December 2, 2023 — Lloyd Billingsley

Educatile Dysfunction

Featured image “We’re from the government. We’re here to help!” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona thinks President Reagan said that, but the actual quote is: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.” Commentators rightly lampooned Cardona but overlooked a couple of back stories. According to his official bio, Cardona earned a bachelor’s degree from Central Connecticut State University, and a master’s »
December 2, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Bill Bennett and I On Gaza and More

Featured imageBill Bennett is a great American who, after a lifetime of public service, continues to be active in a variety of ways, including hosting a top-notch podcast. On Thursday I was Bill’s guest. We talked mostly about the Israel-Gaza war, but also touched on the 2024 presidential race and one or two other topics. You can listen here or on Apple, Spotify and the other usual sources: I don’t remember »
December 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward

Podcast: The 3WHH, Wherein John Yoo Goes One-on-One with . . . Charles Barkley??

Featured imageSo we had promised last week that this episode would feature a cage match between Lucretia and John about realism versus idealism as applied to the Ukraine War (especially since John baited Lucretia by calling her a neocon, which is fighting words not just in the desert west), as well as the problem of January 6, but the passing of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Henry Kissinger diverted us, along »
December 2, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Trofimov not trying hard enough

Featured imageOn its news pages the Wall Street Journal’s more or less marches in lockstep with the rest of the braindead media on Israel’s response to the Hamas massacres. Yaroslav Trofimov is the chief foreign-affairs correspondent of The Wall Street Journal. He wrote the Review section’s featured essay “Does the West Have a Double Standard for Ukraine and Gaza?” Beyond the ambit of the news section, it reflects some of the »
December 2, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Let the credit grow

Featured imageSecretary of State Antony Blinken met with Israel’s war cabinet this week. I wrote briefly about the meeting yesterday in “Annals of strategery.” As has been obvious for a while now, the Biden administration is undermining Israel’s war on Hamas and defaming the IDF in the process. In the context of Biden’s expression of unqualified support for Israel in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 massacres, it is something »
December 2, 2023 — Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: Smackdown Edition

Featured imageIn political news the big event of the week perhaps was the DeSantis-Newsom debate, but for some reason my in-box got a flood of fresh Chris Christie memes, and almost none about the debate. Biden and Harris always take care of themselves. And I am starting to like some of these AI-generated pics. But we’ll mostly just go back to our old standby meme themes this week. I’m really starting »
December 2, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Chauvin Stabbed by Former FBI Informant

Featured imageThe facts are finally coming out on the prison attack on Derek Chauvin: The complaint states Chauvin was in the federal prison’s law library around 12:30 p.m. local time when another inmate, Turscak, attacked Chauvin with an improvised knife, stabbing him 22 times. … Corrections officers immediately responded to the assault and deployed pepper-spray to subdue Turscak, who told the responding officers that he would have killed Chauvin if they »
December 1, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Government Censorship: A Conspiracy Theory?

Featured imageLately Democrats have fallen into the habit of labeling all facts they would rather not talk about as “conspiracy theories.” They must think it works. Yesterday, Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified before Jim Jordan’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. Matt recorded the experience, which he describes as “surreal,” at Racket News. Representative Dan Goldman is the Democrats’ attack dog on the subcommittee. Goldman hasn’t given »
December 1, 2023 — John Hinderaker

Elon Isn’t Perfect, But He’s Right

Featured imageElon Musk provoked a firestorm by agreeing with a tweet that many construed as anti-Semitic: Musk subsequently described his tweet as “foolish” and “literally the worst and dumbest post that I’ve ever done.” Nevertheless, it, together with a smear by Media Matters that purported to show prominent advisers that their ads were showing up adjacent to neo-Nazi content (they were, but only on Media Matters’ computers, having twisted the X »
December 1, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured imageAmmo Grrrll advocates LITMUS TESTS BEST FOR ACIDITY VS. ALKALINITY, not HUMAN BEINGS. She writes: This column will definitely not be in my Top 10 Most Humorous. There is something unfunny that I am compelled to discuss. I’ll be funnier next week. I see a tragic mistake being made over and over again in the commentariat. And it’s one which will ultimately cost us the 2024 election and possibly even »
November 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward

Ho, Ho, Ho/Ho Chi Minh/The PLO/Is Sure to Win

Featured imageThis week’s peak demonstration of leftist anti-Semitic madness comes to us courtesy of the Oakland City Council, where a resolution endorsing a permanent cease-fire in the Israel-Gaza war was met with this parade of insane people: Last night the Oakland City Council voted on a resolution to call for a ceasefire. A city council member tried to insert language condemning Hamas. This was the reaction… pic.twitter.com/r7aTb2mkrQ — Yashar Ali 🐘 »
December 2, 2023 — John Hinderaker

The Times Can’t Multiply

Featured imageThis New York Times correction is one for the books. It raises, once again, two questions: 1) How dumb are today’s reporters? and 2) Does the Times actually employ any editors? Because it is hard to imagine that two people collaborated on this goof: An article on Page 36 this weekend about the recent antitrust actions against the chicken suppliers industry by the Justice Department misstates the profits that suppliers »
December 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Immigrate This!

Featured imageIt is interesting to take in the Gallup trend data on public opinion about immigration. You’ll notice in the chart below that a large plurality of Americans—sometimes a majority—have long wanted decreased immigration, though the number conspicuously dipped during the Trump Administration when—duh—illegal immigration was vastly reduced. Now the number has spiked back up again. Big surprise. »
December 1, 2023 — Steven Hayward

When & How Did Universities Become So Crazy Left?

Featured imageI was fortunate yesterday to take in part of a two-day conference at AEI in Washington DC in honor of Princeton’s Prof. Robert P. George (Robbie to his friends, but still “Professor George” to me and most other mortals), and in particular a retrospective of his early book published thirty years ago, before he had achieved tenure in Princeton’s political science department, entitled Making Men Moral. It set out a »
December 1, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Annals of strategery

Featured imageThe IDF has announced that Hamas violated the terms of the current ceasefire and that it has resumed combat operations against Hamas in Gaza (below). The Times of Israel has posted a long story on the resumption of combat this morning here. Hamas violated the operational pause, and in addition, fired toward Israeli territory. The IDF has resumed combat against the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza. pic.twitter.com/gVRpctD79R — Israel Defense »
November 30, 2023 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Deadbeat Women?

Featured imageYou might think, going by the usual stereotypes, that men would be more delinquent on student loans than women, but lo and behold, it turns out that women appear to be much slower in paying down their student loan balances. This from a report from the Jain Family Institute. The study runs the numbers by race, and the result is depressingly familiar: »
November 30, 2023 — Scott Johnson

Pallywood’s latest blockbuster

Featured imageHistorian Richard Landes gave Pallywood its name. I excerpted his recent essay ”Jihadi journalism” on mainstream media photographers riding along with Hamas on the October 7 massacre. Professor Landes now returns with the Tablet essay “Pallywood’s latest blockbuster” to document the production featuring the Al-Ahli Hospital. A funny thing happened on the way from Pallywood. He concludes with these observations: Had it been merely an Islamic Jihad rocket that fell »