Monday roundup

National security advisor H.R. McMaster had a terse response when asked why the USS Carl Vinson airstrike carrier group had been suddenly pulled from what it had been doing to head to the waters near the Korean Peninsula, but it spoke volumes:

Then, almost as an afterthought, final question, McMaster was asked [by Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday] why the president was sending the entire Carl Vinson Carrier Strike Group to waters off the Korean Peninsula. Taylor Millard wrote of the announcement here.

“Well,” said McMaster, “It’s prudent to do it, isn’t it?”

45 killed and over 100 injured in ISIS bombings of Christian churches in Fanta and Alexandria in Egypt.

The can of worms opened by the Obergefell v. Hodges SCOTUS decision is exactly why that living-Constitution hooey is so dangerous, as explained by Howard Slugh at NRO:

Does the Constitution grant individuals a judicially enforceable right to order the government to combat climate change? Does it contain a right to engage in “BDSM sexual activity”? What about a right to assisted suicide? Unfortunately, these are no longer fanciful hypotheticals. Thanks to Justice Kennedy, cases alleging such rights are currently being litigated and are coming soon to a courthouse near you.

The names of the cases to which Slugh refers are, respectively, Juliana v. Unites States,  Doe v. Rector & Visitors of George Mason University, and Morris v. Brandenburg. Keep an eye on them. There's a good chance they will be treated differently than they would have been in the days when Washington v. Glucksberg (in which a decision written by then-Chief Justice Rehnquist found that assisted suicide was not covered by the equal-protection clause of the 14th amendment) held sway:

In Obergfell, Justice Kennedy did far more than merely discover a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. He wrote that judges have an ongoing “duty” to identify and protect new “fundamental rights.” He maintained that judges should institute new rights whenever their “reasoned judgment” suggests that it is appropriate to do so.

Previously, a Supreme Court precedent titled Washington v. Glucksberg held that judges could recognize constitutional rights only if they were “deeply rooted in” American “history and tradition.” Justice Kennedy dismissed this standard as unduly constraining judges’ power. 

Mulvaney is set to rock and roll:

Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney is reportedly slated to send a letter to federal agencies later this week warning them to prep for substantial budget cuts.

The guidance letter falls in line with President Donald Trump’s March 13 executive order aimed at making the government leaner and more efficient, Axios first reported.

The order called on Mulvaney, a staunch fiscal conservative and former member of the House Freedom Caucus, to “propose a plan to reorganize governmental functions and eliminate unnecessary agencies (as defined in section 551(1) of title 5, United States Code), components of agencies, and agency programs.”

Trump’s budget called for historic cuts to a number of agencies — including a 31 percent cut to the Environmental Protection Agency, a 28 percent cut to the State Department and a 17.9 percent cut to the Department of Health and Human Services. While a number of the departments’ budgets would be slashed, the Department of Defense would see a 10 percent boost in spending.

As I always say, if it ain't in Mr. Madison's document, the federal government should not be involved in it.

Campus jackboots are at it again, shutting down a speech by the Manhattan Institute's Heather MacDonald at Claremont Colleges.

Intention for this week: to make it a mindful walk to the cross

Why is the cross the primary symbol of Christianity? One sees it on church steeples, on necklace pendants, on Bible covers, bumper stickers (including those "coexist" stickers that also include the Star of David, the Muslim Crescent and the yin-yang symbol), graves and tattoos.

But why not the empty tomb, or, say, the manger? Do they not have a bit more of an upbeat connotation?

And it's hardly recent. Iconography from the faith's earliest days puts the cross front and center.

It's clearly an insistence that something be acknowledged. What is it?

Something interesting about the way this ubiquitious symbol is displayed, and has been over the centuries, is that it's either presented as flamboyantly decorative, with curly-cues adorning its edges, or so simple - two perpendicular lines, basically - as to be starkly abstract. It's almost as if the faith is saying that the graphic details are best left to the observer's private thoughts and imaginings.

I guess that's understandable. Say you wrote a novel about some grisly crime that took place in a particular room. Would you not want your publisher's graphics people to put something rather subtle on the book cover, say, an open door, with a beam of dim light projecting out? Your target market might recoil from your work if you got too literal, or mistake what you're offering for some kind of low-brow sensationalism.

Maybe this goes a ways toward explaining why Good Friday is not the big deal on most Christians' - or Westerners' generally - calendar that Easter, or certainly Christmas, is. The most devout try to find time on that day to make it to a service somewhere, but nobody stays home from work, or gathers family for some kind of meal.

But there it is, up on that hill, with the last vestiges of daylight fading behind it, the murmur of weeping Jewish women and astonished Roman soldiers fading with it.

Step right up to it, so you can see the blood. There's lots of it.

At some point, anyone who begins a serious inquiry into just what this Christian-faith thing is has to ponder deeply what happened in the twenty or so hours between the kiss on the cheek from Judas in the Garden of Gesthemane and the scene depicted above.

What happened to that guy - our Lord, the son of the author of all that has ever existed, and is ever going to exist, anywhere in this infinite universe - was abuse of a degree of viciousness and savagery to which very few human beings have ever been subjected. The scourgings went on and on, and the Romans who administered them used the most diabolical of instruments, The spikes dug deep, tearing muscle tissue and causing massive blood loss. He was shoved, kicked, hit and spit upon, taunted. Mocked with the title - "King of the Jews" - that codified the way in which he was most misunderstood, as the anticipated political leader of a liberation movement.

Throughout the entire time, various people came up to him - including the man most responsible for his fate, Pontius Pilate - and said, in so many words, "Why are you putting yourself through this? Tell the authorities what they want to hear, and you can put a stop to this."

