ELECTION: Trump-Endorsed Ohio Senate Candidate Jim Renacci Blows Out Four Opponents.
And “Tolbert” commented on a previous post:
Ohio Governor Primary
Democrat vote tally – 560,258
Republican vote tally – 720,000Perhaps that blue wave really isn’t happening.
One more time: If you want to make a difference in November, spend less time online and more volunteering for a local campaign.
ELECTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES: Trump push for conservative judges intensifies, to Democrats’ dismay.
“FAILURE WAS A FEATURE”: Obama Killed His Own Iran Deal.
JEFF DUNETZ: Analysis Of Trump’s Withdrawal From Obama’s Iran Nuclear Facade.
While Europe was displeased, some of our Middle East allies were very pleased.
Saudi Arabia the leading Sunni Muslim country celebrated the President’s announcement. Iran is a Shia Muslim country And has threatened the Saudi monarchy. The official announcement on State-owned Al Arabiya TV reminded the Saudi people, “Iran used economic gains from the lifting of sanctions to continue its activities to destabilize the region, particularly by developing ballistic missiles and supporting terrorist groups in the region.”
Israel’s reaction was no surprise. Prime Minister Netanyahu made a nationwide address immediately after the president’s speech. His praise was effusive, “President Trump made a courageous decision today, a correct decision, and if the nuclear agreement with Iran had remained in place within a few years, he would have allowed Iran to enrich enough uranium to produce a whole arsenal of nuclear bombs. (…) Therefore, we are very appreciative, I greatly appreciate, and with all of Israel, the firm decision of President Trump to block this bad agreement and stop Iran’s aggression.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani also gave a TV address after the Trump announcement. He claimed he had ordered the country’s “atomic industry organization to be fully prepared for subsequent measures if needed so that in case of need we will start our industrial enrichment without limitations.”
Translation: Now Iran won’t have to try so hard at pretending they aren’t still doing what they’ve been doing.
WHEN YOUR POLITICAL VIEWS BECOME POLITICALLY CORRECT ORTHODOXY, FREE SPEECH SEEMS LIKE A THREAT: Law Professor Ronald Collins: Abandoned? The Liberal Flight from the First Amendment. This process of abandonment has been going on for decades, especially when the First Amendment conflicts with antidiscrimination laws, as I documented in my 2003 book You Can’t Say That!
SPENGLER: What Next for Iran?
It’s complicated.
ROGER SIMON: Schneiderman Scandal Should Be a Spiritual Crisis for Democrats.
Since now five women (the NY Post has a new one) have reported near identical pathologies on the part of Schneiderman, didn’t anyone know about this?
Donald Trump clearly had a suspicion. In September 2013, Trump tweeted, “Weiner is gone, Spitzer is gone — next will be lightweight A.G. Eric Schneiderman. Is he a crook? Wait and see, worse than Spitzer or Weiner.”
Was Trump alone? Hardly likely. And yet the man who suddenly was revealed to be quite literally a human monster, who evidently passed on his proclivities to his daughter, was supposedly a surprise to the good people (read: liberal bourgeoisie of NYC). The man who led the charge against Harvey Weinstein turned out to be as bad, or possibly worse, if that’s possible, we don’t know yet, than Weinstein himself.
And you’re telling me haute New York did not know about this, just as so many in Hollywood “didn’t know” about Weinstein? Well, in that case, I have a Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.
They knew about it, but he was useful and nobody was making them act on it until the rubes found out. Then they professed shock and indignation at the behavior they had known about and tolerated all along.
BARREL DIPLOMACY: Saudi Arabia Pledges to Support Oil Markets. “U.A.E. has also previously said it is willing to boost exports to meet any supply shortage.”
President Donald Trump said Tuesday he was pulling out of a multilateral deal that removed sanctions on Tehran in exchange for Iran abandoning its nuclear ambitions. Washington indicated new U.S. sanctions would limit Iranian exports of crude, although officials didn’t provide specifics.
