NATIONAL REVIEW
MAY 03, 2024 |
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◼ Any day now, Biden is going to build a pier to get humanitarian aid to Columbia University.
◼ Campus protests began at Columbia, where students made a tent city of the central lawn and broke into and occupied a building, and spread from sea to shining sea. Administrators responded differently: The University of Florida, run by former senator Ben Sasse, gave students stern warnings and then removed them, saying the school was not a day-care center. Fecklessness at other institutions led to police sweeps (Columbia, NYU) and even a protest-on-protest riot (UCLA, where Hamas supporters made the mistake of beating up a member of the local Persian Jewish community). The demonstrations are radical, Islamist, antisemitic, and a magnet for demented weirdos. Media have been notably incurious about who was helping organize so many so quickly (all those Coleman tents). Fortunately for President Biden's presidential campaign, the venue for the Democratic National Convention (Chicago) lacks any notable historical association with out-of-hand protests.
◼ On April 30, as protesters sought for the second time to replace Old Glory with the Palestinian flag on the University of North Carolina campus at Chapel Hill, only the swift intervention of patriotic Pi Kappa Phi brothers prevented this outrage. Interim chancellor Lee Roberts had fitting words to mark the occasion, spoken to the face of the mob itself: "This university doesn't belong to a small group of protesters. It belongs to every citizen of North Carolina. . . . That flag belongs to all of us." As the crowd tried to drown him out, Roberts refused to stop: "To take down that flag and put up another flag, no matter what other flag it is—that's antithetical to who we are, what this university stands for, what we have done for 229 years." Here's to Chancellor Roberts, and to the young men of Pike, who honored the flag and what it stands for.
◼ House Democrats have pledged to save House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) from Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.). Democrats had come together with Johnson on Ukraine aid, the National Defense Authorization Act, and several resolutions to keep the government operating, in each case providing the necessary votes to pass legislation over some Republicans' objections. Now they say they will vote against Greene's planned motion to vacate the speaker's chair. This is not a simple outburst of public-spiritedness from the Democrats. Their party has interests in advancing policy priorities while it also controls the White House and the Senate, and in making Washington look slightly less inept under Joe Biden's national leadership before he faces the voters. Republicans, rather than fume that Democrats have denied them a chance to self-destruct, should consider that perhaps this is the inevitable result of the mid-session motion-to-vacate game that has brought them to the brink of losing their majority without an intervening election. A conference that can't bear to see any of its members lead the House will soon enough encounter a cure for that.
◼ The behavior described in Trump's Manhattan "hush money" trial is tawdry: alleged extramarital affairs with a Playboy model and with a porn star. Legally, the case is a travesty. Manhattan's Democratic district attorney, Alvin Bragg, delayed indicting for years to orchestrate a trial during the 2024 campaign. The indictment fails to state the "conspiracy" crime that Judge Juan Merchan is allowing Bragg to present to the jury, and the business-records-falsification statute that Bragg invoked does not specify, as New York's constitution requires it to do, that state prosecutors can use it to enforce federal campaign law. Although nondisclosure agreements ("hush money" deals) are legal, Merchan has allowed Bragg to portray them as federal campaign-law felonies—even though they're not and Bragg has no federal enforcement authority. Merchan has green-lit testimony that Trump's "fixer," Michael Cohen, pled guilty to campaign crimes (he was trying to escape a prison sentence for fraud) and that Trump's pals at the National Enquirer paid a fine to the FEC—evidence that, by law, is inadmissible to prove Trump's guilt. When Trump's lawyers object, Merchan slaps them down—signaling to the jury that it is they, not prosecutors, who are engaged in sleight of hand. Conviction appears inevitable.
◼ South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, already familiar with self-inflicted controversy, stepped in something foul when she revealed in her new book that she shot her 14-month-old dog, a wirehaired pointer named "Cricket," after becoming frustrated with it for attacking livestock and Noem herself. The outcry from all quarters was what one would expect if Noem had gone out and shot each family's Fido. Noem defended her actions by saying that she always works "to make the best decisions" she can for the people in her life, even if they're difficult. But rather than convey her grit, the story has likely ended her aspirations to higher office, such as the vice presidency in a second Trump administration, a role she seemed to be seeking. That dog won't hunt.
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◼ In this presidential cycle, we hear another dog not barking. We have heard the same dog not barking three presidential cycles in a row. The national debt is not a topic of debate. Neither is the federal budget deficit. Neither, accordingly, is the question of entitlements. The Romney-Ryan ticket, in 2012, was bold on these issues. That boldness did not pay off. Often, people speak of a "uniparty." On the matter of our fiscal house, we seem to have one—which is too bad, because the matter of our fiscal house is screamingly important.
◼ Want to know why the U.S. doesn't have more nuclear power? It cost $30 billion to add two new reactors at one power plant in Georgia. They're going to power about a million homes and businesses, proving the impressive energy capabilities of nuclear power. But the project was seven years late and twice as expensive as expected. Nuclear power can and should be a larger component of the U.S. energy mix, but not at costs like that. The Wall Street Journal reports that future nuclear-energy development will likely be in small modular reactors, which are cheaper owing to economies of scale. China and Russia already have them. The U.S. needs to get nuclear-construction costs down—which may require revising a regulatory regime that appears to hobble the industry more than other countries' do—so that Americans can reap the benefits of the cheap and clean energy that nuclear power provides once it is online.
