Three protected menageries

Roger Kimball writes in PJ Media,

“To every thing,” observed the sage of Ecclesiastes, “there is a season.... A time to be born, and a time to die; ... A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up,” et cetera. What this estimable observer of human life omitted from his bracing catalogue of oppositions is the fact that one side of these partnerships tends to be much easier to accomplish than the other.

To the eye of experience, this is obvious. How much time, labor, and inherited expertise go into building an automobile, a house, a city, a civilization. How quickly they can be destroyed by disaster or neglect.

...Look at Venezuela. With the world’s largest proven oil reserves, the South American country emerged from military rule in 1959 and became a bastion of prosperity in the Southern hemisphere. Then came the socialist Hugo Chavez in 1999. His policies pushed the country into decline, slowly at first, and then rapidly. Today, under the rule of Chavez’s hand-picked successor Nicolás Maduro, the country is on the verge of collapse. Inflation is running at 40,000 percent, there are widespread shortages of food, medicine, and other basic necessities, looting and corruption are rampant, people and capital are fleeing the country.

It did not take long to destroy Venezuela. It will take many years, much heartache and suffering, and enormous resources to put it back together.

Donald Trump's

actions are methodical, thoughtful, and (what’s more) effective. His first seventeen months in office have been nothing less than extraordinary in their litany of successes. Superb judicial appointments, welcome tax and regulatory reform, economic growth, consumer confidence, military preparedness, and that difficult-to-measure but still palpable quality of national morale: all on the upswing. These are good things, not bad things. And they are just a few of the many successes Donald Trump has presided over in his short time in office.

...Moreover, the “dissenters,” far from being a “majority,” are in fact a tiny minority cloistered mostly in three protected menageries: 1) the universities; 2) Hollywood; 3) the media.

...the dirty little secret of The Resistance is that what it is “resisting” are the results of a free, open, and democratic election. Donald Trump won in 2016. Hillary Clinton lost. That is the painful, indigestible, intolerable reality. The Resistance is therefore on the side of the enemies of democracy, and its never-ending cascade of calumnies about how Donald Trump is “dismantling democracy” is just a blind, what Freudians would call “projection” and Marxists “increasing the contradictions.” A more commonplace phrase is “arrant nonsense.” They don’t like the results of the election. That does nothing to invalidate it. They don’t like Trump’s pro-American, pro-growth policies: most people do.

...we contemplate the childish, anti-democratic extravagances of the Resistance, that the contest between barbarism and civilization is perpetual. There are no permanent victories, only permanent values. There is, to quote Ecclesiastes again, “Nothing new under the sun.” It is something worth remembering as you listen to Maxine Waters rage, to anti-Trump television personalities call for a recession to check the president’s popularity, or democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer fantasize about nuclear war in order to undo Donald Trump. CNN’s Jim Acosta is exercised that Donald Trump calls the mainstream media “enemies of the people.” But the people seem to agree with the president. It’s harder to build than destroy.

Twitter Tidbits

Thomas Sowell tweeted, "Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it."

Glenn Reynolds replied, Socialism is the Axe Body Spray of political ideologies: It never does what it claims to do, but people too young to know better keep buying it anyway.

Promises made, promises kept.

Kurt Schlichter writes in Town Hall,

If we had listened to Never Trump, we’d have voted for Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit and we would not only have Merrick Garland (or worse) on the SCOTUS but now she’d be picking another pinko who agrees with the lib bloc that the First Amendment has hitherto unknown asterisks that prevent conservatives from using it, that a bunch of other rights that aren’t in the Constitution actually are, and that the Second Amendment stuff about not infringing on our right to keep and bear arms really means libs can totally infringe on our right to keep and bear arms. Let’s leave aside our booming economy and crushing ISIS and pulling out of the climate scam and maybe peace with North Korea. Just these two Supreme Court picks makes Trump the most important and successful conservative president since The Big R. And we wouldn’t have any of it if that nattering pack of insufferable sissies had had their way.

A lot of us had our doubts, but Trump assuaged them by doing something we never expected to see a GOP politician actually do – keep his promises. I was hardcore anti-Trump long ago – I was not Never Trump, only Never Hillary. I was loud and proud for Ted Cruz, with zero trust in a New York playboy whose attachment to conservative ideology seemed intermittent at best. I write about my transformation at length, and with considerably more colorful language, in my upcoming book Militant Normals, which drops in October. But suffice it to say that I, as have a bunch of fellow Trump-doubters, came around because Trump performed. He did what he said he would. Promises made, promises kept. He promised winning, and delivered winning, and damnit, we normal conservatives are here to win.

Read more here.

Exceptionally Strong Economy, Demand and Production Output…

Headline at The Conservative Treehouse:

U.S. Factory Activity Reflects Exceptionally Strong Economy, Demand and Production Output…



Pontificating economic globalists are stuck between empirical good news and their preferred anti-Trump tariff narrative. Economic media like the Wall Street Journal are filled with angst, as Trump’s manufacturing MAGAnomics continues to destroy their decades-long talking points and globalist preferences.

The analysis of June factory and manufacturing indicators from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM) highlight an expanding reality: increased production, increased new orders, increased employment, and demand outpacing supplies and transportation capacity. Yes, all of this means the Main Street U.S. economic engine is firing on all cylinders. We can only imagine what the Q2 numbers will reflect when it’s all rolled up.

Read more here.

What is the real reason Ross resigned?

Yesterday ABC investigative reporter Brian Ross resigned. The media reported that it was because of his false reporting on the Michael Flynn investigation. Today, Sundance at the Conservative Treehouse says,

Hogwash – Brian Ross Didn’t Resign Over the Fake News Flynn Story, He Resigned Because He Was “Reporter 4” Within James Wolfe Indictment – Senate Intelligence Leak Investigation…

Reporter #1 is likely Manu Raju of CNN.
Reporter #2 is definitely Ali Watkins of New York Times.
Reporter #3 is likely Marianna Sotomayor of NBC
Reporter #4 is likely Brian Ross of ABC

Read Sundance's reasoning here.

“If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.”

The Guardian reports on groping allegations on Justin Trudeau.

Days after the event, an unsigned editorial appeared in the Creston Valley Advance, a local newspaper, accusing Trudeau of “groping” and “inappropriately handling” an unnamed female reporter who was covering the event.

While the editorial offered no specifics on what had happened, it claimed the woman felt “blatantly disrespected” and Trudeau had apologised for his behaviour. “I’m sorry,” the editorial alleged Trudeau to have said. “If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.”

Read more here.

In the last quarter century, more than 1.25 billion people escaped extreme poverty

Alexander C. R. Hammond reports at Human Progress,

in 1820, 94 percent of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty (less than $1.90 per day adjusted for purchasing power). In 1990 this figure was 34.8 percent, and in 2015, just 9.6 percent.

...In the last quarter century, more than 1.25 billion people escaped extreme poverty - that equates to over 138,000 people (i.e., 38,000 more than the Parisian crowd that greeted Father Wresinski in 1987) being lifted out of poverty every day. If it takes you five minutes to read this article, another 480 people will have escaped the shackles of extreme of poverty by the time you finish. Progress is awesome. In 1820, only 60 million people didn’t live in extreme poverty. In 2015, 6.6 billion did not.

Now let’s consider those people who are still trapped in extreme poverty. The Oxford University scholar Max Roser’s website, Our World in Data, used World Bank databases to estimate that in 2013, there were 746 million people living in extreme poverty. Of these people, slightly more than 380 million resided in Africa, with Nigeria being home to largest number (86 million). Meanwhile, 327 million of those in extreme poverty lived in Asia, with India having the largest proportion by far (218 million). China had 25 million. The remaining 35 million lived in South America (19 million), North America (13 million), Oceania (2.5 million) and Europe (0.7 million.)

Put differently, of those who live in extreme poverty, over 40 percent resided in just two nations: India and Nigeria.

Since its economic liberalization reforms in 1991, India’s average income has increased by 7.5 percent per year. That means that average income has more than tripled over the last quarter century. As wealth increased, the poverty rate in India declined by almost 24 percent. But most significantly, for the Dalits – the poorest and lowest caste in Indian society – the poverty rate during this period declined even faster, by 31 percent. That means that in the nation that has by far the largest number of people in extreme poverty, it is the people at the very bottom of the social strata who are getting richer faster.

