Archive for 2025

MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE:

ROGER KIMBALL: The Heritage Foundation’s Meltdown: The Heritage Foundation’s Halloween fiasco revealed less about antisemitism on the right than about the establishment’s renewed war on Trump’s populist movement.

Another issue, and the one I wish to focus on here, is what I think of as the play behind the play in the attack on Kevin Roberts. John Daniel Davidson, writing in The Federalist, summed up the plot of that supervening play in the subhead to a recent column: “Genuine concern about antisemitism on the right is being hijacked by neocons to attack J. D. Vance in hopes of retaking control of the GOP.”

Bingo. In other words, two separate things can be true at once. I would add that it is not just J.D. Vance who is in the crosshairs but the entire MAGA, i.e., populist, agenda of Donald Trump. A long article published in The Wall Street Journal on November 7 epitomizes the point. “The Crack-Up at the Heritage Foundation,” runs its headline, “Is a Warning Sign for MAGA World.”

It is no secret that the Journal does not much like “MAGA world.” It does not like Trump’s immigration policy, either regarding the border or the illegal migrants who are already in the U.S. It does not like his economic policies, especially regarding tariffs. Nor does it like most planks of his foreign policy.

In the course of its story, the Journal notes that it reached out several times to both Roberts himself and to other Heritage spokesmen. It got no response. That is hardly surprising. The Journal’s coverage of Heritage under Roberts has been unremittingly hostile.

The Old Guard out, but not down.

MAYBE IT’S TIME TO RETIRE:

COLONIALISM: British Islamism is flexing its muscles more and more openly as it rises to power.

How must Sir Keir Starmer have felt after vowing to do all he could to reverse the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, only to have been humiliated at the hands of the mob? Last month, the Prime Minister declared that the chant “from the river to the sea” was unequivocally antisemitic. What would he say about “death, death to the IDF” as it rang off the pavements of Birmingham?

How must the 700 police officers have felt as they struggled to contain the brazen antisemitism which originated in Pakistan and other foreign climes and was imported into Britain during decades of reckless immigration? Talk about diversity; in Birmingham, the mob appeared almost exclusively Muslim and hostile. How have we done this to ourselves – or had it done to us?

The crowd with the blood of Jews in its nostrils flew many flags tonight: that of Palestine, that of Lebanon, that of Kashmir. One that was notable by its absence was the flag of Great Britain.

As the Israeli prime minister pointed out in an interview recently, try asking these masked activists for their views on our country and indeed the West as a whole. What you will soon discover is that their hatred for the Jewish state is simply the tip of a spear that is headed for the heart of our culture. Look at their past attitude towards the statue of Winston Churchill, the cenotaph and our Union flag. Allahu Akhbar, they screamed through megaphones. Allahu Akhbar!

From the heart of the Middle East, Israel does a better job — a much better job — at defending and promoting Western interests than the British government does in Britain.

The former, I suspect, is the main reason so much of the Left hates Israel.

HOW IT STARTED: “It is not clear if Biden gave the green light to the acts of clemency that night on January 16, however, the exchange suggests that the Biden aides instead took action on what Posada said Biden ‘intended’ to do. The three documents signed early the next morning were for around 2,500 commutations. Biden has since said that the autopen was used to sign the clemency documents because there were ‘a lot of them,’ but there were only three documents that day that were signed with the autopen.”

How It’s Going: Trump pardons Giuliani, Powell, Chesebro and dozens more involved in 2020 ‘fake electors’ case. “President Trump granted pardons for 77 individuals tied to a plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election – including Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Kenneth Chesebro, the White House announced late Sunday night.”

ROBERT SPENCER: Trump Administration Wants to Deport Gang Member Abrego Garcia to This Vacationland. “Soon Abrego Garcia, the mild-mannered ‘Maryland man’ of the mainstream media, was back in the United States, where he became a hero of the anti-Trump, anti-American left. Still, the Trump team did not give up on its efforts to send him out of the country for good. On Friday, the Justice Department asked U.S. District Court Judge Paula Xinis to approve the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to Liberia, and really, who could possibly object?”

HIGHER EDUCATION WAS SUPPOSED TO BRING US THE CONSIDERED VIEWS OF EXPERTS. INSTEAD, WE GET THIS:

WOOD WIDE WEB: No, that is not a typo, it refers to the Wood Wide Web, which has to do with mushrooms. Some mushroom can be eaten, others will produce a high and still others will leave you like that Yankee soldier Clint Eastwood portrayed in “Beguiled.” But it’s the mushrooms’ incredible network below ground that is the focus of a fascinating and lavishly produced video from the John 10:10 Project/Illustra Media this morning on HillFaith.

THE PLACE WHERE CHINESEUM SOLAR POWER MAKES SENSE:   Why Solarpunk is already happening in Africa.

But the whole rushing to the future is nonsense. It’s okay for their current, very limited needs. It won’t support an industrial civilization.  Solar is the power of the future in the same sense Brazil is the country of the future… and will always be. The present, OTOH….