IT’S COME TO THIS: San Francisco Man Has Spent 4 Years and $1 Million Trying to Get Approval to Turn His Own Laundromat Into an Apartment Building. Now the city wants the laundromat studied to see if it is a historic resource.
Because, San Francisco.
Found via Virginia Postrel, who tweets, “This is why only rich people can afford to live in [San Francisco].”
CNN FAILED TO DISCLOSE THAT JAKE TAPPER WAS A FORMER HANDGUN CONTROL, INC. SPOKESMAN DURING LAST NIGHT’S PARKLAND SCHOOL SHOOTING TOWN HALL.
SCOUT KNIVES and lessons learned.
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: Rethinking Watergate.
For liberals in 1973, the status quo was considered right-wing and dangerous—and it was therefore to be opposed at all costs to find the truth about Nixon. In 2016, Clinton was part of a status quo that extended eight years back through Barack Obama’s tenure and was considered the favored candidate by the permanent bureaucracy, the mainstream media, and the legal establishment, many of whom sought to help her defeat Trump.
Think about changing the roles in 2016. Imagine a Trump-funded anti-Clinton dossier drawing on Russian gossip about Secretary Clinton, peddled by the FBI, rubber-stamped by FISA courts, and used to monitor Clinton campaign operatives to find dirt on Clinton and to leak such information to the press—in the last days of a presidential campaign. Would we not then see a true progressive reenactment of Watergate, with all of the concerned parties repeating their 1973 roles—the press especially frenzied rather than somnolent?
FISA-gate is not just an upside-down Watergate. It also forces us to rethink Watergate itself. The facts, of course, that led to Nixon’s 1974 resignation are unchanged and condemnatory. But the relative eagerness to uncover them can be recalibrated by the contrast with FISA-gate.
In other words, was it really principle and concern for the transparent and blind administration of justice that drove the original and necessary official and media investigation of Nixon? Or, in some measure, did the furor over Nixon arise over his seemingly odious politics and person that for decades had enraged his enemies?
FISA-gate, and the media’s response to it, is not so much another Watergate as an anti-Watergate. The disconnect with the past begs us to redefine the story of Watergate itself 45 years later: Was it what Richard Nixon did, or who Richard Nixon was, that ignited the scandal?
The answer to that question can be found at Commentary, where Andrew Ferguson explores The Post, the new bookend to Redford and Hoffman’s All the President’s Men, in an essay titled “Mr. Spielberg Goes to Washington:”
Capra intended his movie to be a hymn to those ideals, and for nearly 80 years that’s what audiences have taken it to be. It is no such thing. Mr. Smith seethes with contempt for the raw materials of democracy: debate, quid pro quo deal-making, back-scratching compromise—all the tedious, unsightly mechanics that turn democratic ideals into functioning self-government. In Capra’s telling, democracy can be rescued only by anti-democratic means. An appointed charismatic savior (he’s not even elected!) uses a filibuster (favorite parliamentary trick of bullies and autocrats) to release the volatile pressure of a disenfranchised mob (the great fear of every democratic theorist since Aristotle). From Mr. Smith to Legally Blonde 2, the point of the Washington movie is clear: Left to its own devices, without an outside agent to penetrate it and cleanse it of its sins, self-government sinks into corruption and despotism.
Steven Spielberg is the closest thing we have to Capra’s successor. Like all his movies, The Post has many charms: a running visual joke about Bradlee’s daughter making a killing with her lemonade stand threads in and out of the heavier moments like a rope light. On the other hand, his painstaking obsession with period detail often fails: A hippie demonstration against the Vietnam War looks as if it’s been staged by the cast of Hair. The set-piece speeches are insufferable, an icky glue of sanctimony and sentimentality. What we call the Pentagon Papers was a classified history of the lies, misjudgments, and incompetence of four presidents, from Harry Truman to Lyndon Johnson, ending in 1968. Sometimes the speechifying is directed at the malfeasance of these men, as when Bradlee bellows: “The way they lied—those days have to be over!”
Weirdly, though, the full force of the movie’s indignation is aimed at Richard Nixon.
Which seems odd, considering the strange new respect the man has gotten from the left in recent years.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Did NYU serve a racist dinner to celebrate Black History Month? The black students complain, and two black dining-service employees lose their jobs. From the comments: “She got 2 low level black workers fired. Her tuition is probably more than their annual wages (used to be). I hope she’s proud.”
Diversity and inclusion!
THERE COULD BE A MARKET FOR THIS: Some Black Holes Erase Your Past.