A similar trend can be seen in Nigeria. Since the new millennium, gross domestic income per capita has increased by over 800 percent, from $270 to over $2,450. There is much work to be done, but this level of progress shows that even in the poorest countries, the speed of economic growth is encouraging.

Read more here.

Is a mega-Supreme Court an idea whose time has come?

Glenn Reynolds writes in USA Today,

...we’ve come to a place where the Supreme Court doesn’t just decide technical legal issues, but is called on to decide some of our most pressing moral and social questions. If the court is going to remain in that role, then it needs to be more representative of America as a whole, and less sensitive to minor changes that produce major shifts in its decisions. (And the near-universal belief that replacing Anthony Kennedy with a conservative will produce such a major shift is also an admission that the Supreme Court today isn’t about legal rigor or “neutral principles,” but essentially about politics.)

So forget 15 justices. Let’s keep the nine we have who are appointed by the president, and add one from each state, to be appointed by governors, and then confirmed by the Senate. Fifty-nine justices is enough to ensure (I hope) that they aren’t all from Harvard and Yale as is the case now, and enough to limit the mystique of any particular justice. If the Supreme Court is going to function, as it does, like a super-legislature, it might as well be legislature-sized.

Making the Supreme Court less sensitive to shifts in the political winds would also benefit presidential and senatorial elections. Right now, they turn significantly on who will be appointed and confirmed to the Supreme Court. If that’s less of an issue, then voters can evaluate candidates on how they’re likely to do their own jobs, rather than who they’ll support for a different one.

Is a mega-Supreme Court an idea whose time has come? If so, we can thank those who put the issue on the table.

Read more here.

“They put 40 members of Congress’s data on one server … That server, with that serial number, has disappeared,”

At The Daily Caller, Luke Rosiak reports,

A secret memo marked “URGENT” detailed how the House Democratic Caucus’s server went “missing” soon after it became evidence in a cybersecurity probe. The secret memo also said more than “40 House offices may have been victims of IT security violations.”

In the memo, Congress’s top law enforcement official, Sergeant-at-Arms Paul Irving, along with Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko, wrote, “We have concluded that the employees [Democratic systems administrator Imran Awan and his family] are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems and thereby members’ capacity to serve constituents.”

The memo, addressed to the Committee on House Administration (CHA) and dated Feb. 3, 2017, was recently reviewed and transcribed by The Daily Caller News Foundation. The letter bolsters TheDCNF’s previous reporting about the missing server and evidence of fraud on Capitol Hill.

It details how the caucus server, run by then-caucus Chairman Rep. Xavier Becerra, was secretly copied by authorities after the House Inspector General (IG) identified suspicious activity on it, but the Awans’ physical access was not blocked.

But after, the report reads, the server appears to have been secretly replaced with one that looked similar.

The memo called for firing the Pakistani-born aides, revoking all their computer accounts, and changing the locks on any door they had access to.

Rep. Louie Gohmert — a Texas Republican on the House Committee on the Judiciary who has done oversight work on the case — said the missing server contained copies of Congress members’ emails.

“They put 40 members of Congress’s data on one server … That server, with that serial number, has disappeared,” he said.

Multiple sources connected to the investigation told TheDCNF that shortly after an IG report came out identifying the House Democratic Caucus server as key evidence in a criminal probe, the evidence was stolen.

“They [the Awans] deliberately turned over a fake server” to falsify evidence, one official close to the CHA alleged. “It was a breach. The data was completely out of [members’] possession.”

Read more here.

"If all you do is scream racism at people, you pump yourself full of self-righteousness and become increasingly radicalized and therefore increasingly at odds with reality and common sense."

At PJ Media, Andrew Klavan writes,

The constant cries of racism have kept race at the center of the American political discussion long after most Americans would happily let the subject go. The attacks on anyone who demands reform from Islam have allowed radical Islamists to range free in their communities while moderates are unprotected. The anti-male cries of sexism have reduced women to perpetual victims, perpetually dissatisfied with life.

And, perhaps most importantly, leftist race mongering turns leftists into political idiots. It isn't until you engage with your political opponents that you learn the strengths and weaknesses of your arguments and can therefore adjust them or even change your mind entirely. If all you do is scream racism at people, you pump yourself full of self-righteousness and become increasingly radicalized and therefore increasingly at odds with reality and common sense.

...fake charges of racism give real racism a kind of panache. Since only good non-racist people can be cowed into silence with false charges, nasty real racists, willing to speak their minds, come across as bold and honest instead of like the jerks they are. When you cry Racist Wolf long enough, you leave the real wolf free to roam.

Eventually, one hopes that insightful black Americans will begin to see that while the left's race mongering may offer them the short-term political power of victimhood, the long-term costs in inequality and social exclusion are too high. On that day, the left will have to get by on the strength of their ideas alone. That will not be pretty.

Read more here.

Eric Trump rushes into traffic in NYC to save ailing woman

Paul Bedard reports at the Washington Examiner,

An ordinary morning in New York City last week for President Trump’s son Eric Trump abruptly turned frantic when he rushed to the aid of a woman who passed out near a train station, dodging rush-hour traffic to chase down a passing ambulance.

According to an eyewitness account provided to Secrets, Trump and his security detail stopped to tend to the unidentified woman outside of the F train stop near 57th Street and 6th Avenue on Wednesday morning.

Our tipster, who requested anonymity, said Trump then spotted a passing ambulance and rushed to stop it.

“I watched as Eric looked up, spotted an ambulance slowly passing by on 6th, ran into traffic — almost getting hit by a bicyclist — and shouted at the ambulance to get its attention,” said the observer.

“Not sure if the ambulance had been called for or if Eric managed to hail one out of the blue, but in any case his sense of urgency was clear and he succeeded in getting the paramedics to stop and tend to the woman,” added the observer, who has no ties to Trump.

Despite being the president’s son, prominent in New York for his role as the Trump Organization’s executive vice president of development and acquisitions, his Good Samaritan role went mostly unnoticed. “I don’t know if anyone really noticed all of this going on, there wasn’t a crowd of people watching,” said the observer.

After the paramedics took over, Trump and his security detail left.

For his part, Trump gave the credit for helping the ailing woman to the medical team he flagged down.

“I’m glad we were able to play a small role in getting help for the woman on 58th Street,” he told Secrets. “We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. I’m especially grateful to the EMTs who took over. It was certainly my first time hailing an ambulance in New York City,” he added.

The deviousness of the Obama sedition runs deep.

Todd Wood writes at The Washington Times,

The deviousness of the Obama sedition runs deep.

...Think about it for a moment. If you wanted peace in the Middle East, why would you throw away the trillions of dollars spent, as well as the lives of thousands of American souls, by irresponsibly pulling out ALL American troops from Iraq? No matter your thoughts on starting the war, pulling out was an irresponsible thing to do. We still have troops in Germany, Korea and Japan, for God’s sake. Why? For stability, that’s why. As Colin Powell said, we broke it, now we own it. It was a given that instability would follow the force withdrawal. When you combine this act with the reality that Obama never really did try to defeat the Islamic State, what conclusion can you come up with? Trump defeated them in a few months. The conclusion is obvious: Obama really didn’t want to destroy them.

...However, the coup-de-grace of anti-American activity was the JCPOA, or, to say it another way, the agreement to give Iran everything it wanted, including nuclear weapons and money — lots of money — which it immediately used to further destabilize the region, and existentially threaten the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel. To take it a step further, why didn’t Obama support the opposition against the Mullahs in 2009 when there was an obvious chance for regime change in Iran? Why didn’t Obama confront Bashar Assad’s chemical weapons use? One of the main unanswered questions is what ties did Valerie Jarrett really have to the Iranian regime?

I won’t go into why Obama ran up more debt for the United States than all previous presidents combined. I won’t ask why he weakened our armed forces. I won’t ask why he used tyrannical policies, like using the agencies of the federal government to go after his political opposition. I won’t ask why he politicized our security apparatus in an attempt to frame President Trump.

What I will say is that there was a big fox in the hen house for eight long years. Eight long years for people like Brennan, Hillary, Kerry, Clapper, Comey and Jarrett to really hurt us regarding our safety and security.

Read more here.

