This Masquerade

Our benevolent governor finally pulled the trigger on his latest power grab:

Gov. Tim Walz has issued an executive order mandating mask use for indoor public spaces.

The mandate will take effect early Saturday morning, and requires Minnesotans to wear masks in public indoor gathering areas like stores and restaurants, as well as while using public transportation.

Exemptions are in place for people with medical or mental health conditions that make it "unreasonable for the individual to maintain a face covering."

Children under the age of five are also exempt from the order, though masks are still encouraged for children between the ages of two and five. The order states that "those who are under two years old should never wear a face covering due to the risk of suffocation."

A few thoughts:

• The whole thing is unreasonable. But you knew that.
• We hear incessantly that the "science" says wearing a mask works. But we don't know, really. We're still in the middle of this experience and most of what's proffered as evidence are really assertions. I suspect there are scientists galore who are actually studying these mandates and we'll eventually get the truth about mask efficacy. But we don't have it yet. 
• I don't believe mask mandates are about thought control or whatnot, but I do know the news media are still awfully good at thought control. People are scared to death of COVID and while certain populations have reason to be cautious, most people who actually encounter the virus will not be at serious risk. Wearing a mask will make no real difference either way.
• I struggle with wearing a mask myself, but I doubt my discomfort would constitute a condition that would exempt me from the order. In my mask-wearing experience thus far, my glasses are constantly fogged and I become quite conscious of my breathing, which causes me a significant amount of anxiety. I don't know how my discomfort benefits others, but my social media feed is full of people who believe it does. And you cannot convince them otherwise. And, for that matter, complaining reveals your selfishness.
• You will note, as with all Walz depredations, there is no end date or sunset provision. Walz will require you to modify your behavior for as long as he chooses, whether his requirements are necessary or proper, and he does not need to provide you with a rationale. While I don't imagine he will mandate all Minnesotans wear a ball gag by October, you can't necessarily rule that out.
• I have mentioned it before, but it's worth saying again. When we finally get past all this, the real damage will be to our ability to be neighbors. Fear is corrosive as hell and the notion that your fear justifies the use of force against your neighbors to assuage your fear is poison, flat out. And any mandate is force.

By the way, if the masks don't work, this may be next:

It's for your own good, and we've heard quite enough from you anyway

Safety School, Baby!

My alma mater gets a nod from the Style Section of the Washington Post, but not of the sort it would want:

But I’m still at a loss about what to do with a situation like Kyle Kashuv’s. And not in some what-is-the-meaning-of-redemption way. But practically speaking: Unless we seal them all in a cave, people who do bad (but not illegal) things are going to continue to be part of our society. What do we think that should look like? What is your personal vision?

The miscreant in question is Kyle Kashuv, a top student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who had the credentials to get into Harvard, but was drummed out because SJWs don't like 2nd Amendment types (Kashuv spoke in favor of the 2nd Amendment, unlike his classmate David Hogg, who is sailing into Harvard with less stellar credentials but a more correct worldview). The SJW spelunking teams dug up some nasty texts he wrote two years ago, where he apparently used the "n" word and maybe said some other uncharitable things that 16-year-old dudes say as they marinate in testosterone. Harvard doesn't want him now, so what to do with him? Post Style Writer/Moral Arbiter Monica Hesse has some suggestions (emphasis in original):

University of Florida? I saw someone suggest that as a possible destination for Kashuv. The argument went that Kashuv shouldn’t be rewarded with the prestige of the Ivy League, but maybe could go off to some less illustrious institution, where he could then continue to work on himself.

I actually saw a fair number of suggestions like this: Not Harvard. Somewhere else. Somewhere less good. The solution seemed reasonable, but it had a tinge of classism, an element of passing the buck. If you don’t believe that Harvard students should have to attend classes with someone who has used racist terminology within the past two years, then why would you subject University of Florida students to that? Or students from Beloit or Colorado State? Would those universities even admit him, or would they follow Harvard’s lead?

Beloit! My alma mater! The quintessential safety school! Beloit, the self-proclaimed "Yale of the Midwest," known up and down the Acela Corridor as a place to park your kid if he's not smart enough to get into Harvard, or was too busy doing bong hits at Pomfret to crack the code at Princeton. But should my fair school be the place where people who are Not Our Kind, Dear have to serve their penance? For her part, Monica Hesse went to Bryn Mawr, a place where one can sniff the glory of the Ivy League from the Philadelphia Main Line. Her school is a member in good standing of the all-female Seven Sisters, so a brute like Kashuv can't even try to go there. Besides which, elite liberal arts schools on the eastern seaboard are right out, including the other proper places in Bryn Mawr's neighborhood; I suspect Haverford would provide no haven and Swarthmore would swat him away, too, so he'll need to go someplace in District 10, where they keep the livestock. Thus, the Beloit dilemma.

Maybe I'm being churlish about this; perhaps Beloiters should be grateful that Hesse doesn't really want to subject my alma mater with an irredeemable type like Kashuv. After all, the Yale of the Midwest needs to maintain its own smelly orthodoxies and a guy who actually likes guns might scare the other matriculants. Hesse is concerned, though -- something has to be done, you see:

What does it look like to make amends? How do we decide what’s redeemable, for example, and then how does a person actually become redeemed? What kind of roles does our society allow for them, and when?