We all should conjure as vividly as possible this week an image of the facial expression with which He gazed at such people in response. Consider that he was weaving in and out of consciousness and lucidity, a chunk of barely recognizable shredded human tissue drenched in his own blood. But surely when directly asked why he didn't choose to end the Hell, he'd engage their eyes directly and convey something with timeless implications, implications for your soul and mine: I have to do this.

And conjure an image of the cross being raised to its full height, in the hot sun. The impact of gravity on the points - hands and feet - at which the body of Jesus of Nazareth was fastened to the wood would bring him to the moment of maximum anguish.

And consider the full depth and  mystery of the things he uttered once up there:

"Forgive them, for they know not what they do."

"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

"Into thine hands I commend my spirit."

"It is finished."

Over the past several decades, Western culture has become enamored of the quest for direct spiritual experience, and has come to value that more than truth revealed in scripture. Some of it is surely due to the instant-gratification value of a mystical experience. As with everything else, we want the full measure and we want it now. We want something cosmic and mind-blowing.

What fits that bill better than what happened on that cross? The utterances listed above, the suddenly darkening sky, the rending of the temple curtain?

The removal of the seam between the profane and the sacred, the reuniting of the mundane and the divine. Creation reconciled with creator.

How's that for cosmic?

But where does the individual human being fit into this?

As I've said before, my last sticking point before fully committing myself to a faith journey was that it looked like a rigged game, that the exercise of this great gift from God, our free will, would inevitably result in sin, and that the only way to avoid the eternal outer darkness resulting from that sin was to make some sort of confession, made a mockery of that free will.

But if you'll permit yourself to really let in the details of that Friday afternoon on that hill, you'll see that it's not just "some sort of confession." Nobody would go through what that guy did, particularly after a ministry filled with parables of lost sheep and prodigal sons, and exhortations to repentance, without desiring something infinitely precious.

He had you on his mind that awful day. Your name, your face, your soul.

You may not even have an inkling you were lost until you really let in what he went through.

He wants you and me with Him in eternity.

Let's make this week truly holy. There is much on humanity's plate, but that is always the case, is it not? For this week, let us put the moment, two thousand-plus years ago, when time and eternity were wedded, and Christ invited us to see Him in paradise, front and center in our minds.

Let's accept being cleansed.

Definitely one for the good-move side of the ledger!

Somebody got the Big Guy's ear and convinced him that being on the side of human advancement where energy is concerned would make him look like a winner:

The Trump administration is developing an order to open new areas to offshore oil and gas drilling, reversing former President Barack Obama’s unilateral decision to lock up most of the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, according to industry sources.

Industry sources familiar with the matter told Platts an executive order is in the works to rewind Obama’s decision to make large swaths of the Arctic and Atlantic off-limits to oil and gas drilling.

Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke told industry representatives the new drilling plan would be signed soon, according to Bloomberg. However, he gave few details on what the order could include.

The Department of the Interior’s (DOI) new five-year offshore drilling plan could take years to develop and would replace the Obama administration’s five-year plan finalized in November.

On the same day that Gorsuch is confirmed. What a fine way to kick off the weekend.

The 59 Tomahawks: not the kind of move one can make a blanket assessment about 12 hours later

What I find noteworthy this morning is the range of opinion on the Right about it. (Haven't seen anything from the Left yet; those folks may still be smarting from the spanking they got in the Senate over SCOTUS-nominee filibusters yesterday.)

Ralph Peters unequivocally thinks it was great:

As I write these lines, I’m unabashedly proud to be an American. Republican, Democrat or independent, you should be, too. Once again, we stood on the side of justice and humanity.

It’s been too damned long, but we’re back.

Ted Cruz qualifies his take with a caveat:

Senator Ted Cruz offered a carefully worded statement with an important takeaway: justify it.

Today, after eight years of Obama foreign policy failures, Syria is a humanitarian disaster. Bashar al-Assad is a monster, a puppet of Russia and Iran, and he has once again used chemical weapons against his own citizens, murdering innocent men, women, and children.

Our prayers are with Assad’s victims, and with the victims of the ISIS and al Qaeda terrorists ripping Syria apart. And, as always, our support and prayers are with the brave Americans in uniform who carried out the military strike tonight.

Any military action in Syria must be justified as protecting the vital national security interests of America – including decisive action to prevent chemical weapons from falling into the hands of radical Islamic terrorists – and I look forward to our Commander-in-Chief making the case to Congress and the American people how we should do so in the days ahead.

That’s not a dissent, but it is careful.

A solidly conservative Facebook friend of mine - against Trump until the final days before the election, and still willing to call him out, but generally supportive of his appointments  - gives it the big thumbs down. Says that aside from oil wells, there's nothing in Syria worth the $50 million we spent on the missiles.

As LITD readers know, I'm pretty much of an unabashed absolutist. I have some core principles I rely on to guide me in all areas of life, and they form the basis of my views on whether something is good or bad. I rarely respond to anything by saying, "I blow hot and cold on this."

But on this matter, I say that there are several ways to look at it.

 There's the fact that the US finally made good on the red line of which the previous president spoke. It re-estabishes the US as the one country with the might, clout and moral capital to really and truly demonstrate that the world does not tolerate a certain level of atrocity.

You'll recall my post from yesterday about how Syria and North Korea having become front-burner issues makes considerations regarding Russia and China more acute. With that in mind, the timing of Xi's visit to Mar-a-Lago is rich in significance:

“China now likely views Trump’s threat to take unilateral action against North Korea as more credible,” said M. Taylor Fravel, an associate professor of political science in the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“China may be more willing to take actions, either by itself or with others, to slow the pace or even halt Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs,” Fravel added. “But North Korea is a much greater challenge militarily that cannot be solved with symbolic strikes.”

