April 18, 2024

MICHAEL WALSH, FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY IN THE NEW YORK POST: How the Obamas could easily win eight more years in the White House.

Biden’s already on record as saying he’ll choose a woman. But none of the defeated female candidates for the nomination, including Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, excited much interest from the Democratic base during the primaries, and while there’s a small Stacey Abrams boomlet currently going on, her record as the defeated candidate for Georgia governor doesn’t inspire much confidence — even if, in her own mind, she still thinks she won.

So the choice is clear: Michelle Obama. Never mind that she has even less political experience than Hillary Clinton did when she ran for the White House, and has long said she disdains public office.

Currently, Michelle is in talks to possibly endorse Biden via a video and is said to be lending her name to a campaign fundraiser as early as next week, according to The Hill. “If she engages, God help Donald Trump, because she’s tough as nails and enormously popular,” former Democratic Party chairman of South Carolina Dick Harpootlian told the outlet. With her husband finally having endorsed Biden last week, the stage is now set.

Well, close enough, considering her husband is behind the scenes in the (P)resident’s administration, pulling the strings, “serving as a third-term president in all but name.”

Posted at 10:22 am by Ed Driscoll

WELL, THAT’S UNIVERSITIES’ RESPONSE TO EVERYTHING NOWADAYS, USUALLY CLOAKED — AS HERE — IN UNPERSUASIVE TALK OF “SAFETY.” “USC Canceling Valedictorian’s Commencement Speech Looks Like Calculated Censorship.” “To elaborate on the heckler’s veto point, behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated: If all it takes to cancel an event is that ‘discussion relating to [the event] has taken on an alarming tenor,’ that just encourages people with all sorts of views on all sorts of issues to try to shut down speakers simply by producing more ‘alarming’ chatter. And if there really were such serious threats that USC felt it had to shut down the event despite this risk, then USC should have at least expressly said that there were such serious threats, and stressed that it had called in law enforcement so that the threateners could be caught and punished.”

Posted at 10:05 am by Glenn Reynolds

LOW ENERGY JOE:

Compare Trump at the Bodega:

Posted at 9:51 am by Glenn Reynolds

TRUMP DOESN’T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING. HE’S A VIOLATION OF THE CONSTITUTION JUST BY EXISTING AND THREATENING THEIR SELF-IMPORTANCE.

Ann Althouse: “I don’t like how the Board is conflating the prosecution and the court and the rule of law. The rule of law is an abstraction. Rights exist within the abstraction, but rights can be violated. The abstraction doesn’t guarantee the rights. People exercising power must ensure that those rights are protected, and they may deviously hide behind the abstraction… perhaps with the help of elite onlookers who make abstract pronouncements in print. Trump’s assertion that the prosecution is “unfair and politically motivated” is may be true even if the court carries out its duties perfectly. Trump may be “fortunate to live in a country” that has some dedication to the rule of law, but that doesn’t deprive him of the reason to complain that the prosecution seems politically motivated. Again, even if the court perfectly carries out its obligation to the rule of law, Trump is motivated to cry out about the onerous prosecutions, which are undercutting his ability to campaign for the presidency.”

Which is the point.

Posted at 9:03 am by Glenn Reynolds

COME SEE THE ANTISEMITISM INHERENT IN THE LEFTISM: Why the Media Ignore Anti-Semitism.

When the New York Times did get around to reporting on some of these incidents, the article’s focus was not on the thuggish rhetoric and behavior of Palestinian activists toward Jews, but rather on how such behavior was affecting Democratic politicians’ holiday parties and fundraisers. “Protests over the Biden administration’s handling of the war are disrupting the activities of Democratic officials from city halls to Congress to the White House, complicating their ability to campaign—and, at times, govern—during a pivotal election year,” the story noted.

