Login
One of the big stories in the New York Times today is another Clarence Thomas smear, but with a twist: “Justice Thomas Hires Law Clerk Accused of Sending Racist Text Messages.”
The story is about Crystal Clanton, who graduated from the Antonin Scalia Law School at George Mason University in 2022. She is coming off a clerkship with Judge William Pryor of the 11th Circuit, who calls her “an outstanding law clerk.” Justice Thomas has now hired her to clerk on the Supreme Court.
For the last seven years, Crystal Clanton has been dogged by reports of an email that she allegedly wrote, in which she supposedly said, “I hate black people.” The Times story admits that they have not seen any such message, and are relying on reporting by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer, perhaps the least trustworthy source in America.
In 2017, Clanton was running field operations for Turning Point USA. Mayer did a hit piece on Turning Point that included a variety of allegations, including the one against Clanton. Mayer claimed to have seen a screen shot of the text. The story has dogged Clanton ever since. When she was offered a clerkship on the 11th Circuit by Judge Pryor, seven left-wing members of Congress lodged an ethics complaint against Pryor, based on Clanton’s alleged text. That complaint was investigated by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which found the complaint to be without merit and dismissed it.
This January 2022 story has the details. Clanton left Turning Point after the claim against her was first made, but the Second Circuit found it to be false:
The Turning Point executive “had determined that the source of the allegations against (Clanton) was a group of former employees,” [Second Circuit Chief Judge Debra] Livingston wrote. “One of these employees was fired after the organization learned that this person had created fake text messages to be used against co-workers, to make it appear that those co-workers had engaged in misconduct when they had not.”
Pryor and Maze knew about the allegations against Clanton when they interviewed and hired her. And both determined the allegations of racist behavior by Clanton were untrue and found she was highly qualified to serve as a clerk for them, Livingston wrote.
“There is nothing in the record to dispute any of this,” she noted.
Charlie Kirk is also quoted in that story:
“The media has alleged that Crystal said and did things that are simply untrue,” Kirk wrote. “I have first-hand knowledge of the situations reported on and I can assure that the media has made serious errors and omissions. The sources of these reports are a group of former employees that have a well-documented desire to malign Crystal’s reputation.”
The employee who was fired had “created fake text messages to be used against other employees,” Kirk wrote.
Crystal Clanton got to know Ginny Thomas when she worked at Turning Point, and she was evidently so distraught about her departure from that group that she lived with the Thomases for nearly a year. So Thomas knows her well. He wrote a letter in connection with the Second Circuit investigation:
“I know Crystal Clanton and I know bigotry,” Thomas wrote. “Bigotry is antithetical to her nature and character.”
Clanton didn’t respond to the Times’s request for comment in the story they published today, but back in 2017 she told The New Yorker that “I have no recollection of these messages and they do not reflect what I believe or who I am, and the same was true when I was a teenager.”
So there the matter rests. The moral of the story, I suppose, is that the Left never forgets. No matter that she was cleared by an investigation by one of the nation’s courts of appeals; once the Left gets its hands on a smear it never lets go. It will never stop trying to destroy your life. And of course, The New Yorker and the New York Times are two of the worst offenders.
Also, what makes this old story worthy of the Times’s A section? Only the fact that Justice Thomas is involved. The Times doesn’t care about a law clerk of whom few people have heard, but it cares deeply about smearing the country’s top conservative African-American. But what, exactly, are we supposed to infer from the Times story? That Clarence Thomas is weirdly favorable to those who hate black people?
A final irony: Supreme Court justices have no doubt hired any number of clerks who have written and spoken favorably about DEI, which actually is racist. But there is no controversy there: on the contrary, endorsing that form of racism is a badge of honor.
Caroline Glick recommends Margaret Brennan’s interview with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this morning on Face the Nation as “very important.” In it he faces the Biden administration talking points argued by Sullivan. She does not ask a single question that reflects sympathy with Israel’s ordeal, yet the Jew haters are having their say in the comments at YouTube. I infer that Netanyahu was able to make his own points effectively. CBS has posted the transcript of the interview here.
This morning I stumbled across a Tweet linking to an Australian “60 Minutes” segment about the unassimilable migrants that are causing the crime rate and other social dysfunctions to soar in Sweden. Turns out the episode is seven years old, but since we don’t see Australia’s “60 Minutes” here (and our CBS “60 Minutes” won’t touch this subject with a ten meter pole), I doubt little has changed in the last seven years, so here’s the complete seven minute segment—watch to the very end:
I still contend that sooner or later, European nations are going to institute mass deportations of migrants. (If it wants to survive, anyway. It may not have the will to do so any more.) Germany has already said it is going to step up deportation proceedings against recent migrants whose asylum claims are unfounded, but look for other countries to ratchet up from there.
George Harrison was born in Liverpool on this date in 1943. He died on November 29, 2001, in Los Angeles. He added to the beauty of the world as a member of the Beatles and in his subsequent solo career. He also founded HandMade Films to produce Monty Python’s Life of Brian, still funny after all these years. I want to celebrate the anniversary of his birth this morning.
