Charlie Hurt.  This is too good to edit.

Mad genius of Trump drives schoolmarms of political press crazy

Oh, the mad genius of Donald Trump!

On the cusp of one of the biggest victories of his administration, cracking down on illegal aliens who commit vicious crimes inside our country, President Trump took to Twitter.

“I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

The only thing missing from this electronic presidential address was the Marine Band playing “Hail to the Chief.”

She was bleeding badly. Face-lift. Low I.Q. Psycho Joe.

It is all so delicious. Mercilessly inventive. Joyously vicious. Like an entire season of pro wrestling drama, all sewn up into two little Twitter messages.

The Trump presidency is a little like having a dog. Every day that passes, you love the dog more and more until it seems impossible to love her any more.

But — sadly — every day also brings that nagging dread that one day she will be gone, seven times sooner than she should. What will we do when it is all over? There will never be another dog like her (sad face).

Of course, the puritanical schoolmarms of the political press went absolutely bonkers over Mr. Trump’s broadside of their fellow travelers. They scolded him that his Twitter missives were beneath the office of the president.

Really, you mean like molesting an intern in the Oval Office? “Presidential” like that?

MSNBC — the afterthought cable channel that airs “Morning Joe” — responded on Twitter: “It’s a sad day for America when the president spends his time bullying, lying and spewing petty personal attacks instead of doing his job.”

But the funny thing about it is that nobody actually disproved anything that Mr. Trump alleged. Just like Russia and obstruction of justice and everything else, there is not one single shred of evidence that Mr. Trump is not 100 percent in the right.

“The Amazon Post” — the paper-of-record for Never Trumpers — rushed to the defense of Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough with a laughably illogical and twisted explanation.

“The notion that Brzezinski and Scarborough were desperate to hang out with Trump on New Year’s Eve but were rebuffed seems dubious, at best,” reporter Callum Borchers wrote on the paper’s website.

“For one thing, the New York Times spotted the co-hosts at Trump’s New Year’s Eve party at Mar-a-Lago.”

So, wait a minute? The proof that Mr. Trump is lying about Ms. Brzezinski and Mr. Scarborough slumming around Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Eve is that — well — Ms. Brzezinski and Mr. Scarborough were slumming around Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Eve?

Oof. Mr. Borchers probably learned this in journalism school. He should have gone to logic school instead.

But the correspondent was still not finished changing diapers for Ms. Brzezinski and Mr. Scarborough.

“For another,” Mr. Borchers writes, “Scarborough followed the report of their appearance [of Brzezinski and Scarborough slumming around Mar-a-Lago around New Year’s Eve] by angrily protesting any suggestion that he and Brzezinski were trying to cozy up to the president-elect.”

Let’s put this in terms the young reporter might understand: O-M-G.

Then Mr. Borchers goes on to accuse Mr. Trump of a “blatantly sexist attack” on Ms. Brzezinski because the president called her “unintelligent.”

Whoa! You mean that accusing someone of being “low I.Q.” is the equivalent of calling them female?

You might want to get a little “woke” to modern times.

Ms. Brzezinski (that would be she of “low I.Q.” and “crazy”), meanwhile, proved herself entirely worthy of Mr. Trump’s tirade by attacking the size of his manhood on Twitter.

I wish I were making that up, but that is what she did.

She posted a picture of a Cheerios box with a small child reaching a tiny finger out for a little toasted Cheerio. The box reads: “Made for Little Hands.”

Get it?

Such classy people. And they have been a respected part of the establishment for years. Donald Trump just got here.

Oh, one last thing. What about the bloody face-lift? No one seems to be addressing the issue of her traipsing around Mar-a-Lago bleeding from a face-lift.

Either way, Mika, you should ask for your money back.

Source Article

NYT Finally Retracts Russia-gate Canard

The New York Times has finally admitted that one of the favorite Russia-gate canards – that all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies concurred on the assessment of Russian hacking of Democratic emails – is false.

On Thursday, the Times appended a correction to a June 25 article that had repeated the false claim, which has been used by Democrats and the mainstream media for months to brush aside any doubts about the foundation of the Russia-gate scandal and portray President Trump as delusional for doubting what all 17 intelligence agencies supposedly knew to be true.

In the Times’ White House Memo of June 25, correspondent Maggie Haberman mocked Trump for “still refus[ing] to acknowledge a basic fact agreed upon by 17 American intelligence agencies that he now oversees: Russia orchestrated the attacks, and did it to help get him elected.”

However, on Thursday, the Times – while leaving most of Haberman’s ridicule of Trump in place – noted in a correction that the relevant intelligence “assessment was made by four intelligence agencies — the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.”

The Times’ grudging correction was vindication for some Russia-gate skeptics who had questioned the claim of a full-scale intelligence assessment, which would usually take the form of a National Intelligence Estimate (or NIE), a product that seeks out the views of the entire Intelligence Community and includes dissents. . . .

Full article here

Ronald Reagan, Working Class Hero: New Book Speaks Loudly to Donald Trump’s America

A familiar narrative of recent American history runs like this: The modern conservative movement started bubbling in the 1930s and 1940s, in opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Then, in 1964, “The Movement” started really roaring, when Barry Goldwater, a fervent opponent of the New Deal, won the Republican presidential nomination.  Goldwater lost in a landslide that year, and yet even in defeat, he laid the seeds for the future victories of his logical successor, Ronald Reagan.  Reagan won the governorship of California in 1966, amidst the national backlash against Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society liberalism, and then, in 1980, he won the White House, thus finally redeeming Goldwater’s anti-New Deal vision.

This narrative shapes much of Republican thinking to this day.  In domestic policy, Republicans, styling themselves as latter-day Reaganites, tend to judge their “purity” based on their opposition to such pillars of the New Deal as Social Security, even as they pursue post-Reagan agenda items such as the flat tax and school vouchers.  Meanwhile, in foreign policy, Reagan wannabes have gone hunting overseas for new “evil empires” to bring down.

These crusaders might admit that ideas such as Social Security privatization and Iraq-style regime-change are distinctly unpopular, and yet, this thinking continues, if they are in the tradition of the Gipper, they must be good.  And so Republicans should keep pushing them, they insist, in the prayerful hope for some ultimate rendezvous with Reagan.  After all, what Republican would want to break faith with the 40th president, the last truly popular two-term GOP chief executive?

