March 30, 2025

SURPRISE ON THE HILL: Turns out, according to recent survey of congressional aides reported on HillFaith, that more than half, 52 percent, of the respondents say religious faith issues are discussed in their offices.

Posted at 8:45 am by Mark Tapscott 18

MARK HEMINGWAY: America’s Librarians Became Militantly Political, And Now They Suffer The Consequences.

Churchill once said of John Foster Dulles that he was “the only case I know of a bull who carries his own China shop around with him.” Had Churchill miraculously lived another 60 odd years, I think he would agree that when it comes to this particular metaphor, Dulles has been outclassed. At the dawn of Trump’s second term, we even see that the bull has become self-aware and is deliberately trying to break as much of the federal crockery as he can get away with.

Last week, Trump issued an executive order proposing the shuttering of seven obscure federal agencies, notably including the Institute of Museum and Library Services. Churlish former Labor Secretary Robert Reich went into high dudgeon, or in Reich’s case maybe just dudgeon, to let us know “Tyrants view educated citizens as their greatest enemy. Slaveholders stopped the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burned books. Dictators censor media. That’s why Trump is attacking education, science, museums, and the arts. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.”

Well, I guess you’re just going to have to trust me when I tell you that I’m no fan of tyranny, slavery, Nazis, or book burning. I have written tens of thousands of words opposing government censorship, I have made a living reading and reviewing books, and I spent 17 years on the board of a private school. I hope it is apparent I care about knowledge and education. And speaking as an ostensibly educated, literate, patriotic American, I am asking the Trump administration to follow through and please, please, please in italics, stick it to America’s librarians.

To be clear, I’m also excited by the prospect of any number of museums being collateral damage, but the issue of political insanity in museums, particularly the art world, has already been well noted. Indeed, you know most museum officials have anti-American politics the same way you know that someone is vegan, into astrology, or didn’t vote for Trump – they’ll tell you. Five years ago, the director of the Met actually said to The New York Times “There is no doubt that the Met and its development is also connected with a logic of what is defined as white supremacy.’’ I had to read “its development is also connected with a logic of what is defined as” a few times and got so turned around I didn’t know whether to object to the self-abasing radicalism or elocution lessons from Kamala Harris.

In contrast to the caricature of snobbish museum curators, librarians have been freeriding on a mostly positive cultural stereotype of old biddies who yell at kids to keep quiet but somehow also know how to help you find obscure information on local zoning laws if it comes to that.

The reality is that sometime in the last few decades the vocation of local librarian acquired a uniquely left-wing nimbus. It’s hard to say whether there was an organized takeover of the profession or it organically attracted a new generation that saw their primary vocational responsibility as agents of radical and unwelcome social change. Regardless, they’ve become a threat to future generations and are making us dumber.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:45 am by Ed Driscoll 55

WE HAD TO HIDE THE TRUTH IN ORDER TO SAVE IT:

Now, with their party in the wilderness, Democratic heavy hitters are stepping up to admit that, well, the fake news was real. Here’s The New York Times’ Ezra Klein, in a widely shared recent appearance on Jon Stewart’s podcast, discussing the Kafkaesque regulatory structures that prevented Biden’s rural broadband legislation from ever being translated into reality:

And here’s Klein—currently touring to promote his book Abundance—in an interview with California Gov. Gavin Newsom, admitting that none of the major investment initiatives from Obama’s stimulus package turned into anything:

Meanwhile, Klein’s Vox cofounder, fellow “abundance” Democrat and author of One Billion Americans, Matthew Yglesias, wrote earlier this week that “Democrats can’t hide from immigration forever.” The headline is obviously true, but the article contained a fairly interesting passage about how the rhetorical sausage gets made in the upper reaches of Democratic politics and punditry. Yglesias quotes a 2021 article from Klein noting that in 2012, the Obama campaign realized that merely talking about the issue of immigration pushed voters to the right. Rather than come up with more popular immigration policies, the campaign staff concluded, it was better to simply duck the issue altogether while making up a fake story that immigration had hurt the GOP and selling that to their friends in the media. Yglesias writes:

It’s… important to remember what happened after Obama successfully ran this “don’t talk about immigration” reelection campaign—his team went out and told reporters that Democrats had won thanks to Hispanic backlash against Romney’s self-deportation rhetoric. The RNC then did an “autopsy” report on the election that concluded that Republicans needed to move to the center on immigration. And an immigration reform bill including a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented residents passed the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support.