When I read Baker’s essay, I didn’t know what to do with the bad men. I didn’t know where they should go, or what the right societal reentry would be. I didn’t want to talk about the bad men at all, but eventually we’ll need to.

The Baker in question is Katie Baker, whose essay concerns what to do with men who run afoul of #MeToo. No one has suggested Kashuv has a sexual issue, other than obviously being too in love with guns so he must be compensating for something, I guess.

Ultimately, we're back to the same cultural turf where we encountered the Covington Catholic kids, who were bad by definition, even though those doing the defining, including Hesse's employer, were wrong. Nicholas Sandmann is suing Monica Hesse's employer. Kyle Kashuv won't be, most likely. But I have two questions -- first, why on earth would Kyle Kashuv want "societal reentry" in the world Monica Hesse inhabits? And second, who made Hesse and her ilk the arbiters of such things?

This makes it easy

So when John Brennan called Donald Trump treasonous, he didn't mean Donald Trump committed treason:

Brennan clarified the comment during an interview Friday, after MSNBC's Rachel Maddow said Brennan said the press conference "rose to treason."

The former CIA director disputed the characterization of his "treason" tweet, saying that he felt compelled to make the comment after Trump sided with Putin's denials of Russia's election interference.

"And for Mr. Trump to so cavalierly so dismiss that, yes, sometimes my Irish comes out and in my tweets," Brennan said.  "And I did say that it rises to and exceeds the level of high crimes and misdemeanors and nothing short of treasonous, because he had the opportunity there to be able to say to the world that this is something that happened."

"And that's why I said it was nothing short of treasonous.  I didn't mean that he committed treason.  But it was a term that I used, nothing short of treasonous," he said.

So Trump does treasonous things but doesn't commit treason when he does treasonous things? All righty, then. In other words, John Brennan will say any damn thing, but don't hold him to it. His opinion means nothing. Proceed accordingly.

Marquette gets its ass kicked

I never attended Marquette University, but it's always had a place in my heart, especially from my childhood memories of Al McGuire's great basketball teams of the 1970s, which was about the only successful sports entity in Wisconsin in those days. I always rooted for those teams. To this day, I still root for Marquette's basketball team, even when they are playing my otherwise beloved Wisconsin Badgers.

Having said that, I'm delighted that Marquette lost yesterday. And they lost a big way:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is ordering Marquette University to give a suspended professor his job back.

"That feels very good. My case has finally been vindicated," John McAdams said Friday, July 6.

It's been nearly four years -- seven semesters -- since John McAdams taught a political science course at Marquette University.

"It's frustrating. I don't like being out of the classroom. I like teaching," McAdams said.

McAdams was suspended in 2014 for a blog post that criticized another instructor who had refused to allow a debate over gay marriage in her classroom.

As a reminder, Marquette is a Catholic university. And as a reminder, in 2014 gay marriage was still very much a topic of conversation and debate -- the Obergfell case did not come down until 2015. Writing for National Review, David French provides a succinct summary of what happened:

The facts of the case are relatively simple. In late 2014, a student approached Professor McAdams and told him that his instructor, a graduate student named Cheryl Abbate, had “listed a number of issues on the board” — including “gay rights” — and then said, “Everybody agrees on this, and there is no need to discuss it.”

After class, the student approached the instructor and attempted to engage her in a discussion about gay marriage. After an initially appropriate exchange, the instructor shut down the discussion, saying that “you don’t have a right in this class to make homophobic comments” and “in this class, homophobic comments, racist comments, will not be tolerated.” She then “invited the student to drop the class.”

The student recorded the encounter and played the recording for McAdams. McAdams wrote up the encounter on his blog, the “Marquette Warrior,” named the instructor, and linked to her public personal webpage. As his post gained increasing public attention, Abbate received a series of hateful messages from third parties, including some that threatened violence.

Marquette decided that McAdams had doxxed Abbate. Back to French:

Marquette responded to this incident by rallying behind Abbate and immediately placing McAdams under investigation. It convened a Faculty Hearing Committee (FHC) that featured a member who’d signed a statement condemning McAdams and then laughably claimed that the statement showed no disqualifying bias. After a four-day proceeding, the FHC recommended that the university suspend McAdams for “no less than one and no more than two full semesters.”

The president of the university then suspended McAdams without pay and said that his reinstatement would be contingent upon his signing a letter that — among other things — acknowledged his blog post “was reckless and incompatible with the mission and values of Marquette University.” McAdams refused to sign the letter and thus remained suspended. He filed suit, seeking reinstatement and back pay.

As a matter of law, this is easy. Marquette and McAdams had a contract. Marquette breached the contract and McAdams is entitled to relief. While I would prefer that private universities have latitude in how they run things, a contract is a contract. Back to French:

When a private university makes binding promises to its employees, courts can and must hold the university to its word. In my more than 20 years of battling censorship on college campuses, I’ve seen the same pattern time and again. Elite private universities — often using flowery, aspirational language — promise a marketplace of ideas and then deliver less academic freedom than the community college across town. They use their academic freedom to make a poetic promise, and then claim that same freedom allows them to go back on their word.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court rejected this reasoning, noting that the university could not “excuse its breach of the Contract as an exercise of its academic freedom.” Instead, the analysis was simple: If McAdams’s blog post fit within the scope of protected academic expression, then the university was barred — by the terms of its own faculty handbook — from punishing McAdams for it. The handbook was crystal clear: “In no case, however, shall discretionary cause [for discipline] be interpreted so as to impair the full and free enjoyment of legitimate personal or academic freedoms of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy, or action.”

