May 13, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Kristi Versus Colleen

Featured image Everybody’s still talking about Gov. Kristi Noem shooting down that dog but it wasn’t the first time an animal fell victim to an owner’s gunfire. As Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) explained in Gone With the Wind, when Bonny fell and broke her neck, “Mr. Rhett grabbed his gun and run out and shoot that poor pony. And for a minute, I think he gonna shoot himself.” Movies also abound with scenes »
May 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker

When Criminals and Law Enforcement Are On the Same Side

Featured imageIn 2002, a Twin Cities gang member, Myon Burrell, murdered an 11-year-old girl named Tyesha Edwards. She was sitting innocently in her home when a bullet fired incompetently by Burrell in a gang shoot-out brought her life to an end. Burrell was sentenced to life in prison for Edwards’ murder. But someone–who was it?–wrote years ago about the mismatch between the dead victim and the living murderer. The murderer can »
May 13, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Making Book on Newsom

Featured image“California Governor Gavin Newsom is currently working on a memoir, which is expected to come out sometime after the 2024 presidential election,” reports Evan Symon of the California Globe. “Memoirs are what presidential candidates bank on today,” explained literary consultant Glenn Forbes, and Newsom is “in the same corner as Obama was in 2006 or Harris in 2018,” with nothing much beyond name recognition. The governor will “probably go deep »
May 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Hamas at Dartmouth [Updated]

Featured imageDartmouth has avoided the ignominy suffered by some of its Ivy peers during the current anti-Semitic moment. That is because its president, Sian Leah Beilock–I missed it when Congress passed a statute requiring every university president to be a woman–has reacted swiftly to illegal demonstrations on Dartmouth’s campus. The major incident was when anti-Jewish protesters erected tents on the Dartmouth Green, surrounded by anti-Semites who linked arms to “protect” the »
May 13, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

More Wittenburg Door Back Stories

Featured imageAs Steve recalled in his tribute to the Wittenburg Door, “Frankie Schaeffer later became a disgraceful leftist, repudiating his father’s worthy life work and legacy.” Frankie’s father is Francis A. Schaeffer, founder of the L’Abri international study center in Switzerland and author of The God Who is There, first published in 1968, and How Should We Then Live: The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture, from 1976. As »
May 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Peak Kamala, At Last!

Featured imageVice President Kamala Harris is apparently at last unburdened by what has been, and has reached what can be, speaking today before the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Relations, and it apparently involves kicking and breaking a lot of things, followed by cackling: Harris at @APAICS Summit: "We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won't, and then »
May 13, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Are Interest Rates Too Low?

Featured imageAs everyone who follows the financial markets knows, the Federal Reserve is trying to walk a fine line, hinting that they’d like to start cutting interest rates, but still worried that inflation is proving too persistent to do it just yet (never mind whether real inflation is actually higher than the official headline rate because of how we measure inflation these days). Further rate hikes seem to be ruled but, »
May 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Netanyahu at length

Featured imageAcross Israel at 11:00 a.m. this morning the sirens sounded to mark Israel’s Memorial Day (Yom HaZikaron) for the fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. This is the day that Israelis, as a nation, honor the fallen from Israel’s military and those casualties from its wars and victims of terror attacks. Since last Memorial Day, 1594 Israelis have been killed. Out of those, 834 are civilians murdered in terror attacks, »
May 12, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Noem Versus Nidal

Featured imageSouth Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a possible VP choice, continues to take heat for gunning down a vicious canine. That invites a look at Vice President Biden’s response to a mass shooting of American soldiers by U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, who billed himself as a “soldier of Allah.” On November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood, Maj. Hasan yelled “Allahu akbar” and blasted away with two handguns. He shot »
May 12, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Before the Babylon Bee

Featured imageThe Babylon Bee—”America’s newspaper of record,” as Glenn Reynolds likes to put it—has established itself as a premier humor and political satire site of our time. They’ve pretty much put The Onion out of business, though one reason for this is The Onion slowly succumbed to wokery, and hence has trouble in the humor department. (Check it out if you want; it’s pretty weak these days.) The Babylon Bee’s proprietors »
May 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Some revision required

Featured imageIt would be a mistake to rely on the United Nations for information about anything, especially anything related to the Middle East. In Israel’s current war the UN operates as an arm of Hamas. It is nevertheless worth noting — as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies does in this Flash Brief: The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revised its child fatality figure from the Gaza »
May 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Misadventures of a Stalinist stooge

Featured imageQuillette has published Ron Radosh’s long review of Benn Steil’s new biography of Henry Wallace as “Misadventures of a Stalinist stooge” (subscribers only). Steil’s new biography is titled The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century. You can read the first section of Ron’s review at the link. You can also listen to the whole thing via the reading of the review in the audio »
May 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Seinfeld plays Duke

Featured imageJerry Seinfeld delivered the commencement address at Duke University’s 2024 university-wide commencement ceremony in Wallace Wade Stadium yesterday. Seinfeld took the occasion to make the case for comedy and humor, both by example and by advice (starting at about 11:45). Seinfeld is a man not entirely in tune with the times, either in his defense of humor or otherwise. He urged the graduates to take advantage of their privilege. As »
May 13, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Brennan versus Cotton

Featured imageLast week we posted Senator Tom Cotton’s close encounter with Jonathan Karl here on ABC’s This Week. Yesterday Senator Cotton appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation (or Deface the Nation, as Rush used to put it). I missed it. You missed it. We all missed it. Here is the video of Senator Cotton’s appearance (full show transcript here). Like Karl, Brennan performs in her capacity as an operative of the »
May 12, 2024 — John Hinderaker

We Are Screwed

Featured imageThis happened a week ago, but I just saw it courtesy of Christopher Monckton on Watts Up With That?: Here is perhaps the most spectacular instance of invincible ignorance I have come across in a long career studying this phenomenon and working to prevent its weaponization and deployment by those who mean harm to democracy. Here is a verbatim clip from a recent interview. Your mission, should you choose to »
May 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson

How to draw a Biden crowd

Featured imageTaking account of President Trump’s huge Jersey crowd over the weekend, John Hinderaker cruelly observed that President Biden, by contrast, could hold a rally in a parking lot. What would it take for Biden to draw a crowd of 80,000 or more like Trump? I think it could be done. Everyone knows Democrats love “free gifts,” as they say in the retail business. Biden might easily draw a Trump-sized crowd »
May 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Sleepers, awake!

Featured imageThe new book by Victor Davis Hanson is The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation. It was published this past Tuesday. The New York Post extracted Victor’s thesis statement from the book for this column (the headline doesn’t come close to capturing the thesis). In the book Victor recounts the annihilation of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan. Victor provides a précis in the publisher’s video below (more VDH »