QUELLE HORREUR! “Our Daughter Lied to Us and Went to a Pro-Life Rally. I seriously thought she was a feminist.” A Slate reader emails their “Care and Feeding” column on Friday for advice:

Yesterday, my 17-year-old daughter, a junior in high school, told us she was going to her boyfriend’s house. It turns out she lied.

I only found out because today, I casually mentioned Roe v. Wade may be overturned, and she replied, “I can’t wait. So many innocent lives will be spared.” We got into an argument in which she ended up confessing her actual whereabouts—she went to a “pro-life” rally with her boyfriend.

We’ve grounded her and taken away her phone for going behind our backs, but she’s showing no remorse. I just can’t believe it. This is the girl who dressed up as Ruth Bader Ginsburg for Halloween when she was 10. She’s heading to law school in a couple years. I seriously thought she was pro-choice and a feminist. I’ve been taking her to rallies and protests since she was a baby. We’ve been educating her about safe sex and consent. We donate to Planned Parenthood every year for Christmas. I’m fine with her disagreeing with us on other topics, but I had an abortion years ago. We live in a conservative state. I don’t want her right to choose to be taken away.

And I’m furious at her for going behind our backs. I’m suspicious of her boyfriend—I know he’s a conservative-leaning Christian and I don’t want to have raised a daughter who votes for whomever her boyfriend does. How do I convince her being pro-life isn’t helping her in the long run?

— Just Trying to Raise a Feminist

In a 2007 article by Norman Podhoretz, he quoted a Commentary staffer who said at a (very early) anti-Vietnam War protest in 1960, “Do you realize that every young person in this room is a tragedy to some family or other?”

It was of an evening in the year 1960, when I went to address a meeting of left-wing radicals on a subject that had then barely begun to show the whites of its eyes: the possibility of American military involvement in a faraway place called Vietnam and the need to begin mobilizing opposition to it. Accompanying me that evening was the late Marion Magid, a member of my staff at Commentary, of which I had recently become the editor. As we entered the drafty old hall on Union Square in Manhattan, Marion surveyed the 50 or so people in the audience and whispered to me: “Do you realize that every young person in this room is a tragedy to some family or other?”

The memory of this quip brought back to life some sense of how unpromising the future had then appeared to be for that bedraggled-looking assemblage. No one would have dreamed that these young people, and the generation about to descend from them politically and culturally, would within the blink of a historical eye come to be hailed by many members of the very “Establishment” they were trying to topple as (in the representative words of Prof. Archibald Cox of Harvard Law School) “the best informed, the most intelligent, and the most idealistic this country has ever known.”

More incredible yet, in a mere decade the ideas and attitudes of the new movement, cleaned up but essentially unchanged, would turn one of our two major parties upside down and inside out.

And now that the American left has had decades of being the once-dreaded ”Establishment,” they seem shocked when their kids rebel to the other side, as teenagers universally are wont to do.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: Wisconsin middle schoolers accused of sexual harassment for using wrong gender pronouns.

BUT THE YEAR IS STILL YOUNG: Dana Milbank Writes the Most Morally Atrocious Column of 2022.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists tried to murder me and destroyed my office. They killed 3,000 of my fellow Americans. A decent human being would be respectful of the dead and the traumatized from that event in drawing comparisons of domestic political controversies to 9/11.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post is not a decent human being. He is a moral monster, and he advertised that in today’s column, entitled “Roe’s impending reversal is a 9/11 attack on America’s social fabric”: “Assuming little changes from the draft, overturning Roe would be a shock to our way of life, the social equivalent of the 9/11 attacks (which shattered our sense of physical security) or the crash of 2008 (which undid our sense of financial security).”

Evergreen flashback: That Dana Milbank column is even dumber than you think.

ONE-TERM BIDEN: Democrats Already Trying to Position Themselves for 2024.

Have you noticed that Elizabeth Warren keeps putting herself in front of every new current thing? When Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter was the hot story, she put herself front and center, then did the same thing with abortion.

Do you think this is a coincidence, or is it more likely that Warren is trying to remind Democrat voters that she is standing by, ready to jump in when they drop Biden?

It’s not just Warren who’s doing this. Bernie Sanders has recently said that he is prepared to run again.

In the past, being primaried hasn’t ended well for sitting presidents:

If Biden is “primaried” in 2024, it would likely be “the kiss of death” to his presidency based on trends, according to historian David Pietrusza.

Pietrusza named William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Lyndon Johnson and Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy in 1968, Gerald Ford and Reagan in 1976, Jimmy Carter and Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy in 1980, and George H.W. Bush and former Republican aide Pat Buchanan in 1992 as examples.

