Displaying posts published in

March 2023

Therefore What? Charles C. W. Cooke Progressives in the media have found a clever way of blaming conservatives, whatever happens.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/therefore-what/

“If a person progressives like is attacked, then that must be the result of conservatives speaking or voting or living as they see fit. And if a person progressives like is an attacker, then that must be the fault of the result of conservatives speaking or voting or living as they see fit. Whatever happens, the same people get blamed. It’s revolting.”

Per Ari Blaff, Terry Moran said the following on television yesterday:

ABC News anchor Terry Moran mischaracterized the legislation and implied it may have been related to the attack.

“The shooter identified herself as a transgender person. The state of Tennessee earlier this month passed and the governor signed a bill that banned transgender medical care for minors as well as a law that prohibited adult entertainment as well as male and female impersonators after a series of drag show controversies in that state.”

I would like to know what is supposed to come next in Moran’s sequence. The shooter was transgender; Tennessee had passed some laws she didn’t like; therefore . . .

Therefore what? Therefore what happened makes sense? Therefore she had no choice but to murder some nine-year-olds? Therefore the State of Tennessee is guilty in some sense? What?

I’d like to know why these facts were raised as they were. Because, to be quite honest with you, I cannot see an innocent explanation for Moran’s having juxtaposed them with the news he was relaying. Certainly, we can quibble over the scale of Moran’s implication, but there seems little doubt that his words were explanatory in nature.

And, unless such explanations are followed by immediate condemnation — which Moran’s were not — that’s a pretty massive problem, isn’t it? Elsewhere yesterday, an NBC reporter named Benjamin Ryan tweeted that “NBC has ID’d the Nashville school shooter as [], 28, who identifies as transgender and had no previous criminal record. Nashville is home to the Daily Wire, a hub of anti-trans activity by @MattWalshBlog, @BenShapiro and @MichaelJKnowles.”

Okay. Therefore what? Therefore Walsh, Shapiro, and Knowles are ultimately responsible? Therefore the shooter should have targeted those people instead? Therefore what? I’d like to know.

Why Did the Biden Administration Oppose Israeli Judicial Reform? Jonathan Tobin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19537/israel-judicial-reform

Ignore Washington’s hypocritical talk about protecting democracy. They want a weak government that won’t make trouble when it comes to Iran, and they won’t stop until they get one.

Washington made no secret of its efforts to directly intervene in a domestic Israeli dispute….

The people who jammed the streets… see the maintenance of an unaccountable court with virtually unlimited power as the only way to maintain the Israeli left’s political power even when they lose elections….

Washington is… determined… to oust a democratically elected government by any means possible.

What the White House and State Department want is more pliable Israeli Prime Minister, who will keep quiet about the nuclear threat from Iran, and who can be intimidated into not acting too forestall that deadly threat to Israel’s existence.

As for behaving like a dictator, Biden’s predilection for governing by executive order… even when his diktats are obviously contrary to the constitution or existing laws makes anything Netanyahu might attempt look like child’s play.

[Biden’s] administration apparently thinks that when Israel’s Supreme Court strikes down Netanyahu’s efforts to govern – on the basis of no law, and only on the judges, subjective ideas about what is “reasonable” – it’s a great idea.

[E]stablishment Jewish groups… joined the liberal groups in praising Netanyahu’s surrender to the mob and then had the chutzpah to laud the protesters, who sought to sabotage the country to get their way without even any attempt at balance by treating supporters of the government and reform, who clearly outnumbered the critics at the ballot box last November, as equally praiseworthy.

[T]hey also understand that the hyperbolic claims that Netanyahu and advocates of judicial reform seek to impose a dictatorship or a Torah state is pure fiction.

What Biden and his supporters want in Jerusalem isn’t so much an all-powerful Supreme Court… but anything that can help oust the prime minister.

The [Biden] administration is now willing to tolerate Iran having nuclear weapons as long as they are not going to publicly flaunt them.

This attitude isn’t just unacceptable to all of Israel’s major political parties. It constitutes a grave threat to the security of the Jewish state that no Israeli prime minister could reasonably be expected to tolerate.