In an interview on the Dick Cavett Show way back when, Harrison was asked about his favorite Beatles songs. As I recall, he said he most enjoyed the Beatles songs with three-part harmonies. He would have contributed the third part on those songs. By my lights he was a talented and ingenious harmony singer. Among the songs he must have been thinking of would be “This Boy,” “Yes It Is,” “I’m Only Sleeping,” and “Because.” Check out the Galeazzo Frudua videos that break down the harmony parts on those songs. George’s contributions are something else.
I thought it might be fun to look back on George’s solo career through lesser known songs on his solo albums over the years 1970-2002. I may have let a hit or two sneak in, but I went in search of deep tracks. If you have a favorite Harrison hit, it won’t be here. My goal is to avoid the hits and see if we can enhance our enjoyment of his legacy along the way. Please accept my apologies in advance for any mistakes in my notes and for ads that may preface the videos. Keep your cursor poised to cut them off.
George’s All Things Must Pass made a huge impact when the Beatles broke up in 1970. You had to make your way over to side three to find “Apple Scruffs.” You can hear the influence of Bob Dylan wedded to the Beatles-style vocal backing that George supplied entirely by himself. This was my favorite track on the album.
George produced the Concert for Bangladesh and the released the related live album in 1971. He didn’t get around to making another solo album until Living in the Material World in 1973. Contrary to the urging of “Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long,” he might have let us wait too long. For some reason or other this track wasn’t released as a single.
George always called on gifted musicians for instrumental backing on his albums. Dark Horse (1974) included work by Nicky Hopkins on piano, Willie Weeks on bass, and a guy named Ringo Starr on drums. They all back George on “So Sad.”
George wrote “Far East Man” with Ronnie Wood. “While the world wages war / It gets harder to see / Who your friends really are.” Tom Scott is on the saxophones, Billy Preston on piano, Willie Weeks on bass, and Andy Newmark on drums.
George kept the albums coming. He released Extra Texture the following year. “You” led off the album and turned into a hit single with sax solos by Jim Horn and Leon Russell on piano. However, we are avoiding the hits in search of buried treasure. “Ooh Baby (You Know That I Love You)” is one of George’s tributes to Smokey Robinson.
In addition to George’s work on guitar, “Tired of Midnight Blue” has Leon Russell on piano and Jim Keltner on drums. This is a most engaging restatement of George’s warning to “beware of Maya.”
George followed up Extra Texture with Thirty Three & 1/3 Third (1975) and included a second tribute to Smokey Robinson (“Pure Smokey”). Listening to the track, I think it’s fair to say once is not enough. George’s solos make the second time around even better. Tom Scott is on the saxes again, Richard Tee on piano, and Willie Weeks on bass.
“Learning How To Love You” closed the album. That’s Richard Tee on keyboards and Willie Weeks on bass. The track was released as the b-side to “This Song.” I think this one belongs in the department of buried treasure.
The self-titled George Harrison was released in 1979. He had originally recorded “Not Guilty” during the Beatles’ sessions for the White Album, but that track remained in the can until it was released on Anthology 3 in 1996. George retrieved the song and rerecorded it for his his self-titled album. Stevie Winwood is on keyboards, Willie Weeks on bass, and Andy Newmark on drums. It’s a beguilingly bitter song.
“Here Comes the Moon” is not to be confused with “Here Comes the Sun.” I think you will enjoy it if you haven’t heard it before. George is on the guitar parts, Stevie Winwood on harmonium and backing vocals, Willie Weeks on bass, and Andy Newmark on drums.
Next came Somewhere In England (1981). George covered Hoagy Carmichael’s “Hong Kong Blues.” You won’t hear it performed by anyone else any time soon.
“Lay His Head” is something of a literal buried treasure. It was one of four songs Warner Bros. rejected for the album, although it was the b-side of “Got My Mind Set On You.” The four songs were deemed insufficiently commercial.
I’m skipping over George’s uninspired Gone Troppo (1982). After a five-year break, George’s Cloud Nine (1987) represented a return to form, as in “That’s What It Takes” (written with Jeff Lynne and Gary Wright). I think that’s Eric Clapton on the guitar solo.
I love the playing on “Fish on the Sand.” That’s George on guitar, Jeff Lynne on bass, and Ringo on drums.
George was working on Brainwashed when he died in 2001. It was posthumously released in 2002. As far as his recordings were concerned, he went out on a high note. “Stuck Inside a Cloud” was released as a promotional single only. If you like George, you’ll love this.
George lovingly covered the Ted Koehler/Harold Arlen classic “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.” That’s George on the uke. What a way to go.
As John notes just below, police in Georgia have arrested Jose Antonio Ibarra, “not a U.S. citizen” and not a student at the University of Georgia, where nursing student Laken Riley, 22, was found dead from “blunt force trauma.”
This is not an isolated incident. Consider California, the “sanctuary state” that protects criminal illegals from deportation.
In 2019, a false-documented illegal from Mexico murdered El Dorado County deputy Brian Ishmael, who left behind a wife and three daughters. In 2018, illegal immigrant Gustavo Perez Arriaga, also known as Paulo Virgen Mendoza, murdered Newman, California police officer Ronil “Ron” Singh, a legal immigrant from Fiji who came the America to work in law enforcement.
In 2014, previously deported Luis Bracamontes gunned down Sacramento County police officers Danny Oliver and Michael Davis. In court, the Mexican national said he wished he had killed more cops. Sometimes the victims are innocent children.