“It’s not so much the fact of a primary but the circumstances of who and when,” Pietrusza said. “Right now, of course, Joe Biden is not a good ‘who,’ and 2024 is not a good ‘when.'”

For Paleologos, the Carter comparison drew the most parallels, but it could also be distinguished given today’s political partisanship.

“Keep in mind that back then there were more persuadables,” he said. “That’s what makes it a serious topic of conversation. You’ve got more people in that pool of left of center than there were in the 1970s, and that’s a bigger pool of people saying there might be a better alternative than the current president.”

Biden’s appearance alongside Rep. Abigail Spanberger in Culpeper, Virginia, last week raised eyebrows after she admitted she is “going to have a hard time getting reelected.” Spanberger secured a second term in 2020 with only a 1.8 point margin of victory.

Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel described Biden as being a “burden” to Democrats like Spanberger.

“From forcing masks on school children and skyrocketing grocery and gas prices, Biden has shown he doesn’t care,” she said.

It’s as if Biden himself “governs like a man who knows he’s not running again.”

FASTER, PLEASE: The Badly Needed EastMed Pipeline Awaits Approval.

“Financial and political support by the EU can facilitate the final investment decision-making process by the private entities that are considering their participation in the project,” Michalis Mathioulakis, an energy expert at the ELIAMEP think tank, said recently, adding that the significant rise in natural gas prices in Europe favors the economic viability of the pipeline.

It was all the more surprising, therefore, when in January, the United States, in a complete policy reversal, unofficially communicated to Israel, Greece and Cyprus that it no longer supported the pipeline. Then, on April 6, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland made it even clearer that the US was officially killing off the EastMed project. As the final feasibility report on the project is still underway, the US decision seemed to come out of the blue.

During a visit to Greece, Nuland said in an interview with the newspaper Kathimerini:

“We don’t need to wait for 10 years and spend billions of dollars on this stuff. We need to move the gas now, And we need to use gas today as a transition to a greener future. Ten years from now we don’t want a pipeline. Ten years from now we want to be green. So we’ve got to use LNG [liquefied natural gas] and we’ve got to use electricity connections that we can do more quickly.”

Nuland’s comments came across as remarkably tone-deaf at a time when the US has actively been seeking to lower oil prices worldwide by appealing to dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia to increase oil production and even courting Venezuela. If anything, oil is even less “green” than natural gas, and the projected time during which the EastMed pipeline can be built is probably not ten years, but significantly less. Furthermore, natural gas is likely to be relevant for decades to come. It is, to say the least, highly unlikely that there will be enough renewable energy to cover European energy needs within the next decade. Fossil fuels will most likely still be needed for the foreseeable future to manufacture those electric cars and fly those airplanes. The greatest beneficiaries of the US and the West closing down their energy industries will be Russia, Iran and other countries set to make a windfall selling their fossil fuels.

So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”

LINCOLN PROJECT FOUNDER MELTS DOWN, PART 348913:

The latest drama began over the weekend amid news that Meghan McCain’s book Bad Republican hadn’t even managed to sell 300 copies. Schmidt joined in the Twitter pile-on, accusing McCain of “14 years of abuse and attacks” and being a “raging, screaming, crying” baby on the 2008 campaign trail. “The tantrums were beyond anything I have ever witnessed from any other human being,” Schmidt said.

Given that rumors have long swirled about McCain’s difficult behavior when she was a co-host on The View, Cockburn isn’t dismissing this accusation out of hand. But Schmidt then turned his fire on a once-unthinkable target: John McCain, a man he’d long claimed to admire. Schmidt claimed that McCain had privately admitted that he’d had an affair with a Washington lobbyist named Vicki Iseman, an allegation that surfaced in 2008 but that both McCain and Iseman denied.

Schmidt also said McCain was scared of his own veep nominee, Sarah Palin. “The bravest man that I had ever met turned out to be terrified of the creature that he had created,” Schmidt lamented. He then let out a wail of agony and tore at his shirt with his own fingernails.

Cockburn notes that if there’s a messier bitch in all of Washington, then he has yet to emerge.

More details of Schmidt’s lengthy Twitter bender at Fox News: Steve Schmidt unloads on NY Times, NY Mag, AP, claims reporting on Lincoln Project will be ‘discredited.’

Lincoln Project co-founder Steve Schmidt guaranteed that stories from multiple mainstream media outlets outlining dysfunction and scandal at his organization would be “discredited” on Thursday.

“By the time the sun sets on the West Coast of the United States of America the below stories will all be discredited. I will be asking @nytimes, @NYMag @AP for FULL-THROATED CORRECTIONS,” he tweeted.

