Monthly Archives: July 2017
July 30, 2017 — John Hinderaker
In the last year, there have been a number of extraordinary events in our political life, some of them plainly involving illegal conduct. And yet only one event, or set of events, is under investigation: possible collusion between Russian interests and the Trump campaign. Oddly, this is not one of the subjects where there is any evidence of illegality, and it would therefore seem to be a relatively low priority
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July 30, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff has made himself a leading purveyor of the “collusion” hysteria with which we have been inundated since the election. Schiff is the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, but he must be tired of life in the House of Representatives. He avidly wants to move on up to the Senate. Every day it becomes clearer that the “collusion” hysteria is more a
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July 30, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Minneapolis Democrats failed to endorse a candidate for mayor at their recent convention. My guess is that Mayor Betsy Hodges’s prospects for reelection must approach zero asymptotically in the wake of the inexplicable and so far unexplained killing of Justine Damond by Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor. Two weeks after the killing we remain in the dark. Nine Democrats including Hodges are vying for the honor of municipal leadership. It’s
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July 29, 2017 — John Hinderaker
There have long been similarities between politics in the United States and politics in the United Kingdom. For example, one could argue that Ronald Reagan = Margaret Thatcher, George H.W. Bush = John Major, and Bernie Sanders = Jeremy Corbyn. Recently, though, the parallels have been rather uncanny. Here in the U.S., Democrats have refused to accept the results of the November 2016 election. They view President Trump as illegitimate
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July 29, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump has decided not to veto the Russia sanctions legislation passed by Congress. The decision was probably an easy one inasmuch as (1) a veto would easily have been overridden, resulting in embarrassment for the president and (2) it would have added fuel to Trump-Russia connection stories. Naturally, Russia is angry about the sanctions. Europe is also unhappy, which is ironic because some European leaders have criticized Trump for
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July 29, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Republican Congress’s failure to repeal and replace Obamacare is of course embarrassing, and may well be a political blow to the GOP, as most expect. Still, we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that Congressional Republicans actually set out to save Obamacare, and not a single Democrat was willing to join in the effort. The future of Obamacare could be grim. Having run a victory lap or two, the
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July 29, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune covers Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar in the manner of a public relations firm promoting a client. Thus the Star Tribune follows up on yesterday’s early hours defeat of Obamacare repeal in the Senate. Senator John McCain theatrically cast the decisive vote against repeal with this bombshell, courtesy of Senator Klobuchar herself: Just before he cast the deciding vote on the Senate’s latest health care repeal bill, Sen.
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July 29, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Sara Carter reports that the FBI’s top lawyer, James A. Baker, is said to be under investigation for leaking classified material that disclosed a top-secret U.S. surveillance program built by Yahoo Inc. The leaked information formed the basis for a story in Reuters. The Reuters story described how the the software program developed by Yahoo for the U.S. government allowed the intelligence community to search Yahoo emails containing specific characters
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July 29, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The so-called Trump Dossier appears to be something like the Rosetta Stone that will allow us to decipher the true story underlying the Trump/Russia “collusion” hysteria. The hysteria has been driven by the Democrats and their media adjunct to explain the shocking outcome of the 2016 election. Ishmael Jones argued the fraudulence of the Trump Dossier here on Power Line yesterday. The FBI apparently thought the Trump Dossier was the
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July 29, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Trump is a genius. He must have foreseen that the Senate would fail to repeal Obamacare, and arranged for the Scaramucci Show and the Priebus Putsch to distract us from this massive failure. He’s adding new dimensions to his three-dimensional chess game. And now John Kelly is the new chief of staff. How long till the White House figure out that when Trump said “Call Kelly to fill the job,”
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July 28, 2017 — John Hinderaker
It is tough to follow the news these days. The biggest disaster is in the Senate, where John McCain, despite having campaigned in favor of repealing Obamacare twice, turned his coat inside out and joined the Democrats in voting down repeal. Now perhaps Obamacare will be left to suffer a lingering death, as premiums continue to rise and insurers exit the exchanges. Or perhaps President Trump will use his authority
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July 28, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here about the attempt of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to obtain voter data from the states to determine whether, or to what extent, voter fraud is a problem. More than a few states have resisted, even though many of them make the same information available for purchase by campaigns, political parties, researchers or even the general public. What, it must be asked, are these states
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July 28, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
This afternoon, President Trump tweeted: I am pleased to inform you that I have just named General/Secretary John F Kelly as White House Chief of Staff. He is a Great American and a Great Leader. John has also done a spectacular job at Homeland Security. He has been a true star of my Administration. Whether, and for how long, Trump will continue to view Kelly as a “star” after he
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July 28, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
When I first heard about Anthony Scaramucci’s call to Ryan Lizza, I figured Scaramucci had talked to the left-wing reporter to get the message out that he is prepared to fire the entire communications staff in order to stop leaking. I assumed he wanted Ryan Lizza to report this. However, lacking self-control and being a bad guy, he ended up spewing foul language about Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. (As
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July 28, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Ishmael Jones writes to comment on the infamous Trump “dossier.” It is one of the keys to the “collusion” hysteria and related “fake news” with which we have been inundated since the 2016 election. Mr. Jones is the pseudonymous former CIA officer and author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. He notes that his comments here are based upon his experience in writing “lots of intelligence
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July 28, 2017 — Scott Johnson
New White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci hasn’t been on the job a week yet and he has already brought the degradation of the Trump White House to a new low. For some reason that is not apparent to me, on Wednesday night he called on New Yorker correspondent Ryan Lizza to unload on his White House colleagues Reince Priebus and Steve Bannon. Lizza’s article on the call is posted
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July 28, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Today is a day to be embarrassed to be a Republican, for Obamacare has survived every effort to repeal and replace it with the defection of Senator McCain in the last-ditch effort to keep the effort alive in the final vote on “skinny repeal” after midnight this morning. Robert Pear and Thomas Kaplan report the story for the New York Times here. The defeat of Obamacare repeal efforts in the
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