MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Why shouldn’t the best foreign airlines be able to carry passengers between American cities? If it saves just one dog’s life, it’s worth it!
Archive for 2018
March 16, 2018
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: McMaster Whiplash, Bridge Collapse and Much, Much More.
Plus: Anatomy of a deep state hit job.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: Academics reeling as market discipline comes to the University of Wisconsin. “There will be many innocent faculty victims of these closures. I feel sadness for those who devoted many years of their lives to obtaining the graduate degrees necessary for teaching in higher education. But by standing by and allowing their disciplines to decline and ignore relevance and utility to students, they may bear some degree of culpability.”
If only someone had warned them.
UPDATE: More here.
RICH LOWRY: Don’t Bork Gina Haspel.
Haspel is connected in the press to the Zubaydah interrogations, although the CIA hasn’t confirmed her participation in the oversight of any particular detainee and insists much of the reporting about her work in this period is erroneous. Again, the Mitchell book suggests a man, not a woman, was in charge at the time. A New York Times report places her at the site in Thailand in question beginning in 2003, when Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding in 2002.
But let’s consider Zubaydah’s case. He was not a detainee who had nothing to tell us, as he is often portrayed by critics of the CIA. Shortly after his capture, he identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and provided information about the so-called Dirty Bomb plot. In the run-up to the use of harsh interrogations techniques, according to the 2014 Senate Intelligence report on the interrogation program, “Abu Zubaydah provided information on Al-Qa’ida activities, plans, capabilities, and relationships,” in addition to information on “its leadership structure, including personalities, decision-making processes, training and tactics.”
The enhanced interrogations were brutal. Zubaydah was struck, placed in stress positions, confined in small boxes and repeatedly waterboarded. During one session, he became unresponsive, until he received medical care. By any standard, this was extreme and right up to the legal line.
The CIA didn’t learn of any planned attack in the U.S.; it did became confident that he wasn’t holding back any information about one. From his capture to his transfer to the Department of Defense on Sept. 5, 2006, there were 766 intelligence reports based on information from Zubaydah.
I’m not sure why the Left hates Haspel more: Because she’s a potential First Woman to [Blank] but not a Democrat, or because she’s an effective intelligence officer.
Update: And let’s not forget that the Thailand story has been debunked — not that that will change any minds on the Left.
AS SHOULD EVERYONE OUTSIDE GOVERNMENT: Private sector can shoulder more responsibility for disaster readiness.
WELL, IT WAS PRETTY GOOD AT GETTING POLITICAL DIRT: FBI supervisor warned Comey in 2014 that warrantless surveillance program was ineffective.
LET THE SUNSHINE IN: Authorities release video showing outside of Parkland high school during shooting.
The video footage released offers a limited viewpoint that focuses mainly on Broward Deputy Scot Peterson.
t begins shortly after gunfire erupted, with Peterson and civilian security monitor Kelvin Greenleaf walking with purpose outside an administration building, clearly alarmed by sounds. When the fire alarm is triggered — apparently by the smoke of the gunfire — the two begin running, get into a golf cart and speed toward Building 12.
The angle of the remaining footage shows the two pull up to the southeast corner of Building 12 as what appears to be a group of students – the images are blurred under orders from the judge – appear to be moving about frantically on a lawn. Peterson and Greenleaf can be seen waving, then the school officer assumes a position that is partially obstructed by a pole.
The footage apparently shows Peterson remaining in that area for the next 20-plus minutes of the clip. Greenleaf appears to leave the view. Other officers show up, though it is not clear from the video whether they are BSO or Coral Springs officers, and students are eventually led out of the building.
It has appeared all along that Peterson was being set up as the Broward County fall guy, but the rot in that sheriff’s department starts much higher up.
NEWS THAT COULD ONLY SURPRISE PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION: Nearly every NYPD cop hates Mayor de Blasio.
IF IT MOVES ELECTRONS, TAX IT: EU Becomes A Graveyard For AAPL, FB, GOOGL, AMZN.
Reportedly, the European Commission (“EC”) is planning to impose “digital tax” on Apple AAPL, Facebook FB, Alphabet GOOGL, Amazon AMZN and Netflix. Per MarketWatch, which quoted a report by FT, these companies will be taxed on their revenues instead of profit in order to put a check on large tax avoidance.
