Why John Conyers, the New York Times and the Washington Post owe me an apology. For more than two years, House Judiciary Committee Democrats and the New York Times editorial board have argued that I personally arranged for Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman to be prosecuted in 2004 for corruption and ordered the removal of eight [...]
Archive for August, 2009
‘Closing in on Rove’
Posted in Editorials and opinion on August 20, 2009 | Comments Off
The plastic sausage machine
Posted in Energy and Environment on August 20, 2009 | Comments Off
A new factory can turn almost any plastic into a useful product DESPITE efforts to recycle plastic, mountains of the stuff still end up in dumps and landfills. The problem is that plastic bottles, lids, punnets, film and the like must not only be clean, but must also be sorted into their various types, if [...]
Keep Off the Astroturf
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 20, 2009 | Comments Off
WITH the “public option” part of President Obama’s health care reform plan looking dead in the water, many of its supporters are taking issue with the legitimacy of its opposition. “We call it ‘Astroturf,’ ” Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said of the protesters at town-hall meetings. “It’s not really a grass-roots movement.” What exactly [...]
Today in History – August 19
Posted in This day in history, tagged August 19 on August 19, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Wednesday, Aug. 19, the 231st day of 2009. There are 134 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Aug. 19, 1909, the first automobile races were run at the just-opened Indianapolis Motor Speedway; the winner of the first event was auto engineer Louis Schwitzer, who drove a Stoddard-Dayton touring car [...]
Today’s papers – August 19, 2009
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged August 19 2009 on August 19, 2009 | Comments Off
Democrats Seem Set to Go It Alone on a Health Care Bill The New York Times leads with news that in the face of stiffening Republican opposition to health care reform, Democrats look increasingly likely to quit wooing minority lawmakers and focus instead on building support among their own ranks. In theory, that should allow [...]
Immigration Out of Sight
Posted in Economy and business, Law on August 19, 2009 | Comments Off
Ignoring immigration policy does no favors for the U.S. economy. President Obama continues his quiet retreat from a campaign pledge to make comprehensive immigration reform “a top priority in my first year as President.” Following a summit meeting in Guadalajara last week with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, Mr. Obama said that an immigration [...]
Rethinking the Corporate Crime Spree
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Law on August 19, 2009 | Comments Off
The ethics of the plaintiffs’ bar infects prosecutors. One of the pleasures of government is the opportunity occasionally to do justice. Team Obama has two such opportunities before it. Yesterday, a federal appeals court overturned the landmark backdating conviction of former Brocade CEO Greg Reyes on grounds of prosecutorial misconduct. His case has been remanded [...]
ObamaCare Is All About Rationing
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on August 19, 2009 | Comments Off
Overspending is far preferable to artificially limiting the availability of new procedures and technologies. Although administration officials are eager to deny it, rationing health care is central to President Barack Obama’s health plan. The Obama strategy is to reduce health costs by rationing the services that we and future generations of patients will receive. The [...]
Ex-soldiers don’t need to be told they’re a burden to society. If President Obama wants to better understand why America’s discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can [...]
The Afghan Vote
Posted in Conflicts and wars, Editorials and opinion on August 19, 2009 | Comments Off
In a troubled country, democracy prevails. Democracy in the Muslim world is sometimes said to be a matter of “one man, one vote—one time.” Tomorrow’s presidential election in Afghanistan, the second since the Taliban were overthrown in 2001, is a useful reminder that the line does not qualify as some kind of iron rule of [...]
Dissent Commodified
Posted in Living on August 19, 2009 | Comments Off
The counterculture seamlessly fits into business culture. The 40th anniversary of the Woodstock music festival has certain pundits in a misty-eyed nostalgic funk for the days when youth culture came of age, challenging conformity, standing up for individuality, and making awesome music before it all got so commercialized. The memory it brought back for me [...]
Harry Reid’s ‘Evil’ Moment
Posted in Editorials and opinion on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
And Democrats wonder why their health plan isn’t selling. Remember when polite society treated a politician’s use of the word “evil” as a sign that the old boy was dangerously lacking upstairs? We saw it in 1983, when Ronald Reagan famously used the word in a speech to describe the Soviet empire. What a rube! [...]
Brain Is a Co-Conspirator in a Vicious Stress Loop
Posted in Health on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
If after a few months’ exposure to our David Lynch economy, in which housing markets spontaneously combust, coworkers mysteriously disappear and the stifled moans of dying 401(k) plans can be heard through the floorboards, you have the awful sensation that your body’s stress response has taken on a self-replicating and ultimately self-defeating life of its [...]
It may be the ultimate free lunch — how to reap all the advantages of a calorically restricted diet, including freedom from disease and an extended healthy life span, without eating one fewer calorie. Just take a drug that tricks the body into thinking it’s on such a diet. It sounds too good to be [...]
Today in History – August 18
Posted in This day in history, tagged August 18 on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Tuesday, Aug. 18, the 230th day of 2009. There are 135 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Aug. 18, 1969, the Woodstock Music and Art Fair in Bethel, N.Y., which had fallen behind schedule, finally wound to a close after three nights with a midmorning set performed by Jimi [...]
