Tag Archives: John Hinderaker

What Our Children Are Learning In School

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At an extended family gathering in Connecticut, we went on a tour in the East Windsor area. We learned about the fort that the English settlers had built there. It was an enclosure to protect them from a particularly vicious tribe of Indians that lived in the area. After a while, some of the neighboring Indian tribes were staying inside the fort to be protected from the one tribe of particularly vicious Indians. The American Indians did not necessarily get along with each other before or after the arrival of American settlers. However, that is not the story our children are being taught.

On Tuesday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog. The article includes the following X Post:

The article notes:

It is no surprise that those who trust our education establishment are the most ignorant. But the idea that one-half or more of Americans believe that Indians were peaceful until the white man came along is astonishing. It means that they know absolutely nothing about pre-Colombian American history, and they ascribe to natives virtues that the Indians never would have claimed for themselves.

Tribes like the Iroquois, to name only one, were in warfare among the most vicious peoples in history, ranking perhaps even worse than the Assyrians and the Mongols. Indian tribes were pretty much all proud of their martial prowess, and would be horrified to learn that, several hundred years after the fact, they are regarded as having lived in peace and harmony with their neighbors, whom they despised.

Just for the record, the Pilgrims settled in land that was not claimed by any Indian tribe. The tribe that had lived on the land had been wiped out by a flu epidemic a few years before the Pilgrims got there, and the other tribes were superstitious and did not want to settle there.

The Need To Change The Protocol

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Obviously a lot has been written and will be written about the attempted assassination of President Trump on Saturday night. However, I think the best accounts and suggestions for improvement will come from the people who were there. Stephen Moore was one of the people who were there.

On Monday, John Hinderaker posted the following at Power Line Blog:

On Saturday night I (Steve Moore) attended the White House Correspondents Dinner at the Washington Hilton Hotel. Every time I enter this hotel, I recall that this was the same Hilton where Ronald Reagan was shot and nearly killed 45 years ago. I walked through the same entrance where that assassin’s bullet came within an inch of killing Reagan.

This is an event for the self-absorbed and self-important Washington DC glitterati to see and be seen.

I had anticipated a very long security line and about an hour wait to enter the hotel. I brought my paper ticket and my passport identification.

To my surprise the security was lax, to put it lightly. Wearing my tux, I walked in the front door by flashing the paper ticket. There was no code to be scanned and I never once was asked for my ID.

The room was packed at 7pm when President Trump entered to shallow applause. What shocked me was that, after the National Anthem and military color guard, Trump and the First Lady sat for dinner front and center in front of 2500 people. That didn’t strike me as safe or advisable. For a sniper, God forbid, it seemed he was a sitting duck.

It also struck me that the President, the VP and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were all in attendance. I am told five of the six in succession to the presidency were there.

About 15 minutes into the dinner, I was chatting with the Wall Street Journal reporters at my table when all hell broke loose. The Secret Service suddenly charged in with pistols and assault rifles and all of a sudden I heard two loud booms, like a bomb going off. There was screaming and we all ducked down and many ducked under their tables.

I looked toward the President and he was surrounded by the Secret Service. They pulled him out of his seat and shoved him toward the exit. My heart sank and I panicked when I saw Trump appear to stumble to the ground. You can see that on the video. Oh my God, I gasped, in horror. Trump has been hit.

I was seated at the table next to Speaker Johnson when the Secret Service agents began yelling: “Where is the Speaker?” His seatmates had pulled him under the table. He was ushered out.

The article concludes:

But this was clearly a major security breakdown on multiple levels. It was easier to get into the Hilton to see the president and to get 30 feet from him than to attend a Wizards basketball game down the street.

Obviously, these protocols need to be fixed.

Please follow the link above to read the rest of the report.

These Are The Refugees We Need

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On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the refugees from South Africa who came to America because of the violence against white farmers in that country.

The article includes an X post about the refugees. It states:

Known a few South Africans recently arrived in America, Afrikaner and English. Uniformly, they’ve said, what a joy just to be able to walk around freely. Without fear of attack. One young South African guy, when I raised the security issue, just blurted out, “I had a gun put to my head.”

A South African woman said an American told her, we have home invasions in this country, too. She asked, how many people do you know who have been home invaded? None, he said. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had a home invasion, she told him. Her elderly parents were tied up at gunpoint. She was grateful they were only robbed.

My Afrikaner exGF carried a gun as a young woman out on the town. Explained cheerfully, you don’t stop for red lights in South Africa. That’s where they’re waiting for you.

Welcome to America. More immigration like this please. Afrikaners just want to work. Contribute. And you can rely on them in all things. Especially should it come to a fight.

They have settled in and begun farming and contributing to American life. This is what happens when you bring in immigrants who are compatible with American culture and are willing to assimilate.

This Is Going To Get Interesting

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On Saturday, The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about the American attack on Kharg Island, a small coral island in Iran in the northern Persian Gulf.

The article reports:

Kharg Island is a small coral island in Iran in the northern Persian Gulf. It is 34 miles (55 km) northwest of the port of Bushehr and vital to Iran’s oil industry.

The oil processing facilities at Kharg Island are a foundational component of Iran’s economy. Roughly 90 percent of Iran’s crude is processed at Kharg Island, and any disruption to its oil processing could cripple Iran’s economy.

All military targets on the Island were destroyed in the attack, but the oil infrastructure on the Island was left intact.

