Monthly Archives: July 2017
July 17, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Jake Sullivan was a top adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Eight months after the election, he still isn’t over Clinton’s defeat. That’s understandable given the closeness of the election, its surprising outcome, and Sullivan’s view of the man who won it. But unlike many Clintonistas, and the candidate herself, Sullivan has managed to move beyond blaming James Comey and the Russians. According to the Washington Post’s Greg Jaffe, Sullivan is
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July 17, 2017 — Scott Johnson
The 2016 shooting death of Philando Castile in the course of a traffic stop by suburban Twin Cities police officer Jeronimo Yanez convulsed the Twin Cities both before and after the officer involved was acquitted earlier this summer. Castile’s death was live streamed and narrated by his girlfriend on Facebook. It was a horrifying, heartbreaking scene. A Ramsey County jury nevertheless found that Officer Yanez reasonably feared for his life
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July 17, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Liberals hate diversity and can’t stand change. So they are toiling 24/7 to assure us that the Trump administration–the aberrational election of a president who is not a professional politician–is a rapidly-unraveling disaster. I doubt that, but time will tell. In the meantime, more unorthodox candidates–better yet, more unorthodox non-liberal candidates–are coming forward, perhaps inspired by the election of a non-politician as president. Yesterday, Caitlyn Jenner said that she is
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July 17, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The Associated Press pined to write an article about how international travel to the U.S. is down because foreigners hate President Trump, or because of the travel ban. Or something. Alas, it was not to be: Last winter, the U.S. tourism industry fretted that Trump administration policies might lead to a “Trump slump” in travel. But those fears may have been premature. International arrivals and travel-related spending are up in
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July 17, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The Iran nuclear deal requires that the administration certify (or decline to certify) to Congress every 90 days that Iran is in compliance and that the agreement is in the vital national security interest of the United States. The next certification is due today. Earlier in the day, National Security Council director H. R. McMaster indicated that the administration will so certify. McMaster added plenty of noise about how the
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July 17, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
French President Emmanuel Macron hosted yet another prominent leader when Benjamin Netanyahu came to Paris this weekend. Netanyahu’s visit struck a more serous note than President Trump’s. The Israeli Prime Minister wasn’t in Paris for a parade. Instead, the occasion was the 75th anniversary of a Holocaust roundup in Paris in which thousands of Jews were arrested and deported to Nazi concentration camps in Eastern Europe. The occasion was also
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July 17, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In her response to my comments on her recent Trump/Russia column, Mona Charen writes: “The Wall Street Journal story about a Republican operative seeking Hillary Clinton’s hacked emails through Russia and claiming that he was working with Mike Flynn is possibly significant.” Anything is possible, but it is highly unlikely. Mona links to Shane Harris’s June 29 Wall Street Journal story on which I commented here. Andrew McCarthy blew off
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July 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
What should we make of last week’s love fest in Paris between President Trump and French President Macron? On the surface, it was improbable. In the French election just a few months ago, Trump seemed more favorably disposed towards Marine Le Pen than towards Macron. And Trump did the unthinkable, from the French perspective, when he withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement. Macron responded by attempting to ridicule
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July 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Today’s column by Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post is called “The. Meeting. Was. Not. Okay.” Can you find the part of the column where she offers reasons in support of this proposition? I can’t. Marcus and her editors must believe that if you put enough periods in the title, no argument in favor of the proposition is necessary. Marcus also asserts that Trump denies Russia interfered in the election.
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July 16, 2017 — John Hinderaker
I usually try to give global warming hysterics the benefit of the doubt–sincere but misguided, not good at math, unacquainted with the Earth’s highly variable climatic history, and so on. But sometimes data come along that make that sympathetic attitude hard to sustain. Like this paper by Dr. James P. Wallace III, Dr. Joseph S. D’Aleo, and Dr. Craig D. Idso, which was published last month. Its title is “On
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July 16, 2017 — Steven Hayward
Some years ago the evangelical scholar Mark Noll wrote an influential book titled The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind. It was a critique of the lack of intellectual seriousness and depth among his fellow evangelicals, and a clarion call to for evangelical thinkers to step up their game. Christianity Today named it the “Book of the Year” in 1994, and it provoked far-reaching and long-lasting discussion among evangelicals. I wonder
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July 16, 2017 — John Hinderaker
I will guest host Laura Ingraham’s radio show four times next week: tomorrow, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The show runs live from 9:00 a.m. to 12 p.m. Eastern, and is heard at other times in some geographies. Tomorrow’s guests will include Ronna Romney McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; Rep. Mo Brooks; and Scott Greer, author of No Campus for White Men. It will be a fun show, and
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July 16, 2017 — Scott Johnson
My friend Mona Charen has sent me the following response to my nearby post “A witch hunt?” In my post I comment on her recent column “16 Things You Must Believe to Buy the ‘Witch Hunt’ Russia Narrative.” I want to give Mona the last word in this exchange and thank her for her response. Mona writes: Before plunging into your objections, Scott, I want to thank you for being
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July 16, 2017 — John Hinderaker
The bizarre corners of academia are usually Steve’s beat, but a reader sent me a link to an article about a paper published in Gender, Place & Culture, a Journal of Feminist Geography. The paper, by Carrie Mott and Daniel Cockayne, is titled “Citation matters: mobilizing the politics of citation toward a practice of ‘conscientious engagement.’” It urges academics working in the field of geography not to cite works by
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July 16, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Mona Charen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, a syndicated columnist and author of two best-selling books that I have found permanently relevant, Do-Gooders and Useful Idiots. She is also a friend whom I greatly admire for her honesty and integrity. Both NRO and Jewish World Review carry Mona’s column. In her most recent column, Mona set forth “16 Things You Must Believe
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July 15, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
In the guise of a news story, the New York Times presents a screed against what it calls “junk insurance.” The occasion for the screed is Senator Ted Cruz’s proposal that insurers be allowed to sell plans that that don’t meet Obamacare standards, if they also sell policies that meet these standards. The idea is to give consumers choices. The Times’ Reed Abelson complains that under this proposal, insurance companies
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July 15, 2017 — John Hinderaker
My friend Jon Lauck is a man of many parts: a lawyer, a historian, and a long-time adviser to Senator John Thune. Jon is a native South Dakotan and a Midwesterner through-and-through. As such, he has long pondered the fact that the Midwest is in many ways the most successful part of the United States. In the 19th century, the Midwest developed a superior civic culture that has produced a
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