Archive for 2016
February 16, 2016
DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: Mountain lions targeting pets in California.
We have them in Tennessee now.
HILLARY CLINTON’S WAR ON MEN: Hillary Clinton hires woman who thinks it’s much better to falsely accuse a man of rape than to disbelieve an accuser. Unless, you know, the accuser is accusing Bill.
Related: Hillary allegations of ‘Bernie-Bro’ sexism didn’t hold up in the first place.
MARK MOYAR: The White House’s Seven Deadly Errors. “Strategic defeat often results from an accumulation of tactical failures. Repeated battlefield setbacks can destroy an adversary’s capabilities, as befell Napoleonic France, or its will, as befell Britain in the American War of Independence. In such cases, military organizations may deserve at least some of the blame for the strategic loss, because in most countries the military leadership bears primary responsibility for training, equipping, and commanding armed forces, functions that are fundamental to tactical effectiveness. Military strategy, by contrast, is often set by civilian leaders, and in the case of the United States it is the statutory prerogative of the civilian commander in chief. . . . A review of America’s military interventions since 2001 reveals that seven broad errors account for America’s inability to turn tactical successes into strategic victories. These errors are described below. In every instance, the error was the direct result of presidential decisions on policy or strategy.”
ANTONIN SCALIA, CIVIL LIBERTARIAN: Defense attorney Harvey Silverglate, author of Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent (but better known to InstaPundit readers as the co-founder of FIRE), writes a tribute to Justice Scalia’s war on vague criminal statutes:
Justice Scalia, more than any other member of the high court during his 30-year tenure, waged war with the government’s attempt to attack the liberty of citizens and others by brandishing laws that nobody really could comprehend. He understood, as few judges do, the extent of the day-to-day tyranny inflicted by any legal system where the laws are not clear as to what conduct can land a citizen in prison. In the 2011 Supreme Court case Sykes v. United States, Justice Scalia articulated this very concern. The majority determined that a particular crime – felony vehicle flight – constituted a “violent felony” under federal law; in practice, this ruling meant that the individual at the heart of the case was subject to a 15-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. Scalia dissented from the majority, arguing that the federal law in question was so vague in defining a “violent felony” that punishing Sykes under it was unconstitutional. He wrote, in part:
“We face a Congress that puts forth an ever-increasing volume of laws in general, and of criminal laws in particular. It should be no surprise that as the volume increases, so do the number of imprecise laws. And no surprise that our indulgence of imprecisions that violate the Constitution encourages imprecisions that violate the Constitution. Fuzzy, leave-the-details-to-be-sorted-out-by-the-courts legislation is attractive to the Congressman who wants credit for addressing a national problem but does not have the time (or perhaps the votes) to grapple with the nitty-gritty.”
Read the whole thing.
DEMOCRATS’ ESTABLISHMENT FIGHTING THE BERN: This piece by Jay Michaelson at The Daily Beast is entertaining, and telling: “Dear Bernie Voters: A Vote for Him is a Vote for Donald Trump”:
Dear Bernie Voter,
Unlike many Clinton supporters, I am not writing to you because I think you’re naïve, or misguided, or sexist, or dumb, or any of the other patronizing and condescending crap that Hillary voters often say. In fact, I probably agree with you on most issues. I am writing to you because I am sincerely worried that you will hand this election to the Republicans, and I want to do my best to convince you not to do so.
The point of primary elections is not to select a president; it’s to select a candidate. For that reason, “electability” is not just one among many issues: It is the central issue. Yet despite having absorbed several dozen pro-Bernie articles and videos, I have yet to hear a plausible path to victory for Bernie Sanders. . . .
Now, some of my pro-Bernie friends say that even if Bernie isn’t ultimately electable, they can’t vote for Clinton in the primary because she’s so awful on, well, insert your key issues here. That is, of course, a coherent position to take. If Clinton’s negatives, or Bernie’s positives, are so high as to be worth losing the general election, then of course it makes sense to vote your values. . . .
Show me a Sanders path to victory, or admit that you’re making that choice, and putting the Republican Party in charge of all three branches of government. . . It’s not compromising, selling out, or picking the lesser of two evils to choose a candidate that can appeal to the broad middle of America—it’s democracy.
Funny, this sounds exactly like the arguments that the GOPe makes against Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. The Democrats’ elite seem to think that in a Sanders vs. Cruz or Trump matchup, the GOP wins. The Republicans’ elite seems to think that in a Clinton vs. Cruz or Trump matchup, Clinton wins.