The article includes President Trump’s statement:

“Moments ago, at my direction, the United States Central Command executed one of the most powerful bombing raids in the History of the Middle East and totally obliterated every MILITARY target in Iran’s crown jewel, Kharg Island. Our Weapons are the most powerful and sophisticated that the World has ever known but, for reasons of decency, I have chosen NOT to wipe out the Oil Infrastructure on the Island. However, should Iran, or anyone else, do anything to interfere with the Free and Safe Passage of Ships through the Strait of Hormuz, I will immediately reconsider this decision.”

“During my First Term, and currently, I rebuilt our Military into the Most Lethal, Powerful, and Effective Force, by far, anywhere in the World. Iran has NO ability to defend anything that we want to attack — There is nothing they can do about it! Iran will NEVER have a nuclear weapon, nor will it have the ability to threaten the United States of America, the Middle East or, for that matter, the World! Iran’s Military, and all others involved with this Terrorist Regime, would be wise to lay down their arms, and save what’s left of their country, which isn’t much! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”

Also on Saturday, John Hinderaker reported at Power Line Blog that the Strait of Hormuz is now open.

The statement from Iran says:

It is only closed to the tankers and ships belong[ing] to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass,” Araghchi (Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi) told MS NOW.

I don’t think that is going to be acceptable.

Was It Legal?

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On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the legality of President Trump’s attack on Iran. John Hinderaker is one of the founders of Power Line Blog. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. He worked as a lawyer in Minnesota before he retired. He is currently President of the Center of the American Experiment, a think tank headquartered in Minnesota.

The article at Power Line Blog states:

Seemingly with one voice, Democrats have denounced the administration’s attack on Iran as “illegal” and “unconstitutional.” But the Democrats’ views on legality vary wildly, depending on who is in the White House. My friend Ilan Wurman, Professor of Law at the University of Minnesota, points out the obvious parallel between Iran and Libya:

The article includes excerpts from the opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel that concluded Obama’s air strikes on Libya were legal. Please follow the above link to the article for further details.

The article concludes:

The Democrats’ assertions about the law–they don’t actually make arguments–are frivolous.

Unlike Ilan, I don’t take “international law” seriously, and I give zero credence to the United Nations. The job of the President is to defend American national security, period. And I would add that Iran posed approximately a million times more danger to our security than did Libya.

Iran has been at war with us since 1979. It was time for us to return the favor.

Breaking The Rules For Political Purposes

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the recent news that the Department of Justice under Merrick Garland secretly subpoenaed phone records of both Kash Patel–now, ironically, the Director of the FBI–and Susie Wiles, now the President’s Chief of Staff. At the time, they were both private citizens–not working for President Trump (source here).

The article includes an X post by Hugh Hewitt:

The article concludes:

Hugh is being charitable. It is inconceivable to me that any lawyer would permit the FBI, or anyone else, to record an attorney-client conversation without the knowledge of his client. That is a grotesque betrayal of a lawyer’s most basic duty, and it is hard to imagine how a lawyer who did such a thing could keep his license.

It is almost impossible to fathom how deep the corruption ran during the Joe Biden/Merrick Garland years.

On Thursday, Just the News reported:

At least 10 FBI employees were fired after working on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, according to a news report Friday.

The firings occurred after news broke on Wednesday that the FBI obtained phone records for now-director Kash Patel during the Biden administration in 2022, and current White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ phone records in 2023, while they were both private citizens.

The subpoenas for the phone records were issued as part of then-special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into President Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Patel told Reuters that the bureau’s subpoenas were an example of federal overreach by unelected officials.

There should be more serious consequences than firing. Otherwise, the next time the Democrats are in charge, it will happen again.

Looking Beyond The Hype To Find The Reason

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On Wednesday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog detailing the reason for 2023 being one of the warmest years on record. Oddly enough, it wasn’t the result of anything people did!

The article reports:

Warmists were ecstatic over the 2023 increase, which they attributed to “climate change.” (It makes no sense to say that a change was caused by change, but put that aside for the moment.) As to the subsequent decline, they were almost entirely silent.

It seemed obvious to me that the most likely explanation was the extraordinary eruption of the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano in January 2022. That eruption, unprecedented in recorded history, sent vast quantities of water vapor into the atmosphere. Water vapor is, of course, the principal greenhouse gas.

The article quotes an article posted at WattsUpWithThat on December 30:

We have been fortunate to witness the largest climate event to occur on the planet since the advent of global satellite records, and possibly the largest event since the eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815. It is clearly a naturally occurring, externally forced climate event. However, mainstream climate scientists are not treating it appropriately. This is because climate science does not function like other sciences and is subject to strong confirmation bias. The first step to learning from the 2023 event is accepting its exceptional nature, which many fail to do.
***
According to Occam’s razor, a climatic event of unparalleled magnitude in modern records requires an exceptional cause. The factors responsible for normal climate variability are insufficient. The only extraordinary factor preceding the 2023 event was the explosion of the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano.
***
For anyone who is not committed to the explanation of climate change due to the radiative properties of greenhouse gases, the Hunga Tonga eruption is currently the best explanation for the 2023 climate event. In July 2025, I analyzed that “if Hunga Tonga is responsible for the 2023-24 warming event, a clear prediction is that we should observe most of this warming disappear in 3-5 years.“[21] This projection does not arise from any of the other considered causes. By December 2025, four years after the eruption, this prediction had come true: the ocean temperature anomaly in November was only 0.05°C higher than in November 2021, before the eruption. 90 % of the ocean warming from the 2023 climate event has disappeared.

