Publication: Powerline

Powerline

The Maine Secretary of State, a left-wing activist, declared that Trump was an “insurrectionist” under the 14th Amendment. On the merits, this is an absurd claim. What happened on January 6 was a protest that got out of hand. The principal violence, and the only fatality, was inflicted by a capitol police officer.

Powerline

The British Broadcasting Company is a notoriously anti-Semitic news outlet. Currently, the BBC is under pressure to start calling Hamas a “terrorist” organization rather than a “militant” one. The BBC is stoutly defending its refusal to label Hamas as terrorist, claiming that it is neutral in the conflict between Israel and Hamas, and calling Hamas terrorists would mean taking a side.

Powerline

The moral nihilism and leftist willfulness of American higher education have finally been exposed by the harsh light of the Hamas barbarism, and for a change there are consequences.

Powerline

The self-appointed “fact checkers” generally fall silent when a Democrat tells a whopper. We are seeing a lot of that in Minnesota these days, with incumbent Governor Tim Walz locked in a tight race with Dr. Scott Jensen.

Powerline

The FBI has openly become an arm of the Democratic Party. This will not serve the Bureau well in years to come.

Powerline

Liberals are predictably up in arms about the decision…It’s no surprise that liberals are unconcerned about federal agencies issuing orders that infringe on the liberties of millions of Americans.

Powerline

John Hinderaker: Everyone knows that millions of people are leaving blue states and moving to red states, but I still haven’t have heard the liberal line on the phenomenon. They have to come up with an explanation other than the obvious one–liberal policies don’t work, and create inferior living condition.

Powerline

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that MSNBC and CNN have cut back on broadcasting the administration’s press conferences because they give viewers a good impression of the administration and thereby hurt the prospects of the Democratic Party, whose interests those networks are dedicated to advancing.

Powerline

Armed guards are great, but as Glenn Reynolds has said, in any mass shooting situation there is one group of people who are present, by definition–the victims. Only, if they are armed, they don’t have to be victims.

Powerline

The demand for white supremacists vastly exceeds the supply, which is why we see absurdities like the controversy over military academy students supposedly flashing “white power” signs at the Army-Navy football game. Now, apparently, the age-old “OK” sign means you are a white nationalist, notwithstanding that there are pictures of pretty much everyone in public life giving the sign, like Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and nearly everyone else. 

Powerline

This is a sad chapter of the Russia hoax. President Trump was right to ask then FBI Director Comey to go easy on Flynn after he resigned from the administration. Flynn has been shortchanged by the system he dedicated so much of his life to preserving.

Powerline

It is delicious that Eastwood’s film about Richard Jewell takes after two rotten institutions that are in Trump’s crosshairs on a daily basis—the media and the FBI. It’s almost as if Eastwood is trying to make an in-kind contribution to the Trump 2020 campaign, and perhaps we’ll yet see some unhinged leftist attempt a complaint to the Federal Election Commission.

Powerline

Democrats are feeling the heat of the immense gamble they are taking by impeaching President Trump. A reporter asks Nancy Pelosi whether she hates President Trump, and whether the whole impeachment drive isn’t about the Democrats’ antipathy toward him. She responds as a Catholic in a fashion that is made even less convincing by her bizarre gestures (see video).

Powerline

In an interview with one Molly Jong-Fast of the Daily Beast, disgraced FBI lawyer Lisa Page speaks. It’s an extraordinarily tiresome interview of the “nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen” variety; she’s “done being silent.”

Powerline

A number of right-leaning news sources speculate that House Democrats are having second thoughts about impeaching President Trump. Such speculation is based in part on polls that generally show opinion turning against impeachment, especially among independents.

Powerline

For the past several weeks a deposition transcript has been floating around implicating Ilhan Omar as a Qatari asset. Bona fide news outlets have hesitated to report on the allegations without some confirmation. Now the Jerusalem Post has stepped forward to serve up the story without confirmation.

Powerline

A good test for national decline is the smell of urine. In declining countries, one frequently smells it. Americans in certain jurisdictions can expect to smell more urine soon. Left-wing prosecutors, some financed by George Soros, will be decriminalizing urination in public.

Powerline

Scott Johnson: I haven’t read it but I state without reservation that it is, after Andrew McCarthy’s Ball of Collusion and Kim Strassel’s Resistance (At All Costs) (the links are to my review of each book on Power Line), the third indispensable book to be published on what the subtitle rightly denominates the biggest political scandal in American history.

Powerline

The Times and the Post are disreputable partisan rags. They have no stature, no standing, and there is no reason why taxpayers should have to support their partisan journalism. Trump’s action provoked the usual hyperventilation from his critics. 

Powerline

There are a number of things that climate activists don’t want the rest of us to do, like eating meat and flying on airplanes. They seem to have decided that discouraging flying is a better bet than compulsory vegetarianism, so several European countries are moving in that direction.

Powerline

President Trump’s White House Counsel, Pat Cipollone, directed an eight-page letter to Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, et al., declining on behalf of President Trump to participate in the Democrats’ sham impeachment proceeding. The letter is excellent. Some would say, brilliant. It attacks the Democrats’ constitutionally defective and politically motivated proceeding at its root.

Powerline

Scott Johnson: To the limited extent that news of Ilhan Omar’s curious marital arrangements has seeped into the national press, it has been disparaged as a “conspiracy theory.” I take this personally because it has been used to defame me.

Powerline

Steve Hayward: I am certain that underneath South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s very smooth and polished presentation is a deep leftist of some kind