Monthly Archives: March 2018

A census that counts citizens will help African Americans

Featured image I’ve written several posts about the decision to ask about citizenship in the 2020 census. Here’s an angle I hadn’t considered: asking about citizenship will help African Americans. Christian Adams explains why: Blacks have been losing political power in immigrant-heavy urban cores because non-citizens are not identified by the Census and are counted for redistricting. . . . Los Angeles provides a particularly stark example. For over a decade, African-American »

Report: McCabe lied four times

Featured image According to Rep. Jim Jordan, the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility found that Andrew McCabe lied four to times to his superiors and investigators. The report containing these findings has not been made public, but Jordan reviewed it. The first alleged lie was to James Comey in October 2016. At that time, Comey asked McCade how information about tension at the FBI/DOJ over an investigation of the Clinton Foundation ended »

Gutless in Gaza

Featured image One would have to be a moron not to understand that the Hamas “March of Return” from Gaza to Israel is a variation on a theme. The theme is set forth in its original “Covenant” of 1988 calling for “the liberation of Palestine” (i.e., Israel’s destruction) in the “struggle against Zionism.” (The 2010 revision is, shall we say, subject to interpretation.) Subtlety is not a Hamas selling point. Yet the »

The Week in Pictures: The Second Shall Be First Edition

Featured image The great thing about being a liberal is not only that you get to live by double standards (flying private jets while decrying climate change), but you don’t even have to keep your story straight. Pay attention: No one is saying they want to repeal the Second Amendment. Except for the people like retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens who says we should. No one wants to take everyone’s »

Sessions is moving shrewdly on the FISA abuse investigation

Featured image Early this month, President Trump tweeted: Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL! Trump’s tweet was foolish at several levels, as I argued here. For one thing, folks who know what they’re talking about »

A century of excellence: All-time great Kansas University basketball stars

Featured image The University of Kansas basketball program has a glorious history. It’s one of the top five college basketball programs of all time. Kansas has won three national championships, played in the championship game nine times, and will be appearing in its 15th Final Four tomorrow. The Jayhawks have been coached by James Naismith (inventor of the sport), Phog Allen, Larry Brown, and Roy Williams — legends all. But its most »

Facebook Eyes the Midterms

Featured image Facebook employees conducted a press conference yesterday to “review our ongoing election efforts.” Facebook has happily (as it seems to me) bought into the dubious narrative that Russian agents significantly influenced the 2016 presidential election by propagating “fake news” on its platform. Facebook’s cure, in my view, promises to be much worse than the disease. By now, everyone knows the story: during the 2016 US election, foreign actors tried to »

Good News! Hillary’s Still Talking!

Featured image And boy is she mad. Appearing this week at Rutgers University, Her Ladyship complained once again of sexism, claiming that no one has ever asked losing Democratic male candidates for president to shut up: “I was really struck by how people said that to me – you know, mostly people in the press, for whatever reason – mostly, ‘Go away, go away,'” Clinton said Thursday during an event at Rutgers »

The Vietnam War revisited

Featured image On March 18 C-SPAN 3 revisited the Vietnam War with a focus on 1968 in a discussion with Washington Post editor David Maraniss and man of many parts Jim Webb moderated by Steve Scully. It is the first part of the nine-part C-SPAN series 1968: America in Turmoil. C-SPAN has posted the video here along with the usual accessories. I have embedded it below. The contrast of Maraniss with Webb »

The unfunniest comedy

Featured image The Death of Stalin is probably playing at a theater somewhere near you. I can’t remember a more widely praised comedy/satire (trailer below). Everyone loves it, including John Podhoretz, my favorite movie critic. Unlike most of the critics, however, John writes with a reservation: “I can’t praise The Death of Stalin highly enough . . . except that it gets really boring after a while.” I found that to be perfectly accurate. »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured image Ammo Grrrll is celebrating an anniversary working with the four of us who play her straight straight men in THE COLUMN TURNS FOUR. She writes: Holy Moly, Rocky, what a Big Deal Day! Today at sunset begins the first night of Passover; it is also Good Friday; and, the 4th anniversary of the Thoughts From the Ammo Line column! In the old Electric Company song, we learned “Two of these »

The More Things Change . . .

Featured image . . . The more they stay the same. At least when it comes to leftists. Lately I’ve been reading some old essays from the late John P. Roche (d. 1994), a distinguished political scientist for many years at Brandeis University, and a liberal Democrat who worked as an aide to President Lyndon Johnson. Roche was the old-fashioned kind of no-nonsense anti-Communist liberal, and in fact by the 1980s he »

Make the Democrats pay for stalling Trump’s nominees

Featured image The Senate is sitting on 78 of President Trump’s nominees who have already been passed out of committee but can’t get a floor vote. Chuck Schumer and his loyal band of Democrats accomplish this obstruction by objecting to unanimous consent that a nomination be taken up. This triggers a motion for cloture which brings with it 30 hours of floor debate. The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial denouncing the »

Education Department will rescind its Guidance on school discipline. . .later

Featured image Four years ago, the Obama administration promulgated a Dear Colleague letter on school discipline. It was a joint Department of Justice/Department of Education production. The Dear Colleague Letter applies a disparate impact analysis to school discipline. Its premise is that discipline should be meted out in the same proportion to students of all races. Non-discriminatory treatment isn’t enough. DOJ/DoEd wanted to see equal results. The Obama DOJ/DoEd policy is perverse. »

Coming Next Week: The Commanding Haidt!

Featured image For Bay Area readers, I’ve got another hot event to bring to your attention. Next Tuesday afternoon, Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind and more recently The Coddling of the American Mind (with Greg Lukianoff), will be delivering the annual Baxter Lecture for the political science department, on the promising title “The Three Worst Ideas in the World, and How They Shape American Education.”  Scott wrote most recently about »

Arizin and his heirs (2) — All-time Villanova basketball greats

Featured image Villanova has been an elite basketball power for as long as I can remember; indeed, for as long as I have lived. The Wildcats have made it to six final fours, winning two national championships: 1985 and 2016. As good as Villanova has been in the past, it’s fair to say that the program is now enjoying its golden era. Coach Jay Wright has led the team to three of »

The Democratic Party Collusion Story Gets Worse

Featured image We have barely begun to plumb the depths of the scandal arising out of the 2016 presidential election. James Comey, John Brennan, Christopher Steele, Fusion GPS, the DNC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the Perkins Coie law firm, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, unknown Russians, Andrew McCabe–the list goes on and on, and it keeps getting longer. The latest report comes from Congressional investigators, via Fox News: Newly uncovered text messages between »