For its part, Marquette doesn't get it. The university posted a remarkably snotty response on its webpage:

The McAdams vs. Marquette case strikes at the core of who we are as a university. When a professor violates professional responsibility toward one of our students, Marquette must be able to respond with discipline. This is not about academic freedom or freedom of speech – it is about a professor’s unprofessional conduct toward a student teacher that resulted in direct, irreparable harm. John McAdams treated our student in a manner that does not represent our Guiding Values as a Catholic, Jesuit university, and in doing so, violated his contract.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's a pile of crap. The only contract that matters in this case is the employment contract Marquette had with McAdams. McAdams did not violate his contract in any way. Marquette knows that, which is why they aren't going to appeal. There's more:

This case has never been about academic freedom or a professor’s political views. Had the professor published the same blog without the student-teacher’s name or contact information, he would not have been disciplined. Marquette has been, and always will be, committed to academic freedom. Marquette welcomes a wide variety of views and perspectives and is a place where vigorous, yet respectful, debate happens every day.

The point of publishing the name of Cheryl Abbate was simple -- to warn people who might take her classes that the academic freedom Marquette claims to revere was not operative in her classroom. People have a right to know that. As for the claim that she received threats after McAdams published his blog post, I would hope that law enforcement would seek out the individuals who made those threats and deal with them appropriately.

At bottom, the problem here is hardly unique to Marquette. Plenty of colleges have decided to set themselves up as judge, jury, and executioner by setting up one-sided and frankly ludicrous disciplinary processes. French asks the relevant question:

How many times must universities lose in court before they learn to embrace true academic freedom? Time and again, they’ve lost challenges to their speech codes, speech zones, and restrictive rules that defund conservative and religious organizations. McAdams’s case represents the latest loss to a conservative professor who cried foul. At present, however, the calculation seems to be that universities would rather endure litigation than face the internal consequences of defying the most radical members of their academic communities — the professors, students, and administrators who demand censorship and repression.

Conservative students and professors have precious little internal leverage, so they are forced to appeal to courts to vindicate their rights. 

Or, in the case of the University of Missouri, universities face other consequences:

In an effort to manage a $49 million budget shortfall, the University of Missouri will eliminate 185 positions and lay off 30 staff members.

In addition, the university will reduce travel, eliminate some courses with low enrollment, cut down on sponsorships of some events and convert several printed products into online-only publications, said MU Chancellor Alexander N. Cartwright and Vice Chancellor for Finance Rhonda Gibler in an announcement made public Thursday.

Marquette could turn this around by affirming it is a place where academic freedom is revered and available to all. It does not appear they are ready to do so yet. Al McGuire isn't going to be able to help them.

Madness in Annapolis

Another shooting, this time in Annapolis, Maryland:

A gunman blasted his way into the Capital Gazette newsroom in Annapolis with a shotgun Thursday afternoon, killing five people, authorities said.

Journalists dived under their desks and pleaded for help on social media. One reporter described the scene as a “war zone.” A photographer said he jumped over a dead colleague and fled for his life.

The guy who did it? A nut with a grudge against the paper:

Police took a suspect into custody soon after the shootings. He was identified as Jarrod W. Ramos, a 38-year-old Laurel man with a long-standing grudge against the paper.

Ramos was charged with five counts of first-degree murder, according to online court records. He did not have an attorney listed; a bail review hearing is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. Friday in Annapolis.

What was the issue?

Ramos’ dispute with the Capital Gazette began in July 2011 when a columnist wrote about a criminal harassment case against him. He brought a defamation suit against the columnist and the organization’s editor and publisher. A court ruled in the Capital Gazette’s favor, and an appeals court upheld the ruling.

Neither the columnist, Eric Hartley, nor the editor and publisher, Thomas Marquardt, are still employed by the Capital Gazette. They were not present during the shootings.

The article in question was called "Jarrod Wants to Be Your Friend" and Slate has an excerpt:

“’I just thought I was being friendly,’ [the woman] said… That sparked months of emails in which Ramos alternately asked for help, called her vulgar names and told her to kill herself. He emailed her company and tried to get her fired.

 But when it seemed to me that it was turning into something that gave me a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, that he seems to think there’s some sort of relationship here that does not exist … “I tried to slowly back away from it, and he just started getting angry and vulgar to the point I had to tell him to stop,” she told the judge.

 “And he was not OK with that. He would send me things and basically tell me, ‘You’re going to need restraining order now.’ ‘You can’t make me stop. I know all these things about you.’ “I’m going to tell everyone about your life.” “An email in April 2010 said, ‘Have another drink and go hang yourself, you cowardly little lush. Don’t contact you again? I don’t give a (expletive). (Expletive) you.

Not the sort of friend anyone would want. In other words, this guy was operating in his own world, independent of anything otherwise happening around him. There won't be any place for the usual ghouls who enjoy using mass murder to push their agendas on this story. Then again, who knows?