Yet now comes author Henry Olsen with another interpretation of Reagan’s life and work.  He argues that the familiar narrative is, in fact, wrong, that it badly misreads the real Reagan.  In his new book, The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism, Olsen, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, DC—a group founded by a man, Ernest Lefever, whom President Reagan would later nominate for a top job at the State Department—argues that Republicans today are getting the Reagan record wrong.  In misremembering Reagan’s life, they misapprehend Reagan’s legacy.

More here: Jim Pinkerton - Breitbart

Henry Olsen

Trump Won the White House by Recapturing Reagan’s Magic

The conservative movement would be wise to do the same

Ronald Reagan often said that he did not leave the Democratic party, the party left him. That statement is usually considered to be mere political fluff, a ruse to make himself politically palatable to the voters who revered FDR and the New Deal. Yet, that view is both condescending and wrong. A close reading of Reagan’s thought shows that he was always more concerned with what government sought to do than the fact that government was used to do it. 

Reagan’s preferences always matched those of working-class Americans. Like him, these men and women voted for the Republican Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956. Like him, these voters were increasingly willing to vote for other Republicans who promised to respect the New Deal’s achievements while maintaining America’s traditional values. Reagan’s political transformation was more thorough and complete than his compatriots’, but it occurred at the same time and for the same reasons. . .

If Reagan’s New Deal conservatism was so politically powerful, why do Republican presidential candidates lose so often today? The answer is simple: even as every candidate pledges allegiance to Reagan, none clearly conveys his or her genuine love for, and belief in, the average American in the way Ronald Reagan did. 

Whether they are of the “establishment” variety (Paul Ryan, Rob Portman) or the Tea Party flavor (Ted Cruz), today’s conservatives fundamentally misunderstand Ronald Reagan’s legacy, because they remain unreconciled to the New Deal’s core principle: the primacy of human dignity sanctions government help for those who need it. 

Conservatives like these men fail to understand that conservative election victories since 1980 have not been rejections of the New Deal’s promises but rather representations of the public’s wish for their fulfillment. Correcting that error will give conservatives control of the moral high ground in American public life. 

NRO

The biggest health issue of our time

Men Die Much Earlier than Women, Who Spend 25% More on Health Care

Heard of any women protesting that life has shafted men?

Of course not

New Study: Guess Who’s Getting The Shaft From Seattle’s Minimum-Wage Hike?

 The new study has found that jobs and work hours fell for Seattle’s lowest paid employees after the city raised the minimum wage to $13 last year. 

The analysis shows that jobs and hours for those workers declined faster in Seattle than in surrounding control areas, where the minimum wage did not increase. . .

It’s not just the scope of the losses, but the losses themselves which are remarkable for the public debate. Advocates of minimum-wage hikes routinely decry the plight of low-wage earners (and not for no good reason), but the impact of this policy doesn’t improve their lives; it actively makes matters worse. As the opportunities for unskilled workers dry up, they have fewer opportunities to earn any living, while the labor market shifts to better-skilled workers who already had an advantage in the marketplace. In the meantime, the added labor costs also will force the cost of living upward, making the decline for unskilled workers even more dramatic.

Article f/ Hot Air

SCOTUS REINSTATES TRAVEL BAN AND REVERSES NUTJOB JUDGES IN SEATTLE AND HAWAII

In a per curiam Order (full embed at bottom of post), the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Trump Travel Order cases, and also substantially lifted the injunctions, with the exception of people seeking admission who already have a bona fide connection to the U.S.

This represents a huge win for Trump. The key element of his Second Travel Order (the one at issue on appeal) was to exercise his constitutional and statutory power to exclude persons from the U.S. The lower courts effectively took that power away, and substituted their own judgments as to security threats. With a relatively narrow exception, that power has been reinstated to the presidency, pending a full decision on the merits of the case.

Great Analysis here at Legal Insurrection

On Gender Pronouns, and Blowing Your Nose

From Fencing Bear at Prayer

On Gender Pronouns, and Blowing Your Nose

For those unfamiliar with the etiquette history of blowing your nose.

Fencing Bear at Prayer

Former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy

The Antithesis of Obstruction

Trump did not obstruct a valid FBI investigation; he demanded the exposure of a false one. 

The “collusion” narrative was a fraud, plain and simple. We know that now. Hopefully, it won’t take another six months to grasp a second plain and simple truth: Collusion’s successor, the “obstruction” narrative, is a perversion. 

The Left loves narrative. The ever-expanding story manipulates time, space, and detail to fit a thematic framework. Political narrative has some surface appeal, but it is deeply flawed. It obscures plain and simple truth. 

So let’s stick with the plain and simple: The essence of obstruction is to frustrate the search for truth. Its antithesis is to demand the exposure of fraud. 

Donald Trump’s political enemies are trying to build an obstruction case on the antithesis of obstruction: the president’s insistence that the collusion fraud be exposed. 

 National Review

MEXICO 2ND DEADLIEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD BEHIND ONLY SYRIA

It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines. 

As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico's drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 -- second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.

"This is all the more surprising, considering that the conflict deaths [in Mexico] are nearly all attributable to small arms," said John Chipman, chief executive and director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), which issued its annual survey of armed conflict on Tuesday.

"The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan claimed 17,000 and 16,000 lives respectively in 2016, although in lethality they were surpassed by conflicts in Mexico and Central America, which have received much less attention from the media and the international community," said Anastasia Voronkova, the editor of the survey.

Article

DILBERT: WHY THE NEW HEALTHCARE BILL WILL BE A LOSER

... I expect the next version of the Republican healthcare bill to be a complete failure. That’s because Republicans seem deeply committed to a losing path, thanks to what might be called the Contrast Problem.

Contrast is the driving principle behind all decisions. You have to know how your options differ, and by how much, or else you have no basis for a decision. President Obama solved for the contrast problem by designing Obamacare to cover more people than before. The rest of the details – especially the costs – were hard to predict, so our brains flushed that noise and focused on the greater number of people covered.

