The latest to comment on the Richwine defenestration: Patrick Buchanan, with perhaps the sharpest response yet. Read it at the peril of your soul — or at the very least, of your adjustment to the Matrix. Update, May 15th: adding Charles Murray and Andrew Sullivan.
According to a story in today’s Washington Examiner, the systematic harrying of conservative groups by the federal government was not limited to the IRS. It’s becoming clearer by the day why Barack Obama selected Joe Biden as his running mate. More here.
It was quite a day at the Benghazi hearings: sharp contradictions of the Obama administration’s account of events (regarding in particular the YouTube story and the failure to provide both security and relief), as well as clear signs of a coverup. This story is not going away. Meanwhile, the Washington Post — which as, readers [...]
Speaking of the Heritage Foundation (see our Sanford post just below), here’s a report they’ve just released: The Fiscal Cost of Unlawful Immigrants and Amnesty to the U.S. Taxpayer. Spoiler: it’s a lot.
Well! South Carolina’s in the news again. The story this evening is that the swinish philanderer Mark Sanford has defeated the liberal candidate, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, for the vacant House seat left open by Rep. Tim Scott’s ascent to the Senate (which in turn followed Jim DeMint’s abdication of his Senate seat in order to [...]
South Carolina’s at it again, this time pushing back against Obamacare. More here. Be sure to watch the embedded video of Walter Williams, professor of economics at George Mason University, testifying before a South Carolina House subcommittee on the history of nullification, and the support it draws from the writings of the Framers.
Here’s a link to the latest report from the Congressional inquiry into the Benghazi fiasco and whitewash. A synopsis: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY An ongoing Congressional investigation across five House Committees concerning the events surrounding the September 11, 2012, terrorist attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya has made several determinations to date, including: – Reductions of [...]
April 22, 2013 – 10:56 am
Here’s a real corker from Walter Russell Mead, on the vanity and foolishness of Maureen Dowd. I used to enjoy Ms. Dowd’s columns, long ago; she writes well, with tartness and wit. Gradually the appeal faded. Call it an acquired distaste.
April 21, 2013 – 11:44 pm
“There can be no peace of mind in love, since the advantage one has secured is never anything but a fresh starting-point for further desires.” – Marcel Proust
April 18, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Yesterday I wrote that gun-control advocates had lost in a “clean sweep” of Senate votes. That’s not quite true. One of the defeated proposals was a requirement that all states reciprocally honor concealed-carry permits. In a rare moment of agreement with Chuck Schumer, I think it’s good that this idea was voted down. It’s anti-federalist, [...]
Well! I’ve been traveling all day, but having arrived in the outer Cape I see we extremists (being one of which, I have it on excellent authority, is under the circumstances no vice) made a clean sweep today in Washington. Most gratifying to win a battle every now and again. On to immigration “reform”!
Today we have an excellent piece by Charles C.W. Cooke on the abrogation, by gun-control partisans, of rational deliberation in favor of shameless appeals to emotion. (Mind you, the abrogation itself is very much the product of rational calculation; the politicians and pundits doing this are clearly aware that such vile mawkishness can be a [...]
With bills addressing both issues making their way through Congress, here are two fine articles by Thomas Sowell: one on gun control, and the other on “immigration reform”. I wish Sowell weren’t quite so old; such clear thinkers are as valuable as they are rare.
When you abandon reason and due process, and act only upon hysteria, emotion and sensationalism, this is what you get. That such people are in charge of our public affairs — and have the power to revise and abridge our cherished liberties at their whim — is horrifying.
Today’s good news: it looks like Dianne Feinstein’s ban on so-called “assault weapons” is dying on the vine.
I guess we’re all feeling pretty low, now that the Sequester has gone into effect. I haven’t been paying much attention to the news since Friday (been busy arranging the canned goods down in the shelter), but if the predictions I’d been hearing have turned out to be correct, the entire nation is now unemployed, [...]
Back in January the New York State legislature rammed through a major gun-control bill, in the middle of the night, as a hysterical reaction to the Newtown shootings. The legislators were given just a few minutes to read the bill before a vote was called, in violation of a law that imposes a three-day review [...]
