A friend of mine wrote me yesterday to send me an item linked by Tyler Durden over at Zero Hedge. The original is a post by one James Howard Kunstler, and it begins as follows: The tides are shifting. Something’s in the wind. And it’s not just the fecund vapors of spring. The political soap […]
March 28, 2019 – 12:15 am
In yesterday’s post I quibbled with Andrew McCarthy’s call, in an article he’d published at Fox News, for full disclosure of the Mueller report and everything else associated with the Russiagate witch-hunt. Today I listened to an interview he gave with John Batchelor on Tuesday, and I see that I had missed his point. As […]
March 26, 2019 – 12:28 am
Podcast here. Article here. One quibble: the Democrats and the media are bawling for the public release of the full text of the report, and Mr. McCarthy seems to think that would be OK — as long as we get everything else as well: You want disclosure? Me too. But let’s see all of it. […]
March 25, 2019 – 12:26 am
Well! The Mueller report’s in, and has confirmed that this whole Russia business was nothing but a frame-up all along. Thanks so very much, news media and Democrat saboteurs (but I repeat myself) for hijacking the nation’s public affairs for two long years of round-the-clock bile, slander, and lies. This will end nothing, of course: […]
March 12, 2019 – 12:10 am
So good to see someone refusing to grovel for once. Give ’em hell, Tucker.
Just before heading off to Ireland a couple of weeks ago, I linked to a discussion between John Batchelor and Stephen F. Cohen about the “Sovietization” of American political culture in recent years. By this term, Professor Cohen referred to the increasing use of social, political, economic, and legal pressure to cow and silence those […]
February 10, 2019 – 1:27 pm
Having pushed their doddering elders down the stairs, and finding among the corpses’ effects the keys to the family car, our newly crowned juvenocracy is wasting no time in taking it for a joyride. The leader pro tempore of this posse of hopped-up teens is a yakkity Chavista bird-brain by the name of Ocasio-Cortez — […]
February 8, 2019 – 9:52 pm
In my previous post I expressed qualified approval for Tuesday’s State of the Union address. Some commenters took me to task for this, because hey, we’re still doomed. They’re right, we probably are. And make no mistake, there’s plenty for a conservative, let alone a reactionary, not to like about Donald Trump, and about the […]
February 6, 2019 – 2:21 pm
I watched the speech last night. It was awfully good. Even for a cynic like me — who believes that this Republic, due to the inherent liabilities of democracy itself, is in the late stages of necrosis, and perhaps an early stage of civil war — Mr. Trump’s message of unity and greatness was rousing. […]
February 3, 2019 – 11:47 pm
There was a horrible story in the local news today: A young woman, pregnant, was stabbed to death in an apartment-building lobby. We read: The killer targeted the 35-year-old woman’s stomach, according to the building super, who said she watched surveillance-video footage that captured the murder. “He’s got a knife! He’s going to kill the […]
February 1, 2019 – 11:54 pm
Abortion’s been in the public eye lately: with the Democratic Party red-shifting leftward, legislators are seizing the opportunity to push the limits — both legal and moral — of the un-personing of the unborn. New York State just celebrated, with standing ovations and a festive light-show, a ghoulish dismantling of its moral obligations to its […]
January 26, 2019 – 11:56 pm
Former Federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has a new item at NRO on the Roger Stone indictment. He makes an obvious but worth-repeating point about the “process crimes” Stone is charged with, which have to to an investigation into his efforts to find out what Wikileaks might have on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign. Mr. […]
January 24, 2019 – 4:00 pm
New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, has just signed into law a bill called the Reproductive Health Act. (You can read it here.) The principal effects of the bill are a) to remove all mention of abortion from the New York State penal code; b) to permit licensed heath-care practitioners to conduct abortions; and c) to […]
January 17, 2019 – 9:54 pm
Magnificent. (Thanks to the indefatigable JK for the link.)
