THIS IS A BIG WIN: There will be no recount in the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. “The outcome of last Tuesday’s election means the Wisconsin Supreme Court will begin its new session later this year with a 5-2 conservative majority on the court. It ensures that, even if the conservative-backed Justice Dan Kelly runs and loses his race next year, the court will remain dominated by conservatives through at least 2023.”
Archive for 2019
April 10, 2019
FASTER, PLEASE: Trump Order Will Clear the Way for the Constitution Pipeline Stalled for 5 Years. “The 124-mile natural gas pipeline would link Pennsylvania and New York.”
Give New Yorkers a taste of those high-paying energy jobs, and even they might start to come around.
ROGER SIMON: William Barr is the Democrats’ Worst Nightmare.
IN THE MAIL: From Diana West, The Red Thread: A Search for Ideological Drivers Inside the Anti-Trump Conspiracy.
HOTEL GOOGLEFORNIA: Even if you don’t check in, you still can never leave. “What happens when you create a specialty VPN to block all access to Google’s 8,699,648 IP addresses? It pretty much breaks your access to the internet.”
“WHO IS TO BLAME FOR THE RISE OF RADICAL PARTISANSHIP IN CONGRESS?”: Over at the Federalist, Madeline Osburn is asking who killed civility in Congress. She resists (as she should) the usual story that it was Newt Gingrich. Instead, she reports that, according to Professor Kevin Portteus, the trend was already well underway in the 1970s.
I can add this: Part of the problem is that legislative compromise is a dying art in Congress. Why? Because one side (and for the examples that come to mind for me, that side is the GOP) has been repeatedly made into a chump when the compromise comes unraveled in the executive branch (through one-sided enforcement) or in the courts (through one-sided interpretation). The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 is a good example. For many years at least the part that GOP favored most went unenforced, while the part the Democrats favored most was interpreted broadly and enforced vigorously. There are other examples.
When legislators feel like chumps, they start shying away from legislating. That gets them out of the habit of negotiating with their colleagues across the aisle. Instead, they spend their time posturing. That posturing in turn makes future negotiations more difficult. Alas, I don’t know how to solve this problem. Once trust is lost—whether in the context of a legislature or elsewhere—is it hard to regain.
1ST ARMORED DIVISION LIVE FIRE EXERCISE IN POLAND: 1st Armored Division M1A2 Abrams tanks deploy in a defensive position during a live fire exercise at Drasko Pomorskie Training Area in Drawsko Promorskie, Poland. Photo taken March 29.
SHUT UP PEASANTS: Joel Kotkin on how green regulation has led to a decline in home ownership, the squeezing of the middle class and the return of feudalism. His book-length treatment of the problem is due early next year and promises to be the must-read of 2020.
WORST. NAZI. PRESIDENT. EVER. President Trump is actually more popular in Israel than he is in the United States.
YES. Biden hugged, Harris ruined lives. Guess who’s more reviled?
As San Francisco’s district attorney and California’s attorney general, Harris compiled an astonishing record of disregarding legal flubs that stuck people in prison as she then insisted they stay there. In effect, she shoved due process in a paper shredder by way of technicalities, thereby enabling the ruin of people who, in some instances, were likely innocent. We’re not talking about emotional disturbance after a supposed kiss on the back of the head. We’re talking about the prolonged, debilitating torture of prison.
Harris, smart, tough and quick to offer freebies we can’t afford to citizens perhaps returning the favor at the voting booth, offered little to defendants when she served as a district attorney. She didn’t tell defense attorneys, for instance, that a lab technician had messed with drug evidence by such methods as theft, and so you got convictions based on a fair share of hooey. A judge let 600 of the victims go home despite Harris’s unprincipled protests.
When she was attorney general, there was a man whose stepdaughter had accused him of sexual abuse. He said she was lying and turned down a plea bargain offer of just a few years in prison. He got convicted without evidence being presented that she had in fact lied like a spurting fire hydrant to police. When that became known, Harris and team still fought to keep him in prison for decades, and won.
But Democrats can’t hold Harris accountable because intersectionality or whatever.
SYRIA’S CIVIL WAR CONTINUES: The chaos continues. Reuters reports suicide bombers disguised as farmers attacked a Syrian Army position north of the city of Hama.
Meanwhile, the Syrian Army continues to make indiscriminate attacks:
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the eight-year-long war, says about 200 civilians have been killed by shelling and bombardment in the region since mid-February, the bulk of them by government attacks on rebel-held areas.
The Observatory said 10 people were killed in Tuesday’s attack in a “demilitarized” zone set up under the Turkish-Russian agreement.
Iranian proxies haven’t left. This podcast discusses Iranian proxy and mercenary operations in Syria.
Remember, Obama said Assad must go. Obama also imposed a “red line” forbidding the use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime — then he failed to enforce it. Obama also allied with Russia in Syria –isn’t an alliance collusion of a type? Obama also gave Iran several billion — money that can be spent on mercenaries.
