May 2, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
I doubt that English Premier League soccer generates many hot takes on American sports gabfest shows. But the second tier of English soccer garnered some recently after a bizarre match between Aston Villa and Leeds United presented an outbreak of good sportsmanship. Aston Villa and Leeds United are two of English football’s blue bloods. Villa, the preeminent team in the Midlands, won a European championship in the 1980s. Leeds, the
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May 2, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
You would never guess it from the mainstream media’s coverage of yesterday’s circus before the Senate Judiciary Committee, but William Barr addressed Robert Mueller’s concerns over media coverage of his report and over Barr’s four-page memo about the report. Barr did so in a statement he released the day after his conversation with Mueller about the special counsel’s concerns. As everyone knows by now, Mueller sent a letter to Barr
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May 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
President Trump is upset that the leadership of a national firefighters’ union endorsed Joe Biden. Trump sent out dozens of tweets and retweets on the subject. In one, he referred to the organization in question as “this dues sucking union.” It’s okay for Trump to be upset and to make his displeasure known, but I hope he isn’t counting on union leaders to back his reelection bid. The American labor
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May 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Attorney General William Barr is sticking to his guns. Earlier this week, as I noted here, Barr rejected the demand of the Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee that, when he testifies about the Mueller report, he do so under extraordinary conditions. One of the conditions was that Barr be questioned by non-members of the Committee — namely, staff lawyers. According to the Washington Post, the last time committee lawyers questioned a
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May 1, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott and Andy McCarthy make short work of Robert Mueller’s leaked letter of complaint to William Barr. The key thing, as McCarthy says, is that Barr’s memo on the Mueller report is 100 percent accurate. According to the Washington Post, when Barr and Mueller spoke, Barr challenged Mueller to identify inaccuracies. Mueller acknowledged that there are none. The essence of Mueller’s moan is that “the summary letter the [DOJ] sent
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April 30, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó appeared Tuesday with troops at a Caracas military base to announce a “final phase” to remove President Nicolás Maduro from office. Whether we have entered the final phase of removing Maduro, or indeed whether he will be removed at all, remains to be seen. But, as the leftists of my youth used to say, “if you don’t push it, it won’t fall. The Washington Post
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April 30, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the NCAA champion Baylor University women’s basketball team visited the White House to be honored by President Trump. Unlike their male counterparts from the University of Virginia, and various other sports championship teams, the “Lady Bears” were willing and, it seems, happy to accept an invitation from Trump. Coach Kim Mulkey is no stranger to the White House. She took championship teams there during the George W. Bush and
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April 30, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Reading this gossipy article in Politico about supply-side economists Art Laffer, Larry Kuklow, and Stephen Moore is a long slog. However, it does contain a nugget near the end. Moore recalls how, during the 2016 presidential campaign, his group would meet with Republican candidates to offer “tutorials” on economics. But that’s not how the session with John Kasich went. According to Moore: We were all sitting there, and he would
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April 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Paul Rosenzweig served as a senior counsel to Ken Starr during the investigations of President Bill Clinton. Rosenzweig claims that President Trump’s attempts to obstruct justice are “blunter by a thousandfold” than anything Clinton did, and more than justify the House Judiciary Committee opening impeachment proceedings. “A thousandfold.” By how many fold would Trump’s alleged attempts at obstruction be blunter than Clinton’s if Trump had perjured himself before a grand
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April 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein resigned today. It has been clear for some time that Rosenstein would depart. However, he waited, reportedly at the urging of Attorney General Barr, for the Mueller report to be filed and summarized before resigning. Rosenstein is a respected figure, but I think he made a major mistake when he appointed a special counsel for the Russia investigation. The investigation should have been handled by
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April 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee are demanding that, when Attorney General Barr testifies about the Mueller report, he do so under extraordinary conditions. They want to depart from the norm whereby committee members get five minutes each per questioning session and they want Barr to answer questions posed by committee attorneys (in addition to answering the ones committee attorneys will write for the members). Barr has balked at these
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April 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
This year, the Democratic National Committee decided that presidential candidates can qualify for the first two debates by earning at least 1 percent of the vote in three national or early-primary-state polls conducted by qualifying pollsters or by receiving donations from at least 65,000 unique donors, including at least 200 individual donors in at least 20 states. I assume that this liberal approach was a reaction to charges that the
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April 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The answer is no. Joe Biden may be too old to be an effective president. He’s certainly too much of a hack to be one. But he’s not too kind for the office. The suggestion to the contrary comes from Kathleen Parker, a columnist for the Washington Post (the question forms the title of her column in the paper edition). Parker cites Biden’s courteous behavior towards Sarah Palin in the
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April 27, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
I wrote here about how the federal government is probing the Montgomery County School system to determine whether it is discriminating against Asian-American students by limiting their admission into two highly sought-after magnet school programs. Between 2016 and 2017, the number of Asian-American students admitted into the two programs dropped by 23 percent. The next year, it dropped again, this time by 20 percent. One reason for the sharp decline
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April 26, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The Trump administration has proposed a new hiring rule under which federal job applicants would have to disclose whether they went through a criminal diversion program. Currently, applicants are asked about criminal convictions and periods of incarceration, but some criminals avoid prison and a criminal record through pretrial “diversion.” Under the proposed new rule, they would be asked about this. The proposed rule is sensible. The federal government ought to
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April 26, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
When I was a young baseball fan, I thought that pitchers who relied on a great fastball would lose their effectiveness more quickly than pitchers with a mediocre fastball who relied on “junk” and guile. After all, speed declines with age while guile, if anything, increases. Eventually, after observing the late career success of Robin Roberts, I realized that pitchers with a great fastball can reinvent themselves as pitchers with
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April 25, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
A Gallup poll from earlier this month found that Americans consider the government and immigration to be the most important problems facing the U.S. 23 percent of respondents named the government/poor leadership, while 21 percent named immigration. Nothing else came close. Health care was a distant third at 7 percent, followed closely by race relations (6 percent) and (at 5 percent each) the economy, poverty-hunger-homelessness, and unifying the country. “Government/poor
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