"Benevolent sexism"

Amanda Prestigiacomo reports at The Daily Wire,

According to a new study from University of Kent and Iowa State University scientists, which was published on Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, women overwhelmingly preferred chivalrous men who viewed women as needing protecting. Researchers Pelin Gul and Tom Kupfer classify this apparently "patronizing" behavior as "benevolent sexism" (BS), or well-meaning sexism. The researchers suggest that women are hard-wired to overlook the "harmful consequences" of BS, "because BS mates are perceived as willing to invest (protect, provide, and commit)," reads the study's abstract. Gul and Kupfer chalk this up to natural selection, a symptom of which women have yet to shake.

Read more here.

Descending into emotional infantilism; walking on eggshells; signing the Declaration of Independence

Why take the trouble to #WalkAway, when it's much easier to #DescendIntoEmotionalInfantilismAndBecomeADemocrat? The best opening monologue ever!

The only way for the press to reform itself is by hiring Trump supporters in their newsrooms.

Michael Knowles: The men who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 were actually signing their death warrants.

The Declaration had two parts: grievances against the King, and philosophy. Not much was said about its philosopy until Lincoln in 1860 in the Gettysburg Address.

The Left wants us to walk on egg shells. Be afraid to open our mouths. They politicize ordinary language in order to get the advantage on their opponent, but they ultimately shortchange themselves.

Fabulous interview with President Trump by Maria Bartiromo

"The European Union is as bad as China, just smaller! $151 billion dollars in trade surplus with the United States! On top of that, we spend a fortune on NATO to protect them! Open borders equals crime.

Maxine Waters is the new leader of the Democrats. I think they will never win another election! They want to raise taxes! I don't think that's a very good formula for winning an election!"

Will you sanction European countries who do business with Iran? "Of course! Absolutely!

OPEC is going to have to put out more oil.

I love the people of this country!"

Obrador elected president of Mexico. Will take office in December

What was his platform? Sundance explains at The Conservative Treehouse,

Primary platform points: ♦Amnesty to all drug cartels. ♦No longer will work with U.S. immigration enforcement. ♦Nationalize oil industry. ♦Farm subsidies. ♦Elimination of multinational corporate influence on farming. ♦Support and assistance for economic growth plan: using •mass migration of Mexican nationals into Southern U.S., •create AmeriMex border region, and •remittance of earnings back to Mexico as initiative for rapid domestic economic growth.

Read more here.

"The most dangerous time for a rescue swimmer is the moment when he reaches the desperate and drowning man. The MOST IMPORTANT aspect for President Trump, and for the survival of the United States, is to make sure the U.S. is not pulled under when Mexico begins to drown."

Sundance writes at The Conservative Treehouse,

On NAFTA the bottom line is easily identified. There are no ongoing negotiations. The NAFTA fatal flaw, which allows Canada and Mexico to act as pass-throughs for foreign products, is an impossible impasse to overcome. Neither Mexico or Canada can negotiate away their economic process of importing foreign goods, assembling them, and then using NAFTA to trans-ship the finished product into the U.S market.

Yesterday Mexico elected a new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has the nickname AMLO. Sundance writes,

On the Agricultural side of NAFTA president-elect Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. President Donald Trump can actually work together. Neither AMLO, nor Trump, support the continuation of the corporately-controlled, Wall Street profit-driven, status quo. An interesting dynamic.

...Overall, Obrador represents an ideological outlook almost identical to former U.S. Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders. [coincidentally the same as former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez]. Hollywood celebrities and avowed leftists will likely embrace Obrador in 2018/2019 as they did Chavez in 2009/2010. Watch, you’ll see.

AMLO has a governing philosophy almost identical to Bernie Sanders; the problem AMLO faces is his Mexican economic policy starts without any underlying Mexican wealth to spread around. [Again, the Venezuelan issue] Socialism only works when you have other people’s money, labor, and property to distribute. The majority of the value in Mexico is owned by outside multinational interests. Those multinationals will now have to figure out how to deal with a nationalist who despises their ownership and control.

[Again, see big picture Venezuela]

Eventually, in order to make good on his promises, AMLO is going to need to *take* value from private ownership and redistribute that wealth to his constituents. That process may take a few years, but it is inevitable. In the history of the world, a socialist economy has never survived itself (without absolute economic capitulation of the citizens).

When that process happens, those entities who have their wealth expropriated will exit the economic system. It has always been thus; there has never been a socialist economy where that did not happen.. and that process begins the Venezuelan spiral.

The most dangerous time for a rescue swimmer is the moment when he reaches the desperate and drowning man. The MOST IMPORTANT aspect for President Trump, and for the survival of the United States, is to make sure the U.S. is not pulled under when Mexico begins to drown.

That, my friends, is why we need the Southern Border Wall. [Regardless of cost.]

In praise of liberty

Guest post by Suzann Darnall

I love the 4th of July! Independence Day! A celebration of America and liberty. Birthday for the land that I do love. And, you know what? With President Trump in office and doing his best to make America great again, I am truly feeling like freedom is alive and well . . . and being restored to American citizens. President Trump is slowly but surely reinstating some of our rights and liberties which had been compromised. Now, that is something truly worth throwing a party to commemorate!!!

While I am no longer much about the fireworks, I do love the picnics or barbecues that frequently happen. It is not that I am against fireworks, but when one lives in Texas’ drought country, one kinda prefers to avoid anything that might set the grass on fire, particularly in the dry month of July. Texas summertime and shooting fire through the air no longer strikes me as a good idea.

I especially love when we can get together with family for the Fourth. I feel that America was created for families. I feel that living in liberty is the best way for families to not merely survive but to actually thrive. It is my profound belief that freedom of religion truly leads to liberty and also aids in the strength of families. Since I also believe that strong families are the cornerstone of a strong society, I am a supporter of the First Amendment, which protects the right of religious freedom, among other freedoms.

I also support the Second Amendment, which I believe is one of the major protections for all of our other rights. Were it not for access to weapons, the early citizens of America would have been unable to gain or retain their freedom from British tyranny. I firmly believe we face tyranny today, just in different forms from days of yore. Once we fought Redcoats, now we fight red tape. The kind of bureaucratic red tape which slowly wrests away our liberty one regulation at a time, until we are no longer citizens of a nation, but merely servants of a government. The bureaucrats keep infringing our rights, including assaults on religious freedom and freedom of speech. And, they are seemingly always trying to take away our right to bear arms. If weapons are ever only in the hands of the government, we are all doomed to nothing more than state-sponsored serfdom.

So, this coming Wednesday, I plan to celebrate my freedom. And, this coming election, I plan to support those candidates which I believe will best support President Trump, ‘cause I believe President Trump is our best hope for regaining and retaining our rights which have been infringed or are under assault.

This 4th of July, take the time to review the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Americans fought and died to grant us the liberty to form a new nation more than 200 years ago. More Americans have fought and died to protect that freedom. Unfortunately, those rights are currently under attack from within our own country’s borders. Even within our own government. So, may God bless my fellow Americans, our President, our military, and our great nation. May we recognize the importance of each and every right we were given under the Constitution. Vote responsibly. Vote to defend liberty. Vote so we may ever celebrate Independence Day. Not just on July 4th, but on each and every day we wake up to a new sunrise in the United States of America!
Suzann blogs at Wooly Mammoth.com

Bill Maher v. Ben Shapiro

Sociopaths and egotists in Congress; Are we going to overturn Roe v. Wade? Why can only men be priests?

Michael says people in Congress are mostly sociopaths and egotists. Every decision they make is about how it will affect their reelection chances.

See the title for today's podcast? It is Roe v. Wade flipped! Are we going to overturn Roe v. Wade? "Look in the Constitution and show me the right to abortion!" The question is Roberts. He is worried that people will get so mad at the Supreme Court that they will just get rid of it. So he sided with the liberals on Obamacare. If Roe v. Wade were overturned, that doesn't mean abortion would be illegal. It means states would decide.

Mailbag: Paul asks, Why does the Catholic Church insist that only men can be priests? "Men and women have different roles in the Church. Who was it that first spread the word of the resurrection? Women! Who were the apostles? Men! Who was closest to Jesus? His mother! Being a priest is about service." That is Michael's answer.

Raw, honest, fearless, and respectful to the average American.

Trump has really achieved something: Democrats are being honest! They elected an open socialist to defeat a top Democrat in New York.

Breakdown of the family, now we have a breakdown of society.

Gavin McInnes is Michael's guest. They have a hilarious interchange of ideas.