TET OFFENSIVE ROCKET ATTACK AFTERMATH: Smoke and dust rise after a barrage strikes Khe Sanh, February 21, 1968.
THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER BILLY GRAHAM, BECAUSE THE WORLD THAT MADE HIM POSSIBLE IS GONE:
“The America that emerged from World War II and the Great Depression was exceptionally unified and cohesive, and possessed of an unusual confidence in large institutions,” Yuval Levin wrote in his 2016 book, “The Fractured Republic.”
“But almost immediately after the war, [America] began a long process of unwinding and fragmenting,” Levin wrote.
And so, the fact that American Christianity hasn’t given rise to a leader like Graham over the last two or three decades isn’t just a result of the fracturing of evangelicalism into different factions — the slick prosperity gospel of Joel Osteen, the strident right-wing triumphalism of Graham’s son Franklin and the theologically precise new Calvinists, to name just a few.
It’s also a story about the fragmentation of American life — arguably a reversion to the norm in American history rather than a departure from it.
Read the whole thing.
(Via Jon Gabriel.)
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WORTHWHILE CANADIAN INITIATIVE: Canada reviewing ten small nuclear reactor designs including eVinci solid state microreactor.
JOURNALISM: CNN’s Tapper sits back as student equates Rubio to school shooter. That’s the standard lefty line: If you don’t support my policy preferences, you’re literally a murderer! Which, conveniently, also serves to justify actual violence against people who don’t support your policy preferences.
Plus: Shooting Survivor: CNN Gave Me “Scripted Question” After Denying Question About Armed Guards. Fake news.
CNN HOST VAN JONES RETWEETS CONSPIRACY THEORY CLAIMING MASS SHOOTINGS ARE COMMITTED BY REPUBLICANS.
Van Jones? Conspiracy theories? Impossible.
PARKLAND STUDENT TO RUBIO: IT’S HARD TO LOOK AT YOU AND NOT SEE YOU FIRING THAT AR-15 AT MY CLASSMATES. “A lefty friend conceded to me that it was vicious and unfair, and doesn’t represent how most liberals feel about gun-rights supporters. Doesn’t it? Does anyone there seem perturbed by it?… Tapper could have said something in the name of keeping the event civil. Bill Nelson, who praised Rubio for showing up to face what everyone knew would be a hostile audience, didn’t say anything. On the contrary, Dana Loesch was heckled once or twice by the crowd with cries of ‘murderer’ when she came out to speak.”
This is CNN.
SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: Presidential Electors and the Brief of the Legal Historians in CREW v. Trump. “The Legal Historians claim regarding presidential electors is perplexing. They cite no authority for this position. More troubling is that there is a substantial body of authority taking the position that presidential electors are state positions, not federal positions, and so entirely beyond the scope of the Foreign Emoluments Clause and its Office… under the United States-language. The Legal Historians did not discuss this line of authority.”
Ever since the Bellesiles scandal, I’ve viewed legal historians’ legal arguments with some skepticism.
DISPATCHES FROM THE EDUCATION APOCALYPSE: “It’s almost as if the dominant culture and its institutions are radically dehumanizing teenagers, and are mystified as to why some of those teenagers don’t see others as human beings worthy of respect and care,” Rod Dreher writes. “Yes, maybe Stella Morabito is right, and Wendell Berry is right, and the form of our schooling has to do with this dehumanization. I think they are correct, to a great degree. But that’s only part of the story. The other part of the story is the culture itself present in these schools, among the children who have been raised like embourgeoised animals, and utterly failed by their parents and all the rest of us.”
Read the whole thing.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, LEGAL EDUCATION EDITION: Gallup: Only 23% Of Law School Grads Say Their Education Was Worth the Cost. But none of the degrees measured, which include PhDs, MDs, MBAs, etc., do very well.
THREE LITTLE WORDS THAT DROVE MSM MAD: It doesn’t take much coming from the lips of President Donald Trump to drive the people playing television journalism up the wall.
IN THE MAIL: From and Kevin J. Anderson & Sarah Hoyt, Uncharted (Arcane America).
Plus, fresh Gold Box and Lightning Deals.
RUSSIAN COVERT INFLUENCE OPERATIONS: They target more than U.S. elections.
I’D SAY IT HAS THE DESIRED EFFECT, IF YOU ASSUME PEOPLE DESIRE THE NATURAL AND OBVIOUS CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR ACTION: What effect does this kind of news coverage have on those who are thinking of becoming the next school shooter?
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