Everyone knew Obamacare would need future tuning to get it right. That gave us mental permission to focus on the good parts we understood – the greater coverage – and hope the other details would get worked out later. President Obama nailed the Contrast Problem like the Master Persuader he is.
That was then.
Now, President Trump and the Republicans have the “going second” problem. The public will compare their proposed bill with Obamacare and conclude that the one metric they understand – the number of people covered – does not compare favorably with Obamacare. The contrast is fatal.
We know Paul Ryan will do his wonkish best to tell us about all the amazing advantages of this new bill. And we know the public won’t understand any of it. But they sure will know it doesn’t cover as many people. Done. Bury it.
During the campaign, candidate Trump made some references to taking care of everyone. It sounded like universal coverage, but no one thought he meant it.

He did mean it.

He meant it because he understands the contrast problem. Any Obamacare replacement needs to cover more people than Obamacare, or else it is dead on arrival. Any skilled persuader would see that.

Paul Ryan doesn’t see the Contrast Problem as important, evidently.

I think most trained persuaders would agree that the one-and-only path to a successful replacement of Obamacare should include AT A MINIMUM a plan to reach greater coverage. And the only way to get there is by goosing innovation in the healthcare field. We can’t tax our way to full healthcare coverage. We need to lower the costs. And President Trump also needs to solve the Contrast Problem.

Scott Adams Blog

My favorite, liberal, wacko, lesbian, Bernie voter

Camille Paglia: "It’s obscene... It’s outrageous, OK? the Democrats are nothing now but words and fantasy and hallucination and Hollywood."
Courtesy of Ann Althouse:

"There’s no journalism left. What’s happened to The New York Times? What’s happened to the major networks? It’s an outrage. I’m a professor of media studies, in addition to a professor of humanities, OK? And I think it’s absolutely grotesque the way my party has destroyed journalism. Right now, it is going to take decades to recover from this atrocity that’s going on where the news media have turned themselves over to the most childish fraternity kind of buffoonish behavior."

Said Camille Paglia, talking to Sean Hannity on his radio show yesterday.

Althouse Blog w/ Link to Audio Interview

On this day in 1964

MISSISSIPPI BURNING

THREE "FREEDOM SUMMER" CIVIL RIGHTS WORKERS MURDERED

On this day in 1964, three young Freedom Summer civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman (a former Honors Program student at the University of Wisconsin), Michael Schwerner, and James Chaney, were murdered in Neshoba County near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

The three had traveled to Longdale, MS, to meet with members of a black congregation whose church had been burned by the KKK.  As they left the church, they were arrested allegedly for speeding and thrown in jail for a few hours.  When they were allowed to leave, they were followed by the local police and others, including members of the KKK.  The police pulled them over again as they were about to leave the county and, with the mob, took the three to another location, tortured Chaney, and shot all of them at close range.  Their bodies were buried deep in a nearby earthen dam.  Their burnt-out car was found three days later near a swamp and their bodies were found two months later thanks to a then-anonymous tip to the FBI from a member of the local police force.

On the day he was murdered, Goodman wrote his last postcard to his parents:

Dear Mom and Dad,

I have arrived safely in Meridian.  This is a wonderful town and the weather is fine.  I wish you were here.  The people in this city are wonderful and our reception was very good.

All my love.

Andy 

The murder of the young Freedom Summer workers enraged the nation and helped guarantee passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

When the State of Mississippi refused to prosecute, the federal government took over and successfully prosecuted several individuals with civil rights violations but failed to find all those involved.  Forty-one years later, Edgar Ray Killen, was charged and convicted of three counts of manslaughter.  Killen is currently serving a 60 year prison sentence.

In 1980, in what many believe is a black mark on his career, Ronald Reagan opened his campaign for president by giving a speech at the Neshoba County Fair Grounds near Philadelphia, expressing his support for states’ rights.

Background Article I

Wikipedia Article

Milton Friedman, 1991: Making Drugs Illegal is Immoral 

Paige: Let us deal first with the issue of legalization of drugs. How do you see America changing for the better under that system? 

Friedman: I see America with half the number of prisons, half the number of prisoners, ten thousand fewer homicides a year, inner cities in which there’s a chance for these poor people to live without being afraid for their lives, citizens who might be respectable who are now addicts not being subject to becoming criminals in order to get their drug, being able to get drugs for which they’re sure of the quality. You know, the same thing happened under prohibition of alcohol as is happening now. 

Under prohibition of alcohol, deaths from alcohol poisoning, from poisoning by things that were mixed in with the bootleg alcohol, went up sharply. Similarly, under drug prohibition, deaths from overdose, from adulterations, from adulterated substances have gone up. . .

The case for prohibiting drugs is exactly as strong and as weak as the case for prohibiting people from overeating. We all know that overeating causes more deaths than drugs do. If it’s in principle OK for the government to say you must not consume drugs because they’ll do you harm, why isn’t it all right to say you must not eat too much because you’ll do harm? Why isn’t it all right to say you must not try to go in for skydiving because you’re likely to die? Why isn’t it all right to say, “Oh, skiing, that’s no good, that’s a very dangerous sport, you’ll hurt yourself”? Where do you draw the line?. . .

Friedman: I’m an economist, but the economics problem is strictly tertiary. It’s a moral problem. It’s a problem of the harm which the government is doing.

I have estimated statistically that the prohibition of drugs produces, on the average, ten thousand homicides a year.

 It’s a moral problem that the government is going around killing ten thousand people. It’s a moral problem that the government is making into criminals people, who may be doing something you and I don’t approve of, but who are doing something that hurts nobody else. Most of the arrests for drugs are for possession by casual users. 

Now here’s somebody who wants to smoke a marijuana cigarette. If he’s caught, he goes to jail. Now is that moral? Is that proper? I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that our government, supposed to be our government, should be in the position of converting people who are not harming others into criminals, of destroying their lives, putting them in jail. That’s the issue to me. The economic issue comes in only for explaining why it has those effects. But the economic reasons are not the reasons. 

Of course, we’re wasting money on it. Ten, twenty, thirty billion dollars a year, but that’s trivial. We’re wasting that much money in many other ways, such as buying crops that ought never to be produced.

