 Dear Weekend Jolter, Admirers of Sydney Powell for her determined and skillful representation of Gen. Michael Flynn had to take the note-iest of note-takes when, as leader of Donald Trump's post-election legal team, she promised to "release the kraken" and thereby show proof of a stolen presidential election, by millions of landslide-y votes, courtesy of sus ballot-counting companies birthed in places abroad and nefarious. As the clock ticks towards approaching elector-certifying deadlines, game-changing kraken yet remain beneath the surface of the briny political seas. Will they breach soon? Reck havoc? Is there a strategic need (as we mix watery metaphors with things parched) to keep dry legal powder? Or will there be an Al Capone's vault aspect to this? Millions of the anxious demand: Get Kraken! The demands made of this epistle are quite different: Provide links! You shall find them aplenty. Short and sweet at first, thus satisfying the gods of G-Mail, and then many repeated (you will have to click on the READ MORE when this missives arrives at that point) avec big spoonfuls of delicious conservatism. Have at it. Get cracking! Editorials The $50,000 Question: Don't Forgive Student Debt. Drawing a Low China Card: Shunning the Trans-Pacific Partnership Was a Costly Mistake. America Last: The Radicalism of Raphael Warnock. Ixnay on the Fed Hopeful: No to Shelton. Bordering on Stupidity: Biden's Foolish Immigration Priorities. Where's the Kraken Beef: Trump's Disgraceful Gambit. Plentiful Displays of Brilliance and Erudition to Be Found on NRO Michael Brendan Dougherty finds an establishment boondoggle: Federal Student-Loan Cancellation Is Bad Policy. Robert Stein urges a Republican economic-policy rethink: A New Agenda for the GOP. Mackubin Owens is concerned about access to strategic minerals: A Growing Threat from China. Michael Auslin reports on a new handbook for taking on the ChiComs: China versus Democracy. Jay Elwes finds the post-populist model a clunker: Boris Johnson's New Look. Jim Geraghty on Barry's Benny-Hate: Obama's Simmering Resentment of Benjamin Netanyahu. Victor Davis Hanson considers the special elections: Marching into Georgia with the Senate in Sight. David Harsanyi praises the Founders' scheme: The Electoral College, Now More Than Ever. More David, who's creeped out by a hack: Raphael Warnock's Blood Libel. Michael Hendrix fingers the culprit: The Pandemic Isn't Killing Cities. Housing Regulations Are. Kyle Smith gags on Barry's gag rule: Obama's Ridiculous Call for Speech Police. John Loftus on virtue-signaling front lawns: About Those 'In This House' Signs. More Loftus, as he low-grades home-zoomery schooling: The Online Learning Crisis. Related from Frederick Hess and Matthew Rice: The Real-World Cost of Remote Learning. Ryan Mills answers Florida's 15-dollar question: Florida Restauranteurs Warn Minimum-Wage Mandate Will Shutter Struggling Small Businesses. Madeleine Kearns on whether a new POTUS and the remodeled PM will become BFFs: Boris and Biden. More Maddie, this time from the depths of the culture war: Gender Ideology, from the Classroom to the Clinic. Ryan Mills and Tobias Hoonhout find a Golden State phony: Gavin Newsom's Disgraceful COVID Hypocrisy the Latest Frustration for NAPA Restaurant Owners. More Tobias, who profiles a hit job: Chris Hayes, Jeff Goldberg Smear Madison Cawthorn Using Fake Quote. Sarah Schuette rattles those pots and pans: 'Making Mistakes, So You Don't Have to': America's Test Kitchen at 20. A Quartet of Solzhenitsyn Originals The new English-language translation of the great Nobel Laureate's memoirs – Between Two Millstones, Book Two: Exile in America, 1978-1994 – is out this week past, and NR has been thrilled to publish four excerpts: 1. The exile wants not to be: Yearning for Home. 2. Richard Pipes dastardly kneecaps a White House visit by the consequential dissident: An Encounter Sabotaged. 3. The Nobel Laureate writes to The Gipper: Letter to President Reagan. 