Sorry to disappoint, but man is simply not important enough in the grand scheme of things to change the earth’s climate. We have a responsibility to take care of the earth, but we also have a responsibility to do what we can to create civilized societies. Balance is the key.

A Positive Move To End A Mental Health Epidemic

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about a rule proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will prevent hospitals that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding—i.e., all of them–from performing “sex-rejecting procedures on children.

The article reports:

While the proposed rules do not appear to be public yet, Kennedy’s Declaration in support of the rules is here. And this process implements President Trump’s Executive Order directing HHS to take such actions, among other things.

The principal legal authority for the proposed rules appears to be Sec. 1861 of the Social Security Act, (e)(9), which defines an eligible hospital, inter alia, as one that ” meets such other requirements as the Secretary finds necessary in the interest of the health and safety of individuals who are furnished services in the institution.” On the basis of this and other statutory provisions, 42 CFR § 1001.2 provides that “when the Department has declared a treatment modality not to be safe and effective, practitioners who employ such a treatment modality will be deemed not to meet professionally recognized standards of health care.”

This is a welcome development. It can, of course, be reversed by a future Democratic administration, but it will put the brakes on pediatric sex-change procedures for at least the next few years, by which time the entire “trans” enterprise may be so discredited internationally that the issue will become moot.

Sex-change procedures in children provide patients for life for the medical community. After a young person is given medical treatment to create the illusion of a sex change, they are a patient for life. The body keeps trying to go back to what it was created to be, so the necessity of drugs never stops. All of the medical procedures and hormones do not change the person’s DNA.

About That Affordability Thing…

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Affordability is the new buzz word of the day. The attempt is being made to use it as a hammer to bludgeon President Trump. Interesting, since he hasn’t even been in office for a year yet.

On Tuesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog reported:

Normally I wouldn’t do anything so facile as to blame inflation on a particular politician, but given that the Democrats are pinning their hopes on hanging the “affordability crisis” around President Trump’s neck, a little historical perspective is in order. Thus, from the Unleash Prosperity Hotline:

We went back to January 2020 when the pandemic started. We found that 13.5% of cumulative inflation (prices are 24% higher today) has happened under Trump, while 86.5 percent of cumulative inflation happened under Biden.

So the “affordability crisis” is the hangover effect of Bidenomics when the White House dumped some $4 trillion of helicopter money out the windows.

The article includes the following chart:

Obviously prices are still rising, but there are a few good things in the future economically–the price of gasoline at the pump is trending down–that impacts everyone and everything. The price of energy should come down in the near future as America increases its energy independence, although some states may not experience the downward turn due to excessive regulation. Most food prices are also stabilizing or moving downward.

Affordability is improving, but it is going to take a while. Two things that will help with the cost of housing are to lower the demand by removing the illegals and to lower the interest rates. Overall, I am optimistic about the future, but there will be a price paid at some point for the excesses of the Biden administration.

One Phone Company Pushed Back

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There is a lot of information coming out lately about the government operation Arctic Frost. I am not sure any of the actions involved in this operation were in line with the U.S. Constitution, but there is one area that violated the Constitution that is very troubling.

On Wednesday, John Hinderaker posted the following at Power Line Blog:

Arctic Frost was the FBI investigation that tried to associate Donald Trump and many other Republicans with the January 6, 2021, Capitol protest. It was the basis for one of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictments of Trump. That indictment was dismissed. Senator Chuck Grassley has been on this case for a long time; whistleblowers approached him long ago to explain the corruption of the FBI and Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.

Arctic Frost can best be seen as a continuation of the Russia Collusion Hoax and the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, which sought to prevent Trump from being elected, and then to cripple his administration after he won the 2016 election. Also the Dirty 51 scandal, which sought, successfully, to swing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.

Arctic Frost included service of 197 subpoenas in which Special Counsel Jack Smith sought incriminating information about hundreds of Republicans, including ten Republican senators and one House member. There was no basis for suspecting any of these individuals of criminal actions, and in fact, no criminality was found. Smith subpoenaed telephone records of those Republicans from various telecom vendors, and rogue Democrat Judge James Boasberg entered a gag order, directing the phone companies not to disclose the subpoenas to their customers–United States Senators–for one year. There is precedent for such orders in organized crime investigations.

The article quotes Fox News:

Verizon justified complying with the subpoenas, saying they were “facially valid” and contained only phone numbers, not names. Verizon said that with the “benefit of hindsight” and recent discussions with the Senate Sergeant at Arms, which handles congressional phone services, it has modified its policies so that it puts up more of a challenge to law enforcement requests pertaining to Congress members.

…AT&T, meanwhile, did not comply with the subpoenas.

“When AT&T raised questions with Special Counsel Smith’s office concerning the legal basis for seeking records of members of Congress, the Special Counsel did not pursue the subpoena further, and no records were produced,” David Chorzempa, general counsel for AT&T, wrote.

The article at Power Line Blog notes:

Taken together, these Democratic Party scandals, from the Russian Collusion Hoax to Crossfire Hurricane to the Dirty 51 to Arctic Frost–and likely others that have not yet come to light–represent by far the worst political corruption in American history. There has never been anything like it.

