April 16, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Iran Insanity

Featured image Two friends of mine comment on the Obama/Biden administration’s bizarre partiality toward Iran. In the New York Post, Glenn Reynolds writes: Post-[Iran’s] attack [on Israel]— going further yet beyond parody — the Biden administration’s chief effort has been aimed at demanding Israel not retaliate. That’s right. Israel has had more than a thousand of its citizens raped, tortured, murdered and kidnapped, it’s been subjected to a massive missile attack, and »
April 16, 2024 — John Hinderaker

A Terrible Idea Whose Time May Be Coming

Featured imageLiberals are trying to do away with the Electoral College, since in recent cycles they have done better with the so-called popular vote. Of course they can’t amend the Constitution, but they don’t need to: instead, they are pushing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact. Briefly, the Compact says that each signatory state will cast its electoral votes for whatever presidential candidate gets the largest number of votes, nationwide. That »
April 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: California Dreaming Indeed

Featured imageLast week the Wall Street Journal‘s James Freeman wrote about the wishful thinking of California elites who waive away any of the sensible causes for the droves of people leaving California (resulting in a sustained net population loss over the last few years for the first time in 170 years) such as high taxes, senseless regulation, rising crime, unaffordable housing etc. Maybe Mr. Newsom is just unlucky. This week in »
April 16, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Angela Davis Makes People Happy

Featured imageAngela Davis, winner of the Lenin Peace Prize, ran for vice president with the Communist Party USA in 1980 and 1984. Angela Davis is also listed as the performer of “Make Someone Happy,” beautifully rendered on alto saxophone. As it happily turns out, that is Australian altoist Angela Davis, who spent eight years in New York, recording albums, Lady Luck and Art of the Melody. Check her out on “Little »
April 16, 2024 — Steven Hayward

NPR Goes Full Gulag

Featured imageWe noted here last week the withering critique of National Propaganda Radio (NPR) by longtime NPR editor Uri Berliner. Turns out that NPR recently hired as its new head a complete commie, Katherine Mayer. How commie? Nate Hochman has some of the very many receipts: And just as James Damore was cashiered from Google when he questioned leftist orthodoxy, National Review is reporting that Uri Berliner has been suspended without »
April 16, 2024 — Scott Johnson

From sea to shining sea

Featured imageNot from the river to the sea, but from sea to shining sea the Kill the Jews crowd was out in force blocking bridges and roadways around the United States yesterday. They did their thing in San Francisco, Oakland, New York City, Philadelphia, San Antonio, Seattle, and points elsewhere in the United States. In the heart of the country they temporarily shut down travel into Chicago O’Hare International Airport. For »
April 15, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Red v. Blue on Tax Day

Featured imageWith everyone’s favorite day (April 15) hard upon us, worth noting how state income tax rates fall out. Pick your home state accordingly: »
April 15, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Trump Goes On Trial

Featured imageAlvin Bragg’s criminal case against Donald Trump goes to trial today. It says something about the world we live in that we haven’t even bothered to mention it lately. I summed up Bragg’s case against Trump here. In a word, it is pathetic. Trump made one or more “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels, which was perfectly legal. The alleged crime is that his business documents reflect falsely that the »
April 14, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

The Hoop and the Harm

Featured imageIowa basketball star Caitlin Clark, who drains three-pointers with the ease of Stephen Curry, has earned an estimated $3.1 million in NIL revenue from marketing her name, image and likeness. Purdue center Zach Edey also took his team to the final, but as he told reporters, “I obviously lost out on a lot of money this year.” The towering center hails from Toronto, and under a student visa NIL earnings »
April 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Not a Race, a Mismatch

Featured imageThe “trans” fad continues to make waves around the Western world. In the U.K., the National Health Service commissioned pediatrician Dr. Hilary Cass to investigate and report on the treatment of gender-confused children and young people in that country. Her report is long and measured, and I am still making my way through it. But it has been seen as a watershed moment in the pushback against the “trans” ideology »
April 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Podcast: The 3WHH, Letter from the Birmingham Starbucks

Featured imageI hosted this crisp episode despite having a creaky voice from a springtime bug (and Lucretia is partly hobbled, too) and we cover a lot of ground, starting with a brief recap of the latest (unanimous!) property rights victory at the Supreme Court, but then moving quickly on to initial reactions to the outbreak of World War III yesterday. What to make of Iran’s attack on Israel? Many things are »
April 15, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Tax Day Reminder

Featured imageSome taxpayers are aware that any refund on their return is their own money. On the other hand, many may be unware that the government got their money before they did. This takes place through the practice of withholding money from workers’ paychecks, a development dating to World War II. “Wars have always been the most important occasions for the introduction of new forms of taxation,” writes Robert Higgs (Crisis »
April 15, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Grotesque Bias Against Trump

Featured imageI find this, from this morning’s proceedings in Trump’s “hush money” trial, inexplicable: Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass looked for a backdoor way of introducing Donald Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” interview into the hush money trial Monday morning, where he recited, word for word, Trump’s “grab ’em by the p—y” speech. Justice Juan M. Merchan had previously ruled that the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office could not play Trump’s interview to a jury »
April 15, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Strategy à la Biden

Featured imageWhen it comes to Iran’s massive missile and drone attack on Israel this past Saturday evening, President Biden has instructed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to let bygones be bygones. I don’t think he cited Sun Tzu in support of the Biden doctrine, but the White House has not released a readout of Biden’s call to Netanyahu following the attack. Rather, the White House released this statement publicly seeking to deter »
April 14, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Loose Ends (251)

Featured image• Bill Maher has gone off the reservation once again, debunking lefty talking points about the greatness of our neighbors and Scandinavia while ignoring facts: • The late John Von Kannon, one of the founders of The American Spectator back in the 1960s, persuaded me many years ago that professional wrestling was a conservative sport, because it is a melodramatic morality play, with clear good guys and bad guys. (This »
April 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Times Finds a Prosecutor It Likes

Featured imageWe have written a number of times about Mary Moriarty, the leftist who now serves as County Attorney for Hennepin County, Minnesota. Moriarty is a former public defender who thinks her job as prosecutor is to take the side of criminals. When she was sworn in as county attorney, did she put her hand on the Bible or perhaps a copy of the Constitution? No: she rested it on a »
April 14, 2024 — John Hinderaker

In Defense of Joe Biden

Featured imageThat’s a post title you won’t often see on this site! I want to move on to Iran, but first, what did Joe Biden actually tell Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday? I can’t see that an official readout of the conversation has been published, but this account, based on conversation with a “senior White House official,” seems as authoritative as any: Biden told Netanyahu the joint defensive efforts by Israel, the »