December 16, 2012 — Scott Johnson

Kerry me back: A comment

Featured image A reader comments on my recollection of John Kerry at Dartmouth in 1971. His message revisits some old issues that have new salience in light of Kerry’s prospective nomination as Secretary of State by President Obama: I’m afraid the current administration is unlikely to consider character, judgment, or patriotism as important factors for any political appointment. In an earlier century in Massachusetts, this habitual liar, narcissist, and apologist for the »
December 16, 2012 — Scott Johnson

Brave old world

Featured imageAn editorial paragraph in the November 12 National Review caught my attention. It concisely relates a story that dates to early October: Last month Megan Ryan was elected homecoming queen by her classmates at Bishop Hartley High School in Columbus, Ohio. Ryan has Down Syndrome, a condition associated with cognitive disability and an enlarged capacity for expressing affection. As high-school seniors, her peers belong to a cohort especially susceptible to »
December 15, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

My thesis about Hagel

Featured imagePolitico reports that President Obama, having just backed down from one major Senate confirmation fight, may be running headlong into another one, as “some in the Jewish community and other Israel backers are reacting with alarm to reports that Obama is preparing to nominate former Sen. Chuck Hagel as secretary of defense.” Politico adds that “Obama will have to assess how big a furor pro-Israel forces will raise and whether »
December 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Miss Universe: The Betting Odds

Featured imageThe finale of the Miss Universe pageant is Wednesday evening. The preliminary round took place on Thursday; it wasn’t televised but was streamed live on the internet. You can watch it here if so inclined. The pageant’s National Costume event was last night; some consider it a rather odd feature of the Miss Universe pageant, but you can watch that, too, on the Miss Universe site. With the finale only »
December 15, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

QE-infinity: Two Views

Featured imageWhat should we make of Ben Bernanke’s historic decision to link interest rates to an unemployment target? I take a negative view, but that’s just a reaction, not an analysis. Let’s turn the floor over to two experts, James Pethokoukis, who favors the move, and King Banaian, who doesn’t. First, Pethokoukis: Let’s look at the economy right now and identity what its biggest problems are. GDP growth will likely come »
December 15, 2012 — Steven Hayward

The Weekly Winston: Public Opinion in American Democracy

Featured imageThis short fragment from volume III of The World Crisis, published in 1927, is worth keeping in mind as we watch the ongoing political fight over the fiscal cliff.  (By the way, notice the curious but prescient mistake in this passage.*) The rigid Constitution of the United States, the gigantic scale of its party machinery, the fixed terms for which public officers and representatives are chosen, invest the President with »
December 15, 2012 — John Hinderaker

The Sandy Hook Murders: What To Do?

Featured imageIn the wake of yesterday’s mass murder at Sandy Hook elementary school, calls for government to “do something” are everywhere. President Obama says we must take “meaningful action” on gun violence. OK, but what action is that? He didn’t say. A logical starting point is to ask why mass murderers like Adam Lanza do it. Most of them don’t intend to survive; their murders are a form of suicide culminating »
December 15, 2012 — Scott Johnson

In search of antithesis

Featured imageFormer Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel is apparently the prospective Obama nominee to replace Leon Panetta as the Secretary of Defense. Earlier this week my daughter Eliana reported how he has been lobbying for a senior position in the administration. With Chuck Hagel at Defense and John Kerry at State, we would have a one-two punch aimed squarely at our own head. In the Weekly Standard editorial “The Hagel thesis,” Bill »
December 14, 2012 — John Hinderaker

IPCC Admission Has Climate World Buzzing

Featured imageGlobal warming hysteria has been driven largely by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued four politically-driven and, in crucial ways, inconsistent reports. The IPCC is now working on report number five, and the current draft has been leaked. It contains a bombshell that may or may not survive in the final product; but in the meantime, the cat is out of the bag. This is »
December 14, 2012 — John Hinderaker

Muslim Persecution of Christians, October 2012

Featured imageRaymond Ibrahim does a great, if depressing, service by periodically cataloging Muslim persecution of Christians around the world. This month’s recitation includes, among others, these incidents: Egypt: A Muslim mob, consisting mostly of Salafis, surrounded St. George Church in the Beni Suef Governorate. Armed with batons, they assaulted Christians as they exited the church after Sunday mass; five were hospitalized with broken limbs. The Salafi grievance is that Christians from »
December 14, 2012 — Steven Hayward

Who Reads Power Line?

Featured imageSyndicated columnist, best-selling author, and all-around troublemaker Jonah Goldberg, that’s who.  In this brief clip, he indicates his approval of John’s “tasteful” coverage of beauty pageants.  Sort of. JOHN demurs: I think Jonah may have been referring to Paul’s tasteful analysis of the deductibility of municipal bond interest. »
December 15, 2012 — Scott Johnson

Kerry me back

Featured imageToday brings word that President Obama has settled on John Kerry as Secretary of State succeeding Hillary Clinton. The record of Kerry’s opinions in American foreign policy is long and deep, distinguished by its devotion to mischief, error and misjudgment. To take only one small example, Jay Nordlinger documented Kerry’s wayward ways Latin America in the 2004 National Review article “Back in Sandinista days…” We’ll have to talk to our »
December 15, 2012 — Steven Hayward

Let Us Now Praise Enviro-Dissidents

Featured imageWhat’s the opposite of the Green Weenie?  Not sure, but we we’re going to have to come up with one for the folks in the environmental camp who break with orthodoxy or think critically about the subject, risking the wrath of the environmental establishment in the process.  We’ve mentioned Keith Kloor here on Power Line before (“Definitely Not a Green Weenie”), and he’s got an important story about what I »
December 14, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

The Edmund Hillary of foreign policy climbers falls short

Featured imageLast month, I posed this question: Should the Secretary of State be a dupe? The answer turned out to be, not this dupe. Rice is a special kind of dupe — the kind who is willing, indeed anxious, to be duped in the service of those who can advance her career. Is this the unduly harsh assessment of a “right-winger”? Not really. Jacob Heilbrunn, from the other side of the »
December 14, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Ivy league profundity falls flat on ESPN

Featured imageI wasn’t going to comment about the remarks of the racist ESPN talking head who suggested that football star Robert Griffin III might be a “cornball brother” (i.e., an inauthentic black) because Griffin’s fiance is white and he might even be a Republican. Random stupidity doesn’t interest me. But then I heard that the taking head in question, Rob Parker, attended graduate school in journalism at Columbia University. Thus, his »
December 14, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

Chuck Hagel and the malignant neglect of Israel

Featured imageChuck Hagel is now thought to be the front-runner for Secretary of Defense. He would be an extremely poor choice. For one thing, he is overly averse to sending U.S. forces into harm’s way. Skepticism about doing so is healthy, of course. But Hagel’s overreaction to the Iraq war seems to have made him so reluctant to support the deployment of troops to battle that his job performance might well »
December 14, 2012 — Paul Mirengoff

The municipal bond tax loophole — low-hanging fiscal fruit

Featured imagePeter Schweizer proposes a tax increase that will raise $124.4 billion over the next ten years. He wants to eliminate the tax-exempt interest on municipal bonds for upper income Americans and, with respect to newly issued municipal bonds, eliminate it for all Americans regardless of income. According to Schweitzer, this move would produce $124.4 billion over the next ten years. Not surprisingly, President Obama has already proposed limiting or ending »