January 9, 2016
A LIVER FOR A HEART: I love love love…
HAVE I MENTIONED MY SHOCKED FACE? Hillary Clinton is running the most sexist campaign ever.
FROM MY FRIEND JEFF DUNTEMANN: The Cunning Blood.
PERHAPS THEY SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO PULL UP THEIR PANTS INSTEAD: U California System Encouraging Students to Formally Report ‘Unwanted Jokes’.
AT THIS TIME, IN THIS PLACE: This could backfire spectacularly. Hint, they call it The Miracle In Philadelphia, not “the perfectly ordinary occurrence in Philadelphia”. Texas Governor Greg Abbott Calls for Convention of the States to Reclaim Power Wrongfully Assumed by Federal Government.
LEADING FROM AN ENTIRELY IMAGINARY POSITION: A Most Unserious War.
NEW FROM MY FRIEND: And comrade-at-arms Dave Freer Changeling’s Island.
WILL THE BURNT FOOL’S BANDAGED FINGER GO WABBLING BACK TO THE FIRE? Will Republicans Blow It?
IF WE WERE OCCUPIED BY AN ENEMY: Would they do anything different? Is the Left Even on America’s Side Anymore?
MIDNIGHT, THE STARS, AND YOU: Exploring the Forgotten Art Deco Artifacts of the New Yorker Hotel.
I’m certain my late father caught a few big bands there during his youth.
January 8, 2016
VIDEO METAPHOR ALERT:
Seems to sum up the new year so far rather well. Or perhaps the last seven. (Underpass is in Durham, NC, in case you’re wondering.)
(Via Terry Teachout.)
DON SURBER: If this is what they do, who needs the Republican Party? “Noonan is most famous for writing the six words that destroyed the first Bush presidency: ‘Read my lips: no new taxes.’ It was a filthy, outrageous lie by one of Our Betters. Bush never bought into Reaganism, The first Bush faked it. He deserved the humiliation in 1992. Noonan gets this wrong, too. It is all about the Republican Establishment. Americans sent them to do a job. They didn’t.”
WHEN NARRATIVES FAIL: France suffered more casualties (murders and injuries) from mass public shootings in 2015 than the US has suffered during Obama’s entire presidency.
Impossible. Obama says the US is uniquely evil. Does France even have an NRA chapter?
WELL, THAT’S MEAN: Apple Blocked Volkswagen from Demonstrating Wireless CarPlay at CES.
I HEAR THAT 13 HOURS IS GOOD: Hillary Clinton’s nightmare: Hollywood tale brings Benghazi back to life.
Related: Ironic Twist For Hillary Clinton.
WHY RED WINE IS PROBABLY BETTER FOR YOU THAN GRAPE JUICE.
TWITTER: WE WILL UNVERIFY YOU FOR THOUGHTCRIME:
Just pathetic.
Related: We’re All Trapped In The Twitter Cave.
UPDATE: Fans begin #JeSuisMilo solidarity movement after Twitter unverifies @Nero.
(Headline via Twitter user “Clarence Whorley”)
CHARLES HILL: The End Of Modernity. “The era called ‘modern’ inexorably began to come to its end when, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, a concatenation of foretold events unraveled the so-called modern world order. As always, the foreordained collapse was generated from internal weakness. We need to look no further than Europe to understand why.”
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ACTUALLY, I THINK THEY ASPIRE TO BE THE OPPRESSOR: Annika Hernroth-Rothstein: Feminists Must Identify Their True Oppressor.
Just before winter break, my two sons, 8 and 13, started sitting down to pee. This happened out of nowhere, a sudden absurdity, and when I asked them why, their reply was that their school had told them that this was a matter of respect for themselves and their surroundings.
I assumed this was another one of those childhood misunderstandings, so at drop-off the next day I took a few minutes to speak to the teachers and straighten the whole thing out, forgetting for a minute that in this day and age reality is far stranger than fiction. . . .
Sweden has gotten a reputation for being a feminist state, a progressive haven of sorts where gender is fought as if it were an enemy battalion. This is supposed to lead to equality, but the feminist hegemony seems to practice willful forgetfulness when it comes to the plight of actual women in actual peril at the end of the subway line where they dare not go.
