May 14, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
That’s the title of this article in the Atlantic by McKay Coppins. If Kavanaugh is out for revenge, it would be understandable given the way Democrats and others on the left treated him. It would be even more understandable if Kavanaugh reads Coppins’ insulting, condescending attempt to psychoanalyze him. I recommend skipping the first part of the article — the stuff about “young Kavanaugh” and “suburban Kavanaugh.” However, I think
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May 13, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Some leftists, including Dana Milbank, are saying so. But then, these are some of the same people who claim that Republicans packed the Supreme Court by nominating and confirming conservatives Justices to fill vacancies on the traditional nine-member court. These folks will argue anything. It’s gratifying to see that attacks on the cancel culture are moving the needle sufficiently for hacks like Milbank to want to throw the charge back
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May 13, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In 2014, we made Elise Stefanik one of our Power Line picks — that is, one of the candidates we urged our readers to back financially. The decision was mine, based on a recommendation by one of my daughters. I understood that Stefanik was less conservative than many of our readers and, indeed, less conservative than I am. However, I liked her positions on national security issues and believed she
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May 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
What do Chuck Schumer, Robert Menendez, and Stenny Hoyer have in common? At least two things. First, all three are Democrats who support Israel’s right to defend itself against the missile attacks launched by Hamas. Second, all three are at least 67 years old. Schumer is 70, Menendez 67, and Hoyer 81. Israel’s support from Democratic lawmakers is largely confined to old-timers. The new generation of congressional Dems is either
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May 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, Steve wrote about how the left has turned on John Kennedy. To me, the wonder is that it didn’t turn on him years ago. Kennedy’s presidency might have been liberal as that term was understood at the time, but it wasn’t “progressive.” In fact, today it might reasonably be considered conservative. Kennedy gave Americans a big tax cut on the theory that this would stimulate the economy. It did.
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May 12, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Donald Trump, the former president of the Untied States and the current de facto leader of the Republican Party, is barred from Twitter. The ban is permanent. Twitter says that even if Trump were to run for president again, he could not use its platform. The ban is for “inciting violence.” I think it’s true that Trump’s words inspired violence on January 6. However, Trump did not advocate violence, nor
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May 11, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Sometimes you don’t know how good a star player is until he comes to a team you follow. That’s certainly true if you’re only a casual fan of his sport, as I am these days when it comes to the NBA. But it can even be true if you follow a sport closely, as I did when Robbie Alomar came to the Baltimore Orioles and blew me away with his
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May 11, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Leaked documents show that the Walt Disney Company has asked employees to complete a “white privilege checklist” and to “pivot away from “white dominant culture.” The documents, published by Christopher Rufo, state (falsely) that the recent killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black Americans are “part of a long history of systemic racism and transphobia.” The documents also cover such topics as “white privilege,” “white fragility,” “white saviors,”
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May 11, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has signed a candidate pledge to bar “action civics” (mandatory political protests for course credit) and critical race theory (attacks on “whiteness,” “Eurocentrism,” etc.) from South Dakota schools. The pledge is sponsored by “1776 Action,” a new group founded by Adam Waldeck, a former aide to former speaker Newt Gingrich and supported by Gingrich and Ben Carson. Stanley Kurtz sees the pledge and Noem’s decision
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May 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Like so many big American cities, New York is experiencing an enormous increase in violent crime. Last year, the city’s murder rate rose by 47 percent, to a total of 468 people killed. So far this year, it has risen by 17 percent. What happened last year that might have caused the spike in murders and other violent crimes? One thing that happened was anti-police activism on a large scale,
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May 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Liz Cheney is about to be removed from her post in the GOP House leadership. Some conservatives are quite unhappy about this and some liberals pretend to be. Our friend Jim Dueholm, once a law partner of John and Scott, disagrees. He offers this opinion: I’ve long admired the Cheneys, father and daughter. Liz, like her father, is whip-smart, a reliable conservative, a sure Republican vote in the House, but
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May 10, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Rhodes Scholarships have been awarded based, in part, on race for at least 50 years. A friend from high school, and one of the smartest people I’ve ever known, was up for the prize in 1971. In the late stage of the process, he was in a room with other candidates from his region. When a tall African-American, an athlete whom I also knew, entered, a buzz went through the
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May 9, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden’s average approval rating is 54 percent. That’s not bad, though it lags behind the 100-day numbers of every post-World War II president except Donald Trump. But our friend Michael Barone looks behind that number and sees worrying signs for Democrats. For one thing, Biden’s 41.6 percent disapproval number is about equal to Trump’s. And Biden’s real numbers may be worse than what the poll average shows because, as
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May 9, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Wayne Rooney burst onto the soccer stage as a 16 year-old in 2002, the same year Power Line entered the blogosphere. I’ve been writing about Rooney ever since — his sensational performance at Euro 2004, his exit from Everton the same year, his champagne play at Manchester United for whom he is the all-time leading scorer (as he is for the English national team), his return to Everton, and his
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May 8, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Spain has suffered from the Wuhan coronavirus to about the same extent (measured by per capita deaths) as the nations it makes the most sense to compare it with — France and Portugal. Spain has been slightly less hard hit than Italy, the UK, and U.S., though I doubt the difference between per capita deaths in Spain and the U.S. is statistically meaningful. When it comes to vaccinations, however, Spain
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May 8, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The U.S. Army apparently has decided to gender-norm scores on the test it administers for combat fitness. As I understand this report in the Washington Post, rather than comparing men’s and women’s scores, women will be judged based on how they perform in relation to other women. This radical change is a response to the unsurprising fact that women are failing the Army’s combat fitness test to a disproportionate extent.
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May 7, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The Trump Justice Department aggressively protected religious rights and liberties. In this post from December 2019, I described five cases in which the DOJ, under the leadership of Eric Dreiband, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, filed papers in defense of religious freedom. One of them was a case from Indianapolis, Indiana. In that case, the DOJ sided with the Archdiocese of Indianapolis which had been sued for firing a
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