The brazen nature of Biden’s attack on Netanyahu… speaks volumes about how much the administration wants an Israeli government that won’t cause trouble over Iran.

It didn’t play a decisive role in the drama that unfolded in Israel as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to call a halt to his efforts to enact judicial reform. But the Biden administration’s willingness to involve itself in the push to oppose the measure was remarkable for two reasons.

Time to End the Veil of Secrecy Inside D.C. Kangaroo Court The new chief judge needs to shine much-needed light inside the E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse. Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/28/time-to-end-the-veil-of-secrecy-inside-d-c-kangaroo-court/

Judge Beryl Howell did not get the gushing send off from her colleagues she undoubtedly expected.

Howell, appointed to the D.C. District Court by Barack Obama in 2010 and elevated to the court’s highest post in 2016—just in time to oversee numerous criminal investigations into Donald Trump—finished up her seven-year stint as chief judge earlier this month. Colleagues and staff assembled in her courtroom as the proverbial torch was passed to Judge James Boasberg, another Obama appointee.

But according to Politico, the retirement celebration turned into a “roast” of sorts as one judge after another chided Howell for her closed-doors dealings. 

“Howell seemed to freeze in her seat as the most senior jurist on the court, Judge Paul Friedman, publicly described her still-secret rulings in grand jury-related matters,” reporters Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney wrote on March 17. “[Her] fellow judges made clear they were as tantalized as the rest of the political world by Howell’s secret work presiding over grand juries that could lead to charges against former President Donald Trump.”

Howell sat “stone-faced” when Friedman teased how, “we’d all love to read her opinions, but we can’t.” Friedman also noted that Howell issued “100 secret grand jury opinions” as chief judge.

Tanya Chutkan, another Obama appointee, also chimed in. “There’s so much work Chief Judge Howell has done that we may never know about,” she joked.

Although she will remain on the bench as an associate judge, her farewell as chief ended on a sour note. Nevertheless, Howell got the last laugh, once again, at Trump’s expense.

In yet another sealed ruling, Howell rejected claims of privilege and ordered Evan Corcoran, one of Trump’s attorneys, to testify before a grand jury in the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into Team Trump’s handling of alleged classified documents. 

Howell’s penchant for secrecy, of course, doesn’t extend to the news media; details related to the sealed order were leaked a few days later. 

Israel’s protesters are enemies, not heroes, of democracy Erielle Davidson and Eugene Kontorovich

https://nypost.com/2023/03/28/israels-protesters-are-enemies-not-heroes-of-democracy/

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu announced Monday night he was temporarily pausing his government’s judicial-reform efforts in the face of strikes by key industries, insubordination in some parts of the military and huge protests.

While many within the international community, as well as on the Israeli left, will attempt to portray the announcement as a triumph of democracy, it is anything but.

The reforms seek to introduce a modicum of checks and balances into Israel’s political system, where the “court” sits as a de facto unelected supreme legislative chamber that can exercise veto power over every single government action.

The assault on the proposals, apart from the telegenic protesters, was actually rooted in the state’s bureaucracy, which remains highly sympathetic to the judiciary.

For 25 years, Israel’s Supreme Court has operated entirely without democratic constraints.

Not only does the court remain unfettered by any written constitution when evaluating a law — it is guided by such nebulous principles as “human dignity” and “liberty” — it’s also seized the ability to block any government act it deems “unreasonable.”

Perhaps most confounding, judges exercise veto power over the selection of their successors, resulting in an ideologically homogenous judiciary.

TikTok CEO Testimony Falls Totally Flat Why nothing short of a sale or nationwide ban will suffice. by Joseph Klein

https://www.frontpagemag.com/tiktok-ceo-testimony-falls-totally-flat/

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew ran into a bipartisan buzzsaw during his grueling five hours of testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23rd. The main take-away is that Tik Tok’s clock is winding down in the United States so long as it remains tied to its Chinese owner, ByteDance, which in turn is under the direct influence of the Chinese Communist regime.