In the past years the demography in this country has changed dramatically, and it has brought with it a society within the society, with its own rules and laws, enforced by young Muslim men who have taken it upon themselves to police the banlieues and control the women who live there. These women have raised their voices at great personal risk, asking for help from the liberal society and the feminists whose chants are usually so proud and so loud. But there is no aid for the aching, for the feminists know that actual patriarchy comes with actual danger and they are unwilling to pay that price.
I’m sure that raising a generation of sitzpinklers is the solution.
ROAD AND TRACK: Why a CVT Is Basically the Perfect Transmission: A dual-clutch gearbox is an automatic, and it isn’t even the best one. I actually really like the CVT on my Lexus and Toyota hybrids.
TODAY’S BEEN A VERY BAD DAY FOR THE LEFT’S PREFERRED NARRATIVES.
● Shot: “For the faithful, it was not a good day. The left’s preferred narratives about voters, about gun violence, about radical Islam, and about Hillary Clinton’s culpability in potentially indictable offenses were all shaken to their very foundations. But that’s the thing about faith: it’s remarkably resilient. They probably didn’t even notice.”
● Chaser: Kerry Marks Terrorism Anniversary Without Mentioning Terrorism.
EL CHAPO CAUGHT*
GOP DEBATES ON CNN CRUSH OBAMA’S TOWN HALL RATINGS: “The President’s two hour-long appearance with Anderson Cooper on Thursday managed 2.4 million viewers. In comparison, a staggering 23.1 million people tuned in for CNN’s GOP debate in September.”
YOUR MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL SUPERIORS: With so little going on in the world today, the New York Times amuses itself by obsessing over Marco Rubio’s boots.
CHECK OUT THE NEW BOOK Academic Freedom in an Age of Conformity: Confronting the Fear of Knowledge about threats to free speech on campus in the UK and beyond. And for a behind the scenes look at it, here is my interview with the author, Joanna Williams:
LIFE IN THE OBAMA ERA: US student visa program’s ‘many vulnerabilities’ raise spying, terror fears.
In an earlier, more confident era, we assumed that to know us was to love us, so that exposure of foreign students to America could only help. This was never actually true, but now, alas, we’ve had our noses rubbed in that.
A BOY AND HIS GUN: “Over Christmas break I took Number One Son shooting and learned something wonderful about him,” Steve Green writes.
Read the whole thing.
TERROR ARRESTS IN SACRAMENTO AND HOUSTON NAB TWO WHO ENTERED US AS IRAQI REFUGEES:
U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner announced in a statement Thursday that Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, 23, of Sacramento, a Palestinian born in Iraq, was arrested on charges that he allegedly traveled to Syria in 2013 to fight with various terrorist organizations, including Ansar al-Islam. He returned to the United States in 2014.
Naturally, the MSM is downplaying the Syrian connection, Ace writes. “It couldn’t have anything to do with Obama’s political demand that we allow in 10,000 fabulously vetted Syrian refugees, could it?”
Meanwhile, the Atlantic goes with the “Republicans pounced” angle to downplay the news.
FROM THE HOME OFFICE IN AL-RAQQAH, SYRIA: Cologne Rapefest: The Top Five Best Liberal Excuses.
A POTEMKIN PRESIDENCY: How The Washington Post contributed to mythology of Obama greatness.
PHILLY TERROR SUSPECT PLED DOWN AN ILLEGAL GUN CHARGE IN 2012 AND DID NO TIME. “After last night’s absurd Obama townhall, this should be the top story in America today.” Plus this: “The shooter in the attack is seen wearing Muslim-style garb – a long white robe over dark pants – on surveillance video, according to police sources, but officials have not said if they believe religion was a factor,” despite suspect saying he did shooting in the name of Islam and pledging to ISIS.
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TO SAVE EUROPE, STOP ALL ‘MIGRANTS,’ SAYS HUNGARY’S PRIME MINISTER.
Related: Report: Syrian ‘Refugees’ Among New Year’s Eve Sexual Assaulters in Cologne.
And as Glenn noted yesterday, “HOW FAR HAS TRUMP MOVED THE OVERTON WINDOW? THIS FAR: Tom Friedman calls for ‘controlling low-skilled immigration.’”