Any military strike on North Korea — especially against its leadership or nuclear sites — would likely be followed by a counterattack on Seoul that would devastate the South Korean capital, something Pyongyang has long threatened to carry out if it comes under attack.

Youngshik Daniel Bong, a research fellow at the Yonsei University Institute for North Korean Studies in South Korea said the strikes have “generated enormous impact.”

“The missile strikes must have been discussed and decided by the Trump administration when it was preparing for the summit meeting with President Xi.”

These discussions, he said, likely “included Secretary of State Tillerson and Secretary of Defense Mattis. That means, it is not just President Trump acting bold. It means there is a very high level of internal unity among top officials of the administration and the president in favor of bold actions that will bring actual results, not the usual resorting to diplomacy and multilateral cooperation.”

But we are already getting a fairly clear indication of how Russia sees it:

"President [Vladimir] Putin regards the US attacks on Syria as an aggression against a sovereign state in violation of the norms of international law, and under a trumped-up pretext at that," Pesov told reporters.

And consider that Secretary of State Tillerson recently said that US policy is decisively back to being that Assad must go.

As an isolated viewpoint it's reasonable enough, but the record in recent years concerning what fills the vacuum after regime changes in Middle Eastern countries is not a good one. We should keep that in mind as we take in these endorsements of yesterday's action. When ISIS and al-Qaeda praise what you've done, it ought to make you step back and think about where it all is going.

It's done. It's in the record books now. A major move has been made on the chessboard. Let us hope that the scenarios for possible subsequent moves are being discussed exhaustively.

Endangering the good moves with an abysmal style of leading

A major point I've stressed here and in my podcasts, certainly since mid-January, but really as far back as Trump's candidacy announcement, is that his lack of ideological consistency was going to muddy the waters of government, policy crafting, and the national discourse as never before.

It's why I've generally stayed the hell away from the daily - hourly - twists and turns of the points of drama within the administration, between the administration and Congress, and among the administration, Congress and the media. If no core principles are at stake in any given development, indulging in observations and speculations and attempting to defend turf for the sake of tribalist loyalties seems to me not only a waste of keystrokes and time, but an unnecessary risk of my credibility.

But I think Noah Rothman at Commentary is onto something in his assertion that Devin Nunes recusing himself from his committee's investigation into the web of spying and leaking accusations occupying the attention of so many is pretty significant:

On Thursday, the Intelligence Committee chair essentially recused himself from the investigation into Russia’s actions, which concedes that Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff, who demanded as much, were right. They claimed that Nunes’s bizarre behavior robbed the public of “the necessary confidence” that the House investigation could be conducted impartially. That assertion was lent legitimacy early Thursday when the House Ethics Committee revealed they were investigating whether Nunes had improperly disclosed classified intelligence to the public without the appropriate authorization. How ironic.

Nunes doesn’t just have himself to blame for his predicament; he could also blame the Trump administration. In late March, the California Republican held an impromptu press conference that appeared to corroborate the allegation implied in Donald Trump’s March 4th tweet, in which he insisted that he and his team had been spied upon by members of the Obama administration. Nunes’s bizarre and evasive behavior in the days that followed led observers to question where precisely his information came from. To shield the White House, Nunes misled reporters with whom he had built up confidence and goodwill over the years.

As it turns out, Nunes’s sources were in the White House, but even this had a reasonable explanation. You see, ranking officials in the last administration who had “unmasked” Trump associates for questionable reasons had done so on systems native to the White House. This was how the allegations involving Rice originated. Now, their source of those allegations has virtually discredited himself.

For anyone who believes in the value of good government, this is tragic. The allegations involving the Obama administration’s efforts to “unmask” Americans in intelligence reports toward political ends are truly troubling. While some might claim the ends justified the means, the unmasking of former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn and the release of transcripts of his entirely above-board conversations with a Russian ambassador was an irreversible breach of the social compact. The intention was to kill a career by implication and association. Flynn’s conduct—lying to the vice president and allowing Mike Pence to humiliate himself in public—cannot be blamed on the former administration, but the notion that Flynn deserved his treatment is entirely subjective and debatable. 

And this is occurring in a most unsettling overall context:

Today, on day 76 of this presidency, stories of palace intrigue have severely undermined the administration’s effectiveness. As NBC News reported, the removal of Senior Strategist Steve Bannon from the principals committee of the National Security Council is indicative of the ongoing war between “nationalists” and “globalists” within the administration. CNN revealed that the “paranoia” and “unrest” among top staff is hindering the administration’s ability to be effective. The ouster of Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’s ally Katie Walsh and the ascendance of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has amassed a comically unwieldy portfolio of responsibilities, is evidence of this chaos. Now, entirely as a result of the White House’s bumbled conniving to distance itself from the narrative it hoped to sow regarding “unmasking,” its ally has been politically neutralized.

Nunes joins Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recusing himself from an investigation into the conduct of the Trump campaign. The White House is running out of friends, and it’s getting harder to justify its objection to a special counsel on the Russia matter. Meanwhile, the administration is suffering legislative setbacks on the Hill, a series of mounting crises overseas, and challenges to its legitimacy at home as Trump’s job approval rating craters. White House allies would do well to stop indulging this administration’s ingrained paranoia and level with Trump: This is a presidency in crisis. 

Trump's big selling point has always been his ostensible knack for leadership. Maybe he really did demonstrate it in his real-estate-developer days, but it clearly hasn't translated into such a knack being applied to presiding over the nation.

His department and agency appointments have been nearly uniformly excellent, as has been the regulatory rollback. But at the top, it's pretty much chaos. And we know, per Harry Truman, where the buck stops.