In Waseca, Minnesota, Lorenzo Sanchez raped 12-year-old Cally Jo Larson, stabbed her to death, then hung her body from a cord in the stairway. See the Forensic Files episode “The Music Case.” And now nursing student Laken Riley is found dead from blunt force trauma.
If a firearm had been in play, and the suspect a U.S. citizen, Joe Biden might have issued a statement on “gun violence.” At this writing, nothing from the White House on the case, and that comes as no surprise.
“You know, 11 million people live in the shadows. I believe they’re already American citizens,” said vice president Biden in 2014. All the 11 million wanted was a chance to contribute, Biden said, so “let people vote.” Since 2020, Biden has bulked up the imported electorate by some eight million, possibly more, so when illegals commit crimes the Delaware Democrat looks the other way.
This year, millions of illegals will be voting, as they already do in California, with squads of politiqueros bribing or threatening them to vote “a certain way,” code for Democrats. That’s what the Biden Junta wants in November.
Laken Riley was a 22-year-old nursing student in Athens, Georgia. Thursday morning, she went for a run and didn’t return. Her body was found on the campus of the University of Georgia. Riley was murdered by an illegal immigrant from Venezuela:
Jose Antonio Ibarra, 26, who was arrested Friday in connection to the murder of the 22-year-old Augusta University student, crossed into El Paso, Texas, from Venezuela in September 2022, NewsNation reported Saturday, citing Department of Homeland Security sources.
He had been released due to a lack of detention space, the sources added.
Laken Riley
Ibarra is one of millions of illegals whom Joe Biden has deliberately welcomed into the United States, in violation of federal law, the Constitution, and Biden’s oath of office. Biden’s motives are hard to understand. But in the law, one is held to have intended the natural and inevitable consequences of one’s actions. Occam’s Razor, like the common law, implies that Biden is trying to bring chaos and destruction to the United States.
Having entered America with no problem, Ibarra set out for New York. I don’t believe it has been reported how he got there, but he spent a year or so in New York City before relocating to Georgia. His social media accounts suggest that he was living it up:
In September 2022, however, the Venezuelan native looked carefree, smiling in Times Square and Rockefeller Center in New York City, posts on a Facebook account linked to his name showed.
Of course, he got into trouble in New York, too:
Police sources in New York confirmed to NewsNation that a suspect matching Ibarra’s name and age was arrested in the Big Apple for endangering a 5-year-old child last year.
But illegals who commit crimes are rarely punished. Ibarra eventually joined his older brother Diego, who I assume is also an illegal although I haven’t seen this reported, in Athens. The older brother is a criminal, too; he was arrested three times between September and December 2023. Ho hum. Liberals refuse to enforce our laws, until a known criminal commits a crime so heinous that it attracts national attention. Like this one.
So, because Joe Biden opened our southern border, Jose Ibarra waltzed in from Venezuela, spent a year or so hanging out in New York, where any crimes he committed went unpunished, then joined his brother in Georgia. Where, day before yesterday, he saw Laken Riley jogging on the University of Georgia campus and decided it would be fun to kill her. Congratulations, Joe. This one’s on you.
A postscript: the U.S. isn’t the only country dumb enough to admit large numbers of illegal aliens, often referred to in the press as “asylum seekers.” Western Europe has problems even worse than ours, as exemplified by this case:
Police in Vienna launched a criminal investigation after three women were found dead in a brothel, authorities said Saturday.
A witness discovered traces of blood outside the building, located near the Danube River, and alerted police on Friday evening. The bodies of the three victims had “cuts and stab wounds,” police spokesperson Philipp Hasslinger told The Associated Press.
A 27-year-old man was soon arrested in the vicinity of the brothel while carrying a knife, the supposed weapon. Police said the suspect is an asylum-seeker from Afghanistan and will be questioned by police later on Saturday.
The Vienna brothel was legal, but apparently the “asylum seeker” disapproved of it. Hey, some of us may disapprove of it, too. But we wouldn’t murder the women who work there. Open-borders immigration policies have been a disaster wherever they have been implemented.
UPDATE: It turns out that Jose Ibarra had a “wife.” Sort of:
“We got married so we could join our asylum cases,” she told The Post. “He was the person I thought I could see through. We’ve known each other our entire lives.”
So, just another species of immigration fraud. Honestly, though, Ibarra and his “wife” needn’t have bothered. Joe Biden’s welcome mat is out, and everyone is here to stay–especially those who will degrade our country.
As mentioned in a previous item, Philip Haney, author of See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government’s Submission to Jihad, had a sequel in the works, but turned up dead by gunshot in Amador County, California, in early 2020. Dr. Katherine Raven, who has performed more than 5000 forensic autopsies, signed off on a “homicide autopsy.”
Two years later, under a sheriff who graduated from the FBI academy, a deputy with no apparent medical training listed “apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound” as the cause of death.
The FBI held on to Haney’s computer, thumb drives, and “whistleblower documents.” The DHS accused Haney of harboring “contraband” and violating five federal laws. The signs point to a faked suicide, hardly a new tactic. As Sidney Hook recalled in Out of Step, Soviet defector Gen. Walter Krivitsky was “suicided” in a Washington hotel room by Stalin’s NKVD, forerunner to the KGB.
