HAVE YOU NO DECENCY, SIR?

I also agree that this may be a tipping point in Krugman’s disgraceful career as a columnist. For one thing, he is intellectually lazy and seems to operate on the principle that a Krugman assertion is, ipso facto, an established fact. He rarely buttresses his assertions with evidence. His one bit of evidence that ”eliminationist rhetoric” in American political life is overwhelmingly on the right was to quote Rep. Michelle Bachmann as saying that people who oppose the Obama agenda should be “armed and dangerous.”

Far worse, however, he is intellectually dishonest. Even the Times’s first public editor, Daniel Okrent, said that Krugman has a “disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” He is no less cavalier with quotes. As John Hinderaker at Power Line shows, complete with a recording of the entire interview, Michelle Bachmann was merely using a metaphor. She was holding a town hall meeting with constituents regarding the cap-and-trade bill and said, “I’m going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back.” She was arming them with information, not bullets, so they could successfully oppose a terrible bill, not shoot politicians.

On June 19, 1954, Joseph Welch asked Senator Joe McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?” It turned out to be the tipping point in McCarthy’s career, the moment when public opinion turned decisively against him. By the end of the year, he had been censured by the Senate. He died a few years later, the object of public scorn, which he remains for most.

I hope that Krugman’s column on Monday, when he shamelessly used a tragedy to smear his political opponents, will be his have-you-no-decency-sir moment. He deserves one. He is the Joe McCarthy of our times.

Ouch.

UPDATE: Christian Science Monitor: As portrait of Jared Loughner sharpens, ‘vitriol’ blame fades. But, so far, apologies are not forthcoming.

“PAUL KRUGMAN, BUFFOON.” Yes, he hasn’t just descended into self-caricature. He’s descended beyond self-caricature.

My guess is that Krugman has no idea when Michele referred to being “armed and dangerous,” or why, or what the rest of the sentence was. Krugman’s biggest problem isn’t that he is stupid. His biggest problem is that he is lazy. He is incapable of doing even the most rudimentary research, which is why his columns rarely contain many facts, and when they do, his “facts” are often wrong.

As it happens, I–unlike Krugman–know all about Michele’s “armed and dangerous” quote, because she said it in an interview with me, on my radio show. It was on March 21, 2009. The subject was the Obama administration’s cap and trade proposal. Michele organized a couple of informational meetings in her district with an expert on global warming and cap and trade, and she came on our show to promote those meetings. She wanted her constituents to be armed with information on cap and trade so that they would understand how unnecessary, and how damaging to our economy, the Obama administration’s proposal was. That would make them dangerous to the administration’s left-wing plans.

The interview illustrates quite well the difference between Michele Bachmann and Paul Krugman. Krugman is a vicious hater. He rarely argues any issue on the merits, but prefers to smear those who disagree with him. Bachmann is infinitely better informed than Krugman. All she wants to do is debate her opponents on the facts. . . . For the record, here is what Michele said: “I’m going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back.” Yes, that’s right: she wanted Minnesotans to be armed with materials–facts and arguments–not guns. If this is the best example of “eliminationist rhetoric” that the far left can come up with, you can see how absurdly weak the claims of Krugman and his fellow haters are.

Krugman: Dumb and lazy. And mean. He’s quite a poster-child for the credentialed gentry. Audio of the interview at the link.

ERIC SCHEIE: Libertarianism is dictatorial collectivism. And freedom is slavery. And you can spot the fascists, because they’re the ones calling for a smaller government!

UPDATE: Related item. “Killer angels?” We sure are seeing a lot of “eliminationist rhetoric” from the pro-Obama crowd, aren’t we?

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND, if you were off, you know, having a life or something:

An Army of Davids is now on Kindle. Hey, if I don’t point it out, who will?

A growing distance between Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.

More momentum for the “Repeal Amendment.”

My Washington Examiner column: I Told You So. With a warning for today’s GOP leaders.

Stuxnet jumps from computers to humans.

Giving taxpayers an itemized receipt. I question whether this will boost support for government.

The dimness of our “educated” class.

Drone warfare as force protection, and drones as strategic air power.

Earth to Beltway: It’s the uncertainty, stupid.

A constitutional amendment to limit spending?

Environmentalists’ eliminationist rhetoric. I’ve written on this topic before.

Some terrific stem cell news.