Of course, it’s too late for Europe, but as Peggy Noonan writes today, “Trump touched an important nerve in opposing the political correctness that has angered the American people for a quarter century. He changed the debate when he asked for a pause in Muslim immigration until America ‘can figure out what’s going on.’ In the age of terror, that looked suspiciously like common sense. Americans do not want America to become what Europe is becoming.”
As Milton Friedman once said, “It’s nice to elect the right people, but that’s not the way you solve things. The way you solve things is by making it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right things.”
U.S. SHIPS HELLFIRE MISSILE TO CUBA:
- a Hellfire missile
- shipped via commercial carrier to Europe
- in early 2014
- goes missing
- and months later, in June, “Lockheed Martin officials realized the missile was missing”
- but is likely in Cuba
- while the Obama administration is finalizing its easement of relations with the Communist dictatorship
- and the White House carried on with the negotiations.
Read the whole thing.
BREAKING: Philadelphia Police Officer Ambushed By Terrorist Who Says He Did it For Islam, Pledged to ISIS.
Related: “Mayor Jim Kenney wasted no time in declaring that ‘there are too many guns on the streets,’ but he might want to take that up with law enforcement. It turns out that the gun used in the shooting was, er …’In a press conference, Commissioner Ross said the gun used in the attack was a stolen police firearm.’”
More: Obama’s streak of perfect timing rolls on:
JASON RILEY: When Black Lives Mattered: To other blacks, that is.
It’s a review of Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment.
NEW EMAIL SHOWS HILLARY EVADED NATIONAL SECURITY MEASURES: Chuck Ross at the Daily Caller has a story today revealing that while Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton instructed her top advisor to send potentially sensitive national security information to her via a nonsecure method:
On June 16, 2011, Hillary Clinton’s top foreign policy adviser, Jake Sullivan, was having trouble sending his boss a list of talking points that contained sensitive — and possibly classified — information. Sullivan told Clinton there were issues “sending secure fax,” an email released by the State Department early Friday shows.
So Clinton offered a shocking solution: remove the markings identifying the information as sensitive and send it by regular fax.
“Turn into nonpaper w no identifying heading and send nonsecure,” Clinton instructed Sullivan. . . .
It is possible that the talking points Sullivan intended to send Clinton did not contain classified information. A document being sent via a secure method does not necessarily indicate that information contained in it is classified. But Clinton hadn’t seen the talking points at that point, and likely would not have known whether they contained classified information.
By instructing Sullivan to remove markings noting the sensitive nature of the talking points, Clinton appears to have invited her aide to violate the the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, and possibly, federal law.
The legality of Clinton’s command would likely depend on whether Sullivan followed through with his boss’ instruction. A State Department official told The Daily Caller that there is no indication that the stripped talking points were emailed to Clinton.
The official also declined to “speculate” on whether the talking points contained classified information. . . .
[T]he email is troubling because it is the first to show Clinton displaying her willingness to skirt State Department protocol — and federal law, potentially — regarding the handling of sensitive information on her personal email account.
Drip, drip, drip.
Is this the kind of person you’d trust as Commander-in-Chief? During her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton’s cavalier disregard for simple measures designed to protect our country’s national security is breathtaking. If she were a Republican, the mainstream media would have (appropriately) disgraced and branded her as a traitor by now.
SPEAKING OF SMALL GENERATORS, I gave one to my sister for Christmas — I believe it was this model under a different brand — for her horse trailer/RV and she reports that it runs the air conditioner and refrigerator just fine. Runs on propane, which is a lot safer and easier to store.
HOW TO GET AN ENTREPRENEURIAL HERO TO THE BIG SCREEN: Make her a woman. My latest column for Bloomberg View looks at the new movie Joy.
In the movies, an entrepreneur is more likely to be a super-villain, or at the very least a mobster, than someone who builds a significant enterprise without getting anyone killed. Even the non-murderers are miserable jerks. Take Aaron Sorkin’s angry, status-obsessed Mark Zuckerberg in “The Social Network” or his Steve Jobs in the abysmal recent movie by that name.
So it might be a surprise to discover a big-budget, award-friendly new film telling a tale of entrepreneurial ingenuity where the protagonist is heroic and the ending is happy. Except that in this case the entrepreneur is a woman. Her gender makes self-assertion, ambition, and even a touch of ruthlessness unconventional and therefore culturally acceptable….
