Monthly Archives: December 2017
December 31, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
When anti-regime protesters become deadly serious, the questions become: (1) Is the regime willing to shoot them en masse and, if so, (2) will its forces do so. If the answer to either question is no, expect the regime to become the former regime. Regimes typically are willing to shoot protesters if they deem it necessary. However, there are exceptions, for example when the foreign power that supports the regime
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December 31, 2017 — John Hinderaker
As President Trump’s first year in office draws to a close, even the Democrats have been forced to admit that he has accomplished quite a lot. While it pains Democrats to acknowledge Trump’s successes, those successes probably pose more of an existential crisis for the Never Trumpers. They, too, have had to re-examine their premises in light of the president’s track record through (almost) one year. From InstaPundit: BRET STEPHENS
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December 31, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The indispensable Judicial Watch, after protracted litigation in federal court, has forced the State Department to begin releasing Huma Abedin’s work-related documents that were found on Anthony Weiner’s personal computer. The documents were provided to the State Department by the FBI, which reviewed them as part of its investigation of the Hillary Clinton email server scandal. The first public release of these documents came on Friday, December 29. Judicial Watch
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December 31, 2017 — Steven Hayward
A few closeout observations before the first bottle of champagne: • Top story of the year: Trump is still President! Lots of folks on the left and in the media were certain he’d be gone by June. Worser news for the left: he’s gaining strength. Worstest news for the left: The Russia collusion angle is coming up dry, and he isn’t going to be impeached. Related, from CNN no less:
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December 31, 2017 — Scott Johnson
In collusion news today, the New York Times has devoted six reporters to producing the “news” that the previously obscure Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos lies at the heart of the putative case. Their story is “How the Russia inquiry began: A campaign aide, drinks and talk of political dirt.” Paul wrote about it last night here. I think the story is ludicrous on its face. The Times has served
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December 31, 2017 — John Hinderaker
“Top” means most widely read, of course, not best or most influential. Still, it is fun to look back and see what posts got the most attention from our readers in 2017. The year’s most-read post, with 150,933 views, was Proof that James Comey Misled the Senate Intelligence Committee, which I wrote on June 10. It was inevitable, I suppose, that many of our top posts related to the storm
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December 30, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Times reports that the impetus for the FBI’s investigation of suspected collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia was not the anti-Trump dossier, but rather statements made by George Papadopoulos. He was the young Trump campaign staffer who later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI. According to the Times, after a heavy night of drinking, Papadopoulos told Australia’s top diplomat in Britain that Russia had political
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December 30, 2017 — Scott Johnson
Washington Free Beacon managing editor David Rutz looks back on 2017 at MSNBC in the supercuts video below. He presents it as his fifth annual nod to the worst MSNBC had to offer this year (in only three minutes?). It ends with a bang, so to speak. “In 2017,” he writes, “the poor folks at the left-leaning cable affiliate had to lean forward into covering undivided Republican government for the
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December 30, 2017 — Scott Johnson
His interest having been piqued by CNN’s intense coverage of the big white truck obscuring President Trump’s golf outing at Mar-A-Lago earlier this week, Mike Magnoli of the CBS News West Palm Beach affiliate turned his investigative skills to the case. He tracked down the truck. He found that the vehicle belonged to the sheriff’s department. He determined, however, contrary to the heavy breathing at CNN, that the truck was
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December 30, 2017 — Steven Hayward
I think I finally figured out the whole “covfefe” mystery from earlier this year. It’s a transliterated anagram for a Chinese new year’s designation. Yeah, I’m going to go with that, and see whether CNN actually chases it down. Anyway, it was amazing, reviewing especially the inventory of cartoons from the Week in Pictures earlier in the year looking for greatest hits, how many of them could run in the
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December 30, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I just saw Lindsey Graham on one of the Fox News talk shows. He told the host, Brian Kilmeade, that the infamous anti-Trump dossier was used in court by the Department of Justice. I take it Graham means that the dossier, or information it contains, was used by the DOJ in the FISA court to gain approval for surveillance of Team Trump. We have suspected that this was the case.
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December 29, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
I’ve been meaning to write about a debate between Alan Dershowitz and Cornel West over the BDS movement. Dershowitz beats me to it with this article for the Gatestone Institute. The resolution Dershowitz and West debated was: “The boycott, divestiture and sanctions (BDS) movement will help bring about the resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Naturally, the debate ended up being more about that conflict than about BDS per se. However,
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December 29, 2017 — John Hinderaker
Demonstrations against that country’s regime have broken out across Iran. Radio Farda reports: [P]rotests against high unemployment, a stagnant economy with inflationary prices and expensive overseas military interventions are spreading unpredictably fast in several cities in Iran…. *** On Friday, protests spread to Kermanshah in the west, Tehran, Esfahan in central Iran, Rasht in the north, Ahvaz in the southwest and even Qom, the religious capital of Shiite clergy in
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December 29, 2017 — John Hinderaker
President Trump sat down with New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt for an interview in West Palm Beach yesterday. Schmidt was low-key and even respectful, while Trump was ebullient. You can read excerpts here. (As always, there is no point in reading any newspaper’s account of the conversation.) Trump was his usual unscripted self–rambling, not very articulate, sometimes humorously self-promoting, generally correct if often imprecise. He talked at length, and
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December 29, 2017 — Steven Hayward
The American Greatness site has gone from startup in mid-2016 to must reading in a very short period of time, and yesterday I had a conversation with managing editor Ben Boychuk (who is also a regular columnist at the Sacramento Bee) about the site’s rapid success, about Trump and how to think about him, and what might go wrong next year. I expect this will be the first of several
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December 29, 2017 — Steven Hayward
As followers of academia—in other words, people known otherwise as masochists—know, liberals of a Rawlsian variety always like to have us do thought experiments behind a “veil of ignorance,” which, yes, is ironic given that the ignorance of most liberals is seldom veiled at all. Still, bear with me here, and indulge this favorite liberal trope for a minute. Imagine a new president whose first year saw: withdrawal from the
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December 29, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
2017 posed a challenge to the mainstream media. Could it set aside its hatred of President Trump and report honestly on him and his administration? To the surprise of no one who had been paying attention, the media flunked this challenge. The failure commenced immediately. The day Trump was inaugurated, a White House reporter claimed, incorrectly, that the Trump transition team had removed a bust of Martin Luther King Jr.
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