Monthly Archives: July 2018
July 31, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Tonight President Trump addressed a raucous rally in Florida. His speech featured a call for voter ID, a popular issue with most Americans but one the Democratic Party press opposes, since pretty much all voter fraud favors the Democrats. The Associated Press, perhaps Trump’s most bitter enemy other than CNN and MSNBC, headlined just one “fact” about Trump’s speech: “Trump at rally makes false claim on photo IDs for groceries.”
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July 31, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
According to the Maryland Department of Health, a record 2,282 people died in Maryland from unintentional drug-and-alcohol-related intoxication in 2017. That’s more than double the number of such deaths in Maryland in 2014. Keep that year in mind. 88 percent of the intoxication deaths in Maryland in 2017 were opioid-related. Opioid-related deaths include deaths due to heroin, prescription opioids, and nonpharmaceutical fentanyl. Large increases in the number of fentanyl-related deaths
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July 31, 2018 — John Hinderaker
Facebook announced today that it has removed 32 “bad actors” from its platform: Today we removed 32 Pages and accounts from Facebook and Instagram because they were involved in coordinated inauthentic behavior. This kind of behavior is not allowed on Facebook because we don’t want people or organizations creating networks of accounts to mislead others about who they are, or what they’re doing. We’re still in the very early stages
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July 31, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Fresh off his meeting with Kim Jong Un, President Trump is talking about getting together with Iran’s leaders “whenever they want” and “without preconditions.” Is this a good idea? I don’t think so. I favored Trump meeting with Kim, but there are at least two important distinctions between North Korea and Iran. First, North Korea has nuclear weapons. Iran doesn’t. I think it’s important to establish some sort of dialogue
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July 31, 2018 — Scott Johnson
The cover story of the current issue of the Weekly Standard is “The Truth About Carter Page, the FBI, and Devin Nunes’ Conspiracy Theory” by one April Doss. I have contrasted Doss’s disparagement of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes in this story with the profile of Nunes by Standard executive editor Fred Barnes in the same issue. I’m with Fred and against Doss. The two pieces sit uneasily in
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July 31, 2018 — John Hinderaker
What happens when the economy grows and companies need more workers? Wages rise, especially when the flow of legal and illegal immigrants competing for low- and middle-wage jobs declines. Not surprisingly, that is what we are currently seeing: American workers are finally reaping the benefits of the lowest unemployment rate and best jobs market in decades. I don’t know about “finally.” President Trump has only been in office for a
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July 31, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
I read somewhere that this year non-pitchers are pitching an unprecedented number of innings in major league baseball games. A manager might call on a non-pitcher (a catcher, infielder, or outfielder) to pitch if he has used all of his relief pitchers or if the game is so far out of reach that he doesn’t want to burn his remaining relievers. It seems odd at first blush that we’re seeing
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July 31, 2018 — Scott Johnson
John wrote about the police shooting and resulting death of one Thurman Blevins here. Police had been called to the scene by a citizen reporting gunshots fired from the street. When the police arrived, they found the perpetrator and his pistol in plain view. The video released yesterday shows the officers doing what they should have done, but Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey could only rouse himself to declare that he
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July 30, 2018 — Steven Hayward
By the time this episode of the Power Line Show went live, I had scrammed from town on an old-fashioned American-style summer vacation, with the kids in a van, a total-dad roof stack/packing job, lots of fast food, lots of discoveries of local awesome eating joints, etc. Anyway, posts are going to be a bit intermittent this week because I’ll be driving too much. I don’t actually take real vacations
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July 30, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
According to the Washington Post, U.S. spy agencies are seeing signs that North Korea is constructing new missiles at a factory that produced the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States. The Post cites “officials familiar with the intelligence.” It also provides a commercial satellite image, taken on July 7, showing the factory in question. The photo includes a vehicle the Post says is similar to
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July 30, 2018 — John Hinderaker
As regular readers know, there have been several controversial police shootings in Minneapolis in recent years. (To be fair, all police shootings are now controversial, even when they are obviously justified.) This one occurred on June 23, a little over a month ago, when officers received a call to the effect that someone was walking down an alley and firing a gun in predominantly African-American north Minneapolis. The officers proceeded
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July 30, 2018 — John Hinderaker
From the Daily Mail, the story of a young man who was quoted $4,517 a year for automobile insurance. (His record was not great.) A light bulb went on: he asked, how much would it cost if I were a woman? $3,423. You can see what is coming: David was angered by what he perceived as gender-based discrimination and asked his insurance broker to change his gender on paper to
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July 30, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Sen. Rand Paul announced today that he will support Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court. Paul had said he was on the fence. Most of us expected that Paul would back Kavanaugh in the end, but it’s good that he’s now on record and good that he didn’t drag out whatever suspense he might have created. Sen. Paul said this: After meeting Judge Kavanaugh and reviewing his record, I
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July 30, 2018 — Scott Johnson
Maria Bartiromo had House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes on the Fox News Sunday Morning Futures show to discuss the heavily redacted FISA warrant applications that were released by the Department of Justice on July 21 in the Saturday night document dump (video below). I posted the documents here as released. Query whether the DoJ released these documents on a Saturday night because they are proud of their handiwork and
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July 30, 2018 — Paul Mirengoff
Although Maryland is one of America’s bluest states, it has a Republican governor. In 2014, we elected Larry Hogan. It was only the second time in 48 years a Republican had won that office here. We haven’t had a Republican Senator since 1987. This year, the Democrats nominated Ben Jealous to run against Hogan. Jealous, formerly the head of the NAACP, is a hard leftist. He favors debt-free college, a
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July 30, 2018 — Scott Johnson
As I have noted here a time or two before, I greatly admire the job that House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has done unearthing the true story of the intelligence agencies’ “insurance” work on the 2016 election and the Democrats’ related collusion with the friends of Vladimir Putin. It is an improbable story that everyone involved has mightily sought to keep hidden from him and his colleagues. Rep. Nunes
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July 30, 2018 — Scott Johnson
I’d never heard of Adam Greenberg before I went to see him speak three years ago at Temple of Aaron in St. Paul. From an early age Adam was a gifted athlete and driven competitor. He excelled at three sports — baseball, basketball, and soccer — but baseball was his first love. He played baseball at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As a junior in 2002, he
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