Author Archive: Glenn Reynolds

I’VE SEEN THE LOCKDOWNS AND THE DAMAGE DONE: NYT Piece Calls Learning Loss “Startling” — But It’s Not. “It’s hard to describe how angry this “revelatory” piece of writing makes me. No, I don’t feel any sense of redemption. I just feel angry that it took them this long. And that the journalistic outlet fails to acknowledge their own complicity in these devastating results.”

KEEP UP THE PRESSURE: Mike Lee Isn’t Done With Liz Cheney Yet. He Had a Great Question for Her About Those FBI Agents and J6. “Jan. 6 Committee member Liz Cheney had a fit that the House Speaker Mike Johnson released all of the Jan. 6 video. Why? It didn’t help the narrative that she had been pushing, when it showed people being escorted through the building by the Capitol police — behaving peacefully — with protesters and police even shaking hands. . . . Calling someone a conspiracy theorist without presenting any facts to rebut what he presents is weak sauce. But she can’t dispute the truth of the newly released video. Meanwhile, it was the Committee who hired an ABC former president and ‘documentary storyteller’ to sell their production, while leaving out the newly released video.”

Related:

HMM: Israeli police say extreme sexual violence, rape by Hamas terrorists was systematic: The Civil Commission on October 7th Crimes by Hamas Against Women is working to compile a database of gender-based atrocities.

Related: Why Western Women Are Converting to Islam: Since October 7, young Americans have been professing their devotion to the Quran in ‘the ultimate rebellion against the West.’ Quite a few Western women ran off to join ISIS, too, under similar circumstances.

UPDATE: A friend writes that we haven’t heard anything from the feminists who were going on about “rape culture” a few years ago — or much of any feminists at all — with regard to the rape and sexual mutilation that went on on October 7.

WELCOME TO THE CRAZY YEARS:

THE GODS OF THE COPYBOOK HEADINGS COULD NOT BE REACHED FOR COMMENT: Pro-Hamas ‘Liberals’ and Other Thoughts on the Binary Nature of Choices. “Excuse me, but if you lie down with dogs, you can’t complain about waking up with fleas, and when Democrats — in a mood of derangement and despair after Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 — decided to embrace the violent Antifa mob, they made a choice that had consequences. It turns out the vicious anarchists have ideas about foreign policy that most Democrats consider to be (pardon the phrase) not kosher.”

THIS IS COOL:

WHOSE SIDE IS BLINKEN ON? NEVER MIND, I KNOW:

OPEN THREAD: Yeah, it’s Saturday night, everybody’s havin’ fun. I’m in the blogosphere, tryin’ to get my bloggin’ done. Watchin’ the blogs go ’round, watchin’ the blogs go ’round. . .

MODERATION IN ALL THINGS: Vigorous Exercise May Have a Concerning Effect We Didn’t Know About. Human beings evolved leading active lives, but with a lot of down time too. That said, I don’t find this study very impressive, due to its size and its use of firefighters, who get exposed to all sorts of chemicals, as subjects.

THE “INSURRECTION” WAS AS GENUINE AS THE “RUSSIAN COLLUSION.”

INTERNATIONAL LAW IS MOSTLY A SWORD FOR “ACTIVISTS” AND OTHER TOOLS TO WIELD AGAINST THE WEST: Prof. Samuel Estreicher (NYU) on The Laws of War, as to the Hamas-Israel War.

It is highly doubtful that Israel qualifies as an “occupying” power of the Gaza Strip because once it withdrew all military forces from Gaza in 2005, it has exercised no authority over the territory, which is a requirement under international law before assuming the responsibility of an occupying power. UN groups like the Human Rights Council counter that the status of “occupier” still applies because Israel has imposed stringent limits on travel to and trade with Gaza. And yet Egypt has (mostly) sealed off Gaza’s other border without being termed an occupying power.

In any event, even if Israel were an occupying power, that status would not justify Hamas’ intentional attacks on civilian targets in Israel or prevent Israel from using force to protect itself. For example, it was not considered illegal for the United States, as the occupying power of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, to use force against Iraqis who were attacking U.S. forces within Iraq.

The second argument against Israel’s right of self-defense—that it cannot invoke this right against non-state actors like Hamas—is equally untenable.

Article 51 of the UN Charter states that nothing shall “impair the inherent right” of self-defense possessed by all member states. In recent years, many governments, including the United States, have adopted the view that this right of self-defense applies against non-state actors like al-Qaeda and ISIS in situations where the government of the state in which the non-state actors are operating is “unwilling or unable” to prevent attacks by the non-state actor. The case of the Gaza conflict is much stronger for Israel than the “unwilling or unable” rationale; Israel is protecting against Hamas’ direct, indiscriminate killing, beheading, torture and hostage-taking of Israeli civilians.

There’s also a traditional right to hang pirates on sight.