Do Americans still want freedom? The Left says no! They say, "You should not have the right to speak!" Leftist Justice Elena Kagan dissented in Janus. The Janus case is about choice! To pay dues to a union or not!

Michael: There is a thought that stops thought, and that is the only thought that ought to be stopped!

Michael ends the program by playing a clip from Elvis Presley's 1968 comeback special. Intimate and authentic, just as Donald Trump has given us! The vast majority of Americans agree with us on the issues. We are winning! The Left thinks that people are stupid and gullible fools, easily deceived. All we have to do is speak honestly and directly. Not like Romney super polished, but more like Trump, raw and honest, fearless and respectful to the average American! Don't ignore their serious complaints and needs.

McCain to resign July 4?

Stan Greene reports at the Santa Monica Observer this headline,

John McCain To Resign Senate Seat on the 4th of July, Says Aide. Cindy McCain Offered his Seat

Since when does John McCain care about supporting anything Donald Trump does? Color me skeptical!
Read more here.

Do you hate and despise Trump? Why then, you are virtue itself and a vessel of perfect probity.

Glenn Reynolds writes at Instapundit,

One of the things that anti-Trumpers hate most is that voters don’t see much difference between them and Trump — and then they proceed to prove the voters right.

Glenn links to an article by Rex Murphy in Canada's National Post. Murphy writes,

...Any statement about Trump, so long as it is in any way condemnatory, dismissive, insulting or condescending, requires neither proof, consistency, logic or (and especially) decency.

...Hatred of The Donald is the ultimate pass to be as vicious and crude as anyone could wish and still have a guaranteed place in heaven. ...Hatred of Trump frees the mind from all obligation to moderation, custom, or articulate argument...It is a chief glory of being “anti-Trump” that having adopted that position as a surrogate for thought, one is, by equally demented analogy, free to write and say the first ripe idiocy that springs to mind, however crude and misplaced.

And so it goes. Even the 20-million-a picture-boys, mainstays of the sexual cesspool of high Hollywood, “secret-sharers” of all its many depravities and predations, who for years rubbed shoulders and god knows what else with Harvey Weinstein or shared the table and god knows what else with Charlie Rose, are liberated to declaim against The Donald. It cleanses them … “Come now ….Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

...Do you hate and despise Trump? Why then, you are virtue itself and a vessel of perfect probity.

Read more here.

The Fragility of Order, The Death of Stalin, The three Foundation Stones of the western world

Did you know President Trump is meeting Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on July 16? There's your proof, Mueller!

The New York Times warns its readers that with Kennedy gone, justice may have to be decided at the ballot box! You mean you have to convince people to vote for your ideas? What a concept! They thought they could rule by fiat through the court and regulatory agencies!

George Weigel is Andrew's guest. He says there are three foundations stones of the western world. One is Biblical religion. Human life is journey, adventure, pilgrimage; it's heading somewhere. We are all made in the image and likeness of God. The second leg of the stool is classical Greek, the belief in the capacity of reason to get at the truth of things. The third leg is the conviction that law, rather than brute force, is the superior way to organize society.

John Paul II ignited a revolution of conscience in the 1980s: living in the truth, living for freedom. The revolution of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe.

Weigel wishes Trump would appeal more to nobility rather than to some very primal fears.

Weigel is Catholic. He believes the Catholic Church is dying in western Europe. He has written a book entitled The Fragility of Order.

Andrew recommends a movie entitled the Death of Stalin. He plays a clip. It is about what happens when Stalin dies. It is "horrifically comic."

"I am looking for my mom."

Deirdre Reilly reports at LifeZette about our Border Patrol saving the life of a 6-year-old child.

'This is something our people encounter on a daily basis,' Border Patrol chief told the First Lady during Arizona visit.

...There may be no better story than this one to illustrate the challenges our country faces as illegal immigrants or smugglers (or both) try anything they can to penetrate the U.S. border unlawfully — and cruelly use children in the process.

Immediately before her briefing with members of Customs and Border Protection in Tucson this past Thursday, first lady Melania Trump asked officials how often agents see children trying to cross the Arizona border alone.

Rodolfo Karisch, chief of the Tucson sector of the Border Patrol, had photos and a heartrending story that had taken place only the week before, on June 19, according to the Border Patrol’s press release, AZ Central reported.

That day, a child was found by himself in the scorching desert.

In a photo taken by the agent who spotted him, the boy is shown sitting by himself on a berm alongside a dirt road. It was 101 degrees that day, but the child was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, jeans, and sneakers.

The little boy carried a large backpack and a zippered tote, reported AZ Central. He also carried a plastic Coke bottle that was less than a quarter full — the only drink he had. He had no food at the time Border Control rescued him.

Karisch told the first lady the details of how the boy was abandoned on the side of the road with the note pinned to him, and said his office had put out a press release about the incident, since it seemed to encapsulate all of the dangers on the border.

“This is something that our people encounter on a daily basis,” Karisch told Melania Trump.

The note pinned to the six-year-old, traveling alone, read, in English: “I am looking for my mom.”

Read more here.

Is he anti-immigrant, or just a career criminal?

Patrick Poole reports on media coverage of the stabbing of nine people, including six children in Boise, Idaho last night.

...The national media quickly seized on the fact that the apartment complex was known to house refugees and that some of the victims themselves were apparently refugees.

...A quick internet search shows a series of arrests and charges for Kinner in a number of states, including apparently being shot by a homeowner during a burglary, but nothing to indicate any anti-immigrant animus or bias, just a career criminal.

Given the media's less-than-stellar response to Thursday's horrific mass shooting at the Capital Gazette newspaper on and all kinds of hints that President Trump's criticism of the media was to blame (turns out the killer had a long-standing grudge against the newspaper), you might think that the establishment media would be inclined to tone down the rhetoric against Trump and his supporters and wait until all the facts come out.

That doesn't seem to be the case. In last night's stabbing spree, there is no indication that the refugee status of some of the victims played any role at all. But that was exactly the element to the story that the media led with earlier today.

Media claims that overheated rhetoric is having a corrosive effect on our political and social discourse may be true, but the media seems to be reluctant to admit, let alone correct, their own fearmongering and how it is contributing to the problem. This is especially true as the facts in many of these cases don't match the initial media narrative.

One might argue that the low public opinion of the media is more due in part to these missteps and the media's own behavior than anything the president says or tweets.

Read more here.

Media freaking out

Camps of victims and oppressors

Hamartia, koros, hubris, atê, Nemesis

Are you familiar with these words from classical history? At Hoover.org, Victor Davis Hanson analyzes Hillary Clinton's loss and subsequent behavior by turning to Sophocles, Euripides, and the Greek epic poets, historians, and tragedians.

Hamartia: an innate character flaw can be repressed, but it will inevitably resurface at the most inopportune moment. Clinton for over 40 years has never much worried about the wages of chronic deception and ends-justifying-the-means morality.

The next step in the slow cycle of classical self-destruction is koros—a greed or overreaching ambition that is the result of hamartia. It thus deludes the apparently successful into believing there will be few consequences to their excess. Koros makes self-reflection impossible.

Koros—the mindset that there are no consequences to surrendering to innately destructive impulses—leads to hubris, or a pattern of blindness brought on by overweening arrogance.

The Greeks saw atê as the concrete result of hubris. Atê was synonymous with individual acts of abject folly. In the-emperor-has-no-clothes-fashion, Clinton doubled down on her delusions. So, her hubris-driven recklessness continued, if not accelerated, as she ranted about the “deplorables” and “irredeemables.”

The final act in a multistoried Greek tragedy is the advent of Nemesis or divine retribution. At some point, the gods decide they’ve had enough of mortal excess, arrogance, and folly, and intervene to destroy the perpetrator—and often everyone in his or her vicinity.

Usually that happens at the pinnacle of the tragic hero’s perceived success, as in the case of a clueless but innately haughty King Oedipus of Thebes. In Clinton’s case, Nemesis approached in late 2016, when experts had all but coronated her as president-elect months before Election Day.

When Nemesis finally hit Clinton on November 8, 2016, she was stunned, unable to even extend a simple public gesture of concession on election night. From there, Nemesis took her on a downward spiral. Clinton descended from once polling as the most popular woman in the U.S. to a rather sad figure, scapegoating, weaving conspiracy theories, blame-gaming, and endlessly replaying the disaster of 2016—a sort of poor, blinded and dethroned Oedipus wandering in exile in the fashion of peripatetic former FBI Director James Comey, whose character and fate in some ways are similar to Clinton’s.

