Monthly Archives: May 2020
May 31, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Larry Bacow, the president of Harvard, blasted this email to members of the Harvard Community: The last several months have been disorienting for all of us. COVID-19 has profoundly disrupted the lives of people worldwide. It has caused more than 365,000 deaths around the globe and more than 100,000 in the United States alone. Forty million Americans have lost their jobs, and countless others live in fear of both the
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May 31, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
Colin Kaepernick is back in the public’s consciousness. Joe Lockhart, the former White House press secretary, says the Minnesota Vikings should offer him a job. That’s just what Minnesota and the Vikings need now — a quarterback controversy involving Kaepernick. But Lockhart’s suggestion seems wise compared to this column by Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post. She writes: Two knees. One protesting in the grass, one pressing on the back
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May 31, 2020 — John Hinderaker
For a generally quiet, mid-sized metropolitan area, the Twin Cities seem to find themselves in the news often. That is true these days, with the George Floyd case and the riots we have experienced. Interest in what is going on here is reflected in my media calendar for the next 30 hours. I encourage you to tune in to any of these shows you might be able to catch: *
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May 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
I wrote an appreciation of Andrew McCarthy’s Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency on its publication date this past August in “All the president’s men, Obama style.” I wrote a little bit more about the book when I posted a video of McCarthy speaking about it. I also put Ball of Collusion first among my books of 2019, which were heavy with books
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May 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
After I wrote “Minneapolis goes Baghdad” in the early morning hours yesterday, Governor Walz called a 10:00 a.m. press conference. With the fires still smoldering in Minneapolis, Walz announced that he had activated our entire National Guard contingent and declared that the curfews in Minneapolis and St. Paul would be enforced yesterday evening (video below). Apparently between 4,000 and 5,000 National Guard soldiers enhanced the law enforcement officers in the
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May 31, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Minneapolis’s Steele family is a local Twin Cities institution. The Star Tribune provided brief profiles in this 2019 update on the family. Our friends at the Dakota sponsored a livestream performance of the Steeles’ “concert for community healing” yesterday afternoon at 3:00 p.m. Jearlyn, Jevetta, Fred, Billy and JD Steele are joined by Spencer Christianson on guitar, Chris Smith on upright bass, Yonathan Berkure on electric bass, and Kenyari Jackson
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May 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Supreme Court yesterday rejected a request from a church in California to block enforcement of state restrictions on attending religious services. Currently, the state limits attendance at places of worship to 25 percent of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees. Chief Justice Roberts joined the four left-liberal Justices to form the majority in a 5-4 decision. Roberts wrote: Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular
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May 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Governor Tim Walz says the City of Minneapolis’s response to rioting there has been an “abject failure,” which is true. Walz’s response on behalf of the state has been an abject failure, too. Maybe the feds can do better: the Pentagon says it has troops ready to deploy if Walz requests them. But there is zero chance Walz would do that. In lieu of actually doing anything to discourage or
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May 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
“Decadence” is one of those familiar terms that is trivialized or rendered comic by overuse—perhaps you’d say from decadence itself. And while most people think decadent is mostly a synonym for “sumptuous,” it has a wider and deeper meaning, which is the subject of Ross Douthat’s new book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Douthat, a columnist for the New York Times and author
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May 30, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Local authorities from the governor on down have utterly failed to control, or in any way deal with, the riots that have devastated much of Minneapolis and some of St. Paul over the last four nights. Desperate to dodge responsibility, Governor Tim Walz and others have blamed “outside agitators” for the riots. Walz said in a press conference late last night, “I think our best estimate of what we heard
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May 30, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The Department of Justice has filed a statement of interest in a lawsuit filed by seven Michigan businesses challenging restrictions imposed by Governor Whitmer in response to the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic. The plaintiffs are a real estate brokerage, a lawn and property maintenance company, an automotive glass exporter, an engine oil and auto parts distributor, a small jewelry store, a dental office, and an association of car washes. They brought
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May 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
The American Political Science Review, the premier academic journal for political science (an article published in APSR will often secure tenure for a young academic) is very pleased with itself for announcing its new editorial staff, which for the first time is all women: A few people have raised eyebrows not so much about whether the female skew is an overwrought expression of identity politics or “diversity,” but rather for the
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May 30, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The Minnesota state authorities held a press conference at 10:00 yesterday morning. Governor Walz led the parade with a classic yammer yammer yammer blah blah blah performance. I have embedded the video below. He is — they are — over their head, out of their depth, out of it, clueless. You have to see it to believe it. Long-time race hustler Attorney General Keith Ellison is worse than out of
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May 30, 2020 — Steven Hayward
I thought Sarah Huckabee Sanders was the greatest White House press spokesperson of all time because of the way she treated the press corps (that’s pronounced “core,” Mr. Obama) like unruly and slow-learning kindergarten kids, as they deserve to be treated. But Kayleigh McEnany has turned it up to 11, not only treating the press corps like children, but as the enemy as well, which they are. And note the
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May 29, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
The MLB players union continues to insist that its members won’t return unless they are paid their prorated salaries — in other words, half their salary for playing half of the 162 games. They take this position even though the owners won’t make anywhere near half their normal revenue because they will receive no money from fans who would have attended the games. In a normal year, that money probably
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May 29, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Last night, criminals took over the 3rd Precinct Minneapolis police station and burned it to the ground. This was such a shocking event that in his press conference today, the state’s feckless governor, Tim Walz, said it caused him to give up on Minneapolis’s Boy Mayor, Jacob Frey–whose political future is about as bright as that of police officer Derek Chauvin–and call out the National Guard. Great. But what does
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May 29, 2020 — John Hinderaker
From the first hours after George Floyd died on Lake Street in Minneapolis, the rush to convict the officers who took him into custody seemed unstoppable. The frenzy was fueled by a video of one of the officers kneeling on Floyd, seemingly on his throat, while the officers waited for an ambulance to arrive. Every politician in Minnesota (and elsewhere) denounced the video as “appalling,” “disgusting,” and so on, and
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