All's well that ends well (but all is not well)

Doing it for 200 years

We finally have things figured out and we now know Fearless Maria will be headed to Saint Louis University in the fall. SLU wasn't necessarily her first choice, but I'm pretty sure it will be the right choice in the end. I really think the college chase is out of control. So many kids are chasing so few spots that the competition is becoming absurd. I've seen it written that many schools wouldn't accept their alumni today -- the board scores and high school grade point averages that could get you into a high-level school 25 years ago wouldn't be nearly enough now.

Has the product improved that much? I don't think anyone who pays attention would make that argument. Every day brings new word of some outrage of political correctness or scandal. Some schools seem to have sold their souls. Our friend Bike Bubba has been covering the unfolding scandal at his alma mater, Michigan State University, with great interest and even greater dismay. The stories coming out of Saint Olaf, a school Fearless Maria briefly considered, are scandalous. And it's clear that places like Evergreen State College are asylums, not academe. We line up to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to such places.

For what it's worth, Benster's school, Knox College, does a good job of keeping speech free on its campus. In many ways, Knox is a typical liberal arts college and is crawling with portsiders, but I had a good feeling about Knox from the outset, an impression that was verified when I heard its president, Teresa Amott, make a specific point that incoming students needed to listen to all voices, liberal and conservative, during her remarks at the opening convocation four years ago. Based on what I know about SLU, Fearless Maria should have a similar experience.

Everbody's heard about the bird

I'm pretty sure Donald Trump flipped the bird yesterday:

Just can't put my finger on what's happening

This is a trap, Democrats. If they start going off about coarseness, there's plenty of impressive evidence that his behavior in this instance is, well, presidential:

Have some, Paul Ryan

If that's too ambiguous for you, there's this:

A dream is a wish your heart makes

Or this:

Hello, Jacksonville!

Or this:

And when you smile for the camera, I know I love you better

There's even a legacy:

Strategery

If it were up to me, presidents wouldn't flip the bird at people. But it's not. And let's not pretend anything Trump does is an affront to decency. That ship sailed a long time ago.

Facelifts and pearl clutching

Oh, that Trump. As always, read from the bottom up:

Wearing a face that she keeps in a jar by the door

I have it on good authority that Trump is worse than ever for writing these tweets. Presidents don't say these things, I'm told. Then again, John Adams would have done quite well on Twitter. Consider this less than 140 character putdown of Benjamin Franklin:

"His whole life has been one continued insult to good manners and to decency."

Or his summation on Alexander Hamilton, which might have required 2 tweets to complete:

"That bastard brat of a Scottish peddler! His ambition, his restlessness and all his grandiose schemes come, I'm convinced, from a superabundance of secretions, which he couldn't find enough whores to absorb!"

The difference, as far as I can tell, between Trump and his predecessors, is that he likes to do the dirty work himself. As a general rule, it's considered bad form to punch down, and yes, it would be better to ignore the likes of Mika Brzezinski, but Trump isn't going to do it.

Again, the salient point comes from the Ace of Spades:

A major schism in the party is over the question of how much pretense we're fighting to keep lying about. A lot of people seem to think that even though we're plainly in a Cold Civil War, and even thought Joe and Mika spend three hours a day ripping Trump, Trump's supposed to pretend we're all (as John McCain says) Good Friends.

I'm not saying Trump scored some tactical victory here. I'm saying, as I usually do- - who gives a wet shit?

How can the flailing old women of the Nominal Right huff themselves up so much to pretend outrage that a guy being attacked by the media everyday decides to occasionally attack them back?

I understand the leftist media's interest in pretending that they're behaving normally and haven't rewritten the professional code of conduct to allow attacks on Trump which would have been near-hanging-offenses on Obama.

But what is the interest of the sissified Nominal Right over defending the media and pretending along with them?

It's the question of the moment, really. Is there any compelling reason to assume that anyone in the MSM is playing it down the middle? John McCain and Mitt Romney always went all Marquess of Queensberry in their presidential ambitions. We know how that turned out.

All the basketball coaches in the Big Ten loved Steve Yoder when he coached the Wisconsin Badgers in the 1980s. They were fulsome in their praise of his coaching skills and the way he ran his program. Of course, they kicked his ass, but it was quite gentlemanly. When Bo Ryan took over the Badgers, he was not very well liked among his peers, but that was because he was beating his opponents.

If your objective is to be dignified and keep your conscience clear, then you can hang out with the pearl clutchers. At this point, my objective is to keep the Left from doing any further damage to this nation. We all have choices to make. Choose wisely.

Update: My good friend and blogging colleague Brad Carlson has a different take.

The Climate Kabuki

Writing for the American Interest, Jason Willick makes a key point about the scuttling of the Paris agreement:

Like many Trump-era debates, the President’s actions on Paris are best understood through the lens of what we (following Tyler Cowen) have called “placebo politics”—elevating or reducing the status of this or that group through symbolic actions that won’t have much if any material impact on policy. President Trump’s repudiation of the agreement falls into this category: It delights his nationalistic base and sends his internationalist-minded critics into paroxysms of rage and despair—all without actually doing anything, because the Paris agreement consists simply of voluntary, unenforceable emissions pledges that are already being flouted.