 

As Syria and North Korea come to a boil, relations with Russia and China will surely get clarified

Hardcore slavish devotees of Donald Trump have set particular store by any utterances he has made over the past two years indicating a foreign policy that would, while projecting American strength, somehow be more astute in avoiding any need to employ that strength. Certainly Laura Ingraham has generally mentioned "not getting us into endless wars in the Middle East" as an addendum to her two-note-Johnny focus on trade and immigration as, in her mind, the most pressing issues facing the country. And Trump himself has provided his minions fodder with remarks like the one about "letting Russia fight ISIS."

The fact that the United States has two superpower adversaries - China and Russia - is so obvious that it has not been lost on even Trump. True, he has publicly fallen for Putin's subtle flattery, but he's not oblivious to Russia's machinations on the high seas, the skies or cyberspace. Concerning China, while he couches his remarks in his trademark winners-and-losers terms, saying we get the short end of the trade-deal stick with them, he has also referenced China's massive military buildup, which has taken place as America's defense capabilities got stretched unacceptably thin during the just-concluded era of planned decline.

This week, it seems that he is coming to that moment that presidents inevitably face - when any kind of outlines of a doctrine they hinted at on the campaign trail are subjected to the hard realities of the world stage.

Of course, he meets with President Xi today at Mar-a-Lago, and, along with trade, North Korea will surely be discussed at length. Just what kind of influence can he exert with his counterpart? For one thing, Xi is facing a Communist Party leadership-selection process at home this year that may determine the degree of his influence. He probably does not want to appear overly conciliatory to an American president at such a moment.

It's often said that China has complete control over North Korea. If that's so, would we not have to conclude that China really has no problem with the Kim dynasty amassing a nuclear arsenal and testing missiles with ever-greater frequency? At what point, and in response to what kind of goading, does China show the same kind of alarm about it that is shown by Japan, South Korea and the United States?

Then there is this week's use of sarin gas by the Assad regime in Syria against its own citizens. Given that regime's alliance with Russia, not to mention with the inarguably evil regime in Iran, it's clear that a passive American response to this barbarism sends signals to all world-stage observers.

The president is surely discovering that no administration gets to make a completely fresh start. The fruits of red lines crossed in Syria -or, going back a bit further, Assad-Kerry dinners, or Hillary Clinton pronouncements that Assad was a stabilizing force in his region - and Agreed Frameworks and Six-Way Talks regarding North Korea, are now being made manifest.

Blank-slate foreign policy is just not possible.

Relations with Russia and China, and, more immediately, what to do in the proxy situations of Syria and North Korea have come to a head.

We know certain things about Donald Trump, largely because he is not shy about revealing his character, such as it is.

Still, there is more to find out, and we soon will.

Wednesday roundup

The United States is characterizing the North Korean threat differently than it ever has before:

A senior administration official warned Tuesday that the "clock has run out" for North Korea and suggested the administration could resort war to solve the problem.

"The clock has now run out and all options are on the table for us," the official said during a briefing by senior administration officials for reporters about the upcoming bilateral meeting between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping

The administration officials said the situation in North Korea, which has recently conducted a spate of missile tests, has become "urgent." Trump himself said in an interview published Sunday that the United States would solve the North Korea problem with or without China.

Chinese president Xi is coming to the US for a meeting with DJT, and while the administration anticipates a substantive exchange, it doesn't have its hopes up for getting the matter wrapped up in a tidy package:

Trump and Xi will tackle tough issues like trade and North Korea's nuclear ambitions this week during their bilateral summit at Mar-a-Lago, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

But that doesn't mean the two leaders will agree on how to handle their disagreements by the end of their roughly 24 hours together.

"I don't anticipate there'll be a resolution on those issues," one administration official said.

The fruits of unenforced red lines:

One of the worst chemical bombings in Syria turned a northern rebel-held area into a toxic kill zone on Tuesday, inciting international outrage over the ever-increasing government impunity shown in the country’s six-year war.
Western leaders including President Trump blamed the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad and called on its patrons, Russia and Iran, to prevent a recurrence of what many described as a war crime.
Dozens of people, including children, died — some writhing, choking, gasping or foaming at the mouth — after breathing in poison that possibly contained a nerve agent or other banned chemicals, according to witnesses, doctors and rescue workers. They said the toxic substance spread after warplanes dropped bombs in the early morning hours. Some rescue workers grew ill and collapsed from proximity to the dead.
The opposition-run Health Department in Idlib Province, where the attack took place, said 69 people had died, providing a list of their names. The dead were still being identified, and some humanitarian groups said as many as 100 had died.

Bet this was a swell time:

Hundreds of LGBTQ protesters gathered outside the home of Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Saturday night for a “Queer Dance Party for Climate Justice at Ivanka Trump’s House!” The purpose of the event was to “send the clear message that our climate and our communities matter” -- because the best way to persuade someone to take your side on an issue is to hold a queer dance party in front of their private residence. It's a sassy, whimsical, and fun way to make friends and influence people --  it's not inappropriate or weird at all.

Jonah Goldberg has a spot-on piece at NRO today entitled "The President is This Presidency's Worst Enemy."

 Trump brings the same glandular, impulsive style to meetings and interviews as he does to social media. He blurts out ideas or claims that send staff scrambling to see them implemented or defended. His management style is Hobbesian. Rivalries are encouraged. Senior aides panic at the thought of not being part of his movable entourage. He cares more about saving face and “counterpunching” his critics than he does about getting policy victories. 

The comment thread underneath is full of "you-still-don't-get-it-do-you-Jonah?" nonsense. Here's a taste of the level of insight to be found there: "Goldberg, you and Bill Kristol together couldn't muster a three-digit I.Q." 

