Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

January 24, 2024

A REVIEW OF ROGER SIMON’S AMERICAN REFUGEES FROM BRUCE BAWER: Those Who Move to a Different State: Roger Simon’s savvy book on the ongoing blue-state exodus. “I never thought of myself as a refugee by nature. But I was wrong, I guess. I did leave. And Roger did, too. And the book that resulted, American Refugees, is in equal parts delightful and distressing. Delightful, because Roger is by nature immune to pretense and abounding in humor, even when discussing topics that at first glance don’t seem particularly rib-tickling. He’s done a lot of hard thinking about his move to Nashville and has a lot to say about it, but he wears his learning lightly and doesn’t pose as an expert in anything whatsoever; on the contrary, his book is framed as a tale of a naif’s exploration and discovery — the story of a man who’s in his seventies but still unsure about a lot of things, still intensely curious, still eager to learn about and adapt to (and, in his own modest way, to try to push for small positive changes in) a new culture, and still ready to make new friends and play an active social and political role on what, until very recently, was, to him, utterly alien terrain. And he’s a man, may I add, who before he moved to Music City thought it was close enough to Knoxville that he’d be able to jump in his car and be having lunch with his UT law professor friend Glenn (‘Instapundit’) Reynolds a half hour or so later. Alas, no.”

A surprisingly common misconception. But heck, you can hardly get from Hollywood to Santa Monica in 30 minutes at lunchtime . . .

Posted at 8:35 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

NOT BACKING DOWN: Governor Abbott Issues Statement On Texas’ Constitutional Right To Self-Defense.

Related: Abbott: Texas Has Constitutional Right To Defend Its Borders From Invasion, Supersedes All Federal Law.

UPDATE: A couple of friends email on this. One says to pay attention, because this confrontation is likely more important than the election or the various wars. Probably true. Another notes that Biden has landed in a bigger legitimacy crisis than anything Trump experienced, and that it’s entirely self-inflicted. Yep.

As for Abbott’s constitutional arguments, well, this is uncharted territory but they seem sound.

Meanwhile, Democratic firebrands are doubling down:

What will Biden do if Abbott says no, arguing that the federal government, having defaulted on its basic constitutional obligations, has forfeited its rights here? He’d better know. Note that Abbott is already getting support from other governors.

ANOTHER UPDATE:

Posted at 8:10 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Maersk ships in US Navy convoy forced to retreat under Houthi missile attack. “The US arm of AP Moller-Maersk is suspending voyages through the Red Sea after two of its container ships came under missile attack while being escorted by the US Navy. The 6,200-teu Maersk Detroit and 2,474-teu Maersk Chesapeake (both built 2008) turned around in the Red Sea and were escorted back to the Gulf of Aden, said the company. . . . US Central Command, which coordinates the country’s military operations in the region, said three anti-ship ballistic missiles were fired toward the Maersk Detroit. One missile hit the sea, while the warship USS Gravely shot down two others. The two ships were carrying cargo and aid for the US government and were given protection by the navy for the passage through the Bab El-Mandeb strait, said subsidiary Maersk Line Ltd, for which the US military is a major customer on its US-flag ships.”

Why do the Houthis still exist?

UPDATE: Biden’s Fake Houthi Offensive Aims to Maintain Treacherous Pro-Iran Policy.

Posted at 7:34 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

FRUITS OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION: Anti-Jewish Riot in Italy. “Nothing says peace and love like ‘urban guerilla war.’ But then again, if you are out there demonstrating your support for genocidal terrorists, your definition of peace and justice might differ from the average person’s. . . . I hope more details come out about just who the demonstrators are. Are they mostly Italians? That would be surprising since antisemitism wasn’t even much of a force even during World War II, when Italians were reluctant to fulfill German requests to deport Jews despite their formal alliance. . . . However, Italy has been flooded with immigrants over the past decade, and it would surprise me not at all to find that the mob was filled with recent Middle Eastern immigrants.”

Me either.

Posted at 7:15 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

WELL, FOR ONE THING, PRESIDENTS HAVE ABSOLUTE IMMUNITY, NOT QUALIFIED IMMUNITY, AS PROVIDED IN Nixon v. Fitzgerald. In both cases, the immunity is only for civil damages, not criminal liability. But there are reasonable arguments that have been made, including by the Justice Department, for presidential immunity to criminal prosecution — and anyway, if everyone else can argue for, and sometimes get, new constitutional decisions from the Supreme Court, why should Trump be barred? He may be wrong (he probably is, but not certainly) but as usual the righteous indignation that meets a Trump claim is mostly because it’s a Trump claim, not because of its validity or lack thereof.

For the record, I oppose both qualified immunity and absolute immunity, both of which are judicial inventions without any basis in the Constitution — the latter being enjoyed by judges and prosecutors as well as the President — but that’s not the point here. And given the degradation of our political and justice systems, you can probably make a better argument today for immunity from criminal prosecution than for civil immunity.

Posted at 12:13 pm by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

WHY IS HIGHER EDUCATION SUCH A CESSPIT OF HATRED AND BIGOTRY? At UNC, Anti-Semitism Is Too Close to Call. “So, at the end of the day, the faculty of the University of North Carolina couldn’t bring itself to condemn the statement, at a UNC event, that Gaza’s massacre of Jews on October 7 was ‘a beautiful day.’ The Faculty Council voted 32-29, with six abstentions, to table the resolution condemning anti-Semitism on campus. The resolution was just too controversial for liberal college professors to get behind.”

Posted at 9:03 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

CNN ACTUALLY RAN SOMETHING NICE ABOUT DEPLORABLES?

Posted at 8:19 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE WOULD BE MY GUESS:

Posted at 8:17 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: RealClearInvestigations: Public Education’s Alarming New 4th ‘R’: Reversal of Learning. “The alarming plunge in academic performance during the pandemic was met with a significant drop in grading and graduation standards to ease the pressure on students struggling with remote learning. The hope was that hundreds of billions of dollars of emergency federal aid would enable schools to reverse the learning loss and restore the standards. Four years later, the money is almost gone and students haven’t made up that lost academic ground, equaling more that a year of learning for disadvantaged kids. Driven by fears of a spike in dropout rates, especially among blacks and Latinos, many states and school districts are apparently leaving in place the lower standards that allow students to get good grades and graduate even though they have learned much less, particularly in math.”

It’s wrong to entrust your kids to public schools.

Posted at 7:30 am by Glenn Reynolds on Jan 24th, 2024

January 23, 2024

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