All religious movements bewail apostates. And on an operational level, faith in the efficacy of climate agreements, and treaties generally, requires belief in the perfectibility of human nature, and on the self-proclaimed genius of those who negotiate such things. Back to Willick:

The drama of the Paris climate accords, then, amounts to a portrait in miniature of our political moment. A smug establishment indulged in vacuous, photo-op politics that doesn’t get us any closer to solving our major problems but pleases donors and nonprofits and makes the great and good feel even better about themselves. An angry coalition of people who felt that their status was declining reacted against this half-hearted phoniness by indulging in a placebo politics of their own—raising their own status by nihilistically tearing down the other side. Trump’s decision today doesn’t make the U.S. better off, but it probably doesn’t make us much worse off, either.

That mostly seems right to me, but I do have one quibble -- are we really talking about nihilism in this context? I don't really know too many nihilists -- do you? And as Mark Steyn has said, when we are talking about climate treaty supporters, we are talking about people who believe, in the main, that we cannot control political borders, but we can control the heavens. Clearly there's faith involved.

Special counsel

We'll have to see how it goes. Chuck Schumer won't be satisfied unless he gets Trump's giant head on a pike. Can't control any of it, so for now we'll just keep watching.

Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies

Word broke yesterday that the racist note "hate crime" that caused St. Olaf to go into turmoil a few weeks back was a hoax:

A racist threat against a St. Olaf student that touched off campuswide protests and forced the college to cancel classes earlier this month was a hoax, the school revealed Wednesday.

A student confessed to writing the note, St. Olaf President David R. Anderson wrote in a message to students. The threat — an anonymous, typewritten note — was “fabricated,” he said, as an apparent “strategy to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”

“This was not a genuine threat,” Anderson wrote in the first of two messages Wednesday to students. “We’re confident that there is no ongoing threat from this incident to individuals or the community as a whole.”

Hoaxes are a problem. If some of the responses of the students quoted in the Star Tribune article are accurate, and I have no reason to believe they aren't, St. Olaf has a much bigger problem on its hands:

Finals begin next week and students were out on the campus grounds Wednesday enjoying the spring sunshine. Student groups set up study break stations on the lawn, blasting music and handing out cotton candy.

Sophomore Alexandra Mascolo was swinging in a hammock next to the campus chapel. She’d participated in the protests earlier this month and believed that the most recent incident “started something good” at the college, although she noted, a hate crime hoax, “was not necessarily the best way to get it started.”

Confirmation bias is a good thing, I guess. Omelets, eggs, that sort of thing. Mascolo isn't alone:

Student organizers who this month called for sweeping changes on campus to address a string of reported incidents involving racist messages targeting black students, said Wednesday that they don’t know the identity of the hoaxer. But they say their protest went beyond any single incident.

“Our movement wasn’t about one individual,” said Precious Ismail, a spokeswoman for the campus group, the Coalition for Change on the Hill. “Our movement was about a pattern of institutional racism.”

What we're not clear about, at least yet, is whose racism we're talking about. As for the movement's actual goals, let's consider the very first demand  the students made in the wake of the initial protest:

A. We demand the removal of Arne Christenson from the Advisory Board of The Institute for Freedom & Community. Given Mr. Christenson’s political views and values as a Christian Zionist, St. Olaf College risks his influence upon the speakers brought to the school, the educational offerings, faculty development workshops, and scholarships sanctioned by the Institute through financial means.

Christian Zionist? What does that have to do with a note on a windshield? And who is Arne Christenson, anyway? A member of the St. Olaf Class of '83, but a thought criminal -- he works for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, you see. And since the United Nations has told us that Zionism is racism, Christenson can't be part of anything affiliated with his alma mater.

The picture of St. Olaf's president, Anderson, with the student group making the demands, must be seen to be believed -- check out the sullen, creepy Maoist vibe you get from the assembled students surrounding Anderson:

Better get with the program there, bald dude

This is the same warmed-over leftist agenda we've seen for years. There's no joy in it, there's no attempting to make the world a better place. It's all about coercion and settling scores. The demands aren't for justice, but for conformity to a narrow worldview. Free inquiry? Forget it. It's a betrayal of everything a liberal arts education is supposed to champion. The St. Olaf campus is gorgeous, but it's a Potemkin village.

We visited St. Olaf as a potential college for my daughter a few months back; I wrote about it at the time. We'll be looking elsewhere.

A source is a source, of course, of course

The Leader of the Free World isn't having it:

Sad!

I would think he's referring to this article, which does have a whiff of literary device about it:

Aides confer in the dark because they cannot figure out how to operate the light switches in the cabinet room. Visitors conclude their meetings and then wander around, testing doorknobs until finding one that leads to an exit. In a darkened, mostly empty West Wing, Mr. Trump’s provocative chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, finishes another 16-hour day planning new lines of attack.

They can't even turn on the lights! What a bunch of simps! But there's more:

Usually around 6:30 p.m., or sometimes later, Mr. Trump retires upstairs to the residence to recharge, vent and intermittently use Twitter. With his wife, Melania, and young son, Barron, staying in New York, he is almost always by himself, sometimes in the protective presence of his imposing longtime aide and former security chief, Keith Schiller. When Mr. Trump is not watching television in his bathrobe or on his phone reaching out to old campaign hands and advisers, he will sometimes set off to explore the unfamiliar surroundings of his new home.

He's in his bathrobe at 6:30 p.m.! Man, what the hell is wrong with this guy?

