April 13, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff

Trump way ahead in New York

Featured image The New York primary is less than a week away, and at least four new polls are out. The polls are by Quinippiac, PPP, Baruch College, and Liberty. Donald Trump is far ahead in each. His share ranges from 51 percent (PPP) to 60 percent (Baruch). Ted Cruz runs third, just behind John Kasich, in all three polls. His share ranges from 14 percent (Baruch) to 19 percent (Quinnipiac). In »
April 13, 2016 — Scott Johnson

Why we dropped the bomb

Featured imageIn the words of the Sam Cooke song, President Obama don’t know much about history. Here I cite my long post “Obama veers into the Daily Ditch,” discussing Obama’s almost unbelievably misguided discourse on Winston Churchill and World War II at his first presidential press conference. What Obama lacks in historical knowledge he makes up in the anti-American attitude of the old new left. David Harsanyi notes that “The Obama »
April 13, 2016 — Steven Hayward

Media and Government Speech Regulation

Featured imageFollowing on to my post here a few days ago about how the Boston Globe‘s faux-cover attacking Trump exposes the reckless futility of government regulation of political speech, take in this interesting tidbit from Michael Tomasky’s latest dispatch about the presidential race in the New York Review of Books: In mid-March, mediaQuant, a firm that tracks media coverage of candidates and assigns a dollar value to that coverage based on »
April 13, 2016 — Scott Johnson

A conspiracy so intense

Featured imageDemocratic officeholders seem to be operating a conspiracy to stifle free speech and suppress heterodox thought. They’re on C.P. time, alright: Communist Party time. Glenn Reynolds names names in his USA Today column “Dear attorneys general, conspiring against free speech is a crime.” Glenn identifies U.S. Virgin Islands Attorney General Claude Walker, California Attorney General Kamala Harris, and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman as co-conspirators. Glenn lays out the »
April 12, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff

A GOP loss in 2016 is one thing, a GOP disgrace is another

Featured imageMichael Gerson takes up the question of whether, for Republicans, it is “better to lose with Cruz or Trump.” Gerson doesn’t answer the question except to say it’s too bad Republicans can’t lose with both. Gerson argues that losing with Cruz would discredit “tea party” purity. Losing with Trump would discredit “white lives matter nativism.” Both are outcomes he desires apparently about equally. I wonder whether Gerson is preoccupied with »
April 12, 2016 — Steven Hayward

The Year in Law, from The Green Bag

Featured imageI’m still chortling over the heartburn created on the left by George Mason University’s coup of naming its law school after Antonin Scalia, especially since I am certain that Virginia’s squalid partisan governor and raging Clintonite Terry McAwful wanted to prevent it, but couldn’t. The Scalia Law School at George Mason University also happens to publish the most interesting and worthwhile law review in the nation—the Green Bag. I made »
April 12, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff

World War II death totals tell quite a story

Featured imageYesterday, Steve noted that President Obama is considering a stop at Hiroshima some time in the coming months, quite possibly to apologize for our ending World War II by dropping nuclear weapons on that city, as well as Nagasaki. I agree with Steve that Obama should not apologize. However, the main purpose of this post is to cite what I think are extraordinary statistics about comparative death totals from World »
April 12, 2016 — Paul Mirengoff

Concern about crime soars; non-whites most concerned

Featured imageA new Gallup poll finds that 53 percent of Americans worry “a great deal” about crime and violence. This figure represents a 15-year high. Two years ago, only 39 percent worried a great deal about these problems. Last year, 43 percent did. No wonder bipartisan legislation that would free thousands of federal criminals and reduce sentences for various drug crimes going forward has stalled. Speaking of illegal drugs, the Gallup »
April 12, 2016 — Scott Johnson

Ratched returns to the asylum

Featured imageAs I mentioned last month, Norman Mailer took a now-famous look at the Democratic convention that nominated JFK for president in the November 1960 Esquire essay “Superman comes to the supermarket.” Jay Rosen recalled it here. As Rosen noted, the title “intend[ed] to say that the man of the hour, Kennedy, was about to send a powerful (and erotic) jolt into mainstream America — if he won the election.” Nurse »
April 11, 2016 — Steven Hayward

Climate Change Hits the Snooze Button

Featured imageOne reason I’ve been writing much less about the climatistas here lately is that the subject has become such a crashing bore. Don’t take my word for it—just ask the lefty Media Mutters for America, the site David Brock curates to whine on Hillary’s behalf. Media Mutters has a new study out bemoaning that the major TV network news broadcasts are losing interest in climate change, despite the UN Paris »
April 11, 2016 — Steven Hayward

World Apology Tour, 2016 Edition

Featured imageIn the news right now is a report that Obama is considering a stop at Hiroshima at some point in the coming months to apologize for our ending World War II decisively there in August of 1945. The New York Sun nails the matter in an editorial today: It would be wrong of Mr. Obama to go to Hiroshima if his aim there is to apologize. There is no doubt »
April 12, 2016 — Steven Hayward

A Re-Run of 1976?

Featured imageAs Republicans head toward the possibility of a contested convention, a lot of people are looking back to the Reagan-Ford struggle ahead of the Kansas City convention that year, where the nomination hung in the balance right up to the week before the convention. Marc Thiessen recounts some of this drama in his Washington Post column yesterday. But there’s one gambit from that year that people have forgotten to mention. »
April 12, 2016 — Steven Hayward

Equal Nonsense Day

Featured imageToday is “Equal Pay Day,” which mitigates the fact that April is also Irritable Bowel Syndrome Awareness Month. (Seriously—it is.) And so we might as well remind everyone—again—that the “Pay Gap” is another of those myths that liberals cling to like a drowning man to a life preserver. One of the better refutations to this perennial nonsense appeared in, of all places, the Huffington Post in 2014: Wage Gap Myth »
April 12, 2016 — Scott Johnson

Toward 95 theses on Clinton’s email

Featured imageMartin Luther promulgated his 95 Theses “out of love for the truth and the desire to elucidate it.” Here I seek to begin a series stating 95 theses on Hillary Clinton’s use of her own insecure email setup for the conduct of official business as Secretary of State. I begin with the propositions that Clinton deems fundamental to her case as posted at Hillary for America. 1. Clinton resolutely shuns »
April 11, 2016 — Steven Hayward

Librules R *So Smart*

Featured imageEveryone knows the old saying, “If you’re so smart, how come you’re not rich?” Everyone except liberals, that is. One of the things I love about liberals is how much smarter they are than everyone in the business world. Amory Lovins has been telling us for nearly 40 years now about how his “soft energy” paths are so much superior—and cheaper!—than hydrocarbon or nuclear energy. Every day I expect to »
April 11, 2016 — Steven Hayward

The Joke’s On Democrats

Featured imageThere’s a big ruckus going on over an attempt at edgy racial humor between Bill de Blasio and Hillary Clinton Saturday evening, as the New York Times reports. Mayor de Blasio makes a joke about being on “C.P. time,” which is shorthand for “colored people’s time.” Hillary tires to bail him out, suggesting it stands for “cautious politician time.” But the real crime here is how stiff and unfunny Hillary »
April 11, 2016 — Steven Hayward

Academic Absurdity of the Week: Vegansexuality Studies!

Featured imageIt’s only Monday, but we have the clear winner for the academic absurdity of the week, from Feminism & Psychology, another must-read journal: Vegan Sexuality: Challenging Heteronormative Masculinity through Meat-free Sex Annie Potts, New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies Jovian Parry, New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies, Abstract The terms ‘vegansexuality’ and ‘vegansexuals’ entered popular discourse following substantial media interest in a New Zealand-based academic study on ethical consumption that »