Obama administration
June 29, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Until now the Obama administration seemed to have domesticated and neutered AIPAC, the proudly pro-Israel lobbying group. Michael Oren’s memoir Ally, published this past Tuesday, confirms this impression. Attending the annual AIPAC Minnesota dinner in Minneapolis last month, however, I was struck by the strong position taken on the imminent Iran deal. AIPAC set forth five criteria for an acceptable deal that would obviously obligate the organization to oppose the
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June 22, 2015 — Scott Johnson
You have to wonder if the Obama administration has ever uttered a true word about Obamacare. I say no. President Obama has shifted the prevarications into overdrive in anticipation of the Supreme Court’s imminent decision on the IRS’s regulatory revision of the Obamacare law in King v. Burwell. On the issue before the Court in the case, we await a true word from the Obama administration, but we’re not holding
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June 20, 2015 — Scott Johnson
Former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren is the author of the new book Ally: My Journey Across the American Israeli-Divide, to be published this coming Tuesday. Through the courtesies of Random House, I obtained and read an advance copy of the book in order to interview Ambassador Oren for a Power Line podcast that should be posted this weekend. I hope you will read the book and
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June 15, 2015 — John Hinderaker
A series of alarming data breaches over the last two years have cast doubt on our government’s competence with regard to cyber warfare. Glenn Reynolds writes about the most recent instance in USA Today: “Hackers linked to China have gained access to the sensitive background information submitted by intelligence and military personnel for security clearances, U.S. officials said Friday, describing a cyberbreach of federal records dramatically worse than first acknowledged.”
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June 9, 2015 — Steven Hayward
What can possibly explain the Justice Department’s subpoena of Reason demanding the identities of anonymous commenters on its website? Bloomberg columnist Virginia Postrel (the editor of Reason magazine back in the 1990s when I wrote for it frequently) explains: This is happening in America — weirdly, to a site I founded, and one whose commenters often earned my public contempt. Los Angeles legal blogger Ken White has obtained a grand
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June 7, 2015 — John Hinderaker
…your former White House Communications Director and Senior Advisor for Strategy and Communications tries to give you credit for winning a horse race. Yesterday, Dan Pfeiffer tweeted that American Pharoah’s Triple Crown is an “accomplishment” of President Obama’s: Another accomplishment — Obama first President to have a Triple Crown winner since Carter — Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 6, 2015 I have studied that tweet at length and can find no
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June 3, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Two polls, both by CNN, are getting a lot of attention, and rightly so. Let’s start with the one on President Obama, released this morning. This survey has Obama’s approval under water at 45%/52%. That isn’t a surprise, since Obama hasn’t topped 50% in the CNN poll in two years. Currently, Obama ranks below all former presidents; George W. Bush is now rated 52%/43% by these same respondents. So the
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May 26, 2015 — Scott Johnson
We doubt that President Obama is a great leader in the defense of the national security of the United States, and the evidence supporting our doubt is abundant. In the Middle East, we see Iran asserting its power from Iraq and Yemen to Syria and Lebanon. We see ISIS on the march. We see al Qaeda and its affiliates expanding their forces. Elsewhere in the world, we see China and
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May 3, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Police shootings and other tales of alleged police abuse (e.g., Eric Garner) dominate the news these days. You can hardly open a newspaper or turn on a television set without seeing protesters, rioters and looters, along with earnest talking heads debating the issue. Why is this? Why has violence on the part of policemen become the story du jour? One possible answer is that police violence is a terrible problem
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April 26, 2015 — John Hinderaker
There has been quite a bit of news coverage of this year’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Don’t ask me why. The annual lovefest between Democratic politicians and Democratic journalists hasn’t generated any actual news in a long time. But this year’s event was perhaps notable because it exposed our president’s bitterness, as he approaches the end of his term. Humor is often revealing. Obama began with a joke that would
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April 8, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The White House hacking story is in the news again today with the revelation by CNN that officials believe the hacking was performed by operators acting on behalf of the Russian government. According to CNN, the hacking took place via the State Department computer system. CNN’s story is reported under the headline “How the U.S. thinks Russians hacked the White House.” The relevance of the hacking of the Executive Office
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April 4, 2015 — John Hinderaker
It was a bad week for the economy. A mere 126,000 jobs were added in March, far below expectations, and average pay declined. One wonders how many of those jobs were part time. Further, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta cut its estimate of first quarter GDP growth to zero: The U.S. economy isn’t off to a great start in 2015. It’s looking so rotten that the Federal Reserve Bank
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March 29, 2015 — John Hinderaker
Lately there has been a fair amount of happy talk from liberal pundits about our supposedly robust economy. Such optimistic evaluations have been guarded, since everyone knows that the jobs picture is still bleak, largely because of runaway legal and illegal immigration. But there is an even more fundamental measure by which the Obama administration is an economic failure. The 2014 numbers are now in on America’s gross domestic product,
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March 16, 2015 — John Hinderaker
The Environmental Protection Agency has long been in the forefront of Obama administration lawlessness. Don’t forget: before Hillary Clinton’s secret email server came to light, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson was conducting government business off the books as “Richard Windsor,” which, she explained when caught, was the name of her dog. The EPA’s current usurpation, an effort to remake America’s power supply system, is much more serious. The EPA has proposed
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March 16, 2015 — John Hinderaker
When the history of Barack Obama’s presidency is written, his unrelenting attack on the Constitution will perhaps be the blackest mark against it. Our constitutional system is, in the end, fragile. It can scarcely withstand the repeated assaults, over a period of eight years, of an executive determined to ignore the law. Immigration is one of a number of areas where Barack Obama has trampled the Constitution without even the
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March 16, 2015 — Scott Johnson
The Free Beacon reports on the news buried in an op-column by AP president Gary Pruitt on the undermining of the Freedom of Information Act by “authorities” (to use Pruitt’s anodyne term) responsible for compliance with it. “We’re talking about this issue now because of Sunshine Week,” Pruitt explains, “created a decade ago to showcase the laws that give Americans the right to know what their government is up to.
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March 6, 2015 — Paul Mirengoff
A reader wonders whether, assuming that President Obama does not submit his nuclear deal with Iran to the Senate for ratification, the deal would bind our next president. In my opinion, it would not. The administration apparently does not intend to submit the deal to Congress. Secretary of State Kerry justifies this decision on the theory that the president has the inherent authority to execute foreign policy. If so, the
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