Law
November 16, 2019 — Scott Johnson
I observed earlier this week that there is a classic satire of democratic politics struggling to escape from the House’s impeachment inquiry. It was only yesterday that the Obama administration refused to provide lethal military aid to the Ukraine. Now the provision of lethal military aid appears to have become a holy sacrament in the evolving Democratic orthodoxy, one with its own martyrs and rites and hymns. You know, like
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October 16, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
I once heard Jonah Goldberg talk about a book in which multiple conservative and multiple liberal authors were asked to write whatever they wanted to about politics and political theory. As Goldberg told the story (or at least as I remember it), the conservative authors collectively presented an array of theoretical musings (libertarian, social conservative, natural law based, etc.). The liberal authors all wrote about how Democrats could win the
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September 22, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
In a talk at Brigham Young University, Justice Neil Gorsuch denied that the Supreme Court is split along partisan lines. Chief Justice Roberts has made a similar denial. He disputes the idea that there are Obama judges and Trump judges. Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative jurist who would like to join Gorsuch on Roberts on the Supreme Court, has echoed the Chief Justice’s view. At a conference at the College
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September 10, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Attorney Generals from almost every state have banded together to investigate whether Google is violating the antitrust laws. This will be a bipartisan effort. The lead AGs are Ken Paxton, a Republican from Texas, and Karl Racine, a Democrat from the District of Columbia. The two “dissenters” are also bipartisan. Only the AGs from California and Alabama have not joined in. A bipartisan group of AGs held a press conference
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September 10, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Senior district judge Marianne O. Battani sentenced Rand Paul’s attacker, one Rene Boucher, to imprisonment for 30 days. Sentencing guidelines prescribed a 21-27 month sentencing range. Recalling the severe injuries sustained by Senator Paul, one wonders how Judge Battani came up with a 30-day sentence. So did the government. The government appealed Judge Battani’s sentence to the Sixth Circuit. Yesterday the Sixth Circuit vacated Boucher’s sentence and returned the case
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September 9, 2019 — Scott Johnson
In his weekly NR column this past Saturday Andrew McCarthy decried “The turn to a pre9/11 mindset.” In part the column takes up last week’s decision (linked below) invalidating the Terrorist Screening Database. Secretly compiled by the government, the watch list subjects those listed to heightened security vetting before they are permitted to board commercial aircraft. My friend Andy writes: Judge Anthony Trenga’s watch-list decision (Elhady v. Kable) is a
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August 31, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
The 9/11 attacks occurred almost 18 years ago. Now, finally, a trial date has been set for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other plotters of the attacks. That date is January 11, 2021. These bastards should have been executed no later than in 2009, after they acknowledged, and attempted to justify, their roles in the 9/11 terrorism. But if a trial was needed, it should have occurred years ago. Why didn’t
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August 29, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Earlier this year, George Soros heavily funded primary challenges to two veteran Northern Virginia Commonwealth Attorneys, both of who whom have served their counties well and both of whom are Democrats. In Arlington County, Soros backed Parisa Dehghani-Tafti, a criminal defense lawyer whose slander of the local police force was her calling card. She narrowly defeated Theo Stamos. In Fairfax County, Soros funded Steve Descano in his race against incumbent
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August 17, 2019 — Scott Johnson
The Wall Street Journal has adapted Charles Kesler’s editorial in the forthcoming issue of the Claremont Review of Books — we’ll be getting to a few highlights ourselves next week — into the column “California’s biggest cities confront a ‘defecation crisis'” (subhead: “Lawmakers ban plastic straws as a far worse kind of waste covers the streets of San Francisco and L.A.”). Having turned one of the most beautiful cities in
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August 13, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Scott Jenkins is the sheriff of Culpeper County in Virginia. In that capacity, and pursuant to requests from the federal government, he turned an illegal immigrant over to ICE once that immigrant finished serving his criminal sentence. The illegal immigrant had been arrested for driving without a license and for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The Culpeper County Jail received a detainer from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
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August 13, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Today is the official publication date of my friend Andrew McCarthy’s Ball of Collusion: The Plot to Rig an Election and Destroy a Presidency. Courtesy of Encounter Books I read an advance copy of the book last week and want to recommend it enthusiastically to Power Line readers. Even though I have closely followed the “collusion” story as it has come into public view since January 2017, I was reminded
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August 6, 2019 — John Hinderaker
In 2017, the New York Times ran an editorial that, by any normal standard, libeled Sarah Palin. It harkened back six years to 2011, when Jared Loughner, an insane person who listed the Communist Manifesto among his favorite books and may never have heard of Sarah Palin, murdered six people in Tucson, Arizona. Democrats made the absurd claim that Loughner’s spree was caused by the publication of a map by
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August 4, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Students of ancient history may recall the victimization of Nicholas Sandmann by the Washington Post and other organs of the mainstream media this past January. Working from their reports, social media amplified the wrongs committed against Sandmann by the mainstream media. In due course Sandmann filed defamation lawsuits against the Washington Post and others. Our own comments on the lawsuit against the Post focused on the constitutional protection afforded defamation
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August 1, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Federal Judge John Koeltl has dismissed the Democratic National Committee lawsuit against the Trump campaign, Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, George Papadopoulos, Richard Gates, Roger Stone, the Russian Federation, various Russians, Joseph Mifsud [!], Wikileaks, and Julian Assange. The DNC alleged in the lawsuit that the Russian Federation had hacked the DNC computers and stolen its emails during the 2016 campaign. The Russian Federation, however, is protected by
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July 29, 2019 — Steven Hayward
The controversy about rat-infested cities provokes a strong sense of deja vu, as a proposed federal rat eradication program was perhaps the turning point against LBJ’s “Great Society” back in 1967. A little background and the climax to this story from the first volume of my Age of Reagan: Many poor urban neighborhoods have yet to recover [from the rise in crime], for it was precisely the poor, and largely
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July 18, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting en banc, decided that Virginia’s statutory scheme of regulating and prosecuting “habitual drunkards” is unconstitutionally vague and violates the Eighth Amendment rights of alcoholics. The vote was 8-7. All eight judges in the majority were nominated by Democratic presidents. One, Roger Gregory, was also nominated by a Republican. George W. Bush renominated Gregory, who wasn’t confirmed while Bill Clinton was president, as
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July 17, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, I discussed briefly George Conway’s Washington Post op-ed, in which he claimed that President Trump is a racist. The op-ed was long on biographical information about Conway, but devoid of argumentation. That’s fitting, because Conway’s biography is his calling card when it comes to getting op-eds published by the mainstream media. From the Post’s perspective, he’s a two-fer — a Republican and the spouse of one of Trump’s most
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