LIZ SHELD’S MORNING BRIEF: Mueller Concerned with Media Coverage of Report Summary. “Well, Bob, of course Barr’s letter didn’t ‘fully capture’ the report, it was just a summary of the ultimate findings. Does Mueller need to be reminded that this report didn’t need to see the light of day, the statute only requires the special counsel turn a report over to the attorney general. The AG didn’t have to release it at all, Barr could have announced the report brought ‘no charges on collusion/conspiracy and no charges on obstruction’ and be done with it. So why Mueller is concerned about the ‘full context’ suggests he has another motive that his report wasn’t playing as planned.”
Author Archive: Stephen Green
May 1, 2019
CHRISTIAN TOTO: Late Night Lies Are No Laughing Matter. “Stephen Colbert lied to attack President Trump this week. Again. It’s the new normal for late night ‘comedians’.”
JACOB SULLUM: Colorado’s New ‘Red Flag’ Law Illustrates the Pitfalls of Disarming People Based on Their Future Behavior.
Colorado’s Deputy Zackari Parrish III Violence Prevention Act, which takes effect next year, is named for a 29-year-old Douglas County sheriff’s deputy who was killed in 2017 by a 36-year-old veteran with a history of psychological problems. The law allows a long list of people, including law enforcement officers, current or former household members, and people related by blood, marriage, or adoption, to seek a temporary “extreme risk protection order” (ERPO) against someone they believe “poses a significant risk of causing personal risk to self or others in the near future.” The standard of proof at this stage, when the “respondent” does not have an opportunity to respond, is a “preponderance of the evidence,” meaning he is more likely than not to pose a significant risk.
Depending on what counts as a “significant risk,” the probability that the subject of a temporary order actually would have used a gun to hurt himself or someone else may be quite low. If 10 percent is significant, for example, that probability might be around 5 percent (51 percent times 10 percent). So even if judges are weighing the evidence with such precision, they will be taking away the Second Amendment rights of people who almost certainly would not have committed suicide or murder.
In practice, judges will be inclined to err on the side of what they take to be caution. When the only evidence comes from someone who believes the respondent poses a threat, judges will rarely, if ever, decline to issue a temporary ERPO. The possible downside of rejecting a petition—the death of the respondent or someone else—will weigh heavily on the judge’s mind, while the temporary deprivation of the subject’s constitutional rights will seem trivial by comparison.
It used to be possible to expose a Leftist’s hypocrisy by suggesting similar limits, restrictions, infringements, licensing, training, etc., for people to exercise their First Amendment rights. But now that it’s “Free speech for me but not for thee,” even that tool is gone.
KAROL MARKOWICZ: If Democratic men really want a woman president, why not drop out?
Asked at the “She the People” forum in Houston whether he will choose a woman to share his ticket, Cory Booker said, “I will have a woman running mate. To me, it’s really clear that we do that.”
Of course, at an event called “She the People,” it would be hard to resist the siren song of pandering. But it wasn’t the first time Booker had made the pledge. He previously said Democrats would “make history” and declared, “There will be a woman on the ticket. I don’t know if it’s in the vice president’s position or in the president’s position.”
Booker isn’t alone. Pete Buttigieg told Ellen DeGeneres he would consider a female VP because it’s important “to have gender diversity and gender balance.”
Even the lower-tier candidates are getting in on the sweet woman-pandering action. Eric Swalwell, previously mostly known for threatening to use nuclear weapons on gun owners, tweeted “SPOILER ALERT: I’m a white man. I know where I can’t speak to someone else’s experience.” He pledged to “pass the mic” and “ask a woman to serve as VP.”
Spoiler alert: Playing the male savior to women is lame.
True, but all that virtue isn’t going to signal itself, Karol.
IMAGINE HOW MUCH MORE WE COULD MISS IT IF SHE’D ONLY GO AWAY: Hillary Misses Her Presidency More Than Voters Do.
#KRUISERFEELINGS: It’s Time to Bring Back Leper Colonies—for Anti-Vaxxers.
SATIRE… OR IS IT? ‘Mortal Kombat’ Introduces Brutal New Fatality Where Your Character Just States An Opposing Viewpoint.
Related (from Ed) and not satire: ‘Minecraft’ Creator Excluded From Anniversary Due to ‘Comments and Opinions.’
ALAN DERSHOWITZ: What if the New York Times Cartoon had depicted a Muslim, a Lesbian, an African American or a Mexican as a Dog?