We can take the word of the reporters on this piece, Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman, because we know they are objective. Thrush had his moment in the WikiLeaks sun last year (sorry about the embedded Anglo-Saxon terminology):

Better run it by Podesta first

Meanwhile, Haberman has a key endorsement of her work:

Tee for two

Satisfaction guaranteed! I'm sure these journalists are getting the story exactly right. If you want a story teed up, get the right people involved.

Trump may wear a bathrobe, but these two reporters have been standing naked in the public square for a long time now.

A tidy summation

Walter Russell Mead, making essentially the same point I've been trying to make recently:

President Obama will no doubt have a lucrative and high-profile retirement. He’s younger than most Presidents, and he will be staying in Washington for the time being. But his immediate legacy is clearly a disaster for Democrats: in early 2017, the Party will control a minority of state houses and no branch of Federal government. With so little, it’s very difficult to regenerate and develop a farm system. The Democrats’ bench is already extremely shallow; it probably won’t get much more crowded over the next few years.

Meanwhile, President Obama’s signature policy initiatives are withering on the vine. The Iran Deal looks unlikely to survive the next four years. Obamacare will likely be gutted early next year. The President’s international climate change frameworks aren’t supported by the incoming administration or the incoming Congress. His nuclear non-proliferation efforts failed. Dodd-Frank’s regulations may be repealed. His free trade agenda has stalled. His immigration reform efforts have led to a backlash that will make life even harder for the people he tried to help. The list goes on…

Darn shame, right? The largest problem Democrats face is the bench Obama leaves behind. Politics is largely about showing up and, in a lot of places in the country, Democrats don't show up. You have a surfeit of political figures in larger metropolitan areas, but in smaller towns and exurban enclaves, Democrats don't have much traction. The DFL wins statewide elections in Minnesota because there are enough like-minded people in the metropolitan area to offset the lack of support DFLers get elsewhere. Well over half of the state's population is in the metro area.

Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, what power Democrats have is largely limited to Milwaukee and Madison, which together fall well short of having half the population. Wisconsin's population is spread out across a larger number of communities and many of them trend conservative. The Democrats have a difficult time winning arguments because the people making the arguments are all concentrated in the same places, which leads to groupthink. I'm not sure how the donks can solve this issue.

Closure

It's finally going to be done today -- the Donald will officially become President-elect. But for the moment, the battle continues in Pennsylvania:

Thousands of emails land in their inboxes every day. Copies of the Federalist Papers and other books urging political courage are being mailed to their homes. They are even getting phone calls in the middle of the night.

Such has been the life of Pennsylvania's 20 electors for President-elect Donald Trump since the Nov. 8 election.

On Monday, they will travel to the state Capitol to cast their votes to assign Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes to Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence during what has, in the past, been a ceremonial and largely unnoticed event.

Not this year.

This time around, the electors will be greeted by organized protests, urging them to assign Pennsylvania's electoral votes to anyone but Trump.

And in some instances, it's been nothing less than harassment:

One elector, Ash Khare, said he and each of the 19 others have been assigned a plainclothes state police trooper for protection.

"I'm a big boy," said Khare, an India-born engineer and a longtime Republican from Warren County, who estimates he receives 3,000 to 5,000 emails, letters, and phone calls a day from as far away as France, Germany, and Australia. "But this is stupid. Nobody is standing up and telling these people, 'Enough, knock it off.' "

No justice, no peace, Mr. Khare. And justice is however the people harassing you define the term.

It's been going on all over the country, too:

Michael Banerian, a Michigan elector and youth chairman of the state Republican Party, said he has received several messages threatening violence.

“You have people saying, ‘You’re a hateful bigot, I hope you die,’” Mr. Banerian told The Detroit News. “I’ve had people talk about shoving a gun in my mouth and blowing my brains out. And I’ve received dozens and dozens of those emails. Even the non-threatening-my-life emails are very aggressive.”

Even in Idaho? Sure:

In Idaho, Secretary of State Lawerence Denney issued a statement last week calling on Trump foes to stop harassing the state’s four electors.

“While there is no federal requirement binding electors to their pledge, and while Idaho is one of 21 states that does not have state-level legislation to force an elector to comply, attempting to sway an elector’s commitment to their party through insults, vulgar language, or threats simply lacks civility,” Mr. Denney said.

An overt threat is more than a lack of civility. This madness ends today and the psychosis of the Left will enter a new phase. I don't imagine it will be more rational than what is happening now.

Tea for the Tillerson

I don't know if it's the right approach, but once again the Donald is taking a different path:

President-elect Donald Trump has selected Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department, dismissing concerns about the businessman's close ties with Russia, two people close to Trump's transition said Monday night.

Trump's decision caps a lengthy process that often played out in public and exposed rifts within his transition team. It also sets Trump up for a potential fight with Congress over confirming Tillerson, who has connections with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump's argument is that familiarity will be helpful:

In a weekend interview with "Fox News Sunday," Trump cast Tillerson's deep relations with Moscow as a selling point. As Exxon Mobil's head, he maintained close ties with Russia and was awarded by Putin with the Order of Friendship in 2013, an honor for a foreign citizen.

"A great advantage is he knows many of the players, and he knows them well. He does massive deals in Russia. He does massive deals for the company," Trump said.

We're spending a lot of time worrying about Russia lately, even though we'd been assured just four years ago that Russia isn't such a problem:

When the 1980s call, do you accept the charges?

