March 17, 2025

IF YOUR SCHADENBONER LASTS MORE THAN FOUR HOURS, CONSULT A DOCTOR:

There’s been an awful lot of “Democrat hoisted by his own petard” stories lately, and it’s a good time to be alive.

Posted at 2:46 pm by Stephen Green 9

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD:

Posted at 2:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 13

SCOTT JENNINGS EXPOSES DEMS’ FILIBUSTER HYPOCRISY, BREAKS CNN PANEL:

Once again, CNN’s Scott Jennings says the one thing exposing leftist hypocrisy that causes a segment to go up in smoke. This time, he did it on CNN’s State of the Union.

Watch as Jennings “thanks” Chuck Schumer for defeating the “racist Jim Crow filibuster”, forcing host Jake Tapper to explain his joke to the viewing audience.

Exit quote: “Scott’s having a lot of fun today:”

Speaking of CNN:

I’m so old, I can remember when Bill Kristol was a conservative. Flashbacks: Emerald Robinson: I Confess — It Was I Who Mercy-Killed The Weekly Standard. As Ace of Spades writes, “This whole article is worth reading, but let me cut to the really juicy part. The revelation of secrets.”

Related: Bill Kristol and the political defector grift.

Seriously, how many times is the press going to re-run the story of a frustrated Kristol turning his back on the party? In 2017 he advocated replacing Republican voters with immigrants. That fall, he donated to Virginia governor Ralph Northam’s campaign. He literally announced just three months ago that he’s ‘not really’ a Republican, hadn’t voted for a Republican in years, and didn’t plan to vote for a Republican for several years to come at least. He even called for people to vote against good Republicans in the House and Senate, because it would risk raising the power of the party as a whole.

Since the days of Richard Nixon, you can make a very good living in the DNC-MSM media bubble by being a prominent Republican who never votes for Republicans.

UPDATE:

Posted at 2:22 pm by Ed Driscoll 27

PUBLIUS:

The most brilliant part of the Tren de Aragua deportation flight is that it forced Democrats to defend and uphold literal narco-terrorists who have murdered Americans and destroyed the neighborhoods of working class voters.

I am 100% sure that the Trump team did a careful mission analysis on the best way to get Dems to embarrass themselves more than usual, right down to the careful timing of having the judge impose his TRO while the plane was in international airspace.

This was a carefully planned operation that was executed to perfection.

Kudos to the entire Trump team.

Indeed.

Of course, it helps that the Democrats have a destructive addiction to the 20% side of a whole host of 80/20 issues.

(Typo fixed — thanks!)

Posted at 1:44 pm by Stephen Green 158

FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: The gyms and fitness chains closed during the coronavirus pandemic — and what some are offering instead.

There’s nothing like a good workout to combat coronavirus-related anxieties — but are trips to the gym safe amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic?

While there’s no need to throw down the dumbbell for good, some gyms are closing as a precautionary measure during the ongoing outbreak. Read on for a list of national chains and fitness studios that have shut their doors (for the time being) to fight the spread of the virus.

Most of the gyms announced “two week” closures, which in reality, often went on for months. 24-Hour Fitness, since reopened, declared bankruptcy on June 15th, 2020.

Posted at 1:35 pm by Ed Driscoll 24

READ MELISSA OLTHOFF’S FORLORN HOPE after meeting her at a con a couple of weeks ago. Finished it last night: Quite good, and I found myself thinking about the characters and events at the gym today, which is always a good sign.

Posted at 1:10 pm by Glenn Reynolds 7

LEFTIES ON MY SOCIAL MEDIA ARE SAYING THE MEASLES OUTBREAK IN TEXAS IS TRUMP’S FAULT. Stupid anti-vaxx MAGA types!

Meanwhile: European Region reports highest number of measles cases in more than 25 years – UNICEF, WHO/Europe: 127,350 measles cases were reported in the European Region for 2024 – double the number reported for 2023 and the highest number seen in the Region since 1997.

Is there anything MAGA can’t do? Related: Ontario is having its worst measles outbreak in almost 30 years. Here’s what you need to know: Measles was rare in Ontario, with only 101 cases reported between 2013 and 2023 — until a surge in cases last year.

Posted at 1:06 pm by Glenn Reynolds 41

WELL: This Will Cause Some Heartburn: Trump Declares POTATUS Auto-Pen Pardons ‘Void.’ The fight over this will be interesting, and ugly, and I don’t see where Trump has anything to lose from it.

Meanwhile, although Congress lacks the power to limit the president’s discretion on granting pardons, as I’ve written years ago it possesses the power to regulate pardons procedurally in many ways — for example, to require that they be signed in person by the president (no autopen), and perhaps to require that they be witnessed by others whose names are recorded, and deposited with the National Archives. This is under its power “to make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” That should be done.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that Trump may know more than we do about how the autopen was used, who was in charge, etc.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lawprof Ann Althouse: “The NYT writer — Shawn McCreesh — observes ‘There is no power in the Constitution or case law to undo a pardon, and there is no exception to pardons signed by autopen,’ but to say that is to look past the question whether there was a pardon. Even if a pardon can’t be undone, how do we know it was ever done? We have a piece of writing, signed by autopen, and maybe it can be shown to have originated within the White House. The power that is in the Constitution is given to ‘The President,’ so, interpreting that clause, one might question whether his hand must do the signing… and whether his mind comprehended what he was doing.” Using the autopen at the direction of the President is one thing. Using the autopen without his knowledge or comprehension is another.