Schmidt, who says he no longer has involvement with the disgraced PAC known as much for its anti-Trump exploits as its myriad of scandals and public fiascos, assailed the New York Times (“21 Men Accuse Lincoln Project Co-Founder of Online Harassment”), New York Magazine (“The Predator in the Lincoln Project”), and the Associated Press (“How a leading anti-Trump group ignored a crisis in its ranks”) over their stories in 2021 about fellow co-founder John Weaver’s online harassment of young, gay men.

* * * * * * * * *

As of Friday afternoon, no corrections or addendums to the stories Schmidt targeted have been added. Spokespersons for the New York Times and AP didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for Vox Media, which owns New York Magazine, backed up its report.

“We stand by this story; we have not been made aware of anything requiring a correction,” Vox Media spokesperson Laura Coates told Fox News Digital.

Schmidt’s online rage over the stories is the latest odd turn in the saga of the Lincoln Project, which raised nearly $90 million in 2020 but was later consumed by Weaver’s scandal, as well as reports of financial self-dealing, bitter in-fighting, a toxic work environment, and calls by even its own former members to shut down.

It remains in operation today, but it’s viewed warily even by some Democrats. For instance, Democratic Ohio Senate candidate Tim Ryan’s campaign recently urged it not to assist in his race against Republican J.D. Vance.

And finally, a question asked and answered: Who was ever dumb enough to make Steve Schmidt famous?

The media’s janitor, that’s who:

UPDATE: Former John McCain Campaign Manager Steve Schmidt Says He Didn’t Vote for Him. “He also told us something he’s never revealed before: his disillusionment with McCain was so deep by the end of the 2008 campaign that he didn’t think McCain should be in the White House. ‘The only conceivable conclusion that you could get to after watching his conduct in this campaign was that he’s completely unfit to be president,’ Schmidt told us. ‘Truth is, I didn’t vote for him either.’ He left the presidential line on his 2008 ballot blank.”

(Updated and bumped.)

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA: Cornish pub will not change name despite letter from Vogue owner.

In a cease-and-desist letter, Condé Nast’s chief operating officer, Sabine Vandenbroucke, argued that the company was the proprietor of the Vogue mark, not only for the magazine first published in 1916 but for “other goods and services offered to the public by our company”.

At first the pub’s landlords, Rachel and Mark Graham, were surprised. But it did not take long for their shock to dissolve to humour. “If someone had obviously taken the time to look us up, it wouldn’t have taken five minutes to say: ‘Oh, there’s a place called Vogue,’” said Rachel, 49, who is not a reader of the magazine.

The letter, dated 1 March, said: “We are concerned that the name which you are using is going to cause problems because as far as the general public is concerned a connection between your business and ours is likely to be inferred.”

The Star Inn has been in the small village of Vogue, near St Day, for hundreds of years, Mark wrote in response – in which his answer to the request was a “categorical no”.

The magazine’s letter was “hilariously funny”, he wrote. He believes it was sent in confusion after the couple changed their trading status to a limited company.

He added: “I presume that at the time when you chose the name Vogue in the capitalised version you didn’t seek permission from the villagers of the real Vogue. I also presume that Madonna did not seek your permission to use the word Vogue (again the capitalised version) for her 1990s song of the same name.”

I wonder if Anna Wintour tossed the lawyers into the piranha tank upon hearing their failure, a la Blofeld dealing with bungling SPECTRE agents in the James Bond movies?

GREAT MOMENTS IN CUSTOMER SERVICE: Craving Persecution. Or, The Minefield Of Modern Progressive Manners:

THERE’S A ZUCKER BORN EVERY MINUTE: Inside the Collapse of CNN+, The News Channel’s ‘Apollo Mission:’ Hundreds of staffers were drawn to the streaming venture, positioned as network’s future; $5.99-a-month service lasted one month.

For the more than 400 workers involved, it’s also the story of the dashed hopes of those caught up in a startup’s woes. CNN+’s rise and fall speaks to the risks people are willing to take to be on the ground floor of something big, especially in a legacy media industry that is searching for a future-proof business model.

Interviews with more than a dozen people involved in CNN+ describe a culture where excitement over what one top producer described as CNN’s “Apollo Mission”—a reference to the program that successfully landed the first humans on the moon—gave way to the realization that failure was arriving swiftly and mercilessly. Many employees of the streaming service started in the past six months or even just a few weeks before the service launched. Several said they left stable jobs or freelancing gigs.

It’s a ridiculous analogy: Apollo was built on sound engineering principles throughout — the numbers to make CNN+ feasible simply weren’t ever there:

Now, help me with the math. CNN, a network whose most popular show pulls in around one million viewers a night, was going to convince two million people to pay for supplemental programming — and 15 million people to do so within four years?

