Books

A conversation with Tom Cotton

Featured image I’m on the distribution list for Mark Halperin’s Wide World of News on Substack and accordingly received notice of Halperin’s interview of Senator Tom Cotton this past Wednesday evening (video below). Halperin drew Senator Cotton out on subjects of current interest including the latest on the Hamas/Israel war and American support of Ukraine. Early on in the interview Senator Cotton expressed the (almost certainly vain) hope that Biden has delivered »

From the Chomsky playbook

Featured image I wrote about the monologue that preceded Tucker Carlon’s interview of Vivek the Fake in “Tucker’s tailspin.” Alana Goodman reported on Ramaswamy’s comments to Carlson in the Free Beacon story “Ramaswamy Says GOP ‘Selective Moral Outrage’ on Israel Driven By Money, Lobbying Groups.” Goodman’s account was cruelly accurate and Ramaswamy threw a fit complete with press release denouncing her. John McCormack reviewed Ramaswamy’s critique in the cruelly accurate NRO/Corner post »

Thought for the day

Featured image From Gerard Baker’s Free Beacon review of Franklin Foer’s hymn to Joe Biden: The Biden of Mr. Foer’s depiction—imagination might be a more accurate description—is not the fumbling, mumbling, stumbling president we have all come to see on our screens these last two years nor the predictable Democratic party hack we have known throughout his more than half a century in national politics. The figure who emerges from the pages »

Thought for the day

Featured image Tom Nolan usually reviews mysteries of the fictional variety for the Wall Street Journal. He loves the work of Ross MacDonald (the late Kenneth Millar) and has written biographies both of MacDonald (the aptly titled Ross MacDonald) and of MacDonald’s gumshoe hero, Lew Archer (that one is squirreled away in The Archer Files: The Complete Short Stories of Lew Archer, Private Investigator). Nolan recently reviewed Barbara Butcher’s What the Dead »

LBJ at 115 [corrected]

Featured image I’ve subscribed and canceled my subscription to the New York Review of Books approximately 10 times over the years. I am currently in a subscribed phase of the cycle. One attraction is the rich archive available to subscribers. Yesterday the editors noted in their weekly email that it was the 115th anniversary of LBJ’s birth: “Johnson was, of course, a frequent subject in the magazine, but it was in the »

Thought for the day

Featured image Barton Swaim dissects Fredrik deBoer’s How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement in the Wall Street Journal’s Review section today. It’s a superb review that ends with five paragraphs on Thomas Sowell’s Social Justice Fallacies: The no-nonsense title of “Social Justice Fallacies” captures the book exactly: There is no introduction, no attempt by the author to lure the reader into the subject; just five essays on the dire unintended consequences »

Thought for the day

Featured image David McCullough covers President Truman’s recognition of Israel at pages 618-620 of his biography of Truman. Truman recognized Israel within minutes of its Declaration of Independence, with the support of the American people but against the great weight of the government (at least the executive branch). Truman’s recognition is set forth in the key document posted by the Truman Library here. McCullough quotes Truman’s later reflections: The difficulty with many »

The Obama factor

Featured image Everything biographer/historian David Garrow writes is worth reading. Garrow is the author, most recently, of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama (2017). This staggeringly researched book — Garrow spent nine years on it — covers 1078 pages of text (even though Garrow relegates his comments on Obama’s presidency to a 50-page epilogue). Rising Star is full of discoveries that Garrow documents in great detail. The 1078 pages of text »

Stalin’s library and mine

Featured image NRO has posted an expanded version — expanded from the current issue of NR — of Jay Nordlinger’s “I met a book,” on readers’ “encounters with books that shaped their worldview or changed their life.” As a famous Senator put it, I have here in my hand a list… Last year Nigel Jones reviewed Stalin’s Library: A Dictator and His Books, by Geoffrey Roberts. Jones wrote in the Spectator: Roberts »

Judging Churchill

Featured image Speaking in class at the University of Chicago on January 25, 1965, Leo Strauss famously commented on Churchill’s death: The death of Churchill is a healthy reminder to academic students of political science of their limitations, the limitations of their craft. The tyrant stood at the pinnacle of his power. The contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous statesman and the insane tyrant – this spectacle in its clear simplicity was »

Is administrative law unlawful?

Featured image Philip Hamburger is the Maurice and Hilda Friedman Professor of Law at Columbia Law School and the author of several books including Is Administrative Law Unlawful? (2014). Steve Hayward mentioned the book earlier this week in “Will the Supreme Court dismantle the administrative state?” Professor Hamburger argues that administrative law is unlawful, unconstitutional, and illegitimate. Drawing on English legal history, he contends that the regime of agency government resurrects the »

Andrew Kull: The affirmative action cases

Featured image After posting my own brief comments on the Supreme Court’s historic decision in the affirmative action cases on Thursday, I wrote Professor Andrew Kull. Professor Kull is Distinguished Senior Lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law and the author of The Color-Blind Constitution. I told him I had been drawing on CBC for something like 20 years to write about the “affirmative action” regime and that »

Power Line U Is Back, with ‘A Plague of Models’—Banned by Amazon!

Featured image I’m pleased to announce a new short course for “Power Line University,” featuring my old writing partner Ken Green, with a webinar here this Wednesday at 4 pm Pacific time, focused on his brand new book, A Plague of Models: How Computer Modeling Corrupted Environmental, Health and Safety Regulations. The book has been banned by Amazon, so you know it must be hot! As everyone who followed the COVID story »

How to stop the bleeding: Dr. Roback responds

Featured image Over the weekend I posted excerpts of Dr. David Shaywitz’s May 29 Wall Street Journal review of In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took On the US Army, by Charles Barber. As presented in the Shaywitz review, Dr. John Holcomb serves as a sort of foil for Frank Hursey and Bart Gullong, the heroes of Barber’s book. Dr. John Roback wrote to comment: Hi »

How to stop the bleeding

Featured image The Wall Street Journal published Dr. David Shaywitz’s May 29 review of Charles Barber’s In the Blood: How Two Outsiders Solved a Centuries-Old Medical Mystery and Took On the US Army. Offhand, I can’t imagine a less inviting or more boring headline than the one the Journal slapped on the review: “How to Improve a First-Aid Kit.” It took me a while to get around to it, but I couldn’t »

“Break the Wheel,” or something: A review

Featured image City Journal has posted my essay/review of Keith Ellison’s Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence. I am grateful to managing editor Paul Beston for letting me have my say under the auspices of City Journal and for giving me permission to cross-post my review on Power Line today. Please see the review as published with links here at City Journal. Having covered Ellison’s career on Power Line »

Questions for Keith Ellison

Featured image Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s new memoir– Break the Wheel: Ending the Cycle of Police Violence — received glowing press in the days following its publication on May 23. The Star Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and NPR all lent a hand in the public relations for the book. Asking around among publishing sources, I am advised that Ellison’s book sold 410 copies in the first week »