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Author Archives: Scott Johnson
Netanyahu’s case
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. 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,” the “nonsense” argument that to refrain from »
A lift too far: The Court of Appeals decision [With Comment by John]
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 »
A bloodbath in the Supreme Court
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 »
Shady Grove, Act III
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 »
Biden unplugged
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 »
Understanding Israel’s war, cont’d
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 »
Sunday morning coming down
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 »
What’s wrong with this picture?
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, »
The Tao of Joe
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 »
Understanding Israel’s war
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 »
An odor of mendacity
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 »
Doesn’t know Schumer from Shinola
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 »
A personal note on the Ides of March
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, »
Thoughts from the ammo line
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 »
After last week
Last week the mainstream press ranked President Biden’s State of the Union address up there with the Sermon on the Mount. I reviewed it in detail and found it to be “The SOTU from hell,” but then I wasn’t the target audience. My assessment might have been unreliable. In my comments I asked to whom the speech was addressed. That wasn’t clear to me. I guess it was addressed to »
Ms. Yellen regrets
In Cole Porter’s “Miss Otis Regrets,” the heroine announces that she’s unable to lunch today. Why? She has a good excuse — because she was strung up by a mob for killing “the man who had led her so far astray.” Now Ms. Yellen regrets. Janet Yellen holds the venerable office of Secretary of the Treasury. Former chairman of the Federal Reserve, Yellen is well qualified for the job and »
The trouble with Dennis Ross
Dennis Ross is a scholar and diplomat of unmatched experience in the vagaries of “the peace process.” His 2005 memoir The Missing Peace: Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace runs to 880 closely printed pages. He served in both the Bush (41) and Clinton administrations. He also served as special assistant to President Obama and worked on National Security Council in both the Reagan and Obama administrations. »