Monthly Archives: November 2018
November 28, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Bernardo Bertolucci, the renowned Italian film director, died in Rome earlier this week. By the time he was 30 years old, Bertolucci had directed at least two minor masterpieces: “Before the Revolution” (1964) and, especially, “The Conformist” (1970). In 1972, Bertolucci hit it big with “Last Tango in Paris,” an X-rated psycho-drama starring Marlon Brando and 19 year-old Maria Schneider in a breakout performance. Pauline Kael, the leading film critic
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November 28, 2018 — Steven Hayward
A week or ten days back we linked to Michael Uhlmann’s speech to the Claremont Institute on “The Struggle Ahead“—the “struggle” being the ongoing political battle to preserve our constitutional order from the predations of the contemporary left that hates the Constitution and its principles. But we were remiss in not including an excerpt from Claremont Institute president Ryan Williams’ introduction of Michael, which offered a summary of some of Michael’s
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November 28, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Conservatives applaud President Trump for keeping his promises. And we are justified in doing so. Trump has indeed kept many of his non-hyperbolic promises. Unfortunately, Trump has violated one of his most important promises: getting tougher on drug dealers. Here is what Trump said just eight months ago: Every day, 116 Americans die from an opioid-related overdose. In New Hampshire, the overdose, really, death rate — I mean, can you
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November 28, 2018 — Steven Hayward
Last night in my lecture at Yale on the topic of equality (previewed here, and coming soon as a podcast) I mentioned that the popular leftist attack today on the American Founding and especially on the Declaration of Independence is ironically the exact same argument the southern defenders of slavery made in the 1850s. Stephen Douglas explicitly argued that Jefferson only meant white English men in his phrase “all men are
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November 28, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Andy Ngo refers to the cable series Portlandia in the conclusion of his chilling Spectator USA column “What’s the matter with Portland?” He writes: “The city has gained a comic reputation as a bastion of wokeness due to the comedy sketch show Portlandia. That’s way off the mark. Real life Portland is much, much worse, and it’s no joke.” His column is published at the Spectator USA together with the
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November 28, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota Rep-elect Ilhan Omar seized on the latest FBI report on hate crimes as the ostensible subject of a column for the Star Tribune. The Star Tribune published her column under the headline “Let us stand together as Americans in rejecting hate.” By the third paragraph, with the exception of one sentence portraying herself as a victim, she has moved on from the hate crimes report to her usual leftist
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November 28, 2018 — Scott Johnson
President Trump came under the usual hyperbolic assaults a few weeks ago for defending the virtue of nationalism. As it happens, Yoram Hazony is the author, most recently, of a new book by that name (i.e., The Virtue of Nationalism). He is a conservative and, I think, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals. If not the latter, he is certainly one of Israel’s leading lights. Taking up the theme of
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November 27, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Tonight, Cindy Hyde-Smith easily defeated Mike Espy, a member of President Obama’s cabinet, in a run-off election in Mississippi. The margin of victory looks to be about 8 points. Hyde-Smith’s win means that the new Senate will consist of 53 Republicans. Consequently, President Trump may be able to nominate (and see confirmed) highly conservative judges and cabinet members he might have shied away from during the past two years. Contrary
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November 27, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
When President Trump took office, only four federal courts of appeals — the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth — contained a majority of Republican appointees. However, President Trump, assisted by Sen. Grassley and his fellow Republican Senators, has done an outstanding job of filling vacancies on these courts with conservative jurists. One sensed that it was only a matter of time until at least one appeal courts with a majority
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November 27, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Mia Love, an African-American woman, represents Utah’s fourth district in the U.S. House of Representatives. Having very narrowly lost her re-election bid, she will leave Congress at the end of the year. We proudly supported Love as a “Power Line Pick” in 2012 (when she ran unsuccessfully), 2014, and 2016. Given her solidly conservative voting record in the House, we probably would have supported her this year, if I had
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November 27, 2018 — John Hinderaker
The Left is making a concerted effort to promote the idea that America suffers from a plague of right-wing violence. To the casual observer, such a claim might seem absurd, but it is bolstered with phony statistics. Paul noted a contribution to this theme by the Washington Post here. The New York Times editorial board similarly used bogus “right wing violence” data to call for suppression of freedom of speech.
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November 27, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the Heritage Foundation, in conjunction with the Hoover Institution, hosted an event with this blunt title: “Identity Politics Is a Threat to Society: Is There Anything We Can Do About It At This Point?” The panel consisted my friends John Fonte and Peter Berkowitz; my hero Heather Mac Donald; our long-time blog nemesis Andrew Sullivan; and Michael Lind, an original thinker whose book about the Vietnam War was the
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November 27, 2018 — Steven Hayward
• After the “renewable energy” scam, the next greatest rent-seeking scam has to be urban “light rail” transit, or what I have sometimes called “The Quest for the Holy Rail,” or “A Desire Named Streetcar.” Construction costs are always underestimated (funny how consistent this is) while ridership projections are always way higher than reality. And then after a while, like San Franciso’s BART or Washington DC’s Metro, “deferred maintenance” results
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November 27, 2018 — Scott Johnson
For those of us who lived through the days of Watergate, the Mueller Switch Project makes us feel young again. It is easy to forget, however, how little we know even to this day about the facts underlying the Watergate scandal. Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler characterized Watergate as a “third-rate burglary.” The Democrats, by contrast, characterized Watergate as something vastly greater than the crime on the surface. According to
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November 27, 2018 — Scott Johnson
We have been following the progress of the so-called caravan that has now reached Tijuana and Mexicali. Most recently, John noted Sunday’s attempted breach of the border between Tijuana and San Diego. Via DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s Twitter feed, I see that Secretary Nielsen has issued a statement “regarding the recent crisis on our southern border.” The statement is posted here on DHS’s Facebook page, though not on the DHS
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November 26, 2018 — Steven Hayward
As if we need any more reason to distrust media bias, this juxtaposition says it all:
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November 26, 2018 — John Hinderaker
In Wisconsin, a wind turbine farm is being decommissioned and disassembled after only 20 years of operation. It turns out that this is typical. My colleague Isaac Orr explains at Center of the American Experiment’s web site: What’s really surprising about these wind turbines being decommissioned after 20 years is the fact that people were surprised by it. You’d be astonished at how many people I talk to have no
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