HARSH, BUT FAIR:

JOEL KOTKIN: The real China threat: “Most American concerns with China revolve around economic issues, and, for some, the threat posed by that country’s expanding military. But China’s real existential challenge is not over market shares or submarines, but in a battle of values. Right now, it does not seem we are certain to win. China presents the most profound challenge to liberal values since the end of the Cold War, a development that has caught our consistently lame political establishment by surprise.”

DON’T GET COCKY, KIDS: Prediction Market Favoring Trump Over Democrats. If you want to make a difference, forget the prediction markets and go volunteer at a campaign.

HMM: Hong Kong Protests Spread to U.S. Colleges, and a Rift Grows.

As the protests in Hong Kong enter their 21st week, the conflict is spilling onto campuses across the United States and highlighting rising tensions between Hong Kong-born students and their classmates from mainland China. College officials face the challenging task of supporting free expression without alienating the largest demographic of international students on American campuses.

Schools in the United States have yet to report physical attacks, like one at the University of Queensland in Australia this summer. But solidarity protests and lectures have devolved into shouting matches. Pro-Hong Kong “Lennon walls,” covered with sticky notes and artwork, have been vandalized.

It would be nice if our universities would stand up against oppression, but I know better.

PETER THIEL ON The Decline of Silicon Valley. “It’s become a lot less charismatic in the last five years. The big tech companies are as self-hating as the big banks were in 2009. There is absolutely no narrative of the future left.”

FLASHBACK: Richard Fernandez: The End Of Normal. “Where Applebaum is correct is predicting that things will never go back to normal. They can’t because it was unsustainable.”

Plus: “What no one wants to remember is that Russian collusion, if it happened at all, happened under Obama. . . . In reality the good old days when ISIS ruled the Middle East, Russia could invade the Ukraine, China steal the OPM data and the South China Sea and kill the entire CIA network in the Middle Kingdom were never that good. Neither Trump nor Brexit nor the Democratic party left wing sprang out of thin air. They sprouted from a crisis.”

SO DOES EVERY OTHER ADVOCATE OF IT: Elizabeth Warren misleads Americans on harm and costs of ‘Medicare-for-all.’

“Medicare-for-all” advocates claim that the focus on its cost to the federal government is disingenuous. We’re already spending well over $3 trillion a year on health care. The Warren/Sanders plan would relieve individuals and employers of that spending — and re-apportion it to the federal government.

Sanders and his allies like to cite a study from the libertarian Mercatus Center, which assumes that “Medicare-for-all” will adopt the existing Medicare program’s low payment rates — and thus save the country $2 trillion over a decade.

Of course, extending Medicare’s payment schedule across the entire health care system would reduce payments to doctors and hospitals by 40 percent, relative to private insurance. And it would raise demand for care by 11 percent.

In other words, “Medicare-for-all” posits that doctors and hospitals will have no qualms about treating more patients for less money.

It’s more likely that doctors and hospitals will respond to lower payment rates by reducing the supply of care they’re willing to deliver.

Quality will decline, too, as lower pay fails to attract the best talent.

ANALYSIS: TRUE. David Rivkin & Elizabeth Price Foley: This Impeachment Subverts the Constitution.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has directed committees investigating President Trump to “proceed under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry,” but the House has never authorized such an inquiry. Democrats have been seeking to impeach Mr. Trump since the party took control of the House, though it isn’t clear for what offense. Lawmakers and commentators have suggested various possibilities, but none amount to an impeachable offense. The effort is akin to a constitutionally proscribed bill of attainder—a legislative effort to punish a disfavored person. The Senate should treat it accordingly.

The impeachment power is quasi-judicial and differs fundamentally from Congress’s legislative authority. The Constitution assigns “the sole power of impeachment” to the House—the full chamber, which acts by majority vote, not by a press conference called by the Speaker. Once the House begins an impeachment inquiry, it may refer the matter to a committee to gather evidence with the aid of subpoenas. Such a process ensures the House’s political accountability, which is the key check on the use of impeachment power.