In sum, Clinton made a series of nearly inexplicable, but clearly disastrous decisions—assuming that she could set up an unlawful private server as Secretary of State, that her 2016 victory was foreordained, and that she would deny and seek to overturn rather than accept her defeat. At any time, easy and obvious choices would have spared her a great deal of humiliation and her associates and supporters disaster.

But then again, according to the classical belief in fate and necessity, Clinton may have had little choice after all—given that her innate flaws were a sort of bomb that was always ticking until blowing up at the most appropriately tragic time.

Read more here.

Homeowners are happy now, but they may soon be reeling.

Investors Business Daily opines,

...In the next housing crisis, banks will hold hundreds of billions in bad loans and the economy will again crater. Then what? Rather than waiting for disaster, why not do what we should've done years ago? Either privatize Fannie and Freddie or shut them down, while the economy's strong and we still have time.

...We've talked before about the strength of the U.S. economy, particularly after tax cuts kicked in. And that's still true. Unfortunately, 10 years after the 2008 financial crisis, there's one exception: The housing market, which, despite superficial signs of health, remains dysfunctional.

Homeowners are happy now, but they may soon be reeling. The Fed, worried about ultralow 3.8% unemployment and rising incomes, has signaled it could raise rates as many as seven times between now and the end of 2019. Not only would new buyers no longer qualify to buy homes, but homeowners who bought during the Fed's zero-interest rate days might get a severe shock as payments surge and buyer demand dries up.

Right now, housing suffers from an affordability crisis. Despite median household income rising strongly since President Trump took office, the average price for a new home today is just under $330,000, vs. about $248,000 in 2006, before the last housing crisis. Higher Fed rates followed by a downturn in housing prices would devastate the U.S. economy.

How did we get here? Unfortunately, you can blame government. Neither Fannie Mae nor Freddie Mac, the two mortgage giants that caused the 2007 housing meltdown, were dismantled. Instead, Washington rewarded them with an even larger role than before.

Read more here.

Who will investigate Clapper and Brennan?

Holman Jenkins makes an excellent point at The Wall Street Journal.

The FBI’s Mr. Comey, since Election Day, has been a model of discretion compared with Obama CIA chief John Brennan and Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Mr. Brennan suggested on national TV that Vladimir Putin possesses secret information he uses to control President Trump. Mr. Clapper, also on national TV, called Mr. Trump a Kremlin “asset” whose election was secured by Russian meddling.

Their involvement in the events Mr. Horowitz details was extensive and pervasive and yet these men are invisible in his report. And it is hardly plausible that they were more restrained in their accusations against Mr. Trump in their private dealings with Mr. Comey before the election than they have been on TV since.

...An underremarked facet of the Horowitz report reveals just how much illegal leaking to the press FBI officials were guilty of. The same rock needs to be turned over with respect to Mr. Brennan’s and Mr. Clapper’s former agencies. If Mr. Putin’s goal was to make a mockery of U.S. democracy, his most useful if unwitting allies may well have been our so-called intelligence community.

Mr. Comey’s FBI is not the only intelligence branch that needs a good shaking out. Historians have a strong case already that both sets of today’s partisan talking points are valid: The Obama intelligence agencies were biased against Mr. Trump and also blunderingly helped elect him—a conclusion based in fact and yet so disconcerting that the press has turned away from it.

Read more here.

Truck Drivers' rising wages are a threat to the economy, says the Washington Post

Jeff Bezos's Washington Post notes with alarm that truck drivers' wages are growing under the Trump economy, and that is a threat to the economy! No, really!

Are you too woke?

Andrew Klavan's guest today is Jenna Ellis. She explains the Supreme Court decisions handed down this week. Thanks to Trump's appointment of Gorsuch to the Court, it was a very good week! Rule of law? No, the Left wants the rule of emotion!

Andrew believes Republicans are bad at selling good ideas.

Andrew answers some letters. God implanted desires in us. Go after the thing you were made to do. Pay attention to what you really want.

Because the Left has so much control over the means of communications, one gets the impression they are far more powerful than they are. Social justice warriors started pumping their stuff into the NFL and Starbucks and we found out they are not untouchable. Starbucks is closing 150 stores mostly in dense urban areas.

Andrew ends the show by playing Tracy Uhlmann's sketch of a support group for people who are too woke. YouTube has banned it, but you can watch it at Louder with CrowderThe group members are "ruining their lives by being overly virtuous."

Not fair!

It is not too much to ask the Supreme Court to support the rule of law.

In PJ Media Andrew Klavan writes,

It is not too much to ask the Supreme Court to support the rule of law.

...But the whole point of the First Amendment is that there are certain choices citizens are not allowed to make — like compelling or curtailing the speech of the opposition.

...The left doesn't like the rule of law much. If they legally lose an election, they take to the streets as if some injustice had been done to them. If we enforce our border laws, they become hysterical and try to intimidate and bully public officials. If they can't get a law passed by constitutional means, they are perfectly happy to use regulation to exert extra-legal control over the citizenry.

All of which is bad enough in leftist media, leftist mobs and leftist officials. But in leftist Supreme Court justices, it's even worse.

Read more here.

Ten reasons she is no longer a Leftist

Aleen Realmuto is a US Marine dedicated to restoring and sustaining individual liberty and national sovereignty in these great United States of America. she writes at Truthuncensored.net about this woman:

Dr. Danusha V. Goska was a lifelong liberal who “could not conceive of ever being anything but a leftist.”

Her fantastic column, “Top Ten Reasons I Am No Longer a Leftist,” details how and why her philosophies changed.

Below are the top ten reasons I am no longer a leftist. This is not a rigorous comparison of theories. This list is idiosyncratic, impressionistic, and intuitive. It’s an accounting of the milestones on my herky-jerky journey.
10) Huffiness.
9) Selective Outrage
8) It’s the thought that counts
7) Leftists hate my people.
6) I believe in God.
5 & 4) Straw men and “In order to make an omelet you have to break a few eggs.
2 & 3) It doesn’t work. Other approaches work better.
1) Hate.

Do click on the link here because she carefully explains what she means by each point.

Join - or not join?

Bill Bennett and Karen Nussle write in Fox News,

In 20 to 30 years, we may look back on this week as the turning point when everything changed for America’s teachers and their students. That’s because the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that individuals who disagree with a union’s political activity will no longer be forced to pay dues to the union.

The 5-4 high court decision in the case of Janus v. AFSCME (American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) is a landmark victory for the First Amendment rights of 5 million public sector employees in 22 states. In addition, a great opportunity for serious school reform may be a consequence as well.

...The court’s clear and affirmative consent requirement means that government employees will have the ultimate choice about whether to join – or not join – a labor union from the outset of their employment.

Read more here.

Today's Manufactured Crisis

Hat tip Lucianne, who is baaaaaack!

Two half-truths added together equals a whole truth. That’s just math.

The Babylon Bee has decided,

It’s time to talk about a troubling trend in how we handle our national discourse: the current political landscape is full of lies, half-truths, and fake news, but the average person only ever consumes half of that. Thanks to people being ever more partisan in their news consumption, most people are only exposed to one distorted version of reality, completely missing out on an equally ludicrous alternative version of events.

This is a crisis. Voters are going to the polls having been manipulated by only one side, scared into voting by one set of myopic irrational fears and not hearing the alternative nonsense that could have resulted in an equally uninformed vote in another direction. Everyone is increasingly comfortable with “their” hyperbolic trolls, seeing only one side as basically Hitler instead of recognizing the Hitler in everyone.

This has to end. People need to broaden the propaganda they listen to and be exposed to all the incorrect ways of looking at an issue. Listening to only one set of lies is part of what leads to all the destructive anger in our politics, but if people only opened up and really listened to all falsehoods, they could replace that anger with much healthier confusion.

And maybe, just maybe, people might stumble onto something real. Two half-truths added together equals a whole truth. That’s just math.

Unhinged

Trying to evade arrest at the convenience store

American Digest brings us this video of a Canadian couple trying to evade arrest.

So you think you are attractive?

Shana Lebowitz at Business Insider compiled information from numerous research studies to inform men what 19 things women find attractive about men. I read them at Science alert.