But “Joy” is more than a wholesome paean to girl power. It’s a portrait of entrepreneurial gumption, with a protagonist whose journey is as relevant to men as to women. On her way to fame and fortune, Joy must reawaken the creative spark dampened by her dysfunctional family, solve practical business problems of financing and distribution, confront her self-doubts, find her persuasive sales voice and subdue adversaries who take advantage of her inexperience and trust. These aren’t uniquely female challenges.
With an appearance by Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, who gives the movie three hearts. Read the whole thing here.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Obama — and FDR — set precedent for Trump’s one-man rule. Choose the form of your Destructor.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE DECIDE THE AUTHORITIES CAN’T — OR WON’T — DO THEIR JOBS: German vigilante group vows to protect women from migrant attackers as 34 suspects are arrested – including three for gang-raping two teenagers. “Thousands have pledged their support to a German vigilante group which has vowed to protect women from migrants in the wake of the New Year’s Eve attacks in Cologne. . . . After the group was launched, and gained thousands of followers overnight, a Dusseldorf police spokesman told local media that German police is responsible for public security. He said the police had no problem with people acting bravely in the face of crime but they were against ‘self proclaimed vigilantes’.” Well, then do your job, buddy.
Related: Unprecedented sex harassment in Helsinki at New Year, Finnish police report; Finnish police ‘tipped off’ about plans by groups of asylum seekers to sexually harass women. “’This phenomenon is new in Finnish sexual crime history,’ Ilkka Koskimaki, the deputy chief of police in Helsinki, told the Telegraph. ‘We have never before had this kind of sexual harrassment happening at New Year’s Eve.’”
The Finnish police appear to have acted more aggressively, though.
BUT WAIT, OBAMA SAID NO OTHER COUNTRY HAS THESE PROBLEMS: US becoming safer compared to Europe in both fatalities and frequency of Mass Public Shootings: US Now ranks 11th in fatalities and 12th in frequency.
IT’S LIKE THEY’RE HOLDING SOMETHING BACK: State Department Misses Second Clinton E-mail Deadline in a Week.
LIFE IN THE ERA OF HOPE AND CHANGE: Sources: Suspect Confesses To Shooting Officer, Says He Did It In the Name Of Islam.
WELL, THIS IS NEWS: Bombshell: In Email, Hillary Ordered Aide to Strip Classified Marking and Send Sensitive Material.
IN THE MAIL: From David McCullough, The Wright Brothers.
Plus, today only at Amazon: Up to 60% Off Select Resistance Trainers and Yoga Products.
TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 974.
PLANNED PARENTHOOD HARDEST HIT: Getting the Pill Without a Doctor: The Revolution Begins.
As Virginia Postrel has written, requiting women to get a prescription for hormonal birth control means that some of them will end up resorting to other forms of birth control they don’t prefer, because they forgot to get to the doctor before the prescription ran out.
That may not mean a whole lot of extra unintended pregnancies or births. (Used correctly, over-the-counter methods like condoms are pretty effective, especially when a backup like the morning-after pill is available.) But “does it prevent a lot of extra unintended births” is far too narrow a question for policy makers to ask. The Soviet system, in which birth control was unavailable but abortions were extremely common, prevented a lot of unintended births. It was still a lousy system.
Absent a compelling reason that women need to see a doctor, it should be as easy as possible for them to get any form of birth control they might like to have. Obviously, this is not practically feasible in every case. We are not going to see at-home IUD insertions any time soon. But it should include oral contraceptives, some of the most extensively studied medications of all time.
Oregon now requires patients to fill out a short questionnaire and have their blood pressure checked in order to get a prescription from a pharmacist, which seems like a reasonable enough procedure to weed out the small number of women who really shouldn’t take it. Though even that may go too far.
I’m conflicted. On the one hand, I think that the dangers of hormonal birth control are substantially underestimated. On the other, I think that the vast majority of prescriptions for same are nothing more than a toll charged by doctors, with no significant actual medical oversight involved.
BECAUSE WE HAVE A STRONG WORK ETHIC, A REMNANT OF THE TIME WHEN OUR SYSTEM REWARDED HARD WORK: Why Do Americans Work So Hard? Though to my observation, that seems to be fraying in the late-Obama era.
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JOE BIDEN HARDEST HIT: Hugs, neck rubs could be ‘sexual battery,’ says university.