January 13, 2019 – 11:32 pm
Please forgive me for the scanty output here of late — I am deeply distracted with work and family matters, so much so that I have had very little to say. But I will direct you to two sharp posts at The Orthosphere, by J.M. Smith and Thomas Bertonneau, on the nature of the frustrated […]
January 9, 2019 – 7:11 pm
I’m back in the States now, and catching up on backlogs of both news and work. (The latter isn’t going to leave me much opportunity for brooding and writing for a while, I’m afraid.) The new Democrat House is in charge. Among the most depressing consequences of that gloomy fact is that the ongoing investigations […]
December 24, 2018 – 8:09 am
I’ve been out of the country, and not paying much attention to the news, but I did hear about Michael Flynn’s sentencing hearing last week. And what did I hear? I heard what the mainstream media wanted me to hear: that the judge at the hearing, Emmet Sullivan, had rebuked General Flynn — whom I […]
December 2, 2018 – 2:08 pm
While all the attention has been on Robert Mueller’s abusive inquisition into factitious allegations about Donald Trump’s “collusion” with Russia, there’s been another, far more serious, investigation moling away in the background: DOJ Inspector General Horowitz’s inquiry into the Clinton Foundation and Obama administration’s shady dealings with Rosatom and Uranium One. Wiring at National Review, […]
November 7, 2018 – 6:21 pm
Well, here we are, on the morrow of the midterms. We’ve picked up seats in the Senate and narrowly lost the House. The unspeakably loathsome Andrew Cuomo will harass and insult conservative New Yorkers for another four years, while Elizabeth Warren today is heap happy squaw. Bug-eyed Communist ignoramus Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will have her chance […]
November 6, 2018 – 10:28 am
OK – it’s Election Day. Republicans: the polls are open. You know what to do. Democrats: it looks like rain, and your guys are probably going to win anyway. I think you’re off the hook.
November 1, 2018 – 11:12 pm
The next skirmish in the war for religious rights and freedom of association might be the case of the Hope Center, of Anchorage Alaska, a Christian charitable organization that provides succor for the poor and downtrodden. Among the services it provides is a women’s shelter. The shelter’s clients are typically victims of domestic and sexual […]
October 30, 2018 – 2:27 pm
This is promising: it appears that President Trump is going to declare, by executive order, an end to birthright citizenship for all but legal residents. The question of whether he has the power to do this, and whether birthright citizenship as currently understood is in accord with the Fourteenth Amendment, will then be taken up […]
October 27, 2018 – 12:13 am
Whelp, it appears that I got that one wrong. The “bomber” (to the extent that what he sent can be called “bombs”) now seems to be a Trump-loving loonie. (“With friends like that…”) I thought William of Ockham was on my side on this one, for all the reasons I laid out in my earlier […]
October 24, 2018 – 8:30 pm
Replying to our recent post about the “caravan” approaching our southern border, commenter Jason asks: From what I have read, there seems to be an honest albeit contentious difference of interpretation within the Trump administration over whether we can prevent South Americans from seeking asylum at the border, versus at various consulates throughout Mexico (and […]
October 24, 2018 – 3:51 pm
OK, by now we’ve all heard today’s top story: suspicious devices delivered to prominent Democrats. I’ll join the chorus of people saying this is a “false flag” operation. The whole thing is just so fishy, in so many ways: 1) Why would anyone bother sending bombs to Obama or the Clintons? They aren’t in power […]
October 23, 2018 – 12:12 pm
Judicial Watch reports on the “refugee” caravan snaking toward our border, and paints rather a different picture than our major news media: Besides gang members and mobs of young angry men, the Central American caravan making its way into the United States also consists of Africans, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans and Indians. Judicial Watch is covering […]
October 22, 2018 – 10:11 pm
Back in May I offered a post linking to Spandrell’s essays on what he calls “Bioleninism”: the enormous political power that becomes available to elites who are able to create durable coalitions of naturally low-status members of society. If you haven’t read these yet, you really must do so; it’s all going to be on […]
October 22, 2018 – 12:51 pm
As I write, a column of foreign invaders is marching toward our border, intent on breaching it to enter the sovereign territory of the United States. Given that our Republic has a government in place that controls the world’s most powerful military, this is a thing that we should have ample resources to prevent. (As […]
October 17, 2018 – 2:02 pm
I so dislike Elizabeth Warren, and would so like to see her drummed out of public life, that I’ll pile on a bit here. Not only is she a race-hustling fraud, as she has in these last days kindly demonstrated for all to see, but she is also a plagiarist. Some time ago she contributed […]
October 16, 2018 – 7:59 pm
It’s been a gratifying few days for Mr. Trump: he swatted aside a hostile 60 Minutes interviewer on Sunday night, then had a judge throw out Stormy Daniels’ lawsuit (and award him court costs). But best of all has to have been Elizabeth Warren’s foolish broadcasting of a DNA result that shows that she might […]
October 9, 2018 – 10:45 am
On Saturday, the New York Times published an opinion piece by Alexis Grenell, a Democrat strategist. Had it run even a few years ago, the language it contains would have been shocking; now the piece is only another example of how far that paper (and with it, American culture) has declined. The essay, written under […]
October 6, 2018 – 9:43 pm
We won. Not the war, which is just beginning. But we won this battle. Take a moment to savor the victory. Let us also praise two unlikely heroes of this campaign: Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham. Who knew? War brings out the best and the worst in men. I commend them for their valor.
