REGARDLESS OF TRUMP, LIBERALISM IS IN TROUBLE: After noting that the liberalism of the rule of law and skepticism of government power and foreign adventurism and so forth was abandoned during the Obama years, Oliver Traldi writes: “Perhaps the most interesting dynamic post-Trump is that there has been no reassessment this time. Instead, there’s been an acceleration. Just as a terrorist attack can be spun to support counterterrorism policy — it’s not that the policy didn’t work; it’s that we need more of it! — the 2016 election seems to have proven to liberals not that their shift in principles was wrong, but that they didn’t shift enough, because they didn’t realize just how powerful the hateful, mystical forces arrayed against them really were.”

I have seen virtually no soul-searching among progressives about what they might have done differently that might have prevented the Trump counter-reaction. Instead, it’s all about how to seize power back and crush the enemy.

WE DON’T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT HILLARY BECOMING PRESIDENT IN 2020:

AN OFFER TO DUKE UNIVERSITY HISTORIAN NANCY MACLEAN: I’m not exactly holding my breath waiting for her to take me up on this offer, but maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

MUELLER’S FORTHCOMING ASSAULT ON THE SEPARATION OF POWERS? Bloomberg: “When it comes to the obstruction portion of the investigation, Mueller is said to be focused on three main episodes: Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey last May; the drafting of a misleading statement about the purpose of a June 2016 meeting between Don Jr., Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and a group of Russians at Trump Tower; and the disclosure that Trump considered firing Mueller last June.”

The first and third of these are part of the Executive’s constitutional authority to hire and fire whomever he wants who works for him. It’s hard to imagine that the Supreme Court would ultimately uphold obstruction of justice charges against a president for firing his underlings, unless perhaps the president knew that the individual in question was literally just about to indict him. The view of the executive branch that Comey seems to be operating under, that the FBI director and special prosecutor are not the president’s agents but are instead somehow independent officials not subject to presidential authority is quite wrong, constitutionally.

(Bumped, by Glenn).

I’M GLAD PERSIAN JEWS DID MORE THAN BAKE COOKIES: The Jewish holiday of Purim starts next Wednesday. According to the Book of Esther, the evil Haman persuaded the Persian king to allow him to murder the Jews of the Persian empire, with the Jews not allowed to defend themselves. Thanks to the heroic intervention of Mordechai and Esther, the King issued a new order permitting self-defense, and the Jews slew seventy-five thousand of those who had planned to kill them.

The actual Purim story apparently didn’t make much of an impression on one young woman, the daughter of a liberal Congressman, who is organizing people to sell traditional Purim cookies called Hamantaschen to raise money for gun control: “I think it’s a holiday that within the Jewish world, at least within more liberal Jewish circles, people take a lot of messages of social justice from, so I think with that in mind it made sense to use it,” she said.

It’s both sad and infuriating to see a three thousand year old religious tradition consistently reduced to “supports whatever the SJW cause of the moment is.” Raise money for gun control if that’s what floats your boat, but leave Purim out of it, ok?

IT’S COME TO THIS: Washington Post opinion piece defends Peron, compares him favorably to Trump, because “Peronism led a process of expanding economic equality, collective organization and political enfranchisement. Trumpism, by contrast, builds upon American tendencies toward inequality, individualism and political disengagement.” Left-wing fascism, in other words, is superior to American democracy. Breaking eggs to make omelettes and all that.

POWERLESS ON THE BENCH: A powerful speech by Kevin Sharp, a former federal district judge, who resigned from the bench because he could no longer be complicit in crazy jail sentences caused by a combination of Congressional malfeasance and prosecutorial overzealousness.

THE AL CAPONE’S VAULT OF AMERICAN HISTORY: “When people embarrass themselves, I tend to cringe and look away. I turn off talk radio when callers make a stupid point. I feel queasy when a colleague misspeaks in a public forum. And when reading Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, which was one of five finalists for the National Book Award for nonfiction, I felt nauseated. I was embarrassed for the author, embarrassed for Duke University and MacLean’s colleagues in its history department, embarrassed for the liberal reviewers who lauded such obviously shoddy and dishonest work, and most of all embarrassed for the prestigious National Book Award for having given it their imprimatur…. Throughout Democracy in Chains I kept waiting for the big reveal that would show the secret details of Buchanan and Koch’s far right takeover—and was left disappointed. The book is the historian’s equivalent of Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s vault.”

SINCE WHEN ARE LIBERTARIANS PRO-“TERROR” AND AGAINST “FAIR PLAY”?  How the Right Co-Opts Frederick Douglass.

Yale History Professor David Blight:

[Frederick] Douglass did preach self-reliance for his fellow blacks: He argued that the freed slaves should be given their rights, protected and then “let alone.” But he never employed that “let alone” dictum without also demanding “fair play,” and security against terror and discrimination. Conservatives have cherry-picked his words to advance their narrow visions of libertarianism.