Are you a hugger? Do you sometimes give neck rubs to friends or acquaintances just out of friendliness? Well now you could be accused for sexual battery and expelled at East Carolina University.
All it takes is for one person who is scared from the sexual assault portion of orientation or who has friends with certain ideologies to ruin one’s life at ECU, thanks to a new policy recently adopted for the new semester going forward. . . .
Any contact, “however slight,” is considered sexual battery. Of course, it’s the accuser who decides whether it is sexual battery, and with the current pressure on colleges and universities to capitulate to accusers in the name of political correctness, any friendly contact is subject to an investigation.
Today’s university administrations — like the Victorians, but without their positive attributes.
Meanwhile, on Biden: Ouch.
I mean, even Talking Points Memo is asking: Why Does Creepy Uncle Joe Biden Get A Pass From Liberals?
THOMAS SOWELL ON GUNS AND THE SHOWMAN-IN-CHIEF.
Strike a pose; there’s nothing to it.
LYING LIAR BUSTED FOR LYING: Watchdog faults State on Clinton emails.
The State Department has been providing “inaccurate and incomplete” responses to requests for the emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a watchdog says in a new report released Thursday.
The 29-page inspector general (IG) report says the leadership of the State Department “has not played a meaningful role in overseeing or reviewing the quality” of the responses to requests for documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
As a result, requests from organizations such as The Associated Press, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and Judicial Watch have been mishandled in various ways, the IG said.
In one example, CREW asked for records in 2012 that would show the number of email accounts held by then-Secretary Clinton. While senior staffers at the department regularly corresponded with her on her private account and her chief of staff was made aware of the request, the State Department replied that there were “no records responsive” to the query.
At other times, the IG said, media organizations have put in nearly identical requests for documents, only to receive different sets of records in response.
In 2015, Clinton’s use of a private email server emerged as a flashpoint in the presidential race, with Republicans using it to attack her candidacy.
Those dastardly Republicans, “using” grossly dishonest behavior to “attack” poor Hillary.
JEB BUSH TO EARN COVETED BURMA-SHAVE ENDORSEMENT: Team Jeb! Battles Trump’s Social Media Prowess with Cutting Edge Billboard Strategy.
Related: “This is what it’s come to. This is the whole Jeb campaign in one image — an antiquated advertising platform, a pitifully weak jab at the bully Trump, an overreliance on the fading authority of the Bush brand, and a bizarre blindness to how this stuff looks to other people…the saddest political ad ever.”
HEADLINES FROM 1942, AS EVERYTHING OLD IS NEW AGAIN: David P. Goldman asks, “Why Does Germany Condone Mass Rape?”
CHANGE: Slovakia vows to refuse entry to Muslim migrants. “Responding to the sexual assaults in Cologne and Hamburg, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has reiterated his aim to allow no Muslims into the country. According to reports, some of the attackers were refugees.”
Related: Reports: Cologne NYE assaulters were largely asylum seekers.
THIS COULD BE HILLARY’S CAMPAIGN SLOGAN: “I know what you’re thinking, but let me offer a competing narrative.”
VAN JONES COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Obama: ‘Conspiracy’ Theories Just Part of American DNA.
Related: Obama’s Chicago-era buddy and Rev. Wright sidekick Michael Pfleger was one of the DNC-CNN plants in Obama’s anti-Second Amendment infomercial audience last night — I wonder if he’ll be endorsing Hillary this year?
THE HATEFUL EIGHT YEARS: “Who is Mr. Netanyahu at war with? To watch the Frontline special, you’d think that it wasn’t the Iranians or the Palestinians or anyone else actually taking up arms against Israel, but rather Obama’s theory of history. No real war, no real consequences, just two men and their competing ideas. It’s the stuff public broadcasting dreams are made of.”
Because for the left, failures are always due to messaging, never their ideology. No wonder they’d frame Netanyahu through the same prism.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Goldman Sachs: Higher Ed Ripe for Disruption.
A Goldman Sachs investment research report issued last month paints a very grim picture of the state of American higher education (h/t Bryan Alexander). The bottom line: “returns on a college education are falling,” and quickly.