Today’s papers – August 18, 2009
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged August 18 2009 on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Iraq May Hold Vote On U.S. Withdrawal The Washington Post leads with news that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki endorsed a referendum that could force U.S. troops to withdraw a year ahead of schedule at a time when American commanders are proposing sending troops to the country’s north to deal with the rising violence. U.S. [...]
Whole Foolishness
Posted in Editorials and opinion on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
The left boycotts a progressive retailer. August is the slowest month for political bloggers, so to chase away the summer doldrums, several on the left have decided to gin up a retail boycott. The object of their wrath: Whole Foods CEO John Mackey’s op-ed in these pages last week, presenting alternative ideas for health-care reform. [...]
Obama Underwrites Offshore Drilling
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Energy and Environment on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Too bad it’s not in U.S. waters. You read that headline correctly. Unfortunately, the Obama Administration is financing oil exploration off Brazil. The U.S. is going to lend billions of dollars to Brazil’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, to finance exploration of the huge offshore discovery in Brazil’s Tupi oil field in the Santos Basin near [...]
The Panel
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
What death by bureaucratic fiat might look like. It is very difficult to imagine the country making those decisions just through the normal political channels. And that’s part of why you have to have some independent group that can give you guidance. —President Barack Obama in a New York Times interview on how costly medical [...]
The Public Option Goes Over
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
The big fight over ObamaCare is far from finished. So it looks as if the public option has been sent to the death panel—so to speak. Over the weekend President Obama and other White House officials throttled back their demands for a new health-care entitlement program that looked like Medicare for the middle class. Liberals [...]
Why Obama’s Ratings Are Sinking
Posted in Editorials and opinion on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Americans will put up with a lot. But not with someone who imperils their future. Public approval ratings of Barack Obama may be falling quickly right now—but his rating of the American public is probably falling even faster. The president won a decisive victory in November promising to rescue the ailing American economy through public [...]
Woodstock rocked
Posted in Arts and Entertainment, History on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Youth, said Oscar Wilde with a polite sneer, is America’s oldest tradition. He should have seen the Woodstock Music and Art Fair (which took place at nearby Bethel because Woodstock got cold feet). Up in the Catskill mountains a fortnight ago an unrivalled list of rock entertainers, some of them British, attracted some 400,000 young [...]
A hollow recovery
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Japan’s recession has technically ended but voters are likely to see through the numbers SUMMERS in Tokyo are renowned for their diabolical heat. But salarymen sweating from Fukuoka to Sapporo might take comfort in economic data released on Monday August 17th showing that Japan’s economy has warmed up a little too. The country, which previously [...]
Telling Grandma ‘No’
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Health on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
When Democratic congressmen dream these days, they’re tongue-tied in town halls, fumbling with their microphones while they’re shouted down by slavering, pitchfork-wielding Limbaugh listeners. But Barack Obama is wiser than most Democratic congressmen, and his nightmares are savvier. Instead of right-wing protesters, he dreams about old people. He’s in the White House briefing room, presiding [...]
Rules for Republicans, Too
Posted in Editorials and opinion, Politics on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
“Community organizing” comes back to bite President Obama. Not long ago, Barack Obama and the Democrats were invincible. Republicans not only had substantially reduced minorities in the House and Senate, but they didn’t even have a leader. Suddenly Obama seems quite vincible, with his signature project, postalizing the health-care system, in deep trouble. How could [...]
Will U.S. Recovery Go Global?
Posted in Economy and business, Editorials and opinion on August 18, 2009 | Comments Off
Before we get too giddy about any U.S. economic “recovery,” we should remember that the preceding economic collapse was global. No recovery can succeed unless it, too, is global. Will that happen? The world can no longer rely for growth on free-spending Americans, who are overburdened by debt and sobered by trillions of dollars of [...]
Today in History – August 17
Posted in This day in history, tagged August 17 on August 17, 2009 | Comments Off
Today is Monday, Aug. 17, the 229th day of 2009. There are 136 days left in the year. Today’s Highlight in History On Aug. 17, 1969, Hurricane Camille slammed into the Mississippi coast as a Category 5 storm with top sustained winds estimated at nearly 200 mph. The hurricane and resulting flash floods were blamed [...]
Today’s papers – August 17, 2009
Posted in Today's Papers, tagged August 17 2009 on August 17, 2009 | Comments Off
‘Public Option’ in Health Plan May Be Dropped The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal‘s world-wide newsbox lead with the Obama administration giving its strongest signal yet that it may be ready to drop the idea of a government-run insurance option to compete with private companies as part of health care [...]
US probe captures Saturn equinox
Posted in Physical sciences, Space on August 17, 2009 | Comments Off
At equinox, the rings turn edge-on to the Sun, reflecting almost no sunlight Raw images of the moment Saturn reached its equinox have been beamed to Earth by the US Cassini spacecraft. Scientists are studying the unprocessed pictures to uncover new discoveries in the gas giant’s ring system. Equinox is the moment when the Sun [...]
Minister warned over ‘UK Roswell’
Posted in Other, Physical sciences on August 17, 2009 | Comments Off
The files include sketches of UFOs drawn by witnesses A former head of the military told the defence secretary that a UFO sighting dubbed Britain’s Roswell could be a “banana skin”, official files show. In 1985 Lord Hill-Norton wrote to Michael Heseltine about the “Rendlesham incident” in 1980, when US airmen in Suffolk thought they [...]