Put this in the ongoing series of liberal academics who don’t understand libertarianism writing critiques of it. Among other things, Blight confuses “individualism,” i.e., favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control, with being unconcerned with the welfare of the community. Hopefully, though, the op-ed will spark interest in Tim Sandefur’s new biography of Douglass, which inspired Blight’s rant.

ABOUT THAT LOGAN ACT: Kerry to Abbas Confidante: ‘Stay Strong and do not given in to Trump’. Remember how many progressives wanted to prosecute members of the Trump transition team under the Logan Act for warning U.S. allies that the U.S. would not look kindly upon them if they voted for a pending anti-Israel UN resolution? Strangely enough, those same progressives have been silent about Kerry’s much more egregious interference in U.S. foreign policy.

YOU CAN’T HAVE IT BOTH WAYS: Former acting AG Sally Yates criticizes Trump for referring to career Justice Department officials as the “Deep State” You can’t go around trying to organize anti-Trump “resistance” in the federal civil service–or in Yates’ case actually engaging in real resistance by refusing to carry out your duties when you disagree with the president–and then squawk when the president suggests that the civil service may not be exactly neutral on the issues of the day. Trump’s best allies are the Obama administration veterans who live up to all his worst rhetoric.

(Bumped, by Glenn).
 

OBAMA VETERANS CONTINUE TO BECLOWN THEMSELVES OVER IRAN: Former CIA Director Brennan hits Trump strategy on Iran

“With wholesale condemnation of Iran and nuclear deal over past year, Trump Admin squandered opportunity to bolster reformists in Tehran and prospects for peaceful political reform in Iran,” Brennan tweeted. “Bluster is neither a strategy nor a mechanism for exercise of U.S. power and influence.” Because eight years of appeasement, including the lifting of sanctions, illegally sending hundreds of millions of cash straight to the Iranian government, and allegedly easing up on Hezbollah worked so well. I’ll take the Trump Administration’s moral clarity on Iran over that any day.

APPARENTLY, ROY MOORE IS MARRIED TO ARCHIE BUNKER: Roy Moore’s wife fights anti-Semitic tag: ‘One of our attorneys is a Jew’.

By any chance, is his name Rabinowitz?

UPDATE: This is more funny than offensive, because it’s so completely tone deaf, like praising a black person for being “articulate,” or saying “some of my best friends are black” in response to a charge of racism. In all cases, it doesn’t mean you are hostile to the group, but you aren’t doing yourself any favors.

EVEN THOUGH SHE PURPORTS TO COMPLETELY AGREE WITH HIM Sen. Warren critical of Trump decision on Jerusalem.

Warren told a Reform Jewish convention, “Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and diplomacy between Israelis and Palestinians should determine the final status of Jerusalem for all parties.” Trump’s critics claim their criticism is over “timing” or the “absence of a comprehensive peace plan.” In reality, there are two types of critics among those who purport to support recognizing that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital: those who agree with Trump’s decision, but won’t give him credit for anything, and those who pretend to agree with the substance of Trump’s decision, but in fact want to deny Israel the legitimacy of having its capital recognized by the international community, indefinitely. The Jewish left is mostly in the former camp, the rest of the left, likely including Warren, in the latter.

DON’T FORGET THE SECURITY ADVANTAGES: Spread the swamp? Trump administration wants to move government offices out of Washington

Advocates for this idea neglect perhaps its most important aspect, the way it would make the federal government much more resilient in the aftermath of a catastrophic terrorist attack on Washington, D.C., such as a dirty bomb or biological attack on the Metro. Why would you want all of the most important government offices and officials to be concentrated within a few square miles?

FREE SPEECH FOR ME, BUT NOT FOR THEE: Two very wrong perspectives on Masterpiece Cakeshop

John McGinnis:

Consider, first, Linda Greenhouse: “in my opinion, if someone wants to be able to pick and choose his customers, he should bake for his friends in his own kitchen and stop calling himself a business.” On her view, people in commerce lose all expressive rights, because on any sensible line, sometimes a baker will be able to refuse a customer because of what that customer insists must be included in the cake design.

Greenhouse’s prejudices against people in commerce are right out of the nineteenth century. There aristocrats and landed gentry looked down on people in trade, thinking that the way those with income earned from land gave them social superiority and a more capacious set of rights. Similarly, Greenhouse earns income as a journalist, and does not regard that as a low commercial activity, although it entirely depends on consumers buying media products. Nevertheless, she feels she should get a full panoply of First Amendment protections while mere artisans get none.

Someone really ought to write a book about how antidiscrimination laws are gradually eroding civil liberties.