Re: the rivalries of which Jonah speaks, it will be interesting to see where this development germinated. Bannon said some time ago that he fully expected the Jared-Ivanka camp to get him ousted from the administration:

White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has been removed from his seat on the National Security Council, reversing one of the most controversial decisions of the young Trump administration. 

A filing on Tuesday in the Federal Register did not list Bannon as a regular attendee of NSC "principals committee" meetings, as he previously was. The change adds Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, back to the committee.

Despite the move, Bannon retained his security clearance, NBC said.

Sad to see FNC pulling the plug on Red Eye.

And speaking of television, here's one for the doubling-down-on-a-formula-for-failure file:

On Tuesday morning, ESPN – which has been in a losing battle to keep its subscribers – issued a new set of guidelines “recognize[ing] connection between sports, politics.” ESPN public editor Jim Brady acknowledged the oddity of releasing guidelines after a presidential election, but said, “we are living in unique political times…which explains the revised guidelines for discussion of political and social issues.” According to ESPN vice president Craig Bengtson said that Trump’s election was the essential factor behind the new guidelines.

The first part of the guideline is a recommitment to “objective” journalism: “our audiences should be confident our original reporting of news is not influenced by political pressures or personal agendas.” Of course, that’s not going to help much: CNN believes the same, and their reporting is slanted heavily to the left. The left’s version of objectivity states that a story, once decided upon, must not be overtly political; this ignores selection bias, which decides which stories are important to cover. ESPN’s heavy focus on Caitlyn Jenner, for example, pushes a political agenda through selection bias.

ESPN does make two more important changes to their policy: first, they say that hard news reporters and editors at the company should not make any public statements in any forum that would reveal their political biases. That’s absurd, and doesn’t solve the problem of political bias in reporting itself.

But the most important change is the encouragement of more political talk from commentators:

Outside of ‘hard’ news reporting, commentary related to political or social issues, candidates or office holders is appropriate on ESPN platforms consistent with these guidelines….The presentation should be thoughtful and respectful. We should offer balance or recognize opposing views, as warranted. We should avoid personal attacks and inflammatory rhetoric.

In other words, talk politics, so long as it’s leftist. 

Who saw this one coming? Barry Manilow comes out as gay.

 

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How did a universally liked guy like Gorsuch become a lightning rod?

Consider that in July 2006, he was confirmed by a unanimous voice vote to a seat on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals. Consider that he has the highest rating the American Bar Association grants.

So why are Democrats turning their ire on their own Senators, such as Indiana's Joe Donnelly, who intend to vote to confirm him to the Supreme Court?

Why is Chuck Schumer publicly announcing that there will be a filibuster?

Rich Lowry in the New York Post says it's a singularly stupid move in Senate history:

Throughout its history, the US Senate has experienced disgraceful filibusters (Strom Thurmond against the 1957 Civil Rights Act), entertaining filibusters (Huey Long in 1935 reciting a fried oyster recipe) and symbolic filibusters (Rand Paul making a point about drone strikes in 2013). But the filibuster Chuck Schumer is about to undertake against Judge Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court nomination is perhaps the institution’s dumbest.

It won’t block Gorsuch, won’t establish any important jurisprudential principle and won’t advance Democratic strategic goals, indeed the opposite. A Gorsuch filibuster would be an act of a sheer partisan pique against the wrong target, with the wrong method, at the wrong time.

The effort to portray Gorsuch as out of the mainstream has fallen flat. He has the support of President Barack Obama’s former solicitor general, Neal Katyal. He got the American Bar Association’s highest rating. He’s been endorsed by USA Today. He will receive the votes of at least three Democratic senators. Some radical.

From the moment of his announcement by President Trump to the very last question at his confirmation hearings, Gorsuch has been an exemplary performer, whose deep knowledge has been matched by his winning temperament. The attack on him as an enemy of the little man is based on a few decisions where he clearly followed the law, even though it resulted in an unsympathetic outcome.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a delightful and surprising show of resolve, has made it clear he'll respond with the unfortunately named "nuclear option."

The "M"SM is taking every opportunity to use that term, as if Republicans would be doing something dastardly.

John Steele Gordon at Commentary says that not only would ending the filibuster for nominations - a different critter from legislation - not be dastardly, it would be great:

The Senate, according to Thomas Jefferson, is meant to be “the saucer in which to cool the coffee.” The House, all of whose members are up for election every two years, tends to respond to every political whim. The Senate, with six-year terms and only one-third up for electio

n every two years, is supposed to be more deliberative and take a wider view. (Whether it does, of course, is another story.)

The filibuster, which essentially means that sixty votes are needed to pass legislation, helps that happen. By empowering the minority, it forces legislation towards the center, as the majority, unless it has a very large majority, has to compromise with the minority to get things done. This is simple political horse trading: we’ll give you this if you give us that.

But with nominations, no compromising is possible. Either Judge Gorsuch is confirmed or he is not. No horses can change hands. So to have a filibuster with nominations is not to empower the minority, it is to give it a veto on all nominations and, in effect, to negate the results of the last election.  And in a democracy, according to Barack Obama, elections are supposed to have consequences.

So I look forward to the showdown this week and to seeing the end of the profoundly undemocratic filibuster for nominations. I only hope some misguided Republicans (Senator McCain, are you listening?) do not seek a “compromise,” such as letting Judge Gorsuch be confirmed in exchange for agreeing to keep the filibuster for any future Supreme Court nominations. That would be an enormous gift to the Democrats in return for absolutely nothing. Indeed, less than nothing if the next justice to retire is a liberal, which is likely. It would be a naked betrayal of the Republican Party.

The point about McCain types is quite relevant here. This is a week for being on guard for Senators who exhibit symptoms of Reasonable Gentleman Syndrome. The Freedom-Haters are in war mode. Constitutionalists must unflinchingly respond in kind.