To put that in perspective, per Charles Cooke, NFL Sunday Ticket has two million subscribers. Granted, Sunday Ticket costs much, much more than a CNN+ subscription does, but the NFL fan base is much, much, much larger and more enthusiastic than CNN’s. And still: “Only” two million subscribe. So where did CNN get its target numbers from?

Care to guess how many viewers per day CNN+ is actually averaging lately? According to sources who spoke to CNBC, it’s … just 10,000.

As Daniel Greenfield of Frontpage Mag predicted in December:

CNN is far behind FOX News and MSNBC in the ratings. It averages around half a million viewers in prime time and it recently hit a 7-year low in the demo.

So it was the perfect time for Chris Wallace to leave FOX News for CNN+.

Some might have thought that Wallace was leaving to fill Chris Cuomo’s slot at CNN. No such luck, though without Cuomo the failing news network’s ratings have crashed to new lows.

But crashing to new lows is the default story at CNN.

CNN Airport, its captive audience operation, shut down earlier this year. And CNN isn’t far behind. CNN+ is the network’s bet that enough people will pay 6 bucks a month to watch it.

CNN’s effort to launch CNN+, a paid streaming service, at a time when its core ratings are crashing is confusing observers who wonder why the news network thinks people will pay for CNN when they won’t even watch it for free.

CNN President Jeff Zucker billed CNN+ as being for “CNN superfans, news junkies and fans of quality non-fiction programming.”

The existence of CNN superfans is as improbable as Bigfoot and UFOs. No one has ever spotted a CNN superfan in the wild and not even the most exotic zoos have them in stock.

Once Jeff Zucker was resigned/was pushed out in early February, the clock was ticking on CNN+. I wonder how Chris Wallace enjoyed his role as a would-be Apollo astronaut?

UPDATE: CNN+ folded so quickly that some staffers actually received welcome packages after the network pulled the plug on it.

(Updated and bumped.)

XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! Ironic: Communist-Owned TikTok Censors My Fox News Video Telling People Not To Trust the Government.

REPORT: Here’s What the Buffalo Shooter’s Alleged Manifesto Actually Says.

Others have tried to link the shooter in a more general way to right-wing politics. For example, the so-called conservative S.E. Cupp of CNN tried to blame “right-wing extremism” for the shooting.

But here’s what the manifesto says about the shooter’s politics:

Did you always hold these views?

When I was 12 I was deep into communist ideology, talk to anyone from my old highschool and ask about me and you will hear that. From age 15 to 18 however, I consistently moved farther to the right. On the political compass I fall in the mild-moderate authoritarian left category, and I would prefer to be called a populist.

So, the shooter describes himself as “authoritarian left-wing,” but the left and S.E. Cupp are trying to blame “right-wing extremism.” Okay?

* * * * * * *

Later in the manifest, the shooter insists, “I would prefer to call myself a populist. But you can call me an ethno-nationalist eco-fascist national socialist if you want, I wouldn’t disagree with you.” He also repeatedly attacks capitalists, and rejected the conservative label because, he wrote, “conservativism is corporatism in disguise, I want no part of it.”

But let’s not pretend that, assuming the manifesto is legitimate, the rhetoric espoused in its pages means the shooter cannot be legitimately aligned with either major political party or political movement. While I would argue that the views expressed in the manifesto echo rhetoric of radical leftism, the manifesto is full of nonsense and garbage that is at times inconsistent. The people who were quick to exploit the situation to attack Fox News and conservatives were wrong and should be ashamed of themselves.

More here: As Twitter Takes to Blaming Tucker Carlson for Shooting, Suspect’s Manifesto Confirms He’s No Fan of Fox News.

OLD AND BUSTED: Biden calls for unity and healing after Electoral College certifies his victory.

—CNBC, December 14th, 2020.

The New Hotness? If You’re Reading This, Karine Jean-Pierre Probably Hates You. Here’s Why.

—Robert Spencer, PJ Media, yesterday.

JAMES BOND DIRECTOR CARA FUKUNAGA ‘ASKED TWO TWIN SISTERS FOR A HOT TUB THREESOME AT THEIR PENNSYLVANIA HOME’ AS HE IS ACCUSED OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND GROOMING BY THREE ACTRESSES:

Fukunaga has been accused of sexual harassment and ‘grooming’ by three young actresses.

The 44-year-old, who directed Daniel Craig‘s final outing as 007 in No Time to Die, allegedly left one woman so traumatised that she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The allegations come after Mr Fukunaga posted a story on his Instagram page declaring his support for women’s rights in light of a leaked document revealing that the US Supreme Court is about to overturn Roe v Wade, a ruling which legalised abortion in America.

He wrote: ‘The Supreme Court is about to push us one step closer to war with ourselves… by legitimizing a war against women’s rights.’*

One of his accusers is actress and professional skateboarder Rachelle Vinberg, 23, who says she met Mr Fukunaga when he directed her in a commercial the day after she turned 18 and became of legal age. The pair began a consensual sexual relationship which ended when she was 21.