The Republican voters have been patient, but when will the Republicans hold someone accountable?

It’s Time For A Change

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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s term expires in May 2026. It’s a shame that he will be in charge until then. He claims to be apolitical, but his actions tell another story. On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s term.

The article reports:

We hear constantly about the importance of the independence of the Federal Reserve. Fine: but what if the Fed isn’t independent of politics, it is just independent of, and hostile to, the administration that is in power?

Some think that is the situation now before us. Stephen Moore comments on Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s most recent pronouncements:

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell was full of doom and gloom yesterday [Wednesday], forecasting 1.6% growth for this year and closer to 1.5% next year.

Was he talking about Afghanistan or the United States?

In the second quarter of this year, the U.S. economy grew by 3.3%, and with a few weeks to go in the third quarter, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is forecasting above 3% growth – twice Powell’s anemic rate.

…Powell never mentioned that real household incomes are up $1,100 for the first seven months of 2025.

He attacks Trump’s tariffs and more restrictive immigration policies as restricting growth – and he’s right on that. But he never mentions the Trump tax cut, the immediate expensing for capital purchases (which has spurred an investment boom), the deregulations that could save up to $1 trillion this year, or that Trump’s pro-energy policies have increased U.S. production of oil and gas to record highs, or that the area where job growth is way down is in government employment – which is GOOD for the economy.

So Powell is hostile to the administration’s economic agenda, and–perhaps–has positioned the Fed in opposition to it.

Stephen Moore notes:

There’s also something almost comical of a Fed chair who let inflation soar by 21% and promised it was all “transitory” now terrified of an inflation rate of less than 3% this year.

The article notes:

Then, of course, there is the Fed’s Taj Majal, construction of which I believe President Trump has stopped. But that is a minor point, compared to the possibility that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is actively trying to undermine America’s economic policies. That isn’t independence, it is partisanship.

If you are unfamiliar with the history of the Federal Reserve, please watch the video below about the history and purpose of the organization.

The Federal Reserve is not what we were told it is.

Who Is Actually In Charge?

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On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article asking the question, “Who Runs the Executive Branch?” During the past four years, that was a very appropriate question, but it is still an appropriate question.

The article reports:

Under Article II of the Constitution, the President is the executive branch. But over the years, Congress has tried to limit the power of the President by establishing a number of “independent” agencies–the SEC, the FDIC, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, and so on. In many cases, Congress has purported to limit the President’s ability to fire employees of those “independent” agencies, even though they are part of the executive branch and nominally under his control.

Democrats like this arrangement, since the agencies are staffed overwhelmingly by Democrats. They have served to undermine every Republican president of the last generation. Until now, Republican Presidents have generally put up with the fact that they do not effectively control the executive branch, but President Trump has moved to assert his proper constitutional authority in several ways.

Most notably, in February he issued an executive order which we wrote about here. It asserted, in several ways, his authority over the “independent” agencies. He has also fired a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve for cause, and, more importantly, he has fired other executive branch officials without cause, as should be his prerogative under Article II.

This has given rise to the vitally important case of Slaughter v. Trump. Rebecca Slaughter was a Federal Trade Commissioner. President Trump fired her without asserting any “cause,” even though the Federal Trade Commission Act says that a Commissioner can be removed by the President only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.” The administration takes the position–correctly, I think–that this limitation on the President’s control of the executive branch is unconstitutional.

The article concludes:

What is being teed up here is, ultimately, an epic battle between Congress and the President. Democrats are on the side of Congress, mostly because Congress has, in turn, ceded power to the Administrative State, which is overwhelmingly Democratic but which, as Professor Philip Hamburger among others has persuasively argued, is essentially unconstitutional. Republicans are now mostly on the President’s side, because the current President is a Republican, and because they have seen how the Administrative State has become a permanent and unaccountable fourth branch of government.

Of all the battles to which the Trump administration has given rise, this one may, in the end, be the most important.

The decision on this matter will determine whether or not we go back to the Republic our Founding Fathers created–do the checks and balances put in place in our Constitution still apply?

What’s In A Name?

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The word of the day is “gerrymandering.” It is a technique long used by the Democrat party to ensure that Republicans don’t get elected to Congress. Lately, the Republicans have figured out that they can play that game too.

On Thursday, the Tilting At Windmills website on Substack reported:

The term “gerrymandering” has become a big part of the recent news cycle. Mostly, it’s been a yawn for me. Both sides do some degree of gerrymandering, but it’s only a problem when the other side does it.

Texas, however, was engaging in a little bit of it that would oust Rep. Jasmine Crockett and help Republicans snag a few more seats in the midterms, where the president’s party typically loses a bit of ground.

And people lost their minds over it, acting like this has never happened anywhere else, and that it’s somehow the most horrible thing in the world despite the pile of examples of Democrats doing it.

Politico, however, went a slightly different direction in their headline for a story about the situation that reads, “Democrats try to separate their tactical use of redistricting from that of Republicans.”

That’s right, it’s not gerrymandering that Democrats do. It’s “tactical use of redistricting.”

And understand, the word “tactical” isn’t anywhere else in the piece, so that’s Politico’s choice of words there, not a quote from someone like JB Pritzker or some other Democrat trying to deflect.

No, that’s their covering fire.