Much more here: transcript & videos 

Frank Luntz Focus Group of Trump Voters Still Strongly Supports Trump

With Analysis by Rush

Climategate Scientist Admits Pause in Global Warming is Real

The ‘Pause’ in global warming is real and the computer models predicting dramatically increased temperatures have failed.

This is the shocking admission of a paper published this week in Nature Geoscience. It’s shocking because the paper’s lead author is none other than Ben Santer – one of the more vociferous and energetic alarmists exposed in the Climategate emails.

Delingpole via Breitbart

WTH?!

NYT's David Brooks Defends Trump

But Althouse Accuses Brooks of Weasel Words

I was the op-ed editor at The Wall Street Journal at the peak of the Whitewater scandal. We ran a series of investigative pieces “raising serious questions” (as we say in the scandal business) about the nefarious things the Clintons were thought to have done back in Arkansas. 

Now I confess I couldn’t follow all the actual allegations made in those essays. They were six jungles deep in the weeds. But I do remember the intense atmosphere that the scandal created. A series of bombshell revelations came out in the media, which seemed monumental at the time. A special prosecutor was appointed and indictments were expected. Speculation became the national sport. 

In retrospect Whitewater seems overblown. And yet it has to be confessed that, at least so far, the Whitewater scandal was far more substantive than the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington.

 Ann Althouse noted:

"Political victories are won when you destroy your political opponents by catching them in some wrongdoing. You get seduced by the delightful possibility that your opponent will be eliminated. Politics is simply about moral superiority and personal destruction."

Writes David Brooks in "Let’s Not Get Carried Away," which is about "the Russia-collusion scandal now gripping Washington." Brooks ends by quoting a Trump tweet... 

“They made up a phony collusion with the Russians story, found zero proof, so now they go for obstruction of justice on the phony story.” 

... and adding:

Unless there is some new revelation, that may turn out to be pretty accurate commentary.

Why say "may turn out to be" and not "is"? "Unless there is some new revelation" already locates you in the present, looking at the sum total of the evidence we have now. Trump said it amounted to "zero." Either you agree with that or you don't. I understand weasel words, but why double up on weasel words? What are you afraid of?

NYT Brooks
Althouse Blog

On this day in 1863

WEST VIRGINIA ADMITTED AS 35TH STATE

On this day in 1863, West Virginia was admitted into the Union as the 35th state following its secession from secessionist Virginia.   

After Virginia seceded to join the seven southern states that had originally seceded to form the Confederacy, western Virginians, who were mostly non-slave-owning farmers and laborers, felt increasingly alienated from and controlled by the eastern oligarchical planter-slaveholders.  This sentiment had existed from the days of the American Revolution when area residents had unsuccessfully petitioned the Continental Congress to form the state of Westsylvania.   

On June 11, 1861, western Virginia delegates voted to secede and wanted to name the state “Kanawha”.   Western Virginia was immediately invaded by Confederate forces who took over the region claiming, ironically, that the westerners had no right to secede.  

Notwithstanding the presence of Confederate troops, western Virginians voted in a public referendum for secession from Virginia and drew up a state constitution. 

 Although it took two years from the initial delegate vote, President Abraham Lincoln, who had his own reservations about West Virginia’s legal right to secede from Virginia, admitted West Virginia into statehood on this date two years later.

Background Article
Background Article II

Law Prof Althouse Rips NYT Analysis of WI Redistricting Case Before SCOTUS: "Insane"

"Inkblot" is the wrong meme for the gerrymandering problem in the case the Supreme Court is looking at.

The NYT has the headline "Gerrymandering Case Echoes in Inkblot-Like Districts Across the U.S." and the writer — Michael Cooper — gets very far along presenting the problem in terms of the seemingly apparent wrongness of having a sprawling, weirdly shaped legislative district. . .

But the Wisconsin case is just about the opposite problem, as Cooper lets us see in the closing paragraphs of the article. . . 

The problem in Wisconsin is that Democratic voters are concentrated in these compact — not inkblot-like — districts, so that there are "wasted" votes, and Democrats win by wide margins in those places instead of getting their voters spread into some other districts that could become competitive, instead of safe for Republicans. That is, the Democrats are fighting for something more like the Maryland Sixth District. In the new Supreme Court case, the plaintiffs want to "yoke" more Democratic voters in urban areas to Republican voters in more suburban/rural places.

Did the NYT not notice that the article is insane? The problem in the first half is the solution in the second half! You can't have it both ways. Which is kind of why the Supreme Court hasn't figured out what to do with these cases (other than to allow the litigation to proceed, which is some sort of deterrent to the most aggressively partisan gerrymandering).

Althouse Blog

Remember Japanese Internment Camps?

U.S. Supreme Court Sanctions Federal Government’s Imprisonment of Muslims in Post-9/11 Roundup

Muslims held on minor charges but subjected to sleep deprivation, solitary confinement, strip searches, etc.

The Supreme Court on Monday quashed a prison mistreatment case, filed by immigrants rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001, against former Attorney General John Ashcroft and other officials.

“High officers who face personal liability for damages might refrain from taking urgent and lawful actions in a time of crisis” if they fear possible lawsuits, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.

Federal authorities rounded up hundreds of predominantly Muslim and Arab men following the Sept. 11 attacks and, under a policy to detain them even on minor pretexts while terrorism investigations proceeded, held them for immigration violations.

Six Arab and South Asian men jailed at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City sued, alleging their rights had been violated by their unjustified detention under the strictest conditions permitted by federal regulations, which included sleep deprivation, solitary confinement and frequent strip searches, as well as unauthorized verbal and physical abuse, including broken bones.

If the allegations are true, “what happened to respondents in the days following Sept. 11 was tragic,” Justice Kennedy wrote, joined in whole or in part by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

But while federal law would permit inmate lawsuits against state officials over similar allegations in state prisons, Congress had provided no such remedy for those in federal custody, he wrote.

WSJ Article (if not a subscriber, click the X in the subscription box)

This used to be a good thing

Trump demands face time with favored Cabinet heads

But Politico worries about it.  Like how many scoops of ice cream Trump gets for dinner.

