Author Archives: Scott Johnson

Ramirez speaks

Featured image The Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez posts his daily cartoons on Substack at the Michael Ramirez Newsletter. He is a conservative whose genius cannot be denied. Thus the Pulitzer. Readers can subscribe here. Michael has also been writing weekly essays for his newsletter that I have posted in our Picks as each one was made freely accessible. Today Michael has posted an 18-minute video essay that is keyed to his »

Return to Shifa

Featured image President Biden has turned on Israel. He and his brain trust support the survival of Hamas. It’s a big-time sell-out. The cover of the current issue of England’s Economist depicts Israel Alone (cover story here behind the Economist paywall). It reminded me of the time when England stood alone against a genocidal maniac — alone against “the insane tyrant,” as Leo Strauss referred to Hitler in his tribute to Churchill »

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured image Ammo Grrrll looks into the future: I THINK THAT I SHALL NEVER SEE…quite a few things! Joyce Kilmer, author of the beloved and universally known American poem “Trees,” declared that he thought that he would “never see / A poem as lovely as a tree.” Soon I shall list some things that we cannot BELIEVE we HAVE seen. And then several things that, like Mr. Kilmer, we will never see. »

“Migrants” on parade

Featured image Here we have the video of the day. It depicts a horde of illegal aliens breaking through the razor wire (mounted, I assume, by Texas authorities) and overrunning Texas National Guard soldiers seeking to resist them in El Paso. The video raises many questions, among them how many many “migrants” does it take to mount used to be known as an “invasion”? We have now entered year four President Biden’s »

Inside the Biden family business

Featured image Tony Bobulinski testified under oath before the House Oversight Committee yesterday. The Democrats of course sought to turn his appearance into a circus. Tox News captures a few of the highlights/lowlights here. Josh Christenson picks up a strand of Bobulinski’s testimony in the Biden family business newspaper of record here. This is classic. The lady reclaims her time. Heated exchange between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Tony Bobulinski. .@RepAOC: "Did »

Biden’s EV mandate

Featured image The Biden administration has a problem with the average American who wants nothing more than to be left alone. The administration wants to run our lives. Count the ways. It’s a long list that includes the displacement of cars powered by internal combustion engines by electric vehicles. We love the former and reject the latter. They therefore intend to force EVs down our throat. It’s for our own good! (Not.) »

Understanding Israel’s war, cont’d

Featured image Ron Dermer is Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs serving in the government war cabinet. He is an eloquent spokesman for Israel’s cause. Dan Senor sat down with Dermer for the current episode of the Call Me Back podcast. Dermer will be one of the government’s representatives dispatched to Washington in response to the summons for a meeting with Biden’s brain trust. Senor provides this summary of the podcast: In the »

Biden’s guidance for Israel

Featured image The Biden administration produced a disgraceful debacle with its exit from Afghanistan. We live with the consequences around the world. Our enemies hold Biden in contempt. The authors of the debacle have suffered no impairment of their self-regard, let alone any detrimental effect on their career. Merrily they roll along. The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the debacle yesterday. Retired Army General Mark Milley, former chairman of »

The right to shout “BS” during a pandemic

Featured image I found the oral argument of the case now styled Murthy v. Missouri this past Monday to be utterly demoralizing. As soon as the oral argument concluded I rashly hazarded my assessment that it portends a victory for the massive censorship-industrial complex represented by the Biden administration. My assessment was a hot take based on the tenor of the argument. The argument seemed to me to reflect a fantasy world. »

Spring can really hang you up the most

Featured image As a break from the news of the day I’m taking the liberty of reposting this tribute to a great song with an unusual story behind it. Since I first wrote this 18 years ago, YouTube has become a resource that allows me to fill out the story. Stretching from Ella Fitzgerald to Fran Landesman to T.S. Eliot and Geoffrey Chaucer, this is the bare-bones version of the tale: There »

Netanyahu’s case

Featured image Representatives of the Israeli government have been summoned by the Biden administration to meet in Washington next week. See Joel Pollak’s Breitbart News story on National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s press conference yesterday here (the White House transcript is posted here). This is classic: Sullivan said that Biden had specifically criticized Netanyahu’s plans to attack Hamas in Rafah. Sullivan said that Biden had addressed what he called a “straw man,” »

A lift too far: The Court of Appeals decision [With Comment by John]

Featured image On the local front, I have sought to draw attention to the case of JaycCee Cooper v. USA Powerlifting in several posts accessible here. Filed in Ramsey County District Court and assigned to Judge Patrick Diamond, the case raises the question whether USAP’s separation of men from women in USAP’s Minnesota competitions must yield to Cooper’s self-identification as a woman. Although a biological male, Cooper seeks to compete with the »

A bloodbath in the Supreme Court

Featured image This morning the Supreme Court held oral argument in the case that is now styled Murthy v. Missouri. C-SPAN has posted audio of the oral argument here. The case arises from the government’s “encouragement” of censorship by the social media platforms, as documented in the Twitter Files. We have followed the case as it has wended its way through the district court to the Fifth Circuit and then to the »

Shady Grove, Act III

Featured image The Star Tribune represents the mainstream media at work in Minnesota. It is the dominant voice of conventional wisdom that relentlessly peddles the left-wing line on its news pages and in its editorial positions. It is, moreover, a profitable business owned by a billionaire. Glen Taylor bought it in 2014 for $100 million. He may have assumed some of the paper’s debt in the process. It reportedly makes a substantial »

Biden unplugged

Featured image In his weekly NRO column yesterday, Andrew McCarthy urges readers to review the transcript of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s interview of President Biden. Hur interviewed Biden in the course of his investigation last year on October 8 and October 9. The Department of Justice did not see fit to release the transcripts until the day of Hur’s congressional testimony last week. As McCarthy puts it, “the transcript is such a »

Understanding Israel’s war, cont’d

Featured image Rick Richman is the author of And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel (2023) and Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler (2018), both published by Encounter Books. He forwards the video of Dave Rubin’s “utterly amazing interview” of former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and now Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer below with the recommendation »

Sunday morning coming down

Featured image John Sebastian celebrates his 80th birthday today. He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2008. I had a great time compiling a set of videos in his honor last year. I can’t let Sebastian’s big 8-0 pass without inviting readers to take another look back with this revised and expanded edition. Sebastian grew up in Greenwich Village in a musical family. He is saturated in American music »