CONRAD BLACK: Could U.S. Face Regime Change In Trump Era?

The broadening revelations of the lawless, almost putschist excesses of the Comey-McCabe FBI and elements of the Justice Department and the Brennan-Clapper intelligence services invite serious contemplation of how close the United States came to being a country where regime change might be plausibly and self-righteously attempted by what in undemocratic countries is generally known as the secret police.

It is fantastic to contemplate such a thing in the United States, which is fundamentally prouder of nothing than of its Constitution and the immense place that the system created by that Constitution and maintained these 230 years by recourse to interpretation and reassertion of it has played in the unprecedented rise of America from a loosely connected group of colonists numbering only a few million at independence to the overwhelming preeminence of the U.S.A. at the end of the Second World War. That preeminence has been substantially maintained since.

For at least 60 years I have heard high American officials announce that the United States is not a “banana republic.” Of course it is not, and never was. But there is a complacency about America’s status as a society of laws that is both unbecoming and unjustified. As many judges, lawyers, and commentators have noted, the level of prosecution success in criminal cases is over 95%, 97% of those without a trial; these, and the proportion of the population that is incarcerated, are totalitarian numbers.

Congressional investigations where there is no lawyer-client privilege, the ease of alleging and gaining convictions on charges of dishonest responses to the police, as well as press trials long before a defense has even been filed (as in the Jussie Smollett case, where the chief of police of Chicago has been garrulously babbling out the prosecution evidence); all of this is a Star Chamber. None of it would be admissible in any other serious common-law country, such as Great Britain, Canada, Australia, or Ireland.

Not a banana republic, perhaps, but maybe an avocado-toast republic.

VIDEO: Tom Steyer Weaponizes Cohen Testimony for Trump Impeachment. “Confirming Jim Jordan’s suspicions.”

NORMALIZING BIGOTRY: Rolling Stone cover features Ilhan Omar.

COMPARE AND CONTRAST: Roger Simon: Dems Reelect Trump by Staging Partisan Cohen Hearing during Nuke Negotiations.

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Yeah, this shouldn’t have been such a surprise, really. I mean, unless you’re deeply uninformed and live in a bubble.

UPDATE: Related: Conservative African Methodist Denounces the Racism of Progressive American Bishops.

VIRGINIA CLOWN SHOW UPDATE: Virginia first lady under fire for handing cotton to African American students on mansion tour.

OPEN THREAD: Hump Day.

MEGHAN MURPHY: Why I’m Suing Twitter. “So Twitter is violating its own stated rules, and it is doing so as a means to target specific individuals for ideological reasons. The victims include people like me, who relied in good faith on Twitter’s written assurances, as we used that platform to develop our professional operations and networks, to communicate with other users and the general public, to share information and opinions, and (in my case) to defend womens’ rights—until Twitter arbitrarily reneged. That’s why I’m suing.”

NEW FROM PROJECT VERITAS: Facebook Insider Leaks Docs; Explains “Deboosting” “Troll Report” & Political Targeting in Interview.

QUESTION ASKED: Is The Green New Deal Built On An Old ‘Certified’ Big Lie?

Now that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has declared herself the boss of the Green New Deal, will she also claim ownership of EPA’s multi-billion dollar product known as government “certified” energy efficiency? Very few Americans know anything about ENERGY STAR, arguably the most corrupt federal program in history that allegedly invented the most valuable commodity ever. For bureaucrats.

In 2006, Katherine Mangu-Ward of Reason wrote that in the 1990s, Businesses “learned that it’s pretty easy being green:”

Ask Bob Langert about the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and he starts to chuckle. “When we meet the regulators, it’s kind of nice,” says the senior director for social responsibility at the McDonald’s Corporation. “We just got an award from the EPA. When we see the regulators, we always hope it’s because they’re giving us an award.”

* * * * * * * *

The idea of the rich corporate villain gleefully dirtying Mother Earth is powerful and appealing. Children of the 1980s encountered this supervillain in comics, movies, public awareness videos, and science textbooks. Times were good for mandatory recycling, for mandatory emissions reductions, for anything mandatory aimed at restraining corporate polluters.

But in the late ’90s, something peculiar started happening. The men in suits were still middle-aged, round, and white. They were still just as concerned with profit and golf. Very few of them sported tie-dyed attire, aside from the occasional whimsical Jerry Garcia tie. But the men in suits started caring. Or at least acting like they cared. Which, if you ask a spotted owl, is the same thing.

So environmental activists across the nation bought their own ties and started dealing with corporations as almost-equal partners in planet saving. Businesses in turn learned that it’s pretty easy being green.

Thus paving the way for the corporatism and crony venture socialism of the Obama era’s original “Green New Deal.” But in the first draft of the latest “Green Nude Eel,”* AOC’s ghostwriters went far beyond Obama’s corporatism into full-on crankery. No need for her to bother with the Energy Star program — as the old joke goes, What did socialists use before candles? Electricity.

* Classical reference.

MARK RIPPETOE ON THE FUTURE OF WOMEN’S SPORTS: “It’s actually more profound than pubertal considerations: the majority of the neuromuscular effects of testosterone occur in utero. The system is ‘primed’ for puberty in the pre-natal portion of human development, just as the changes to the sexual morphology of the developing human are so profoundly influenced by testosterone at the same time. The sexual infrastructure and the neuromuscular infrastructure develop at the same time, under the same in utero environmental influences of testosterone. The people yelling about the supposed fact that there are no differences between men and women that hormone therapy can’t fix right up are studiously ignoring this. They are quite wrong, everybody actually knows this, and politics are going to lose this round.”

