May 1, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Eurovision is the annual European (and beyond) popular music contest that has become a giant cultural event. Each country is represented by a single singer or group, and the competition is intense. This year’s contest will begin on Tuesday in Malmo, Sweden. Israel has won the competition four times, most recently in 2018. This year it is represented by a 20-year-old woman named Eden Golan. But the contest will not
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April 30, 2024 — John Hinderaker
This morning, Judge Juan Merchan fined Donald Trump $9,000 and threatened to imprison him for violating Merchan’s gag order in the farcical Stormy Daniels case. The order prohibits Trump from commenting publicly on witnesses, jurors or prospective jurors, prosecutors (other than the District Attorney), staff members of the court or District Attorney, or family members of various persons. The offending statements by Trump were mostly reposts of comments by others
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April 30, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Kill-the-Jews protesters at Columbia have taken over that school’s main administration building, Hamilton Hall. Scenes from the campus are horrifying: Students at Columbia University have occupied Hamilton hall. Today the university president explicitly said to students the school would not be divesting and threatened to suspend students protesting. The last time this building was taken over by student protesters was in 1968 pic.twitter.com/IhoWVYlocB — Lama Al-Arian (@lalarian) April 30, 2024
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April 30, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Britain’s National Health Service is aligning itself with reality by acknowledging that sex is a biological fact: The NHS is to declare that sex is a matter of biology in a landmark shift against gender ideology. Changes to the health service’s written constitution proposed by ministers will for the first time ban trans women from women-only wards, and give women the right to request a female doctor for intimate care.
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April 29, 2024 — John Hinderaker
So who is behind the kill-the-Jews campus protests that, as Steve noted earlier today, have panicked Congressional Democrats who fear a political debacle as in 1968? Consistent with the retro nature of the protests, the organizers appear to be largely left-wing retreads, with a financial assist, it is reported, from one or more Soros entities. Take, for example, Charlotte Kates. Kates has been prominent in the Columbia protests: Radical anti-Israel
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April 28, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Liberals denounce Donald Trump as a would-be tyrant, but the fact is that he ruled less by executive order than any other recent president. It is Joe Biden who has discarded the Constitution and imposed a blizzard of illegal or probably-illegal regulations on the rest of us. Lately, they have been coming so furiously that it is hard to keep up with them. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board caught
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April 28, 2024 — John Hinderaker
A year ago, it would have been hard for me to imagine anything that would cause me to sympathize with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and its attendees. A more disgraceful event, and a more disgraceful group of people, are hard to conceive of. But last night, the dinner was beset by kill-the-Jews protesters, an even worse gang: "Shame on you!" pro-Palestinian protesters let their voices known to the members
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April 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Modern liberals have distilled the true essence of Marxism, which is the idea that every human relationship is exploitative. Lenin summed it up as “who/whom”–who is doing what to whom? Of course this idea is ridiculous. Most human relationships, whether personal or economic, are not exploitative. But Marx’s idea has a perennial appeal to the discontented, and is endlessly malleable to suit the neuroses of the day. Thus, modern Marxists
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April 27, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The kill-the-Jews rallies going on across America have resulted in casualties, including the leader of Columbia’s protests, now banned from the campus although it doesn’t appear that he has been expelled. Here in Minnesota, we have the entertaining spectacle of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion officer at the University of Minnesota’s School of Public Health being fired, and subsequently starting a lawsuit. On to that in a moment, but first,
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April 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Commentary in the liberal press is so uniform that you wonder whether reporters and commentators have coordinated their coverage, down to the word and the phrase. Well, they have, of course. You remember JournoList, where, years ago, reporters would gather to coordinate their pro-Democrat, anti-Republican stories. JournoList supposedly disbanded after it came to light, but I assume it more likely just went underground. Here we have another instance, JournoList 2.
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April 26, 2024 — John Hinderaker
There is no doubt about the fact that various gases have a “greenhouse” effect. They trap radiation leaving the Earth’s surface, thus warming the atmosphere. The chief greenhouse gas, by a wide margin, is water vapor. Carbon dioxide and methane are two more minor greenhouse gases. We owe these substances everything: without the greenhouse effect, there would be no life on Earth. The fact that some gases absorb radiation that
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April 25, 2024 — John Hinderaker
The protesters setting up tent cities to celebrate Hamas may attend “elite” universities, but that doesn’t mean they are very bright. You may have seen this short video of a couple of Columbia students who aren’t exactly sure what or why they are protesting: 🚨VIDEO: A REAL interview we had at NYU: QUESTION: "Why are you protesting?" PROTESTER #1: "I don't know. I'm pretty sure there's something about Israel [turns
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April 25, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s case against Donald Trump was argued in the Supreme Court today. The issue is the extent to which ex-presidents are entitled to immunity for acts committed while they were in office. The New York Times covered the arguments with live updates. Here are some excerpts: Overall, several justices — maybe a majority — apear to have suggested through their questions that presidents should indeed enjoy some
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April 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Mark Twain said that there is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress. However, he didn’t know about the Minnesota DFL party’s legislative delegation: The arrest rate in the United States is 2,181.7 per 100,000 each year, or 2.18%. The arrest rate for #mnleg Democrats is 3 per 104 in the last year, or 2.89%. Elected #mnleg Democrats have a 32% higher arrest rate than the general population. pic.twitter.com/rXxYlU31qi —
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April 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I wrote last night about the absurdity of Alvin Bragg’s criminal prosecution of Donald Trump. Today both Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Turley made similar points. Andrew went into considerably more detail. He writes: As I’ve related a few times, Alvin Bragg, Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney, is trying to hoodwink the jury into believing that (a) it is a crime for a candidate for public office to conspire with
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April 24, 2024 — John Hinderaker
I’m sure Biden’s staff has had conversations with him about not reading the instructions on his teleprompter, but whatever they have done isn’t working. Is it possible to use different colors on a teleprompter? I don’t know, maybe they could put the text in black and the stage directions in red. Here, Biden is instructed to pause so his audience can take up the “four more years” chant. Of course
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April 23, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Donald Trump is undergoing a criminal trial in Manhattan. He is charged with filing corporate records that included a false statement; namely, that payments to Michael Cohen that were described as being for legal services were, in fact, to reimburse Cohen for making one or more payments to Stormy Daniels in exchange for a non-disclosure agreement. But those payments to Daniels were perfectly legal, and filing a false corporate document
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