Mr. Chew described TikTok’s efforts to create a more secure video sharing app platform intended to satisfy U.S. officials’ concerns about the Chinese regime’s access to American users’ personal information for surveillance purposes. He also claimed that TikTok is taking seriously and addressing the harmful content posted on the video sharing app that endangers children’s lives and mental health. But Mr. Chew failed miserably, dodging question after question posed by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.

Mr. Chew also raised eyebrows when he claimed that “ByteDance is not owned or controlled by the Chinese government. It is a private company.” Before the congressional hearing had even begun, the Chinese regime put the lie to Chew’s assertion. China’s commerce ministry ruled out a sale of TikTok’s so-called “private” U.S. business to an American company.

Chew would not even admit that TikTok’s parent, ByteDance, is a “Chinese company.” ByteDance, while incorporated in the Cayman Islands, is indeed a Chinese company headquartered in Beijing and fully subject to all of China’s laws.

“TikTok has repeatedly chosen the path for more control, more surveillance and more manipulation. Your platform should be banned,” said Washington Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee’s chair who set the bipartisan confrontational tone of the hearing.

Frank Pallone, the committee’s ranking Democrat from New Jersey, was equally critical of TikTok. “The combination of TikTok’s Beijing communist-based China ownership and its popularity exacerbates its danger to our country and to our privacy,” he said.

The ‘Woke’ Tyranny Welcome to a substitute religion filling the void created by Christianity’s decline. by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-woke-tyranny/

A minor culture-war squall recently happened over the definition of “woke.” Activists have taken to responding to conservatives who use the term by asking them to define it. The various definitions are usually decried as incorrect, then followed up with QED. certainty that conservatives have no clue what it means, and use the term merely as a question-begging epithet and a political smear.

The word is indeed a political weapon, one adaptable to various political ideologies.  But that doesn’t mean the question of meaning is idle. There are various dimensions of the idea of “woke” that originated over a century ago and continue to shape our culture for the worse. A closer examination of “wokeness” reveals that at its heart lie some of the most destructive ideas of modernity that have been spuriously repackaged as cutting-edge novelties.

Like most definitions, a recent one in Atlantic by Thomas Chatterton Williams captures some of the components of the concept, though the author begs the question by writing that conservatives “end up using this word as an epithet to refer—vaguely—to seemingly anything changing in the culture that they don’t like.” That’s not a fact, but an unsubstantiated assertion of “woke” received wisdom.

The author’s own definition begs even more questions: “The constellation of social-justice concerns and discursive lenses that have powerfully influenced institutional decision making does [sic] work to sort individuals into abstract identity groups arranged on spectrums of privilege and marginalization.”

But what specifically and empirically comprises concepts like “social justice,” “privilege,” and “marginalization”? Lurking behind these cant-terms are questionable assumptions about the role of socio-economic status in personal success, and the contested, often subjective metrics used to define “privilege” and the “marginalization” the follows from its lack.

Biden to Israel: “They Cannot Continue Down this Road” “Biden said Netanyahu won’t be invited to visit the White House” by Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-to-israel-they-cannot-continue-down-this-road/

The leftist mobs shrieking hate and blocking ambulances claimed that they were fighting for “democracy” in Israel by demanding unlimited power for an unelected leftist judiciary that picks its own members.

This is what “democracy” looks like.

President Biden on Tuesday said he hopes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “walks away from” plans to pursue reforms to the country’s judiciary…

“Like many strong supporters of Israel, I’m very concerned, and I’m concerned that they get this straight. They cannot continue down this road,” Biden told reporters after a speech in North Carolina on the economy.

“Hopefully the prime minister will act in a way that he can try to work out some genuine compromise. But that remains to be seen,” Biden added.

Biden said Netanyahu won’t be invited to visit the White House “in the near term.”

Even Democrats Are Rejecting Biden Nominees By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2023/03/28/even-democrats-are-rejecting-biden-nominees-n1682125

Democrats have a 51-seat majority in the Senate, but that doesn’t mean that Joe Biden’s nominees for federal office and the federal bench are getting an automatic stamp of approval. In fact, there have been several recent high-profile embarrassing withdrawals by nominees for a variety of reasons.

