December 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker

China Runs the Table

Featured image That is energy expert Robert Bryce’s title for his depressing Substack piece: On Monday, the Biden administration issued new restrictions on the export of key semiconductor equipment and software to China. On Tuesday, China retaliated by banning the export to the US of three strategic elements — antimony, gallium, and germanium — that have multiple military and civilian uses. It also restricted the export of graphite to the US. The »
December 7, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Trump Bestrides the World Like a Colossus

Featured imageDonald Trump hasn’t been inaugurated yet, but he already dominates the world stage. He is in Paris today for the re-opening of Notre Dame Cathedral, an international event attended by numerous heads of state. He is there at the specific invitation of French President Macron. This short video shows Trump’s arrival, where he is greeted by Macron. Note that the French are treating Trump in a manner that normally would »
December 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Pearl Harbor remembered

Featured imageJim Downing was serving on the USS West Virginia at Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, 1941. CNN’s Jake Tapper invited then 103-year-old former Lieutenant Downing to discuss the Japanese attack on the American fleet on the 75th anniversary of the attack. Downing testified: “It’s frozen in our minds the destruction that took place that morning…” Downing’s valor and patriotism shine through this brief interview. He died a »
December 7, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Mobilize as Forcefully as We Can

Featured imageOn Thursday, former president Obama delivered a 4,756-word speech purporting to deal with “pluralism,” which “means that in a democracy, we all have to find a way to live alongside individuals and groups who are different than us.” On the other hand: What happens when the other side has repeatedly and abundantly made clear they’re not interested in playing by the rules? It’s a problem. And when that happens, we »
December 7, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Podcast: the 3WHH, Repatriation Edition

Featured imageThe Three Whisky Happy Hour gang is finally all back in the U.S. after weeks of galavanting overseas, and boy is there a lot to catch up on. Among our topics this week are the signs and wonders that the Age of Trump is fully established; the Biden pardons; the farcical Penny trial; whether World War III is indeed under way, and the attempted coup in Korea, about which our »
December 7, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Toward a Supreme Court for the People

Featured imageThe Tennessee trans tangle is before the U.S. Supreme Court, where Justice Sonia Sotomayor compared irreversible transition surgery to taking an aspirin. Scott proclaimed Sotomayor “an idiot,” and it’s hard to blame him. This woman once proclaimed herself a “wise Latina,” which is revealing. Ancestry in the Iberian peninsula of Europe may generate pride, but it qualifies no person for a seat on the Supreme Court, and this is not »
December 7, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: Pardon Me?

Featured imageThe only surprise about the Hunter Biden pardon is that anyone was surprised—outside the mainstream media, which had treated “my word as a Biden” as though it was ever serious. Predictions: Biden isn’t done with his dubious pardons yet, and he will leave office in January with the lowest public approval rating in history, topping even Nixon in 1974. Headlines of the week:   And finally. . . »
December 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Hegseth On Track?

Featured imageThe Democrats have mounted a smear campaign against Pete Hegseth. With Matt Gaetz gone, he appears to be their number one target. The smears have involved Hegseth’s relationships with women and allegations of excessive drinking. But there are problems with the Democrats’ campaign: the allegations are anonymous, and thus in the realm of rumor. And they are nearly all old, and generally contradicted by others who are willing to go »
December 6, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Will Democrats Rediscover the Constitution?

Featured imageYou have to hand it to Donald Trump’s limitless political genius. Beyond his obvious capacity to drive the media and the left (but I repeat. . .) out of their minds, some of his singular achievements have gone unremarked. Consider, for instance, that Trump has figured out how to make Democrats actually hate a Kennedy. Republicans have ben trying without success to do this for 60 years. It looks like »
December 6, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured imageAmmo Grrrll running to keep up with GALLOPING GRATITUDE. She writes: I know what you’re thinking: Ammo, LAST week was Thanksgiving. NOW you choose to talk about “Gratitude”? Did you not get your homework in on time? Ah, but I can explain. My dearest Orthodox Jewish mentors and friends do not celebrate either Father’s or Mother’s Day as any kind of special day because they believe it sends the wrong »
December 5, 2024 — John Hinderaker

More Pardons to Come?

Featured imageThis morning I was on Chicago drive time radio with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson. This is my segment: It was an interesting conversation as always, but Dan asked me about something I hadn’t thought much about: will Joe Biden follow up on his pardon of Hunter by pardoning people like Anthony Fauci, Adam Schiff, and Liz Cheney? Politico says that such pardons may be in the works: President Joe »
December 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson

The Obama projection

Featured imageFree Beacon reporter/humorist Andrew Stiles has suffered through two public appearances of Barack Obama this week so you don’t have to. In “Obama Takes Another Victory Lap” he catches Obama interviewing Angela Merkel at an event sponsored by Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C. this past Monday evening. Tickets for the sold-out event — the marked price ranged from $75-$125 — included an unsigned copy of Merkel’s doorstop memoir Freedom »
December 6, 2024 — John Hinderaker

The Senate Map

Featured imageThe dominant fact of 21st century political life is the Great Sort–Americans separating themselves into increasingly distinct camps, red and blue, by state. This has obvious implications for the Senate. Kyle Kondik has an interesting analysis at »
December 6, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Impound This!

Featured imageIn the article I wrote for the American Mind a few weeks ago about what Trump ought to do on Day One in office was this: With excessive government spending having reached a crisis point, President Trump ought to mount a frontal challenge to our profligate Congress by impounding some spending in defiance of the 1974 Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act. (For starters, I nominate impounding State Department grants »
December 6, 2024 — Scott Johnson

DeButts of the joke

Featured imageYou may know Hunter deButts as the former Princeton lacrosse midfielder. This Hunter deButts actually exists and has done nothing to require a presidential pardon. He is not to be confused with the fictitious Hunter deButts whom The View’s Ana Navarro cited as Woodrow Wilson’s brother-in-law — the one whom Wilson pardoned for his crimes. Searching for precedents that would support President Biden’s pardon of his partner in the corrupt »
December 6, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Tennessee Trans Tales

Featured imageIn U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Biden-Harris administration seeks to strike down Tennessee’s law restricting “transgender” procedures for minors. As Steve noted the case has revealed that the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH), has taken direction from Admiral Rachel Levine, Biden’s Assistant Secretary For Health. The admiral is on record that cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers, are gender reassignment surgeries are “medically necessary, safe, and effective for trans and non-binary youth.” »
December 5, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Another Look at the Red Shift

Featured imageAs we have covered here in several different ways, the Trump victory is impressive in its uni-directionality. It turns out that Harris is the first presidential candidate since Herbert Hoover in 1932  who didn’t shift a single county in the country in her party’s direction from the previous election. A unidirectional loss like that may not be a statistical landslide, but as argued previously here, it is at least an »