Presumably, then, both parties think that in a Clinton versus Cruz or Trump election, Clinton wins. While the latest RCP average does show Clinton beating Trump by an average of 4.7 percent, it actually shows Cruz narrowly besting Clinton by an average of 0.2 percent. Of course none of this polling matters if you don’t believe the polls, and they are acknowledged by many as increasingly inaccurate. So who knows?
What is clear is that both parties are feverishly trying to convince their base to abandon the “outsider” candidates. It’s almost like the more the political establishment (of either party) yells and screams at the unwashed masses, the more the unwashed masses tune them out.
FOLLOWING THE RULES AS WRITTEN IS OFTEN MOST BENEFICIAL TO THOSE WITH THE LEAST POWER: Antonin Scalia Was a Great Jurist for Criminal Defendants: The Supreme Court Justice’s opinions often favored the accused—because their rights were in the Constitution.
“I WON”
President Obama says he could have reached out more to Republicans https://t.co/qFMxAgcXNh pic.twitter.com/pEFlD0eJOZ
— Bloomberg Politics (@bpolitics) February 16, 2016
IN THE MAIL: The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom.
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TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1013.
DISPATCHES FROM THE HIGHER EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: Glock and Man at Mount St. Mary’s — A college president in over his big head.
Related: “This is hard for you because you think of the students as cuddly bunnies, but you can’t. You just have to drown the bunnies … put a Glock to their heads.”
Charming.
QUESTIONS NOBODY IS ASKING: Boston Globe opinion letter: Is Hillary ‘too competent to win?’
STEPHEN L. CARTER: Scalia’s Grave-Dancers Deserve a Harsh Verdict.
When the news broke Saturday that Justice Antonin Scalia had died at age 79, my Twitter feed began to fill with hate. Not disagreement or disrespect — actual hate. He was an ignorant waste of flesh, wrote one young fool. His death was the best news in decades, cheered another. Then there was the woman who just had to tell the world that she felt safer now than she had at the death of Osama bin Laden. And several people expressed the hope — the hope! — that Clarence Thomas would die next.
Thus we see the discursive toll of our depressing Supreme Court deathwatch. We’re actually rooting for people to die.
It’s unusual for a vacancy to occur in the midst of a presidential campaign, but it’s common as cake for activists to dream the hours away speculating on who’ll be next to go, and for journalists to count up the number of appointments they think the next president will get to make. Sometimes in their earnestness the activists of left and right do indeed sound as if they’re rooting for a death or two. They seem to think the justices whose votes enrage them deserve to go.
None of this is entirely new. My mentor, Justice Thurgood Marshall, didn’t die in harness, but I remember the deathwatch all the same. I was serving as one of his law clerks in 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected, and on election night, one of the television networks reported that Marshall had decided to quit the court, in order to give Jimmy Carter the opportunity to make an appointment. The report was false, of course, and Marshall was furious. Some in the building speculated that the story had been planted by activists hoping he would get the message and depart, clearing the way for a younger liberal voice — much as, in recent years, some on the left have openly if cruelly urged Ruth Bader Ginsburg to step down, as though she owes them some special fealty.
To the SJW crowd, everyone owes them special fealty. But read the whole thing.
Plus: “To trash the justices because we don’t like their votes (usually on a handful of issues) is to diminish the majesty of the court itself. The more we do it, the less reason there is for anybody to respect the justices when at last whichever side we’re on has a majority.” But, you know, one reason why people take such a ghoulish interest is because the Court has become so very important, and individual members so very important.
TAMMY BRUCE: When Starbucks meets Sharia:
A person attempting to be a Starbucks customer was waylaid by the 6th century. Thinking she would get her java at the Riyadh Starbucks, instead she received some tall extra-fat Sharia and encountered a sign which she promptly tweeted. Outside the coffee shop was a notice that read in English and Arabic, “Please no entry for ladies only send your driver to order thank you.”
Read the whole thing — and file it away for the next time Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz dares to hector his customers on race and diversity.
IRONY: MIZZOU PROF MEETS “SOME MUSCLE” OF WHICH SHE DISAPPROVES. “It’s always enlightening when those who demand big government come into contact with it, eh?,” Ed Morrissey asks.
Well, yes — see also this iconic Libertarian Party ad that ran while Occupy Wall Street was in full-swing:
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UH OH: German ‘bail-in’ plan for government bonds risks blowing up the euro. “If I were a politician in Italy and I was confronted by this sort of insolvency risk I would want to go back to my own currency as fast as possible, because that is the only way to avoid going bankrupt.”