Saudi Arabia, long a regional rival to Iran and a fierce competitor for global oil market share, quickly telegraphed its willingness to step in. It has limited its own output since 2016, as part of a pact among big producers to help lift prices.
In the wake of Washington’s decision, Saudi Arabia issued a statement saying it remained “committed to supporting the stability of oil markets.” It said that, along with other big producers, the country would help “mitigate the impact of any potential supply shortages” caused by the new sanctions.
The Saudis opened the spigots wide in the 1980s, helping the West to undercut the Soviet economy. And with oil prices already on the rise, now they can undercut Iran while still filling their own coffers.
HOSTILE EDUCATIONAL ENVIRONMENT: Conservatives flee student groups at the University of Denver after campus harassment.
FASTER? PLEASE! Conservatives to McConnell: Time to Force Issue on Nominees, Spending Bills.
Perdue and several other GOP senators plan to send a letter to McConnell later this week encouraging him to keep the Senate in on Mondays and Fridays and in August if it has not finished its spending bills and wrapped up work on the confirmations.
“This is a commitment to [McConnell] that we are willing to do whatever is necessary to get these confirmations accomplished and also to ensure that we debate the funding bills now in whatever manner they come,” Perdue told reporters Tuesday.
“We have an uphill battle, and we believe we have to get outside the box in terms of getting the government funded before September 30,” he added.
Canceling the August recess would be particularly punitive for Senate Democrats, as well as vulnerable Democrats running for reelection, although there are far more Senate Democrats than Republicans in close reelection contests this year.
If Democrats want to play the delay game, don’t let them play the campaign game.
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Hollywood Hypocrite Alyssa Milano’s Disastrous NRA Video.
Armed bullies for me but not for thee.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Avenatti Claims RUSSIANS Paid Cohen and Much, Much More. “How does Avenatti have Michael Cohen’s bank records? You cannot just get someone’s back records. This leads me to believe that something very illegal is going on here. Where does this fit on an index of lie to FISA court to snoop on opposing political campaign and leak the newshook for CNN to report the fake dossier, is hard to say at this early stage.”
ANALYSIS: TRUE. Trump Is Now Free to Fight for Iranian Freedom. “The most urgent task after the nuclear deal is increasing the odds of success for the democratic uprising.”
That’s Eli Lake, and it dovetails nicely with Michel Weiss yesterday on Twitter:
Yuge.
YOU KNOW THAT’S NOT ALLOWED: George Mason Law School Is Under Attack For Being Successful And Different.
Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University has a very highly cited faculty, showing that it has a relatively large impact on the world of legal ideas. It is ranked as the 21st, just after the University of Texas. This ranking is an extraordinary achievement, given that it was a young school with a small endowment, not at all comparable to long established schools like Texas. As is clear from objective data, Antonin Scalia Law School’s faculty is also unusual in having a faculty that it is right of center in a profession where every school with a higher citation count is left of center, sometimes far to the left of center. For instance, schools in the top twenty citations regularly have less than ten percent conservatives and frequently less than five percent.
This is the context of the large recent gifts to the law school, a context that makes nonsense of the idea in a recent New York Times article that conservatives are trying to buy influence over its hiring or anything else. The reporters have the causation exactly backwards. The gift is not designed to elicit conservative thought from the school. Instead the school’s thoughtful conservatism elicited the gift. Those who support liberty, as defined in classical liberalism, want to help an effective institution that does not currently follow the academic orthodoxy arrayed against it. What a surprise!
Anyone who is interested in more diversity of views in the legal academy should also applaud this gift. Indeed, anyone who wants more high impact scholarship should be happy. Given how well George Mason has done with little money, increasing its endowment is likely to do much more at the margin than giving to most other schools.
And the insinuations in the article that there is something wrong with an official of the Federalist Society trying to help land a gift is silly. Charitable donations often occur through networks. Nor is it shocking that someone at the Federalist Society recommends a candidate for a faculty position. Recommendations come in from many quarters. The notion that Antonin Scalia Law School faculty will not hire on the merits is refuted by its extensive track record. The scholars hired there have been far more productive than at all but elite schools with far more resources than George Mason.