Politico

The Federalist

New Cuba Policy Helps Define An Emerging Trump Doctrine

President Trump does not believe the United States has enemies only because we create them, or that anything good comes from accommodating hostile regimes

By withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, rattling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by insisting on fair dealing regarding its costs, disrupting business as usual at the United Nations, and strictly scrutinizing the Iran nuclear agreement, President Trump is signaling that U.S. action in the world will be decided first and foremost according to U.S. interests, not some vague notion of an internationally approved consensus.

This approach makes sense. After all, no country on earth is now acting or ever has acted in the world for the good of the world. All nation-states serve their interests first. If they are wise, they try to act in ways that attract allies and provide common benefits, but the chief goal is always their own interests and security. To think countries do otherwise is fantasy. . . 

Speaking of the Obama administration: Trump’s actions are a marked departure from his predecessor’s approach to the world. Steeped in the “anti-colonial” view of the world that saw first British then American leadership as the cause of the world’s ills and a justification for rogue states’ bad actions, Obama intentionally put U.S. interests last or subsumed them into some vague notion of the world’s interests. No matter how hostile, threatening, or insulting a regime was toward the United States, Obama looked for ways to accommodate them. . .

Obama spoke and behaved as though Cuba was poor, dysfunctional, and allied with our enemies because the United States had pressured and bullied Cuba. His view was that if the United States would simply normalize relations (treat Cuba like any other country in the world) and trade with it, the regime would moderate, open its economy to the world, and democratize. From that would flow peace, harmony, and development on the island.

The Obama administration did not deny that the Cuban regime was a dictatorship or was failing its people materially or in terms of freedom. The administration simply did not hold Castro’s regime responsible for all the problems it caused itself and others. Rather, Obama believed the U.S. posture toward the regime had caused the regime’s bad actions. Therefore, if the United States would change its behavior and embrace the regime, then the regime would respond in kind.

This requires an incredible amount of ignorance or willful disbelief about how dictatorships—especially Marxist-Leninist ones—think and operate. The Castro regime does not exist for the sake of the Cuban people; it exists for the sake of itself, the party, and the military that run the island. Every single action it takes is to first keep itself in power and then to enrich itself.

Not only do such regimes control political life to stay in power, they also control the economy to stay in power. Obama’s refusal to acknowledge that the regime controlled the economy as a means to holding on to power is key to understanding the fatal flaw of his “opening” policy. . .

The ball is now in Castro’s court to change his policies and actions if he wants to benefit from engagement with the richest country on earth. Moreover, Trump’s new policy requires the regime to hold free and fair elections supervised by international observers and free all political prisoners.

President Trump’s new Cuba policy provides us with the sharpest contrast to date between Trump’s understanding of foreign policy and Obama’s. Trump does not believe the United States is the cause of other countries’ bad behavior. He does not believe that we have enemies only because we create them. And he does not believe anything good comes from accommodating barbaric regimes hostile to the United States.

The Federalist

Andrew McCarthy/NRO

THERE IS NO OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE CASE AGAINST PRESIDENT TRUMP

There is no legal obstruction case against President Trump. As we have repeatedly explained, obstruction requires prosecutors to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a public official acted corruptly in endeavoring to influence or interfere with an investigation. To establish the corrupt mental state, prosecutors must prove that the official knew what he was doing was against the law. 

The president’s actions here, no matter how much one might judge them ham-handed or inappropriate, were not against the law. A president has prosecutorial discretion: He may lawfully shut down an investigation, to say nothing of merely influencing it. And the intelligence services exist to serve the president: He may lawfully terminate any intelligence-collection effort he chooses to. 

In point of fact, Trump did not shut down the investigation of Michael Flynn or the counterintelligence probe of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election. Since he had the authority to bring these investigations to a screeching halt, he cannot have acted corruptly by taking lesser lawful action. Period. 

The claim that Trump may be guilty of a prosecutable obstruction crime is premised on a legal error – namely, that the FBI and the Justice Department are a separate branch of government, independent of the executive. In fact, they are subordinate to the president. The power they exercise, as inferior officers, is the president’s power. It does not matter whether an FBI director finds it troubling that a president makes suggestions to him about how a case should be handled. The president gets to do that. If the FBI director finds that intolerable, he can resign. The director’s comfort level is constitutionally irrelevant. 

Prosecutorial discretion is part of a continuum of executive police powers that includes the ultimate interference in law-enforcement: the pardon power. No matter how offended we are when a president pardons (or commutes the sentences of) serious criminals, the matter is unreviewable by the courts. The president may not be prosecuted for obstruction of justice over it, even though it seems like a profound obstruction of justice, because the president has the indisputable authority to take the action. 

Prosecutorial discretion is no different. It is simply the beginning of the process rather than the end – i.e., the decision not to investigate a potential crime, rather than, by pardoning it, to create the constructive legal reality that the crime never happened. The powers of prosecutorial discretion and pardon are two sides of the same coin.

McCarthy NRO Article

What?!

CNN Poll Shows 70% of Americans Believe President Trump Should not be Investigated for Obstruction of Justice

CNN Poll

Does the Swamp always win?

ANDREW MCCARTHY/NRO:

The Justice Department Is Killing Trump

Four key decisions, three of them made after the president was inaugurated and the Justice Department came under his control, at least nominally, have done immense damage to his administration — in conjunction with Trump’s belief that fires are best doused with gasoline. 

To understand why, I will reiterate my two-part working theory for why we have a mess, albeit one that, as a matter of law rather than appearances, falls woefully short of obstruction. First, Trump lobbied for the investigation of Michael Flynn to be dropped — something he could lawfully have ordered to be done — because he (a) was feeling remorse over Flynn’s humiliating removal as national-security adviser and (b) thought further investigation and potential prosecution would be overkill. Second, Trump’s decision to fire Comey — something he was lawfully entitled to do — was not an endeavor to influence the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign; it was the result of exasperation over Comey’s skewed public statements about the investigation, which created the misimpression that Trump was a criminal suspect.

