Author Archives: Paul Mirengoff

Is Trump in trouble over document handling?

Featured image He might be. The National Archives and Records Administration has asked the Justice Department to examine the former president’s handling of White House records. The Archives’ request came after officials recovered 15 boxes of materials from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence that were not handed over to the government when he left office, as the Archives says was required by law. To make matters worse, Trump turned over some White House records »

Let’s end political litmus tests in education

Featured image “Diversity statements” are the latest device the left has come up with to impose and enforce woke conformity in education. Stanley Kurtz explains how they work: Let’s say you’re applying for a teaching job at a university. In addition to submitting a CV and a description of your academic research, many universities now require you to answer a series of questions designed to prove your commitment to the ideology and »

Report: Team Biden resisted military’s Kabul evacuation plan

Featured image According to the sworn testimony of military commanders involved in the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, senior White House and State Department officials failed to grasp the Taliban’s steady advance on Afghanistan’s capital and resisted efforts by U.S. military leaders to prepare the evacuation of embassy personnel and Afghan allies weeks before Kabul’s fall. The result was the perilous, chaotic, and ultimately deadly withdrawal that stunned America. This indictment is contained »

Two borders that have nothing to do with each other

Featured image Some of the rhetoric in the debate over Ukraine policy seems wildly disproportionate to actual disagreement on the subject. I don’t know of any Ukraine “hawk” who advocates sending U.S. forces into battle against Russia, if it invades. I don’t know any who advocates admitting Ukraine to NATO in the near future. The “hawks” want severe sanctions if Russia invades. In addition, they support moving a relatively small number of »

Conservative clash captures media attention

Featured image I detect an emerging trend in the anti-conservative mainstream media — using conservatives to attack other conservatives. The New York Times is leading the charge. How else does one explain the Times publishing the op-ed by “common good conservative” Adrian Vermuele attacking originalism? Or an op-ed by three leading common good (or national) conservatives attacking the Republican foreign policy establishment? The publication of the two pieces can partially be explained »

Canadian truckers receive the Tea Party treatment

Featured image I haven’t commented on the protest by Canadian truckers in Ottawa. That’s John’s beat, and he’s doing a great job with it. However, I did come across this passage in a Daily Mail article about the protests: James Doull, 24, a diesel mechanic who is organizing truckers parked along Wellington Street, where many of the parliamentary and government buildings are located, claimed ‘all the stuff put out by Trudeau and »

Hispanic women warming to GOP in Texas

Featured image So says Politico, and it seems to be true. Certainly, Donald Trump made inroads among Hispanic voters in 2020 — both in Texas and elsewhere. And the GOP achieved further gains with this ethnic group in Texas elections held in 2021. There are indications that Hispanic women are leading the charge. In Texas, according to Politico: Hispanic women now serve as party chairs in the state’s four southernmost border counties, »

For lifelong Evertonian, a dream come true

Featured image Last month, I wrote about the romance of the FA Cup. That competition is an English soccer tournament open to more than 700 teams — from local semipro clubs to some of the best teams in the world. Every year, it seems, one obscure, lowly team makes a deep run in the tournament. This year, it’s Boreham Wood, from England’s fifth division. Over the weekend, the Hertfordshire club knocked off »

Americans tune out Olympic ceremonies

Featured image I was happy to read, via NRO’s Jack Butler, that the ratings for Friday’s opening ceremonies at the Winter Olympics were down 43 percent from 2018. Butler cites an article in Axios which notes that ratings for the opening ceremonies in Tokyo last summer were also down, but by only 6 percent. Thus, Axios’ explanation for the mass tuning out of the China ceremonies — that “broadcast and cable TV »

A congressional covid committee? No thanks.

Featured image According to this report, there is bipartisan support for creating a congressional Covid-19 Commission. It would be modeled after the one that, for better or (in my view) worse, examined the 9/11 attacks. The proposed commission would investigate the origins of the coronavirus pandemic and the responses of the Trump and Biden administrations. The plan is proposed by the top Democrat and Republican on the Senate Health Committee — Sens. »

Common good constitutionalism vs. originalism

Featured image Adrian Vermeule is a law professor at Harvard and a leading proponent of Common Good (or National) Conservatism. He has written an op-ed for the New York Times called “The Supreme Court is on the wrong path.” I’m not sure what path the Supreme Court is on (we’ll probably have a better idea by the end of June). Therefore, I neither agree nor disagree with proposition set forth in the »

Marilyn Mosby’s reckoning

Featured image Marilyn Mosby is the “no justice, no peace” Baltimore prosecutor who brought charges against six Baltimore police officers in the Freddie Gray matter. She failed to obtain even one conviction. Mosby was in U.S. District Court yesterday, not as an attorney but as a criminal defendant. She is charged with perjury and making false statements on mortgage applications. We discussed these charges here. The Washington Post lays them out here. »

Black Republican excluded from Black Caucus of Virginia legislature

Featured image A.C. Cordoza is a newly-elected member of the Virginia House of Delegates. He’s Black and he’s Republican — the only member of the Virginia legislature who answers to that description. As such, Cordoza sought membership in the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus. It excluded him. Cordoza says he was excluded because of his answers to a questionnaire from the caucus. Among the question he apparently answered “incorrectly” were ones pertaining to »

The Washington Post “normalizes” China’s Olympics

Featured image This column in the Washington Post by Barry Svrluga is full of deserved contempt for China and the fact that the Winter Olympic Games are being held there. He writes: According to Human Rights Watch and other advocacy groups, the Chinese government has arbitrarily detained, tortured and forced into labor more than a million Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic population largely in Xinjiang, in the country’s northwest. Beijing has suffocated free »

Whoopi Goldberg and the cancel culture

Featured image Josh Hammer has a column for Jewish World Review called “The limits of appeals to cancel culture.” Hammer seems bothered that David French lamented Goldberg’s suspension on cancel culture grounds. Having also objected to the suspension, I want to address Hammer’s column. Hammer argues that “there are certain things that should be canceled.” This is true, of course. Some speech is not protected by the First Amendment — Hammer cites »

Josh Hawley on Ukraine

Featured image Sen. Josh Hawley has sent a letter to Secretary of State Blinken asking that the Biden administration “clarify” its “support for Ukraine’s prospective admission in NATO.” Hawley’s letter is well argued, thoughtful, and far from unreasonable. However, I disagree with what he advocates. I take Hawley’s main point to be that Ukraine’s admission would entail a military commitment to defend Ukraine, and that this would detract from our ability to »

Brian Flores sues the NFL

Featured image Last month, I wrote about Brian Flores, the moderately successful black coach of the Miami Dolphins, who was fired after three seasons. I said that the firing of Flores raised suspicions of racism, but that it’s extremely unlikely the dismissal really was race based. The Dolphins defended the decision to sack Flores, at least in part, on the basis that the coach clashed with the Dolphins’ general manager, who is »