Fisheries: Iain Murray says Obama’s right and the critics are wrong.

How to save California.

GM’s IPO: A Government “Pump-and-Dump” Scheme?

Hipster heartache: Velvet Underground Drummer Now A Tea Partier. One who is “furious about the way we are being led towards socialism.”

Ten Great Nontraditional Movie Vampires.

MORE POLITICAL VIOLENCE: Video: Ted Strickland supporter dumps coffee on Iraq veteran. I blame the Administration’s extremist, eliminationist rhetoric.

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED OVER THE LONG HOLIDAY WEEKEND:

My Washington Examiner column on environmentalists and “eliminationist rhetoric.” But can I really be serious?

Let’s end the war on drugs.

Michael Barone on the higher education bubble. Plus more on the subject from Roger Kimball and The New York Times. And a mortgage-bubble analogy.

More on the public pension tsunami.

Rand Paul polling surprisingly well.

“Barack, can we talk?”

More developments in the Eddie Bernice Johnson scandal.

More on bedbugs. When I was a kid, thinking about living in the 21st Century, bedbugs weren’t among the things I thought we’d be talking about.

A Labor Day Poll.

Raquel Welch dances in a space bikini.

PATTERICO ASKS IF MY WASHINGTON EXAMINER COLUMN is serious or satire.

But answering that would spoil things. So let’s crowdsource!

UPDATE: “James Lee was the tip of a very large Green iceberg of dangerous ideas.” Then lettuce be thankful his efforts wilted.

ANOTHER UPDATE: McCain emails: “Insta-PUNNED-it!”

ECO-TERRORISM? Gunman who took hostages at Discovery Channel inspired by Al Gore. “Lee appears to have posted environmental and population-control demands online, saying humans are ruining the planet and that Discovery should develop programs to sound the alarm. . . . Lee said he experienced an ‘awakening’ when he watched former Vice President Al Gore’s environmental documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth.'”

Won’t Al Gore please stop it with his extremist, eliminationist rhetoric before he inspires still more violence?

UPDATE: Reader Lois Brenner sends this:

A manifesto posted on a Web site registered to a person named James Lee, who gave a post office box in Canada as his address, lists several demands to the Discovery Channel, saying the station “MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet.” It lists 11 demands about airing shows that would promote curbing the plant’s population growth, finding solutions for global warming and dismantling “the dangerous US world economy.” . ..

“All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions,” it reads. “In those programs’ places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it.”

The manifesto was published on http://SavethePlanetProtest.com. Law enforcement sources said they believe the site was operated by the same person who is inside the building. Lee has lived in Hawaii, California and the D.C. area.

“Parasitic human infants” — well, that’s the logical conclusion of the “deep ecology” view. Eliminationist rhetoric indeed. Brenner also comments: “If this is more zeitgeist tie-in publicity, Franzen has a genius working for him. By the way, the book stinks.” Oh, well.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Hot Air has a roundup and notes a double standard. Plus this:

Speaking of lefty bloggers, Think Progress blames Lee’s madness partly on rhetoric from … groups opposed to illegal immigration. Even liberal Adam Serwer of the American Prospect is embarrassed by their post.

Nice try, guys . . . .

MORE: Another roundup here, including this: “On his Yuku forum Lee lamented the fact that Al Gore wasn’t involved in his ’08 protest of Discovery.”

And reader Hastings Walton writes: “If humans are so bad, why hasn’t he killed himself already? Hypocrite.” Yeah, they never seem to follow their humans-should-be-extinct logic to its obvious conclusion.

STILL MORE: Suspect James Lee Rails in Manifesto Against ‘Filthy Human Babies.’

FINALLY: Police Shoot Discovery Channel Gunman, Hostages Safe.

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED THIS WEEKEND:

My Washington Examiner column on what Henry Waxman doesn’t know.

Violent, Eliminationist Rhetoric — from Greenpeace.

AlfonZo Rachel reads his hatemail.

My impressions of the iPad.

Rush Limbaugh, Chris Matthews, and the “Regime” Question.

CNN: Disgruntled Democrats Join The Tea Party. Plus, 53% now trust Republicans more than Democrats on health care. And Ed Driscoll observes: In the future, everyone will be a Klansman for 15 minutes.

Rex Murphy: Please Don’t Call It “Human Rights.”

An important IowaHawk investigation: Journo-politico Violence: Deadly Threat or Menacing Trend?

