2016 Election

The other dossier

Featured image We have yet to ascertain the source of the counterintelligence investigation that culminated in the Mueller Switch Project. Andrew McCarthy and Lee Smith are the two analysts who have both refused to disseminate the carefully cultivated stories of the Obama/Clinton apparatus and provided their own invaluable analysis to the proceedings. Today Lee Smith complicates my understanding of the Steele Dossier in the intensely reported RealClearInvestigations column “Unpacking the other Clinton-linked »

Investigate this

Featured image Yesterday Rep. Ron DeSantis and ten other Republican congressmen sent a letter to Attorney General Sessions, FBI Director Wray and Sessions designee John Huber seeking the investigation of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Loretta Lynch and other players “in connection with 2016 campaign controversies,” as FOX News puts it in its report. Observing “the dissimilar degrees of zealousness” that have marked the investigations of the respective presidential campaigns, the letter cites »

Is It History, Or Is It Propaganda?

Featured image Fox News reports on an AP American History textbook that tells our kids what happened in the 2016 presidential election. From Hillary Clinton’s point of view, of course: Tarra Snyder, a student at Rosemount High School in Minnesota, who saw a copy of the book sent to her school, told Fox News she was “appalled” after seeing how “blatantly biased” the newest edition of “By the People: A History of »

Digitalships and Double-Standards

Featured image I don’t know if anyone has yet used the term “digitalship” to describe the rising “dictatorship of the digerati”—perhaps both the term and phrase are too ungainly—but if not I’ll lay claim to it as a literary device (hat tip to Jeane Kirkpatrick, too) for pointing out the massive hypocrisy of the left over Cambridge Analytica’s use of Facebook data on behalf of the Trump campaign. Because as near as »

What Were the Russians Up To?

Featured image John has offered his take on the Mueller news just below. Here’s my first pass at it: The indictment of 13 Russians handed down today by special prosecutor Robert Mueller is going to dominate the news cycle at least through the weekend and likely beyond. This is a “Groundhog Day” event, assuring at least six more weeks (if not months) of the Trump-Russia story line. The indictment provides details of »

Breaking: The Memo Is Out!

Featured image The infamous Nunes memo has been released in the last hour. The House website is intermittently clogging up as you might imagine, but you can try to download it yourself here or here. On a quick first read, there is not much in it that we didn’t already know in general terms— the flyblown Steele dossier was the sole “evidence” the FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to monitor »

Did Obamacare Cost Hillary the Election?

Featured image Back in 2011 I noted over at National Review the work of three Stanford political scientists who dove deep into the data of the 2010 election to discern the causes of the wave that saw Republicans win 63 House seats from Democrats, when none of the pre-election prediction models forecast that Republicans would come anywhere close to that large a gain. Their article, “The 2010 Elections: Why Did Political Science »

The Year in Review

Featured image As followers of academia—in other words, people known otherwise as masochists—know, liberals of a Rawlsian variety always like to have us do thought experiments behind a “veil of ignorance,” which, yes, is ironic given that the ignorance of most liberals is seldom veiled at all. Still, bear with me here, and indulge this favorite liberal trope for a minute. Imagine a new president whose first year saw: withdrawal from the »

Ishmael Jones: The Trump Dossier

Featured image Ishmael Jones writes to revisit the infamous “Trump Dossier.” It is the Rosetta Stone to the “collusion” hysteria and related “fake news” with which we have been inundated since the 2016 election. Mr. Jones is the pseudonymous former CIA officer and author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture. He advises that his comments here are based upon his knowledge of how intelligence reports are written and »

Exploding: Hindenburg or cigar

Featured image Writing about the Fusion GPS scandal, Conrad Black uses the metaphor of the exploding Hindenburg. Although it’s a metaphor that should be avoided when talking Clinton scandals, I think it would more aptly be described with the metaphor of an exploding cigar. Here’s why. The Trump Dossier has been widely used to foment and propagate the hysteria over Russian collusion with the Trump campaign. How widely we don’t know. What »

Russian “Meddling” Promoted Black Lives Matter

Featured image It is an article of faith among liberals that Russian “meddling” in the 2016 election–the word that is always used–was of world-historical significance. But what exactly the Russians did has been murky. Maybe they spearphished the DNC’s email account and tried unsuccessfully to spearphish the RNC’s account, although Julian Assange–who should know, but is an unreliable witness–apparently denies that claim. Beyond that, the Russians are accused of publishing anti-Hillary stories »

What Happened? A Horrible Candidate Lost

Featured image So far, I have refrained from weighing in on Hillary Clinton’s post-mortem, What Happened, even though, as one of the few pundits who predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidential election, I perhaps can claim at least some insight into what happened. Why did I foresee that Trump would win? Not because I anticipated or understood what became the Trump phenomenon. Rather, because I thought that Hillary was such »

Want to See a Real Nightmare?

Featured image Paul brings our attention below to the NY Post account of Hillary’s atrocious book debut in New York yesterday, and at this point in life I simply can’t be bothered to follow the rollout and howlers of Hillary’s latest apologia (her third in 15 years, I think?). I’ve already linked here before to my 2003 review of Hillary’s Living History, which apparently required six ghostwriters. I’ll just repair once more »

Is the GOP establishment trying to nullify the 2016 election?

Featured image In an interview that will air tomorrow, Steve Bannon tells Charlie Rose that the Republican establishment is trying to “nullify” the 2016 election. There’s a lot I respect about Bannon, but this claim strikes me as false. The obvious problem with it is that every Republican member of the House was elected in 2016 or later. Indeed, since it’s impossible to win a House seat with fewer votes than one’s »

It Takes A Distillery—or Three

Featured image Scott has mentioned the breathless anticipation for Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming book What Happened, and my own anticipation sent me back to the review I wrote of Hillary’s 2003 memoir, Living History in the CRB, which began thus: Years ago I developed a standardized measurement for the agony involved in reading and reviewing tendentious books. I call it the “Donaldson Scale,” after Sam Donaldson of ABC News, whose book I once »

A Lesson in Punching Back

Featured image We’re three weeks away from the Georgia special election to fill the open House seat of Tom Price, who moved up to be secretary of Health and Human Liabilities. By all accounts it is a very tight race in a district that Trump carried by a narrow margin, meaning it is winnable by either side. It’s one of those suburban districts where Trump is not especially popular even with many »

Why the Left Secretly Loves Trump

Featured image Forget all the wailing and gnashing of teeth by the left. That’s just for show. Remember that the left was never very enthusiastic about Hillary Clinton, and are not sorry to have seen her lose. Trump’s victory, however, provides the left with something much more important that patronage in Washington DC: it provides them with the supposed evidence to bolster their essential hatred and contempt for America, and endless opportunities »