The House has followed this process every time it has tried to impeach a president. Andrew Johnson’s 1868 impeachment was predicated on formal House authorization, which passed 126-47. In 1974 the Judiciary Committee determined it needed authorization from the full House to begin an inquiry into Richard Nixon’s impeachment, which came by a 410-4 vote. The House followed the same procedure with Bill Clinton in 1998, approving a resolution 258-176, after receiving independent counsel Kenneth Starr’s report.

Mrs. Pelosi discarded this process in favor of a Trump-specific procedure without precedent in Anglo-American law. Rep. Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee and several other panels are questioning witnesses in secret. Mr. Schiff has defended this process by likening it to a grand jury considering whether to hand up an indictment. But while grand-jury secrecy is mandatory, House Democrats are selectively leaking information to the media, and House Republicans, who are part of the jury, are being denied subpoena authority and full access to transcripts of testimony and even impeachment-related committee documents. No grand jury has a second class of jurors excluded from full participation.

Unlike other impeachable officials, such as federal judges and executive-branch officers, the president and vice president are elected by, and accountable to, the people. The executive is also a coequal branch of government. Thus any attempt to remove the president by impeachment creates unique risks to democracy not present in any other impeachment context. Adhering to constitutional text, tradition and basic procedural guarantees of fairness is critical. These processes are indispensable bulwarks against abuse of the impeachment power, designed to preserve the separation of powers by preventing Congress from improperly removing an elected president.

House Democrats have discarded the Constitution, tradition and basic fairness merely because they hate Mr. Trump. Because the House has not properly begun impeachment proceedings, the president has no obligation to cooperate. The courts also should not enforce any purportedly impeachment-related document requests from the House.

I dunno, but I look forward to starting the impeachment inquiry on the next Democratic president on January 21 of his/her first year.

PARENTS OF KAYLA MUELLER GRATEFUL FOR DEATH OF ISIS LEADER WHO HELD THEIR DAUGHTER HOSTAGE.

FLASHBACK: The Washington Post Reports on Impeachment Efforts on Inauguration Day.

In an article from the Washington Post from Jan. 20, 2017 (Inauguration Day) Matea Gold writes about the effort to impeach President Trump. Titled, “The campaign to impeach President Trump has begun” Gold writes: “The effort to impeach President Donald John Trump is already underway. At the moment the new commander in chief was sworn in, a campaign to build public support for his impeachment went live at ImpeachDonaldTrumpNow.org, spearheaded by two liberal advocacy groups aiming to lay the groundwork for his eventual ejection from the White House.” Gold continues, ” Their effort is early, strategists admit. But they insist it is not premature — even if it triggers an angry backlash from those who will argue that they are not giving the new president a chance.”

“The impeachment drive comes as Democrats and liberal activists are mounting broad opposition to stymie Trump’s agenda. Among the groups organizing challenges to the Trump administration is the American Civil Liberties Union, which plans to wield public-records requests and lawsuits as part of an aggressive action plan aimed at protecting immigrants and pushing for government transparency, among other issues. ‘We think that President Trump will be in violation of the Constitution and federal statutes on day one, and we plan a vigorous offense to ensure the worst of the constitutional violations do not occur,’ said Anthony D. Romero, the ACLU’s executive director.”

Actually, they were talking about impeaching him within a day or two of the election.

THERE HE GOES AGAIN: Joe Biden: Cops Don’t Pull Over White Girls.

ROGER KIMBALL: Multitasking the Intelligence Community Roundup. “I am not the only one to notice that Schiff and Nadler are more and more playing to suburban dinner theaters with tiny audiences while the names William Barr, John Durham, and Michael Horowitz are front-page news wherever there is news.”

ONE REASON WHY PEOPLE ARE NO LONGER IMPRESSED WITH EXPERTS’ OPINIONS.

Flashback: The Suicide of Expertise.