November 5, 2010 – 10:17 pm
Charles Krauthammer has written a good piece on the recent election. In particular he makes clear that this is very definitely not Republican Beatlemania: This is not, however, a rejection of Democrats as a party. The center-left party as represented by Bill Clinton remains competitive in every cycle. (Which is why he was the most [...]
November 1, 2010 – 5:37 pm
We’ve been hearing an awful lot during this election cycle about our aloof “elites” (a demographic segment that generally overlaps what Scott Rasmussen defines as “the political class”). Members of the group in question understandably bristle at the characterization, preferring to imagine that they are the salt of the earth. (“Elite? Moi??”) In case you [...]
October 28, 2010 – 9:07 am
Bill Vallicella, the Maverick Philosopher, wrote a sharp little post a couple of days ago about the divergent philosophical assumptions that inspirit the political struggle between liberals and conservatives. The problem, he argues, can be represented as an aporetic tetrad: In illustration of my thesis, consider the the values of individual liberty and material (as [...]
October 26, 2010 – 11:00 pm
To define the word “chutzpah”, the example usually given is that of a teen who murders his parents, and then insists that the court take mercy on an orphan. And then there’s this. (P.S. During the several seconds I spent diligently researching this story, I also came across this feisty little website, which tickled me [...]
October 18, 2010 – 10:02 pm
We’ve just got back to Gotham from a delightful weekend in Cape Cod — including a brief hop, courtesy of a friend with a a small plane, over to Martha’s Vineyard (where the lovely Nina and I first met, 35 summers ago). During the drive back to the city, we listened in on a “debate” [...]
October 8, 2010 – 3:07 pm
Might this fall’s impending conservative landslide actually help Barack Obama’s chances for re-election? Victor Davis Hanson, in an essay over at NRO, makes the case that the Transformer-In-Chief might be in a position to benefit from the economic lift that a conservative Congress would provide, while telling his progressive base he’s still true to his [...]
October 6, 2010 – 4:58 pm
If the Tea Party is, as I’ve suggested, an American Salafist movement, then it seems natural enough for it to quote the Prophet in justification of its own existence. (Of course the Tea Party’s “Prophet” is not one man, but many: namely, the Founding Fathers, peace be upon them.) To that end, here’s a piquant [...]
September 29, 2010 – 11:26 pm
In a recent column, David Brooks had this to say about the scope of government nowadays: The heart of any moral system is the connection between action and consequences. Today’s public anger rises from the belief that this connection has been severed in one realm after another. Financiers send the world into recession and don’t [...]
September 15, 2010 – 11:31 pm
Tea Party candidates made a strong showing in primary elections yesterday, and as a conservative sort myself I can’t say I was sorry to see it happen. The American people are roused to righteous anger, and by all indications, there are going to be an awful lot of wigs on the green come November. Of [...]
September 14, 2010 – 10:43 am
Back in July we looked at the details of an onerous provision hidden deep inside the recent health-care bill. It was a little booby-trap requiring that businesses file 1099-MISC forms for all purchases over $600 — mandating an enormous compliance burden on small businesses, in an effort to bleed enough private-sector money into the public [...]
September 9, 2010 – 10:20 pm
With a hat-tip to reader JK, here’s my favorite campaign video of the season.
August 6, 2010 – 11:12 pm
Elena Kagan lately having been confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, John Derbyshire gives us a preview on this week’s Radio Derb (transcript here) of what he thinks we’ll be getting: Look for lots of wonderful new rights to be discovered buried in the Constitution — things that mysteriously escaped the attention of [...]
August 5, 2010 – 10:09 pm
Lawrence Auster brings to our attention a hot item: the rank and file of ICE (that’s the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Union) have issued an angry letter announcing a vote of no confidence in their director, John Morton, and assistant director, Phyllis Coven. The letter says that the enforcement agents were, in effect, intentionally prevented [...]
In a recent post, I linked to an essay by Heather Mac Donald in which she wondered whether the DOJ’s assumption of “preemption” might apply to Arizona’s enforcement of immigration law, and not just its creation of law (the law in question being, of course, the controversial S.B. 1070). In other words, Ms. Mac Donald [...]
August 2, 2010 – 10:07 pm
Yet another excellent item from today’s above-average miscellany at NRO: a balanced and thoughtful essay on the banning of the burqa, by independent journalist Claire Berlinsky. Ms. Berlinsky begins by acknowledging the many good arguments against such a ban — in particular the compelling point (previously emphasized here at waka waka waka by commenters Peter [...]