Danish diplomat Povl Bang-Jensen refused to reveal names of Hungarian patriots who testified to the UN about Soviet atrocities during the 1956 invasion. In 1959, after going missing for two days, Bang-Jensen was found dead in a New York park, shot through the right temple. The scene looked staged but the case was officially declared a suicide. See Betrayal at the UN, by DeWitt Copp and Marshal Peck.
In 1993, White House official Vincent Foster turned up dead in Fort Marcy Park. The death was ruled a suicide but the scene left plenty to ponder, especially as the Clinton White House senior staff behaved in highly suspicious ways after Foster’s death (removing—and likely destroying—files from his office, etc.) See The Strange Death of Vincent Foster, by Christopher Ruddy.
Communist assassins also killed by staging fake car accidents. That was the fate of Soviet actor Solomon Mikhoels, artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater and chairman of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee during World War II. By this time, Stalin had revived traditional Russian anti-Semitism, branding Jews “rootless cosmpolitans.”
Nobel laureate Albert Camus, author of The Plague and other books, opposed the Soviet invasion of Hungary and was on record that Communism equals murder. In The Death of Camus, Giovanni Catelli compiles evidence that Camus was the victim of a fake car accident set up by the KGB. The ultimate trick, as Whittaker Chambers explained in Witness, was to make the assassination look like a natural death. That is a distinct possibility in several cases, to be explored at length in future.
The death of Philip Haney, meanwhile, shows what can happen to those who expose Islamic terrorists and their enablers in the US government. That raises issues for those who expose the FBI as the government’s secret police and KGB. When booting up a computer or tablet, see if “FBI Van,” or “FBI Surveillance Van,” show up in other networks in your neighborhood, then suddenly disappear.
Watch for persons unknown offering to send materials to your residence. Take note of strangers who suddenly engage you in conversation and just before leaving ask where you live. Apprise colleagues, friends and loved ones of these realities. Most important, never stop calling out those who attack the God-given freedoms of the people.
Yesterday in San Francisco President Biden held what the White House termed a press gaggle. In the event it seemed more of a gag than a gaggle. This is the White House transcript of his remarks:
Hello, folks. This morning, I had the honor of meeting with Aleksey Navalny’s wife and daughter.
As to state the obvious, he was a man of incredible courage. And it’s amazing how his wife and daughter are — are emulating that. And we’re going to be announcing the sanctions against Putin, who is responsible for his death, tomorrow.
And — but the one thing I’ve made — that was made clear to me is that
Yulanda[Yulia] is going to — she’s going to continue to fight (inaudible) the way. So, we’re not letting up.
You say Yulanda, I say Yolanda. Let’s call the whole thing off.
Today, Biden said he "had the honor of meeting with" Alexei Navalny's widow, who he called "Yolanda."
Her name is Yulia. pic.twitter.com/ecBgLtZdn0
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) February 23, 2024
In 2001, 2005 and 2017, some Democrat House members objected to the certification of electoral votes for the winning Republican presidential candidate. Those objections, while “denialist,” were only symbolic. But Democrat leaders in the House are now suggesting that if they control that body following November’s election–as they well might–they may refuse to allow a victorious Donald Trump to take office.
The Atlantic did the original reporting, behind a paywall. This is from the Election Law Blog:
Murray and other legal scholars say that, absent clear guidance from the Supreme Court, a Trump win could lead to a constitutional crisis in Congress. Democrats would have to choose between confirming a winner many of them believe is ineligible and defying the will of voters who elected him. …
In interviews, senior House Democrats would not commit to certifying a Trump win, saying they would do so only if the Supreme Court affirms his eligibility. But during oral arguments, liberal and conservative justices alike seemed inclined to dodge the question of his eligibility altogether and throw the decision to Congress.
“That would be a colossal disaster,” Representative Adam Schiff of California told me. “We already had one horrendous January 6. We don’t need another.” …
The choice that Democrats would face if Trump won without a definitive ruling on his eligibility was almost too fraught for Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland to contemplate. He told me he didn’t know how he’d vote in that scenario. As we spoke about what might happen, he recalled the brutality of January 6. “There was blood all over the Capitol in the hypothetical you posit,” Raskin, who served on the January 6 committee with Schiff, told me….
The Democrats have become so insane on the subject of Donald Trump that it is hard to know which of their mutterings to take seriously. But if Trump wins the election and a Democrat-controlled House refuses to certify his election on the ground that he is an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment, we will be past the point of a constitutional crisis. If that happens, the only realistic path forward will be disunion, possibly accompanied by civil war, but preferably not.
This is one reason why the Supreme Court should put the 14th Amendment theory out of its misery, once and for all. It is obvious that the drafters of that amendment meant the just-concluded Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans lost their lives, when they referred to “insurrection or rebellion” against the United States. In contrast, the January 6 protest was not one of the 50 most destructive riots of the last few years, and the only person killed was Ashli Babbitt. Not a single participant in the protest was arrested in possession of a firearm. Some insurrection!
In the interest of preserving the Republic, the Supreme Court should rule definitively that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment does not apply to Donald Trump.
