted along with Manafort. Gates’ indictment received little attention. Like Manafort, though, he is a candidate for squeezing by Mueller’s team. Indeed, he may be a better candidate. The Washington Post says President Trump’s advisers have expressed concern about Gates because he has a young family, may be more stretched financially than Manafort, and continued to be involved in »

Papadopoulos? Whodat??? (2)

Featured image Our friendly former FBI Special Agent with two decades of experience in counterintelligence writes to comment on my adjacent post. I thought readers would find his comments of interest. He writes: For what it’s worth, I couldn’t agree more. The description of what Papadopoulos did that got him in hot water makes it clear that he essentially wasted the FBI’s time. But not that much, because it’s also clear that »

Papadopoulos? Whodat???

Featured image When John Updike’s fictional alter ego Henry Bech was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature , Updike posited the headline reporting the news in the New York Daily News: “BECH? WHODAT???” (The thought was at the same time self-deprecating and self-aggrandizing. Updike was one of the most prominent of those who deserved the Nobel Prize for Literature in the past 25 years while failing to receive it. Now it is »

CRB: The Democrats’ dilemma

Featured image The new (Fall) issue of the Claremont Review of Books is in the mail. Thanks to our friends at the Claremont Institute, I have read the new issue in galley to select three days’ worth of pieces to be submitted for the consideration of Power Line readers. (We have three pieces on the Founders in store tomorrow.) As always, wanting to do right by the magazine and by our readers, »

The Papadopoulos plea [UPDATED]

Featured image With news of today’s indictments of Paul Manafort and his colleague came word that former (minor) Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to making false statements to investigators. In addition, we learned that Papadopoulos has been cooperating with the Mueller investigation. Papadopoulos was in the news back in August, when the Washington Post reported that during the presidential campaign he sent emails to the Trump campaign »

The Manafort indictment

Featured image I can think of no one better than Andy McCarthy to evaluate the indictment of Paul Manafort. In McCarthy’s view, the indictment “is much ado about nothing . . . except as a vehicle to squeeze Manafort, which is special counsel Robert Mueller’s objective.” That sounds right. McCarthy explains: This case has nothing to do with what Democrats and the media call “the attack on our democracy” (i.e., the Kremlin’s »

Explaining the Liberal Cesspool

Featured image Why is it, Glenn Reynolds likes to ask, that liberal-run cities and institutions all seem to be hotbeds of sexism and racism? To adapt this slightly, maybe there’s a reason the left is so obsessed with sexual harassment and racism, because it is practiced so much in their communities and institutions. These thoughts come to mind in looking over the peculiar Cosmopolitan magazine (yes, Power Line’s research staff reads Cosmo »

Why Mueller should not be special counsel

Featured image I believe any reasonable observer, if he considers the matter independently of whose ox is being gored, would agree that it is problematic to have a special counsel with a broad mandate to investigate, unbound by some of the normal constraints of a prosecutor, a campaign and a presidency. Reasonable observers will disagree about the extent of the danger, and about the countervailing value of having such a prosecutor in »

The squeeze on Manafort

Featured image Politico has posted the 12-count indictment handed up against Paul Manafort and Richard Gates on Friday by the Washington grand jury hearing evidence brought before it by Robert Mueller’s team of all-star prosecutors. The charges all relate or derive from Manafort’s business activities that predate Manafort’s involvement with the Trump campaign (although various related deceptions are alleged to date). I don’t believe that Gates ever had any involvement with the »

Investigate this (5)

Featured image In this series we have provided the expert commentary of a former FBI Special Agent with two decades of experience in counterintelligence. He has brought his expertise to bear on the investigation of President Trump for alleged collusion with Russia in the course of the presidential campaign. President Trump himself could remove much of the mystery regarding this matter if he were to order release of the FISA warrants obtained »