February 28, 2013 – 1:54 pm
Here’s Maxine Waters, who is a walking one-woman argument for limiting the power of the Federal government, “explaining” sequestration. Apparently, more jobs will be lost — 170 million — than currently exist. As Charles Cooke said on Twitter just now, “I wouldn’t trust this woman to explain how a fork works.”
February 26, 2013 – 11:13 pm
If a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s a festschrift on Federal spending, from the Heritage Foundation. Browse. And just for some perspective about the calamitous effects of the impending “sequestration” — upon which event, we are told, the sun will be folded up, the heavens flayed, the pregnant she-camels neglected, and Hell set [...]
February 12, 2013 – 11:58 pm
I haven’t got a whole lot to say about the speech. What did anyone expect? There isn’t a problem anywhere on Earth that isn’t best solved by some new Federal program, “partnership”, or “investment”. And all without adding a “single dime” to the deficit. There was the call for higher Federal minimum wage, the argument [...]
February 10, 2013 – 9:34 pm
Attentive readers may recall that a few years ago we U.S. taxpayers lent $465 million to Tesla, a maker of electric cars. More recently we restructured the loan so that Tesla wouldn’t run out of money. (It is now, after all, a matter of vital national interest that Elon Musk’s entrepreneurial speculations actually pay off.) [...]
February 9, 2013 – 10:46 pm
In case you haven’t heard, the chattering classes are all atwitter about a talk given at the recent National Prayer Breakfast by one Ben Carson, chief of pediatric neurosurgery at John Hopkins. At the podium, standing just a few feet away from President Obama, Dr. Carson spoke about several matters of national policy — in [...]
January 25, 2013 – 11:29 pm
Remember those “recess appointments” to the National Labor Relations Board that President Obama went ahead and made last January, when the Senate wasn’t in recess? The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia today ruled them unconstitutional. The Obama administration seems inclined to ignore the ruling, with Jay Carney today declaring that [...]
January 22, 2013 – 3:51 pm
Yuval Levin has written an excellent, and even-tempered, response to yesterday’s unapologetically collectivist speech by the President. Levin seizes on what I also thought was a key point, namely that Mr. Obama remains frankly and resolutely committed to the hollowing out of the essential layers of civil society that stand between the individual citizen and [...]
January 22, 2013 – 1:58 pm
Speaking of yesterday’s inauguration, some of you might not have seen the hat that Justice Antonin Scalia wore. More here.
January 15, 2013 – 7:54 pm
Seizing its chance, New York’s legislature has now, in a breathless rush of immoderate and ill-considered haste, passed one of the nation’s strictest gun laws. Similar measures are soon to be attempted at a national level. Those in power should be mindful, just now, not to push too hard, too fast; there is a tremendous [...]
January 5, 2013 – 5:54 pm
California, not so long ago the flagship of the American federation, has been going under for quite a while now: overfreighted with lavish entitlements, embarnacled with suffocating regulation, and holed below the waterline by demographic disintegration. Because attacking the root of the problem by reducing the expansion of government is for deep-blue California an ideological [...]
January 4, 2013 – 1:08 pm
In this brief item, Jim Pethokoukis weighs the various options for dealing with the looming debt-ceiling battle. Among them, in case you haven’t heard: trillion-dollar platinum coins.
December 21, 2012 – 11:33 am
One of our foremost gloominaries is Patrick Buchanan. Today, in a ringingly despondent essay, he looks at the past and the future of the Republican Party, and considers its prospects in light of the inexorable trend, in all democracies, toward relentless government expansion and ultimate exhaustion. His concluding remarks: If we would see our future, [...]
December 18, 2012 – 11:51 pm
This is amazing. From XKCD cartoonist Randall Munroe.
December 16, 2012 – 9:56 pm
With a hat tip to our friend Jeffery Hodges, here’s an excellent survey of the moribund and incoherent state of American conservatism. It is not a cheery picture.
December 13, 2012 – 11:27 pm
“Liberty and democracy are eternal enemies, and every one knows it who has ever given any sober reflection to the matter. A democratic state may profess to venerate the name, and even pass laws making it officially sacred, but it simply cannot tolerate the thing.” – H.L. Mencken, the Baltimore Evening Sun (13 April 1925) [...]
December 11, 2012 – 12:18 pm
In an item that’s been making the rounds since its publication a few days ago, Mark Steyn examines the modest lifestyle of America’s populist champion. Here.