What the paper of record failed to mention, but is easily visible across social media on a regular basis, is that these protests are promoting and normalizing anti-Semitism, not taking a principled stand on behalf of the Palestinians (a majority of whom approved of Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, according to polling data). In New York in late March, for example, outside a fundraiser for President Biden, a male protester was captured on video following a young woman who was trying to get into the building. He screamed at her, “F—ing murderous kike. F—ing die. Keep it moving, bitch.”

Why aren’t these anti-Semitic attacks front-page stories? Why aren’t they given the kind of relentless scrutiny that anti-Semitism on the right has properly received in these same outlets? The Times has published countless stories about the rhetoric of participants in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Where are the big-think pieces and deeply reported stories about the organizations and funders behind the anti-Jewish groups staging protests outside synagogues and other Jewish institutions?

Read the whole thing.

Posted at 8:37 am by Stephen Green

STUDENT SUSPENDED FOR USING LEGAL TERM: Ever wonder where the term “illegal alien” originates? I don’t know if federal law was the originator, but, as Liberty Unyielding’s Hans Bader points out this morning, the term appears in both federal and state law codes.

So why is North Carolinian Leah McGhee’s high-school student son being penalized for using the term? Bader explains:

“Leah McGhee’s son has a teacher who assigned vocabulary words during class last Tuesday, including the word ‘alien.’ McGhee says her son made an effort to understand the assignment and responded to his teacher, asking, ‘Like space aliens or illegal aliens without green cards?’

“According to an email describing the incident, sent to local officials and shared with Carolina Journal, a young man in class took offense to his question and reportedly threatened to fight him, prompting the teacher to call in the assistant principal. Ultimately, his words were deemed by administrative staff to be offensive and disrespectful to classmates who are Hispanic.

“’I didn’t make a statement directed towards anyone; I asked a question,’ said the student in response to his suspension. ‘I wasn’t speaking of Hispanics because everyone from other countries needs green cards, and the term illegal alien is an actual term that I hear on the news and can find in the dictionary.'”

Prediction: Leah McGhee is raising one sharp young man who just might end up in law school someday and advance to a position where he can help restore common sense and justice to American public education.

 

Posted at 8:35 am by Mark Tapscott

KEEP THE BUREAUCRATS OUT: Why the White House and Congress can’t see eye-to-eye on regulating commercial space. And this is at best a stretch: “The FAA, Department of Transportation, has been doing human spaceflight safety for many years.” The FAA has done a great job with human spaceflight by not regulating it. The “learning period” law has prevented anyone from doing so. And that’s how it should stay for the foreseable future.

Posted at 8:30 am by Glenn Reynolds

ATHENA THORNE: Trump’s Brilliant Prosecution Juxtaposition Campaign. “Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and Judge Juan Merchan conspire to keep the presidential frontrunner locked up in a dingy courtroom during the day, but he is free to roam after court hours. An irrepressible and brilliant marketer, Trump seizes on those hours to communicate. And he is off to a pitch-perfect start.”

Posted at 8:06 am by Stephen Green

YOU COULD MAKE A MUCH BETTER CIVIL WAR MOVIE OUT OF HIS BOOKS: That Civil War Movie Is a Symptom of Hollywood’s Problems.

The problem with “Civil War” isn’t its point of view, to the extent it has one. Now, you can tell that, beneath the surface, it has a generic left-wing orientation. The bad guy president is vaguely Trumpy. He’s a straight white male, of course. In fact, every single villain is a straight, white male. None of the major heroes is a straight, white male. You can make movies where the villains are straight, white males, and where none of the heroes are straight, white males, but it’s now a woke Hollywood cliche to make all the villains straight, white males, and none of the heroes straight, white males. You can’t unsee it. Rural white guy? Definitely a villain. Black woman? Hero!

But the mandatory pseudo-diversity of Hollywood is not the main problem with “Civil War.”

Plus: “This was a missed opportunity. We’re at a very dangerous time in our country.” Read on.

Posted at 8:01 am by Glenn Reynolds