November 22, 2024

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Was Trump Doing His 4-D Chess Thing With His Attorney General Picks? “Given Pam Bondi’s close personal and professional relationship with Donald Trump, why wasn’t she his first choice? Since we’re having fun with the 4-D chess idea, we have to wonder if the plan always was to eventually have her be the nominee.”

Posted at 9:09 am by Stephen Green

AND HIS PROTECTION IS DISAPPEARING: Well, YEAH: Cop Who Shot Ashli Babbitt Has Long Disciplinary Record. “The issues in Captain Michael Byrd’s background included a failed shotgun qualification test, a failed FBI background check for a weapons purchase, a 33-day suspension for a lost weapon and referral to Maryland state prosecutors for firing his gun at a stolen car fleeing his neighborhood, according to congressional and police documents.”

Posted at 8:59 am by Glenn Reynolds

THEY’VE BEEN DREADING THE INVESTIGATIONS TO COME: House Oversight Committee: DoD Inspector General Lied About January 6th. “Representative Barry Loudermilk, who chairs the Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight, released a report yesterday that slams the Department of Defense Inspector General and basically accuses him of engaging in an illegal coverup of the truth behind the Army’s failure to deploy the D.C. National Guard to defend the Capitol building as ordered.”

Posted at 8:42 am by Glenn Reynolds

CHANGE: MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s salary reportedly cut by $5M despite being ‘ratings Viagra’ – as parent company Comcast deals with ‘difficult time.’

Maddow’s reported salary haircut comes as panic engulfed MSNBC’s 30 Rock headquarters in Midtown, as The Post reported, over Comcast’s plan to spin off off its cable channels by the end of 2025.

Splitting off MSNBC from NBC News could force the cable channel to change its name, logo and headquarters, and may lead to layoffs.

Maddow’s new deal will keep her in the anchor chair on Monday nights, and allow her to produce podcasts and documentaries, the Ankler reported.

The network also plans to use her as a “secret weapon” on other shows when there’s breaking news, the outlet added.

MSNBC’s ratings have tanked 54% in the days after President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris — a win that left MSNBC’s staunchly anti-Trump hosts speechless.

Viewers no longer seem to be buying what Maddow is selling at any price.

Posted at 8:38 am by Stephen Green

SPOILER: YOU WILL, IN FACT, BELIEVE IT: You Won’t Believe Who Police Say May Be Breaking Into Celebrity Athletes’ Homes. “While the burglaries were initially thought to be a local issue, multiple law enforcement agencies are now involved, including the FBI. The reason? Sources say that it’s part of a larger, more sophisticated organization, and many in law enforcement believe a ‘South American crime ring’ could be behind it. And it’s not just limited to the Kansas City area; it’s happening in wealthy neighborhoods around the country.”

Posted at 8:07 am by Stephen Green

GALLUP: Republican Women Scooping Up Guns.

The percentage of Republican women who own a gun increased from 19% in 2007-2012 to 33% in 2019-2024, according to Gallup. Gun ownership rates have fallen 7% among Democrat men to 29%, and fell 5% among independent men to 39%, according to the poll.

Republican men remain the most likely gun owners at 60%, according to Gallup.

The survey found men (43%) are more than twice as likely as women (20%) to own a gun, though the gender gap has decreased from 30 points in 2007-12 to 23 points in 2019-24.

Close that gap faster, ladies!

This gap I’m fine with: “The political party gap among gun owners has increased, according to Gallup. In 2007-2012, personal gun ownership rates differed by 16 points among Republicans, 38%, and Democrats, 22%. Now the gap is 28 points, 47% and 19%, respectively, according to Gallup.”

Is it any wonder that Harris-Walz struggled so comically to connect with gun owners?

Posted at 7:36 am by Stephen Green

GOVERNMENT IS JUST ANOTHER WORD FOR THE THINGS WE CHOOSE TO DO TOGETHER:

Posted at 7:33 am by Glenn Reynolds

OUT ON A LIMB: Build More Prisons.

Many lament the number of Americans in prison. “Our nation holds the shameful distinction of being the world’s largest jailer,” said Senator Cory Booker in a representative statement last year. America may not truly lead the world in incarceration—El Salvador now beats us on a per-capita basis, and autocratic states like China and Russia are probably lying about the true size of their prison populations. But we certainly incarcerate a great number: 1.2 million as of 2022, yielding a higher rate than those in any peer countries. Estimates suggest that about one in 20 Americans will go to prison in his or her lifetime, including one in 11 men. The projected rate among black men is one in six.