Ms Vinberg accused him of grooming and abusing her, writing on Instagram: ‘So he posted this today. And it p****s me off cause he literally doesn’t care about women. He only traumatizes them. I spent years being scared of him. Man’s a groomer and has been doing this for years. Beware women.’

She claimed Mr Fukunaga told her their relationship, which was ‘completely fully intimate’, had to be kept secret and that he introduced her as his cousin, niece or sister when they were in public.

Ms Vinberg, who posted pictures of herself with the director, said: ‘I tried to reach out to him in the past about how he made me feel and he’s never taken accountability, he’s basically brushed me off.’

She said the experience left her so traumatised she remains in therapy and has been diagnosed with PTSD. Two other women, twins Hannah and Cailin Loesch, met him on the set of Netflix’s 2018 drama Maniac when they were 20, and say they had a three-year ‘hot-and-cold relationship’ with him.

* Flashback to John Nolte last year: ‘No Time to Die’ Director Smears Sean Connery’s Bond as Rapist.

Cary Fukunaga, director of the upcoming 007 feature No Time to Die, is running around smearing Sean Connery’s James Bond as a rapist.

“Is it Thunderball or Goldfinger where, like, basically Sean Connery’s character rapes a woman?” Fukunaga rhetorically asked the far-left Hollywood Reporter during an interview. “She’s like ‘No, no, no,’ and he’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ That wouldn’t fly today.”

Well, of course, it wouldn’t fly today, you goddamn simpleton. But the only reason it wouldn’t fly today is because we now live in a world where everything is rape. Look at a woman wrong; it’s rape. Some woman later regrets her life choices; it’s rape. Micro-aggressions are rape. Everything is rape except when Joe Biden is credibly accused of rape.

* * * * * * * *

You know, it’s not even the sexless prudishness that bothers me as much as it’s fascist assholes like Fukanaga deliberately looking to terrify artists to behave within his fascist boundaries. And that he does so by smearing art is especially galling. And that’s what Thunderball is, it’s art, and in this briefest of brief subplots, it is art with a legitimate, complicated, and fascinating message.

And I say that as someone who doesn’t even agree with the message. Sexual liberation has only unfurled the horrors of abortion, STDs, and unwed mothers. Oh, and I also don’t believe people should have sex at work.

But because I’m not a goddamn simpleton like Fukanaga, I can also see beyond the text to the subtext. I can see that the overall message here is not just about jumping in bed with a relative stranger. It is also about questioning authority and not allowing others to control your behavior.

That’s a very good message, even if you disagree with the vehicle delivering it.

These people are not only uptight squares; they’re full-fledged morons.

Or perhaps, they’re employing a bit of misdirection in the hopes you won’t investigate their alleged role in industry that’s been called “a sex-grooming gang.”

BILL MAHER SLAMS BIDEN’S ‘DISINFORMATION GOVERNANCE BOARD:’ “Maher pointed out the inevitable way such an expansion of power will eventually be used against liberals and progressives. ‘Who do you think is going to be the Truth Czar in 2025?’ he asked, implying that it may very well be a Republican appointee if the GOP wins the White House.”

As Glenn wrote last year when Democrats stripped Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, “Just as when Harry Reid got rid of the filibuster, they think the worm will never turn.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: India, second-largest wheat producer, bans exports amid food supply concerns.

IT’S COME TO THIS: MSNBC Condemns ‘Talk About The Constitution’ In SCOTUS Draft Opinion.

Because the Supreme Court has “court” in its name, most people understand that it is an institution tasked with addressing legal issues, but MSNBC’s Ali Velshi and The New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolhatkar are not most people. On Velshi’s Saturday show, they condemned the Court for “talking about the Constitution” and “the right to life” while ignoring economic statistics.

* * * * * * * *

Kolhatkar then condemned the draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, “You know, they spend 98 pages of their draft opinion talking about the Constitution, they talk about conception, and the right to life but there’s almost nothing about what this will look like in society other than a very cursory throwaway line about how there is widespread access to childcare, contraception, and paid family leave.”

After condemning the Court for doing its job and putting life before money, Kolhatkar added, “And, of course, those, as we know, are simply false assertions.”

It’s the return of The Raj Koothrappali Approach to Constitutional Law! As Glenn noted in 2013, “Here’s the problem with public officials — because that’s really [Louis Michael Seidman’s] audience — deciding to ignore the Constitution: If you’re the president, if you’re a member of Congress, if you are a TSA agent, the only reason why somebody should listen to what you say, instead of horsewhipping you out of town for your impertinence, is because you exercise power via the Constitution. If the Constitution doesn’t count, you don’t have any legitimate power. You’re a thief, a brigand, an officious busybody, somebody who should be tarred and feathered and run out of town on a rail for trying to exercise power you don’t possess. So if we’re going to start ignoring the Constitution, I’m fine with that. The first part I’m going to start ignoring is the part that says, I have to do whatever they say.”