The growth of anti-deadbeatism.

Shocker: Indicted Militia Member a Registered Democrat.

THINGS YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED:

Unhinged Harry Reid supporters attack Andrew Breitbart.

327 Members of Congress Tell Obama to Make a U-Turn On US/Israeli Relations.

Jim Treacher: A Brief History of Racism: The Clyburn Files.

I want a golden ticket, and I want it now!

Fears about Treasuries.

Greg Gutfeld: Anger Is A Right.

Universities encourage students to go on food stamps.

Poll: Majority Says Tea Party More In Touch On Issues Than Congress.

InstaPundit: A full-service blog. No, really.

From Democratic NH State Rep. Nick Levasseur, hateful eliminationist rhetoric.

No “Bounce:” Obama polls hit low after ObamaCare passes.

SHOCKER: Harry Reid’s gun-imagery takes aim at political targets. When will Democrats stop inciting political violence with their hateful rhetoric? (Analysis via Christian Science Monitor).

Then there’s talk like this: Obama: ‘If They Bring a Knife to the Fight, We Bring a Gun’. This sort of violent gun-related eliminationist rhetoric is likely to produce further unrest. For shame!

HATE SPEECH UPDATE: NEW HAMPSHIRE DEMOCRATIC STATE REP. APOLOGIZES FOR “two nukes weren’t enough” eliminationist rhetoric.

GARRISON KEILLOR: KILL ALL THE REPUBLICANS. ““Thirty-two percent of the population identifies with the GOP, and if we cut off health care to them, we could probably pay off the deficit in short order.”

I’m sure we’ll hear lots of condemnation of Keillor’s “eliminationist rhetoric” from David Neiwert, et al. Meanwhile, with this gang in charge who would be surprised to find that under ObamaCare your chances of a liver transplant really will depend on your politics? Not me.

OH NO: Crazies with guns everywhere!

I love this bit: “And that’s not all. A man brought a gun to a town hall with Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) last week, without incident.” Stop the presses! A man brought a gun without incident!

This, on the other hand, is mostly incoherent: “At Obama’s town hall last week in Portsmouth, N.H., a man was arrested for having a gun hidden in his car after the Secret Service found him at Portsmouth High School hours before Obama arrived carrying a pocketknife. He didn’t have a license for a concealed weapon.”

Does Obama need a license for a concealed weapon to carry a pocketknife? . . . . And if so, why didn’t they arrest him, too?

Okay, that’s just snark. But really, if you’re going to sell the image of crazy armed mobs everywhere!!!! you’re going to need better anecdotes than this. And, you know, a mastery of 8th grade grammar.

But one of my regular correspondents thinks these incidents are all a ruse by the authorities: “Here’s the set up for that Boston Massacre type of event I keep goin’ on about…”

I’m not seeing it, but then I’m well-known to be Polyannaish in outlook. However, assuming that these aren’t agents provocateurs but rather militant gun-rights activists trying to counter “denormalization,” well, I think this is a bad idea and I’d urge them to reconsider. Barbecue joints are one thing, Presidential appearances another.

Matt Welch has related thoughts. Plus, if people had showed up with guns at Bush events, do you think the press would have spun it as evidence of Bush’s unpopularity?

UPDATE: Reader Nathaniel Ferguson writes:

This is not just a poorly written statement, it also brings up a couple of questions.

1. Is it illegal to carry a pocket knife?

2. Is it illegal to carry a pocket knife in a location where the President is going to be in the near future?

3. Is being found with a pocket knife (oh the horror of it!) grounds for the police to search your car? Did the police have to get a warrant for that?

4. Does a person need to have a concealed carry permit to have a firearm in their car? It doesn’t seem that he was carrying the gun on his person.

5. What’s next, police will visit gunowners’ homes in towns the President will visit at some point in the future and take their guns away before he arrives?

I could be wrong, but I think the Secret Service offers adequate protection for the President in the event of a potential Swiss Army Knife wielding maniac.

If not, our tax dollars are going to waste. Meanwhile, I’ll note that the worst actual violence at any Town Hall event was the Ken Gladney beating. But when a black guy is beaten by white union supporters of Obama’s healthcare plan, it’s not news.

Plus, eliminationist rhetoric from the Green Party? Well, Ken Gladney certainly experienced that “smash critics” talk firsthand.