According to a striking graph included in the report, the average “wage premium” from going to a four-year college (that is, the difference in incomes between college graduates and high school graduates) and college tuition (including room and board) rose in tandem throughout the 1990s. Then, starting in about 2002, something changed—the wage premium growth started growing more slowly, even as tuition kept rising as fast as ever.This disconnect, Goldman notes, is not a problem for all classes of colleges. It appears that the top institutions (as ranked by SAT scores) are still delivering good returns, while the returns for schools in the bottom half, and especially the bottom quarter, are falling off steeply. This can’t go on forever. If costs continue to exceed returns, the bubble will burst eventually—even if Washington keeps subsidizing it.
NO WORD ON HOW ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’ AFFECTED ALIENS: Maybe Hillary will tell us. Claim: Climate Change Forced Bigfoot to Migrate to America.
BEYOND COLOGNE. HELSINKI COPS: ‘Widespread’ Sexual Harassment By ‘Asylum Seekers’ on New Year’s Eve. (Sorry, link broken. Fixed now.)
DO LET’S CONSIDER THE ACTION, NOT THE METHOD: They kill people!!
AND WHY AFTER ALL THIS SHOULD WE LISTEN TO THEM? Government revises Dietary Guidelines for Americans: Go ahead and have some eggs.
YEAH, IT’S BAD ADVICE, FOR THE NERDS (WE PREFER GEEKS.): I told a friend yesterday there is a war on competence. That’s what this boils down to. Hey, guys, if you’re intelligent and have geeky interests, you don’t know how to treat people and don’t care about feelings. You heard it from the Washington Post first. Oh, no, wait, my bad. You heard it from stupid teachers and taunting classmates first. Hollywood has told women to date nerds for decades. It’s bad advice.
AND DON’T EVEN DREAM OF GETTING THE REAL NUMBERS: Friday’s jobs stats could stir up Wall Street drama.
PARTICULARLY SINCE YOU CAN GET ON THE LIST FOR ALL SORTS OF CRAZY THINGS: Labeling sex offenders’ passports is overkill.
HATERS GOT TO FIND HATE: Also, how dare you have fun they haven’t approved of? Listen to the joyless scolds. They know how you should have fun, the RIGHT way. Does Quentin Tarantino Hate Women and Minorities? (This is not my circus, not my monkeys, since I rarely watch movies, but what they’re saying is so familiar, as it will be to anyone who games, reads, or just wants to attend school and live their own lives.)
IT’S CALLED MULTI-CULTURALISM: The European Sickness Spreads.
January 7, 2016
COMMIES GONNA AIRBRUSH: MSNBC Edits Out Footage of Bill Clinton Being Asked About Juanita Broaddrick.
SHOCKER: Feds arrest two Middle East refugees on terror-related charges. “Both men were Palestinians born in Iraq and living as refugees in the United States, according to the U.S. Justice Department. And both of them are accused of lying to immigration officials about their alleged ties to terrorist organizations.”
FLASHBACK: Dems Turn to Mocking Terror Fears.
STACY MCCAIN: Feminist Barbie and ‘Rape Culture.’
ACTUALLY, IT TURNED OUT TO BE A GENUINE SUICIDE VEST: Paris Cops Kill Man in Fake Suicide Vest: He had a knife, shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ at police station.
He will not be missed. Just think of it as evolution in action.
YOU WERE ALREADY IRRELEVANT, JEB, AND NOW YOU’VE JUST MADE YOURSELF MORE SO: Jeb: Trump’s An Isolationist, And I Won’t Promise To Support Him If He’s The Nominee. Didn’t you take a pledge to support the nominee, whoever it was?
Jeb has underperformed more than anyone could have expected. He should have taken the advice I gave him a year ago.
Related: “The GOP plotted to restore the Bush dynasty, but instead triggered a class war.”
MARK STEYN ON THE GHOSTS OF CHARLIE HEBDO, ONE YEAR LATER: “The weepy passive candlelight vigils — the maudlin faux tears and the Smug Moral Preening overdose — aren’t enough. If you don’t want to put out the fire, it will burn your world to the ground.”
And you can’t put out a fire this big with an airbrush.