HMM: Annual at-home stool test may be as effective as colonoscopy, study finds.

AT LEAST SHE WASN’T IN BLACKFACE OR KLAN REGALIA WHEN SHE DID IT: Virginia first lady criticized for handing cotton to black students on mansion tour.

Remember, according to the press, longtime Virginia pol Ed Gillespie had suddenly turned into a Stormfront operative, but Ralph Northam was going to be the avatar of racial equality.

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Washington Post Makes Sure To Note Only Conservatives Care About A Leftist Punching A Conservative.

Earlier: UC Berkeley Police Seeking Felony Warrant from DA for Suspect in Assault on Conservative.

OBAMA TELLS YOUNG BLACK MEN TO LIVE LIKE CONSERVATIVES TO BE HAPPY:

“If you are very confident about your sexuality, you don’t have to have eight women around you twerking,” former president Barack Obama said to an audience of young black men last Wednesday. “You seem stressed that you got to be acting that way, because I have one woman that I’m very happy with.”

* * * * * * * * *

The former president’s town hall addressed a wide range of social issues, including black success, family, and manhood, and many of his conclusions were temperamentally conservative.

“The odds of any young man, unless you look like Zion Williamson, to be in the NBA, are very low,” Obama said at one point. “The odds of being a doctor or a lawyer? Much higher.” Kudos to the former president for encouraging young black men to choose sustainable professions with demonstrated economic viability over pipe dreams about being rappers, sports stars, and activists.

Obama went from pop culture to economics into the topic about which he was clearly most passionate: the importance of male mentorship. He spoke about his own difficulties living in a household without a father, and how his community stepped up and became like a “surrogate father” to him. He exhorted the people in the audience to fill these father-like mentorship roles, “to truly care” about one another. He invited Curry to give a testimony about the impact his father made on his life.

Talk about burying the lede: pace Charles Murray, it’s actually possible for an elite leftist to preach what he practices.

WHY IS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY SUCH A CESSPIT OF RACISM? Rep. Tlaib (D-MI) Blows Up Cohen Hearing: It Was a ‘Racist Act’ for a Republican to Bring a Black ‘Prop.’

“I could see and feel your pain. I feel it,” Cummings told Meadows. “And so —and I don’t think Ms. Tlaib intended to cause you that… that kind of pain and frustration.”

“As everybody knows in this chamber, I’m pretty direct,” Tlaib said. “So if I wanted to say that [Meadows is a racist] I would have. But that’s not what I said.”

Meadows thanked Cummings for addressing the issue and withdrew his demand to have the statement stricken from the record.

Cummings concluded the hearing with an angry speech, declaring that Congress is “better than this.”

No, it really isn’t.

DOS AND DON’TS FOR CPAC: Dustin Siggins surveyed a bunch of folks who have attended more CPACs than they can remember and came away with 13 tips for getting the most out of America’s biggest, oldest and most influential annual political conference.

IS IT REALLY THAT STRANGE? A Strange Relationship Between Vegetarianism and Depression: New research connects vegetarianism and depression. The question is why? Well, for one thing, there’s no bacon.

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Clarence Thomas is right: Here’s why Supreme Court should revisit libel law overreach.

FLORIDA: New Poll: GOP Governor Ron DeSantis Posts Sky-High 64% Job Approval Rating.

I’M NOT SAYING THAT IT’S ALIENS, BUT IT’S ALIENS: Asteroid Ryugu MYSTERY: Hayabusa2 Ryugu selfie reveals strange dark ‘smudge.’

LIKE THEIR PARENTS, MILLENNIALS ARE BUYING WATER BEDS: “It’s like salmon. They’ll return to the place where they were spawned.”

IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN’S SPORTS:

[Martina] Navratilova added that, as a lesbian, she is sensitive to feelings of sexual minorities and has no issue with addressing a transgender woman according to preference. Nevertheless, she draws a “critical distinction” between transsexualism and transgenderism. Indeed, she herself had a transsexual coach and friend — Renee Richards — and Richards now shares Navratilova’s concerns about transgenderism as it relates to women’s sports.

Navratilova also drew an even more critical distinction: intersex conditions. In her article, she pledged support for Caster Semenya, the Olympic 800-meter champion, who is female but has a rare condition that results in naturally high testosterone levels, and who is challenging the International Association of Athletics Federations at the Court of Arbitration for Sport after they introduced a rule requiring her to take hormone therapy.

So far, so uncontroversial — one would think. But apparently not.

Within days of the article’s publication, Athlete Ally, a New York–based LGBT-rights organization, expelled Navratilova on the grounds that her “recent comments on trans athletes are transphobic, based on a false understanding of science and data, and perpetuate dangerous myths.” Chase Strangio of the ACLU, a trans activist, told The Nation that “Athlete Ally’s decision was absolutely, 100 percent correct.”

As Breitbart.com’s John Hayward tweeted yesterday, “Generations of hard work cultivating women’s sports, oceans of money spent, and ‘transgender activists’ will burn it all to the ground in a matter of months. Women’s sports are over, feminists. You lost an intersectional squabble with a more preferred victim group.”