December 1, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll advocates LITMUS TESTS BEST FOR ACIDITY VS. ALKALINITY, not HUMAN BEINGS. She writes: This column will definitely not be in my Top 10 Most Humorous. There is something unfunny that I am compelled to discuss. I’ll be funnier next week. I see a tragic mistake being made over and over again in the commentariat. And it’s one which will ultimately cost us the 2024 election and possibly even
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November 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Historian Richard Landes gave Pallywood its name. I excerpted his recent essay ”Jihadi journalism” on mainstream media photographers riding along with Hamas on the October 7 massacre. Professor Landes now returns with the Tablet essay “Pallywood’s latest blockbuster” to document the production featuring the Al-Ahli Hospital. A funny thing happened on the way from Pallywood. He concludes with these observations: Had it been merely an Islamic Jihad rocket that fell
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November 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has died at 100. The New York Times obituary by David Sanger is posted here. Sanger’s obituary links to the statement announcing Kissinger’s death by his consulting firm. What a monumental American life he led. Ah, yes, the Times. In 2011 the Times Book Review featured Kissinger’s laudatory review of the new biography of Bismarck by Penn’s Jonathan Steinberg on page one. On my
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November 29, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “Trading terrorists for hostages” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line. He writes:
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November 29, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The media are gingerly reporting the story broken by the Financial Times. As the New York Post puts it: A high-ranking CIA official boldly shared multiple pro-Palestinian images on her Facebook page just two weeks after Hamas launched its bloody surprise attack on Israel — while President Biden was touring the Jewish state to pledge the US’s allegiance to the nation. The CIA’s associate deputy director for analysis changed her
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November 28, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration is doing its best to engineer Israel’s submission to Hamas, or so it seems to me. Caroline Glick reads the tea leaves in her JNS column “Biden is the primary obstacle to Israeli victory.” In the column Glick picks up on Biden’s apology to five unnamed but “prominent Muslim Americans” as reported by the Washington Post. The Post story relates that Biden had voiced skepticism about the
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November 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
It’s increasingly obvious to me that President Biden intends to suppress Israel’s campaign to eliminate Hamas. I may be mistaken, but that’s the way the wind is blowing, isn’t it? You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows in the mainstream media. That much I can tell you. Author of Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy (published by our friends at Encounter Books), Batya
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November 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I excerpted Professor Jeffrey Herf’s review of the two Hamas charters in “From the river to the sea.” Professor Herf returns along with Professor Norman Goda in the Quillette essay “Holocaust Historians, the Genocide Charge, and Gaza.” They write: As it happens, there is an interesting and challenging connection between the current Gaza war and Nazi Germany, but it is not the one Bartov proposes. It concerns the relationship between
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November 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
We followed the removal of the Ramirez “Human Shields” editorial cartoon depicting the Hamas way of war from the Washington Post’s site in “Ramirez on the record.” The cartoon is posted at Ramirez’s Substack site in “Free speech dies in darkness” with a collection of links to comments on the episode. I posted the cartoon here. We learned from the Free Beacon’s Collin Anderson’s story that Washington Post opinion editor
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November 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
In this morning’s Weekend Beacon email Vic Matus directs the attention of readers to Andrew Roberts’s “monumental essay comparing Hamas with the Nazis. In many ways, Hamas comes out worse.” However, President Biden is doing his best to complicate Israel’s effort to eliminate Hamas and impose his “two-state” fantasy on the Israelis despite the glaring absence among Palestinian Arabs of a market for peace. Take Hamas — please: The sheer
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November 26, 2023 — Scott Johnson
I was surprised to read what I thought was an exceedingly fair and illuminating review of two new books on Friedrich Hayek in the current (December 7) issue of the New York Review of Books. The review is by the financial historian Edward Chancellor. In “The Naturalist” he takes up Hayek: A Life, 1899–1950, by Bruce Caldwell and Hansjoerg Klausinger, and Liberalism’s Last Man: Hayek in the Age of Political
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November 25, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Cliff May is founder and president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) and a columnist for the Washington Times. He is a veteran reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor for the New York Times and other publications. Cliff’s current column is “The unmaking of the United Nations” (at FDD, where it is posted with links). Cliff has kindly given us his permission to post his column on Power Line.
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November 25, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Today comes word that Derek Chauvin has been attacked and seriously injured by another inmate in federal prison. John wrote about the stabbing and commented on the Chauvin case here earlier this morning. Something’s happening here. What it is is pretty clear. When Derek Chauvin filed an appeal of his conviction for the murder of George Floyd, a funny thing happened on the way to the Minnesota Court of Appeals.
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November 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The historian Jeffrey Herf is the Distinguished University Professor emeritus at the University of Maryland. Among the books he has written is Nazi Propaganda in the Arab World (published by Yale, now out of print). Professor Herf takes up the deep meaning of the Hamas charters of 1988 and 2017 in his learned American Purpose column “From the river to the sea.” He concludes: There is no precedent in modern
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November 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Mark Tapson covers the Candace Owens/Ben Shapiro controversy. Candace is apparently bidding to expand her market while otherwise exposing herself as something of an ignoramus. A cat has her tongue on precisely whom she was talking about in the tweet below. No government anywhere has a right to commit a genocide, ever. There is no justification for a genocide. I can’t believe this even needs to be said or is
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November 24, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll reflects on GRATITUDE, INGRATITUDE and SHAME. She writes: As I may have said here before – sometimes I feel like in 10 years I’ve said EVERYTHING here before – Thanksgiving is at least tied with 4th of July for my favorite holiday. First of all, the menu is hard to beat – Turkey, Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, Gravy, Cornbread/Hot Sausage Stuffing, Gravy, Squash, Cranberries, Scalloped Corn, Biscuits, and Gravy.
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November 23, 2023 — Scott Johnson
The IDF has carefully overtaken and explored the tunnel system that converges on Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. The IDF seeks to expose the Hamas way of war as inherently criminal — a point that has gotten lost in the media shuffle. Shifa Hospital director Muhammad Abu Salmiya was arrested yesterday along with several other hospital staff members while attempting to evacuate southward along the humanitarian corridor — i.e., the escape
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