Monthly Archives: March 2020
March 31, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The reaction of the media and the left (but I repeat myself) to Mike Lindell’s public profession of piety at the White House this week is one more vivid reminder that liberals are the most intolerant people around today. No wonder they talk about “tolerance” so much: they are compensating for their obvious lack of it. I have an idea for Trump. As the coronavirus crisis continues, and especially as
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March 31, 2020 — Steven Hayward
Readers: As promised, I’m going to step up the frequency of podcasts for the duration of the COVID-19 martial law, and I’ve got several guests lined up for conversations over the next few days. But tomorrow (Wednesday) I’ll be hooking up with “Lucretia,” Power Line’s International Woman of Mystery, to catch up and kick things around. We’re both really desperate to talk about anything besides the coronavirus, and we’ve decided
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March 31, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Most Americans are now subject to “stay-home” orders of one kind or another, issued by state and local authorities, and countless “nonessential” businesses have been shut down. Millions have been thrown out of work, and thousands of businesses that have been shuttered will never reopen. The stock market has crashed, destroying the life’s savings of millions. Many millions of lives, in short, have been devastated by governments’ responses to the
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March 31, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Our friend Michael Auslin explains the importance of pushing back against China’s effort to deflect blame for the origin and spread of the Wuhan coronavirus. The case for holding China accountable is founded in morality, global governance, and the need to protect against future pandemics. The moral case stems from the Chinese government’s reprehensible response to the early outbreak of the pandemic there. Auslin reminds us: Chinese officials knew of
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March 31, 2020 — Steven Hayward
A lot of people are making the usual red-versus-blue points out of this survey data reported in the New York Times, showing Democrats more alarmed by the risk of COVID-19 than Republicans: The left, and the media, say this is proof of the insensitivity or “science denial” of Republicans or something, though I say it reflects the superior ability of Republicans to calculate risk tradeoffs better than Democrats. More on
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March 31, 2020 — John Hinderaker
During this weird time when it is illegal for my organization, Center of the American Experiment, to sponsor the kinds of in-person events we normally produce, we are instead taking to the internet. We have planned a series of four programs under the rubric of “Master Class In Public Policy.” The first one is scheduled for tomorrow at noon Central time, and features our senior economist, John Phelan. Phelan will
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March 31, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Charlie Cooke poses the question. It’s a good one. Cooke writes: At the moment, the greater New York area is at the center of the coronavirus crisis in the United States, and yet Kayak confirms that, even today, anyone from the city and its environs can get on a plane and travel almost anywhere within the United States. . . . Given the seriousness of the pandemic — and the
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March 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz has just issued his follow-up audit of the FBI’s compliance with procedures intended to confirm the accuracy of its FISA warrant applications. I have embedded the report below via Scribd. Based on the FBI’s execution of the four Carter Page warrant applications on which Horowitz previously reported, Horowitz had his doubts that all was well. This is a sideshow to the FBI’s investigation
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March 31, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, March 30, the number of reported deaths in the U.S. from the Wuhan coronavirus passed 3,000. The current total, 3,141, exceeds the number of Americans killed on 9/11. No one knows how many Americans will die from this virus. However, the death toll is likely to be somewhere between 10 and 100 times that of 9/11. In Italy, the daily death count ticked upwards after two days of decline.
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March 31, 2020 — John Hinderaker
I don’t watch television, so I am spared much of the madness that most people have to absorb. But I take it that the Democrats and their press are still doing their best to blame COVID-19 on President Trump. This makes no sense, obviously, but when has that ever stopped them? On CNN on Sunday, Nancy Pelosi said, “As the President ‘fiddles,’ people are dying.” That is an absurd way
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March 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota’s MyPillow man Mike Lindell joined President Trump and chief executive officers Darius Adamczyk (Honeywell), Debra Waller (Jockey — great!), Greg Hayes (United Technologies), and David Taylor (Proctor and Gamble) at yesterday’s daily White House Coronavirus task force briefing. Lindell is a recovering addict, an outspoken Christian, a fervent Trump supporter, a successful entrepreneur and all-around remarkable gentleman. Lindell spoke for less than three minutes (video below). He announced that
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March 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Justice Department has filed a statement of interest in a case challenging a Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) policy that enables biological males to compete against biological females. Attorney General Barr explained: In our pluralistic society we generally try to accommodate how individuals desire to live their lives up to the point where those desires impinge on the other people’s rights. Allowing biological males to compete in all-female sports
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March 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Three weeks ago I wrote a post titled Joe Biden Can’t Be President: I’m not saying Biden shouldn’t be president. That has always been true. I am saying that he lacks the physical and mental qualities necessary to to the job–not to do it well, but to do it at all. Evidence of Biden’s incapacity continues to pile up. Earlier today, he gave an interview to MSNBC in which he
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March 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
A week ago, I reported the number of Wuhan coronavirus cases in Italy by region. Today, I’ll update these numbers, my main interest being in how regions that were slow to be hit by the virus — i.e. southern Italian regions — are doing. Let’s start with northern Italy, though. A week ago, the Lombardy region, where the virus first hit hard, had around 28,000 reported cases. As of yesterday,
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March 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
• You want to know how long the month of March has been? It was still this month that Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg were running for president. Remember impeachment? Seems as long ago as Andrew Johnson’s impeachment. How long is April—T.S. Eliot’s “cruelest month”—going to be? By the way, in retrospect does anyone think the frivolous impeachment whose outcome was foreordained might have distracted the
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March 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Remember the story about the man who lost his life when he scarfed down an aquarium cleaner containing chloroquine to ward off the Wuhan virus on President Trump’s recommendation? Marc Thiessen put it this way in a recent column: After the president expressed hope that the anti-malaria drug chloroquine was showing signs of success as a treatment for the coronavirus, news organizations tried to blame him for the death of
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March 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The Wuhan epidemic is bringing to light many regulations and processes that have needlessly impeded efforts to fight the virus by private industry, as well as by government. Quite a few such regulations are now being suspended, causing many to ask, why did we have them in the first place? At Center of the American Experiment’s web site, economist John Phelan offers a textbook example from our state of Minnesota.
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