December 4, 2014 – 11:51 am
Even the Washington Post now agrees that President Obama’s unilateral action on immigration is unprecedented, and that his claims to the contrary are audacious and palpable falsehoods. It is now up to Congress to defend its Constitutional authority in the only way it can, short of impeachment: by using the power of the purse to […]
November 20, 2014 – 3:03 pm
Everybody’s talking about the unilateral illegal-alien amnesty President Obama plans to announce tonight. (One thing you may not have heard, buy the way, is that it will add as many new foreign workers as there have been jobs created since 2009, at a time when, for example, unemployment among blacks, who will disproportionately be competing […]
November 19, 2014 – 3:44 pm
“First of all, temporary protective status historically has been used for special circumstances where you have immigrants to this country who are fleeing persecution in their countries. Or there’s some emergency situation in their native land that required them to come to the United States. So it would not be appropriate to use that just […]
November 14, 2014 – 5:49 pm
The Democrats, and by proxy Barack Obama, got hammered last week. Lest you think this was just some low-turnout election that doesn’t really mean much, a Gallup poll taken afterwards indicated that by a sizable margin — 53% to 36% — Americans would rather have the GOP at the helm than Mr. Obama. (And that’s […]
November 7, 2014 – 10:41 pm
In case any of you blue-state types are losing some of your mojo in the wake of this week’s whuppin’, and might even be thinking about joining the forces of Good and Truth and Liberty and Tradition and Reason over here on the Right, here’s some gentle prodding from one Danusha V. Goshka: Ten Reasons […]
November 5, 2014 – 7:53 pm
In the wake of today’s bizarre, solipsistic White House presser, it seems that even Chris Matthews is beginning to see through Barack Obama’s charismatic aura. Better late than never, I guess. We all know people who are still under the man’s spell, even now.
November 5, 2014 – 10:46 am
Last night’s election results were a welcome sign of life, and a clear indication that the Left’s cultural and political blitzkrieg of the past few years has outstripped its supply lines, and conquered more territory than it can hold. Exactly what legislative ground can actually be retaken by the forces of order, liberty, sanity, and […]
November 3, 2014 – 1:38 pm
I’m a registered Democrat. Some of you may find this surprising. The reason is purely tactical: I am registered in New York City, where any conservative vote is just a drop in the left-wing ocean, so the best I can hope to do is to exert a microscopic influence, in the Democratic primaries, to support […]
October 28, 2014 – 6:07 pm
The comedian Bill Maher has, throughout his career, been a darling of the Left. His smug and odious schtick has for years consisted of taunting and ridiculing conservatives, Republicans, Christians, and pretty much anyone who represents American traditional values. (That he chooses to do so in the coarsest and most vulgar terms imaginable only serves […]
October 24, 2014 – 9:36 pm
This from Hillary Clinton today: “Don’t let anybody tell you that, you know, that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.” I kid you not.
October 5, 2014 – 10:02 pm
Sir Henry Sumner Maine on the locus of power in democracies: Political liberty, said Hobbes, is political power. When a man burns to be free, he is not longing for the “desolate freedom of the wild ass”; what he wants is a share of political government. But, in wide democracies, political power is minced into […]
September 24, 2014 – 2:51 pm
At NRO we have an excellent response, by Charles Cooke, to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s egregious illiberality regarding climate heretics. Longish excerpt: Were he to have his way, Kennedy admitted, he would cheer the prosecution of a host of “treasonous” figures — among them a number of unspecified “politicians’; those bêtes noires of the global […]
This just in: $619 billion missing from federal transparency site That’s billion with a B. Don’t forget, folks: tax day is April 15th. File early to make sure you avoid penalties and late fees.