Nor is the publication of this anti-Semitic cartoon a one-off. For years now, the New York Times op-ed pages have been one-sidedly anti-Israel. Its reporting has often been provably false, and all the errors tend to favor Israel’s enemies. Most recently, the New York Times published an op-ed declaring, on Easter Sunday, that the crucified Jesus was probably a Palestinian. How absurd. How preposterous. How predictable.
In recent years, it has become more and more difficult to distinguish between the reporting of the New York Times and their editorializing. Sometimes its editors hide behind the euphemism “news analysis,” when allowing personal opinions to be published on the front page. More recently, they haven’t even bothered to offer any cover. The reporting itself, as repeatedly demonstrated by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA), has been filled with anti-Israel errors.
Read the whole thing.
PHILIP CARL SALZMAN: The Peculiar Progressive-Islamist Alliance. “Progressive leftists, who wish to bring socialism to America, and Islamists, who wish to bring Sharia law to America, are strange bedfellows indeed.”
Not really. They both need to smash existing political institutions and cultural norms to get their way. But like Hitler and Stalin feasting on the corpse of Poland, they’d be at each others’ throats soon enough.
FASCINATING: The Christian Origins of Islam.
GOOD: Trump Pushes to Designate Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Group.
First the IRGC, now this. That’s change you can believe in.
LATE-STAGE SOCIALISM: Venezuela’s Blackouts Go Beyond Electricity.
Official data is partial, sometimes unreliable and always late. Consider the size of Venezuela’s economic black hole. The central government last published fiscal balances in 2013, and consolidated public sector accounts, including those of the state oil company PDVSA, in 2011, according to Francisco Rodriguez, of Torino Capital, LLC. The country’s latest filing of a general economic assessment, a contractual requirement under Article IV of the International Monetary Fund: 2004.
Inflation? Venezuela hasn’t released an official number since December 2015, and ever since it’s been monetary roulette. The price of a cup of coffee is up by six figures since last April, according to Bloomberg’s café con leche index, while Torino Capital reckoned a cornmeal arepa pastry cost 300,000 percent more by the end of 2018. The opposition-controlled National Assembly is less circumspect, putting overall inflation last year at 1.7 million percent. They have nothing on the IMF, which recently pegged consumer prices rising at 10 million percent.
Keeping track of crime is another actuarial adventure. The Venezuelan Observatory of Public Safety, a government oversight body, offers no graphics or statistical tally for criminal violence, just a single paragraph on its webpage describing homicide as “reproachable behavior.” And good luck finding comprehensive crime stats on the Interior, Justice and Peace Ministry’s forensic division website.
Whatever or whoever replaces the Chavista regime, they’ll have an impossible time trying to fill in the blanks. Which for Maduro and his cronies, is probably a feature not a bug.
BECAUSE FAIRNESS OR SOMETHING: Trans ‘Woman’ Demolishes World Records; Olympian Decries ‘Pointless, Unfair Playing Field.’
FEDERALISM, HOW DOES IT WORK? Kamala Harris Wants to Ban Right-to-Work Laws.
BRIAR PATCH: Impeachment Could Be a Trap — for Democrats.
What if President Trump actually wants Democrats to try to impeach him?
OK, so that isn’t likely. Nobody would wish to go through the embarrassment of impeachment in the House of Representatives and the public spectacle of a follow-up trial in the Senate.
Still, the fact that the idea would even seem plausible illustrates the risks Democrats are running in considering a move toward impeachment. The backfire potential is large. It’s telling that the Democrats who lived through the last impeachment—and remember how that movie ended—are the least eager to move down that path now.
Everything about Mr. Trump’s history—before and since assuming the presidency—suggests he likes a clearly identifiable enemy, and he likes a fight. He is the famously self-proclaimed counter-puncher, defining himself by those with whom he is battling and distinguishing himself by the way he conducts the battle. In an impeachment fight, he could do exactly that.
Plus: “The broader, underlying risk for Democrats if they pursue impeachment: What if average voters just don’t care as much about the Russian interference/Mueller investigation saga as do Democratic party activists and the political intelligentsia in Washington? What if they think the fight is just too damaging to the country?”
It has been damaging to the country, and Democrats have been the instigators since Day One.
LIVE UPDATES: Juan Guaidó Launches Military Coup in Venezuela Against Socialist Maduro.
I’m not sure “coup” is the right word here.
LEFTIST MISOGYNY: Can a woman beat Trump? Some Democrats wonder if it’s worth the risk.
NOT A BAD PROBLEM TO HAVE: The Fastest-Growing U.S. City Is Scrambling to Survive the Shale Boom.