MORE: SayUncle: “Black man with a gun not breaking the law. Press panics.” Well, it does kind of blow their preferred racial narrative.

STILL MORE: Bob Owens deflates lefty shock:

The armed protesters at events in Arizona and New Hampshire were never “at” Obama’s meetings. They were never inside of the security perimeter that the Secret Service establishes for Presidential appearances. They weren’t ever close.

The protester in New Hampshire who had a gun in a tactical drop-leg rig was on private property well away from the Obama appearance (I’ve heard estimates of ½ to ¾ mile away) and was never in direct line of sight of either the venue or the motorcade. He never remotely a threat to the President, nor did he intend to be.

Likewise, those open carry advocates at yesterday’s event in Arizona arranged for a police liaison the day before the event, and were constantly afforded security by the Phoenix Police Department and had at least one known Secret Service agent shadowing them to assure they were following the law. These citizens were never anywhere near the President, nor did they attempt to go anywhere near the Secret Service’s security perimeter that cordoned off the event and the building in which it was held.

As for the citizens ejected by the Secret Service during President Bush’s meetings in the past, I can’t claim to know much about the specific instances they refer to, but they do make clear these were citizens inside the event location when they were ejected.

Read the whole thing.

FINALLY: The White House and Secret Service are fine with armed protesters. Go figure. Tempest, meet teapot! Er, and somebody tell the folks at Talking Points Memo that they’re diverging from the, er, talking points . . . .

FLASHBACK:

What They Mean by ‘Civility’: The New York Times raises no objection to murderous, racist rhetoric at a Common Cause rally.

The New York Times editorial page, a division of the New York Times Co., on Saturday endorsed Common Cause’s personal attack on Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. . . . That campaign took an even more sinister turn at a Common Cause protest Jan. 30, as we noted Thursday. Participants in the rally were captured on video advocating the assassination of Scalia, Thomas, Thomas’s wife and Chief Justice John Roberts. Two of them explicitly called for Justice Thomas, the court’s only black member, to be lynched. One man also asserted that Fox News president Roger Ailes “should be strung up,” adding: “Kill the bastard.”

A statement from Common Cause made clear that what it called these “hateful, narrow-minded sentiments”–rather a delicate way of describing lurid calls for murder–were contrary to the corporate position of the self-styled “grassroots organization.” But the Times editorial expresses no disapproval of the Common Cause supporters’ racist and eliminationist statements. . . . This is the same New York Times that, as we noted Jan. 11, seized on the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona to announce that “it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible” for a “gale of anger” that the Times claimed had set “the nation on edge”–even though it had already been established that the vicious crime in Arizona had nothing to do with Republicans or their “supporters in the media.”

By the Times’s standards, surely it is legitimate to hold Common Cause, and particularly its most virulent supporters in the media, responsible for the depraved sentiments expressed at the Common Cause rally. That the editorial said nothing at all about the subject is further evidence that the paper’s pieties about “civility” are fraudulent–a cheap exercise in partisanship and a thuggish attempt to burnish its own reputation by tearing down those of its media competitors.

Thuggish but ineffectual.

That’s likely to be the epitaph for Pinch Sulzberger’s version of the New York Times.

LEFTIST CULTURE OF HATE: ‘He needs to be humiliated’: Robert De Niro calls for someone to rub a ‘bag of shit’ in Trump’s face.

While Jane Fonda, now 82, spends her dotage getting arrested each week, having flashbacks to her Hanoi Jane days, De Niro, age 76, seems to be channeling his assorted Scorsese tough guy characters, knowing that he’ll never be called out by the left for his own style of “eliminationist” rhetoric.

Earlier: Donald Trump was elected to break the elite. Of course they want to impeach him. “Trump’s supporters have known since election night that this day would eventually come. After all, his sworn enemies have been openly promising it since before he was sworn into office! They’ve used words like ‘resistance,’ ‘coup,’ ‘insurance policy,’ and ‘impeachment’ so often that, now that they are actually doing it, the American people — and Republicans especially — are offering a collective yawn.”

THIS JUST IN: CLASSICAL LIBERALS* ARE CLASSICAL LIBERALS. The Intellectual Dark Web is more liberal than you’d think.