Listen up, Squirrel-Hair

Pro-feeedom, pro-clarity Texans let the president know they aren't pleased:

The Texas Tea Party has sent a bold message to President Trump.

The White House has hurled blame at the House Freedom Caucus for opposing the tumultuous health care bill brought forward by Paul Ryan.

In response to all the backlash against the Caucus, the Texas Tea Party wrote a letter making it very clear that the Tea Party stands with the Freedom Caucus in opposition to Ryancare.

More than 90 conservative grassroots leaders signed the letter to send a message to Trump that he needn’t turn his back on the movement that propelled him into the Oval Office.

“To our dismay, the repeal and replace plan put forward by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) did nothing to address the core regulatory infrastructure of Obamacare, which means that American families would still see health care costs continue to rise until at least 2026,” the letter reads.

“This is unacceptable.”

“The Freedom Caucus is doing exactly what their supporters and their constituents sent them to Washington to do,” said JoAnn Fleming, the Executive Director of Grassroots America – We the People.

As a volunteer conservative activist in Texas for more than 25 years, Fleming has also served as the Texas Legislature’s Tea Party Caucus Advisory Committee, Chairman of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s Grassroots Advisory Board, and an adviser to the Freedom Caucus of the Texas state legislature.

“Frankly, the people that I work with in Texas, all these grassroots leaders on this letter – they worked their tails off to send Republicans to Washington and to offices at every level of government — to stand strong behind conservative, limited government, constitutional conservative principles,” Fleming said.

Fleming says that her letter seeks to make it abundantly clear that Trump would be making a grave mistake to turn his back on the Tea Party and the House Freedom Caucus.

“We don’t agree with you, Mr. President, on the approach you’re taking toward the Freedom Caucus and toward the promises we intend to hold the GOP to. They made a promise that they were going to repeal Obamacare, and that means take out all of the big government structure that was there, the mandates, and to get us back to a patient-centered, free-market based approach to health care. This bill did not do any of that and what we believe is that it would have driven up costs, premiums.”

The Tea Party groups of Texas strongly urge Trump to work with the HFC if he actually plans to “drain the swamp” like he claims he wants to do. 

So "move on" to other issues at your own peril, S-H. The myriad promises of legislator after legislator over the past seven years rings loudly in the ears of patriots.

So it looks like it's Susan Rice

She of the lie about the cause of the Benghazi attack appears to be the high-up figure who did the "unmasking," according to Bloomberg's Eli Lake:

White House lawyers last month learned that the former national security adviser Susan Rice requested the identities of U.S. persons in raw intelligence reports on dozens of occasions that connect to the Donald Trump transition and campaign, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

The pattern of Rice's requests was discovered in a National Security Council review of the government's policy on "unmasking" the identities of individuals in the U.S. who are not targets of electronic eavesdropping, but whose communications are collected incidentally. Normally those names are redacted from summaries of monitored conversations and appear in reports as something like "U.S. Person One."

The National Security Council's senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice's multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel's office, who reviewed more of Rice's requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

The intelligence reports were summaries of monitored conversations -- primarily between foreign officials discussing the Trump transition, but also in some cases direct contact between members of the Trump team and monitored foreign officials. One U.S. official familiar with the reports said they contained valuable political information on the Trump transition such as whom the Trump team was meeting, the views of Trump associates on foreign policy matters and plans for the incoming administration. 

Rice did not respond to an email seeking comment on Monday morning. Her role in requesting the identities of Trump transition officials adds an important element to the dueling investigations surrounding the Trump White House since the president's inauguration.

To be sure, it's still pretty clear that the Tweeter-in-Chief jumped the gun with the wiretapping claim:

Rice's requests to unmask the names of Trump transition officials do not vindicate Trump's own tweets from March 4 in which he accused Obama of illegally tapping Trump Tower. There remains no evidence to support that claim. 

But it does go some ways toward explaining the moves of Nunes and the reactions thereunto of Schiff:

The news about Rice also sheds light on the strange behavior of Nunes in the last two weeks. It emerged last week that he traveled to the White House last month, the night before he made an explosive allegation about Trump transition officials caught up in incidental surveillance. At the time he said he needed to go to the White House because the reports were only on a database for the executive branch. It now appears that he needed to view computer systems within the National Security Council that would include the logs of Rice's requests to unmask U.S. persons.

The ranking Democrat on the committee Nunes chairs, Representative Adam Schiff, viewed these reports on Friday. In comments to the press over the weekend he declined to discuss the contents of these reports, but also said it was highly unusual for the reports to be shown only to Nunes and not himself and other members of the committee. 

Schiff's reaction indicates that something smells funny about this.

And, of course, we know that Rice is capable of moves that are downright stinky.

 

 

The Jared factor

How comfortable are you with the outsized role DJT's son-in-law has been given in this administration?

It appears that, dozens of reports to the contrary notwithstanding, the old man wasn't all that miffed about the Aspen ski trip as the non-repeal-and-non-replace health care bill faltered. Kushner's portfolio has done nothing but expand.

There was the weekend trip to Iraq with the Joint Chiefs of Staff chair. Three's the assignment to be The Guy Who Finally Brokers Peace Between Israel and the Palestinians. He's been assigned another time-worn chestnut as well - making government operate efficiently like a business! How many administrations have tried to push that rock up the hill?

Like his wife, he comes from a family of real-estate developers going back to his grandfather. In 2007, he set a record for the most expensive property purchase in US history, plunking down $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Avenue.

