Monthly Archives: May 2023
May 29, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Power Line observes its twenty-first anniversary this Memorial Day weekend. I am taking the liberty of looking back by pulling out three of my favorite posts of the past twenty-one years. This is the third. Stephen Spender wrote in his most famous poem: “I think continually of those who were truly great.” Today I am thinking of Leo Thorsness. He was truly great. When Leo died on May 3, 2017,
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May 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Sometime in the middle of our unfolding Iraq agony beginning 20 years ago, the State Department decided it needed to build a new embassy compound in Baghdad at a total cost approaching $1 billion. No one seemed to ask why our mission in Iraq, which we assumed wouldn’t last forever, needed what looked like an outpost for a permanent colonial empire rather than a mere security necessity. What security necessity—both
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May 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It was possible to dismiss the ABC News/Washington Post poll a couple weeks back that had dismal numbers for Joe Biden as an outlier, but then the Harvard/Harris poll reported similar dismal results for Biden. And now CNN joins the pile on, with a poll showing Biden’s approval rating continuing to slump all the way down to 35 percent. President Joe Biden’s bid for a second term begins with a
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May 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota Fourth District Rep. Betty McCollum is a malicious nobody and pre-Squad Israel hater. She has stayed around long enough to become the ranking Democratic member of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. As such, she attended President Biden’s announcement this past Thursday of his intent to nominate General Charles Q. Brown, the Air Force chief of staff, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The
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May 28, 2023 — John Hinderaker
This is the most interesting thing I have come across in a very long time. Artificial intelligence (or, at least, the Chat GPT program) makes stuff up, out of what seems to be a spirit of fun, or perhaps a desire to please. This is the first instance; I linked to it here. Tony Venhuizen, a smart guy from South Dakota, operates a web site where he writes about the
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May 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Power Line observes its twenty-first anniversary this Memorial Day weekend. I am taking the liberty of looking back by pulling out three of my favorite posts of the past twenty-one years. This is the second. Since I wrote it in August 2020, Chris Hillman has published the memoir Time Between: My Life As a Byrd, Burrito Brother, and Beyond and I have taken in hours of Chris Hillman’s Burrito Stand
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May 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker
A global consensus has emerged that governmental responses to covid-19, which mainly involved shutdowns, limitations on mobility and other aspects of freedom, mask mandates, and vaccination requirements, did an enormous amount of harm. The issue is sometimes posed in terms of whether governments’ responses did more damage than the epidemic did. But that isn’t actually the right question. The epidemic happened. The question is whether the epidemic + government restrictions
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May 27, 2023 — John Hinderaker
This short video by the BBC’s “Disinformation Correspondent”–not a joke–explains how that news agency is seeking out disinformation and conspiracy theories. These are found on “alternative media,” i.e., not on the BBC, and the BBC is investigating the links between disinformation and “far right figures.” No mention of far left figures. And the BBC is using fake social media accounts to track what is happening in those venues, and how
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May 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
You would think a team named “Dodgers” would know how to dodge a culture war battle they can’t win (see: Target, Bud Light), but no, the Los Angeles Dodgers managed to get picked off in the most embarrassing fashion in a pickle-style rundown entirely of their own ineptitude. Surely the conservative (and Catholic) O’Malley family that used to own the Dodgers—before the onerous estate tax forced the family to sell
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May 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It’s late in the 4th quarter for this year’s Supreme Court season, and the Justices are starting to score with some long bombs. Our Three Whisky Happy Hour bartenders celebrated with entire flights of whisky (our kind of diversity!) while pondering Thursday’s clean sweep of two 9 – 0 decisions that reinvigorate the “takings clause” of the 5th Amendment, and clip the wings of the EPA without once mentioning either
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May 27, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
Methinks they protest too much. It took about a nanosecond for the legacy media, former President Donald Trump, and his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination to pounce following the launch of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign on Wednesday evening. True, the technical glitches which delayed the livestream event weren’t exactly ideal and it was a missed opportunity for DeSantis. But the derision that has ensued is way out of
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May 27, 2023 — Elizabeth Stauffer
You may have thought you were observing Memorial Day this weekend – a day to honor and mourn the lives of Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to their country. But rather than a day to reflect upon those who died for our freedom, the woke among us have perverted it into a “transgender day of remembrance.” In the video below, a young woman donning a clerical
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May 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Power Line observes its twenty-first anniversary this Memorial Day weekend. I want to take the liberty of looking back by pulling out three of my favorite posts of the past twenty-one years. This is from March 2009. * * * * * * Asked where they had their most memorable campus experiences, Dartmouth students polled back when I was an undergraduate most frequently identified the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
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May 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Come of think of it, Biden, Feinstein, and Fetterman are the perfect exemplars of senescent leftism today, and as such the ideal leaders of today’s Democratic Party. No wonder they’ve become the party of transgenderism, since their socialist wish-fulfillment fantasies aren’t working out very well. Headlines of the week: And finally. . . Tina Turner, RIP:
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May 26, 2023 — John Hinderaker
The Left is attacking us with its most bizarre culture war yet, the “trans” fad that threatens the mental and physical health of our children and young people. So we have no choice but to fight back. To start with, let’s fight back against Target. Target’s sins go far beyond its “Pride” collection. Most attention has focused on the clothing line that included expanded-crotch “women’s” swimsuits and partnership with a
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May 26, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As of this writing Friday morning, the media reports that there is no debt ceiling deal yet, but that the two sides—meaning Biden and Kevin McCarthy—are close. Strange how Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer seems to be totally sidelined. Does the Senate not have any leverage at all? Apparently not. Biden’s regular weekend trip to his beach house in Delaware for his vitamin injections and blood transfusions or long sleeps
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May 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In her weekly Wall Street Journal column Kim Strassel turns her attention to the IRS — the cases of Matt Taibbi (discussed here yesterday) and Gary Shapley (discussed in the adjacent post this morning). Strassel notes that Taibbi “may have been targeted by the IRS in retribution for documenting the joint censorship efforts of Big Tech and the federal government.” Coincidences abound. In particular: Mr. Taibbi in March told the
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