The current Secretary of State is John Kerry, the dictionary definition of a pompous ass and a figure of mockery in much of the world. It's possible that Tillerson could be worse than Kerry, but I'm not quite sure how. I might have preferred someone like Mitt Romney, but Trump's reading of the situation is understandable. In the business world, we often talk about "transferable skills" and the skill set of a CEO for a multinational corporation likely is a better fit than, say, the skill set of a pompous ass. I also imagine Tillerson will be far more likely to stick with Trump's program. That matters as well.

Existential threat?

As the old saying goes, personnel is policy. And the President-elect has made quite the pick for the Environmental Protection Agency:

Liberals and the environmental left have gone into a tizzy over the selection of Oklahoma attorney general Scott Pruitt as Donald Trump's pick to head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

House minority leader Nancy Pelosi says the Pruitt nomination must be blocked "for the sake of the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the planet we will leave our children." New York AG Eric Schneiderman says Pruitt is a "dangerous and an unqualified choice." Independent socialist senator Bernie Sanders declares the Pruitt pick is not only dangerous but also "sad." The League of Conservation Voters calls Pruitt not just a global warming skeptic but "an outright climate denier."

If you think that reaction is a bit strong, try this one from Obama hand Dan Pfeiffer:

High praise indeed

Pruitt has been a prominent member of a group of attorneys general who have been fighting against EPA rulemaking, especially where the energy industry is concerned. This isn't particularly surprising, given he is from Oklahoma, a state that produces a lot of energy. Does that make him an existential threat?

The larger meaning of the Pruitt nomination is simple -- the Washington bureaucracy needs to be reined in. Trump may actually be serious. We'll be watching.

Pipeline

I haven't written about the Dakota Access Pipeline controversy, mostly because it's outside the realm of topics we usually discuss around here. Things apparently got real out there yesterday:

CANNON BALL, N.D. — Law enforcement officers dressed in riot gear and firing bean bags and pepper spray evicted protesters Thursday from private land in the path of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, dramatically escalating a monthslong dispute over Native American rights and the project's environmental impact.

In an operation that took nearly six hours, hundreds of armed state and local police and National Guard — some on foot and others in trucks, military Humvees and buses — pushed past burning barricades to slowly envelop the camp.

At least 117 people were arrested. No serious injuries were reported, though one man was hurt in the leg and received treatment from a medic.

Among those arrested was a woman who pulled out a .38-caliber pistol and fired three times at officers, narrowly missing a sheriff's deputy, State Emergency Services spokeswoman Cecily Fong said. Officers did not return fire, she said.

Very briefly:

• Cannon Ball, ND has to be one of my all-time favorite datelines.
• Note the words "private land" in the article -- that's the lede.
• Peaceful protesters don't fire .38-caliber pistols.
• Burning barricades is an odd way to protect the environment -- this image from the AP tells the tale:

JAMES MACPHERSON – ASSOCIATED PRESS

What I do know is the lefties on my social media feed are really angry about all this. This is a Holy Cause. So I guess we need to pay some attention.

On Trump

Thoughts on the latest scandal scandal scandal SCANDAL SCANDAL! SCANDAL!!

• If Donald Trump had any wit, he'd start referring to his penis as Quemoy or Matsu.
• It took 32 years beyond the predicted date, but the Junior Anti-Sex League is here. For people who are obsessed with sex as much as modern liberals, they sure are a bunch of intermittent Puritans.
• It personally took me a while to realize this, but a gentleman doesn't discuss his sex life. For the most part, people who discuss their sex lives in detail don't actually have one. Trump would be an exception on both scores. Extreme narcissists are a breed unto themselves and are rarely gentlemen.
• For months, certain commenters here have asked me why I still consider myself #NeverTrump. It's because of crap like this. Defending the indefensible is a mug's game.
• I'm not particularly offended by what he said; back in the day, I heard worse on a daily basis. Although I don't remember saying anything as foul as what Trump said, I wouldn't swear I didn't, especially after I'd had a few adult beverages. But I stopped acting that way a long time ago. Trump never did and he's spent most of his adult life in proximity to microphones. He's probably said worse and we're likely to hear it before Nov. 8.
• A comment on Althouse's blog sums up the current state of play accurately:  "Any girl with a story to tell about Bill Clinton knows by now to keep her mouth shut. On the other hand, any girl with a story to tell about Donald Trump will be honored and richly rewarded. They're both players but the game is rigged in Clinton's favor." As usual, you can complain about the double standard all you want, but your complaints won't make the double standard go away. 
• So what is the actual standard? Republican sexuality is bad -- it's pretty much axiomatic. No one really gave a damn about Trump's horndogging, except in a Page Six, do you believe what Trump did this time? sense, until he began describing himself as a Republican. Trump likely didn't understand that when he was running his mouth 11 years ago, but he understands it now. Back in 2005, it wasn't disgraceful. It was marketing. Not any more.
• As always, the tape hit at the same time as another revelation of Clinton perfidy arose, but this time one that implicates St. Barack's minions. Can't have that, so we need to have the locker room banter on Page One. At some point, the historians may tell us some of the stories we really need to understand, assuming we still have historians in the future. We will only get glimpses of the truth for the moment.
• Unless the biochemical engineers in her employ screw up the titration and she dies onstage tomorrow at Washington University in St. Louis, Hillary Clinton is going to be president. The only consolation is she's going to reap a hell of a whirlwind. Everyone knows she's a monster and the Gods of the Copybook Headings will be visiting in due course.