Like John, it would be hilarious to observe the left’s sudden obsession with “Christian nationalism” if it weren’t based on an abysmal ignorance that is itself a grim threat to the continuation of our republic. I guess Thomas Jefferson was a Christian nationalist for the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, although in fairness to stupid leftists, they don’t believe in “self-evident truth” either, because they are unable to grasp the meaning of “self-evident” as Thomas Aquinas, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln learned from Euclid. (One of my core lessons in the classroom is the continuity of thought between the “Two Tommys”—Tommy Aquinas and Tommy Jefferson. Hardly anyone ever notices this.)
Or how about John Adams: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
But you know who else turns out to be a “Christian nationalist”?
Joe Biden, Christian Nationalist:
"My rights are not derived from any government…they're given to me and each of my fellow citizens by our Creator."
— Denny Burk (@DennyBurk) February 23, 2024
Gosh—I wonder whatever became of that guy?
This episode has everything: a how-to guerilla guide to improving your McDonald’s hamburger experience; a spirited discussion of the Alabama Supreme Court decision that defines frozen embryos as persons (I think the media is willfully misreporting the decision—John is not so sure); those crazy new presidential rankings from political scientists—and even some soft-core porn!
Say what?
Well, it turns out that that Judge Arthur Engoron, who oversaw Trump’s alleged fraud trial in New York City, apparently has a case of Anthony Weiner envy, and posted some rather racy locker room pics of himself some years back. And right in the middle of our discussion Lucretia flashed the pictures up on the Zoom screen, sending John and me rushing for some eye-bleach. There must be something in the bottled water Manhattan Democrats drink. (And doesn’t Engoron sound like the name of a dwarve or elve who goes bad in Lord of the Rings?)
In any case, we do finally get around to a new segment of the 3WHH, where we note three articles from the last week for what they can tell us about something. John chose those stupid presidential rankings; Lucretia chose an MSNBC articlefrom leftist columnist Paul Waldman that unwittingly admits that everything conservatives say about the administrative state is completely true; and I picked Karol Markowitz’s NY Post column reflecting on how recent social science that ratifies the conservative view that two-parent families are the best way to raise children is so controversial with the left, which is no surprise. (Honorable mention to a parallel column on the same subject by Mark Judge in the Washington Examiner.)
So listen here or from our hosts at Ricochet. But have your eye-bleach for your mind’s eye at the ready.
We are apparently meant to take last week’s indictment of long-time FBI confidential human source Alexander Smirnov as a repudiation of what we have learned about the Biden family business. Smirnov’s indictment was sought by Biden-friendly United States Attorney David Weiss. It is linked in the related Department of Justice press release.
Kim Strassel observes in her weekly Wall Street Journal column: “If th[e allegations are] true, it ought to be massive story that the FBI for 13 years relied on a man who prosecutors now worry has troubling and ‘extensive’ ties to Russian intelligence. Instead, the media in its desire to embarrass Republicans is working to absolve the FBI, with the New York Times explaining the bureau never did ‘think much’ of the Smirnov claims and concluded in 2020 that they ‘did not merit continued investigation.’”
This particular episode of the Biden saga reminds me of the phonetically linked Yakov Smirnoff. Smirnoff is the immigrant comedian who wielded his catchphrase to great effect: What a country! Smirnoff’s catchphrase might qualify as the motto of the entire saga of the Biden family business. Looking around for a photo of Yakov Smirnoff I discovered that Jonathan Turley also drew on Smirnoff’s work in his New York Post column on the indictment.
Peter Schweizer first outlined the Biden family saga based entirely on publicly available documents in Profiles in Corruption (2020). In one of the interviews about the book, Peter observed: “We’re not talking about a congressman who’s trying to get a road paving for his nephew from the federal highway funds…We’re talking about globalized graft and corruption involving actors around the world who don’t particularly have the interests of the United States at heart.”
Yesterday Andrew McCarthy elaborated on “David Weiss’s Very Peculiar Smirnov Indictment in the Biden Case.” He commented: “[N]one of the most critical evidence of Biden-family influence-peddling comes from Smirnov or Russians.”
I sat down intending to demonstrate the irrelevance of the Smirnov indictment in light of the evidence accumulated to date, but Andy has done my job for me this morning in today’s NRO column “The Smirnov Indictment Does Not Vindicate the Bidens.” Subhead: “There is already extensive evidence, having nothing to do with Smirnov, of corrupt Biden-family influence-peddling.” If you can’t see the corruption, you’re not paying attention or you’re not looking. It’s in plain view. Miranda Devine also makes this point in her accessible New York Post column “Despite media spin, there’s still overwhelming evidence Joe Biden knew of family’s business dealings.”
I’m sorry McCarthy’s columns are posted behind NRO’s paywall. I wish some public-spirited benefactor would make a deal with NR’s publisher to extract McCarthy from NRO’s paywall prison. He brings his long experience as a federal prosecutor to bear and is the best columnist out there on matters at the intersection of law and politics.
The Wall Street Journal has posted Mark Kelly’s accessible video below in connection with the appearance of James Biden for deposition by the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees behind closed doors this week (Fox News story here). The caption on the video reads: “The latest revelations in the House Oversight Committee investigation into Biden family business dealings surrounds two checks that landed in Joe Biden’s personal bank account, one for $40,000, the other for $200,000.” As I say, if you can’t see it you’re not looking.
