December 15, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
I believe there’s a market among Democrats for a presidential candidate who is not radical, who is not old and frequently confused, and who is not a straight white male. Who might that candidate be? It might have been Kamala Harris. However, she oped not to fill that lane. Now, she’s an ex-candidate for president. It might be Pete Buttigieg, except it’s not so clear that he’s non-radical. Buttigieg seemingly
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December 15, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A police officer who was hit in the head by a rock thrown at a 2016 demonstration in Louisiana sued DeRay Mckesson, the prominent Black Lives Matter provocateur who organized the demonstration. The officer did not allege that Mckesson threw the rock, that he called on anyone to throw rocks, or that he called on anyone to commit any act of violence. Yet, he sought to hold Mckesson liable for
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December 14, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Cenk Uygur is a candidate for Congress in California. He is seeking the seat formerly occupied by Kate Hill. In a sense, he would be a worthy successor to Hill. Like Hill, he would be a disgrace. Until yesterday, Uygur had Bernie Sanders’s endorsement. This is the story of how he lost it. But first, some background. Uygur runs a left-wing online news and commentary show called “The Young Turks.”
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December 13, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
While the Obama Department of Labor plods through its eleventh year, the Trump Justice Department is steaming through its third. As I discussed here, the Labor Department is prosecuting compensation discrimination cases brought in the dying days of the Obama administration based on spurious theories long peddled by radicals. In addition, the Labor Department persists in demanding that federal contractors “allow employees and applicants to use restrooms consistent with their
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December 13, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The Washington Post begins its latest front page hit piece on President Trump this way: On a day in which North Korea issued a fresh threat and a House committee set the stage for his impeachment, President Trump on Thursday found time to insult 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg after she was named Time’s Person of the Year, an honor he has coveted for years. (Emphasis added) Here’s what
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December 12, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Once upon a time, Stanley Fish was a state of the art radical professor — “a scrappy advocate of multiculturalism, affirmative-action hiring quotas, campus speech codes and openly subversive strains of post-structuralist critical theory,” to quote the view attributed to his critics by the New York Times. Fish transformed the Duke University English department into a bastion of “deconstructionism” — the view that literary texts acquire meaning only as a
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December 12, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The most bitter local rivalry in British football is probably the one between Celtic United and Rangers, a pair of Glasgow teams that long have dominated Scottish soccer. Unlike the rivalries between, say, Liverpool and Everton or Tottenham Hotspur and Arsenal, the Celtic-Rangers rivalry has major sectarian overtones. Celtic is the team of choice for Catholics, Rangers for Protestants. Last weekend, Celtic defeated Rangers 1-0 in the League Cup Final.
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December 12, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order that will enable the government to consider discrimination against Jews to be a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. This means that colleges and universities can lose federal funding if they fail to combat discrimination against Jewish students. Trump’s move is a response to the growing number of anti-Semitic incidents on our campuses. To receive Title VI protection, Jews must
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December 11, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
As John discussed below, Michael Horowitz testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. He told the committee that there were 17 instances of misconduct by the FBI in connection with the FISA application process. Horowitz also said that his team found no evidence of intentional misconduct. However, he added that the FBI agents involved were unable to provide satisfactory explanations for their actions. But the absence of an innocent explanation
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December 11, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
We have discussed from time to time Jim Scanlan’s insight that reducing an adverse outcome tends to increase relative racial differences in rates of experiencing the outcome. Thus, for example, if one lowers the passing score for an employment test because that test is disqualifying minority applicants at a disproportionate rate, more minority applicants will pass the test but the test will disqualify members of this group at an even
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December 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Last month, I noted with dismay that, in a survey, a majority of Republicans deemed Donald Trump a better president than Abraham Lincoln. It’s only fair for me to note, with even more dismay, that most Democrats who participated in a new survey deemed Barack Obama a better president than George Washington. The survey comparing Obama and Washington is from Monmouth University. It found that among Democratic voters, the “Father
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December 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Politico reports that a small group of House Democrats — about ten of them — are floating the idea of censuring President Trump instead of impeaching him. All of these Democrats represent districts carried by President Trump three years ago. Among them are Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.), Anthony Brindisi (D-N.Y.), and Ben McAdams (D-Utah). Schrader explained: I think it’s certainly appropriate and might be a little more bipartisan,
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December 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Jonathan Turley responds as follows to Michael Horowitz’s finding that the Justice Department had enough evidence to meet the low threshold for beginning its investigation of the Trump campaign: This is akin to reviewing the Titanic and saying that the captain was not unreasonable in starting the voyage. The question is what occurred when the icebergs began appearing. Horowitz says that investigative icebergs appeared rather early on, and the Justice
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December 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Former Rep. Scott Taylor has dropped his challenge for the Virginia Senate seat held by Mark Warner. He will run instead for the seat he used to have in the House. This is good news for those of us who support Daniel Gade for the Republican nomination, and all the more reason to contribute to his campaign (see below). However, I believe that Daniel, a more solidly conservative candidate than
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December 9, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
From Inspector General Horowitz’s report, beginning at page 186: An important aspect of the FBI’s assessment of Steele’s election reporting involved evaluating Steele’s source network, especially whether the sub-sources had access to reliable information. As noted in the first FISA application, Steele relied on a primary sub-source (Primary Sub-source) for information, and this Primary Sub-source used a network of sub-sources to gather the information that was relayed to Steele; Steele
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December 9, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Now that it’s clear Pete Buttigieg is a serious contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, with a real chance of winning the Iowa caucuses, his rivals are attacking him for working as a consultant at McKinsey & Co.for three years. McKinsey helps businesses (as well as governmental bodies and entities) solve problems. Buttigieg, for his part, has attacked Elizabeth Warren for consulting work she did many years ago for various
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December 9, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott has provided a link to the Inspector General’s Report of the Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation. Scott has also quoted the full statement of Attorney General Barr regarding that report. I think the key sentence in Barr’s statement is this: The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on
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