4. A writer concentrating, while something lurks: Wolves and Ephemerality. Happy Birthday NR. Or, Time to Apply for Medicare? On the magazine's 65th birthday, we published James Burnham's initial column from the 1955 premier issue: The Third World War. The Mighty Quinn Ace reporter Jimmy is on the press plane of the globe-trotting Secretary of State, and files excellent reports that merit your attention. In Paris: Pompeo Kicks Off Post-Election Foreign Trip, in Low-Key Style. In Israel: Pompeo Declares Golan Heights Part of Israel, in First Visit by U.S. Secretary of State. In Jerusalem: Pompeo Declares BDS 'Anti-Semitic,' Turns Tables with Funding-Cutoff Call. In Jerusalem: Iran 'Ever More Isolated' as Israel Forges New Ties. In Tbilisi: Pompeo Visits Georgia, in Show of Support amid Russian Threat. In Istanbul: Pompeo Takes Religious-Freedom Agenda to Istanbul. Lights. Camera. Review! Armond White likes Jeanne: A Second Joan of Arc Film Challenges Us All. More Armond, who finds Ron Howard's latest is a bunch of hee-haw hoo-haw: Hillbilly Elegy: Opie and Vance at Yale and Hollywood. Editorials, Super-Sized 1. The call for student-debt forgiveness falls on deaf ears her. From the editorial: There is simply no justification for forgiving student debt broadly, even with limits to the overall amount of forgiveness or the income of the beneficiaries. Forgiving college debt is a slap in the face to those who paid down their debts early, those who minimized their borrowing by attending cheaper schools or working during their studies, those who forwent college entirely, and those suffering under other kinds of debt. College-loan forgiveness is also a poor way to stimulate the economy in the short term during the COVID-19 malaise, because there are plenty of groups more deserving, because much of the forgiven debt wouldn't have been repaid for years anyway, and because the forgiveness would probably be taxed. And it's virtually guaranteed to be regressive, for the simple reason that Americans who went to college are a richer-than-average bunch. And if debt forgiveness is premised upon the idea that the current lending system is unfair, why should only one generation of borrowers benefit? This will create political pressure, as all "one-time" amnesties do, for repetition on behalf of future borrowers, who will be encouraged to think of debt as free money that will never need to be repaid. Forgiving debt via executive order poses additional problems. Congress has unwisely granted the executive branch a broad authority to modify, compromise, waive, or release students' debts, but this was clearly not meant to authorize a mass-scale jubilee, and there are solid arguments that courts should not even allow it. For instance, federal law also directs agencies to "try to collect" the debts they are owed, and as the late Antonin Scalia once wrote, policymakers don't hide elephants in mouseholes: An obscure provision of the law shouldn't be taken as a license to ignore the rest of it.
2. With the RCEP emergence, we argue the Trump Administration's dealings with China have prompted a trade downside. From the editorial: Still, the sheer extent of the trade zone should worry Washington, which has missed opportunity after opportunity to convert the grievances of China's neighbors into meaningful policy victories. If previous ASEAN agreements are any indication, the scope of the RCEP is likely to expand over time. And those nations most willing to partner with the U.S. against China — Japan and South Korea — rank among the largest beneficiaries of the agreement. By abdicating our role in the region, we've allowed our allies to grow more dependent on Chinese corporations and consumers just as Beijing ratchets up its military and diplomatic aggression. The Trump administration deserves credit for emphasizing the dangers of China's economic malfeasance. For too long, Western leaders overlooked the trade barriers, industrial subsidies, and intellectual-property theft that gave China an unfair advantage in international trade. But over the past four years, the White House never delineated clear, cohesive goals for economic policy in Asia, often taking measures at cross-purposes with each other.
3. The Georgia Democrat senator-wannabe is one heck of a radical. From the editorial ... READ MORE | 
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