A tax of 3% will be levied on the company’s advertisement revenues, subscription revenues and revenues earned by selling digital data. Per FT, European Commission is estimated to raise Euro 5 billion annually by implementing this tax.
EU’s aim on extracting as much tax revenues from these U.S-based tech giants has already gained support from 10 member countries including Germany, Italy, Spain, France and Portugal. Reportedly, Britain has also lent its support to this initiative.
How to pick a favorite between eurocrats and America’s pushiest tech giants?
To paraphrase Henry Kissinger, it’s a pity they can’t all lose.
YOU CAN’T SAY THAT! YOU MUST SAY THIS: The Supreme Court this term is hearing a potential landmark First Amendment case from (where else?) California. It poses the issue of whether California law can require pregnancy centers to provide information about the availability of abortion services. The Ninth Circuit upheld the law as a reasonable information requirement.
But Villanova University law professor Michael Moreland told LifeZette’s Brendan Kirby and other journalists on a conference call hosted by the Federalist Society that such a claim “is a very tough argument for the government to prevail on. So I think the plaintiffs have, I think, good reason to be optimistic that it might even be more than 5-4.” One might wonder why such a case would ever be anything less than 9-0, but moving right along …
WALTER OLSON: Yale admissions office responds to my WSJ piece.
Jeremiah Quinlan, dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale, has written a letter to the Wall Street Journal responding to my opinion piece last week. Countering a claim I never made, he asserts that civic activism in an applying student is not “the only attribute we look for.”
Interestingly, Quinlan does not distance his office from, seek to explain, or mention at all, the earlier Yale admissions blog post on which my piece was based, which had said of accepted students: “we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice.” Instead, he summarily dismisses my analysis as “false” and wrong.”
Meanwhile, in Quinlan’s reworking, what had been a call for applicants to be “versed in issues of social justice” has turned into a thing more anodyne: Yale will “expect its students to be engaged citizens.”
But even that fallback ought to be controversial, if intended as a requirement for applicants rather than a plus. So a high school senior has mastered a field of study or performance, shown mature character and wide-ranging mind, but never spoken out on a public issue, marched, campaigned or even perhaps taken the time to vote? That’s an automatic “no” for an admissions committee?
Ivy League admissions are a scam and a threat to equality. They should be forced to admit students at random, to promote social justice.
MICHAEL WALSH: Wolves in Lamb’s Clothing.
What ought to worry the GOP about the Lamb victory is not the victory itself—Lamb had been leading handsomely in the polls, running as a “conservative”—but the stealthiness of the campaign, which is all part of an emerging new Democrat strategy. As House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) noted, “the candidate who is going to win this race is the candidate who ran as a pro-life, pro-gun, anti-Nancy Pelosi, conservative.”
So behold the emerging Campaign ’18. For months now, Democrats have been recruiting youthful military vets, some of them anti-abortion, and committed to a generational change of the Democrats’ geriatric leadership. In an area like Pennsylvania’s 18th congressional district, which historically has been home to white, working-class, blue-collar cradle Democrats, this is a winning idea. In order to take back states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, Democrats finally are realizing that the Pelosi-Schumer-Clinton axis of evil no longer holds any appeal, but that clean-cut, all-American types like Conor Lamb very much do. A party that has never had any problem compromising its transient “moral” principles won’t hesitate to run right at conservative Democrat voters, even it means betraying their professed ideals in order to support the national party with votes in Congress when it matters. “By any means necessary” is the Democrats’ slogan for a reason, after all.
No matter how “conservative” these congressional Democrats run as candidates, once in office they can be counted on to vote Yea in favor of the leadership’s most extreme measures.
FAT CHANCE: On Climate Change, Please Address the Science, Not the Politics. “Once and for all, stop poisoning the debate.”
CRIMINAL JUSTICE: False Confessions, Mistaken Witnesses, Corrupt Investigators: Why 139 Innocent People Went to Jail.
The criminal justice system is just another government-run enterprise.
HISTORY IS ALL AROUND: Names on the Landscape.
WELL, YOU KNOW HOW THEY SAY “GET WOKE, GO BROKE”: Disney: Woke Is In, ‘Wrinkle’s’ Christianity? Not So Much.
SHE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW: Prediction about the 2018 election.