JACK DUNPHY: Dave Chappelle and the Death of Free Speech.

[L.A. D.A George] Gascón is currently facing a recall campaign, and his refusal to file felony charges against Lee has stoked outrage among his detractors, whose number now includes podcaster Joe Rogan. Rogan took to Instagram to lament Gascón’s decision. “When you see that a person commits a clear crime,” says Rogan’s post, “and does it to one of the most loved performers alive, and does it in a very high profile public setting, and it gets captured on video, and you don’t charge that person for what they obviously did, it’s the kind of thing that makes people lose faith in law enforcement.”

Perhaps so, but loath as I am to defend Gascón, his rejection of felony charges in the Chappelle matter is entirely reasonable and indeed the only ethical choice. It may be true that Chappelle is, as Rogan describes him, one of the most beloved performers, and it is indisputably true that the Hollywood Bowl is a high-profile public setting, but neither of these factors weighs in the determination of the appropriate charge against Lee. He was arrested and booked under a charge of assault with a deadly weapon, but sober examination of the incident reveals his conduct did not match the elements of this crime under California law.

Yes, at the time Lee rushed the stage and assaulted Chappelle, he is said to have possessed a deadly weapon, to wit, a replica handgun built into which was a folding knife, but it was in a bag Lee carried and was never wielded at Chappelle or any of the men who pursued and subdued Lee backstage. Further, Chappelle was uninjured and continued his performance when the commotion settled. Not even the most aggressive, law-and-order prosecutor would file a felony charge given this set of facts.

Though Chappelle soldiered on and appeared unfazed, as his fans have come to expect, in his quiet moments since that day he surely must have wondered, as we all must have, what might have happened had Lee been more determined to cause him harm. Lee somehow carried his weapon through the Hollywood Bowl’s security measures, then to the foot of the stage and finally onto the stage itself. Lee easily could have inflicted a mortal wound on Chappelle with such a weapon. And consider that if a replica handgun passed through security with such apparent ease, what would have prevented Lee from bringing a real one?

Returning now to our aspiring comedian, what assurance does he have that one of his jokes will not ignite in some member of his audience a violent impulse similar to that which stirred within Isaiah Lee? If Dave Chappelle, with all his handlers and security team, can be attacked in front of 17,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl, what chance does an unknown have at the local comedy club should some lunatic try to take him out?

Read the whole thing.

EVERYTHING SEEMINGLY IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL: AP: GOP’s new midterm attack: Blaming Biden for formula shortage.

Republicans aiming to retake control of Congress have already sharpened a message centering around blaming Democrats for high inflation, expensive gas, migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and violent crime in some cities.

But GOP leaders landed on an issue this week that it hopes could prove even more potent: tying President Joe Biden to a shortage in baby formula.

Parents are suddenly running into bare supermarket and pharmacy shelves in part because of ongoing supply disruptions and a recent safety recall. But in an election year that was already shaping up to be rocky for Democrats, Republicans sense that the shortage could prove to be an especially tangible way to argue that Biden is incapable of quickly solving problems confronting the U.S.

“This is not a Third World country,” said GOP Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, the chair of the House Republican conference. “This should never happen in the United States of America.”

The administration has sometimes been slow in responding to sudden political threats, perhaps most notably when signs of inflation began to surface last year. The White House appears determined not to repeat that mistake, announcing on Friday that formula maker Abbott Laboratories committed to give rebates through August for a food stamp-like program that helps women, infants and children called WIC.

Biden insisted there’s “nothing more urgent we’re working on” than addressing the shortage.

Asked if his administration had responded as quickly as it should have, Biden said, ”If we’d been better mind readers, I guess we could’ve. But we moved as quickly as the problem became apparent.”

But the defense by the White House illustrates how finger-pointing at the Biden administration has already spread far and wide among Republicans in Washington, on television and on social media. It’s a new issue for the GOP to hammer at and a way to address families at a time when Democrats believe outrage over the U.S. Supreme Court possibly ending the right to an abortion could galvanize women and other key voters, and thwart or at least lessen a Republican wave in November.

As Hot Air’s Allahpundit notes (but curiously, the other AP doesn’t): “America doesn’t need a mind-reader as president. It needs a Wall Street Journal reader. Per Jim Geraghty, the Journal had a story about the formula shortage back on … January 12.”

Did anyone in the White House read it at the time?