A reminder from afar

We'd rather not talk about our governor in Minnesota. Sometimes it takes a reminder from an outside observer to make the point. Here's Victor Davis Hanson:

In our new age of racial polarization, few have been quite as crude as Minnesota governor Mark Dayton, who lashed out at any Minnesotans who questioned the wisdom of allowing into his state mostly unvetted refugees from Somalia, a few with demonstrable Islamist ties: “If you are that intolerant, if you are that much of a racist or a bigot, then find another state. Find a state where the minority population is 1 percent or whatever.” Then Dayton zeroed in with contempt for the white working class: “Our economy cannot expand based on white, B+, Minnesota-born citizens. We don’t have enough.”

I suppose if Dayton would stop insulting them and taxing the snot out of them, we might have a few more, but I digress. Hanson brings up Dayton in service of a larger point:

White progressive elites also explain much of the disparagement. By focusing on the supposed racism of the working classes, they find exemption for their own often exclusionary lives. Paula Deen’s long ago insensitive racial epithet was nearly a career-ending gaffe, whereas the nation simply shrugged off the more recent and racist characterization of Barack Obama in 2008 by then senators Joe Biden and Harry Reid. Saturday Night Live, worried about the appearance of its nearly all-white cast, just hired a “Latina” comedian who in preemptory fashion deleted 2,000 tweets that had illustrated her own racial stereotyping of black men and Asians in general.

Those with real “white privilege” can both alleviate guilt and navigate around the ramifications of their own racialist ideologies by expressing outrage at supposedly unrepentant Confederates and hillbillies — and, more recently, Trump supporters. I know hundreds of working-class whites in rural central California and have not heard racial slurs from any of them. But then again, none stereotype other white people as “deplorable” in the fashion of Hillary Clinton in 2016. Maybe because none ever traffic in the race vocabulary of “white people,” in the fashion that Hillary Clinton did in 2008, they now feel no need to do so to demonize them.

We all need our Other. And we all need our expiation. It's a lot more tolerable if you can dump your sins on someone else. Back to Hanson:

Cowardice too plays a role. It is much easier to blast faceless white supposed Neanderthals from afar when proximate whites are frequently the sensitive metrosexuals and pajama boys of the Yale campus, in the MSNBC green room, or among the Washington press corps. When a Princeton environmental-studies major confesses to her white privilege, she seeks exemption for her own apartheid by suggesting that white racists are epidemic in places she has never visited.

Speaking truth to power is not chastising those of the same elite class but rather venturing to a Bakersfield NASCAR race or a rural Ohio fairground to blast “white privilege.”

And if you want to know why Trump is still hanging in there, even though every major media outlet around is issuing full-throated denunciations of him, it's behavior of this sort that explains it. Hanson sums it up quite nicely:

In a new world of racially segregated dorms, racially safe spaces on campus, and racial preferences for the children of Eric Holder and Jorge Ramos, one needs a quite unattractive white working class other than the sympathetic multimillionaire cadre of a John Kerry, Chelsea Clinton, or George Soros. In that context, the Clingers, the Deplorables, and the B+ers of America’s vast loser interior serve well enough.

Until they don't.

The Wrong Messenger

If you think bashing the Fourth Estate is dangerous for our country, you might want a better spokesman for the notion than this guy:

Dan Rather took to Facebook on Wednesday to condemn Donald Trump's “tirade” against the media earlier in the week and defend the necessity of a free and critical press.

“I felt a shudder down my spine yesterday watching Donald Trump's fusilade against the press. This is not a moment to be trifled with. It wasn't his first tirade and it won't be his last,” the former CBS Evening News anchor said in a seven-paragraph post, which has already been shared more than 12,000 times.

Ahem:

CBS News apologized Monday for a “mistake in judgment” in its story questioning President Bush’s National Guard service, claiming it was misled by the source of documents that several experts have dismissed as fakes.

The network said it would appoint an independent panel to look at its reporting about the memos. The story has mushroomed into a major media scandal, threatening the reputations of CBS News and chief anchor Dan Rather.

It also has become an issue in the presidential campaign. The White House said the affair raises questions about the connections between CBS’s source, retired Texas National Guard officer Bill Burkett, and Democrat John Kerry’s campaign.

Rather joined CBS News President Andrew Heyward in issuing an apology Monday.

“We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry,” Rather said. “It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to carry on a CBS News tradition of investigative reporting without fear or favoritism.”

That was twelve years ago and Rather ultimately left CBS because of his conduct. The "good faith" part? Well, that was crap. It wasn't. There's been no good faith in American journalism in a long time. And CBS wasn't misled. They were attempting to mislead.

Trump is a danger -- I remain convinced of it. But you can't defend an empire of crap and Dan Rather and his ilk are a big part of the reason why Trump is able to make headway. And the shoddy practices continue, as we have learned recently:

Katie Couric has reversed course and taken responsibility for an edit that misrepresents the response of gun rights activists to a question she poses in a new documentary.

The segment in "Under the Gun" shows nearly 10 seconds of silence after Couric asks the activists how felons or terrorists could be prevented from purchasing a gun without background checks.

Audio of the exchange leaked last week reveals an almost immediate response to the question.

If you have a bunch of liars attempting to call out Trump on his lies, it's just not gonna work.