Some have been too radical — even for Democrats. Some have been woefully unqualified. But the curious thing about these withdrawals is that Senate Majority Leader Senator Chuck Schumer and the White House are blaming Republicans for the nomination’s failures.

Most recently, the nominee to fill the vacant FAA administrator position, Phil Washington, was forced to withdraw after some Democrats pointed out that Washington, a former military officer and CEO of the Denver International Airport, needed a waiver from the Defense Department to serve as FAA administrator. Washington claimed he didn’t despite what the law clearly says.

In addition to the waiver problem, Washington — embarrassingly — had no aviation experience. Sen. Krysten Sinema (I-Ariz.) alluded to this deficit in Washington’s resume in a statement, saying that “the administration should quickly nominate a permanent FAA administrator with the necessary, substantial aviation safety experience and expertise.”

The Commerce Committee has been a particular sore spot for Biden.

Politico:

The Commerce Committee in particular has given Biden’s nominees a rough ride. FCC nominee Gigi Sohn withdrew earlier this month after being twice nominated by Biden for a position on the commission. That’s on top of several other tough confirmation fights consuming the early days of this Congress.

Julie Su’s nomination to head the Labor Department is expected to draw most of the GOP’s attention in the coming weeks; she had no Republican support in the vote to confirm her as deputy Labor Secretary in 2021, and moderate Democrats will face pressure to oppose her even though she won Democratic support back then.

Before barely being confirmed as undersecretary of labor, Julie Su had served as California’s labor secretary during the time that more than $32 billion in COVID-19 unemployment fraud occurred. This may prove to be a bridge too far for many Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, who only said, “I’m looking forward to the hearing and looking forward to her confirmation.”

North Korea Unveils New Nukes as U.S. Argues about ‘Misgendering’ By Catherine Salgado

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/catherinesalgado/2023/03/28/north-korea-unveils-new-nukes-as-us-argues-about-misgendering-n1682402

As a U.S. aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea for military drills, North Korea responded by unveiling new nuclear warheads. I guess that’s what you call an explosive statement.

Photos of the  smaller nuclear warheads, called Hwasan-31s, were released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Reuters reported.

Nuclear experts reportedly said that, based on the photos, North Korea has made progress “in miniaturising warheads that are powerful yet small enough to mount on intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States.” 

Meanwhile, back in America, mainstream media outlets, including New York Times, USA Today, and CNN, are apologizing for referring to a female murderer as a woman because she called herself “he/him,” and President Joe Biden cracks jokes about ice cream before discussing the shooting of six people, including three young children. Somehow, that’s not encouraging.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un visited the Nuclear Weapons Institute to inspect the nukes, nuclear counterattack operation plans, and ballistic missile warhead mounting tech. Kim was further reportedly briefed on an “IT-based integrated nuclear weapon management system called Haekbangashoe,” which Reuters reported means “nuclear trigger.”

Has Trump Won The Free-Trade Debate In The U.S.? I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/29/has-trump-won-the-debate-over-free-trade-in-the-u-s-ii-tipp-poll/

Trump’s ideas resonate even among Democrats

In recent decades, Americans have shown strong support for the idea of free trade, based on the belief that they would benefit as much as or more than our trading partners did. But in recent years, as trade and geopolitical conflict with China grew and economic growth slowed, Americans’ support for free trade has waned, as the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

Given recent public debates over trade, the online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,358 adults, taken from March 1-3, asked Americans three questions about current trade policy proposals. All come from recent proposals made by former President Donald Trump, as he presumably moves to run again for the presidency in 2024.

The results clearly showed a strong shift toward greater trade protection for domestic markets and workers, and a shift away from free trade.

The three questions all began identically, as follows: “Thinking about America’s trade and tax policy, please indicate the extent to which you support or oppose the following ideas:”

Respondents were then given three policy proposals to react to, including: 1) “Placing new tariffs on foreign goods;” 2) “Imposing strict controls on trade and investment with China;” and 3) “Cutting taxes for American workers and companies.”

The available answers included “Support strongly,” “Support somewhat,” “Oppose strongly,” “Oppose somewhat,” and “Not sure.”

Surprisingly, the answers showed a strong turn in favor of more protectionist measures for trade.