This is the week we got confirmation that Joe Biden is not merely a doddering, senile fool, but a bad dog owner, which is cosmically worse. Meanwhile, the FBI continues its string of comic incompetence, arresting an informant it has had on its payroll for more than a decade (paging Inspector Clouseau!), but only when it became useful to embarrass Republicans. It’s enough to make you want to put a gold-gilted Trump high-top sneaker up something.
Headlines of the week:
Totally want. . .
And finally. . .
• Behold the newest frontier in “equity”—”vaccine equity.” Which is needed to counter “vaccine nationalism.” (And you thought “Christian nationalism” was the worst threat out there.)
You think I am making this up? From Nature magazine today:
Today, nearly one-third of the world’s population has still not received a single dose [of COVID vaccine], and the death toll resulting from vaccine nationalism continues to grow. . . As time runs out, we urge WHO member states to agree on a ‘science-for-science’ mechanism that ensures vaccine equity in the next pandemic.
• Sen. John Kennedy (the good one), speaking at CPAC (only a minute long, but with an epic editorial flourish at the end):
I wish he would run for president someday.
• Some of the best reporting about the rot at the top at Harvard has been done by the student newspaper, the Harvard Crimson. The Crimson is out today with a long piece exposing the fact that the Harvard Corporation “chose Claudine Gay as Harvard’s 30th president without conducting a scholarly review of her work, according to a person familiar with the process.”
More embarrassing is that the Harvard Corporation chose Gay “over two internal candidates who boasted both administrative experience and far more extensive scholarship credentials: Tomiko Brown-Nagin and John F. Manning ’82. Brown-Nagin, dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, published two books and won the highest award in American History writing, while Manning, dean of Harvard Law School, argued nine cases before the U.S. Supreme Court and wrote more than 40 legal articles.”
Pretty much confirms what we’ve known all along about why Gay was selected. And raises the obvious follow up question: what are the clearly inept members of the Harvard Corporation going to resign?
• “You’ve lost another spy balloon, Xi?”
The Great Sort is under way, as normal people move to red states and liberals move to blue states. (That last is hypothetical and hasn’t actually been observed.) When massive numbers began leaving blue states like California and New York for red states like Texas and Florida, many conservatives worried that those blue staters might bring their bad voting habits with them. Happily, that doesn’t seem to have happened.
This Wall Street Journal story is headlined: “Blue-State Residents Streamed Into South Carolina. Here’s Why It Stayed Ruby Red.” But it deals with more than one state:
A Wall Street Journal analysis of census data found that a third of [South Carolina’s] new residents between 2017 and 2021 hailed from blue states and a quarter from red ones, according to census data. …
Yet the new arrivals are disproportionately Republican. Estimates from the nonpartisan voter file vendor L2 suggest about 57% of voters who moved to South Carolina during that time are Republicans, while about 36% are Democrats and 7% are independents. That places them roughly in line with recent statewide votes in South Carolina.
It shouldn’t be surprising that when conservatives leave liberal states, they likely will move to conservative ones. The same thing is happening in states other than South Carolina:
The Palmetto State is a prime example of why a yearslong wave of migration to the South has largely failed to change its partisan tint. Many people who leave blue states are Republicans gravitating toward a more politically favorable new home.
In Florida, for instance, 48% of people who moved there between 2017 and 2021 came from blue states while 29% came from red states, Census figures show. Among those who registered to vote, 44% are Republicans, 25% are Democrats and 28% are nonpartisan, according to L2 data. Texas also has a heavier flow of newcomers from blue states but a greater share who L2 data estimates are Republican.
There is much more at the link; it is fun to see Democrats try to spin the numbers:
McDougald Scott and other South Carolina Democratic officials are working to target these new voters and persuade them to vote Democratic by focusing on issues like education…
I live in a blue state (for the time being, anyway) where the public schools are almost unbelievably bad. To be fair, though, the schools in New York and California are likely worse.
…infrastructure…
Have these people never driven on a highway in California?
and healthcare…
What about healthcare? Most people get health insurance through their jobs, and jobs are much more plentiful in red states. Blue states spend incomprehensible amounts of money on Medicaid, but that isn’t exactly a magnet for desirable new inhabitants.
…which she believes the Republicans are neglecting.
Apparently millions of Americans who are moving from blue to red states do not agree. Perhaps this is what it comes down to:
She said South Carolina’s limited access to abortion—which is banned at six weeks of pregnancy—is also something that crosses party lines.
Right. Hey, blue state economies may suck, crime may be rampant, taxes may be too high, government may be corrupt–but if the occasion arises, you can always kill your baby. This is the sales pitch my state’s liberal government is actually trying to implement: come here to get an abortion or a sex change operation, especially if you are a kid! Somehow, it doesn’t seem to be working.
The bottom line is that the Great Sort continues to benefit Red America. The question is, to what extent is the out-migration of normals locking liberalism into the blue states?
Fani Willis’s prosecution of Donald Trump has descended into comedy, currently of the bedroom farce variety. As all the world now knows, Willis carried on a torrid affair with Nathan Wade, whom she hired to lead the Trump prosecution and to whom she paid an extraordinary amount of taxpayer money, and then helped him spend it. That is corruption of the most old-fashioned sort. Willis and Wade have claimed that their affair did not begin until 2022, some time after she hired him to prosecute Trump.