On August 6th, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted a chart showing the impact of gerrymandering:

The chart shows why gerrymandering is important and how it impacts Congress. Let’s end tactical use of redistricting!

Stating The Obvious

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War is a horrible thing, but sometimes it is necessary. The Bible notes that there is, “A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.” I am not sure that this is the time for peace in the Middle East, and evidently I am not the only person feeling that way.

On June 16th, John Hinderaker posted the following at Power Line Blog:

With respect to Israel and Iran, talk of peace is in the air. We are beset with calls from various quarters to “de-escalate” the situation there, lest wider war break out. President Trump, who partnered with Israel in deceiving Iran prior to Israel’s preemptive strike, is now talking about making another deal with Iran.

I hope he doesn’t mean it. The last thing Israel, or anyone else, should be thinking about is another agreement with the mullahs. Israel now controls the skies, has largely degraded Iran’s missile capability, and can do pretty much anything it wants, militarily. It was delightful to see that Israel wiped out the regime’s state broadcaster.

So this is a golden opportunity, almost certainly the best one Israel ever has had, or ever will have, to bring about regime change in Iran. The mullahocracy needs to go. Neither Israel nor the rest of the world will ever be safe, as long as Islamic extremists control Iran. Israel has already demolished Iran’s proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah, and, to a lesser extent, the Houthis. But if Iran’s regime is allowed to stay in place, it will readily rebuild its terrorist infrastructure, just as it will eventually rebuild its nuclear capability.

I agree with the idea of removing the Iranian theocracy, but I am concerned about what will replace it. First of all, America, covertly or openly, should not be involved in any regime change in Iran. Our track record there is not good–we installed the Shah, and that did not turn out well. I am not sure that we ever fomented a color revolution anywhere that actually turned out well. The Iranians need to be free to choose their own future without outside interference.

The Impending End Of A Really Bad Idea

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On Sunday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about wind energy. The Trump administration is taking a good, hard look at the practicality and efficiency of wind energy.

The article reports:

One of the most felicitous aspects of the new Trump administration is its determination to drive a stake through the heart of the zombie wind industry. Because it is an absurdly inefficient and unreliable way to generate electricity, wind power was doomed from the start. But the Trump administration is seeing it off.

Robert Bryce, one of our top energy experts, has a long Substack post that is full of good news. You will have to follow the link to get it all, but here are some highlights:

A few days ago, Jason Grumet, the head of the American Clean Power Association (annual revenue: $62.3 million), told Heatmap News that “probably more than half” of all new wind projects under development in the US could be killed due to President Trump’s executive order requiring a “comprehensive assessment” of federal permitting. Heatmap explained that Trump’s policies pose “a potential existential threat to the industry’s future. Just don’t expect everyone to say it out loud.”

…[T]he offshore and onshore wind sectors are in full-blown panic mode. Trump’s executive orders, particularly the one requiring the federal government to assess the wind industry’s impact on wildlife — have had an immediate and chilling effect on wind projects onshore and offshore.

The article concludes:

I am not sure why solar energy is doing better than wind. It has the same defects that wind does: solar is ridiculously expensive, inherently unreliable since it can’t produce electricity at night, when it is cloudy, or when solar panels are covered with snow, and it is massively destructive of the environment.

So let’s drive the solar scam out of existence next. Or, rather, make it stand on its own two feet: no subsidies and no mandates. Let solar compete on even terms with nuclear, natural gas, coal and hydro power, and see who wins. Solar will die out, and the environment will only be better for it.

We have better, more efficient, and cheaper ways to produce energy. Let’s further develop them.

Looking Through The Lens Of History

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On Thursday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about the Senate confirmation hearings. He notes that at the three hearings this week  the Democrats were hoping to stop the nominees, things did not necessarily move in that direction.

The article notes:

But now several of Trump’s most controversial nominees–controversial meaning that the New York Times and The Washington Post really, really hate them–have taken their turn. Today, Robert Kennedy, Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard all testified in confirmation hearings. These are the nominees (along with Hegseth) that the Democrats are seriously determined to block, and you could see it in their hysterical, if sometimes hilarious, questioning.

I was able to watch only brief portions of today’s hearings and don’t have an opinion on how, in general, they went, other than the fact that the Democrats were in full howl-at-the-moon mode.

I hope all three nominees are confirmed, although I could go either way on Kennedy. Even here, though, Kennedy came across as I expected. He is walking away from some of his more out-there positions of years ago, and is focused on “making America healthy again.” I think there is room for him to do considerable good as an advocate for more healthy lifestyles.

But I really hope that Tulsi Gabbard is confirmed. From my own (admittedly minimal) experience with her, I have a great deal of respect for Gabbard’s patriotism, her intelligence–she is very, very smart–and her military bearing. And, to be honest, in my dealings with Gabbard I just liked her.

America’s “intelligence community” is sick and throughly politicized. Tulsi is, I think, a great choice to set it straight. I don’t agree with all of her opinions–my view of the Iraq war is more positive than hers, for instance–but I trust her to oversee an objective, competent and non-politicized intelligence operation. Which is what Trump wants, and a huge improvement.

