March 20, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration produced a disgraceful debacle with its exit from Afghanistan. We live with the consequences around the world. Our enemies hold Biden in contempt. The authors of the debacle have suffered no impairment of their self-regard, let alone any detrimental effect on their career. Merrily they roll along. The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the debacle yesterday. Retired Army General Mark Milley, former chairman of
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March 20, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I found the oral argument of the case now styled Murthy v. Missouri this past Monday to be utterly demoralizing. As soon as the oral argument concluded I rashly hazarded my assessment that it portends a victory for the massive censorship-industrial complex represented by the Biden administration. My assessment was a hot take based on the tenor of the argument. The argument seemed to me to reflect a fantasy world.
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March 20, 2024 — Scott Johnson
As a break from the news of the day I’m taking the liberty of reposting this tribute to a great song with an unusual story behind it. Since I first wrote this 18 years ago, YouTube has become a resource that allows me to fill out the story. Stretching from Ella Fitzgerald to Fran Landesman to T.S. Eliot and Geoffrey Chaucer, this is the bare-bones version of the tale: There
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March 19, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Representatives of the Israeli government have been summoned by the Biden administration to meet in Washington next week. See Joel Pollak’s Breitbart News story on National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s press conference yesterday here (the White House transcript is posted here). This is classic: Sullivan said that Biden had specifically criticized Netanyahu’s plans to attack Hamas in Rafah. Sullivan said that Biden had addressed what he called a “straw man,”
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March 18, 2024 — Scott Johnson
On the local front, I have sought to draw attention to the case of JaycCee Cooper v. USA Powerlifting in several posts accessible here. Filed in Ramsey County District Court and assigned to Judge Patrick Diamond, the case raises the question whether USAP’s separation of men from women in USAP’s Minnesota competitions must yield to Cooper’s self-identification as a woman. Although a biological male, Cooper seeks to compete with the
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March 18, 2024 — Scott Johnson
This morning the Supreme Court held oral argument in the case that is now styled Murthy v. Missouri. C-SPAN has posted audio of the oral argument here. The case arises from the government’s “encouragement” of censorship by the social media platforms, as documented in the Twitter Files. We have followed the case as it has wended its way through the district court to the Fifth Circuit and then to the
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March 18, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune represents the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. It is the dominant voice of conventional wisdom that relentlessly peddles the left-wing line on its news pages and in its editorial positions. It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial
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March 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In his weekly NRO column yesterday, Andrew McCarthy urges readers to review the transcript of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Biden. Hur interviewed Biden in the course of his investigation last year on October 8 and October 9. The Department of Justice did not see fit to release the transcripts until the day of Hur’s congressional testimony last week. As McCarthy puts it, “the transcript is such a
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March 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Rick Richman is the author of And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel (2023) and Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler (2018), both published by Encounter Books. He forwards the video of Dave Rubin’s “utterly amazing interview” of former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and now Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer below with the recommendation
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March 17, 2024 — Scott Johnson
John Sebastian celebrates his 80th birthday today. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008. I had a great time compiling a set of videos in his honor last year. I can’t let Sebastian’s big 8-0 pass without inviting readers to take another look back with this revised and expanded edition. Sebastian grew up in Greenwich Village in a musical family. He is saturated in American music
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March 16, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration conveys a pathetic weakness for which the physical person of President Biden serves as an apt metaphor. In its current story on administration negotiations with Iran that date back to January, the New York Times reports: Two Iranian officials, one with the foreign ministry, said that Iran had maintained in the talks that it did not control the activity of the militia [targeting Americans], particularly the Houthis,
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March 16, 2024 — Scott Johnson
You may recall Benjamin Hoff’s popular book Tbe Tao of Pooh (“[i]n which it is revealed that one of the world’s great Taoist masters isn’t Chinese–or a venerable philosopher–but is in fact none other than that effortlessly calm, still, reflective bear”). When President Biden welcomed the Irish Prime Minister (“Taoiseach” Leo Varadkar) to the White House yesterday, the president displayed the Tao of Joe. It is the Tao of a
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March 16, 2024 — Scott Johnson
John Spencer is chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. His profile is posted here. His X feed can be found here. He has been in Israel and Gaza to see what he could learn from the current war. Yesterday he uploaded the video of his February 27 interview with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (below). This is an intensely interesting discussion of “everything from
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March 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson
At page 16 of his opinion ruling on the conflict of interest issues raised by defendants’ in the Georgia “conspiracy so immense” prosecution brought by Fani Willis, Judge McAfee states that “an odor of mendacity remains.” He is referring to the acrid smell left by the testimony of Willis and her former lover, Special Assistant District Attorney Nathan Wade. I believe that Judge McAfee is alluding to Big Daddy’s classic
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March 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson
In a long speech on the floor yesterday Senate Majority Chuck Schumer called for the replacement of the current Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Times of Israel has posted the full text of Schumer’s remarks here. According to Schumer, Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace, the two-state final solution, and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. We must popularize the phrase “He doesn’t know Schumer from Shinola.” Jonathan
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March 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I ask readers to forgive me for repeating this personal note from last year. It is meant to pay tribute to my high school, my high school teachers — Latin teachers Lyman Hawbaker (who also taught ancient history) and Dave Sims in particular — and to my classmates. In the course of our high school years we were required to study Latin and dip our toes into Caesars’s Gallic Wars,
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March 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll has seasonal thoughts on WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM PROFESSIONAL SPORTS – especially BASEBALL. She wants commenters to know that she “will be slightly less interactive today as her son is here and we will be at a Spring Training game. It is just a coincidence (honest!) that this column was next up in the pipeline.” She writes: Unless you are very lucky, the first thing you learn
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