Which turns out to be a lie:
Phone records, recently unveiled in new court documents obtained by The Post, indicate a pattern of late-night visits by Wade to Willis’s apartment, raising questions about the timeline of their relationship.
According to the cellphone data presented in court, Wade frequented the vicinity of Fulton County District Attorney Willis’s condo in Hapeville at least 35 times before their confessed affair.
***
[Investigator Charles] Mittelstadt highlighted times that refuted both Wade’s and Willis’s testimony that they had not begun a relationship prior to November 2021, and that he had only visited the apartment on occasion to discuss business.“I was directed into a deeper analysis on two specific dates: September 11-12, 2021 (before I understand Mr Wade was hired) and November 29-30 (prior to what I understand was the in-court testimony that the romantic relationship began in 2022).
“Specifically, on September 11, 2021, Mr Wade’s phone left the Doraville area and arrived within the geoface located on the Dogwood address [Willis’s condominium] at 10.45pm,” Mittelstadt said.
“The phone remained there until September 12 at 3.28am at which time the phone traveled directly to towers located in East Cobb consistent with his routine pinging at his residence in the area. The phone arrived in East Cobb at approximately 4.05am, and records demonstrate he sent a text at 4.20am to Ms Willis.
“Additionally, on November 29, 2021, Mr Wade’s phone was pinging on the East Cobb towers near his residence and, following a call from Ms Willis at 11.32pm, while the call continued, his phone left the East Cobb area just after midnight and arrived within the geofence located on the Dogwood address at 12.43am on November 30, 2021. The phone remained there until 4.55am,” he added.
Willis and Wade are the most famous illicit couple since Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Like Strzok and Page, Willis and Wade appear to have made texting and phoning one another a full-time job:
Mittelstadt’s report also showed Wade and Willis had made more than 2,000 voice calls to each other and exchanged just less than 12,000 text messages over an 11-month period in 2021.
It makes you wonder when Wade found time to rack up all those billable hours.
I don’t know what the future holds for Donald Trump, but I think we can confidently predict that the Sun soon will set on Fani Willis’s political career.
According to the polls, the Tory Party over in Britain s heading for a wipeout at the hands of the Labour Party later this year, thereby squandering Boris Johnson’s record Tory landslide of 2019. Has there ever been a greater example of political malpractice in recent decades? There are lots of reasons for this dreadful scene (starting with Johnson’s own terrible handling of COVID and other unforced errors) which can be treated more fully on another occasion. Conservatives in America ought to pay close attention, however, and take some lessons perhaps.
For the moment, it is worth noting is that the Tory Party has especially lost ground among younger voters. Sound familiar? Actually, the Financial Times looked at cross-national survey data, and concludes that Britain’s Tories are an outlier (click to embiggen):
Affordable housing may have something to do with this:
I wrote here about the Left’s current bugbear, “Christian nationalism.” Despite being a Christian and a nationalist, I have no idea what that phrase means, and have never met anyone who describes himself in those terms.
On MSNBC, a Politico reporter explained the meaning of “Christian nationalism.” You have to hear it to believe it:
Oh, my. 'They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…' https://t.co/R4L8HzKriJ
— Byron York (@ByronYork) February 23, 2024
These liberals are living in a state of utter ignorance. They literally know nothing. What I can’t figure out is, how can we be losing to people who are so unutterably stupid?
Lifelong Democrat Jeane J. Kirkpatrick came to the attention of former Democrat Ronald Reagan though her 1979 Commentary essay “Dictatorships and Double Standards.” As America’s future UN ambassador contended:
The failure of the Carter administration’s foreign policy is now clear to everyone except its architects.
The pattern is familiar enough: an established autocracy with a record of friendship with the U.S. is attacked by insurgents, some of whose leaders have long ties to the Communist movement, and most of whose arms are of Soviet, Chinese, or Czechoslovak origin. The “Marxist” presence is ignored and/or minimized by American officials and by the elite media on the ground that U.S. sup- port for the dictator gives the rebels little choice but to seek aid “elsewhere.”
Our “commitment to the promotion of constructive change worldwide” (Brzezinski’s words) has been vouchsafed in every conceivable context. But there is a problem. The conceivable contexts turn out to be mainly those in which non-Communist autocracies are under pressure from revolutionary guerrillas. Since Moscow is the aggressive, expansionist power today, it is more often than not insurgents, encouraged and armed by the Soviet Union, who challenge the status quo. The American commitment to “change” in the abstract ends up by aligning us tacitly with Soviet clients and irresponsible extremists like the Ayatollah Khomeini or, in the end, Yasir Arafat.
So far, assisting “change” has not led the Carter administration to undertake the destabilization of a Communist country. The principles of self-determination and nonintervention are thus both selectively applied.
Carter’s doctrine of national interest and modernization encourages support for all change that takes place in the name of “the people,” regardless of its “superficial” Marxist or anti-American content.
Surely it is now beyond reasonable doubt that the present governments of Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos are much more repressive than those of the despised previous rulers; that the government of the People’s Republic of China is more repressive than that of Taiwan, that North Korea is more repressive than South Korea, and so forth.
Groups which define themselves as enemies should be treated as enemies. The United States is not in fact a racist, colonial power, it does not practice genocide, it does not threaten world peace with expansionist activities. . . . We have also moved further, faster, in eliminating domestic racism than any multiracial society in the world or in history.
