December 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
We finally got round to our promised but delayed cage match about Ukraine and unanswered questions about January 6, and alas, all of my attempts to cheer up Lucretia with the week’s great news—the Hunter Biden indictment, the embarrassment of Ivy League presidents, Kevin McCarthy resigning, Trump winning Tom Friedman’s vote, and even John’s colorful description of this podcast last Sunday on C-SPAN—proved unavailing. Futile, even. Why Lucretia even trashed
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December 9, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Harvard Prezident Claudine Gay has moved on from “context” to “my truth.” I guess “truth” is proprietary now at Harvard. Gay clearly doesn’t know the First Law of Holes: “If you’re in one—stop digging.” Has there ever been a more pathetic display of academic arrogance and cluelessness? It ought to be embarrassing for three Ivy League president to be humiliated by a bunch of Congresscritters, around whom Ivy Leaguers are
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December 4, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Dear Power Line Readers: Alas it has become necessary for me to take an extended sabbatical from Power Line. It’s a simple matter of becoming steadily overcommitted and needing to devote a lot more time to overdue projects and upcoming demands. I’m now just a month out from starting up again at Pepperdine University, filling the large shoes of the late Ted McAllister next semester, and I haven’t even started
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December 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I’m starting to think that maybe we should wish for more Democratic politicians to have strokes like John Fetterman, because it seems it might make them better. It looks to be so in the case of John Fetterman. He’s clearly on the mend, not just physically, but mentally. First, in the aftermath of October 7, he has been unequivocally on the side of Israel, even seen parading outside the Capitol,
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December 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Last year, as many readers will recall, I was fortunate to have the privilege of appearing on C-SPAN’s “In-Depth” series, a two hour program where the host takes you through your entire corpus of work. Well, our podcast partner, and my frequent classroom partner, John Yoo was jealous, and is appearing tomorrow at noon eastern (9 am Pacific) on In-Depth. He encourages all Power Line readers to tune in, and
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December 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
So we had promised last week that this episode would feature a cage match between Lucretia and John about realism versus idealism as applied to the Ukraine War (especially since John baited Lucretia by calling her a neocon, which is fighting words not just in the desert west), as well as the problem of January 6, but the passing of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Henry Kissinger diverted us, along
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December 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward
In political news the big event of the week perhaps was the DeSantis-Newsom debate, but for some reason my in-box got a flood of fresh Chris Christie memes, and almost none about the debate. Biden and Harris always take care of themselves. And I am starting to like some of these AI-generated pics. But we’ll mostly just go back to our old standby meme themes this week. I’m really starting
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December 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward
It is interesting to take in the Gallup trend data on public opinion about immigration. You’ll notice in the chart below that a large plurality of Americans—sometimes a majority—have long wanted decreased immigration, though the number conspicuously dipped during the Trump Administration when—duh—illegal immigration was vastly reduced. Now the number has spiked back up again. Big surprise.
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December 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward
I was fortunate yesterday to take in part of a two-day conference at AEI in Washington DC in honor of Princeton’s Prof. Robert P. George (Robbie to his friends, but still “Professor George” to me and most other mortals), and in particular a retrospective of his early book published thirty years ago, before he had achieved tenure in Princeton’s political science department, entitled Making Men Moral. It set out a
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November 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
You might think, going by the usual stereotypes, that men would be more delinquent on student loans than women, but lo and behold, it turns out that women appear to be much slower in paying down their student loan balances. This from a report from the Jain Family Institute. The study runs the numbers by race, and the result is depressingly familiar:
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November 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward
This week’s peak demonstration of leftist anti-Semitic madness comes to us courtesy of the Oakland City Council, where a resolution endorsing a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war was met with this parade of insane people: Last night the Oakland City Council voted on a resolution to call for a ceasefire. A city council member tried to insert language condemning Hamas. This was the reaction… pic.twitter.com/r7aTb2mkrQ — Yashar Ali 🐘
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November 29, 2023 — Steven Hayward
The aftermath of the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade has concentrated chiefly on its political effects, but has it reduced the number of abortions or increased the birth rate? Abortion with few or no limits remains available in most states, and as most abortions occur early in a pregnancy even those states that have adopted a 15-week ban should not be expected to see significant changes. Is anyone trying
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November 28, 2023 — Steven Hayward
As everyone knows, this Thursday Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis will square off in a debate on Fox News that is clearly meant to be a proxy for the presidential race a lot of people in both parties wish we would have next year. Think of it as the undercard for the heavyweight bout to follow between the aging champs hanging on past their prime. Don’t underestimate Newsom: he’ll come
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November 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
With each passing week since October 7, the outbursts of anti-Semitism in America have become more brazen, more widespread, more ferocious, and with fewer attempts to disguise its true character with academic jargon about colonialism. The Jew-hatred is completely out in the open now. The most shocking example this previous week occurred at Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, where students rioted in the hallways against a teacher who
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November 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Behold our current secretary of education, who couldn’t get anything more backward if he took LSD and tried really hard: Education Secretary Miguel Cardona: "I think it was President Reagan who said, 'We're from the government. We're here to help!'" Here's the actual quote: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help." pic.twitter.com/Hgxpt2Xdoh — Townhall.com (@townhallcom) November 27, 2023
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November 27, 2023 — Steven Hayward
Turns out Germany’s great “energy transition” is hitting the wall so hard that the coalition government might go “splat.” The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend how Germany’s Constitutional Court has ruled that the Scholz government can’t take unspent Covid funds and pour them down the net-zero rathole, but the full dimensions of the cost of Germany’s energy madness was revealed by Bloomberg, who noted that spending for green
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November 25, 2023 — Steven Hayward
While most other podcasts are taking the Thanksgiving holiday off, your three bartenders behind the Three Whisky Happy Hour remain on the job, because no one wants leftover podcasts for the long weekend. Lucretia and I had traditional home-cooked feasts, while John, naturally, dined Thursday at a yacht club, sweater knotted properly around his neck. In the middle of this episode that ranges from the metaphysics of free speech to
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