The issue that commands the most consensus, not surprisingly, is free speech, with 89 percent of us agreeing it should always be allowed and 83 percent believing ‘people should be allowed to say and believe whatever they want, even if others think those words or beliefs are hurtful’. We’re also very respectful towards those who disagree with us, which is what you’d expect from a group committed to viewpoint diversity. More than half the respondents said they had a high tolerance for members of the political party opposite to them and wouldn’t mind if one of their children was going out with someone with diametrically opposed views.

What struck me on reading this is that most of us hold opinions that 70 years ago would have placed us to the left of the Overton window and 20 years ago would have put us squarely in the middle. But the shift to the left among the educated intelligentsia has accelerated so significantly in the past 10 years that it’s now commonplace to describe a group of ‘moderate secular liberals’ (Michael Shermer’s phrase) as ‘alt-right’ extremists.

Which dovetails well with the “America’s Delusional Elite Is Done” essay in the American Mind we linked to yesterday:

The failure of the conservative establishment to address the insanity of the new left is the chief negative cause of the phenomenon or movement in question. The new left has alienated large swathes of younger men especially who otherwise would have been sympathetic to its causes. Many voted for Obama and were very much of the “green” faction for example. They weren’t doing so because they were antifa or communists or radicals—in temperament, background, profession, many would have probably been young Republicans before George W. Bush—but did so because the Republican party of the time, the party of Romney and Paul Ryan, was bankrupt in ideas and spirit and had nothing to offer. Obama was promising accountability for the extremely destructive financial crisis of 2008 and for the Iraq War before that. But he didn’t deliver; he became instead a protector of a corrupt ruling class, and a racial demagogue.

The anti-male and anti-White rhetoric of the new left is extreme. The racial attacks on whites in particular approaches exterminationist propaganda seen only in, e.g., the Hutu against the Tutsi in 1990’s Rwanda.

For anyone who doubts this, consider the following few examples, which are far from complete:

A columnist for the Huffington Post, a major leftist publication, wrote an article titled “Towards a Concept of White Wounding,” apparently calling for racial violence.

The New York Times hired a columnist who had repeated vulgar racial attacks on whites, calling “whiteness” “awful,” whites “only fit to live underground like groveling goblins,” expressed great joy at “being cruel to old white men,” and declared that whites will be “extinct soon.” The Paper of Record stood by her when these attacks were exposed, and only quietly let her go recently when she supported a boycott against her own employer.

Symone Sanders, currently a senior adviser to Joe Biden and previously the national press secretary for Bernie Sanders, mocked a disabled white teenager who was tortured on camera in 2017 by a black mob screaming “Fuck Trump! Fuck white people!” and otherwise called cases of antiwhite political violence “a protest.”

The New York Times—again, hardly an unknown blog—published an opinion column by Michelle Goldberg with the eliminationist title “We Can Replace Them,” ostensibly against “white nationalism,” but in fact directed against a demographic white majority as such, which the author seeks to replace with nonwhites for what she imagines to be political advantage.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones, a major organ of the Left that pushes the security establishment’s Russia Hoax conspiracy theories, called this summer for “a literal or figurative war” on whites and a “race war” that the DNC must be willing to get “Lincolnesque” about.

Major leftist and establishment media such as Newsweek publish cover stories titled “Is Your Baby Racist”; major publishers promote books titled White Fragility, or The Dying of Whiteness, and CNN—not white nationalist outlets—runs graphics on “The Vanishing White American.”

Again, all this is par for the course these days; as everyone knows, state-funded universities routinely hold “white privilege” seminars and orientation sessions, promoting a concept the plain meaning of which is to dispossess people of property and civil rights based on their biology.

And again: “In New Jersey, two high school boys stand accused of racially harassing and intimidating four younger black girls. The accused are of South Asian (Indian) descent. You might think that this ugly display is a reminder that the sin of racism is a universal part of the fallen human condition. You would be wrong, according to Princeton historian Nell Irvin Painter. Writing in The New York Times, the L’Osservatore Romano of the Cult of Social Justice, Painter tells us that it’s really whitey’s fault.”

* “Progressives” hijacked the L-word beginning in 1919, after the hash Woodrow Wilson made of their ideology during WWI.

YES, WE ALREADY KNOW THAT COCAINE MITCH PLAYS FOR KEEPS, NANCY. Nancy Pelosi’s latest shot at Mitch McConnell is already backfiring and we’re here for it:

Curious that Democrats have no problem holding up a sign that says “McConnell’s Graveyard.” I’m so old, I can remember when they accused political clip art of having murderous intent, and demanded a new civility from both sides of the aisle. Despite the plethora of left-on-right violence since November of 2016, Nancy Pelosi seems to have no problem with rhetoric that could be seen as eliminationist, and I eagerly await Paul Krugman’s stern condemnation.

