Monthly Archives: January 2020
January 31, 2020 — John Hinderaker
First of all, the game should be good, and the teams are relatively new to the national spotlight. (“What do the Super Bowl and the Democratic presidential field have in common? No Patriots!”) I am not one of those who think the commercials are more interesting than the game; on the contrary, to the extent I watch them, I often find myself scratching my head over what product or service
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January 31, 2020 — John Hinderaker
With Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski announcing that they will vote against calling witnesses, the Senate’s impeachment proceeding nears an end. I thought they might actually vote tonight and bring the farce to a merciful conclusion, but apparently that isn’t happening. The New York Post offers a bipartisan explanation, but I suspect that part of what is going on is that the Democrats hope to extend the process beyond President
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January 31, 2020 — Steven Hayward
• So, how’s that whole impeachment thing working out for Democrats? Chaser: Trumpsters, 2016: Burn it all down! Trumpsters, 2020: Bern it all down! • I wish we had more college administrators like this one, as reported in The Times of London today: How do you respond when placard-waving students occupy your 15th-century quadrangle and refuse to leave until you sell the college’s shares in oil companies? As this is
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January 31, 2020 — John Hinderaker
It’s come to this: Tom Steyer, one of the flailing Democratic presidential candidates who remains in the race only because he is rich and has plenty of money to spend on a vanity candidacy, tells an Iowa audience: “I know that people describe me as being a rich person, but that isn’t how I think of myself. My mom was from Minneapolis, Minnesota….” If Steyer identifies as a poor man,
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January 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Former Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren posed a grandstanding question attacking Chief Justice Roberts and the Supreme Court in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump yesterday. Warren was shrieking for attention. Why might that be? It is a little difficult to follow the logic of the question. The patent stupidity of the question should embarrass her and her target audience. Chief Justice Roberts was visibly chagrined by the
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January 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
In his online Wall Street Journal Best of the Web column, James Freeman asks “Who is Kevin Clinesmith?” The column explores the media’s extreme lack of interest in Clinesemith since the publication of the Department of Justice Inspector General report on FISA abuse in the matter of Carter Page and the Trump 2020 presidential campaign. The headline poses a good question, but Freeman closes his column with an even better
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January 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
It’s hard to top my first impeachment related edition of “Dems then & now.” The retrieval of the 1999 Biden memo, however, makes a timely appearance for the windmills of your mind. John Bresnahan and Burgess Everett report at Politico: “In January 1999, then-Sen. Joe Biden argued strongly against the need to depose additional witnesses or seek new evidence in a memo sent to fellow Democrats ahead of President Bill
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January 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll would like to introduce us to a few of the nameless PEOPLE I HAVE BEEN HAPPIEST TO SEE IN MY LIFE. She writes: There are people whom we are not at all happy to see who appear with appalling frequency – tax auditors, traffic cops when we were barely going 30 miles per hour over the posted speed suggestion, process servers, boring co-workers, freeloading distant relatives, and the
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January 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Good to see that CNN has its news priorities straight (so to speak). With the coronavirus threatening to become a serious worldwide epidemic potentially on the scale of the Spanish influenza of 100 years ago, here’s what CNN thinks is important to report: File it under “Why Decent Americans Hate the News Media, Chapter 12,186.” Chaser: Why does CNN make it so easy for Trump? Is he secretly paying them?
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January 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Carter Page, the most innocent man in America, has begun suing those who conspired to have him unlawfully spied upon for a year or more: Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page filed a lawsuit Thursday in federal court against the Democratic National Committee, law firm Perkins Coie and its partners tied to the funding of the unverified dossier that served as the basis for highly controversial surveillance warrants against him.
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January 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
I believe that Senator Ron Johnson rephrased the question Senator Paul submitted to Chief Justice Roberts as set forth in the adjacent post. Chief Justice Robert having declined to read the question, Senator Johnson gave it another go. The question alludes to the RCP columm by Paul Sperry that we also published last week in “Whistleblower overheard.” Not surprisingly, Chief House impeachment manager and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff
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January 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Chief Justice Roberts declined to read a question submitted by Senator Rand Paul during the ongoing question and answer session in the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump today. He declined to read the question and he failed to offer an explanation (video below). Senator @RandPaul sends question to the desk during Impeachment Trial. Chief Justice Roberts: "The presiding officer declines to read the question as submitted." pic.twitter.com/CCeB33HnRP — CSPAN
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January 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Ezra Levant writes: I wrote a best-selling book about Justin Trudeau in the last election. After the election, I received a letter by registered mail notifying me that I was being investigated for that book. Trudeau’s elections commissioner claimed it was an illegal campaign activity and demanded that I submit to an interrogation. So I went to Elections Canada’s Ottawa headquarters last week, where I was grilled for an hour
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January 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
I realize the campaign is just getting underway (assuming it ever actually stopped after 2016), but this brief ad, which is one of two Trump ads slated to play during the Super Bowl, sums up President Trump’s ultimate pitch to the voters very well. I think we will be seeing a lot more like it between now and November. The case for re-electing the president seems to me to be
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January 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Reboots are all the rage in Hollywood these days, and also in politics it seems. There’s something familiar about a Democratic nomination contest featuring a former Vice President trying to fend off a challenge from a far left Senator who enjoys the enthusiastic backing of the frenzied left for the privilege of facing off against a Republican incumbent that Democrats loathe with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns.
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January 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Earlier this month new counsel for former Trump NSA Michael Flynn brought a motion seeking the withdrawal of his guilty plea to one count of making false statements to the FBI. I briefly noted the motion and embedded the PDF here. General Flynn has now filed a sworn statement in support of the motion. I have embedded the statement below. Politico’s Josh Gerstein has a good story on it all
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January 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
On Sunday Ilhan Omar’s henchman — one Guhad Hashi — emitted a stream of terroristic threats against David Steinberg. They were numerous, they were vulgar, they were public, and they were intended to silence David and others. I wrote about the threats here. David used Twitter to comment on the threats. I documented David’s comments here (with link to archived screenshots of the threats) and here. If you have followed
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