April 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Earth Day and Me

Featured image Last Monday, April 22, was Earth Day, which found me in Washington DC doing a program at the American Enterprise Institute on environmental progress along with Roger Pielke Jr. If you missed the livestream, the video of the entire event is now up. It’s almost 90 minutes long in total, but my portion of the program is just the first 25 minutes or so. »
April 25, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Garrow Bonus Coverage

Featured imageLast August in “The Obama Factor,” Tablet’s David Samuels asked David Garrow if he could imagine Obama joining the Supreme Court. “He’d be terrible because he’s too lazy,” Garrow said.  “This in the book. It goes back to him being Hawaiian. At one point, he says, ‘I’m fundamentally lazy and it’s because I’m from Hawaii.’ That’s close to the actual quote.” Garrow’s massive Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama »
April 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Is Crime Falling?

Featured imageRight now we are hearing that crime—especially homicide—is falling (just like inflation—heh), suggesting that the runaway crime of recent years was somehow an epiphenomena of Covid. Here’s the chart getting wide circulation: These data are likely correct, but there is reason to doubt that crime overall is falling, for the simple reason that lots of people have lost confidence in law enforcement and prosecution and no longer report many crimes »
April 25, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Trump In the Supreme Court

Featured imageSpecial Prosecutor Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump was argued in the Supreme Court today. The issue is the extent to which ex-presidents are entitled to immunity for acts committed while they were in office. The New York Times covered the arguments with live updates. Here are some excerpts: Overall, several justices — maybe a majority — apear to have suggested through their questions that presidents should indeed enjoy some »
April 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Campus Left Loses The Atlantic

Featured imageThe Atlantic today has posted up an article from George Packer that, as John Podhoretz noted on Twitter, you could have read in Commentary at any point for the last 35 years. The fact that this is appearing in The Atlantic perhaps marks a turning point in established  liberal opinion, but will college administrators and trustees take note and do anything about it? It’s a long piece, but here are »
April 25, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Crisis at NPR?

Featured imageThe saga of how state-run radio (better known as NPR) continues to fester, despite the best attempts of NPR’s new apparatchick, Katherine Maher, to suggest her previous hostile comments about free speech, her “my trutherism,” and her Democratic partisanship are all “taken out of context.” (Understand that for the contemporary left, “context” is everything, so claiming something anyone says is “taken out of context” is not a denial that they »
April 25, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Half a mind to be president

Featured imageI have set the over/under on President Biden’s mental capacity at 40 percent. He has half a mind to be president. Yesterday he read the instruction inserted in the text of his remarks to “Pause” for the crowd to take up the chant of “Four more years.” The White House has posted the transcript of Biden’s remarks to North America’s Building Trades Union National Legislative Conference here. However, Biden’s reading »
April 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Jon Stewart Skewers the Media’s Trump Coverage

Featured imageNormally I expect that Jon Stewart, freshly back hosting The Daily Show on Mondays, will use his show to bash Trump. But this week he surprised by using a 15-minute opening segment to bash the media’s coverage of the Trump trial going on right now in Manhattan. I have to say it is pretty effective at making the media look stupid. It goes off the rails when he brings on »
April 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker

America’s Native Criminal Class?

Featured imageMark Twain said that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress. However, he didn’t know about the Minnesota DFL party’s legislative delegation: The arrest rate in the United States is 2,181.7 per 100,000 each year, or 2.18%. The arrest rate for #mnleg Democrats is 3 per 104 in the last year, or 2.89%. Elected #mnleg Democrats have a 32% higher arrest rate than the general population. pic.twitter.com/rXxYlU31qi — »
April 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Pause That Depresses

Featured imageI’m sure Biden’s staff has had conversations with him about not reading the instructions on his teleprompter, but whatever they have done isn’t working. Is it possible to use different colors on a teleprompter? I don’t know, maybe they could put the text in black and the stage directions in red. Here, Biden is instructed to pause so his audience can take up the “four more years” chant. Of course »
April 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: The University Abyss

Featured imageAs we watch our most elite universities circle the drain by capitulating to a mob indistinguishable from the German professoriate that cheered on the Nazi Party in the 1920s and 1930s, I offer our quote for the day from our friend Inez Feltscher Stepman: “Sorry I have no patience for people continually surprised by what’s going on in Columbia and across university campuses like what did you think would happen »
April 25, 2024 — Scott Johnson

The Arizona indictment

Featured imageNow an Arizona grand jury has handed up a 2020 election-related indictment procured by Arizona’s Democratic attorney general. The indictment includes charges against Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, and others in connection with the scheme Trump was pursuing in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Trump is named an unindicted co-conspirator. The indictment is posted online here. Politico’s story on the indictment deciphers the names redacted from the indictment at »
April 25, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Leadership from the Speaker

Featured imageIn an act of leadership that contrasts with the malicious indifference of President Biden and his team, House Speaker Mike Johnson went up to Columbia University to call for the restoration of order on campus. He spoke from the steps of Low Library to denounce the treatment of Jewish students on campus. I have posted video below. Johnson was joined by a GOP delegation including Reps. Virginia Foxx, Anthony D’Esposito, »
April 24, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Ode to an Uncle

Featured imageJoe Biden believes that his uncle, Second Lt. Ambrose J. Finnegan Jr., could have been eaten by cannibals after being shot down over Papua New Guinea during World War II. There is no evidence for the claim, and current PNG prime minister James Marape protests that “my country does not deserve to be labeled as such.” While this plays out, let me tell you about my uncle, World War II »
April 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker

A Prosecution In Search of a Crime, Part 2

Featured imageI wrote last night about the absurdity of Alvin Bragg’s criminal prosecution of Donald Trump. Today both Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Turley made similar points. Andrew went into considerably more detail. He writes: As I’ve related a few times, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney, is trying to hoodwink the jury into believing that (a) it is a crime for a candidate for public office to conspire with »
April 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward

State of the Race

Featured imageIt is tempting to suggest that the best of all worlds is for Trump to be tied down in the courtroom, where he can’t let fly with one of his frequent provocations, while Joe Biden gets out and campaigns more, reminding Americans that he is a doddering fool. The big story last week was that Biden is the comeback kid! The polls have closed, with some putting Biden back in »
April 24, 2024 — Scott Johnson

A word from Obama’s wingman

Featured imageWe haven’t heard much from Barack Obama about the 10/7 massacre or Iran’s missile assault on Israel. Former Obama wingman Eric Holder gives us a taste of what we are missing in the Washington Free Beacon story “Eric Holder Says Columbia’s Campus Agitators Have ‘Legitimate Concerns.'” Both Obama and Holder are Columbia alumni. Collin notes the contradiction between Holder’s defense of the pro-Hamas campers at Columbia and the stated position »