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CHARLES C.W. COOKE: Even Obama Understands the Second Amendment Better Than Liberal Activists:
Consider: In order to argue with a straight face that the right to keep and bear arms is inextricably linked with “service in an organized and sanctioned militia,” you would have to believe the following unbelievable things: 1) that the Founders’ intent in codifying the Second Amendment was to protect the right of individuals to join an organization over which the federal government has constitutionally granted plenary power; 2) that unlike every other provision in the Bill of Rights — and every other constitutional measure that is wrapped in the “right of the people” formulation — the Second Amendment denotes something other than an individual right that can be asserted against the state; and 3) that every major judicial figure of the era was mistaken as to its meaning — among them, Joseph Story, William Rawle, St. George Tucker, Timothy Farrar, and Tench Coxe, all of whom explained the Second Amendment perfectly clearly — whereas a few judges and politicians in the 20th century have been bang on in their comprehension.
Furthermore, one has to grapple with the theory’s obvious consequences. If it is indeed the case that “a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state” — and if this supposition is binding rather than explanatory — then one has no choice but to conclude that America is both insecure and unfree, and and no choice but to wonder aloud whether the government has abdicated its enumerated constitutional responsibilities to the point at which its legitimate authority must not only be called into question but supplanted by volunteers.
As Fordham’s Nicholas Johnson has noted trenchantly, presumptions such as these are flatly unsustainable in the face of sedulous investigation, and their key progenitor — the now-retired Justice John Paul Stevens — has done little but embarrass himself with their promulgation.
Most of them, however, are beyond embarrassment.
RANDY BARNETT: Why Ted Cruz is a “natural born citizen.” “Just as the offspring of the sovereign monarch are ‘natural born subjects’ of the realm regardless of where they are born, so too are offspring of the sovereign individual citizen ‘natural born citizens’ of the United States, though they may be born outside its borders. Who is the sovereign, not territory, is what matters. In the United States, it is We the People, each and every one.”
A QUESTION SHE’LL NEVER BE ASKED: Would today’s Hillary Clinton would have supported the Bill Clinton of the 1990s if he weren’t her husband?, ponders Betsy Newmark.
And speaking of a nation whose elites have moved far to the left of where they were in the mid-1990s, also at the same link as part of Betsy’s aggregation of news stories, Dan Henninger on the “Revolt of the Politically Incorrect — Donald Trump and Ben Carson popped the valves on decades of pent-up PC pressure.” As Henninger writes, “The PC game has always been: We win, you lose, get over it, comply. But people don’t get over it, and they never forget. For a lot of voters now, possibly a majority, their experiences with enforceable, politically correct behavior, speech and thought have bred a broad mistrust of elites.”
Who have chosen the form of their destructor, to coin an Insta-phrase.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE ABOUT RAPE: White Woman Accuses Black Man Of Rape After Bragging.
The two accused students, identified in the lawsuit as Justin Browning and Alphonso Baity, II, are both African-American. They were accused by a white woman, identified in the lawsuit only as M.K., after an encounter at a party.
Browning and Baity were expelled despite the fact that every witness interviewed corroborated the accused students’ story, and that witnesses came forward to say that M.K. bragged about the encounter as a consensual act. Not only were they expelled, but the expulsions came just two days after the accusation was filed, and campus procedures regarding sexual assault accusations were not followed. . . .
At some point M.K. returned to the bedroom with Browning and again engaged in sexual activity. Again, the lawsuit claims the acts were consensual and that M.K. initiated.
Throughout all of this, the roommates and friends heard sounds coming from the bedroom that indicated consensual sexual activity.
M.K. left in the morning and returned to her dorm, where she discussed the previous night with other women in the dorm, including the resident assistant. According to at least one of these women, M.K. bragged about the evening and her sexual activity with Browning and Baity. M.K. never suggested any sexual assault took place.
Around that same time, M.K. also told another of her friends about the sexual activity with Browning and Baity; again, she was bragging. She even interacted with Baity and his friends in the days following the encounter.
Yet 10 days later, M.K. would accuse Browning and Baity of sexual assault.
Another case of “regret rape.”
OBAMA’S FIDDLING, WHILE NORTH KOREA GIVES GLOBAL TUTORIALS ON HOW TO GET THE NUCLEAR BOMB, Claudia Rosett writes:
Surely North Korea’s weapons clients in Iran are watching closely, even as they benefit from a nuclear deal struck just last year — which they are already violating, and can scrap entirely at a time of their choosing. So are others in the Middle East, where the feckless Iran deal has already fueled interest in a nuclear arms race. The world is watching. And learning. Whether it was an H-bomb or an A-bomb is an important question. The bigger question is what must now be done to ensure that North Korea is stopped. Entirely. And who will do it?
