November 19, 2019 — Steven Hayward
• Okay, here we go: Two guards on duty the night of Jeffery Epstein’s “suicide” were charged today with criminal negligence on the job: The night that Jeffrey Epstein hanged himself in a Manhattan jail, one of the guards on duty was catching up on sports news and looking at motorcycle sales on a government computer. The other spent time shopping online for furniture. For about two hours, they appeared
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November 18, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The White House announced today the forthcoming recipients of the National Medal of Arts and National Humanities Medal, and one recipient stands out: The Claremont Institute for championing the Nation’s founding principles and enriching American minds. Its publications and public events have deepened our understanding and appreciation of American freedom, democracy, justice, and rule of law. The Claremont Institute is only the second think tank ever awarded the National Humanities
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November 17, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The New York Times today took after FedEx for the sin of having a low corporate tax bill. Sample: FedEx reaped big savings [from the Trump tax cut], bringing its effective tax rate from 34 percentin fiscal year 2017 to less than zero in fiscal year 2018, meaning that, overall, the government technically owed it money. But it did not increase investment in new equipment and other assets in the
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November 17, 2019 — Steven Hayward
This week I catch up with Henry Olsen to go through the inside baseball of the unfolding Democratic presidential primary season, but also the inside baseball about . . . baseball! Did you know that the Houston Astros colluded with the Russians and Ukrainians to steal the 2017 World Series! So runs the allegation, with hearings no doubt to follow. In any case, I actually stumped Henry by recalling the
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November 16, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Paul noted a couple days ago the very public “workout” publicity stunt of Colin Kaepernick, which was scheduled to go off at 3 pm eastern time today at Atlanta Falcons stadium. But suddenly this morning Kaepernick complained that the media were being overly restricted, and suddenly moved the event to a local high school and delayed the start time. ESPN reported about an hour ago: Colin Kaepernick’s NFL workout is
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November 16, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Hey, have you heard that Jeffery Epstein didn’t kill himself? I hear that too. That ought to be good enough to convict someone. Hillary maybe. If hearsay and memes are good enough to impeach the president, why not just go with it and solve the Epstein killing. Headlines of the week: And finally. . .
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November 13, 2019 — Steven Hayward
It is tempting to do a Mid-Week in Pictures special offering today because I have a lot of great material accumulating in my Week in Pictures folder for this Saturday—way more than I will be able to use already. But I don’t want to overdo it. Instead, herewith a post on just two pictures, because each has a good story. First up: As it happens, I once got the opportunity,
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November 13, 2019 — Steven Hayward
• Wait—Mark Sanford was running for president? Somehow I missed him on the campaign trail. But now he will have more time for that other trail. • Is this real news, or the Babylon Bee (which is more accurate news these days): Hillary Clinton says “many, many, many people” are urging her to run for president again next year. As the Bee points out, most of these people are likely
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November 11, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The other day we noted how Williams College was attempting to take the crown as the most infantile leftist college. (Evergreen State is permanently disqualified, because who can compete with that?) But Northwestern University is not taking the challenge lying down. Northwestern has one of the most highly regarded journalism schools in the country (though that is obviously a mark against it), and yesterday the Daily Northwestern student newspaper issued
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November 11, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Move over Cook County, Illinois, and make room for King County in Washington state, where Seattle’s ongoing bid to rival San Francisco in the crazy department is only exceeded by its dubious record in ballot counting after close elections. Last week I noted that the attempt to reimpose affirmative action in Washington state had failed at the ballot box, but then the “late vote” started coming in from King County.
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November 9, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The fall of the Berlin Wall on this day 30 years ago was the most spectacular moment of the end of the Cold War, but in fact only represented the mid-point in the “last sad chapter” of this bizarre story, as Ronald Reagan once put it. The occasion of remembering the last day of the Wall is a fitting time to recall the broader sweep of events that surrounded it.
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November 9, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I hear the Centers for Disease Control is opening a case file on the sudden onset of Jeffery Epstein “suicide” memes, which appear to be spreading faster than the clap in a 19th century seaside whore house (which whorehouses should not be confused with either Congress, the Clinton Foundation, or Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, though this confusion is quite understandable). I don’t think this is going away any time soon.
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November 8, 2019 — Steven Hayward
Just in time for your weekend reveries, John Tamny of Freedom Works and RealClearMarkets joins me to discuss his provocative new book, They’re Both Wrong: A Policy Guide for America’s Frustrated Independent Thinkers, just out this week from our friends at the American Institute for Economic Research. Tamny is one of the great imaginative and original contrarian thinkers of our time on matters of economics and policy, as readers of
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November 7, 2019 — Steven Hayward
When last we checked in on Williams College a year ago, a group of students had issued a petition opposing a call for Williams to adopt the free speech/free expression statement of the University of Chicago. The petition was so bad that, as I said at the time, “you have to read it, not to believe it.” It contains such gems as: “Free Speech,” as a term, has been co-opted
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November 6, 2019 — Steven Hayward
There is no sugarcoating yesterday’s election results: Republicans had a bad day. Their losses especially in many suburban areas (such as around Philadelphia) are not a good omen for next year. They were trounced badly in Virginia, despite the supposed Republican-friendly gerrymander. (And let’s see how fast liberals forget about how gerrymandering is an “offense to democracy” when they are in charge of it in more states two years from
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November 3, 2019 — Steven Hayward
I’m starting to wonder whether Elizabeth Warren is another Karl Rove/Steve Bannon dirty trick—a plant inside the Democratic Party with the perfect appeal to make the party sign up for the biggest political suicide note since the Labour Party decided to run on unilateral disarmament against Margaret Thatcher in 1983. (Labour lost in a historic landslide.) Warren’s Medicare-for-All will depend apparently on a 6 percent wealth tax on the super-rich,
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November 2, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The opioid crisis has been prominent in the news for the last several years, while more recently the controversy over vaping has erupted to new heights, with the Trump Administration proposing to ban many vaping products. There are some glaring contradictions and ironies between our attitudes and policy responses to both issues, but it takes someone of Sally Satel’s perception to notice these dimensions. Sally Satel, a resident fellow of
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