Monthly Archives: July 2017
July 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday we learned that at least four of former FBI Director James Comey’s memos of conversations with President Trump contain information that has been classified at some level. The Hill’s John Solomon had the story here. I wrote about Solomon’s story here. Andrew McCarthy carefully explicates how the story should be read in his NRO column here. Jonathan Turley comments further in a column posted by The Hill. Although he
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July 11, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Today the New York Times credits four reporters with the story advancing the latest installment of the “collusion” story involving the Trump campaign and a mysterious Russian lawyer. We are colluding in comedy. In today’s episode the Times reports that before Donald Trump, Jr. arranged a meeting with “a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email
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July 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Thirteen years ago, Everton sold Wayne Rooney to Manchester United. At the time, Rooney, age 18, wasn’t just the best young footballer in England, he was as a good a young player as England had seen in the 25 years I had been following the English game (and in the 13 years since), a status he had underlined with a breakout performance at the 2004 European Championships. Rooney basically forced
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July 10, 2017 — John Hinderaker
I wrote here about President Trump’s excellent Warsaw speech and the Left’s unhinged response to it. One of the liberals whom I quoted protested that she doesn’t hate Western civilization. Perhaps not. Perhaps she only hates any defense of Western civilization. Sort of like the anti-anti-Communists of the cold war. Kurt Schlichter lays it on the line, as quoted by Glenn Reynolds: Let me throw down this marker: The West
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July 10, 2017 — John Hinderaker
If you don’t subscribe to The Week That Was by the Science and Environmental Policy Project, you should. It is a one-stop shop for news and commentary on the environment, with all sane perspectives represented. This week’s edition includes these observations on the economic return on energy investment, an important but usually overlooked metric: Writing for the Global Warming Policy Forum, Economics Professor Michael Kelly brings up an important concept
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July 10, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Starbucks thinks of itself as a fully progressive company. Which is what makes this story all schadenfreudey to the max: Muslims Are Boycotting Starbucks Over the Company’s Pro-LGBT Stance Parkasa, a hard-line Muslim group in Malaysia that touts around 700,000 members, is joining another Muslim group in Indonesia, Muhammadiyah, in calling for the boycott of Starbucks. Almost 30 million people belong to Muhammadiyah, the second-largest mainstream Muslim organization in Indonesia. They
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July 10, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Climate science is “settled,” right? To the 97th percentile! Anyone who asks pesky questions about what we might not know, or what might be a meaningful uncertainty, is a “denier,” the moral equivalent of a Holocaust denier. Well then: Amazing how one wet winter can change the science.
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July 10, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Lately I’ve been thinking that the Koch brothers ought to come out big for wind and solar power, just to watch lefty heads explode. Better still, they could take a substantial position in publicly-traded Tesla, though the stock is likely overvalued (down over 10 percent in recent weeks I think). Still, it would almost be worth it for the heartburn it would cause the anointed. (For one thing, we could
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July 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I want to add a few thoughts to Scott’s post about the meeting between Donald Trump, Jr. and a Russian lawyer who said she had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The damaging information reportedly had to do with Russian funding of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton. The main point I want to make is that there is nothing wrong with such a meeting and such discussions, though in
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July 10, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
In the Washington Post’s lead story today, another screed about how Trump allegedly is selling out to the Russians, Philip Rucker writes: After Putin denied in his meeting with Trump any such election interference, the U.S. president tried to turn the page altogether on the issue of Russian hacking. As special counsel Robert S. Mueller III investigates Russian interference and possible collusion with Trump campaign officials, Trump has repeatedly labeled
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July 10, 2017 — Scott Johnson
On Saturday afternoon the New York Times posted the story that Donald Trump, Jr. had met with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 along with Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort. Trump issued a statement that the meeting was “primarily about” issues of adoption. Trump explained: “I was asked to attend the meeting by an acquaintance, but was not told the name of the person I would be meeting with beforehand.”
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July 10, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Hill’s John Solomon reports that “more than half” of former FBI Director James Comey’s seven memos of conversations with President Trump “have been determined to contain classified information, according to interviews with officials familiar with the documents.” By my calculation, “more than half” of seven memos would be at least four. Comey testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee on June 8 that he showed at least one of the
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July 9, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
James McPherson, writing in the Washington Examiner, makes a remarkable observation: the leaders of Europe have no children. France’s Emmanuel Macron has none. Same with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British prime minister Theresa May, Italian prime minister Paolo Gentilon, Holland’s Mark Rutte, Scotland’s Nicola Sturgeon, and Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission. Sweden’s prime minister Stefan Lofven has no biological children. The prime minister of Luxembourg is also childless.
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July 9, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Janice Rogers Brown has notified officials that she will step down from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Judge Brown, age 68, has served on that Court since 2005. The Wall Street Journal story says, in its headline, that Judge Brown’s retirement will give President Trump the opportunity to appoint a conservative to this powerful court. He’ll be hard-pressed, however, to appoint a more solid
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July 9, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The great Andrew Klavan directs our attention to this old story at EverydayFeminism, which we’ll pick up in the middle after this headline: My Partner Came Out as a Man—And I Struggled With Losing My Lesbian Identity . . . Imagine the seismic shift in my identity then when Amy sat down one night after a therapy session and told me that she was transgender. To be fair, this wasn’t
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July 9, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Independent reports that France will ban gasoline-powered vehicles by 2040. The Independent is foolish enough to think that this is good news: France plans to ban all petrol and diesel vehicles by 2040, the country’s new environment minister has announced. Nicolas Hulot made the announcement as he unveiled a series of measures as part of newly elected President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to make the country carbon neutral by 2050.
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July 9, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I thought Wonder Woman was overrated, chiefly because I have very little enthusiasm for the whole comic book superhero film adaptations, which all seem unmemorable in as little as 30 minutes after leaving the theater. And they all have the same climax: the hero is losing to the villain, until some magical point when the hero summons up a reserve of hidden strength, or discovers a new dimension of power,
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