Lots of good reading over at NRO today. Heather Mac Donald has contributed a thoughtful analysis of the legal tug-of-war between Arizona and the DOJ over S.B. 1070 and the question of “preemption”. What does the existing body of case law indicate: does “preemption doctrine” apply only to statutes, or can it be extended to [...]
In an essay that is sure to have critics across the aisle whetting their ad hominem knives, Arthur Laffer explains why soak-the-rich tax increases are a bad idea. Here.
According to a recent release from Gallup: PRINCETON, NJ — Gallup’s 2010 Confidence in Institutions poll finds Congress ranking dead last out of the 16 institutions rated this year. Eleven percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress, down from 17% in 2009 and a percentage [...]
Paul Krugman has been awfully lathered up lately. His fulminating resentment of conservatives for causing all the world’s ills (and worse, for disregarding his Olympian sagacity) has gotten downright pyretic, and in his twice-weekly tirades he seems — due, no doubt, to the July heat — increasingly indifferent to the need to clothe his recriminations [...]
The influential (and generally non-partisan) think-tank The Cato Institute has published an in-depth assessment of the recent health-care bill. It’s a hefty read, and not at all encouraging. Here.
On September 6th, 1824, at Monticello, the eighty-one-year-old Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to one William Ludlow (my emphasis): …I have observed this march of civilization advancing from the sea coast, passing over us like a cloud of light, increasing our knowledge and improving our condition, insomuch as that we are at this time [...]
Within the IRS is an agency called the Taxpayer Advocate Service. Here’s what it is, according to the IRS.gov website: The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) is an independent organization within the IRS whose employees assist taxpayers who are experiencing economic harm, who are seeking help in resolving tax problems that have not been resolved through [...]
The DOJ has now uncorked its long-threatened lawsuit against Arizona for the latter’s audacity in attempting to enforce Federal law to stem the disastrous tide of undocumented Democrats streaming into the state from across the border. Blogger Ann Althouse examines the suit’s premises here. Her commenter “Mesquito” crisply summed up the seething frustration of a [...]
103° today. It’s hard to think original thoughts while undergoing massive organ failure, so for tonight I will just add my own to the chorus of voices yelping in indignation over the interview that NASA director Charles Bolden gave to al-Jazeera. Here’s what he said (starting at about 1:11): “Before I became the NASA administrator, [...]
Here’s an interesting little item. In 2000, the Supreme Court struck down Nebraska’s ban on partial-birth abortion. In their decision they cited a policy report by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). A key phrase in the report said that the procedure “may be the best or most appropriate procedure in a particular [...]
John Derbyshire (who, by the way, if he ever finds himself at loose ends in midtown Manhattan at the end of the workday, should get in touch with me because I will buy him a good glass of whisky), aired a particularly snappy episode of his “Radio Derb” podcast last week. Have a listen here.
Senator Robert Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia and the longest-serving member of Congress in U.S. history, died this morning. I will leave it to others to provide the eulogy. It’s unclear what will happen to his seat. The state’s Democratic governor will appoint an interim Senator, but whether a special election will be held this [...]
Here’s Peggy West, Democratic county supervisor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, explaining why all right-thinking people should support a boycott of Arizona over SB1070.
In today’s Best of the Web James Taranto points out something both funny and sad. It’s the website of the Democratic candidate for governor of Nevada. His name is “Rory”, and the site is called “Rory 2010″. But what’s his last name? It doesn’t seems to say anywhere… how odd! Odd, that is, until you [...]
There’s a savory juxtaposition on the Op-Ed page of today’s Times. In the top-left position we have yet another column from former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, calling for further government stimulus of the economy (he’s been tag-teaming with Bob Herbert on this theme for months now). It begins: Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; [...]
As the Obama administration prepares its legal attack upon Arizona for trying, in desperation, to enforce federal immigration law, Allahpundit over at Hot Air reports that Arizona Senator John Kyl says that President Obama actually told him in a meeting that he won’t do anything about border security because it doesn’t serve his political interests. [...]
As the conservative eye surveys the field of presidential prospects for 2012, it is hard for it not to linger appreciatively upon New Jersey’s straight-talking new governor, Chris Christie. To understand why, have a look at this collection of video clips, which the National Review has gathered together under the title Chris Christie’s “Common Sense [...]
Here is a fine little essay by Thomas Sowell on the seasonal tide of self-congratulating commencement speeches by public “servants”. So good is it, in fact, that I reproduce it in its entirety below.
Readers who have been trying to get a handle on Elena Kagan may find this interesting: her baccalaureate thesis from Princeton, written in 1981. In it she makes a searching examination of the causes leading to the self-destruction of the American Socialist Party in the years following the First World War. She concludes with the [...]