Following on our item the other day about cultlike birthday messages from the President, I should mention that just after publishing that post, I got this: Malcolm — I don’t want to make this awkward, but… It looks like you haven’t signed OFA’s birthday card for President Obama yet. Today’s the big day — I […]
Ripples continue in the wake of the Halbig decision, over which Obamacare enthusiasts have been getting their knickers in a knot since the ruling came down. In today’s Washington Post, blogger Greg Sargent wrote a detailed item explaining, or so he thought, that the intent of the law was always to provide subsidies to people […]
The Obamacare Federal-exchange-subsidies plot just thickened a bit, with the discovery online of video of one of the Affordable Care Act’s architects, Jonathan Gruber, explaining in 2012, that the exclusion of Federal health-care exchanges from eligibility for IRS subsidies was no bug, but a feature. Its purpose, Gruber explained, was to pressure the states to […]
Shortly after yesterday’s post, a different circuit court — a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, based in Richmond — ruled on a similar case about the legality of IRS subsidies for health-care plans sold on Federal exchanges. (The language of the Affordable Care Act is absolutely unambiguous about this: […]
When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was about to become law, Nancy Pelosi famously scoffed at its critics, many of whom had said the proposed legislation was an incomprehensible dog’s breakfast of a bill, far too complicated for anyone in Congress to understand. “[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can […]
Following on our previous post, here’s a link I ought to have included: Jeremy Bentham on the Declaration of Independence.
There’s another important court ruling on the way, one that focuses on a serious weakness in the language of the Affordable Care Act. Learn more here. .
From our reader Bill Keezer comes a link to a piquant item by Richard Fernandez on the crumbling Obama presidency. There’s so much blood in the water now that even some of Mr. Obama’s most stalwart allies are swimming away as fast as they can, lest they be devoured too. It’s even getting to the […]
Here’s a little clip from a public appearance by Hillary Clinton today. It’s only a couple of minutes long, but is, let’s just say, densely packed. As the clip begins, Ms. Clinton is asked by an androgynous, hoplophobic sycophant whether she thinks that banning “assault weapons” and “high-capacity magazines” would exert a downward pressure on […]
Well! It appears the IRS has “lost” two years’ worth of Lois Lerner’s emails. Golly, what an unlucky coincidence. Especially considering that the NSA has copies of every email every American citizen has ever written, backed up redundantly in hardened underground bunkers scattered across all fifty states. Allahpundit just remarked: This is the Platonic Form […]
A young man named Evan Todd, who is a survivor and eyewitness of the Columbine massacre, has written an open letter to the President urging him to reconsider his support of Federal gun-rights infringements. You can read it here. One quibble: arguing against universal background checks, Mr. Todd asks “is a universal background check system […]
Say what you will about Barack Obama, the man is consistent: everything he does seems reliably to act against the interests of the United States, its people, and its economic and social well-being; against the intention of the Framers that we shall live under a government of limited, enumerated powers, in which the three branches […]
Our reader Henry has sent us a link to the latest crop of “Random Thoughts” from Thomas Sowell. Some excerpts: Some people act as if the answer to every problem is to put more money and power in the hands of politicians. * Republicans in Congress seem to be drawn toward the immigration issue like […]
Here’s George Will outlining the sort of presidential candidate he’s hoping for next time round. I have to say, I think that if someone actually presented himself to the voters as Mr. Will proposes, he’d win by a landslide. At the very least, he’d certainly get my vote.
Well! Good news from across the Big Ditch, as the “bunch of fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists” known as UKIP did very well indeed in yesterday’s elections. Here’s a happy reaction from UK blogger ‘Anna Racoon’, in which she writes: So peace finally reigns in the old ‘Muppet show’ studio ‘D’ at Elstree, from where […]
We haven’t been covering political events very closely of late, so here are two items of interest. In the first, we learn that the Executive Branch has been short-circuiting deportation proceedings for thousands of criminal aliens, choosing instead just to let them go. Apparently this cohort, now at large within our borders again, have already […]
Our pal Mangan directed us yesterday to an interesting item, from Britain’s Institute of Economic Affairs, on the idea of ‘political correctness’ as an expression, not of one’s actual beliefs, but as a ‘signaling’ mechanism employed to enhance status. (This is not a new idea, but this is a good treatment of it.) Inside the […]
April 28, 2014 – 10:27 pm
NRO’s Jim Geraghty attended the National Rifle Association’s annual convention last week in Indianapolis, and today he summed up his impressions in an excellent post. I had begun to cull some excerpts, but really you should go read the whole thing yourself. It’s here. Best line: “Hi, I’m here to change your culture!’
Megan McArdle comments on the Obama administration’s conveniently timed revamp of insurance-data collection: I’m speechless. Shocked. Stunned. Horrified. Befuddled. Aghast, appalled, thunderstruck, perplexed, baffled, bewildered and dumbfounded. It’s not that I am opposed to the changes: Everyone understands that the census reports probably overstate the true number of the uninsured, because the number they report […]
April 15, 2014 – 12:08 pm
Here’s a good piece by Jon Hinderaker on the Bundy affair.