The illusion of civility; Growing protests in Iran

The Left has been living off the illusion of civility. If you assume that everybody is racist, you don't have to argue with them; just insult them as "racist." Trump is exposing them for who they are and for whom they have always been! The Left has wrapped people in a mental prison. David Bosse tells a man "You're out of your cotton-pickin' mind" and gets suspended from Fox for one week!

This is week three of Andrew's Leftese Dictionary, so, C is for Constitution! Is it living?

Sebastian Gorka is Andrew's guest. Andrew asks him about Turkey. Erdogan is re-Islamizing Turkey.

Nest, Andrew asked him about the growing protests in Iran. They had large protests when Obama was president, too, in 2009, and Obama did not support them. Obama turned his back, the Mullahs retrenched themselves. Obama released $140 billion into the Iranian economy. Tehran has not been the center of these protests. They are happening everywhere in Iran. Iran has one resource, beside Islam: crude oil. Donald Trump has told importers they have three months to end the importation of Iranian oil.

Donald Trump is not an interventionist. He thinks it is crazy for us to go in to change other countries.

Next, Dr. Gorka talked about the manpower constraints on our border officials.

Who will be the new swing vote?

Both the New York Times and Washington Post are excited that Chief Justice Roberts will now likely be the swing vote on many Supreme Court cases. Ann Althouse quotes from both papers and adds her own thoughts here.

The most callous in fact, the most caring in theory?

Victor Davis Hanson writes in American Greatness,

How could California square its present circle of being both the most impoverished and affluent of states—the most callous in fact, the most caring in theory?

Why not cease the current stampede to private academies that has left the public schools of the greater coastal corridor non-diverse and near-apartheid?

The huge Los Angeles Unified School District is now more than 70 percent Latino, as whites and Asians have fled the arrival of immigrant children. It’s much the same in Silicon Valley, where private prep schools are expanding enrollments to meet the demand from the affluent members of the tech industry.

...Instead, despite the rhetoric of inclusion, and televised and tweeted fury at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the progressive left coast is among the most exclusionary of all American communities.

One of the strangest scenes in impoverished rural Fresno County, where I live, is the epidemic of substandard housing. Almost every small old farmhouse now has trailers and shacks tacked on to them—all substandard and not meeting codes—to accommodate recent waves of new immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Yet the media often showcase the huge gated homes and enclaves of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and the journalistic elite. Surely some of all that unused square footage and those guest houses could be used to offer at least temporary hospitality to those in need.

Actor Peter Fonda could do far better to help immigrants than by tweeting threats to 12-year-old Barron Trump from his most non-diverse ranch in Paradise Valley, Montana. Instead, Fonda might advocate that Hollywood actors live among newly arrived immigrants, associate with them as equals rather than as the help, and promote public schools by ensuring that their own children and grandchildren attend them.

Better yet, why doesn’t Fonda invite a few of the immigrant families awaiting word on their legal status to the open spaces of his Montana ranch? Media accounts of his expansive and tasteful digs show an infrastructure that easily could accommodate a few needy immigrant families.

It is easy to invoke the Nazis and the Holocaust to express anger at the temporary detention of children and their families who have entered the U.S. illegally. It would be far more meaningful if marquee journalists, actors, academics, and activists knew immigrants not just as a distant abstract cause, or as nannies and landscapers, but as their neighbors, their children’s school friends—and as their social equals.

Read more here.

Canada puts themselves in a tough spot

Sundance writes at The Conservative Treehouse,

Today Canada released an updated list of retaliatory tariffs designed as countermeasures to the U.S. Steel and Aluminum tariffs [SEE HERE] which will begin Sunday, July 1st.

Additionally, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains, and Employment and Labour Minister Patty Hajdu, announced they would initiate an emergency program to use Canadian taxes compensate workers, expand unemployment benefits, and subsidize impacted industry. Yes, in a transparent display of political ideology (throwing capitalism directly out the window), Canada doubles-down on centralized government subsidies to offset market impacts. Brilliant ‘eh!

...Team U.S.A. have applied tariffs to Canadian softwood lumber, Steel and Aluminum as Canada refuses to negotiate new terms for NAFTA where North American products are prioritized. Canada demands the ability to continue importing Asian, mostly Chinese, products for their assembly-based market.

With the latest counter-move by Justin and Chrystia from Canada, it is increasingly likely President Trump will levy a 20% tariff on imported Canadian automobiles. Last month (May) the Canadian economy dropped over 31,000 full time jobs.

Canada has put themselves into a tough spot. The current Canadian government cannot support any NAFTA agreement that requires the actual manufacturing of goods in North America. Both Canada and Mexico have structured their economies to import goods from Asia, mostly China, and use their access into the U.S. market to trans-ship their final goods.

Chinese central government, as well as Asian and EU corporations, pay Canada and Mexico (through trade agreements) for U.S. market access. Essentially Mexico and Canada are trade brokers or pass-throughs. Neither Canada nor Mexico have the actual raw material, infrastructure or processes in place to manufacture goods in North America; they both generally only assemble parts made overseas into finished products.

Because of this structural flaw, the Canadian government is doubling down on their intent to keep the status quo in place. However, this approach also makes it a futile exercise to continue talking about renegotiating NAFTA.

Mexican elections are being held July 1st (Sunday), it is yet to be determined if Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AM LO), Mexico’s virtually guaranteed-to-win next president, will support a Mexican withdrawal from NAFTA.

Read more here.

Informing the president that he was not a suspect when he clearly was!

At National Review, Andy McCarthy asks,

May the president of the United States be charged with obstruction based on non-criminal discretionary acts that are unquestionably within his constitutional authority as chief executive?

...As a matter of principle, the law-enforcement arm of government must operate on a presumption of innocence. Therefore, in this country, a prosecutor should be assigned only if there is strong evidence that a crime has been committed; in the absence of such evidence, a prosecutor should never be assigned to investigate whether an American may have committed some unknown crime.

...Mueller was appointed in the absence of strong evidence of a crime that would legitimately trigger a criminal investigation or prosecution. Since that should not have happened, one must ask: Why?

...Regardless of the motivation, the scheme to sustain the Russia investigation even after Obama left office and Trump was in a position to end it had three parts: (1) important information about the investigation needed to be withheld from the new president; (2) Trump had to be led to believe he was not under investigation (even though he was central to the investigation) so that he would not feel threatened by the investigation; and (3) Trump had to be admonished about respecting the independence of law-enforcement, to instill the fear that if he invoked his constitutional authority to shut down the investigation, he would be accused of obstruction.

This audacious strategy worked for four months, but it was done in by its core contradiction: It called for informing the president that he was not a suspect when he clearly was.

...There was no crime and he had been told he was not a suspect, yet the FBI was conducting itself as if there had been a shocking crime in which he was the main suspect.

Remember: The Obama strategy was to straitjacket Trump by making him the focus of a continuing investigation, even if there was no apparent crime and even though Trump, as president, had the power to end the investigation. With Comey now sidelined, the only way to continue exploiting the Russia counterintelligence investigation for this purpose was to get a special counsel appointed.

It is now clear that the collusion narrative was catalyzed by an unverifiable dossier of rank, anonymous hearsay, commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and compiled by Christopher Steele, a former British spy who lied to the FBI about his communications with the media — which the bureau should have anticipated since, as a mercenary retained by an opposition-research operation working for Democrats, Steele’s job was to get Mrs. Clinton elected, not to investigate Russia. These facts were kept from the FISA court when the Justice Department and the FBI used the dossier to seek surveillance warrants. It increasingly appears that the officials who made these judgments may have more to answer for than the Americans on whom they were spying.

...It is worth repeating that the Russia investigation is a counterintelligence probe; it was not a judicial proceeding or a criminal investigation. Counterintelligence probes are not conducted to enforce the law through judicial proceedings; they are conducted to inform the president of threats posed by foreign powers. The president may shut them down at will, and doing so does not obstruct justice in any way.

Read more here.

"If we're going to have peace, we're going to make it together."

Judge Amy Coney Barrett testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee, September 6, 2017. (via C-SPAN)
In National Review, Michael Brendan Dougherty writes that he wants Trump to nominate Amy Coney Barrett to be the next Supreme Court Justice.

...The fight over Barrett’s confirmation would almost certainly build trust between President Trump and social conservatives. It would energize Republicans ahead of the midterm elections.