Amongst the many blessings conferred upon a reluctant polity by the recent health-care bill is a little “Easter egg” you may not yet have heard about. (To be fair, I suspect that most of the solons who poked this egregious legislation down our gullets didn’t know about it either, though that hardly redounds to their [...]
Today I read, at the new conservative/HBD website Alternative Right, an essay by Jim Kalb called The Effects Of Inclusiveness. A sample: No person or society can realize all human possibilities. We are finite creatures who realize ourselves–become good, happy, productive, vibrant, and creative–by becoming something in particular. Since we are social, that particularity requires [...]
Here’s another pointed essay about the Arizona brouhaha: What If Arizona Were Quebec?
In a speech at the University of Michigan on Saturday, President Obama castigated critics of recent government excesses, reminding them that “government is us”. This seems innocent enough, but in fact it is chilling. The Founders saw a powerful central government as an unfortunate and dangerous necessity, the only way to administer certain tasks that [...]
I’ve been mum about politics for a few weeks, and in particular haven’t said anything about the controversial Arizona legislation, although as you might imagine I of course see no reason why Arizona shouldn’t act if the federal government simply won’t. Meanwhile, here in New York our own mayor — who, as both New York [...]
April 12, 2010 – 10:02 pm
Some time ago, while the lovely Nina and I were visting our daughter at college in Ann Arbor, we went to a local comedy club. The featured act was a very funny fellow by the name of D.C. Malone, who told us, after he was intoduced, that he had just quit drinking a few weeks [...]
March 23, 2010 – 10:45 pm
Well, as we might expect, the events of Sunday night have provoked quite a Festschrift on the right. Here’s Mark Steyn, at National Review Online, on the decline of great nations. Here’s Dennis Prager, also at NRO, who sees this ideological conflict as nothing less than a bloodless civil war. Here’s George Will, on “America’s [...]
March 22, 2010 – 11:32 am
“Come, thick night, And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of hell, That my keen knife see not the wound it makes, Nor heaven peep through the blanket of the dark, To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’” The fell deed is done. In today’s Wall Street Journal, Kimberly Strassel gives us a peep beneath the blanket. “Ay, [...]
March 16, 2010 – 10:03 pm
The statist machinations of the new kings of the hill in Washington inspired me a little while ago to read The Federalist Papers, which previously I had only sampled, more or less at random. They are, if you have never read them, a series of 85 essays, published pseudonymously in 1787-88 by John Jay, James [...]
February 28, 2010 – 6:52 pm
As you all know, the global-warming community has been under a great deal of pressure lately. Its Pontifex Maximus, Albert A. Gore, published a lengthy riposte in the Times today. You can read it here. It is about what you would expect: a reminder that even if the scientific claims of the global-warming industry are [...]
February 13, 2010 – 11:37 pm
In the essay linked to in our previous post, historian Gerard Alexander discussed the opinion, common amongst liberal critics, that Republicans lack the temperament, or perhaps even the basic intelligence and necessary habits of thought, for focused, critical examination of complex social, political, and philosophical issues. We are pleased tonight to offer a devastating counterexample, [...]
February 13, 2010 – 7:24 pm
Once again it’s been a busy few days, with little time for brooding and writing. For now, then, here’s an essay that has been making the rounds for a week or so: Why Are Liberals So Condescending? It’s by one Gerard Alexander, who teaches politics at the University of Virginia. In it he identifies, and [...]
February 9, 2010 – 12:27 pm
An article in today’s New York Times describes frustration amongst black activists over what they see as insufficiently preferential treatment from the President. Here’s an example: On Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Black Caucus have expressed irritation that Mr. Obama has not created programs tailored specifically to African-Americans, who are suffering disproportionately in the [...]
February 5, 2010 – 4:30 pm
A commenter here recently said: “Wake me up if Charles Krauthammer ever gets anything right.” Coffee?
February 2, 2010 – 9:56 pm
Hats off to Sarah Palin. While others are bickering about trivial superficialities — health care, the economy, and other inconsequential distractions — Ms. Palin has seized upon an issue of genuine substance: White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s characterization of certain Senate liberals as “f***ing retarded”. Now some will say that this is a [...]
January 29, 2010 – 12:01 am
Having absorbed much of the commentary on President Obama’s speech last night, I have nothing to add here that hasn’t been said already by all of the usual bloggers and pundits. I will second a few thoughts though. First, I thought the president seemed oddly unfazed by recent events. He certainly wasn’t ill at ease; [...]