April 25, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Half a mind to be president

Featured image I 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 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 president 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 veteran »
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

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 »
April 23, 2024 — John Hinderaker

A Prosecution In Search of a Crime

Featured imageDonald Trump is undergoing a criminal trial in Manhattan. He is charged with filing corporate records that included a false statement; namely, that payments to Michael Cohen that were described as being for legal services were, in fact, to reimburse Cohen for making one or more payments to Stormy Daniels in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. But those payments to Daniels were perfectly legal, and filing a false corporate document »
April 23, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

More Wisdom from the Book of Garrow

Featured imageOn August 2, 2023, Tablet editor David Samuels interviewed David Garrow, author of Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama, a massive work that, as Scott explains, “puts every other biographer of Obama to shame.” This post reviewed Samuels’ statements in light of 10/7 and Iran’s more recent attack on Israel. In that context, Garrow’s comments are also of interest, particularly his outing of Dreams from My Father as a work of fiction. »
April 23, 2024 — Scott Johnson

The trouble with Columbia

Featured imageColumbia University presents an extreme case of the rot infesting our major institutions — elite organs of higher education, corporate America, the mainstream media, the entertainment business, the legal profession, the teachers’ unions, and so on. We can learn from Columbia’s extremity. It highlights elements of the phenomenon that otherwise remain beyond our view. The rot at Columbia runs through the students, the administration, and the faculty of the university. »
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 24, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Extension, Columbia style

Featured imageThe pro-Hamas kill the Jews crowd in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at the heart of campus has received an extension. Not to get the campers’ term papers in, of course, but rather to vacate the encampment at the heart of the campus. The encampment is unauthorized and was supposed to be removed days ago. Columbia President Minouche Shafik then set a deadline of this morning at 8:00 a.m. She has »
April 23, 2024 — John Hinderaker

“I know I did something bad”

Featured imageThe Democrats hold a one-vote majority in Minnesota’s state Senate. They used that advantage to pass an unprecedented barrage of far-left legislation in the 2023 session. Their skinny majority is now in jeopardy, however, because a DFL senator has been arrested for burglary. This account is from a local news outlet in Alexandria, Minnesota: A state senator from Woodbury, Minnesota has now been charged with burglary for breaking into her »
April 23, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Stagnating Regulation

Featured imageAs you may know, the supposed slow-growth of wages since the early 1970s has long been a cause-celebre among the left’s equity crowd. It is usually attributed to lower income tax rates, or the demonic powers of “neoliberalism.” One factor that is seldom considered, at least by the mainstream media and the celebrated egalitarian academics like Thomas Piketty, is the role the sharp rise of economy-wide government regulation that began »
April 23, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Quotations from Chairman Joe

Featured imageThe silence of President Biden on the eruption of anti-Semitic “protests” on elite college campuses constitutes a disgusting sidebar to the unfolding story. He was asked about them yesterday as he shambled down a sylvan path in Triangle, Virginia. “I condemn the antisemitic protests,” Biden told reporters. “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.” “Palestinians” widely support Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the terrorist forces »