UNEXPECTED HEADLINES: Doctors find four bees in woman’s eye, feeding on her tears.
EVERYTHING IS FINE AT HARVARD: Winthrop Tutors Plan to File Title IX Complaint Regarding Confrontation with Student.
MANILA’S BEIJING BROMANCE WRECKS ON PAG-ASA ISLAND: Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte has threatened Beijing with military action.
China’s prior theft of Filipino maritime territory and resources is a fact. In 2016, the Hague’s arbitration tribunal ruled that China had intruded on Filipino territory when it seized islets in the Spratlys, constructed artificial islands on reefs well inside long-recognized Filipino territory and conducted illegal fishing operations. The tribunal relied heavily on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea treaty (UNCLOS), which China claims to recognize and support.
Read the whole thing.
ISRAEL: After yet another election win, what’s next for Benjamin Netanyahu? Weird, my sense from the press and pundits in the runup to the election was that he was doomed.
HMM: China’s Next Naval Target Is the Internet’s Underwater Cables.
While people tend think of satellites and cell towers as the heart of the internet, the most vital component is the 380 submerged cables that carry more than 95 percent of all data and voice traffic between the continents. They were built largely by the U.S. and its allies, ensuring that (from a Western perspective, at least) they were “cleanly” installed without built-in espionage capability available to our opponents. U.S. internet giants including Google, Facebook and Amazon are leasing or buying vast stretches of cables from the mostly private consortia of telecom operators that constructed them.
But now the Chinese conglomerate Huawei Technologies, the leading firm working to deliver 5G telephony networks globally, has gone to sea. Under its Huawei Marine Networks component, it is constructing or improving nearly 100 submarine cables around the world. Last year it completed a cable stretching nearly 4,000 miles from Brazil to Cameroon. (The cable is partly owned by China Unicorn, a state-controlled telecom operator.) Rivals claim that Chinese firms are able to lowball the bidding because they receive subsidies from Beijing.
Just as the experts are justifiably concerned about the inclusion of espionage “back doors” in Huawei’s 5G technology, Western intelligence professionals oppose the company’s engagement in the undersea version, which provides a much bigger bang for the buck because so much data rides on so few cables.
MAYBE IT’S TIME TO RE-OPEN THE AWAN INVESTIGATION? The Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak reports a second Senate aide was involved in digital theft of GOP senators’ personal information from the congressional computer networks.
Rosiak knows whereof he speaks, being the author of Obstruction of Justice and the guy who busted the Awan scandal wide open.
HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: College promotes men’s cuddling group to ‘redefine masculinity.’ Because “traditional masculinity” is toxic.
LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Congressional Hearing Circuses and Much, Much More. “Yesterday, Attorney General William Barr appeared before the House Appropriations Committee to talk about the DOJ budget, but that was more of an afterthought as the Democrats used the opportunity to showcase their virtue on the Mueller report. The Democrats are upset that Barr released a letter summarizing Mueller’s findings and those findings blew up more than two years of claims that Trump is a RUSSIAN asset who worked with the RUSSIANS to win the presidential election. Now, the objective is to create a cloud of suspicion around Barr which, I guess, will cast doubt on the Mueller report. Silly stuff.”
STOP USING KIDS AS A WEAPON: Parkland victim’s father: Traumatized students shouldn’t have been flung into politics. “The politicization and media-frenzied response to the murders overwhelmed and eclipsed the real, personal needs of the survivors and their loved ones. To be blunt, the cacophony of voices on gun control drowned out and suppressed a needed conversation on the mental health needs at the school and in the community. For that failure, our community is paying a heavy price.”
A LIE SO BIG, POLITIFACT IS WILLING TO BUST DEMOCRATS FOR IT: “Here’s what they left out in the process: the fact that Trump wasn’t clearly talking about asylum seekers. His ‘animals’ comment came nearly a year ago during a White House discussion on MS-13 gang members.”
It’s funny how badly they want Trump to be the racist demagogue he clearly isn’t. But then, if Trump’s not evil, they’re not special.
DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE NEW ‘CONSENT CONDOM?’ No, I am not making this up, it’s a new product from an Argentinian firm. Four fingers are required to open the package – thus the product name. Any bets on how long till American colleges distribute these to students for free?
Prof. Sean McDowell of Biola University points to the lesson shouted by the Consent Condum about the “failure of the Sexual Revolution.” And Prof. Adam Ellwanger, writing in The Federalist, points to a huge related glaring contradiction in the nation’s current sexual climate.
But wait, there’s more! The same post takes you to something The Urban Alternative’s Tony Evans and Super Bowl-winning NFL coach Tony Dungy are doing on the same front and did you see Gallup’s Lifestyle survey results? Surprise! Married men and women are happier virtually across the board.
It’s all in one jam-packed HillFaith post this morning.
SEAN TRENDE: Evaluating the 2020 Democratic Primary Field.
Good stuff on all the major-ish candidates, declared and not-yet-declared. Worth your time.