History
June 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
On Wednesday, during our show for Power Line VP members, John recalled the heady days of Watergate, when newly minted Harvard law grads descended on Washington to work for Archibald Cox, the Harvard law professor who was serving as the Watergate special prosecutor. John remembered that the young Harvard law grads he knew expressed clarity about their mission: to get Nixon. The Washington Post expresses the same clarity in a
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June 6, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Reader Patti Kruse wrote us last year to encourage our remembrance of the D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches. “My dad landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day,” she told us. “He was one of the fortunate ones, as he was never physically injured and managed to survive from D-Day all the way through the Battle of the Bulge and V-E Day. He rarely spoke about his experience except to say
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June 2, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
It is beyond my power of discernment to identify the most over-the-top comment criticizing President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord. But this tweet by a Harvard professor named Joyce Chaplin is surely a contender: The USA, created by int’l community in Treaty of Paris in 1783, betrays int’l community by withdrawing from #parisclimateagreement today. Chaplin teaches American Studies. Yet, she appears not to know how
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May 29, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In observance of Memorial Day 2007 the Wall Street Journal published a brilliant column by Peter Collier to mark the occasion. The column remains timely and is accessible online here. I don’t think we’ll read or hear anything more thoughtful or appropriate to the occasion today. Here it is: Once we knew who and what to honor on Memorial Day: those who had given all their tomorrows, as was said
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May 5, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Leo Thorsness died of cancer at the age of 85 earlier this week. He was awarded the Medal of Honor for the actions he took on his 93rd Wild Weasel mission over North Vietnam. He tells the story of his Medal of Honor mission in the first chapter of Surviving Hell. Richard Goldstein also tells the story in his excellent New York Times obituary. Eleven days after his Medal of
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May 3, 2017 — Scott Johnson
I am sad to report that Leo Thorsness has died at the age of 85. Meeting him was perhaps the most awesome experience I owe to writing for Power Line. I had the great good fortune of meeting Colonel Thorsness in the summer of 2008 through the offices of McCain campaign midwest spokesman Tom Steward (now with Center of the American Experiment). When Tom invited me to meet with Leo
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May 1, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
In an interview yesterday, President Trump speculated that Andrew Jackson might have prevented the Civil War. He’s probably right. Indeed, any Democratic president of that era might well have prevented it. The Democrats were the party that accommodated Southern slaveholders, of which Andrew Jackson was one. Sufficient accommodation in 1861 very likely would have prevented, or postponed, the Civil War. It had done so in the past eight years of
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May 1, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Vivan Gornick exudes nostalgia for The Romance of Communism, as she called her 1978 book documenting the memories of old members of the Communist Party USA. Marion Magid’s unamused review of Gornick’s book for Commentary performs an expert anatomy on a reeking carcass of a book. Anticipating May Day today, the Times turned valuable real estate in its Sunday Review section yesterday over to Gornick for a rerun of her
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April 30, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein both spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner last night. Time has posted their speeches in case you were otherwise occupied at the time. They had some advice for President Trump. In part they revisited past glories covering the Watergate scandal and taking down President Nixon. They have a few loose ends to tie up. For example, they still haven’t discovered what Nixon’s guys were
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April 29, 2017 — Scott Johnson
USA Today rounded up a panel of observers to grade President Trump on his first 100 days in office. It’s a tough crowd. Five of the 10 contributors award Trump a D or lower. Glenn Reynolds stands out in the crowd. Glenn teaches law, presides over InstaPundit and writes a regular column for USA Today. He awards Trump an A+. Grade inflation has nothing to do with it. His case
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April 23, 2017 — Steven Hayward
It was 20 years ago that Thomas G. West, nowadays the Potter professor of politics at Hillsdale College, published Vindicating the Founders: Race, Sex, Class, and Justice in the Origins of America. The book was a tour de force against the left’s relentless attacks on and distortions of the American founding, and it is an indispensable reference book for every one of the left’s clichés about the supposed defects, if
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April 22, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The date was April 22, 1970. The place (for me) was Hanover, New Hampshire. I don’t think I participated in the festivities. However, I do recall a band playing “Season of the Witch.” Beatniks are out to make it rich; Oh no, must be the season of the witch. Appropriate, as it turned out. The first Earth Day came full of gloomy commentary and predictions from the scientific community. Mark
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April 19, 2017 — Scott Johnson
A reader writes to add a comment on my post noting the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Doolittle Raid yesterday: Because it was not at all obvious, reporters asked FDR from where the Doolittle raid bombers were launched. He just smiled and answered: “Shangri-La!” This great answer added to the mystique and psychological impact of the raid and maintained complete secrecy. In contrast, within hours of the killing of Osama bin
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April 18, 2017 — Scott Johnson
If you’ve ever learned the story of Doolittle’s Raid and Doolittle’s Raiders, you remember. After Pearl Harbor, as Japan was racking up victories in the Pacific, then Army Air Force Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle led something like a suicide mission to bomb Tokyo. Today is the seventy-fifth anniversary of Doolittle’s Raid. On the occasion Gerald Skoning recalls the story’s highlights in “How Doolittle little did so much for so many
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April 13, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The bill of indictment against the 1970s usually leads with Jimmy Carter, disco, bell bottoms and leisure suits, pet rocks, those Damn Yankees, the bogus “energy crisis,” and stagflation. And did I make sure to mention Jimmy Carter? But maybe we’ve overlooked one key data set with a marker of 1970s weirdness (click to embiggen): You can find more over on Reddit.
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March 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump admires Andrew Jackson. He sees himself as Jacksonian. Accordingly, it might instructive to recall how President Jackson is said to have responded when the Supreme Court ruled, in Worcester v. Georgia, that Georgia laws calling for the seizure of Cherokee lands violated federal treaties. Here is the statement Jackson may have made: John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it. Jackson may never have uttered
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February 22, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Today is the anniversary of the birth of George Washington. Of all the great men of the revolutionary era to whom we owe our freedom, Washington’s greatness was the rarest and the most needed. At this remove in time, it is also the hardest to comprehend. Take, for example, Washington’s contribution to the Constitutional Convention of 1787. Washington’s mere presence lent the undertaking and its handiwork the legitimacy that resulted
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