Friday roundup

It's important, when steering you folks to articles elsewhere, that I avoid hyperbole. I don't want you to dismiss anything based on my having trotted out a term too many times and thereby diminished its impact. But Noah Rothman's piece at Commentary entitled "Everyone Owns the Iran Deal's Deceits" is truly important. You read the details of how the deal was constructed so as to accommodate an overwhelming flood of subjectivity, and consider that it is therefore probably too late, or nearly so, to just completely tear it up, and then consider how a chillingly similar chain of events has brought us to the current mortal peril we faced from North Korea, and, well, it doesn't exactly brighten your mood.

James Pethokoukis at the American Enterprise Institute says that exercises in economic nostalgia like Trump's speech yesterday in Harrisburg. Pennsylvania to truckers point up a lack of vision on the part of those - right-of-center economic-policy specialists - who ostensibly offer the only alternative to statism.

When setting up the terms under which he'd be leading his company, Harvey Weinstein basically acknowledged that he was a monster:

Serial sexual harasser Harvey Weinstein's contract with The Weinstein Company (TWC) included a clause that allowed for his sexual harassment as long as he paid the costs of settlements out of his own pocket, TMZ reported Thursday.

Therefore, it appears, Weinstein may have been wrongfully terminated by TWC.

According to Weinstein's 2015 employment contract, as seen by TMZ, if he got sued for sexual harassment or any other "misconduct" resulting in a settlement or judgment against TWC, as long as Weinstein paid the company what the company paid out, plus a fine, he was good to go.

Every damn day last week, there was a right-of-center speaker whose address was shut down by jackboots on a major post-American university campus.

As I said yesterday, since I didn't vote for DJT last November (and, to state again what I hope is obvious, neither did I press the button for Madame BleachBit), I'm in the position of being able to call out his recklessness, bombast and ignorance when appropriate, but also applaud his good moves. This one is a very good move:

President Donald Trump nominated a climate change skeptic to lead the White House’s environmental policy board Thursday night.

Trump picked Kathleen Hartnett White to serve as a member on the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which ensures that agencies comply with environmental rules before approving projects. White has spent much of her public life making what she calls the “moral case for fossil fuels.”

White is a fellow for environment issues at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a free market group that has been a vehement critic of former President Barack Obama’s climate policies. She was also the former chairwoman of the state’s CEQ.

White’s position on carbon emissions is sure to roil environmental activists already concerned about Trump’s climate skepticism and environmental rollbacks. She has been upfront in recent months about her opposition to rules regulating carbon emissions.

“Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and carbon is certainly not a poison. Carbon is the chemical basis of all life on earth. Our bones and blood are made out of carbon,” White wrote in a June op-ed.

She is vehemently opposed to the Environmental Protection Agency, and suggested in November that the agency will be dialed back to focus solely on pollutants posing harm to public health and will cease its present extracurricular focus on agenda-centered pollutants supposedly causing man-made global warming.

Mark Hemingway at The Weekly Standard on the significance of the "Boy Scouts" admitting girls.  For one thing, it's "a commentary on what a terrible organization the Girl Scouts has become." Also, it shows that the BSA is "operating out of fear." Quite a public stance to have when the oath your members take comments them to being brave.