The political statistician Nate Silver recently predicted that the Democrats might lose the Senate this fall (insh’Allah). This has caused some consternation over on the Left. Mr. Silver also moved his blog, recently, from the New York Times to ESPN. In an item published earlier today, he notes that this seems to have ruffled a […]
March 13, 2014 – 11:52 pm
A while back I agreed to comment on a New York Times editorial advocating a rise in the minimum wage. (The editorial, entitled The Clear Benefits of a Higher Wage, is here.) The brief editorial’s main point is that a minimum-wage increase cannot be reliably expected to cause enough of an increase in unemployment to […]
From the Times: WASHINGTON ”” The Obama administration, struggling with continued political fallout over its troubled health care law, said Wednesday that it would allow consumers to renew health insurance policies that do not comply with the law for two more years. The action is a reflection of the difficulties the president has faced as […]
January 29, 2014 – 12:10 am
Here’s a pleasingly dyspeptic assessment of the State of the Union pageant, from Kevin D. Williamson.
January 24, 2014 – 11:32 pm
Here’s something that seems to be in the air today. Yesterday I added a comment to our Benghazi thread from a few days back. As usually happens as threads lengthen, the conversation had wandered off-topic toward the more general sort of ideological scuffling that is a constant attractor in any discussion of current events these […]
January 21, 2014 – 7:14 pm
The venerable liberal journalist Nat Hentoff joins the chorus calling for Barack Obama’s impeachment. Worth a try, say I. The only plausible objection I can think of is Joe Biden, but at this point that’s a trade I’d be glad to make.
January 15, 2014 – 6:52 pm
The psychotic, pestiferous torrent of cultural-Marxist sludge excerpted below is, apparently, what a college education in the humanities produces nowadays. This is the moment when you make of your fist the same clench in your teeth, make of your tongue all the textbooks your school was not funded enough to provide you with, make of […]
January 7, 2014 – 12:39 pm
Here’s an outstanding piece by Heather Mac Donald on our new, Marxist mayor. I had begun to prepare some excerpts and commentary, but you should really just go read the whole thing, here.
January 4, 2014 – 11:37 pm
Here’s a little late-night reading to make you love your local Leviathan just a little bit more: an Obamacare threefer, and then an NSA nightcap. First, this was too much even for Sonia Sotomayor. Second, some number-crunching from James Taranto. Third, a little historical perspective from Jay Cost. Last, this comforting item by way of […]
December 19, 2013 – 11:52 am
With a hat tip to the indefatigable JK, here’s an item from Yahoo! Finance summarizing yet another unforeseen consequence of the grotesque and misbegotten Affordable Care Act. (The original story, from the Seattle Times, is here.)
December 12, 2013 – 11:49 pm
From the indefatigable JK, a link to yet another story of swaggering government overreach and unintended consequences. A sage once was asked: “Master, what is wisdom?” “Good judgment.” “And how does one acquire good judgment?” “Bad judgment.” Unfortunately, this process works for people, but not democracies, where those who make the bad judgments never pay […]
December 12, 2013 – 5:57 pm
Well, political junkies, here it is: Politifact’s Lie of the Year. (One could bicker about which year it really belongs to, but it’s certainly a whopper, and had a major effect on the course of events.) Of course there are far bigger specimens out there — submerged monsters big enough to affect the very currents […]
November 22, 2013 – 4:08 pm
My God, is there no limit to this man’s narcissism? (No need to reply, we already know the answer.) Can he not honor anything or anyone without placing himself in the frame?
November 21, 2013 – 7:12 pm
The Democrats today decided to grab a little more power — for now at least — by changing the Senate rules so as to prevent filibustering of executive nominees. This enables them to bypass the Republican minority in order to get some left-wing judges onto the D.C. circuit court. The rule they changed has been […]
November 18, 2013 – 10:30 pm
Interesting item in the New York Post today, especially in light of this item from a few years back. Wonder if we’ll be hearing any more about this.
November 10, 2013 – 8:47 pm
My old friend Dave, aware of my gloomy presentiments about our incoming Mayor, sent along an item from Commentary that he thought might cheer me up. The article suggests that things might not go as badly for Gotham as it seems reasonable to expect. After all, argues the author, nobody‘s crazy enough to govern the […]