She doubts that courts will want to open that can of worms, and she’s probably right. But what if it can be established that the pardons were done entirely by staff without Biden’s knowledge? Judges’ clerks may write their opinions, but if they write and issue them while the judge is in a coma, that can’t be valid, right? There must be some point where it’s not a question of delegation, but simply fraud. Again, what does Trump know? What have permanent White House staff told him? (Bumped).

Posted at 1:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds 374

DECOUPLING: Apple’s India manufacturing efforts expands to AirPods. “According to sources of The Economic Times, Apple will be commencing manufacture of AirPods from April. The production will be taking place at a Foxconn plant located in Hyderabad, with AirPods produced at the facility intended for exports only.”

Posted at 12:42 pm by Stephen Green 11

SUCKING IN THE SEVENTIES: Battle of the Bitty: Six 1971 Small Cars Compared. From the Car and Driver archive: We compare the AMC Gremlin, Chevrolet Vega, Ford Pinto, Simca 1204, Toyota Corolla, and Volkswagen Super Beetle to anoint the 1971 compact-car champ.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 97

15 DAYS TO SLOW THE SPREAD: Five years ago, Las Vegas’ casinos shut down for 78 days. The fallout was brutal.

[Five] years ago few believed that Las Vegas’ casinos would be forced to close to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 virus that was rampaging worldwide.

But they did. And the fallout was brutal.

About a month after casinos in Macao were closed for 15 days to slow COVID’s spread, then-Gov. Steve Sisolak on March 17, 2020 ordered all casinos as well as restaurants, bars and other nonessential businesses in the state to close for 30 days.

The key phrase above is “then-Gov. Steve Sisolak:” COVID Lockdown Helps Bounce Democratic Governor in Nevada.

Posted at 12:30 pm by Ed Driscoll 27

COVID COVERUP: Ed Morrissey is Unsparing.

Now that the cat has come out of the bag, suddenly the New York Times feels the need to get out in front of the backlash. For years, the NYT ran story after story, scathing column after column, about anyone who dared to challenge The Science®. How dare people suggest that a novel coronavirus might have emerged from the nearby lab being run under questionable practices doing exactly the kind of research intended to produce novel coronaviruses! Those dissenters were all raaaaaacists, remember?

Now, the NYT — and not even in its own editorial voice — wants to play victim of The Science®. . . .

Ahem. “Has since emerged” is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here. As early as April 2020, those “terrifyingly lax” protocols had already come to light. We also knew at that same time that the State Department had flagged the Wuhan Institute of Virology for violating safety protocols required for the kind of gain-of-function research it was conducting as far back as 2018. We also knew that The Science® still had zero evidence for a natural zoonotic leap to humans to explain the outbreak epicentered in the same town as the lab . . .

And yet, the New York Times went out of its way — as did the rest of the Protection Racket Media — to spend years treating anyone who questioned the “consensus” around a natural zoonotic leap as either a crank, a racist, or worse. Even when hints that the intel community had its doubts about the “consensus,” the media rushed to defend The Science® from any scrutiny whatsoever. . . . Why did the media circle the wagons around The Science®? Because The Science® helped cause the pandemic and didn’t want to get held accountable for it. Anthony Fauci and Francis Collins funded gain-of-function research even after several warnings about its dangers. They funded the WIV even after all the red flags went up about their “terrifyingly lax” protocols in pursuing that research. Had the media exposed that at the time, Fauci and Collins (and others) would have been hauled in front of a jury rather than allowed to set policies to deal with the pandemic to which they greatly contributed.

Read the whole thing. Despite President Autopen’s dodgy pardons, this needs to be looked into, deeply and unrelentingly.

Related:

Posted at 12:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds 79

ANALYSIS: TRUE. Treasury Secretary Bessent says White House is heading off a ‘guaranteed’ financial crisis.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday the Trump administration is focused on preventing a financial crisis that could be the result of massive government spending over the past few years.

“What I could guarantee is we would have had a financial crisis. I’ve studied it, I’ve taught it, and if we had kept up at these spending levels that — everything was unsustainable,” Bessent said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We are resetting, and we are putting things on a sustainable path.”

President Donald Trump has made getting the government’s fiscal house in order a priority since taking office. He created the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, to spearhead job cuts and early retirement incentives across multiple federal agencies.

Still, the U.S. debt and deficit problem worsened during Trump’s first month in office, as the budget shortfall for February passed the $1 trillion mark.

Yes, we all saw it coming: Biden leaves Trump with deteriorating deficit. “Part of it is a last-minute spending spree by Mr. Biden, who is trying to push money for his big projects out the door before Mr. Trump can jerk the reins.”

Posted at 11:40 am by Stephen Green 72