Related: McConnell: As long as I’m Senate leader, Democrats’ ‘socialist schemes’ won’t become law.

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Is the newest member of the New York Times editorial board, Sarah Jeong, a racist?

From one perspective — that commonly held by people outside the confines of the political left — she obviously is. A series of tweets from 2013 to 2015 reveal a vicious hatred of an entire group of people based only on their skin color. If that sounds harsh, let’s review a few, shall we? “White men are bullshit,” is one. A succinct vent, at least. But notice she’s not in any way attacking specific white men for some particular failing, just all white men for, well, existing. Or this series of ruminations: “have you ever tried to figure out all the things that white people are allowed to do that aren’t cultural appropriation. there’s literally nothing. like skiing, maybe, and also golf. white people aren’t even allowed to have polo. did you know that. like don’t you just feel bad? why can’t we give white people a break. lacrosse isn’t for white people either. it must be so boring to be white.” Or this: “basically i’m just imagining waking up white every morning with a terrible existential dread that i have no culture.” I can’t say I’m offended by this — it’s even mildly amusing, if a little bonkers. (Has she read, say, any Shakespeare or Emily Dickinson?) But it does reveal a worldview in which white people — all of them — are cultural parasites and contemptibly dull.

A little more disturbing is what you might call “eliminationist” rhetoric — language that wishes an entire race could be wiped off the face of the earth: “#cancelwhitepeople.” Or: “White people have stopped breeding. you’ll all go extinct soon. that was my plan all along.”

I’ll take that as a Yes then.

And do read the whole thing.

THE NEW REPUBLIC, IN DEFENSE OF DISINVITING ‘HATEFUL’ SPEAKERS. At Hot Air, John Sexton writes:

It has been a banner day for progressives who want to redefine our notions of free speech. Earlier today Allahpundit wrote about Howard Dean’s dubious argument that free speech doesn’t protect “hate speech.” Then Jazz Shaw wrote about a piece published by the New York Times which argues free speech should be restricted for the public good. For the third part of this hat trick, I direct your attention to the New Republic where Assistant Professor of English Aaron Hanlon has a piece titled, “Why Colleges Have a Right to Reject Hateful Speakers Like Ann Coulter.”

The New Republic is altering the deal. Pray they don’t alter it any further.

GREAT MOMENTS IN PRUSSIAN PROJECTION: While Germany deals with knife-wielding terrorists shouting Allahu Akbar, this is what Der Spiegel chooses to run on their cover this week:

You stay classy, Germany.

UPDATE: “The New Yorker is beside itself with envy,” Byron York tweets. “The New Yorker’s Next Cover Features Lady Liberty with Her Light Snuffed Out,” their fellow lefties at Mother Jones note.

ROGER SIMON ON SOVIET-STYLE BUREAUCRACIES AND OFFICIAL FAVORITES LISTS, THEN AND NOW: WikiLeaks Exposes Workings of an American ‘Nomenklatura.‘

Reminder: Terry Gilliam now views Brazil as a how-to guide for growing the bureaucracy.

TNR ON DONALD TRUMP AND THE POLITICS OF DISGUST:

Last week, Donald Trump was once again disgusted. Commenting on Hillary Clinton’s awkward bathroom break during the last Democratic debate, he said, “I know where she went, it’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it. No, it’s too disgusting. Don’t say it, it’s disgusting, let’s not talk.”

It’s not the first time that Trump has been perturbed by a bodily function. As Frank Bruni noted in his New York Times column, Trump has been publicly disgusted by Marco Rubio’s sweat and by the idea of pumping breast milk. Then there was his notorious comment about Fox News host Megyn Kelly, in which he conveyed an almost visceral revulsion: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

The Trump campaign has stunned bemused pundits by growing in strength with every controversy and outrageous policy proposal, like banning foreign Muslims from entering the United States. It has finally forced them to admit that his success comes not despite these things, but because of them.

What if disgust is a distinct part of that?

It’s an interesting angle, though I’m not sure if a magazine which in 2013 advised President Obama to roll the tanks in and start shelling the GOP-controlled Congress during the fall budget sequester is the best publication to be proffering it.