Andrew McCarthy Article  

My favorite wacko liberal, lesbian, Jill Stein voter

Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democrats, Transgenderism, and Islamic Terror

A Must Read

Dilbert: Left & Liberal Media Radicalized VA Shooter To Shoot Hitler/His Supporters but the Shooter Ruined the Brand of the Resistance

Scott Adams on Periscope

Althouse: Does Dem Sen. Cornyn Agree that Comey's Takeover of the Clinton Email Investigation Violated DoJ Policy?

But there's one more stunning thing, and I was sure Cornyn was going to say it. Wasn't the rejection of a special prosecutor in the Clinton investigation a matter of timing inconsistent with the Principles of Federal Prosecution described in the Election Year Sensitivities policy? Cornyn thinks Comey "usurped the role of the Department of Justice prosecutors." Comey seemed to think he had to step into the role because there wasn't time to bring in special counsel, but timing wasn't supposed to be taken into account under the Principles. We should have had a special counsel! The argument against it is an argument for violating the Election Year Sensitivities policy.

I was sure that's where Cornyn was going. Did he run out of time or am I missing something? I'd like to hear from Loretta Lynch. Is it true that she didn't ask Comey to take over the announcement, and why didn't she appoint a special counsel in the Clinton matter? Was it because it would take too long and absolving Clinton needed to be timed to the election? Doesn't that violate the Election Year Sensitivities policy?

Much more worth reading at Althouse Blog

Hard to believe more weren't hurt

Audio of Trump Hater Shooting at Republicans

Link to Video/Audio

OBAMA VOTER ALTHOUSE:  CNN COVERAGE OF SESSIONS TESTIMONY BIASED AGAINST TRUMP

On CNN, there was a panel speaking in a dire tone about the Sessions testimony. Every line that came out of their mouths deserved pushback. I watched the hearing, and it was obvious to me that CNN's talking heads were distorting things — always in the direction of bolstering the belief that President Trump is in big trouble — but it's not in print, so how do I blog it? Spend my time doing my own transcriptions? Video the television and put up my homemade clip? I could. But I thought, this is why I stick with the written word. The flow of crap on TV is too awful. You just have to shut it off. Back to print.

Althouse Blog

Pat Buchanan, the man who presaged Trump

ARE WE NEARING CIVIL WAR?

President Trump may be chief of state, head of government and commander in chief, but his administration is shot through with disloyalists plotting to bring him down.

We are approaching something of a civil war where the capital city seeks the overthrow of the sovereign and its own restoration. . .

Trump has had many accomplishments since his election. Yet his enemies in the media and their deep state allies have often made a purgatory of his presidency.

What he and his White House need to understand is that this is not going to end, that this is a fight to the finish, that his enemies will not relent until they see him impeached or resigning in disgrace.

To prevail, Trump will have to campaign across this country and wage guerrilla war in this capital, using the legal and political weapons at his disposal to ferret out the enemies within his own government.

Not only is this battle essential, if Trump hopes to realize his agenda, it is winnable. For the people sense that the Beltway elites are cynically engaged in preserving their own privileges, positions and power.

If the president cannot rewrite Obamacare or achieve tax reform, he should not go around the country in 2018 wailing about Nancy Pelosi or Chuck Schumer. They are not the real adversaries. They are but interchangeable parts.

He should campaign against the real enemies of America First by promising to purge the deep state and flog its media collaborators.

Time to burn down the Bastille.

Full Buchanan Article

A must read:

Law Prof Turley: Comey's Leak Illegal For Many Reasons

Jonathan Turley: The Hill

Althouse: NYT Readers Highly Critical of Chelsea Manning Coverage

The top four comments are high on entertainment value but #4 might be the best:

Glad the New York Times was not around 250 years ago, or you would be braying about "Benedict Arnold: Misunderstood Patriot."

Althouse Blog

Con Law Prof to MSNBC: Trump Has Unfettered Constitutional and Statutory Authority to Stop Flynn Investigation

“To the extent that people want try to make this obstruction of justice, there’s a million different layers why this is not technically obstruction of justice, either as a statutory matter or a constitutional matter,” Foley said. “But this point particularly about a ‘corrupt intent’ is even worse. Because think about it, the president also has the authority under Article II [of the Constitution] to pardon people, but we don’t say for example that the president can’t pardon a certain person because he has a corrupt intent, he likes the guy he’s known him for a long time so therefore he can’t pardon him.”

“The pardon power like the power to head the investigative, or the rest of the executive branch like the FBI, like the DOJ is a plenary discretionary authority of the president. He can pardon anybody for any reason he wants, corrupt purpose or no, and he can direct the investigation or non- investigation corrupt motive or no,” she added.

“You don’t put discretionary limits on constitutional authority ap and if you do you invite Article III non-elected non-accountable judges to second-guess the president’s authority. You never want to have a constitutional regime that sets up that way. We the people can either not vote the president in or we can impeach him, those are the political pushback mechanisms

Daily Caller/Video 

No, no, no - it was the Russians!

Decline in black, Hispanic turnout helped sink Hillary

“What really cost Hillary the election, based on the demographic analysis, was the decline in black turnout nationally and in key states, as well as the decline in Hispanic turnout in Florida and an uptick in white turnout in some places like Florida and Ohio,” Camarota told WND in an interview.

Article 

Leading liberals develop blueprint to expand 'deep state' and undercut Trump

The good news is they get it (my emphasis added):

Forlorn liberals took refuge at the American Constitution Society's national convention in Washington this week, discussing whether to encourage the growth of the "deep state" resistance inside the government or fight President Trump from outside.

"The election of Donald Trump was an assault on the federal bureaucracy," William Yeomans said to a room full of students and civil servants, including those recently displaced by Trump's administration. "His values are simply not consistent with the values of people who are committed to public service and who believe deeply in the importance of public service."

Washington Examiner

American Thinker

COMEY UNMASKED AS A VENOMOUS REVENGER

Article

Obama/Clinton Voter and Retired Law Prof Althouse Critiques Bernie Sanders' Religious Test for Trump Appointees

It's interesting to shine some light now and then on the big topic of  religious believers who go about picturing other people headed for eternal damnation. But imagine a new Sandersesque norm, in which we characterize that belief as bigotry and begin to shun everyone who thinks like that! We'd be shunning an awful lot of people, and another matter that used to be considered part of religious freedom will have been relocated into the category of a social belief where it can be impugned without incurring the accusation that to impugn it is to discriminate based on religion.