How many times is this administration going to find itself surprised by supply-chain issues? They dropped nearly $2 trillion last year on COVID relief amid a supply crunch, then were stunned that the whole country being flush with cash while goods are scarce might cause prices to rise. Now they’re figuring out that when a major baby-formula manufacturing plant got shut down three months ago at a moment when formula was already hard to find, a serious shortage might result.

Is seeing one move ahead on the chessboard too much to ask?

Ed pointed out on Twitter that the Washington Post and the Journal were running stories about stores rationing baby formula fully a month ago. What has the crack Biden economic team been doing about it since then?

Why bother attempting to solve problems, when you know the DNC-MSM has your back, as AP proved yesterday?

(Classical reference in headline.)

WENDY MURPHY: Democrats weak as court signals reversal on Roe.

Not a single person at the 2017 Women’s March said a word about the Equal Rights Amendment, which would establish women’s basic legal equality under the Constitution for the first time in history.

ERA advocacy groups asked for time to speak, so they could explain how the ERA would ensure that all laws are enforced fully and equally on behalf of women, but the people in charge said no. The huge crowd that gathered to talk about women’s suffering would learn nothing about the fact that the primary cause of that suffering is women’s second-class citizenship.

Telling women they should rally in our nation’s capital “as women” but only if they talk about everybody else’s problems is like telling Black Lives Matter they can have a protest, but not talk only about racism. Or telling the Anti-Defamation League that when they host a public gathering, they cannot focus on anti-Semitism.

No group fighting for basic human rights wants to be told they must water down their message.

By forbidding speakers to talk about the ERA Women’s March revealed itself not as an advocacy group for women but as a proxy for the Democratic Party, which would be fine if the Democrats actually cared about establishing women’s full legal equality, but they don’t.

If they did, the Biden administration would not currently be blocking the ERA and preventing it from being added to the Constitution. The ERA should already be in the Constitution because it became law when the last necessary state ratified it in January 2020, but the Trump administration blocked it.

Women then voted for Biden in droves assuming he would unblock it, but he refused. Yes, the ERA has a purported deadline that expired years ago, but many scholars agree the deadline is invalid, which liberated Biden to use his executive authority to validate it — yet he refused.

Biden is not only blocking the ERA today, he is also fighting against it in DC federal court. The DC court’s ruling is expected any day, and most believe the court will rule against the ERA, in part because the Biden administration is fighting against it.

The Democrats will be delighted if, when the ruling comes down, women are so focused on abortion they don’t notice how Biden helped kill a far more important law.

To be fair, a month and a half ago, Biden’s Supreme Court nominee couldn’t actually provide a definition of the word “woman,” or her opinion of when life begins.

ALL YOU NEED IS CASH: An Open Letter to Paul McCartney Regarding Ticket Prices.

Let’s, Paul, for the sake of argument, say I want my parents to, you know, actually see you, so I buy three seats in section C129. Those seats are $450. Each. And, as Ticketmaster reminds me, “+ fees.”

I can’t surprise my parents with tickets to see Sir Paul freakin’ McCartney only for them to sit halfway to LAX. That’s like giving a child a toy without batteries. A $600 toy, mind you.

That $600 doesn’t include parking. I’ve yet to visit SoFi Stadium, but let’s pretend parking is $20. We both know it’s not $20, but let’s pretend. That’s $620. My parents don’t drink alcohol, so I’m definitely saving money on beers, but — and I know you don’t live here — have you any idea of current gas prices? You probably don’t because if I wrote “The Long and Winding Road” I wouldn’t know gas prices, either. Paul, gas is expensive. Like, so expensive that I’m writing to you and wasting space by talking about gas.

Conservatively, if I bought the cheapest tickets, I would be looking at $700 to take my parents to your show and sit far enough away that we will not be able to see you. To be frank, Paul, that sucks. I don’t want to spend that kind of money to stare at the big screens that I am sure will be on stage. Certainly, you’ve heard of YouTube. My parents and I can get the same experience tomorrow morning for much less money.

Paul, serious question: What the f*ck?

Did you actually think the Beatles were serious when they sang “All You Need Is Love?”

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: As Parents Resisted Transgender Push, Teacher Suggested Sending in Child Services.

The more she thought about the whole ordeal, the more Lee realized she had to do something.

First, she contacted Chambers, the woman who Lee says “groomed” her daughter and who also sometimes works as a substitute teacher for the district. “Her response was alarming,” Lee said. “It was delusional. She doubled down on her actions.”

Next, she contacted the principal, who seemed empathetic but confirmed that secret GSA meetings with children were an intentional part of creating a “safe space” at school.

There are more than two dozen self-proclaimed LGBT children in the small middle school, according to social media posts by SPLASH. And the district is determined that they be “affirmed” without parental involvement, Lee said.