Related: David Gelernter asks “What Explains the Vicious Left? When politics becomes a religion, nonbelievers must be punished.”

TNR apparently prefers the T-34 tank to get the job done.

JAMES TARANTO: More Thoughts on Bloomberg’s Idiotic Police-Strike Plan.

We are unable to comprehend what Bloomberg could have in mind when he says he didn’t mean his comment “literally.” Last year, when lefties went hysterical over “violent” and “eliminationist” rhetoric from the right, it was clear that almost all of the examples they cited were not literal. Politicians and political observers have long drawn metaphors from the language of combat. Some such metaphors, like the word “campaign,” are so ingrained in the language that they are dead ones.

By contrast, as far as we know there is no metaphorical meaning of the phrase “go on strike.” Further, the context of Bloomberg’s remarks makes clear that he did mean the phrase literally. Merriam-Webster defines strike as “a work stoppage by a body of workers to enforce compliance with demands made on an employer.” Bloomberg said he wants police to declare “collectively”: “We’re not going to protect you. Unless you, the public, through your legislature, do what’s required to keep us safe.”

I predict that such a strike — not that it’s likely to happen — would lead to less crime, and far less political support for the police. Meanwhile, just to prepare against the eventuality, I think I’ll go buy a gun.

Plus this:

The prospect of police shirking their duty to protect the citizenry strengthens, not weakens, the case for private ownership of firearms and other tools of self-defense.

A police strike, as Bloomberg figured out a day late, is illegal in itself. Bloomberg’s strike would be for the purpose of curtailing the citizenry’s constitutional rights. The mayor urged an unlawful rebellion by government employees against their employers, the people. Since ours is a government of the people, established by the Constitution, this was nothing less than a call for insurrection.

Bloomberg’s an embarrassment to New York. They should be ashamed to have such an ignorant, anti-civil-rights hick running the show.

UPDATE: Mike Bloomberg, criminal? It’s not just the strike that’s illegal. It’s also illegal in New York for public employees to call for one:

You may be familiar with the Taylor Law for its prohibition on strikes by public employees, such as teachers, transit workers, and, yes, police officers. But the law also declares that “no public employee or employee organization shall cause, instigate, encourage, or condone a strike.” Bloomberg is a public employee, no? And he appears to be encouraging a strike? Not that we expect Bloomberg to be brought up on charges or anything, but still, he’s the mayor! He’s not supposed to be violating the law.

He may wriggle out on a technicality, but that’s hardly the point. A truly pathetic exhibition by an increasingly embarrassing politician.

JAMES TARANTO: What They Mean by ‘Civility’: The New York Times raises no objection to murderous, racist rhetoric at a Common Cause rally.

The New York Times editorial page, a division of the New York Times Co., on Saturday endorsed Common Cause’s personal attack on Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. . . . That campaign took an even more sinister turn at a Common Cause protest Jan. 30, as we noted Thursday. Participants in the rally were captured on video advocating the assassination of Scalia, Thomas, Thomas’s wife and Chief Justice John Roberts. Two of them explicitly called for Justice Thomas, the court’s only black member, to be lynched. One man also asserted that Fox News president Roger Ailes “should be strung up,” adding: “Kill the bastard.”

A statement from Common Cause made clear that what it called these “hateful, narrow-minded sentiments”–rather a delicate way of describing lurid calls for murder–were contrary to the corporate position of the self-styled “grassroots organization.” But the Times editorial expresses no disapproval of the Common Cause supporters’ racist and eliminationist statements. . . . This is the same New York Times that, as we noted Jan. 11, seized on the attempted murder of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona to announce that “it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible” for a “gale of anger” that the Times claimed had set “the nation on edge”–even though it had already been established that the vicious crime in Arizona had nothing to do with Republicans or their “supporters in the media.”

By the Times’s standards, surely it is legitimate to hold Common Cause, and particularly its most virulent supporters in the media, responsible for the depraved sentiments expressed at the Common Cause rally. That the editorial said nothing at all about the subject is further evidence that the paper’s pieties about “civility” are fraudulent–a cheap exercise in partisanship and a thuggish attempt to burnish its own reputation by tearing down those of its media competitors.

Thuggish but ineffectual.

That’s likely to be the epitaph for Pinch Sulzberger’s version of the New York Times.