November 28, 2012 – 11:24 am
From an article entitled When Work Is Punished: The Tragedy Of America’s Welfare State: We realize that this is a painful topic in a country in which the issue of welfare benefits, and cutting (or not) the spending side of the fiscal cliff, have become the two most sensitive social topics. Alas, none of that [...]
November 13, 2012 – 10:24 pm
My, what a lot of advice folks on the Left are giving the GOP all of a sudden! They seem truly concerned. It’s all very touching. Meanwhile, I’m encouraged by how eager so many on the Right seem to be to shape-shift into something more marketable to the tiny voting bloc they imagine they might [...]
November 7, 2012 – 12:44 pm
Peter Kirsanow posted this at the Corner today: Now that president Obama has been given more “flexibility,” conservatives need to pause, recharge, assess, recalibrate. Then fight. Conservatives can’t be in denial. The country may very well be at a tipping point. Yes, millions fewer voted for Obama than in 2008, but it’s astonishing and disconcerting [...]
November 6, 2012 – 11:56 am
Shortly after taking office in 2009, the newly minted President Barack Obama, speaking of his plan to re-energize America’s economy, told Matt Lauer: “If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.” OK, folks! Today’s the day. Let’s get out there and assert the proposition.
November 5, 2012 – 3:23 pm
An interesting item from Dan Foster. Here.
November 3, 2012 – 12:48 am
I’ve been almost completely disconnected from the Internet for the past couple of days (I traveled back yesterday to storm-ravaged New York City, where I’m staying with friends, as our house here is still uninhabitable due to a construction project). So for tonight, just an item from the mailbag. The latest edition of Jonah Goldberg’s [...]
October 31, 2012 – 10:47 am
Here’s a video that’s making the rounds, from Steven Crowder (the fellow who gave us that Lena Dunham parody a few days ago). In this one Mr. Crowder “redistributes” Hallowe’en candy to reduce inequality. Needless to say, the kids he’s taking the candy from don’t like it. It’s a funny video, sort of, and yes, [...]
October 28, 2012 – 2:49 pm
With a hat tip to Bill Keezer, here’s a look at the Obama administration’s increasingly routine use of kill lists and drone strikes to prosecute foreign policy. I excerpt two notable quotes from this post. The first is by its author: Benghazi illustrates the problem of the President having the authority for everything and the [...]
October 27, 2012 – 10:25 pm
Here’s a story that’s making the rounds today. I have no way of assessing its veracity.
October 27, 2012 – 8:26 pm
By now you’ve probably seen the Obama campaign’s video featuring Girls star Lena Dunham. It’s a pitch to female first-time voters, and the conceit of the video is to liken a girl’s first voting experience to her first sexual experience. “Your first time shouldn’t be with just anybody,” the tattooed Ms. Dunham explains. “You want [...]
October 24, 2012 – 3:58 pm
Mitt Romney drew scorn from Obama supporters, and warm approval from the rest of us, when he referred to Barack Obama’s “apology tour” during Monday’s debate. Obama apologizing for America? Never happened, says the Left. (Indeed, they even said it here.) Pah! Mere pettifogging and hairsplitting. Blogger Jeryl Bier explains, deftly and succinctly, here.
October 22, 2012 – 10:47 pm
Well, there you have it, America. We don’t have to watch any more debates until the next presidential campaign gets underway, which won’t be for several months yet. Romney held his own well enough, and landed a few good blows (best of all: the apology tour). He looked steady and calm, and plausibly Presidential. That [...]
October 22, 2012 – 5:55 pm
Readers, today we have come to the last debate of this historic election cycle. The stakes couldn’t be higher: upon this election hinges the very survival of this great Republic, and the security of our children, and our children’s children. So here’s tonight’s drinking game.
October 20, 2012 – 9:06 pm
Just got this in the mail from the Obama campaign:
October 20, 2012 – 12:30 pm
With just over two weeks to go until the election, I know many of you are still in the critical “undecided” column. If so, then perhaps this rousing exhortation, sent to me this morning by African Americans for Obama, will help you make up your mind: The American people and President Obama know how to [...]
October 19, 2012 – 8:14 pm
Want more of this? It’s up to you. Sixteen days and counting.