JUST THINK OF THEM AS DEMOCRATIC OPERATIVES WITH PULPITS: Reform Jewish Movement: Concerned About White House Jerusalem Announcement

That was yesterday. There must have been some blowback from the grassroots, because today’s press release was much more agreeable. The fact remains that the institutional Reform movement increasingly acts as a wing of progressive Democratic politics. I have little doubt that if President Clinton, instead of President Trump, had been making the announcement about Jerusalem, no such “concern” would have been expressed.

DEFINE “DANGEROUS GAMBIT”: Recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is a dangerous gambit.

So says long-term American diplomat Aaron David Miller, who helped facilitate the Oslo Accords. But it’s not like Trump is inviting unrepentant anti-American PLO terrorists to form a government a few kilometers from Israel’s heartland, inevitably leading to thousands of casualties on both sides, right?

TRUMP TO MOVE U.S. EMBASSY FROM TEL AVIV TO JERUSALEM, HYPOCRITES WORLDWIDE HARDEST HIT: The U.S. State Department, European diplomats and “moderate” Palestinian officials all claim that any future peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians must be based on the 1948 armistice lines. In 1948, Israel was in full control of the Western half of Jerusalem, and established its capital there. By contrast, the original U.N. partition plan, rejected by the Arabs, would have placed all of Jerusalem under international control. If everyone supposedly recognizes the 1948 armistice lines as a starting point for negotiations, why shouldn’t the United States recognize at least the Western half of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, regardless of whether Israel claims the whole city, as it does? Locating the U.S. embassy in West Jerusalem does not prejudice any claims the Palestinians have in future negotiations to East Jerusalem. So according to what diplomats worldwide purport to believe, moving the U.S. embassy is completely proper, and the loud opposition to such a move suggests that these diplomats have never really accepted the 1948 lines as the basis for negotiations as they claim.

LAKE WOBEGON: Where all the sexual harassment settlements are above-average. H/t Lowell Jacobson

SNATCHING DEFEAT FROM THE JAWS OF VICTORY: Trump’s invoking “Pocahontas” to criticize Elizabeth Warren at a ceremony to honor Navajo war heroes was to say the least highly inappropriate and buffoonish. Yet somehow, the Democrats and their media allies have shifted the focus to a clear loser, the question of Warren’s phony claim to Native American heritage. Meanwhile, media outlets keep referring to Warren as having “claimed” or “unsubstantiated” Native American heritage. Five years after the controversy over her “claim” originally broke, if there were any evidence, DNA or genealogical, supporting the claim she would have produced it by now. Why can’t reporters bring themselves to write something like “apparently false claim…” at this point? I think we know the answer. You want more Trump? This is how you get more Trump.

SENATOR WARREN IS LYING: Elizabeth Warren denies using Native American heritage to ‘get ahead’. If Warren or her defenders have a plausible explanation as to why she listed herself as a “minority” law professor until she got her job at Harvard, and then removed herself from that list, I’ve yet to hear it.

Related: It’s time for Elizabeth Warren to apologize for her Native American deception: “The details of what Warren did, and how she tried to conceal it, are set forth at Elizabeth Warren Wiki, a website we created to put in one place the research documenting Warren’s deception. It’s all there, including the rundown of her highly questionable, if not downright debunked, family lore stories.”

BLAMING THE MESSENGER: Defending Anti-Semites, Rutgers President Takes Aim at the Algemeiner

President Barchi rightly noted that the controversies facing the three members of his faculty staff originated with exposés published by The Algemeiner – but his goal wasn’t to offer a vote of thanks to Shiri Moshe, our reputable journalist who brought these vital issues to the public attention. Instead, his intention was clearly to disparage, undermine and delegitimize our reporting. And on what basis? On the basis that the stories had originated in a Jewish newspaper.

HATE CRIMES IN THE AGE OF TRUMP: I’ve long suspected that the purported massive increase in hate crimes resulting from the Trump campaign was wildly exaggerated. The new FBI hate crimes stats are out, and hate crimes rose only 5% between 2015 and 2016. The increase isn’t good news, but between what certainly looks like an increase in hate crimes hoaxes and the greater attention paid by the media to real hate crimes, which encourages reporting, there may not be any real increase at all. Certainly, the whole “2016 in the United States is like 1933 in Germany” crowd should be embarrassed. Relatedly, the ADL recently reported a 67% surge in anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, which preposterously includes bomb threats made to Jewish institutions that were ultimately traced to a mentally disturbed Jew in Israel.

THE QUAKERS WON’T BE MISSED: Quakerism is a dying religion, with only seventy thousand or so adherents left in the United States, and falling. Instead of tending to their dying religion, the leadership has been investing in Palestinian rejectionism with echoes of anti-Semitism. Unfortunately, the Quakers still have disproportionate ideological influence through their prestigious private “Friends” schools.