(John Hinderaker) Scott wrote this morning about documents that the Intercept has obtained under the Freedom of Information Act relating to NIH funding of coronavirus research in Wuhan, China. These documents relate to two grants that the NIH gave to Ecohealth Alliance, which in turn collaborated on the Chinese research. They have been hailed by many as conclusive proof that Dr. Fauci has lied about NIH supporting gain of function research at
Category: Power Line Blog
Now the Taliban Have Gone Too Far
(John Hinderaker) It’s bad enough that the Taliban don’t have any women in their government, now they have committed the ultimate outrage: painting over a mural of George Floyd. After successfully completing its takeover of Afghanistan, the Taliban has been painting over murals in Kabul and replacing them with proclamations of victory, including one that featured Black Lives Matter icon George Floyd. The Taliban have started painting over murals left behind from
Today in Academic Crazy
(Steven Hayward) Peter Boghossian is (actually, after today, was) a professor of philosophy at Portland State University, and although he has always considered himself a progressive liberal, he has become completely alienated from our university culture today. His resignation letter to Portland State Provost Susan Jeffords is up at Bari Weiss’s popular Substack channel, and I encourage you to read the whole thing if you have time. I am glad to see
Whole lotta lyin’ goin’ on
(Scott Johnson) I’ve held off writing about the hostages stranded by Biden in Afghanistan while the facts are sorted out. I’ve gone from Jim Geraghty’s Morning Jolt yesterday “Secretary of State Blinken: This Is Not a Hostage Crisis” to Michael Goodwin’s New York Post column “Plane truth of Biden’s Afghanistan botch” to Peter Hasson’s FOX News story “State Department obstruction of private rescue flights from Afghanistan revealed in leaked email.” Joe Concha
Manchin’s red line
(Paul Mirengoff) Joe Manchin reportedly has told the White House that he won’t support a reconciliation spending bill that exceeds $1.5 trillion. He might not even support one that exceeds $1 trillion, according to the same report. Without Manchin’s support, there can be no reconciliation package. Add $1.5 trillion to the roughly $1 trillion in the bipartisan infrastructure, and the price tag for Republicans losing the Senate comes to around $2.5 trillion.
Poll: Biden below water in seven key congressional districts
(Paul Mirengoff) We’ve discussed the fact that Joe Biden’s approval rating is sinking in national surveys. John Fund points us to what might be an even more relevant survey of Biden’s approval — one that polled seven key House districts, each represented by a Democrat. Biden fares little better in these jurisdictions than he does nationally. He’s underwater in all of them, and by seven points on average: The American Action Network,
The fallacious Fauci revisited
(Scott Johnson) The Intercept’s Sharon Lerner and Mara Hvistendahl report on what they found in documents they have obtained under the Freedom of Information Act: NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund
The tornadoes of your mind
(Scott Johnson) President Biden engineered the humiliating disgrace of the United States in Afghanistan. It will travel far with us along our road. Biden wants both to celebrate it as a glorious victory and to “move on.” Yesterday Biden turned his attention, such as it is, to the “climate.” Biden seeks to get the climate under control. Biden was out stumping on the “climate” in New York and New Jersey. The damned
The Taliban forms a pro-al Qaeda government, Part Two
(Paul Mirengoff) In an earlier post, I discussed how top jobs in the new Taliban government will be held by leaders with close ties to al Qaeda. But there’s more to this story. You can find a list of the Taliban cabinet members here. It includes four terrorists who were released by the U.S. in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl. The four are: Mullah Norullah Nori (Acting Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs)
Return of the Hockey Stick?
(John Hinderaker) Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph, which purported to show that global temperatures hummed along at virtually a flat rate until a recent, unprecedented uptick, has long been discredited as an artifact of either ineptitude or fraud. In fact, global temperatures have varied significantly throughout the Earth’s history, including the last 12,000 years. But the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change apparently is trying to bring back the hockey stick. One