Archive for 2018
June 4, 2018
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Is National Lampoon 2.0 Going Woke Already? “A new screenwriting competition suggests the rebooted brand will be anything but subversive.”
The old Lampoon was fearless — and hysterical.
ANTI-FASCISM: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG. Portland sees bloody fighting as Antifa activists storm Patriot Prayer rally.
Some protesters on Sunday hurled bottles and fireworks at police officers while others were caught with knives and other weapons, Portland Police tweeted. Officials encouraged people to get out of the immediate area “for their safety.”
Many of the Antifa activists wore black and covered their faces. Some protesters said they were demonstrating against police brutality; one sign bluntly read “F— the police.”
Patriot Prayer, which bills itself as a peaceful First Amendment advocacy group, organized a rally — “Tiny’s Freedom March,” a going-away event for Tusitala John Toese, who’s close with group leader Joey Gibson — for 5 p.m.
The Rose City Antifa scheduled a counter-protest for 4 p.m. “to show Patriot Prayer, just as we showed them last year, that their violence and hatred has no place in Portland.”
Except for the violence and hatred perpetrated by the Left, of course.
JONATHAN TURLEY: Yes, Trump Can Pardon Himself.
Of course he can. The pardon power is plenary. Under its “necessary and proper” powers, Congress can regulate around the edges a bit (archiving requirements for pardons, say) but the president can pardon anyone he wants for any crime against the United States — possibly even in advance of the crime taking place, there’s dictum to the contrary but it’s only dictum — and the sole remedy is impeachment.
Can Congress impeach a President for pardoning himself (or others)? Yes, if enough members of Congress conclude that doing so constitutes a “high crime and misdemeanor.” Which would depend entirely upon the circumstances, and is — like the pardon decision with the president — a judgment left entirely to Congress.
QUESTION ASKED AND ANSWERED: “Why are conservatives so bad at art and culture?”
On Power Line’s latest podcast, Steve Hayward interviews PJM’s Michael Walsh on his new book, The Fiery Angel: Art, Culture, Sex, Politics, and the Struggle for the Soul of the West, his sequel to The Devil’s Pleasure Palace.
SOMEHOW, “FOUR EYES” DOESN’T SOUND AS COOL AS “FIVE EYES”:” China’s communist party has so much power in New Zealand that western countries might stop sharing intelligence.
BLUE WAVE? House generic ballot a toss-up.
The CBS News/YouGov Battleground Tracker shows that if the 2018 midterm elections happened now, Democrats would take 219 seats in the House, while Republicans would take 216.
The tracker has a margin of error of nine seats, making this year’s race for control a toss-up between the two parties.
This is definitely not the time to get cocky.
IN THE MAIL: From F. H. Buckley, The Republican Workers Party: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy, and Why It Was Just What We Needed.
ANDREW KLAVAN: The Democrats Descend Into Farce.
Read the whole thing.
CHARLIE MARTIN: What Facebook and Google Do With Your Information Should Not Be a Surprise. “You’ve always been the product. Now you’re just a higher quality product.”
Funny, they don’t make me feel higher-quality.
OLD: Bake the cake, hater.
IN: Supreme Court rules narrowly for Colorado baker who wouldn’t make same-sex wedding cake.
Narrowly? It was a 7-2 decision, Reuters.
Update: Quick, sharp analysis from Paula Bolyard.
So that’s how the Court got to 7-2. The next go-’round might be too close to call.
PLAYING THE LONG GAME: The FBI calls Chinese spies in the US a ‘whole of society threat’ — here’s how to protect yourself.
New court documents filed in the US allege that ZTE, another Chinese phone maker, was set up with the express purpose of conducting international espionage.
With a camera, microphone, and the logins of its owners accounts, accessing the smarphones of US citizens would be a massive intelligence boon for any nation.
Public naivety comes up again and again in intelligence circles. In May, the US banned all Chinese-made smartphones from the Pentagon, saying devices from Huawei and ZTE “may pose an unacceptable risk to department’s personnel, information and mission.”
If the Pentagon is taking seriously the risk of espionage via Chinese-made phones, maybe savvy US citizens should follow suit.
What I’d like to know is, when Chinese-made smartphones were becoming ubiquitous during the Obama Administration, why weren’t the American people warned?
YEAH, BUT THERE WAS PLENTY OF GRAFT AND IT WAS ONLY TAXPAYER MONEY THAT WAS WASTED. New York Spent $15 Million to Build a Film Hub. It Just Sold for $1.
The flop of the Central New York Film Hub, built by frequent and generous donors to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo who are facing federal corruption charges, had been presaged almost since its announcement in 2014, when the governor wondered aloud the miracle of the concept.
“Who would have ever figured: Hollywood comes to Onondaga, right?” Mr. Cuomo said. “You would have never guessed. But it has.”
It actually never did.
Shocking.
FLASHBACK: How Non-Originalists Popularize Originalism and What that Means.
Seth Barrett Tillman wrote what could be the companion piece to Rick Moran’s “When in God’s name did a liberal ever care what the writers of the Constitution intended?” (Linked earlier today.) Except that Seth wrote his back in 2016.
MASSIVE IMMIGRATION IS A HUGE POLITICAL ISSUE IN GERMANY: Now there’s a big scandal in the immigration office.
BYRON YORK: Trump lawyers reveal previously unknown evidence in Michael Flynn case.
Now, with the Trump lawyers’ memo leaked to the New York Times, it seems clear that all the key players in the Flynn affair, including the president himself, were aware of the FBI’s assessment in real time. And the president’s knowledge — that the agents did not think Flynn lied, plus strong hints that the investigation was actually over — underlay Trump’s Feb. 14, 2017, statement to Comey that, “I hope you can see your way to letting this go, to letting Flynn go.” Trump’s lawyers argue that the president had no intention to obstruct an investigation he thought was finished.
The leaked memo portrays a confused White House in the administration’s early days, trying to figure out what the Justice Department was up to with its interest in Flynn’s conversations with Kislyak.
Note: If someone — Comey, McCabe, whoever — lied to Trump or his aides about what the FBI was investigating, that was every bit as much a False Statements Act violation as anything Flynn is accused of.