It would be charitable to attribute the approach of this article to the reporters’ ignorance of the legal academy, its ideology, and its practices. But another possibility is that it reflects the mindset of the New York Times, composed almost entirely of left-liberals, to entrench left-liberal orthodoxy in realms other than the mainstream media.
You may not be interested in the gleichschaltung, but the gleichschaltung is interested in you.
NIALL FERGUSON: An ancient trap awaits China and US.
Historians often look back to the events of the 1890s and 1900s in an effort to trace the origins of the Anglo-German antagonism. The long-established narrative goes something like this: The German economy was overtaking the British economy, a trend summed up in the words “Made in Germany” that were stamped on a rising proportion of imported manufactures.
Germany had imperial ambitions, too, acquiring colonies in Asia and Africa. And it was building a fleet that was obviously intended to rival the Royal Navy.
Increasingly, as their economy boomed, the Germans argued that their political system — in which the parliament (the Reichstag) had much less power than its British equivalent, and the monarch much more power — was intrinsically superior. Their material successes bolstered an already deep-rooted nationalism.
The ultimate result was that Britain and Germany followed the ancient example of Sparta and Athens: the incumbent power and the rising power ended up going to war. The Harvard political scientist Graham Allison calls it the “Thucydides trap,” after the historian of the Peloponnesian War.
Are the United States and China on the way to repeating this classic historical mistake? Having just spent a fascinating week in Beijing and Shanghai, I fear they may be.
Read the whole thing.
THIS WEEK IN HATE: The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is holding a hearing on hate crimes on Friday. (Yes, of course, you’re invited.) For the reasons I wrote about in Lights! Camera! Legislation!: Congress Set to Adopt Hate Crimes Bill That May Put Double Jeopardy Protections in Jeopardy, I opposed the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. But … well … I lost. That happened to me a lot during the Obama Administration.
On Friday, I hope to learn more about how the statute has been implemented. One of the things about the Act that bothers me is that is doesn’t actually require the prosecutor to prove the defendant was motivated by hatred. It’s enough that the defendant acted “because of” somebody’s race, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability. That can cover an extraordinarily broad range of cases (as I describe in my essay).
HMM: U.S. Navy’s Costliest Warship Suffers New Failure at Sea.
The previously undisclosed problem with a propulsion system bearing, which occurred in January but has yet to be remedied, comes as the Navy is poised to request approval from a supportive Congress to expedite a contract for a fourth carrier in what was to have been a three-ship class. It’s part of a push to expand the Navy’s 284-ship fleet to 355 as soon as the mid-2030s.
It was the second failure in less than a year with a “main thrust bearing” that’s part of the $12.9 billion carrier’s propulsion system. The first occurred in April 2017, during sea trials a month before the vessel’s delivery. The ship, built by Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc., has been sailing in a shakedown period to test systems and work out bugs. It’s now scheduled to be ready for initial combat duty in 2022.
The $12.9 billion figure is misleading, as it includes development costs on several all-new shipboard systems, which won’t carry over as more Ford-class ships are built.
This propulsion issue seems to be due to “an out of specification condition,” which I assume to mean some kind of manufacturing defect, and therefore ought to be repairable.
More worrisome is that the Navy can’t seem to get the Ford‘s Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) working to spec — and EMALS is a huge part of the justification for the Ford-class of carriers. It’s supposed to allow for more sorties and less wear-and-tear on the aircraft, but testing still isn’t going gone well. If the Navy and shipbuilder Huntington Ingalls can’t get EMALS to work as advertised, or at least to work as well as the steam-driven catapults on the existing Nimitz-class carriers, then it puts the entire Ford-class at risk. And despite what President Trump said last year, you can’t go back to “goddamned steam” without redesigning the entire ship.
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