Archive for September, 2011

THE RETURN OF Catiline.

KEVIN WILLIAMSON ON THE AL-AWLAKI KILLING: “A U.S. citizen has been assassinated, apparently by the U.S. government, which had earlier placed him on a hit list. Washington celebrates. I suspect we will regret this precedent.”

Yeah, it almost makes me wish I’d voted for a Democrat in 2008. . . .

LATE NIGHT COMICS suffer ratings slide. They quit doing their job when Obama was elected.

“THE SPOT I HAVE, I EARNED.” No, honey, you didn’t. And you know it, too. Which is why you are holding a sign, instead of studying.

POLIWOOD: Herman Cain ‘Teas’ Off After Morgan Freeman Plays the Race Card. Particularly powerful is the juxtaposition of the race-neutral 2006 Morgan Freeman with the race-baiting 2011 Morgan Freeman. Is this hope and change? According to Lionel Chetwynd, Freeman can’t deal with the first black president as “a powerful guy who’s a comprehensive failure.”

A. BARTON HINKLE: What’s wrong with “extremism?”

Suppose that, in 1955, a Southern political candidate had declared segregation obscene, laws against ethnic intermarriage odious and the notion of racial supremacy grotesque. Suppose he organized bus boycotts and lunch-counter sit-ins and marches for civil rights. Suppose he promised to overturn Jim Crow as soon as he took office. If any candidate had done that, he would have been widely denounced as the “most extreme” you-know-what-lover ever.

He also would have been right.

Kind of like people today who say the jig is up for the post-New Deal era of bottomless spending, and actually mean it.

FROM STEPHEN GREEN: An Open Letter To A President Who Thinks We’ve “Gone A Little Soft.” “In 2008, we elected a man who promised us ‘a net spending cut,’ a guy who would go ‘line by line’ through the budget with steely eyes under his green eyeshade and trim Washington down to the bone. We elected — we thought we elected — a tough man to do a tough job. Who is soft, Mr. President, the electorate who went crazy for the tough guy, or the president who broke his promises while refusing to make a single tough decision about spending?” There was a lot of golf, though.

FROM TIM CAVANAUGH, A SOLYNDRA ROUNDUP: Steven Chu, Oh Where Are You? “As Chu spends time with his family, we may have a clue to why the FBI launched its investigation of Solyndra: an investigation into possible inaccurate financial statements. The DoE’s impeccably timed $737 million loan to the Solar Energy Project is also smelling worse by the day. It can’t be a good sign when one of the most prominent beneficiaries of the loan is former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California)’s brother-in-law, and that isn’t even the scandalous part.” So where’s Chu?

Right here: Chu takes responsibility for a loan deal that put more taxpayer money at risk in Solyndra. “Energy Secretary Steven Chu acknowledged Thursday making the final decision to allow a struggling solar company to continue receiving taxpayer money after it had technically defaulted on a $535 million federal loan guaranteed by his agency.”