September 19, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump addressed the United Nations today. You can read his speech here. I think it’s an excellent address. I agree with Rick Manning that “Trump has provided a cogent and inspiring defense of America and the American constitutional system of governance to the world, not as imposition but an example to be followed, while at the same time respecting the sovereignty of other nations.” While making clear that the
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September 19, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Do reports (if true) that the government wiretapped Paul Manafort, including during times when he worked for candidate Trump, vindicate President Trump’s claims about the Obama administration wiring tapping his campaign? I don’t think so. To see whether Trump has been vindicated, we need to consider what he actually said about wiretapping. The tweet that generated the controversy said this: Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped”
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September 18, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Hillary Clinton’s attempt to explain “what happened” in the 2016 election has been greeted with derision from many on the right and on the left. However, the folks at FiveThirtyEight defend both the effort and the product. In doing so, they give voice to an emerging complaint that the New York Times and other mainstream media outlets helped elect Donald Trump. I find it difficult to take this complaint seriously.
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September 18, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Kyrsten Sinema represents Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is said to be the first openly bisexual woman elected to Congress, as well as the only openly non-theist or atheist member of the current Congress. Sinema presents herself as a bipartisan moderate. She did not vote for Nancy Pelosi for Speaker of the House and reportedly voted with the Democrats “only” 73 percent of the
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September 18, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Over the weekend, President Trump announced that he will visit Alabama next weekend to campaign for Sen. Luther Strange in that state’s Senate primary Republican run-off . I found this decision difficult to explain inasmuch as (1) polls show that Strange trails his opponent Judge Roy Moore by a significant margin and (2) Moore seems as likely as Strange to vote for pro-Trump positions — at least the ones that
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September 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
The last time we looked in on the Alabama Senate primary race between Sen. Luther Strange and Judge Roy Moore, the (former) judge had a double-digit lead. In the first round of the primary, Moore bested Strange by six points and apparently had extended the margin as the run-off approached. That was about three weeks ago. The latest poll, by Emerson just a few days ago, suggests that the race
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September 16, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump may be disillusioned with Jeff Sessions, but the Attorney General is doing an outstanding job. Perhaps his most significant accomplishment is returning the DOJ to the rule of law by reinstituting guidelines that require prosecutors to charge the most serious offenses and ask for the lengthiest prison sentences. One indication of the significance of this accomplishment is the howling from Team Leniency, including two former Obama-appointed prosecutors —
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September 15, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump has decided to work with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi because he’s concluded that otherwise he won’t be able to get things done. This begs the question, which is whether the things he can get done with Chuck and Nancy are worth doing. President Obama didn’t work with Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan for the sake of getting things done. But Obama is a principled leftist. Trump is
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September 15, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
As John noted earlier this week, Obamacare replacement legislation isn’t dead in the U.S. Senate after all. Senators Cassidy, Graham, and Johnson have come up with a bill that partially repeals Obamacare and turns power over to the states. Their legislation would: * Repeal Obamacare’s individual and employer mandates. * Repeal the medical device tax. * Enhance the states’ ability to waive Obamacare’s regulations. * Give to the states in
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September 14, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
How did Donald Trump pull off his stunning run to the presidency? I didn’t predict it, so I don’t feel qualified to say. Steve Bannon predicted it. Indeed, he told Charlie Rose he was 100 percent certain Trump would defeat Hillary Clinton. Thus, Bannon has standing to opine. Bannon told Rose that the core issue behind Trump’s success was his hard line on illegal immigration. He said that, though he’s
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September 14, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, PJ Media published a disturbing report about H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser. It said that at a meeting during the week of August 27 at the White House, McMaster brought with him Mustafa Javed Ali, NSC Senior Director on Counter-Terrorism. According to PJ Media’s report, Ali has been described by a senior administration source as being “opposed to Hezbollah’s designation as a terrorist organization.” The Israelis reportedly
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September 14, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Late last night, in an update to a post about DACA, I noted that President Trump reportedly had just made a deal with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi regarding DACA-style legislation. The alleged deal would protect the roughly 690,000 people covered by the current DACA program (but not, I take it, other “dreamers”) and would include a package of border security measures, excluding the wall, that’s “acceptable to both sides.”
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September 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
In the public imagination, the dreamers are folks who were brought to the U.S. by their parents as young children. They are unfamiliar with the country where they were born and would be lost if forced to return there. They are hard-working and law abiding. Many attend college or serve in the military. But one can be a “dreamer” for purposes of benefiting from DACA without fitting any part of
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September 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
As Scott has pointed out, the Southern Poverty Law Center is misnamed in the same kind of way the Holy Roman Empire was. The SPLC, a vicious left-wing attack machine, is neither poor nor devoted to law, though it is based in Alabama and may be a “center” of sorts. Former Vanderbilt University Professor Carol Swain is a victim of the SPLC. She wrote about the experience in the Wall
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September 13, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Hillary Clinton’s book about her 2016 defeat is called What Happened. Her answer, apparently, is that Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Barack Obama, the Russians, Joe Biden, James Comey, Anthony Weiner, the Electoral College, apathetic voters, and assorted misogynists behaved badly and/or let her down. A better answer can be gleaned from this account by Maureen Callahan of a book signing event in New York City. Callahan writes: Among the enduring
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September 12, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
Race permeates the left’s analysis of almost every major domestic issue, particularly on college campuses. Why, then, is race absent from the discussion of campus sexual assault? The question is prompted by an article by Emily Yoffe in the Atlantic. The conventional narrative on campus rape holds that it’s the product of white privilege — the rich, white frat boy as sexual predator, as Petula Dvorak, a feminist columnist for
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September 12, 2017 — Paul Mirengoff
We haven’t written yet about the Equifax data breach. It is one of the worst, if not the worst, security breach of our personal information in history, the personal information of most U.S. adults having been obtained by cyber criminals. However, I had nothing of note to say about it. Stuff happens, I thought, and very bad stuff can happen in our digital age. My view changed when I read
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