Which is just to say that as far as I can tell, the Obama team fibbed about the role that immigration played in the 2012 campaign as part of a strategy to psyche Republicans into agreeing to an immigration deal—and it almost worked!

The problem with this comms strategy—creating a rhetorical hall of mirrors that not only bamboozles the electorate but baits the opposing party into acting against its own interests based on an entirely false premise—is that by “lying in politics,” you “trick your own supporters.” In this case, the Obama White House and allied pundits, in trying to trick voters, accidentally tricked the Democrats into thinking that immigration wasn’t something to worry about—a defensible “fib,” in Yglesias’ view, but one that now needs to be addressed for tactical reasons.

We’re glad Yglesias has at least discovered a utilitarian case against lying, since he doesn’t believe in the principled one:

Yglesias was publicly admitting that he was fine about lying to advance the socialist cause since at least 2010:

Meanwhile, last night governor turned professional podcaster Gavin Newsom told Bill Maher: ‘The Democratic Brand is Toxic Right Now.’

Gov. Gavin Newsom continues to make news by pushing back on the far left of his own party. In a conversation last night with Bill Maher, he said a few things which are likely to rile up the extremists on his own team.

First up, he made the case for talking to people on the other side of the aisle. “These guys are crushing us,” Newsom said. He continued, “The Democratic brand is toxic right now. We had a high water mark two weeks ago, that was a CNN poll at 29% favorability. It’s dropped in an NBC poll down to 27%.”

Those who are hyper-online have no doubt seen the hot-dog meme guy many times over the years on social media, which Know Your Meme defines as:

“We’re All Trying To Find The Guy Who Did This” is a quote from the Netflix sketch comedy series I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson. The quote originates from a sketch where an unnamed man in a hot dog costume tries to pretend he is not the one who has crashed a hot dog-shaped car. The image of the man in the costume was widely used as a reaction image on Twitter and other websites in 2020 and early 2021, typically in response to complaints about problems from the people responsible for those problems.

Newsom is determined to live out that meme, as he prepares his 2028 presidential bid, though he’s far from alone on the left.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll 62

THE MIDTERM POLITICAL ADS WRITE THEMSELVES:

Posted at 7:00 am by Glenn Reynolds 41

March 29, 2025

OPEN THREAD: Party on.

Posted at 9:30 pm by Glenn Reynolds 1863

THE MISSING MEN: “I realized that there is something like a touch of the tragic about many of the lives of the young men on my street in a small town in southwestern Ohio. It’s a homey town in a fast-developing and affluent county, not far from Cincinnati, with a good school district, close to opportunity in many ways. But there’s something quietly amiss, something about the men. I think of them as good men—often sensitive, often kind. But it’s like the train left and they are still here waiting.”

Posted at 6:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds 232

I THINK THEY’RE DRAWING FROM A POISONED POOL: Columbia’s new prez called Congress hearings on antisemitism ‘Capitol Hill nonsense.’

Also a shallow pool: “Claire Shipman, a former CNN White House correspondent married to former Obama Administration press secretary Jay Carney, served as co-chair of the University’s board of trustees before she was appointed Friday night to replace interim school president Katrina Armstrong.”

Posted at 6:17 pm by Glenn Reynolds 182

ANOTHER PIC BY THE INSTAWIFE, WHO WAS ON A REAL NEWSGATHERING BINGE TODAY:

This was the Knox County convention, and former state rep. Martin Daniel was elected county chair. I think that is an excellent choice, and that he’s got the right ideas.

Posted at 4:41 pm by Glenn Reynolds 39

AFFLUENT WHITE FEMALE LIBERALS ARE AWFL: Woman whose MAGA hat meltdown, subway wipeout went viral is an ‘extremely liberal’ luxury-brand specialist. “Testanero has gone off the deep end when it comes to politics, a former colleague claimed. ‘She and I stopped being friends a while ago, as she became extremely liberal and very agitated,’ the one-time coworker told The Post.”

Mentally disturbed women who think they can do anything with impunity are a problem.

Posted at 4:07 pm by Glenn Reynolds 227