That these incarceration levels are shameful even appears to be a consensus. Despite a backlash against progressive prosecutors and defunding the police, two-thirds of likely voters still believe that it’s important to reduce the incarcerated population, including a majority of Republicans. In response to political and fiscal pressures, and with crime rates well below their 1990s peak, jails and prisons are shuttering. One estimate found that 21 states closed prisons between 2000 and 2022.

This shift in both policy and opinion represents perhaps the greatest success of the “criminal-justice reform” movement, which maintains that incarceration is expensive, inhumane, and either doesn’t reduce crime or actively causes more of it. So successful have these arguments been that contemporary debate around prison policy today often centers on whether the nation should put anyone behind bars—and, if so, at what diminished margin. Should we cut prison populations by half, or only by a quarter?

These arguments are a textbook example of what Manhattan Institute president Reihan Salam and I have called “starve-the-beast progressivism”—in which progressives identify problems in the criminal-justice system and then argue that they should be fixed not by improving the system but by dismantling it. This dynamic facilitates bipartisan alignment on criminal-justice reform. The Left likes cutting the criminal-justice system; the Right just likes cutting government.

It’s a safe bet that anything that Makes America Great Again™ will make Fox Butterfield quite cross — so it’s a dual win all around: “‘The Butterfield Effect’ is named in honor of ace New York Times crime reporter Fox Butterfield, the intrepid analyst responsible for such brilliantly headlined stories as ‘More Inmates, Despite Drop In Crime,’ and ‘Number in Prison Grows Despite Crime Reduction,’ not to mention the poetic 1997 header, ‘Crime Keeps on Falling, but Prisons Keep on Filling.’”

Posted at 7:22 am by Ed Driscoll

MARK KRIKORIAN: Sending Them Home.

Who said the following?

Credibility in immigration policy can be summed up in one sentence: those who should get in, get in; those who should be kept out, are kept out; and those who should not be here will be required to leave.

Donald Trump? Stephen Miller? Incoming “border czar” Tom Homan?

No—civil rights icon Barbara Jordan in 1995.

Jordan, the first Black congresswoman from the South and a star of the Watergate hearings, was named by President Clinton to head an immigration commission some 30 years ago. It is precisely because her recommendations were ignored that we are where we are today. The lack of credibility that Jordan bemoaned is how you get a man like Trump.

The bottom line is that a large-scale program to make illegal aliens leave doesn’t require soldiers breaking down doors, cattle cars, or concentration camps. This is law enforcement, not war. And it is imperative in light not just of the past four years of immigration mismanagement, but the past four decades of dishonesty.

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 7:14 am by Ed Driscoll

WHILE I TRY TO AVOID PUBLICLY CRITICIZING OTHER NONPROFITS, I recently made an exception to that rule to raise awareness that the once-great AAUP has not only failed in its mission to defend academic freedom but, in fact, is a threat to both free speech and academic freedom.

Posted at 6:48 am by Greg Lukianoff

November 21, 2024

WHEN REPUBLICANS ARE IN THE WHITE HOUSE, THE MACHINERY OF GOVERNMENT MUST BE FREE OF POLITICS. WHEN DEMOCRATS ARE IN, IT’S ALL POLITICS, ALL THE TIME.

Just another of the many double standards they employ, in pursuit of untrammeled power.

Posted at 10:03 pm by Glenn Reynolds

BRIAN KEMP SHOULD PARDON HER, THEN HAVE THE COPS FIRED: Georgia Police Arrest Mom Because Her Son Went for a Walk. “She was taken to the police station, stripped and put in an orange jumpsuit. She was initially told the charge was “reckless endangerment,” but there is no such offense in Georgia. The actual charge was reckless conduct, a misdemeanor which could land her in jail for up to a year. Patterson’s lawyer David DeLugas points out that under Georgia law parents can leave a child aged 9-12 with a caretaker for up to two hours. She left Soren at home with his grandfather for 90 minutes. And since she didn’t give him permission to walk to the store, there was no criminal act here.”

Even if she had given him permission that shouldn’t be criminal. Criminalizing what for centuries was normal parenting and normal childhood behavior and parenting is a civil rights violation, and civil rights violators should be punished.

Posted at 9:33 pm by Glenn Reynolds