...The facts of Barrett’s life — that she is a mother of seven children, and that when she speaks about her Catholic faith, she speaks about God as if she really believes in His existence — will provoke nasty and bigoted statements from Democratic senators and liberal media personalities. Again.

You may recall that this has already happened. In 2017, during confirmation hearings for a seat on the Seventh Circuit, Senator Dianne Feinstein surveyed Barrett’s public statements on her personal faith and told her that she worried that “the dogma lives loudly within you.” The bizarre idiom she created was a sign that Feinstein didn’t have an easy way to say what she wanted to say: A Catholic is fine. A believing Catholic is not.

The Feinstein incident caused Christopher L. Eisgruber, president of Princeton University, to publicly defend Barrett and her writings on how her faith relates to her duties as a judge. He then urged against what he saw as an emerging religious test. “In my view,” Eisgruber wrote, “Professor Barrett’s qualifications become stronger by virtue of her willingness to write candidly and intelligently about difficult and sensitive ethical questions: Our universities, our judiciary, and our country will be the poorer if the Senate prefers nominees who remain silent on such topics.”

Now, it would be churlish to choose Barrett only because her nomination will cause some Democrats to bleep, bloop disconcertingly before entering into auto-destruct mode. It would be good to nominate her, however, because the fight to confirm her will contain edifying political lessons. We don’t have religious tests for public office in this country, and having a republic that does not have an established religion does not require excluding sincere believers from positions of authority.

Liberals have lately internalized the idea that so long as they can justify their policy preferences as having egalitarian motives or ends, they should be able to compel religious people to conform to liberal moral norms — which just so happen to track exactly to doctrinal developments in the once dominant Mainline Protestant churches. The ACLU would compel Catholic hospitals to perform abortions. The last administration wanted to compel Notre Dame to offer contraceptives as part of its compensation to employees. The baker will be made to cater at the private solemnities that offend his conscience. Evangelicals at a crisis pregnancy center will be made to advertise for abortion.

An Amy Coney Barrett nomination fight would contain an even deeper lesson, one that is salutary for both liberal secularists, who once indulged in triumphalism, and conservative believers, who have been tempted to despair: Believing Catholics and Evangelicals will continue to make their contributions to the common good of this country. You will live with us. If we’re going to have peace, we’re going to make it together.

Read more here.

The top five

At The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro reports,

According to Fred Barnes of The Weekly Standard, the White House has narrowed down its list of potential Supreme Court nominees to a top five: Brett Kavanaugh, 53, of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals; Amul Thapar, 49, of the 6th Circuit; Amy Barrett, 46, of the 7th Circuit; Thomas Hardiman, 52, of the 3rd Circuit; and Raymond Kethledge, 51, of the 6th Circuit.

Ben writes what is known about each of the five and then closes with this paragraph:

So, here’s the bottom line: the most outspokenly textualist judges on this list are Barrett and Thapar (though Kavanaugh and Kethledge have spoken in favor of textualism as well). Kavanaugh has some red flags; Hardiman has red flags of his own. We will certainly need to ask probing questions about those on the list, and we’ll need to hear from groups that have spent time vetting all of the candidates. Conservatives simply can’t afford another Souter, Kennedy, O’Connor, or Roberts.

Read more here.

Lather, rinse, repeat!

At his blog, Dan Mitchell posted this chart showing that

Companies are almost making as much money from manipulating Washington as they earn from serving consumers.



What an awful cycle. Government gets bigger and more powerful, which lures companies into viewing Washington as a profit center, which then leads to more policies that expand the size and power of the federal government, which leads to further opportunities for rent-seeking behavior. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Oh, and don’t forget this is one of the reasons why there’s a revolving door of insiders who shift back and forth between the private sector and government, but their real job is always to be working the system to obtain undeserved wealth.

Read more here.

He had Rosenstein under oath for five minutes but didn't ask a single question!

What do you make of the fact that Trey Gowdy had Rod Rosenstein under oath for five minutes but didn't ask him a single question? At the same time, Gowdy urged the appointment of a grand jury and encouraged Rosenstein to file charges against Trump. I don't trust Gowdy. Do you?

Feverishly coming up with rules that nobody has ever heard of before

At the Ace of Spades blog, Oregon Muse writes,

"So with the announcement of the retirement of Supreme Court Justice Kennedy, the progtards are feverishly coming up with rules that nobody has ever heard of before, but nevertheless they claim Trump is bound by. The first one out of the gate was that Trump couldn't appoint Kennedy's successor until Mueller's ongoing investigation cleared him of collusion with the Russians. It's doubtful that that this rule ever existed before three or four days ago, but you have to admire the brazen presumption of guilt here. And now Chuck U. Schumer is claiming that Trump can’t appoint a Supreme Court Justice in an Election Year. Even though Justice Kagan was nominated by Obama and confirmed just 3 months before the 2010 midterms, you have to wonder what other long-standing rules the left is going to suddenly invent out of whole cloth to obstruct the president. Get ready for 'Since Kennedy was a moderate, he has to be replaced with another moderate'. Or maybe 'The president can't nominate any judge in the summer or in months with the letter 'r'. Just watch. The craziness has just begun. And then, years from now, when a Democrat gets elected president, and a SCOTUS vacancy opens up, all of these rules will mysteriously disappear, never to be heard from again."

Who should Trump pick to replace Kennedy?

In USA Today, seven legal scholars give their views on who Trump should appoint to the Supreme Court. Interestingly, three of the seven chose the same guy, Don Willett. I was particularly interested in reading who Glenn Reynolds picked, and he picked Willett.

Who would I pick from Trump's list? (And note how unprecedentedly transparent and helpful it is to have a president with such a list.) My personal first choice would be former Texas Supreme Court Justice and 5th Circuit Judge Don Willett. Writing in Patel v. Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, Willett quoted Frederick Douglass' joy on receiving the first money he earned as a free man and observed, "Douglass’ irrepressible joy at exercising his hard-won freedom captures just how fundamental — and transformative — economic liberty is. Self-ownership, the right to put your mind and body to productive enterprise, is not a mere luxury to be enjoyed at the sufferance of governmental grace, but is indispensable to human dignity and prosperity." There are, sadly, few other judges who understand this.

And Willett knows about such things. As I've argued in my recent book, "The Judiciary's Class War," the current Supreme Court is a monoculture of Ivy League "thoroughbreds" with elite backgrounds. There's nothing wrong with that, but a little variety would be nice. Willett offers some.

After his father died when Willett was 6, his mother supported the family by waiting tables at a truck stop. He attended Baylor University and Duke — first-rate schools, but a change from the Harvard/Yale monoculture that currently fills the court. And like many previous justices but no current ones, he has actually run for office. A first-rate mind with a background that reflects Trump's America, Willett seems like a great choice to me.

Ilya Somin also prefers Willett because

will stand up against Trump's administration!

Willett was highly critical of Trump during the 2016 campaign, even comparing his border wall to the Death Star. That suggests Willett will not hesitate to rule against the administration, when necessary.

George S. Khoury is the third to prefer Willett. Reason? Willett has a massive Twitter presence!

Eugene Kontorovich prefers Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

He has an unquestionable commitment to interpreting the Constitution as it was understood when it was ratified, not as it has evolved in the minds of Supreme Court justices and law professors. But he is also humble and gracious, important traits when one has to work with the same eight people for decades.

Eric Citron believes Trump

should nominate a conservative who is an economic populist, and not just a conservative.

...Perhaps short-lister Thomas Hardiman, who worked as a taxi driver through college, has greater exposure to and sympathy for the working-class perspective.

William Vogeler recommends

Trump should nominate Judge Amy Coney Barrett because she will add a conservative voice for women on the national's highest court.

Adam Feldman thinks

Judge Kavanaugh is the most likely nominee for several reasons. He has a strong track record of ruling on behalf of conservative agenda items and especially on behalf of big businesses’ interests. He also has an extensive record as a judge on a federal court of appeals, which is in contrast to several of the other judges on the short list, including Judges Amul Thapar and Barrett. This is important because the president does not want to be blindsided by a pick thought to be conservative but who later turns out to align with the liberal justices.

Read more here.

Why didn't you recuse yourself?

Here is Congressman DeSantis questioning Rod Rosenstein about his conflicts of interest and why Rosenstein didn't recuse himself.