The article notes a bit of history often overlooked:

The Democrats can’t block any of the President’s nominees, so their grandstanding is directed mostly at their own base. I suppose they also hope to persuade four Republicans to vote against Gabbard and the others. That shouldn’t happen. Of this group, the only one who isn’t plainly an excellent choice is the eccentric Robert Kennedy. But Kennedy, too, is President Trump’s choice, and there is a clear rationale for why he might be a very good Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Beginning with the Clinton administration and until this year, I believe there were only two occasions on which any senator of a president’s party voted against any of his Cabinet nominees. That number grew from two to three when three Republicans voted against Pete Hegseth’s confirmation as Secretary of Defense. Let’s hope that Senate Republicans don’t continue to break with tradition.

If the Republicans are not willing to support their own President’s choices, why should they be considered Republicans? I am willing to support any primary opponent who runs against a Republican who opposes President Trump’s choices.

About The Confirmation Hearings

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We have had a few days of confirmation hearings, enough to get a feel for what will be asked and how people will conduct themselves. So far, many of the questions asked have very little to do with the future and much to do with accusations or possible past mistakes. It is entertaining to watch some of the Democrats making accusations being reminded of their own actions.

On Wednesday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the hearings.

The article lists his three main observations about the hearings:

First, Trump’s nominees have uniformly done well. Pete Hegseth, Pam Bondi, Marco Rubio and Chris Wright have all come across as competent and likable, in contrast to most of their Democratic interlocutors, who have been shrill at best, and often dim-witted.

…Second, the main themes behind Trump’s nominations have come through. Trump nominated Pete Hegseth because he wants a soldier running the Pentagon–an idea to which I have enthusiastically come around. Pam Bondi will run a non-politicized Department of Justice. Marco Rubio will implement an America First foreign policy. And Chris Wright wants reliable, affordable energy. All of these themes are popular with the general public.

Third, the Democrats have played only to their hard-core base. Their questions often have focused on hobby horses that the general public has long lost interest in: Will you concede that Trump lost the 2020 election? Should the January 6 protesters be pardoned? And so on.

Somehow I don’t think this is what our Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote ‘advise and consent.’

The article concludes:

Finally, all of Trump’s key nominees are going to be confirmed. Republicans control the Senate, and there is no sign that any Republican senators are wavering. Some nominees will sail through, like Marco Rubio, who not only benefits from a traditional senatorial privilege, but is genuinely popular with senators on both sides of the aisle. Others, like Pete Hegseth, will be the focus of Democratic opposition. But it won’t matter: Republicans have the votes, and Republicans are united behind the Trump administration. Democrats can howl at the moon, but they have no power to stop the administration from taking office and moving forward.

A Picture Of A Shift

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On Friday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about the Senate elections in 2020 and 2024.

The article includes two illustrations:

The article concludes:

So the Great Sort continues apace. The GOP has a slight built-in advantage in the Senate, but that edge could be neutralized by the Democrats’ vast financial resources and their control over most of the means of communication and the federal bureaucracy.

The more fundamental question, which I won’t address for now, is whether the Great Sort renders futile the entire notion of a United States that includes both its red zones–pro-America, pro-Constitutional government, pro-free enterprise, indifferent to race–and its blue zones–anti-American, anti-Constitution, socialist and racist. On what basis, exactly, can we form a common polity?

That question may become acute much sooner than most observers realize.

I believe that most voters rejected some of the strange ideas the political left has espoused in recent years such as ‘affirmative gender care’ for children and drag queen story hour. Those things may be okay in liberal cities, but they are not acceptable with mainstream Americans trying to raise children. Until some of the more extreme ideas of the political left are jettisoned, there will be little common ground. The extreme right also has its problems. We can’t legislate morality, but we can encourage it. Sometimes the right forgets the old expression that says you can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. The political right needs to stand for the values that made this country great, but they need to do it with compassion.

You Can Tell When Israel Is Winning–The United Nations Asks For A Cease Fire

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On Monday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the continuing war between Israel and the terrorists that surround it. It is unfortunate that the rest of the world does not understand that in defending Israel they are fighting worldwide terrorism.

The article quotes The Wall Street Journal:

Israeli special forces have been carrying out small, targeted raids into southern Lebanon, gathering intelligence and probing ahead of an expected broader ground incursion, people familiar with the matter said.
***
The Biden administration expects an imminent Israeli invasion of Lebanon, U.S. officials said.
***
An Israeli official said that, if there were to be a broader ground operation, it would feature “localized, limited raids against Hezbollah targets along the border with the objective of destroying the capabilities of the Radwan Forces,” the militant group’s special-operations unit. Israeli forces assess that the group is making preparations for an attack, as Hamas did before Oct. 7, including positioning clothes, weapons and other materials along the border.

The difference is that October 7th was unprovoked and aimed at civilians. Israel’s attack has been provoked by the constant rocket fire on civilians in Northern Israel, and Israel’s attack is aimed at Hezbollah–a terrorist group.

The article at Power Line Blog concludes:

So, what is the Biden administration’s role in these events? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have remained true to their policy of being utterly irrelevant, when they are not actually destructive, on all foreign policy issues. Biden’s greatest fear, apparently, is that Israel might actually achieve victory in its battle to the death with Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies:

President Biden starkly instructed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to abandon reported plans for an imminent invasion of southern Lebanon to clear out Hezbollah-held areas days after the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah.

“Israel may now be launching a limited operation into Lebanon. Are you aware of that? Are you comfortable with their plan?” a journalist asked Biden at the White House.

“I’m more aware than you might know, and I’m comfortable with them stopping,” the president replied.

“We should have a cease-fire now,” he added.