October 5, 2018 – 1:34 pm
There’s been a lot of excellent commentary on the Kavanaugh carnage from, to hijack a phrase from an erstwhile commenter of ours, “the adults in the room”. Here’s a sampling (with a hat-tip to Bill Keezer for sme of these links): First up, we have former senator Tom Coburn, who identifies as a root of […]
October 4, 2018 – 11:36 pm
Well, the FBI report is in. Unsurprisingly, it contains nothing new. (If it had contained any damaging evidence against Brett Kavanaugh, the Democrats would have leaked it. If, on the other hand, it had contained some exculpatory evidence — which, given the lack of any specifics in the Ford allegation as regards time and place, […]
September 28, 2018 – 3:46 pm
Things are moving more quickly now. Let’s review the status of our three branches of government: After Donald Trump’s shocking defeat of Hillary Clinton, the losing side has done everything in its power to delegitimize his administration — from trying to co-opt the Electoral College in the early weeks, to a ginned-up story about Russian […]
September 27, 2018 – 6:57 pm
You’ve probably seen it by now, but here’s Lindsey Graham at today’s hearing. I’ve never been much of a fan of the man, to put it mildly — but this new, red-pilled Lindsey Graham is something else again.
September 23, 2018 – 10:46 pm
This is war. Vote. — Malcolm Pollack (@mtpollack) September 24, 2018
September 19, 2018 – 5:09 pm
In the latest ploy to stall the Kavanaugh appointment until after the midterm elections, the Democrats have arranged for Mr. Kavanuagh’s accuser, Christine Ford, to demand that the FBI investigate her claim before she will consent to provide any testimony. This is ridiculous, of course: the FBI exists to investigate federal crimes, not decades-old recovered […]
September 17, 2018 – 10:54 pm
As the Democrats launch a desperate last-ditch offensive against Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, the president, in a flanking maneuver, has declassified an assortment of records — FISA applications, Strzok-Page texts, and whole lot more — that may be of considerable importance in exposing the real scandal in Washington: the weaponization of government agencies, by […]
September 6, 2018 – 2:08 pm
Returning from a month of happy isolation and indifference to the news, I see that we’ve been slipping ever deeper into bitter factional strife, if not yet (quite) outright war. The Kavanaugh hearings, which I had on in the background as I worked these past two days, are an obvious and dispiriting example. A steady […]
Once again we call your attention to the ongoing conversation between John Batchelor and historian Michael Vlahos on the darkening clouds of civil war. You can find all of these podcast episodes here.
With a hat-tip to the Maverick Philosopher, here’s an essay by Bruce Thornton arguing that we might as well give up on political debate with the cryptoreligious Left. The best recourse, he tells us, is ridicule. (Hume was right: reason is the slave of the passions.) I agree with Professor Thornton about the futility of […]
Sorry about the scanty output: it’s summer, and I’m on a reduced schedule. I have begun reading The Political Theory of the American Founding, which you may recall from our link to, and subsequent discussion of, Michael Anton’s review. The book directly addresses several questions I have been stewing over for a long time now, […]
With a hat-tip to Bill Vallicella, here’s a survey of the blood-soaked political battlefield from Victor Davis Hanson.
John Batchelor discusses, with former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy, the FISA-court application that got the Mueller investigation started. (The redacted application was finally released this weekend in response to persistent FOIA pressure by Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch.) The interview is in two parts, here and here. Mr. McCarthy writes about the release in his […]
An injunction blocking a California law that threatens gun owners with fines or imprisonment if they don’t surrender or otherwise dispose of “high-capacity” magazines (the term refers to anything over ten rounds) has been upheld by, if you can believe it, the Ninth Circuit. David French has the details in a column published yesterday. He […]
Following on our previous post, today we bring you a column by Angelo Codevilla about Monday’s conference in Helsinki. It begins: The high professional quality of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin’s performance at their Monday press conference in Helsinki contrasts sharply with the obloquy by which the bipartisan U.S. ruling class showcases its willful incompetence. […]
How wearying it is to watch the reaction of the press, and of his political enemies, to President Trump’s press conference with Vladimir Putin. The hyperbole — “Treason! Pearl Harbor! Kristallnacht!” — would be comical if we weren’t already at about the halfway point on the road to civil war. (This is the same crowd, […]
If you are as fatigued as I am by that false and flyblown “nation of immigrants” propagandum, you will read with appreciation this item, by Pedro Gonzalez, at American Greatness.