Althouse Blog

But this is too logical

No case for obstruction from hyper-hyped Comey hearing

This week’s hyper-hyped hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee had two surprise endings: Donald Trump did not commit obstruction of justice, not even close, and the president was right to fire FBI Director Jim Comey.

John Yoo and David Marston

This may explain why the Dems don't want to investigate voter fraud

12 Staffers At Dem-Linked Group Charged With Voter Fraud

Local prosecutors in Marion County, Indiana, charged 12 employees of a Democratic-linked voter recruitment organization of submitting fraudulent voter registration applications prior to the 2016 election.

According to the Associated Press, prosecutors say that 11 temporary canvassers working for the Indiana Voter Registration Project made and sent in an unknown number of fake voter applications. The canvassers’ supervisor, Holiday Burke, was charged as well.

The organization, the AP reported, is managed by Patriot Majority USA  a group with strong ties to Democratic Party, including former President Bill Clinton and former Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, as well as labor unions.

Daily Caller

Former U.S. Attorney Andrew McCarthy nails it

Why Trump Fired Comey

He believed that the FBI director misled the public to think that the president was under investigation.

At last, at least for your humble correspondent, this week’s big hearing brought clarity. I now believe President Donald Trump fired Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey because he believes Comey intentionally misled the public into believing Trump was under investigation by the FBI. There is enough support for this theory that, had the president been forthright in explaining it when he dismissed Comey on May 9, there might have been considerably less uproar. Instead, Trump dissembled, as he seems hardwired to do. He thus bought himself a debilitating special-counsel investigation, despite its being increasingly patent that there is no crime to investigate. . .

All that said, and as the former director learned painfully during the Clinton caper, the FBI and Justice Department should not make public statements about investigations unless and until they are prepared to file charges formally in court, where people get to see the evidence and have a chance to defend themselves. What possible good reason was there to alert the public that the Trump campaign was under investigation? Inevitably, that would induce the media to tell the world — incessantly — that Trump himself was under investigation. 

Comey maintains, as he did in the July 2016 Clinton-e-mails press conference, that there is a “public interest” exception to the Justice Department rule against commenting on investigations. But public interest is the very reason for the no-comment rule. The point is to avoid smearing people who have not been charged with a crime. Such a smear happens only if the public is interested in the case. 

More fundamentally, what is the “public interest” in misleading the public? If you know that what you are about to say is going to lead people to believe the president of the United States is under investigation (as it did), and you know for a fact that the president of the United States is not under investigation (as Comey did), why make the statement? And if it was important enough to tell Congress that Trump was not under investigation so that Congress would not be misled, what conceivable reason is there not to tell the public — especially when you must know that withholding this critical detail will make it much more difficult for the president to deal with foreign leaders and marshal political support for his domestic agenda? 

The fact that President Trump was not under investigation did not get out until Trump finally put it out himself. That was in the May 9 letter that informed FBI director Comey that he was removed from office: “I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation.” 

Do you suppose the desperation to tell that to the world, the exasperation over Comey’s refusal to tell it to the world, just might have been at the front of the president’s mind?

National Review

Because the Russians told him

Biden: I Knew Hillary Would Lose Battleground States

The Daily Caller

Wait, wait, this doesn't fit the Dem narrative

First US Natural Gas Shipment Arrives In Poland, Undermining Russia

“The United States welcomes the arrival of the first U.S. liquefied natural gas shipment to Central Europe, which arrived in Poland on June 7,” Heather Nauert, a spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, said in a press statement. “U.S. LNG exports support American jobs, lower energy prices for our partners abroad, and contribute to Europe’s energy security goals using a reliable, market based supplier.”

U.S. natural gas exports threaten Russia’s dominance over European energy markets, especially in Eastern Europe. Poland, for example, received 60 percent of its natural gas from Russia in 2013. Europe as a whole got about half of its gas imports from Russia, which may have hampered their response to Russian actions in Syria and Ukraine.

“The Department of State has worked closely with European partners to diversify European energy supplies through new sources of natural gas, vital interconnectors and new facilities to import LNG,” Nauert said. “The United States congratulates Poland on this significant step to diversify its own sources of energy and to strengthen Europe’s energy security.”

Threatening to use U.S. LNG to create a more diverse supply of natural gas could be a potent bargaining tool when Poland renegotiates its current energy deals with Russia in a few years.

The Daily Caller

Caddell: Dishonest Anti-Trump Media Have Become ‘Danger to Democracy’

Article

DOJ corrects Comey's testimony again!

DOJ: Comey Provided False Testimony About Jeff Sessions' Recusal from Russia Investigations

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday evening accused former FBI director James Comey of providing false testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. According to DOJ spokesman Ian Prior, who made the accusations against Comey via an official DOJ press release, Comey did not answer truthfully when Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Cali.) asked him about the process by which Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any federal investigations of Russian interference with the 2016 elections.

The Federalist

Comey said Trump was NOT under investigation

Here's a Sampling of Media Reports Falsely Claiming Trump was Under Investigation

National Review

From National Review: The Answer is Federalism

We’re Not in a Civil War, but We Are Drifting Toward Divorce

Our national political polarization is by now so well established that the only real debate is over the nature of our cultural, political, and religious conflict. Are we in the midst of a more or less conventional culture war? Are we, as Dennis Prager and others argue, fighting a kind of “cold” civil war? Or are we facing something else entirely?

 I’d argue that we face “something else,” and that something else is more akin to the beginning stages of a national divorce than it is to a civil war. This contention rests fundamentally in two trends, one political and the other far beyond politics. The combination of negative polarization and a phenomenon that economist Tyler Cowen calls “matching” is leading to a national separation so profound that Americans may not have the desire to fight to stay together. Unless trends are reversed, red and blue may ultimately bid each other adieu. . . 