There is a pattern here: whenever the Jews are winning, liberal Democrats want a cease fire to give the terrorists time to regroup and live to fight again another day. Happily, no one cares what they think.

If Mexico were firing rockets into Texas every day, would America want a cease-fire?

Caught!

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On September 18th, Hot Air posted an article about the Hezbollah pagers that exploded yesterday. There were some very interesting people who had those pagers.

The article quotes The New York Times:

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, lost one eye and severely injured his other eye when a pager he was carrying exploded in a simultaneous wave of blasts targeting wireless electronic devices, according to two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps briefed on the attack.

The Guards members, who had knowledge of the attacks and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Amini’s injuries were more serious than Iran initially reported and that he would be medevacked to Tehran for treatment.

Hossein Soleimani, the editor in chief of Mashregh, the main Revolutionary Guards news website, confirmed the extent of Mr. Amini’s injuries in a post on X. “Unfortunately the injuries sustained by Iran’s ambassador were extremely severe and in his eyes,” Mr. Soleimani wrote.

Why was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon carrying a Hezbollah pager?

John Hinderaker at Power Line reported on the news that on Thursday handheld radios were exploding.

The article at Power Line notes:

Apparently fires have broken out in seemingly random buildings, and loudspeakers are telling people to take the batteries out of their phones. I haven’t seen any reports, however, of exploding cell phones.

The usual suspects are up in arms over yesterday’s pager attack:

The United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss Israel’s wave of attacks in Lebanon, according to Slovenia, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month.

How many emergency meetings have they held over Hezbollah’s rocket bombardment of Israel, which has gone on for months?

The United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, has criticized the pager attack as a violation of international law and called for those behind it to be held to account.

So, does sending thousands of rockets into Israel violate international law? What does the U.N. propose to do about it?

Nothing, of course. Hence the need for Israel to defend itself.

That is the current state of the United Nations.

 

The Impact Of American Elections

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On Sunday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the recent prisoners swap with Russia. The article made a few observations on why the swap took place now instead of after November.

The article quotes a Wall Street Journal article:

[Deputy chief of the foreign secret service BND Philipp] Wolff’s team saw an opening when their Russian counterparts said they wanted to wrap up the deal before the U.S. election in November. Some officials deduced that the Russians were either concerned about an unpredictable Donald Trump coming again to the presidency, or they feared that [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz would no longer be willing to help a president who rarely misses an opportunity to criticize Germany.

“We then decided to push it to the limit,” a senior official involved in the talks said.

The article speculates that the real reason for the rush to complete the deal before November is based on the fact that if President Trump is elected, his administration will be much better negotiators than the Biden administration. The article reminds us that the Iranian hostages of the 1970’s were released as soon as Ronald Reagan became President.

Some Americans may get caught up in the ‘never Trump’ movement, but have they thought about the consequences. The Biden administration has given us a small taste of what a Harris administration would be like–higher taxes, weak economy, more unemployment, shrinking middle class, etc. Don’t get caught up in the media spin that says President Trump is a threat to democracy (we are not a democracy) when the Democrat party candidate for President has been put in place without a single vote in the primary election. All of the Americans who voted in the Democrat primary have had no say in who the candidate is–their votes didn’t count. So who is the threat to ‘democracy?’

 

The Consequences Of Liberal State Government

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On Saturday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the movement of the American population from Blue States to Red States.

The article reports:

One of the most important phenomena in contemporary America is the Great Sort–we are increasingly dividing into red and blue states, in part because of domestic migration. But that migration is basically a one-way street: people are fleeing blue states and moving to red states. Many, but not all, of these migrants are conservatives seeking a more congenial home. And of course there are liberals living in red states, but very few of them are picking up stakes and volunteering for higher taxes and more sluggish economies.

This is not a new phenomenon. The billboard below is from 1971:

So what impact does this movement of people have on red and blue states? The article includes the following charts:

If the state governments are the laboratories of democracy, it is becoming very obvious which states are doing better economically and in other areas.

The article concludes:

Where does it all end? I don’t know, but one possibility is that the current balance in our national politics, where far-left and center-right forces are almost equal, may before long become obsolete. America may become definitively a center-right country, simply because that is where most people and most resources are located.

Moving illegal immigrants to red states might help restore the balance of power. Just sayin’.

 

Moving Quickly In The Wrong Direction

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On Sunday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the impact of the climate-change regulations the Biden administration is placing on Americans.

The article reports:

Liberals denounce Donald Trump as a would-be tyrant, but the fact is that he ruled less by executive order than any other recent president. It is Joe Biden who has discarded the Constitution and imposed a blizzard of illegal or probably-illegal regulations on the rest of us.

Lately, they have been coming so furiously that it is hard to keep up with them. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board caught up with just one set, relating to power plants. The intent of the regulations is to set our economy and our material well-being back by as much as a century:

On Thursday the Environmental Protection Agency proposed its latest doozy—rules that will effectively force coal plants to shut down while banning new natural-gas plants.
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Barack Obama’s regulation spurred a wave of coal plant closures. Now President Biden is trying to finish the job by tightening mercury, wastewater and ash disposal standards. EPA is also replacing the Obama Clean Power Plan that the Supreme Court struck down with a rule requiring that coal plants and new gas-fired plants adopt costly and unproven carbon-capture technology by 2032.

