WHY THEY HATE HIM: Scott Pruitt, Warrior for Science. How could “the party of science,” as Democrats like to call themselves, be opposed to the EPA administrator’s demand for more transparency in sharing data and more rigorous peer review of the agency’s research? Because better science could get in the way of the green political agenda. My City Journal piece looks at the fight to get rid of Pruitt in the context of the EPA’s history of junk science. Once again, the real war on science is the one waged by the left, as John Stossel writes at Fox News.
Archive for 2018
April 11, 2018
A MUST-READ FOR POTENTIAL SNOWFLAKES: All Minus One, a beautifully illustrated and smartly abridged version of John Stuart Mill’s arguments for free speech in “On Liberty,” is just out at Heterodox Academy, which hopes it will become required reading for students before they enter college. Here’s a conversation about Mill — and why he’s more relevant than ever — with Richard Reeves, the Mills biographer who edited this book together with Jonathan Haidt.
OPEN THREAD: Do that comment voodoo that you do so well.
21ST CENTURY REPRODUCTION: Chinese Sperm Bank Seeks Donors. Only Good Communists Need Apply.
VIDEO: Watch Courtney Balaker and IJ’s Scott Bullock talk about Courtney’s new movie, Little Pink House.
STANDING UP AGAINST THE MOB: Women pose for open carry pics in solidarity with college student who had gun in her graduation photo.
STANDING UP AGAINST THE MOB: Penn Trustee Emeritus resigns over University ‘treatment of Amy Wax.’ “‘Preventing Wax from teaching first-year students doesn’t right academic or social wrongs,’ Levy wrote in the letter. ‘Rather, you are suppressing what is crucial to the liberal educational project: open, robust and critical debate over differing views of important social issues.'”
THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE: The #Zuckerberg hearing gave cause to wonder who to trust: a social-media company with a profit motive to keep sharing our personal information or clueless politicians who might try to regulate it.
Why would you trust either group? But given a choice, as long they have a (D) after their names, I’m pretty sure I know where the Chronicle stands.
IT’S FEMALE SEXUALITY, OF COURSE. CELEBRATING MALE SEXUALITY WOULD BE CREEPY AND PRACTICALLY RAPE. Janelle Monáe Celebrates Sexuality in ‘PYNK’ Video.
JOHN PODHORETZ: The Ryan Retirement in Seven Points. Including:
The nature of the Tea Party and post-Tea Party GOP caucus is so fundamentally anti-institutional that the prerogatives of leadership are nothing now in the GOP. If a Republican is elected speaker after the 2018 midterms, it will be interesting to see how long he or she lasts.
2. A Republican likely won’t be elected speaker after the 2018 midterms. Ryan’s decision suggests he and others have seen enough internal data to know their capacity to hold their 23-seat majority is slipping away. Already this morning, another Republican, Dennis Ross of Florida, announced his decision to retire. That makes 42 GOP retirements among the 237 Republican members of the 115th Congress—a number vastly higher than any recent Congress’s. Most of these retirements are in districts a Republican will win anyway. But while all signs have pointed to significant Democratic gains in the 2018 midterms, the Ryan retirement isn’t just a sign. It’s like a fireball from the sky. And it will occasion more retreats and embolden more Democrats.
At the Federalist, Ben Domenech explores “How Paul Ryan Went From Young Gun To Gone:”
It’s easy to forget how Paul Ryan was vilified by the media. For a politician with so few marks against him – the worst thing one could say was that he suggested staffers read Ayn Rand – Ryan was treated incredibly unfairly in 2012 as a vice presidential candidate, with no moment greater than when his policies were described inaccurately by Martha Raddatz in a terribly run debate with no question was even asked about his signature Medicare reform policies.
Ryan’s response to this trend was to grow frustrated, and irritated, but also to carefully and politely explain his policy perspective in more detail, to try and convince his interviewers, to build momentum for the type of Republican Party he thought the nation needed. Donald Trump’s response to this was to punch the media in the face, repeatedly. The voters let us know which response they prefer.
When one of the most milquetoast Republican members of Congress is subjected to this sort of treatment…
…is it any wonder why GOP voters prefer someone who pushes back hard?
YOUR DAILY TREACHER: Tucker Carlson Tells the Ugly Truth About Pandas. “Everybody loves them, and as usual, everybody is wrong. Pandas stink, and not just literally.”
MICHAEL MOORE’S COMMENTS ON THE 2018 ELECTIONS ARE REVELATORY OF HIS ADMITTED DEVOTION TO MARXISM—”Dude, I am on Marx’s Tomb!”—Never Disclosed by the MSM:
In the States, mainstream media types have called Michael Moore’s Sicko his “least political film”. But in his interview with Thomas Sotinel, the Le Monde reporter states that this seems to be Michael’s coming-out as “a socialist”. To which Moore answers (retranslated from the French) that, in a scene in Sicko, “I film myself on Marx’s tomb. Nobody mentioned it. In the reviews in America, they wrote, ‘it’s his least political film.’ And I say: “Dude, I am on Marx’s Tomb!” Do I need to take out a baseball bat and hit them on the head [for them to understand]?!”
Imagine the meltdown in the DNC-MSM if Sarah Palin joked about hitting reporters over the head with baseball bats. Speaking of which, here’s a flashback to a January 2011 Hollywood Reporter headline: “Michael Moore, Kathy Griffin, Jane Fonda Blame Sarah Palin for Arizona Shooting.”
Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it.
5 CRITICAL MISTAKES made by Defensive Gun Owners.
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Bias against conservatives works like any other prejudice.
Found via Virginia Postrel, who in 2016 asked, “Imagine If Conservatives in Academia Could Safely ‘Come Out.’”
MAY’S GETTING SERIOUS: UK Moves Submarines Next To Syria, Strikes May Begin As Soon As Thursday.
ASHE SCHOW: Cornell Law Professors Join Strengthening Push For Due Process On Campus. “Cornell University is getting sued for denying male students accused of sexual assault due process, and a third of its law professors are backing the suit.”
Well, good — but even more would be even better.
NEWS YOU CAN USE: Here’s Exactly How to ‘Swedish Death Clean’ Your Closet.
HOTDOGS VS. HAMBURGERS: Which is better for you? Personally, I choose on the basis of what I’m in the mood for.
BRIDGET JOHNSON: As Trump Reportedly Mulls Rosenstein Ouster, GOP Senators Warn Firing Would be ‘Suicide.’ “‘He knows most every Republican senator feels that way,’ says Foreign Relations Committee chairman as president fumes over Cohen raid.”
BLUE WAVE? Republican Congressman Dennis Ross is retiring.
Ross is only 58 and his district has a Cook PVI rating of R+6.
I CAN BELIEVE IT: Later school start times help teens’ moods, study says.
JOSH KRAUSHAAR: Senate Republicans Growing Anxious About Their Majority. “Mitch McConnell raised alarms about the grim political environment for Republicans last week. He had good reasons.”
This year’s Senate election playing field is more heavily tiled towards the GOP than perhaps at any time in 35 years I’ve been watching politics. If they’re afraid of losing their majority under these conditions, they have no one to blame but themselves and their own shoddy record.