No more is it necessary or appropriate to support vocal enemies of the United States because they invoke the rhetoric of popular liberation. It is not even necessary or appropriate for our leaders to forswear unilaterally the use of military force to counter military force. Liberal idealism need not be identical with masochism, and need not be incompatible with the defense of freedom and the national interest.
That probably got by Sen. Joe Biden. As Mark Bowden (Black Hawk Down) noted in 2010, the Delaware Democrat “makes few references to books and learned influences.” In 2024, to paraphrase ambassador Kirkpatrick, the failure of the Biden administration is now clear even to its architects.
The Biden administration has fashioned another program of student debt relief forgiveness. The so-called SAVE plan was promulgated by regulation last year. It takes the load off the fanny of beneficiaries of certain federal college loan programs and puts it right on the back of taxpayers. Politico reports that Biden is emailing 153,000 student loan borrowers that he’s canceling their debt. “I hope this relief gives you a little more breathing room,” the message says.
Those of us who actually pay taxes could use a little breathing room, but there is no breathing room to be found. Suffocation is the order of the day.
President Biden is himself a suffocating demagogue, as in his victory lap in the video below (White House transcript here). We thought the Supreme Court had spared us this particular outrage by its decision last year in Biden v. Nebraska. Apparently the justices needn’t have bothered themselves.
Biden declares that he has discovered a workaround. To the extent that one can understand what he’s saying in the clip below, he strikes a defiant note. He’s unafraid of consequences. He’s daring someone to stop him.
Biden on student loan cancellation: “The Supreme Court blocked it. But that didn't stop me." pic.twitter.com/ZomPnhTU1k
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) February 22, 2024
NRO’s James Lynch has a good story on Biden’s announcement in “Biden Administration Wiping Out another $1.2 Billion in Student-Loan Debt.” Matt Continetti adds up the damage:
On February 21, Biden announced that he was canceling $1.2 billion in federal student loans for 153,000 borrowers. That’s on top of more than $130 billion in student debt that he has canceled to date. The Penn Wharton school says that Biden’s efforts will cost a total of $475 billion over 10 years.
NRO’s Charlie Cooke has posted a cry from the heart expressing his indignation over the unfairness of Biden’s action. In his concluding paragraph, he seems unfairly to blame House Republicans. According to Politico, however, the House actually voted to kill SAVE this past December, but the Senate saved it. Now what?
The regulatory background to the current monstrosity is set forth by Jill Desjean in “ED Releases Final Rule on Latest Income-Driven Repayment Plan.” The final regulation was announced in the Federal Register here last year.
In light of the Supreme Court decision in Biden v. Nebraska, the regulation purports to find authority for the regulation under section 455 of the Higher Education Act than under the HEROES Act. See the “Legal Authority” section of the Federal Register announcement linked above.
What we have here is a monstrosity. James Bovard has an entertaining New York Post column satirizing it, but Bovard has no proposal to kill it. The current monstrosity comes to life this coming July 1. What we need to kill it is a new president to rein in the Education Department, or Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate, or some serious legal analysis on which to premise a challenge to the madness of King Joe.
Dan Senor’s most recent Call Me Back podcast features Matti Friedman. Among many other things, Friedman is a former AP Jerusalem bureau staffer. It is his AP experience that prompted him to think through the wide world of sickness that we see in the reaction of the outside world to Israel’s current life-and-death struggle with Hamas. Senor asks good questions and lets the incredibly articulate Friedman speak.
Senor has posted the podcast with this introduction:
Every day we see news accounts “reported” by reputable journalists. There is typically one frame in the post-10/07 War: “Gazan Palestinians are the victims of Israel.” How does this happen? How do journalists actually operate in Gaza and around the world? And is this a window into what had Hamas figured out long before 10/07 — that the forces of barbarism could manipulate the intentional press reaction to their massacre of 10/07? That is why we wanted to sit down with Matti Friedman, who is one of the most thoughtful writers when it comes to all matters related to Israel, the broader Middle East, and also trends in the world of journalism.
He writes regularly for The Free Press and is a regular contributor to The Atlantic. His newest book is called Who by Fire: Leonard Cohen in the Sinai. Before that he published Spies of No Country: Secret Lives at the Birth of Israel, and before that Pumpkinflowers: A Soldier’s Story of a Forgotten War.
Matti’s army service included tours in Lebanon. His work as a reporter has taken him from Israel to Lebanon, Morocco, Moscow, the Caucasus, and Washington, DC. He is a former Associated Press correspondent and essayist for the New York Times opinion section. But it was his time covering Hamas’s takeover of Gaza that led him to study with great detail how Hamas manipulates the media, NGOs and the international community, and how they are working from the same playbook right now, perhaps quite masterfully.
I urge interested readers to check out the podcast below.
Here are the show notes citing Friedman’s work discussed in the podcast (I especially commend Friedman’s 2014 Tablet column linked below):
“The Wisdom of Hamas” — The Free Press.
“What if the Real War in Israel Hasn’t Even Started?” — The Free Press.
“There Is No ‘Israeli-Palestinian Conflict'” — The New York Times.
“An Insider’s Guide to the Most Important Story on Earth” — Tablet Magazine.
“What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel” — The Atlantic.
Vaunce News 