Well, not this administration, of course. Which is why, as Victor Davis Hanson writes, “Look for America’s Enemies to Take Advantage of Obama’s Last Year.”
And the DNC-MSM are happy to cover for him — minimizing Obama’s foreign policy disasters simultaneously hides those of his former Secretary of State.
H.L. MENCKEN LEFT THE BUILDING A VERY LONG TIME AGO: Baltimore Sun editor calls for ‘searchable database of gun owners online.’
That program would of course, also serve double-duty as a searchable database of their neighbors without guns. Which presumably means that unlike these scaredy-cat Democrat operatives with bylines, Sun deputy editorial page editor Tricia Bishop would have no problem displaying a “This Home Proudly Gun-Free” sign on her front lawn, right?
FOR HILLARY CLINTON, THE QUESTION IS NOT HOW WOULD YOU HANDLE NORTH KOREA BUT HOW DID YOU HANDLE IT?
LAURENCE JARVIK: A Discourse on “Critical Thinking.”
AT AMAZON, New Year’s Deals in Jewelry. Valentine’s Day is next month — get ahead of the curve!
IT’S A BAD DAY FOR THE CLINTONS WHEN VOX FAIRLY EXPLAINS THE RAPE ALLEGATION AGAINST BILL.
SMOOT-HAWLEY FOR POTUS 2016! Trump wants a 45 percent tax on Chinese imports.
As Tom Nichols tweets, “I bet this sounds awesome to people who have no idea how much stuff they buy from China.”
Relax — I’m sure that trade protectionism will work this time.
SUSPECT IN COLOGNE SEX ATTACKS: “I AM SYRIAN. YOU HAVE TO TREAT ME KINDLY. MRS MERKEL INVITED ME.”
Related: The Migrant Rape Culture The Political Elite Wishes Were Fake:
It’s hard to explain the “why” behind the troubling correlation between increased Muslim immigration and sexual assault. But one explanation can be found in Islamic culture itself and the heinous way it treats victims of rape.
Many women who find themselves the victims of sexual assault can later become victims of brutal punishments handed down by Sharia courts. In 2008, a Somali girl was stoned to death after being gang raped. Her crime was for engaging in fornication, according to the Islamist court which sentenced her. Courts in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh regularly hand down multiple lashings to rape victims and do little to rapists.
Even if the law does nothing, victims can still find themselves murdered in honor killings. For instance, a Syrian woman who suffered a gang rape in her native land was later stabbed to death in October in an act to purify her shame. The murder took place, shockingly enough, in Germany.
It looks like Europe may engage in victim blaming today and victim slaying tomorrow if it doesn’t get a handle on this problem soon enough.
Which dovetails perfectly into this headline — German Interior Minister: Chatroom Comments are Just as Bad as Muslim Mass Sex Attacks on Women.
WINNER OF 2015′S WORST COLLEGE PRESIDENT OF THE YEAR: Peter Salovey of Yale. A good call, though it was a rich field this year.
LIFE IN THE 21ST CENTURY: Toyota Wants Its Cars To Expect Its Unexpected. I love my car, but if I were to buy a new one it would be for some of the fancier semi-autonomous electronics. But not yet.
WHEN JUDGES VIOLATE THE LAW: Court ordered a billionaire businessman not to speak online about a rival businessman, and to remove posts about him. “In late 2014, a Florida trial court issued an injunction ordering billionaire businessman Alki David not to post about businessman John Textor and to remove posts about Textor. Yesterday, the Florida Court of Appeal quite rightly held that the injunction violated the First Amendment — but such injunctions have regrettably become common and often stay in place when the speaker lacks David’s financial resources and thus can’t hire a lawyer for an appeal.”
We need more accountability for judges who violate people’s rights.
SO YESTERDAY, when I wrote about grid failures, blackouts, and generators, some readers suggested that while a home generator is nice, proper disaster-prep involves having more than one source of backup power, heat, etc. They’re right. I also recommend inverters, which you can take with you, or use at home. I’ve had posts on that here and here.
SAYS THE MAN WHO WOULD HAPPILY CONFISCATE 90 PERCENT OF TAXPAYER EARNINGS: Bernie Sanders: ‘Greed Is Not Good.’
