Monthly Archives: August 2018
August 27, 2018 — Steven Hayward
I find my facility with mathematical notation has gone to the dogs, as I have been trying (but failing) to put together the equation that postulates that the probability of all conversations leading to Trump over time is 1.0. Certainly this is true in Washington, DC. Maybe one of our readers from the ranks of engineers can put it together for me in the comments. In any case, it is
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August 27, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Today the U.S. and Mexico announced a revised, potentially bilateral version of NAFTA that makes some of that treaty’s provisions more favorable to the U.S. At the link, the New York Times engages in predictable hand-wringing, in particular over the need for Canada to be part of the deal. You have to read pretty deep to learn any specifics about the agreement: Under the changes agreed to by Mexico and
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August 27, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Daniel Pipes has a column in the Wall Street Journal on Venezuela which, if you are not a subscriber, you can read a portion of at Pipes’s web site. A key paragraph: The story of Venezuela, brought from affluence to misery by its own madman in authority, makes this point with singular clarity. In 1914, the discovery of oil on Venezuelan land brought the country vast revenues and produced a
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August 27, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Over the weekend I finally finished reading Dominic Green’s long Weekly Standard profile of Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Tory backbencher and serious Brexiteer. I learned a lot from reading Green’s profile, but what kept me going was the sheer entertainment of the thing. Wanting to hear what Rees-Mogg sounds like, I tracked down the highlight reel below on YouTube. I can’t get enough of it. Fortunately, it’s only part 1 of
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August 27, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune fancies itself the newspaper of the Twin Cities and certainly dominates metropolitan if not regional news coverage. Yet it is a pathetic simulacrum of a newspaper. Take Keith Ellison — please. He is a national figure running for Minnesota Attorney General. He is both the odds-on favorite to win the election — no Republican has won the office since 1966 — and manifestly unfit for the office.
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August 26, 2018 — Steven Hayward
The news for the Roman Catholic Church keeps getting worse and worse. But let’s stop right there for just a moment. “News” is exactly that—it is what we know from the news media, whose accuracy and depth Power Line readers, among others, know to distrust. There are some first-hand documents (more on this in a moment) to go on, but do we really want to place complete credulity in the
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August 26, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, it was determined that the leniency-for-drug felons legislation being pushed by Democrats and some Republicans will not be brought to the Senate floor before the November elections. Left open was the question of whether it will be brought to the Senate floor afterwards. The answer to that question lies, I believe, in the position President Trump takes. If he supports leniency-for-felons legislation, it might well get a floor
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August 26, 2018 — John Hinderaker
It is easy to tell when an energy source is “dumb”–i.e. inefficient, unreliable and expensive. Smart energy sources like coal, nuclear, hydroelectric and natural gas, exist because they satisfy a permanent demand for cheap and reliable energy. Dumb energy sources, on the other hand, exist because government has put its thumb on the scale in the form of subsidies and mandates. The most valuable employees of companies that sell dumb
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August 26, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Under the Constitution, the President exercises all executive authority. But we do not live under the government that is described in the Constitution. We live in a society that is dominated by the Fourth Branch of government, the unelected bureaucracy that is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. And the Fourth Branch is increasingly declaring its independence from the elected officials to whom it ostensibly reports–that is to say, from the
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August 26, 2018 — Steven Hayward
A very bright young fellow I know sent me an email recently about how he had been reading about the 1960s and the Vietnam War, and was puzzled as to why victory over North Vietnam wasn’t our object. Why this strange exercise in conceiving the war as some kind of exercise in “communicating” with the Communist regime by means of “graduated pressure”? I have my own answers to this good
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August 26, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I recently quoted Seth Lipsky’s unsigned New York Sun editorial “The president in a vise” observing of the Mueller prosecutions: “This is part of an effort by the Democrats and their collaborators to overturn a presidential election that they thought they would win.” The editorial expressed my thoughts exactly. By the same token, so does the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial “Let the people decide: A special prosecutor shouldn’t negate an election.”
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August 26, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Washington attorney Cleta Mitchell is a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Foley & Lardner and a bona fide legal expert on the thorny federal law of campaign finance. She brings her expertise to bear on the question we examined yesterday in “Both sides not now.” She asks what is by now a rhetorical question concerning the Mueller Switch Project: “Fair-minded investigation or partisan witch hunt?” Cleta bores in
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August 25, 2018 — Steven Hayward
So, President Trump had a terrible week. CNN, and the rest of the prestige press, told us so. It’s only a matter of time before Trump is brought down. A crisis of the regime is imminent. You can tell things are serious because the stock market . . . hit a record high! Strange how, aside from the Cheerleaders of the Tape at CNBC, we heard so little about this
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August 25, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
I concur fully with Scott’s post about Sen. John McCain. McCain was an American original and, I would add, an American hero. Like Scott, I disagreed with McCain’s positions on some very important issues. Yet I found the occasions when I spent time in McCain’s company to be personal highlights. That’s particularly true of the time I spent riding with him on the Straight Talk Express in New Hampshire in
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August 25, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
This story is both appalling and true. Lilly Diabetes has parted ways with driver Conor Daly after reports surfaced that his father, Derek Daly, a retired Indy 500 and Formula One driver, used the N-word during an interview in the 1980s. The pharmaceutical company’s partnership with Daly was intended to raise awareness for treatment options and resources for people with diabetes. Daly was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age
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August 25, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Despite whatever political disagreements I had with Senator McCain over the years, I am deeply saddened by the news of his death today at the age of 81 from the aggressive form of brain cancer with which he has been contending over the past year. I found the occasions on which I spent time in his company to be a personal highlight. He was an American original. The New York
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August 25, 2018 — John Hinderaker
This is an appalling story, if true. And I don’t have any reason to doubt that it is: Visa, Mastercard Block Donations To ‘David Horowitz Freedom Center’ After SPLC Labels Them A Hate Group. Under pressure from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), Visa and Mastercard have blocked donations to the conservative think tank David Horowitz Freedom Center (DHFC) after it was labeled a hate group by the militantly left-leaning
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