Archive for 2019
September 30, 2019
REALCLEARINVESTIGATIONS: ‘Straight Shooter’ Justice Dept. Watchdog Has Held His Fire on Powerful People. “I see a pattern of him pulling up short and trying to be a bit of a statesman instead of making the hard calls.”
Beijing has the kind of problem with Hong Kong that they can’t fix with bullies and tear gas.
AT AMAZON, Save up to 41% for International Coffee Day.
STEPHANIE GUTMANN: Why is a good man so hard to find? Blame the war on boys and men. (Bumped).
HOOVER DAM: On this day in 1935, Hoover Dam was officially dedicated. At the time, it was the most expensive public works project in American history. Today it continues to supply power for over a million homes (and reliable water too). I am told my house in San Diego is usually one of them.
Just starting on this epic undertaking required building a railroad from Las Vegas to the site, constructing an entire town—Boulder City—to house the workers, and temporarily diverting the Colorado River through four diversion tunnels. All of this had to be done in a place where summer temperatures frequently top 110 degrees.
Among the many thousands of workers were the so-called “high scalers”—some of whom had been circus acrobats. Their job was to climb down the canyon walls on ropes and remove all loose rock in preparation for building the actual dam. Jackhammers and dynamite were their tools.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation web site tells this story:
Perhaps the most famous feat any of the high scalers ever performed was a daring midair rescue. Burl R. Rutledge, a Bureau of Reclamation engineer, fell from the canyon rim. Twenty-five feet below, high scaler Oliver Cowan heard Rutledge slip. Without a moment’s hesitation, he swung himself out and seized Rutledge’s leg. A few seconds later, high scaler Arnold Parks swung over and pinned Rutledge’s body to the canyon wall. The scalers held Rutledge until a line was dropped and secured around him and the shaken engineer was pulled, unharmed, to safety.
I know I’ll forget by tomorrow, because it’s the 21st century and it’s hard not to take electrical power for granted. But today at least I’m going to try to remember all those who worked on the dam—including the hundred or so who died—when I flip on a switch and a light comes on. It’s a tribute to how lucky I am that I am likely to forget even before lunchtime.
KYLE SMITH: Trump impeachment saga is pointless reboot of 1999 Bill Clinton effort.
If Trump is impeached, he will follow the precedent set by Bill Clinton and ignore calls to resign. Then he’ll follow the second precedent set by Clinton and win in the Senate, which will set up the third precedent, a claim that his tormentors wasted the people’s time and money. Clinton’s approval rating rose by double digits as the process played out and Americans decided he was being needlessly put through a wringer. The lesson we all should have learned is: If you can’t make your impeachment bipartisan, don’t bother.
One doesn’t normally look to The New York Times for pushback to the Resistance, but this week the Paper of Record made an honest attempt to break outside the Acela corridor and ask Americans outside the political class what they think of impeaching the president. What they found was very little interest in impeachment. A recent poll showed 57 percent opposition to impeachment, and the Times’ reporting suggests that figure isn’t going to shift much.
The kindest explanation I have is that the Democrats have been trying to get payback for more than 20 years, finally ran out of patience, and decided to go all in on a weak hand. Voters ought to punish them at the polls next November for it, but we’ll see.
THIS STORY ABOUT BIDEN AND GIULIANI BURIES THE LEDE: Biden campaign says you have to hold public office to be entitled to opine on ‘the nation’s airwaves.’
In a letter addressed to the heads of the major news and cable networks, as well as top news anchors, two top Biden campaign advisers make the case that by peddling routine falsehoods about the work of Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, Giuliani’s presence on the airwaves is editorially untenable.
“We are writing today with grave concern that you continue to book Rudy Giuliani on your air to spread false, debunked conspiracy theories on behalf of Donald Trump. While you often fact check his statements in real time during your discussions, that is no longer enough. By giving him your air time, you are allowing him to introduce increasingly unhinged, unfounded and desperate lies into the national conversation,” the letter from top aides Anita Dunn and Kate Bedingfield reads.
“We write to demand that in service to the facts, you no longer book Rudy Giuliani, a surrogate for Donald Trump who has demonstrated that he will knowingly and willingly lie in order to advance his own narrative,” the letter continues.
The Biden campaign letter goes on to note that “Giuliani is not a public official, and holds no public office that would entitle him to opine on the nation’s airwaves.” And it demands that if the former mayor is put on the airwaves, “an equivalent amount of time” be given “to a surrogate for the Biden campaign.”
(Emphasis added). A friend was suggesting to me yesterday that Giuliani is hurting Trump more than helping him. Well, Biden’s campaign doesn’t seem to think so. And now he’s got them showing an amazing sense of entitlement.
THAT WOULD BE NICE, BUT APPARENTLY THERE’S A CONSTITUENCY FOR THAT KIND OF THING: Trump: ‘Rep. Adam Schiff Must Resign From Congress!’
ED LINKED THIS ROGER KIMBALL PIECE ON IMPEACHMENT ALREADY, but I think it’s worth breaking out this bit:
There were plenty of hints and adumbrations before, but it really took shape with Donald Trump. What we have seen over the last few years is an effort to render a large part (indeed, a majority) of the electorate illegitimate.
Donald Trump won the presidency in a free, open, and democratic election. And yet a sliver of the population—the Antifa thugs, the Hollywood brats, the media sissies, the beautiful people with expensive degrees, and, of course, the radical fringe of the Democratic Party—all refused to accept the results of the election.
It’s not just that they disliked Donald Trump. They declared him illegitimate. By implication, they declared anyone who supported Trump illegitimate, too. In essence, they bowed out of the social compact that underwrote the legitimacy of the American regime.
That’s exactly right. And something similar is happening with regard to Brexit. They wish to dissolve the people and elect another.
NO. NEXT QUESTION? Question: is it ethical for federal judges to participate in ABA programs?
The ABA is a partisan organization, and federal judges should not be involved in it.
CHANGE: Alaska Institutes Opt-In Unions.
Public sector unions in Alaska will no longer be able to automatically collect dues from workers after Republican governor Mike Dunleavy instituted the nation’s first statewide “opt-in” system of unionization.
In 2018, the Supreme Court overturned decades’ worth of legal precedent that allowed public-sector unions to collect mandatory dues or fees from government employees. The 5-4 ruling in Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said that such a practice impedes on the First Amendment rights of workers by forcing them to financially support political speech. In response to the ruling, states around the country allowed employees to opt out of union membership. Gov. Dunleavy went a step further on Thursday, signing an executive order that requires employees to affirmatively opt in to union membership before agencies deduct dues from their salaries.
They’ll feel that.