Category Archives: History

The IRS Non-Scandal

They’re still withholding 7000 documents that show how (as Koskinen himself admitted) they were targeting conservatives.

As I wrote on an email list this morning (in the context of Big Data, Facebook and government spying): “I’m much more worried (or at least was in the last administration) about being targeted as a “right-wing” (i.e., someone who is a classical liberal, and gives a s**t about the Constitution) rather than Islamic terrorist, if they’re looking through my contacts and statements. And I think that the previous administration was the worst since Woodrow Wilson in terms of targeting what it perceived to be its political enemies (including through the campaign…). I’d call it Nixonian, except Nixon didn’t get away with it.”

A Classic SLAPP

Popehat shows how this works. As he says, Colorado doesn’t have an anti-SLAPP law, but it may just get dismissed.

By the way, while I don’t generally discuss my own case, briefly, because he’s a public figure, if it ever actually gets to trial, he has to show that I acted “with malice.” Legally, what this means is that I had a “reckless disregard for the truth,” which means that I either knew what I was writing wasn’t true, or I didn’t care whether or not it was.

Whatever else you might think of him, you know who recklessly disregards the truth every day? Donald J. Trump. Though Barack Obama did it a lot, too, to cram ObamaCare down our throats (among many other things).

The Cold Civil War

Kurt Schichter is afraid it’s about to get hot. But there is this difference:

Sally Kohn, a CNN commentator perfectly personifies the left’s combination of utter cluelessness and utter certainty in its own moral superiority. Drawing from her bottomless well of stupidity, she recently became infamous for wishcasting about what happens “[s]traight forward from here.” Her scenario starts with Step 1 (“Impeach Trump & Pence”) and ends with Step 6 (“President Hillary”), thanks to a Constitutional process she created herself by blending ignorance, fascism, and wanting.

Sally, however, overlooked Step 2.5, where several dozen million Americans defend the Constitution by taking out their black rifles and saying, “Oh, hell no.” I assume the patriots determined to protect the Union would be confronted, for a short and awkward time, by a pro-coup hipster army locked and loaded with vinyl LPs, participation trophies and unearned self-regard.

There’s no reason not to believe that for these seditious Democrats, the second time will be the charm.

Democrats always get angry and violent when Republicans threaten to emancipate their slaves.

Trump And The Judge

I’m no Trump fan, but I think all the pearl clutching from the media over his “so-called judge” tweet was ridiculous. So does Jonathan Turley. And as always, it’s particularly ridiculous coming from people who probably had no problem with Obama upbraiding (and in the process lying) the Justices who had honored him with their attendance at the State of the Union over Citizens United.

Trump’s “Chaotic” First Weeks

People complaining about this from Trump (as with many other things they complain about from Trump) have short memories:

Even the Washington Post had to admit all was not well in Obama world when they reported that the White House wasn’t ready for conflicts over policy: “President Obama’s advisers acknowledged Tuesday that they were unprepared for the intraparty rift that occurred over the fate of a proposed public health insurance program, a firestorm that has left the White House searching for a way to reclaim the initiative on the president’s top legislative priority.”

Jay Cost of RealClearPolitics was “stunned” that Obama “would be caught off guard by this,” adding that his “lack of foresight” was “absolutely inexcusable.” “How could they not have anticipated this?” Cost asked. “How could they possibly have been surprised that the left and right flanks of the party would not see eye to eye?”

Seems like things haven’t changed that much, at least rhetorically. “But Trump is worse!” many might claim. Yet that isn’t true at all. What’s worse is the way it’s being reported and repeated. The claims of incompetence are rushing like a torrent from every direction and with such hysteria that you’d think the chaos of Armageddon was upon us.

But that was Saint Barack! How could it be?

“Liberals”

How they became the fascists they’ve always been warning us about.

#ProTip: They’ve always been, and are not now, and have never been, liberals.

Speaking of which, Bob Zubrin wants to start a new political party:

America needs a new Liberal Party because both major parties have abandoned liberalism. Neither adequately supports international free trade or the defense of the West — the two pillars of the liberal world order since 1945. Both lack commitment to constitutionally limited government, separation of powers, free enterprise, and human equality and liberty under law. Each supports its own Malthusian antihuman collectivist ideology: for Democrats, it is ecologism, for Republicans, it is nativism.

Largely, yes, but for the latter, that’s mostly because of Trump. Who is also no liberal.

[Afternoon update]

Related: No Republicans need apply:

One of the less understood criticisms of progressivism is that it is totalitarian, not in the sense that kale-eating Brooklynites want to build prison camps for political nonconformists (except for the ones who want to lock up global-warming skeptics) but in the sense that it assumes that there is no life outside of politics, that there is no separate sphere of private life, and that church, family, art, and much else properly resides within that sphere.

…The people who close their doors against those who simply see the world in a different way, who scream profanities at Betsy DeVos or chant ‘You should die!’ at Jewish musicians, are people who cannot rise far enough above their own pettiness to understand that the thing they fear is the thing they are.”

Yes. The Left a) has no sense of irony whatsoever, and b) continually engages in psychology projection of its own pathologies on others.

[Via Ed Driscoll]