A civil war results when the desire for unification and domination overrides the desire for separation and self-determination. The American civil war is a classic example. There were grounds for separation — North and South were culturally different on a scale that dwarfs modern divides between red and blue — but the North did not consent. It sought to first unify and then transform the southern states. By contrast, had Scotland voted to leave the United Kingdom, would England have mobilized in response? No, the U.K. came close to its own national divorce, the dissolution of a union generations older than the American republic.

 Here is the core American question. As we continue our own “big sort,” will the desire to separate trump the desire to dominate? Or can we instead choose to tolerate? We’re still quite far from the kind of near-miss that Britain just experienced, and we’re even farther removed from the vicious strife of a true civil war, but the trends are pointing toward continued matching of like with like — and along with that, increasing hostility against communities not like our own. In my Memorial Day column, I asked what I believe to be the key question: “Is there a single significant cultural, political, social, or religious trend that is pulling Americans together more than it is pushing us apart?”

 I don’t believe a civil-war mentality will save America. There are simply too many differences and too many profound disagreements for one side or the other to exercise true political dominance. Red won’t beat blue in the same way that blue beat gray. Adopt the civil-war mentality and you’ll only hasten a potential divorce. No, absent a presently unforeseen unifying ideology, event, or person, the idea that will save America is one of the oldest ideas of the Republic: federalism.

 So long as we protect the “privileges and immunities” of American citizenship, including all of the liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights, let California be California and Texas be Texas. De-escalate national politics. Ideas that work in Massachusetts shouldn’t be crammed down the throats of culturally different Tennesseans. Indeed, as our sorting continues, our ability to persuade diminishes. (After all, how can we understand communities we don’t encounter?)

 If we seek to preserve our union, we’re left with a choice — try to dominate or learn to tolerate? The effort to dominate is futile, and it will leave us with a permanently embittered population that grows increasingly punitive with each transition of presidential power. There is hope, however, in the quest to tolerate. Our Constitution is built to allow our citizens to govern themselves while protecting individual liberty and providing for the common defense. It’s built to withstand profound differences without asking citizens or states to surrender their strongest convictions. We can either rediscover this federalism, or we may ultimately take a third path — we may choose to separate.

David French, The Federalist

Camille Paglia has some very strong opinions about genderless pronouns

Jordan Peterson Interviews Camille Paglia

The Art of the Deal

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, & Bahrain Cut Diplomatic Ties, Shut All Borders With Qatar

Just days after president Trump left the region, a geopolitical earthquake is taking place in the Middle East tonight as the rift between Qatar and other members of the (likely extinct) Gulf Cooperation Council explodes with Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt cutting all diplomatic ties with Qatar accusing it of "speading chaos," by funding terrorism and supporting Iran.

zero hedge

My Second Favorite Economist

Larry Kudlow: Nixing Paris accord means 'the war on fossil fuels is over'

Larry Kudlow, who served as an informal economic adviser to President Trump's campaign, is praising Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord, arguing it effectively ends “the war on fossil fuels.”

“Like [former President] Obama, the Europeans hate fossil fuels. It is a war on fossil fuels,” Kudlow, a CNBC senior contributor, told John Catsimatidis in an interview that aired Sunday on AM 970 in New York.

Kudlow went on to target German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has been a vocal critic of Trump’s environmental policies.

“They made a big bet on renewables. Wind, solar, etc. And guess what? The bet failed,” he said, referring to the economic powerhouse’s commitment to renewable energy.

“Ironically, the queen of climate change is producing huge volumes of coal,” he added.

The former economic adviser argued that renewable energy sources were not enough to sustain the economy.

“So Trump is saying, 'I’m here to defend America, and we are going to continue our explorations and our technology. We’re going to strive for clean coal, we’re going keep natural gas fracking, we’re going to keep oil, etc.' The market loves that because the market wants growth,” Kudlow said.

The Hill

And the world didn't come to an end

Déjà Vu: Outrage Over Trump’s Paris Decision Is Identical To Bush’s Rejection Of Kyoto 16 Years Ago

About 16 years ago, Bush announced that he would continue opposing the Kyoto Protocol, the world’s first binding global warming treaty, largely on the grounds that it would hurt the U.S. economy and allow China and India to continue emitting greenhouse gases.

”The world’s second largest emitter of greenhouse gases is China,” Bush said in June 2001. ”Yet China was entirely exempted from the requirements of the Kyoto Protocol. India and Germany are among the top emitters. Yet India was also exempt from Kyoto.”

Bush also said the Kyoto Protocol would ”have a negative economic impact, with layoffs of workers and price increases for consumers,” the New York Times reported at the time.

Outrage ensued.

Daily Caller

And I couldn't be happier

Democrats Have Lost On Climate Change, And It’s Their Own Fault

When it comes to perfunctorily treating global warming as an evil, Democrats have won. The importance of “greening” everything has saturated society. Everyone gets it. When it comes to policy that supposedly mitigates climate change, though, they lose. Mostly, because they’ve hijacked “science” in pursuit of ideologically driven economic policies.

The Paris Agreement is substantively a joke. The widespread rage about President’s Trump’s withdrawal is, as many people have already noted, a case of mass virtue signaling. But the episode does reflect a larger problem for the Left.

The cycle goes something like this: Americans are marginally (or what some of us believe, appropriately) concerned about carbon emissions. For Malthusian progressives, and increasingly the rest of the Democratic Party, this won’t do. So they ratchet up the apocalyptic rhetoric in an effort to scare those people into embracing a slate of economic policies. The problem, of course, is that many people don’t like progressive economic policies. So liberals ratchet up the doom and gloom, to the point where they’re talking about this as an extinction-level event. Lots of people ignore these hysterics. Progressives then go from scaring to attempting to humiliate and bully those who won’t accept that progressive economic policies are tantamount to “science.” Half the country goes from being increasingly immune to becoming increasingly angry.

The Federalist

An idea that has outlived its time if it ever had one

George Will: Public broadcasting’s immortality defies reason

As changing technologies and preferences make government-funded broadcasting increasingly preposterous, such broadcasting actually becomes useful by illustrating two dismal facts. One is the immortality of entitlements that especially benefit those among society’s articulate upper reaches who feel entitled. The other fact is how impervious government programs are to evidence incompatible with their premises.

WaPo Opinion