CLAUDIA ROSETT: A Vital Warning About China and the Looming “Decade of Concern.”
Read the whole thing.
Archive for 2018
May 18, 2018
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE, OPEN RACISM EDITION: Student group bars white ‘allies’ from forum on arming police.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION MAXIMUM PRESSURE TARGETS IRAN: My latest New York Observer column. (bumped)
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: RUSSIA, Trump Hotel Attacked and Much, Much More.
NO, OCTOPUSES AREN’T ALIENS: Enough said.
TEACH WOMEN NOT TO LIE: Reuben Foster’s ex: ‘Lied a lot’ about domestic violence incident.
Elissa Ennis, the former girlfriend of San Francisco 49ers linebacker Reuben Foster, testified Thursday in a preliminary hearing that Foster never put his hands on her and that she “lied a lot” to authorities about an alleged domestic violence incident.
Ennis, who testified against the advice of her attorney Stephanie Rickard, said she made up the story because she wanted to ruin Foster’s career and sue him for money after he broke up with her on the morning of Feb. 11. She also admitted to falsely accusing a former boyfriend of domestic violence in Louisiana in 2011 after he attempted to break up with her.
Ennis said she felt she needed to tell the truth because she “had to do the right thing,” even if it meant admitting to previous lies to the police and to stealing money and two Rolex watches from Foster in the days after their breakup.
Well, kudos for the contrition, anyway.
FLASHBACK: UC DAVIS LAW SCHOOL COMMENCEMENT 1978: California Supreme Court Justice Stanley Mosk’s Finest Hour. (Yes he did have a finest hour.) At the Volokh Conspiracy.
BUFF TAKEOFF FROM GUAM: The “Continuous Bomber Presence” is still there and still prepared to visit Pyongyang.
HOW TO GET THE LEFT TO CONDEMN HAMAS: (1) Charter a flight to Charlottesville for Hamas’s leaders; (2) Give them a march permit; (3) Have them say what they always say about Jews. Because apparently shouting anti-Semitic slogans in Charlottesville is far more egregious than running a terrorist army in Gaza dedicated to genocidal anti-Semitism.
FAKE CHARITY CLINTON FOUNDATION IS THE NEST EGG BUILT FOR CHELSEA: Let us count the ways Bill and Hillary have abused philanthropy law and regulation to create and control a billion-dollar family slush fund that’s tax-exempt and seemingly immune from accountability. And who knew Charles Ortel is a Dire Straits fan!
May 17, 2018
SARAH SANDERS DESERVES A MEDAL: For two things — Daily hand-to-hand combat with a half-dozen or more liberal ideologues masquerading as journalists in the White House Press Corps and, as LifeZette’s Kathryn Blackhurst lucidly reports, insisting on cold, hard facts about, for example, what the animals AKA MS-13 routinely do to their victims.
AT AMAZON, summer savings on men’s Electric Shavers.
YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG. Charlie Martin: Bias is Not the Only Crisis in University Education.
KIMBERLEY STRASSEL: Was Trump’s Campaign ‘Set Up’? At some point, the Russia investigation became political. How early was it?
And what do you know? Sometime in April, the law firm Perkins Coie (on behalf the Clinton campaign) hired Fusion GPS, and Fusion turned its attention to Trump-Russia connections. The job of any good swamp operator is to gin up a fatal October surprise for the opposition candidate. And what could be more devastating than to paint a picture of Trump-Russia collusion that would provoke a full-fledged FBI investigation?
We already know of at least one way Fusion went about that project, with wild success. It hired former British spy Christopher Steele to compile that infamous dossier. In July, Mr. Steele wrote a memo that leveled spectacular conspiracy theories against two particular Trump campaign members—Messrs. Manafort and Page. For an FBI that already had suspicions about the duo, those allegations might prove huge—right? That is, if the FBI were to ever see them. Though, lucky for Mrs. Clinton, July is when the Fusion team decided it was a matter of urgent national security for Mr. Steele to play off his credentials and to take this political opposition research to the FBI.
The question Mr. Nunes’s committee seems to be investigating is what other moments—if any—were engineered in the spring, summer or fall of 2016 to cast suspicion on Team Trump. The conservative press has produced some intriguing stories about a handful of odd invitations and meetings that were arranged for Messrs. Page and Papadopoulos starting in the spring—all emanating from the United Kingdom. On one hand, that country is home to the well-connected Mr. Steele, which could mean the political actors with whom he was working were involved. On the other hand, the Justice Department has admitted it was spying on both men, which could mean government was involved. Or maybe . . . both.
Which brings us to timing. It’s long been known that Mr. Steele went to the FBI in early July to talk about the dossier, and that’s the first known intersection of the strands. But given the oddity and timing of those U.K. interactions concerning Messrs. Page and Papadopoulos, and given the history of some of the people involved in arranging them, some wonder if the two strands were converging earlier than anyone has admitted. The Intelligence Committee subpoena is designed to sort all this out: Who was pulling the strings, and what was the goal? Information? Or entrapment?
I have a pretty good idea.
TRACY QUAN ON TOM WOLFE: Passing The Acid Test. “Wolfe’s witty, humane indictment of modern architecture turned my head. I left the Marxist cult I was involved with, fell into a reactionary mood best understood as 20-something alienation – but I felt emboldened. You could organise your life around aesthetic concerns! What liberation. To escape from that deceptive thicket of class politics was essential, and Wolfe helped me to do so.”
OPEN THREAD: Be careful out there.