May 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Some revision required

Featured image It would be a mistake to rely on the United Nations for information about anything, especially anything related to the Middle East. In Israel’s current war the UN operates as an arm of Hamas. It is nevertheless worth noting — as the Foundation for Defense of Democracies does in this Flash Brief: The United Nations Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) revised its child fatality figure from the Gaza »
May 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Sleepers, awake!

Featured imageThe new book by Victor Davis Hanson is The End of Everything: How Wars Descend Into Annihilation. It was published this past Tuesday. The New York Post extracted Victor’s thesis statement from the book for this column (the headline doesn’t come close to capturing the thesis). In the book Victor recounts the annihilation of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan. Victor provides a précis in the publisher’s video below (more VDH »
May 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Be Kind to Fish!

Featured imageA family member pointed out this PETA tweet as an object of derision: Just a reminder that tuna fish are individuals who didn’t want to die to be your sushi dinner. — PETA (@peta) May 5, 2024 Heh. Are tuna fish “individuals” that shouldn’t be caught and eaten? That is an easy view to mock, as many did in comments on PETA’s tweet. As commenters pointed out, tuna are predators. »
May 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Biden Is a “Total Moron”

Featured imageTonight Donald Trump held a rally before 80,000 to 100,000 cheering fans in New Jersey. Joe Biden, in contrast, could hold a rally in a parking lot. Trump is not one of my 25 favorite politicians, but the fine points are rapidly becoming irrelevant. The New York Post reports: “You could take the 10 worst presidents in the history of our country, and add them up .. and they haven’t »
May 11, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Eurovision Winds Up Happily

Featured imageThe giant Eurovision pop music competition came to a climax with the finals this evening in Malmo, Sweden. Pretty much all of the news surrounding the event related to Israel’s participation. Israel’s representative, Eden Golan, all of 20 years old, was booed during rehearsals. Thousands of anti-Israel demonstrators turned out Thursday for the semifinal rounds, and again tonight during the final round of competition: Thousands of people protested in Malmo »
May 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward

Podcast: The 3WHH on Judges Without Judgment

Featured imageJohn Yoo hosts this week’s episode from exile in Austin, Texas, where he humors me and Lucretia with our extra-legal views on the Trump trials and tribulations in a Manhattan courtroom, and speculate how Trump’s “Letter from the Rikers Island Jail” would read (though it will be more likely in the form of Tweets or TruthSocial posts). Have we discovered a trial judge who seems to have no judgment at »
May 11, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Week in Pictures: Dog Days of the 2024 Campaign

Featured imageGreat moments in presidential campaign immolation: George Romney confessing to being brainwashed; Howard Dean screaming like deranged Burlington street person; Hillary Clinton declaring half of America to be “deplorable;” Rick Perry saying “oops.” And now Kristi Noem shooting a dog—and maybe RFK Jr. confessing having his brain eaten by a worm, though I thought Kennedys preferred whisky to tequila. Speaking of dogs, over at the Trump trial this week. . »
May 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Eurovision, Take 2 [Updated Again]

Featured imageI wrote here about how Israel’s presence has roiled Eurovision, the big European pop music competition. Each country is represented by an artist, either an individual or a group. After two semifinals, the lineup for the final evening is now set. Somewhat remarkably, the Israeli contestant passed through the semifinal round and will compete in the finals. The result is predictable; the London Times reports: “Thousands protest over Gaza as »
May 10, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Douglas Murray: Choose life, not the death cults

Featured imageThis past Monday evening our friends at the Manhattan Institute recognized Douglas Murray (“for his unwavering defense of Western values”) and Ross Perot, Jr. (“for representing the best of civic engagement in Dallas and throughout Texas”) at the institute’s annual Alexander Hamilton Award Dinner. In his acceptance speech Murray describes his recent time in Israel and Gaza. He celebrates the spirit and heroism of the living Israelis he met and »
May 10, 2024 — Scott Johnson

The Nine-Percent Solution

Featured imageIn his interview with Erin Burnett for CNN, President Biden most notably announced his betrayal of Israel the day after proclaiming his “ironclad” support. We had seen it coming. It wasn’t a surprise. It was obviously top of what is left of his mind. He also unleashed a series of whoppers that suggest he is lost in a senescent fog. The editors of the New York Post tabulate and itemize »
May 9, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley

Signer of the Times

Featured imageJoe Biden has been called as a waxworks effigy of a president, sock puppet, bobblehead and so forth. Those descriptions are all valid, but there’s a better way to view the Delaware Democrat now occupying the White House. Consider the experience of the composite character president David Garrow charted in Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama. During Obama’s eulogy of Nelson Mandela on December 10, 2013, South African interpreter »
May 11, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Another stab in the back

Featured imageIn February President Biden promulgated National Security Memorandum 20. NSM-20 directs the State Department to “obtain certain credible and reliable written assurances from foreign governments receiving [U.S.] defense articles and, as appropriate, defense services” that they will abide by U.S. and international law. NSM-20 also requires the Departments of State and Defense to report to Congress within 90 days on the extent to which these governments and services are abiding »
May 10, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Oil Companies: Please Support Trump!

Featured imageA person could make it his life’s work to respond to all of the ignorant, unfair and dishonest attacks that liberals make on Donald Trump. I don’t want to do that. But I do want to comment briefly on the latest Trump “scandal”: At a Dinner, Trump Assailed Climate Rules and Asked $1 Billion From Big Oil.* Many outlets tried to make it sound like Trump was soliciting a bribe: »
May 10, 2024 — Steven Hayward

The Daily Chart: Peak Climatism?

Featured imageMatthew Yglesias, a progressive-leaning writer with a popular Substack site, reflected recently on how his views about climate change have departed from progressive orthodoxy. He writes: “I’ve come to see the mainstreaming of this fairly extreme approach to climate change as probably the central error of the contemporary progressive movement. . . Voters don’t care that much about the Democrats’ top priority.” Maybe, just maybe, we have reached and passed »
May 10, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Begin & Bibi v. Biden

Featured imageIn a November 2020 Wall Street Journal column Tevi Troy recalled “When Biden Met Begin” (posted in accessible form on Pundicity). Tevi recounted how Biden and Begin once clashed in a private June 1982 session with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: Mr. Biden, 39, lectured the 68-year-old [Israeli Prime Minister Menachem] Begin over Israeli settlements, jabbing his finger at the prime minister and banging his fist on the desk. Mr. »
May 10, 2024 — Scott Johnson

Thoughts from the ammo line

Featured imageBRIDESMAIDS OF HAMAS — not better than brides. Ammo Grrrll writes: Some years ago in the U.K. a 15-year-old ninny decided to run to Syria to become a “Bride of ISIS.” When the reality of that life sank in, of course she demanded to be let BACK IN to the U.K. She even claimed she would be a force to fight terrorism if allowed to come home. By some miracle, »
May 9, 2024 — John Hinderaker

Who Are the Anti-Semites?

Featured imageThe New York Times, alarmed that its fellow leftists have outed themselves as anti-Semites on campuses and in the streets (not to mention in Congress), has published an interminable article, with four reporters’ bylines, claiming that Republicans are the real anti-Semites. There isn’t much need to read the article, as the headline says it all: “How Republicans Echo Antisemitic Tropes Despite Declaring Support for Israel.” The Times purports to use »