September 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
In a highly useful Wall Street Journal column Professor Harvey Mansfield undertakes close analysis of “The ‘systemic racism’ dodge.” The column opens: Systemic racism, also known as institutional or structural racism, is a new phrase for a new situation. We live in a society where racism is not, and cannot be, openly professed. To do so not only is frowned upon but will get you into serious trouble, if not
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September 20, 2020 — Scott Johnson
There is an obvious follow-up question or two to the widely quoted statement made by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer during a Democratic Caucus conference call Saturday afternoon. Schumer is quoted saying “everything Americans value is at stake” and warned of possible payback if Republicans fill Justice Ginsburg’s vacant Supreme Court seat before January. “Let me be clear: if Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing
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September 19, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Speaking at his rally in Bemidji last night, President Trump paid tribute to the journalism of David Steinberg on Ilhan Omar (video below). In July 2019 we published one of David’s most important investigative pieces under the heading “Tying up loose threads in the curious case.” Trump got it right: David deserves a Pulitzer Prize for his work exposing Omar. When I met briefly with President Trump about my own
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September 18, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The degradation and decline of the city of Minneapolis proceed apace. 5 Eyewitness News has posted the report by Jay Kolls (video below) from inside the city’s “autonomous zone,” a/k/a the Free State of George Floyd. Whatever you do, you don’t want to be in need of police help in the Free State of George Floyd — Marcia Howard to the contrary notwithstanding. Compare and contrast Kolls’s report with the
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September 18, 2020 — Scott Johnson
We’re going to have to differentiate among the forms of dementia when our book of Quotations From Dementia Joe comes out. The quote below falls into a straightforward category of demented — not confused, not addled, not senile — TDS-demented, right up the alley of CNN viewers at whom it was pitched. Just in case you missed it last night…this one is a killer, so to speak. Quotable quote: “Just
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September 18, 2020 — Scott Johnson
As Obama administration Secretary of State, John Kerry delivered the deal with Iran that made the Munich Agreement look good and lied volubly about it in crushing tones of condescension. The signing of the Abraham Accords at the White House this week affords us the opportunity to look back at this piece of conventional wisdom circa 2016 and evaluate it in light of this week’s events. Often wrong but never
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September 18, 2020 — Scott Johnson
While I was otherwise engaged with Magistrate Judge Thorson and officials from the Minnesota Department of Health yesterday — settlement negotiations continue for another week or two, during which I am bound to confidentiality — the rest of the MDH crew held another press briefing. I have posted MPR’s audio recording of the briefing below. It is worth a listen to tune into the voice of Assistant Commissioner Dan Huff.
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September 18, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Ammo Grrrll invents a new hashtag and commences a new campaign: #YEAH, ME NEITHER. She writes: We already have the hashtag campaign #MeToo that encourages women everywhere to remember that time when, God forbid, a man told them they looked nice, or a co-worker put a hand on their shoulder without a notarized permission slip, or when a classmate had consensual sex with them but then failed to return their
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September 17, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Paul G. Cassell is the Ronald N. Boyce Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and University Distinguished Professor of Law at the S.J. Quinney College of Law at the University of Utah. He is also the foremost scholar of the “Minneapolis Effect” reflecting the spike in murders following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. Professor Cassell describes the effect in the opening of today’s Wall Street Journal
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September 17, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The Minnesota Department of Health held its 100th COVID-19 press briefing yesterday as I reach the 100th installment of this series. On April 27 the MDH silently expelled me from the briefings without notice or explanation — and refused to tell me why. What happened? After obtaining Governor Walz’s response to my Data Practices Act request seeking the answer, I filed the lawsuit against MDH officials pending in federal court.
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September 16, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Thinking a bit more about the Abraham Accords signing ceremony at the White House yesterday, I want to salute President Trump. Hearing Arab officials refer to Israel and Prime Minister Netanyahu in friendly terms before a worldwide audience is mind-boggling. Trump has done a good thing that continues his great undoing of the worst “achievements” of the Obama administration. In order to arrive at this destination, the Trump administration had
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September 16, 2020 — Scott Johnson
You may have heard that Joe Biden emerged from the basement to hold a staged event yesterday wooing six veterans — count ’em in the AP photo included with the FOX News story — in Tampa. The video below captures yet another of our Quotations from Dementia Joe: “Cause if you could take care, if you were a quartermaster, you can sure in hell take care runnin’ a, you know,
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September 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
C-SPAN has posted video of the Abraham Accord signing ceremony including representatives of Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain at the White House today. I have embedded the video below. The Times of Israel has posted a brief account of the ceremony here. Everyone involved has an interest in hyping the importance of the agreement, but it is a great and historic day by any fair reckoning. The agreement
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September 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
A reader kindly forwarded the September 8 Viral Issue Crucial Update posted on YouTube by Ivor Cummins. I have found the video both entertaining and instructive. Indeed, even though I have lost my sense of humor on the subject, I found Cummins’s understated contrarian take on the epidemic hugely entertaining. Focusing on COVID-19 in Europe, Cummins places the relevant data “in context,” as they say. I asked my friend and
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September 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Someone has posted Sunday’s installment of Life, Liberty and Levin on YouTube. I have embedded the video below. Candace Owens appears in the show’s two opening segments followed by Michael Anton for the next three. The occasion of Anton’s appearance is the publication of The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return. I posted the first of the three segments with Anton here yesterday. The second segment with him
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September 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
The National Association of Scholars is hosting an online conference responding to the odious Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project promulgated by the New York Times. The conference began yesterday and runs through Friday. After a welcome by NAS president Peter Wood, Peter Kirsanow kicked off the conference with a sort of keynote speech. Kirsanow was followed by Professors Diana Schaub speaking on Frederick Douglass and John Stauffer on the white abolitionist
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September 15, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Since the Department of Health held its third press briefing of last week this past Thursday, the authorities have attributed the following numbers of deaths to COVID-19: 13 (9/11, 8 in long-term or congregate care facilities), 9 (9/12, 7 LTC), 13 (9/13, 9 LTC), and three (9/14, 0 LTC). Hospitalizations continue at an extremely low number (235 total, 135 in intensive care). The data simply do not conform to the
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