◼ The overturning of Roe v. Wade revived long-dormant abortion bans in several states, some of them dating back to the mid 19th century and containing few exceptions. Since its first territorial criminal code in 1864, Arizona has had an absolute ban on abortion, excepting only those necessary to save maternal life. Similar bans triggered a pro-abortion backlash in Michigan and Wisconsin, and a fall referendum in Arizona threatened to focus on the 1864 ban. The law is defensible morally, but not politically in this climate. Repealing it, as Democrats did with a few GOP votes, gives pro-lifers the opportunity to fight the referendum as a vote on Arizona's more modest 15-week restriction, signed by Governor Doug Ducey in 2022. A broader restriction would be preferable, but after Republicans lost the governor's mansion in 2022, one was not on offer, and the state GOP was leaderless. Wars, as Churchill reminded us after Dunkirk, are not won by evacuations. But prudent evacuations can keep the troops alive to fight again on a better day.
◼ "If you're going to San Francisco, you're gonna to meet some gentle people there," singer Scott McKenzie reassured his listeners in 1967. Today, he might not be as confident. Democratic congressman and Senate candidate Adam Schiff—who recently attended a fundraising dinner in the Golden Gate City dressed like a Beltway pollster on casual Friday—confirmed that his car had been broken into and his luggage stolen. A few days earlier, in San Jose, a security guard was caught flat-footed in a streetside sparring session with a passerby who decided to crash Mayor Matt Mahan's TV interview. Violent crime in California has generally been above the nationwide trend and has risen further since the pandemic. Aggravated assault has become a state sport. Schiff, Mahan, and colleagues: Don't leave your valuables—or your jurisdictions—unattended. |
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◼ The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down West Virginia and North Carolina laws that prevent state health-insurance plans from covering medicalized gender-transition procedures. The opinion, on an 8–6 vote of the full court, was written by Judge Roger Gregory, a Clinton recess appointee who was given a life-tenured judgeship by George W. Bush in a fit of unrequited bipartisan comity 23 years ago. Judge Gregory asked whether "healthcare plans that cover medically necessary treatments for certain diagnoses but bar coverage of those same medically necessary treatments for a diagnosis unique to transgender patients violate either the Equal Protection Clause or other provisions of federal law." He answered in the affirmative. To frame the question by assuming that such treatments are "medically necessary" even when the legislatures think otherwise is to load the dice. "Why the rush to constitutionalize?" asked Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III. "In the long tomorrow," he warned, "the recurrent creation of rights so unmoored from constitutional text or history will deplete the store of public respect on which a branch devoid of sword or purse must ultimately rely." We side with Wilkinson over Gregory in rejecting the overruling of civilian legislative oversight of medical standards by judges on nothing more than their say-so.
◼ Russia has never been known as a good neighbor, so it's not much of a surprise that the GPS systems of thousands of planes have been jammed while flying over and near the Baltic and the Black Sea. This has been a long-standing problem, at least over the Baltic, and has intensified since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In the Baltic region, it appears that the jamming, which is not hard to do, is coming from Russia's Kaliningrad exclave and various points close to the Estonian border. The jamming contravenes international agreements but is less dangerous than it sounds, although any interference that forces a reversion to less familiar procedures is undesirable. Additionally, airports, including the one in Tartu, Estonia's second city, which depend solely on GPS, are left particularly vulnerable. Two Finnair flights headed there recently had to turn back. Russia is sending a signal that it considers the Baltic its backyard. But the jamming is also almost certainly intended to give the West a taste of the harassment it could face if tensions increase further. NATO has no obvious response. It's time to think beyond the obvious.
◼ In London's Hyde Park, the authorities covered a Holocaust memorial, owing to the marches now taking place in the city center—marches concerning the Gaza war. Such covering has been done elsewhere as well. Authorities face a dilemma: Cover the memorials, which is unseemly? Or let them be defaced or otherwise vandalized? John Mann, a member of the House of Lords, is the British government's adviser on antisemitism. He described the covering of the memorial in Hyde Park as "sad but necessary." We can understand his reasoning. But part of us says, "Let the buggers show who they are, in their vandalism."
◼ Catholic Answers, a nonprofit dedicated to apologetics online, introduced "Father Justin" on April 23. Hours later, after criticism and ridicule from Catholics left, right, high, and low, the AI chatbot had lost the "Father." By the end of the week, "Justin" was gone, his funeral evidently a private affair. "I've got to take my lumps," said Jon Sorensen, the chief operating officer of Catholic Answers, discussing what he describes as a kerfuffle in his project to harness the church to artificial intelligence. "Justin" in his short life gave many correct answers but also some wrong ones. He appeared to commit sacrilege by simulating absolution as given by a priest in the sacrament of reconciliation. His uneven responses were spun from information in the vast, impressive archive of Catholic Answers. "We get tons of emails," Sorensen said, "and there's a search engine on our website, but a lot of people just don't use it." To determine whether the primary sources they find there are reliable or relevant to their inquiry requires judgment. They might not trust theirs, but that of a chatbot won't necessarily be more intelligent. Human priests in the real world remain available for confessions.
◼ "On any occasion when a response is called for, what usually comes to my lips is a line from some poem or other," Helen Vendler said in an interview in 1996. "My son laughs about this and says, 'A quotation for every occasion, Mom.'" She laced her poetry criticism with long but choice prose excerpts, too, from other critics. In early adulthood, the daughter of bookish Boston teachers who insisted on her Catholic education began to trade its rigors for those of literary studies in colleges and universities across the Northeast. From Boston University to Harvard, Cornell, Swarthmore, Haverford, and, in 1981, back to Harvard, where she taught for the next 43 years, she earned a reputation for being the consummate "close reader." She rejected the label, describing her work rather as "a view from the inside," the "view of someone who composes with words." As the author or editor of more than 30 books on English-language poetry, and from perches at the New Yorker and the Pulitzer Committee as well as in Cambridge, she helped revive the waning reputation of Wallace Stevens and boosted those of poets including Rita Dove and Jorie Graham. Dead at 90. R.I.P.
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