ONLY NOW, AT THE END, DO THEY UNDERSTAND: The intolerant student Left has even turned on me – a lifelong civil rights campaigner.
KURT SCHLICHTER: The GOP Sitcom Just Got Serious.
HARRY REID HAS NEVER ONCE PUT THE GOOD OF THE COUNTRY AHEAD OF PARTISAN ADVANTAGE: Reid to GOP: For the good of the country, stop your nakedly partisan obstruction.
And nothing the GOP can do is better for the country than obstructing Obama’s agenda. It’s called checks and balances, Harry. Perhaps if you hadn’t rammed a hated bill through on 100% partisan lines through the abuse of reconciliation, you’d get a friendlier reception now.
DONALD TRUMP PRAISES SADDAM HUSSEIN AS… A TERRORIST FIGHTER? WAIT, WHAT? Saddam Hussein paid the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. This is known.
A decade ago, the late Christopher Hitchens asked Ron Reagan (the former president’s dilettante socialist son), “Have you ever heard of Abu Nidal, the most wanted man in the world, who was sheltered in Baghdad…When I went to interview Abu Nidal, then the most wanted terrorist in the world, in Baghdad, he was operating out of an Iraqi government office. He was an arm of the Iraqi State, while being the most wanted man in the world. The same is true of the shelter and safe house offered by the Iraqi government, to the murderers of Leon Klinghoffer, and to Mr. Yassin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. How can you know so little about this, and be occupying a chair at the time that you do?”
That same question that Hitch asked Ron could — and should — be asked to Don as well.
HEH: UVA student launches Trump-themed campaign for student gov’t.
Erich Reimer wants to make University of Virginia Law great again. He wants to build a wall between the law school and the business school. UVA Law just doesn’t win anymore.
“Let’s be honest, when Main Grounds sends its people, they aren’t sending their best and brightest,” the second year law student complains in a Donald Trump-themed campaign for the school’s student council.
“They come here and take our free coffee at MyLab and hog group study tables,” Reimer, 25, says. “And some, I assume, are good people.”
UVA called its campus “Grounds.” Reimer even sports a blue suit jacket and red hat emblazoned, “MAKE UVA LAW GREAT AGAIN.” He’s even self-funding.
Good fun, though I suppose someone will probably complain that it’s triggering.
FLASHBACK: Joe Biden in 1987: President Should Weigh the Senate’s ‘Prevailing Views’ about High Court. “The U.S. Senate has confirmed only five Supreme Court justices during presidential election years since 1912 – and the last time it happened current Vice President Joe Biden defended the Senate’s constitutional right to act as ‘a forceful constitutional counterweight’ to the president’s nominee.”
Well, sure, but that’s when we have a Republican president. When we have a Democrat in the White House, being a forceful constitutional counterweight is terroristic obstruction.
OH THAT RADICAL CHIC: White House tweets shoutout to Grammy winner Kendrick Lamar.
Earlier:
A few hours before delivering that State of the Union, President Obama met with rapper Kendrick Lamar. Obama announced that Lamar’s hit “How Much a Dollar Cost” was his favorite song of 2015. The song comes from the album To Pimp a Butterfly; the album cover shows a crowd of young African-American men massed in front of the White House. In celebratory fashion, all are gripping champagne bottles and hundred-dollar bills; in front of them lies the corpse of a white judge, with two Xs drawn over his closed eyes. So why wouldn’t the president’s advisors at least have advised him that such a gratuitous White House sanction might be incongruous with a visual message of racial hatred? Was Obama seeking cultural authenticity, of the sort he seeks by wearing a T-shirt, with his baseball cap on backwards and thumb up?
To play the old “what if” game that is necessary in the bewildering age of Obama: what if President George W. Bush had invited to the White House a controversial country Western singer, known for using the f- and n- words liberally in his music and celebrating attacks on Bureau of Land Management officers? What if Bush had also declared that the singer’s hit song—perhaps a celebration of the Cliven Bundy protest—was the president’s favorite in 2008, from an album whose grotesque cover had a crowd of NASCAR-looking, white redneck youth bunched up with an African-American official dead at their feet? And what if the next day, Bush told the nation that he regretted not being able to bring the country together? Would there have been media calls for Bush’s impeachment?
—Victor Davis Hanson, “Still Polarizing After All These Years,” January 17th, 2016.