After all that, Lee spoke out at a school board meeting and contacted all its members by email. None responded. When she was finally able to sit down with two of them, they both “supported everything that transpired and refused to address any of my concerns.”

Finally, exasperated and realizing her first call would have been to the police if this had occurred on a playground or any other setting, Lee contacted the sheriff’s office.

While law enforcement was deeply sympathetic to her plight, and urged her to speak out loudly, there was nothing they could do from a legal perspective, Lee said.

District officials, meanwhile, saw nothing wrong with what had occurred, she said. Indeed, some expressed shock that a parent would be upset over the incident.

As Lee fought back, school officials were working on their next move.

Among other tactics, documents and communications obtained by The Epoch Times revealed a discussion about the possibility of reporting the parents to child-welfare authorities.

Thumbs up from the management of Comcast and MSNBC:

THANKS, BIDEN: Gavin Newsom is Exploiting Your Federal Tax Dollars to Fund More Abortions in California. “California, for its part, got a whopping $42.3 billion bailout from Biden’s corrupt legislation. The Democrats funneled them this money even though California was already running a budget surplus, not in some dire revenue crisis. Now, Newsom and co. are flush in cash at our expense. And, of course, they’re using that surplus to fund abortions, which means that federal taxpayers are also, directly or indirectly, subsidizing California abortions. Thanks, Biden.”

CRISES BY DESIGN: Biden admin cancels massive oil and gas lease sale amid record-high gas prices.

The Biden administration canceled one of the most high-profile oil and gas lease sales pending before the Department of the Interior Wednesday, as Americans face record-high prices at the pump, according to AAA.

The DOI halted the potential to drill for oil in over 1 million acres in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, along with two lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico. The move comes as Biden has taken a few actions to combat high gas prices, despite his administration’s generally hostile approach to the oil industry.

“Due to lack of industry interest in leasing in the area, the Department will not move forward with the proposed Cook Inlet OCS oil and gas lease sale 258,” a DOI spokesperson told FOX Business in a statement Thursday.

“The Department also will not move forward with lease sales 259 and 261 in the Gulf of Mexico region, as a result of delays due to factors including conflicting court rulings that impacted work on these proposed lease sales,” the spokesperson added.

The spokesperson also told FOX Business that “there are 10.9 million acres of offshore federal waters already under lease to industry,” and “of those, the industry is not producing on more than three-quarters (75.7% or 8.26 million acres).”

Federal law requires DOI to stick to a five-year leasing plan for auctioning offshore leases. The department had until the end fo the current five-year plan – due to expire on June 30 – to complete the sales.

A source familiar with the Cook Inlet lease confirmed to FOX Business that the DOI received no comments indicating specific company interest in leasing during the scoping period.

Within his first week in office, President Biden signed an executive order temporarily suspending new oil and gas leases on federal lands. The administration resumed the new leasing last month following court challenges against the ban. The administration is appealing a ruling in which Judge James Cain, a Trump appointee, struck down the ban.

Earlier: “We’re going to keep at it to ensure the American people are paying their fair share for gas,” is the perfect Kinsley Gaffe for an Obama administration retread like Biden:  As Steven Chu, Obama’s then-incoming energy secretary, told the Wall Street Journal in the fall of 2008: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.”

So is it fair to ask if Biden is on the payroll of Putin? As Walter Russell Mead wrote in 2017:

If Trump were the Manchurian candidate that people keep wanting to believe that he is, here are some of the things he’d be doing:

Limiting fracking as much as he possibly could
Blocking oil and gas pipelines
Opening negotiations for major nuclear arms reductions
Cutting U.S. military spending
Trying to tamp down tensions with Russia’s ally Iran.

“Yep,” Glenn added in late 2019. “You know who did do these things? Obama. You know who supports these things now? Democrats.”

Related: Biden tormented by Republican guerrilla campaign and ‘I did it’ stickers.

Also: 100Pcs I Did That Biden Funny Car Stickers. #Resist #CommissionEarned

Seen in Cleburne, TX, last night:

JIM TREACHER: Biden Lies About the Vaccine He Took on Live TV.

“I think the [Trump] administration deserves some credit, getting this off the ground with Operation Warp Speed.”

Biden told the truth for once, so of course now he has to take it back.

Now, if this dishonest White House had said the vaccine wasn’t widely available, that would be arguable. I didn’t get mine until April 2021. But saying there was no vaccine available at all is a damn lie and they know it.

It’s such a huge lie that even their own stenographers are balking at it:

Exit quote: “I sure am glad I didn’t vote for him or tell anybody else to vote for him. Never Trump doesn’t mean Never Think.”

THE POWER LINE WEEK IN PICTURES: Ultra-Maga Edition.