575 arrested for protesting ICE

Alex Pappas reports at Fox News,

Washington Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal is among the more than 500 protesters who were arrested inside a Capitol office building on Thursday while demonstrating against President Trump’s immigration policies.

The protest, which included hundreds demonstrators, took place in the Hart Senate Office Building. The protesters were calling for the abolishment of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, and were heard chanting “abolish ICE." Most of the protesters were female.

Eva Malecki, a spokeswoman for the United States Capitol Police, said 575 individuals were charged with unlawfully demonstrating in the atrium of the building.

Read more here.

Gunman shoots and kills 5 people at a Maryland newspaper office

Kevin Rector reports in the Baltimore Sun,

t least five people were killed and several others were “gravely injured” in a shooting Thursday afternoon at the Capital Gazette in Anne Arundel County, authorities said.

A shooter is in custody, police said. Police would not name the suspect or say what type of weapon was used.

...Police said a “long gun” was used in the incident. They said officers did not exchange gunfire with the suspect, who was now being interrogated. They said officers had recovered what appeared to be an “explosive device,” and had “tactically secured” the building. About 170 people were inside at the time of the shooting, police said.

Phil Davis, a Capital Gazette crime reporter who was in the building at the time of the shooting, said multiple people were shot, as others — himself included — hid under their desks. He said there was a lone male gunman.

“Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees. Can’t say much more and don’t want to declare anyone dead, but it’s bad,” Davis wrote on Twitter as he waited to be interviewed by police.

“There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you’re under your desk and then hear the gunman reload.”

Read more here.

Jim Jordan gets under Rosenstein's skin.

Here are two videos. The first is Ohio Representative Jim Jordan questioning Rod Rosenstein. After you watch it, another video appears. It is South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy summarizing for Mr. Rosenstein Gowdy's concerns. Gowdy and Rosenstein seem to be on the same page. Not so with Jordan and Rosenstein!

Poking a hornet's nest

At The Declination, Thales wonders when the other shoe will drop.

nobody really knows exactly where the Rubicon is, in this political mess. Will it be gun control or confiscation? Will it be the next time a Democrat wins control over the federal government? Will they be hellbent on revenge and do something they shouldn’t? Will it be getting Rightists fired from their jobs, destroying their businesses and ability to earn, such that they have nothing to lose? Or will it be a cumulative ‘death from a thousand cuts’ situation, where all of these smaller, lesser attacks will, in aggregate, finally exceed the Rightist’s ability to tolerate?

I have no Earthly idea. But I do know that the Rubicon is somewhere, and that across its shore lies Civil War, or something approximating that. And so, in this, we are generally wiser (though not wise, see: Socrates) than our Leftist counterparts, who haven’t a clue about the hornet’s nest they’ve been poking.

Read more here.

We need more citizen warriors

At a blog called By Spear and Ax, Tom writes that we need more citizen warriors.

For better or worse, the stigmatization of warriors was long ago. It started with parents being told that games like “war” and “cops and robbers” wasn’t fitting for children. They were encouraged to engage in other forms of play. They were told that such things weren’t appropriate and that such play would invariably lead to more violence on our streets.

Some parents listened. Some didn’t.

However, schools carried the effort on. Whereas a schoolyard fight might have landed the kids some mild punishment in times gone by, today it is the cause of dreadful concern. Meanwhile, no effort is made to determine who initiated the fight or why it took place. Both parties are punished the same, thereby teaching that meekness is the only appropriate response to naked aggression.

...we need more citizen warriors so they can be everywhere they need to be. They can be on the New York subway car. They can be on the airplane. They can be in the movie theater or office building. They can be there the very moment they’re needed.

Maybe it’s a mass shooter, some jackass who thinks he needs to take vengeance for some imagined slight. Maybe it’s a terrorist who thinks his 72 virgins await. Maybe it’s some loser who thinks this will make some kind of a point.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters is the moment that evil rears its head, someone is there to meet it and put an end to it. Permanently, if needed.

The only way that happens is if the warriors are there when they’re needed, and for that, we need more of them.

Read more here.

Some Supreme Court rulings could be reversed.

The Washington Examiner explains here six cases that could possibly be overturned if President Trump appoints a conservative to replace retiring Justice Kennedy.

Putting the screws on Iran

Stephen Greene at Instapundit writes,

Trump’s Reaganesque attitude towards Iran’s mullahs — “We win, they lose” — is a refreshing change from George W. Bush’s waffling and Barack Obama’s obeisance.

He links to an article by Michael Lee in the Star Tribune with this headline:

US begins to dismantle Iran nuclear deal sanctions relief,

then, Steve links to a Wall Street Journal article headlined,

King Dollar Tightens Noose on Iranian Economy

Finally, Steve links to this article at CNBC headlined,

Iran protests set to continue amid collapsing currency, increasing pressure on regime

“The European ‘we’ does not exist”

Joel Kotkin has been attending a conference in France. His observations are reported at City Journal.

...a 2016 poll by the Communism Memorial Foundation found that 44 percent of American millennials favored socialism, while another 14 percent preferred fascism or Communism. By 2024, these millennials will be the biggest voting bloc.

European media

which downplays coverage of Islamist agitation, as well as rapes and crime associated with refugees, since these disturb its preferred narrative of a multicultural, post-national world.

...“The European ‘we’ does not exist,” suggested Manent. “We don’t know any more what we are.” The EU, that great construct of progressive centralism, he added, “is devoid of any character. European culture is in hiding, disappearing, without a soul.” Critical here is the precipitous decline of Christianity, the ideal that forged Europe’s premodern identity. Well over 50 percent of Europeans under 30 don’t identify with a religion; in the UK, the Muslim population could exceed Anglican Church membership within a decade.

...Perhaps the most heated expression of demo-pessimism comes as a reaction to mass migration, notably from Islamic countries. The decision of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to open her borders to refugees from places like Syria and Afghanistan and the African continent has destabilized European sensibilities in a way not seen since the Second World War. Few speakers defended Merkel’s actions, reflecting almost three-to-one negative reaction to mass migration among Europeans.

...Many progressives see nationalism as a dirty word, associated with fascist regimes through history, two world wars, and the extremists of the racist right. Liberal globalists detested President Trump’s Poland speech last summer in large part because he explicitly defended Western values. Yet in a world where authoritarians are on the rise—most importantly in China, but also Turkey, Russia, and throughout the developing world—embracing Western values has never been more important. To counter the authoritarian wave also means rejecting unrepresentative, allegedly democratic authority that refuses to consider the views of its own citizens.

Read more here.

Unbiased coverage

A core American right?

Mollie Hemingway tweeted,

Resistance outrage machine has shifted rather suddenly from outrage over children separated from parent due to border enforcement to outrage, thanks to Kennedy retiring, that children might not legally be separated from parent and dismembered via abortion.

The Babylon Bee wrote,

Upon the announcement that Justice Kennedy would be retiring soon, liberals across the country expressed their horror that they might soon lose the legal right to kill 60 million more American babies over the next several decades.

Worried that Roe v. Wade could be overturned by a new, conservative-leaning court, progressives expressed their sheer horror that the unalienable right to slaughter unborn children wholesale could be ripped away from the nation’s women.

“We’ve enjoyed so much freedom to kill innocent unborn babies over the past 45 years, but if we take that for granted, if we give up the fight now, the Supreme Court could rip that important, foundational right away from us,” a Planned Parenthood spokesperson said at a protest rally Wednesday. “We must not give up. We must fight to prevent Trump from nominating a justice who doesn’t recognize that ending another human life is a core American right guaranteed by the founding fathers.”

"Civil disobedience" doesn't have to do with harassing individuals and shaming or scaring them out of appearing in public.

Aaron Blake opines in the WaPo,

...When passions run as strongly as they do with a story like this, actions will be ratcheted up.

Which means Democrats and Trump opponents as a whole need to decide where their line is for civil disobedience (or, in Waters's case, possibly going beyond civil disobedience)....

Ann Althouse responds,

Civil disobedience?!! Somebody needs to look up the definition of terms! "Civil disobedience" doesn't have to do with harassing individuals and shaming or scaring them out of appearing in public. Civil disobedience is declining to obey an unjust law. It's governing your own behavior in observance of a higher morality than the government's law. It has nothing to do with violating just norms — such as rules of etiquette or the legal protection from threats and physical violence — to hurt other people when those other people offend your moral standards!

Read more here.