It is interesting that the Biden administration is planning to severely limit the production of electricity while at the same time encouraging Americans to buy electric cars. If the grid will not be able to keep up with normal expected growth, how will it be able to keep up with the additional demand placed on it by electric cars?

The article concludes:

Biden’s purpose is not to benefit the climate, it is to benefit the vast “green” grift that is one of the Democratic Party’s main constituencies. The greens, but also Communist China. China controls the market for solar panels and wind turbines, and it also controls the raw materials that are necessary to produce solar panels, wind turbines, electric vehicles and the hypothetical batteries that are the magical solution to the fact that weather-dependent sources of energy can never fuel an economy–a primitive economy, let alone a modern one.

Why is Biden destroying our electrical grid and dragging the United States back into the 19th century, to the immense benefit of the Chinese Communist Party? Occam’s Razor suggests that he is doing it on purpose. Even Joe Biden isn’t dumb enough to fail to understand where these policies are leading. I don’t know whether it is sheer, malicious anti-Americanism, or whether the millions of dollars that Biden and his family have gotten from China have made him the Manchurian Candidate. But, one way or another, the disastrous consequences of the Biden administration’s energy policies are obvious to anyone who pays attention.

Including, even, Slow Joe.

Why Almost All Of The News Sounds The Same

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On Friday, John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the current state of journalism in America.

The article reports:

Commentary in the liberal press is so uniform that you wonder whether reporters and commentators have coordinated their coverage, down to the word and the phrase. Well, they have, of course. You remember JournoList, where, years ago, reporters would gather to coordinate their pro-Democrat, anti-Republican stories. JournoList supposedly disbanded after it came to light, but I assume it more likely just went underground.

Here we have another instance, JournoList 2. Politico reports: “Inside the Off-the-Record Calls Held by Anti-Trump Legal Pundits.”

As the Jan. 6 committee was working on its bombshell investigation into the Capitol riot and President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the last election, committee staffers took some time out of their seemingly 24-hour jobs one day in 2022 to brief a group of lawyers and legal pundits on a Zoom call.

The people on the call weren’t affiliated with the investigation or the government. But they would have been familiar to anyone who watches cable news. They were some of the country’s most well-known legal and political commentators, and they were there to get insights into the committee’s work and learn about what to look for at the hearings.

To “learn what to look for.” That is, to coordinate their news coverage. But that zoom wasn’t a one-off:

The group’s gathering was not a one-time event, but in fact an installment in an exclusive weekly digital salon, whose existence has not been previously reported, for prominent legal analysts and progressive and conservative anti-Trump lawyers and pundits. Every Friday, they meet on Zoom to hash out the latest twists and turns in the Trump legal saga — and intellectually stress-test the arguments facing Trump on his journey through the American legal system.

The article concludes:

The Politico reporter, while sharing the group’s anti-Trump bias, understood that not everyone would see it that way:

[A]s I was reporting this story, I learned that some members of the group were understandably anxious about its publication. Trump has claimed that there is a legal conspiracy against him, and there is a risk that news of a group such as this could give Trump and his allies an attractive target.

Trump’s claims of an organized conspiracy might be bunk, but there are other potential problems with the Friday Zooms: There is a risk, for instance, that the calls could breed groupthink or perhaps help dubious information spread, where it might then reach people watching the news.

Trump’s claim obviously is not bunk, as the Politico article itself reveals. And the idea that the weekly calls could “breed groupthink” or “help dubious information spread” to “people watching the news”? That is the whole point, obviously.

This is just one more reminder that the legacy press is hopelessly corrupt and wholly unreliable. Happily, hardly anyone pays any attention to these people.

If we are going to save America, we have to learn to listen carefully to both the mainstream media and the alternative media. When almost all of the media uses the same words to describe the same news, something is not right.

 

Why Should They Listen To The Voters?

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On Saturday, John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog about one possible outcome of the 2024 election. It is becoming very obvious that as the powers that be work harder and harder to make sure that President Trump does not get a second term, more and more voters are deciding to support him–just to have their voices heard. This is going to make for a very interesting year.

The article reports:

In 2001, 2005 and 2017, some Democrat House members objected to the certification of electoral votes for the winning Republican presidential candidate. Those objections, while “denialist,” were only symbolic. But Democrat leaders in the House are now suggesting that if they control that body following November’s election–as they well might–they may refuse to allow a victorious Donald Trump to take office.

Notice that the objects to the electoral votes were not allowed in 2020–they were pre-empted by the events outside the Capitol and a parliamentary procedure was used to block them when the House reconvened.

The article concludes:

The Democrats have become so insane on the subject of Donald Trump that it is hard to know which of their mutterings to take seriously. But if Trump wins the election and a Democrat-controlled House refuses to certify his election on the ground that he is an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment, we will be past the point of a constitutional crisis. If that happens, the only realistic path forward will be disunion, possibly accompanied by civil war, but preferably not.

This is one reason why the Supreme Court should put the 14th Amendment theory out of its misery, once and for all. It is obvious that the drafters of that amendment meant the just-concluded Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans lost their lives, when they referred to “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. In contrast, the January 6 protest was not one of the 50 most destructive riots of the last few years, and the only person killed was Ashli Babbitt. Not a single participant in the protest was arrested in possession of a firearm. Some insurrection!

In the interest of preserving the Republic, the Supreme Court should rule definitively that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Donald Trump.

Stay tuned.