The family's not without scandal. His father, Charles Kushner, spent two years in federal prison on charges of tax evasion, witness tampering and illegally donating to political campaigns. (The prosecutor was Chris Christie. Could there be anything to the timing by which Christie was eased out of the Trump circle as Jared was given his high profile?)

But it's the hints of left-of-center leanings that unsettle me - that and the fact that DJT sometimes heeds his input:

Ivanka Trump and her husband, White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, intervened to get a pending executive order stripped of language critical of an international climate agreement signed by President Barack Obama.

Kushner and Ivanka “intervened to strike language about the climate deal from an earlier draft of the executive order,” sources familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal.

Ivanka and her husband “have been considered a moderating influence on the White House’s position on climate change and environmental issues,” WSJ reports. Now, the executive order will have no mention of the so-called Paris agreement.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign two executive orders in the coming days to begin dismantling Obama’s Climate Action Plan and other costly environmental regulations. The orders reportedly target the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a moratorium on new coal mining leases, and the “Waters of the U.S.” rule.

Trump promised to withdraw from the Paris agreement and stop global warming payments to the U.N. while on the campaign trail. But Trump’s opposition to Obama’s climate agenda seems to be running up against his daughter’s plans.

WSJ noted the “move is the latest sign of influence Mr. Trump’s daughter and Mr. Kushner have in a White House that has seen internal divisions on a variety of issues, including foreign policy.”

What is going to happen now that  new EPA head Scott Pruitt as well as new Energy Secretary Rick Perry are taking decisive measures to move environmental policy away from the fiction of a climate in some kind of trouble due to human activity?

Quite obviously, not everyone in this new administration is on the same page about everything. The question is, as it all moves forward, who gets to determine the page from which folks are reading?

Sunday roundup

A few noteworthy aspects of North Korea's upcoming nuclear-weapon test: The weapon in question may be small enough to fit on an ICBM, and / or it may be a hydrogen bomb, and / or there may be two weapons tested simultaneously.

Mosques in Germany have apparently been used to spy for the Turkish government.

Virginia jackboots can't stand the thought of a Congressman holding a town hall:

Students and residents in Charlottesville, Virginia, protested Republican Rep. Tom Garrett’s first town hall Friday with a massive sign stating “no dialogue with white supremacy” and chants including “say it loud, say it clear: immigrants are welcome here.”

Garrett was protested both inside and outside of the building at the University of Virginia where he hosted the town hall, reports NBC 29. Both Showing Up for Racial Justice and UVA Students United organized the protests.

“[W]e refuse to give him a platform to spout his politics of racial terror and white supremacy,” the Charlottesville chapter of Showing Up for Racial Justice said in a Facebook post. “Engaging in polite conversation with Garrett normalizes his extreme views and allows them to spread. Instead, we need to disrupt this language and these policies in order to make space to create a world in which we can all be liberated from the damning violence of white supremacy that has built and structured this nation since its inception through settler colonialism and racial chattel slavery.”

 

Climate liar Michael Mann tries to play the martyr in his testimony before the House Science Committee. 

And at one time, these two newspapers were actually worthy of their stature

Not anymore.

Take the case of the Washington Post's  underhanded distortion of the remarks of a House member from Texas:

The headline from the Washington Post couldn’t have been more clear: “GOP Lawmaker: The Bible says the unemployed ‘shall not eat.” Shocking, right? Judging by the Washington Post’s reporting, either this lawmaker is a real jerk, God is a real jerk for hating people without jobs, or maybe even they’re both jerks.

Here’s what the newspaper wrote about Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.):

One lawmaker is citing a godly reference to justify changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Tex.) recently quoted the New Testament to question the strength of current work requirements.

The biblical passage, 2 Thessalonians 3-10, was a rebuttal to one of the hearing’s expert witnesses, a representative of the Jewish anti-hunger group MAZON. (He referenced Leviticus.) It is also a familiar refrain to anyone who has watched past debates about SNAP.

House Republicans have historically cited the verse — “if a man will not work, he shall not eat” — as justification for cutting some adults’ SNAP benefits. Arrington referenced the verse in a discussion about increasing the work requirements for unemployed adults on the food stamp program. But critics say that advances a pernicious myth about the unemployed who receive SNAP.

There are a few problems, however, with that story from Washington Post reporter Caitlin Dewey: the lawmaker never said that, the Bible never says that, and the Washington Post article never even quotes the Texas Republican as saying that. In fact, the article doesn’t quote Arrington a single time. Not one word. Because democracy dies in darkness, or something.

Not only did Arrington not disagree with the witness who quoted passages from Leviticus requiring the Israelites to leave harvest gleanings in the field for sojourners and the poor, Arrington actually affirmed him and noted that the passage in question is “a great reflection on the character of God and the compassion of God’s heart.” Here’s what Arrington really said:

I did hear, Mr. Protas, your opening remarks where you quoted Leviticus, I believe, and I think that’s a great reflection on the character of God and the compassion of God’s heart and how we ought to reflect that compassion in our lives.

But, there’s also, the scripture tells us in 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “For even when we were with you we gave you this rule: ‘If a man will not work, he shall not eat.'” And then he goes on to say, “We hear that some among you are idle.”

I think that every American, Republican or Democrat, wants to help the neediest among us. And I think it’s a reasonable expectation that we have work requirements. I think that gives more credibility quite frankly, to SNAP. Tell me what is a reasonable and responsible work requirement as part of the SNAP program?

At no point did Arrington ever declare that the Bible requires that the unemployed shall not eat. Not once. At no point did Arrington ever say, “The Bible says the unemployed shall not eat.”

Rather, the Texas congressman noted to the witness at his hearing that in addition to commanding God’s people to leave a share of their harvest for the needy to pick up and eat as they moved through the fields, the Bible tells Christ’s disciples not to allow idleness to make them a burden on their fellow Christians. Paul’s letter to the church in Thessaloniki, after all, was not a directive to government officials in Rome, but an exhortation to his fellow followers of Christ in Greece.

