December 2, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Heads exploded at the Washington Post yesterday thanks to the oral argument at the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the abortion case. Evidence of the explosion was scattered all over the Post’s front section. In the opinion pages alone, there were four op-eds about the case, plus an editorial. One of the op-eds was by Billie Jean King. Her piece was called “My abortion story shows
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December 2, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
It’s an important one — Peter DeFazio, whom Politico describes as “the Oregon firebrand who leads the House’s transportation committee.” DeFazio says he’ll retire to “focus on my health and well-being.” Politico attributes the decision in no small part to the impending takeover of the House by the GOP. The two explanations aren’t inconsistent. Losing his chairmanship and being in the minority would not be good for DeFazio’s well-being. DeFazio
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December 2, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this week, I wrote about how Chris Christie ripped his former ally Donald Trump for not delivering on key agenda items as president. I agreed generally with Christie’s complaint, but noted that, as Trump’s term went on and he replaced some of his early appointees, the delivery improved. I suggested several possible explanations for why Trump got off to a slow start, but omitted an important one — Chris
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December 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Leftists like Kamala Harris want us to believe that white supremacism is a major threat to America. What about black supremacism? To Harris and the left, it’s a myth, and worrying about it is racist. Daniel Greenfield at FrontPage has the details on Harris’ quest to render black supremacism a non-concept and to bar the Department of Justice from preventing terrorism by black supremacists: Two years ago, Senator Kamala Harris,
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December 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
According to Ralph Cipriano at “Big Trial,” the suspect in the murder of Temple student Sam Collington is a criminal who escaped charges for armed carjacking, among things, thanks to the leniency of left-wing, Soros-backed Philadelphia prosecutor Larry Krasner: The suspect in the murder of a 21 year-old Temple University student was arrested on Aug. 14th and charged with eight crimes in connection with an armed carjacking, including aggravated assault,
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December 1, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
That, at least, is how the Washington Post interprets today’s oral argument in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. The team of five (yes, five) Post reporters that covered the argument writes: The Supreme Court on Wednesday signaled that it is on the verge of a major shift in its abortion jurisprudence after hearing nearly two hours of arguments from attorneys for Mississippi, an abortion provider from the state and
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November 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
I’m not a fan of Chris Christie, but he’s a world-class hatchet man. His current target is Donald Trump. Why? Maybe because Trump didn’t elevate him while president (probably due to the fact that Christie successfully prosecuted Jared Kushner’s crooked father). Maybe so Christie can boost sales of his book. Maybe because Christie anticipates running against Trump in 2024. Maybe all of the above. I’m less interested in Christie’s motive
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November 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Last week, I wrote a post called “Biden’s covid scorecard is worse than Trump’s.” I caveated it by saying that presidents should not be judged based, without more, on how many Americans die during a pandemic. However, I also noted that Joe Biden based much of his case for the presidency on precisely this criterion. Employing it, I found that the U.S. has lost ground to the four major European
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November 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
There isn’t much doubt that Democrats will lose control of the House of Representatives following next year’s election. This article by CNN’s Chris Cillizza strongly suggests that House Democrats don’t doubt their impending loss of control. Cillizza observes that 18 House Dems have decided to retire or run for higher office in 2022. Only 11 House Republicans will be moving on. By contrast, at this point in the 2020 election
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November 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
For a long time, I sympathized with Dr. Anthony Fauci. There he was, trying to deal with a pandemic caused by a virus no one knew much about. Sure, he was often wrong about pandemic-related matters, but so were plenty of others, on both sides of the political spectrum and in between, who opined on these subjects. Everyone was shooting in the dark. But at some point — possibly because
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November 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
A Missouri federal judge, Matthew Schelp, has just issued an order temporarily blocking the Biden administration’s coronavirus vaccine mandate for health care workers in ten states. The states are Alaska, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming. These are the states whose attorneys general filed the lawsuit in question. The mandate is now blocked in these states while litigation on the merits of the
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November 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Today, Joe Biden told reporters that lockdowns are “off the table for now” as a response to the new coronavirus variant. I consider this statement incoherent. To me, “off the table” means “ain’t gonna happen.” Lockdowns cannot be “off the table” if Biden is leaving open their possibility later on. Biden’s statement reflects the fact that lockdowns are no longer popular, not any principled unwillingness to impose them. But even
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November 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Throughout the last decade, Greece’s economy was a basket case. Lally Weymouth of the Washington Post reminds us that Greece endured a crippling depression in which it lost one-fourth of its GDP. The nation’s banks nearly collapsed and European Union officials contemplated expelling Greece from the EU. But in 2019, the Greeks dumped the leftist government of Alexis Tsipras and replaced it with a center-right government led by Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
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November 28, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Some of them, anyway. Donald Trump has endorsed candidates in 15 Senate contests to date, according to Politico. Many of them are incumbent Senators. They are expected to cruise to renomination by the GOP. But, says Politico, some of the others are struggling. Politico cites Mo Brooks in Alabama, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, Ted Budd in North Carolina, and Sean Parnell in Pennsylvania (Parnell recently withdrew from the race due
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November 27, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
I don’t think we know yet. But England’s chief medical officer, Prof. Chris Whitty, says we shouldn’t be too worried. (Unless otherwise indicated, his views and the others set forth below are reported by Laura Donnelly of The Telegraph.) Whitty agrees with banning travel from the African regions where the new variant is prevalent. He considers this a reasonable precaution. However, Whitty is more worried about the Delta variant, which
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November 26, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Joe Biden has ordered a ban on travel from eight African countries due to the emergence of the latest coronavirus variant. The countries from which Biden is cutting off travel are South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi. When Donald Trump banned travel from China in the early days of the Wuhan coronavirus outbreak, Biden called the move xenophobic. I suppose that makes Biden’s travel ban racist
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November 25, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott and John have written about Saule Omarova, Joe Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. That office is the chief regulator of America’s banks. Omarova is a graduate of Moscow State University (Russia, not Idaho), where she won the 1988-89 Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship. In her current, merely socialist, incarnation, Omarova would like to reimagine banking, as the cliché goes. Along the way, she
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