You wouldn’t know any of that if you read the Washington Post’s dishonest mischaracterization of what Arrington said, because the Washington Post refused to tell you what Arrington actually said. 

Then there's the case of the New York Times reporter who hasn't even a grade-schooler's grans pf the Constitution:

On Thursday, the New York Times published an article on a vote in the Senate that was headlined: “Senate Lets States Defund Clinics That Perform Abortions.” The article, by Jennifer Steinhauer, bitterly described how a measure under the Congressional Review Act passed the Senate, with a tie-breaking vote by Vice President Mike Pence. A reader pointed out that a correction in yesterday’s Times admitted that the reporter (and any editor who may have read the piece prior to publication) lack a high-school level knowledge of the Constitution:

Correction: March 30, 2017

An earlier version of this article misstated the circumstances in which the vice president of the United States can cast a vote in the Senate. He can vote only to break a tie, not to vote on significant policy measures that are short 60 votes.

The original version of the article reveals multiple levels of ignorance. Apart from not knowing the Vice President’s constitutional role in the Senate, did the reporter really believe that the Constitution includes a reference to “significant policy measures” on which the Vice President can vote? And she apparently thought that the Senate’s current filibuster rule is embedded in the Constitution.

This is reminiscent of the occasion when the Times bungled the process for amending the Constitution, and then couldn’t even get it right in its subsequent correction.

But that’s not all! The Times also grossly mischaracterizes the Congressional Review Act, the statute under which yesterday’s vote took place:

The measure fell under a somewhat obscure and, until recently, rarely used Congressional Review Act that allows a new Congress to undo actions of the old Congress during the first few months of the year.

Again, the Times’s ignorance is appalling. The Congressional Review Act has nothing to do with “undo[ing] actions of the old Congress.” (A current Congress can always undo the actions of any past Congress, if it has the votes and the president’s signature.) Rather, the CRA provides a procedure whereby Congress can disapprove and nullify regulatory rules issued by federal agencies. It is incredible that the Times employs a reporter who writes for its “Politics” section and does not know this.

The reporter’s error is all the more egregious, since her own article quotes Senator Joni Ernst, who correctly stated the nature of the vote:

“It should be the right of our states to allocate sub-grants under the Title X program in the way that best fits the needs of the people living there,” she said. “Unfortunately, like many other rules issued during the Obama administration, this rule attempted to empower federal bureaucrats in Washington and silence our states.”

This second error has not yet been corrected by the Times.

As someone who makes his living as a freelance writer, I have to believe any editor I've ever written for would rake me over the coals for these kinds of lapses.

But maybe I assume way too much esteem for objectivity on their part. Or maybe my own view that one ought to exhibit basic knowledge of the Bible and the Constitution to be a functioning writer keeps me from finding myself in situations in which I'd find out.

But if the NYT and the WaPo are still widely regarded as standard-bearers, we are in deep trouble.

Here's where to get clarity on all the threads in the tangled mess that is Russia's role in the 2016 election

David French at NRO admirably and succinctly examines all the factors and figures in the cluster of controversies surrounding the current administration, its immediate predecessor, Russia, and US politics. He lays it out in Q&A style, with the italicized questions representing the various aspects of the entire scenario about which the everyday American is curious. He covers it all: Manafort, Page and Flynn, the fakes-news phenomenon, the historically dismal approval numbers for both of last year's final candidates, the notion of a "deep state," what is problematic with the way Devin Nunes has behaved, what we do and don't know about Obama-era figures trying to hobble Trump from early on.

The way to give you a taste is with a look at the final question and answer:

Wait a minute, after more than 2,300 words, are you saying that we know Russia tried to interfere with the election, but we don’t know if Trump officials helped or colluded in any way, if Trump himself was involved in any way, if Obama officials have improperly unmasked or surveilled Trump’s team, or who any unlawful leakers were? Is this the least-helpful Q & A ever written?

The answer to all these questions except the last (I hope!) is “yes.” We don’t know the most important facts of the case, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything important. It’s important and troubling to know that members of the intelligence community are seemingly leaking with impunity to damage Trump. It’s important and troubling to know that Trump has lost key aides because of their Russia ties, and that Trump and his team continue struggling to tell the truth about their Russian contacts. And it’s important and troubling to know that huge swaths of the American political establishment are being exposed as purely partisan.

The FBI is continuing its investigation, and so are the House and Senate intelligence committees (though Nunes’s House committee is in a state of chaos). Every major media publication is feverishly chasing the various threads of the story. It’s entirely possible that we’re not at the beginning of the end of this scandal, but rather at the end of the beginning. It’s also entirely possible that the end, when it comes, will leave political casualties on all sides, from bureaucrats who may face prosecution for unlawful leaks to public figures who may face ruin for unlawful or inappropriate foreign contacts.

One thing is clear: The Russian government has run one of the most cost-effective and disruptive espionage operations in history. Through a few simple hacks of the DNC, some basic online trolling, and garden-variety propaganda spread by modern means, the Kremlin has turned a superpower’s politics upside down. Its chief geopolitical rival is divided, with leaders obviously more furious at each other than at the foreign power who created the crisis. Russia may well face a day of reckoning for its attack on our democracy, but for now it has won, and the magnitude of its victory increases with each petty and partisan turn in Washington’s most consequential drama. 

Indeed. One big takeaway is that Russia is our adversary at best.

As I said the other day, though, LITD is not going to get mired in the latest supposedly hot development and run the risk of getting distracted by matters of speculation.

Big picture, folks, big picture.