NATIONAL REVIEW
MAY 24, 2024 |
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◼ This isn't the first time the Left has gotten upset about Justice Alito's enthusiasm for the work of the Founders.
◼ The first-ever criminal trial of a former president and current de facto presidential nominee continues to be as peculiar as it is historic. Both sides had rested by Tuesday only to have the erratic judge, Juan Merchan, send the jury home for a week to enjoy the holiday weekend while marinating in the intense publicity (which he piously directed them not to consume). Trump "fixer" Michael Cohen, a convicted perjurer, fraudster, and born-again anti-Trump monomaniac, concluded a bruising cross-examination by admitting that he'd bilked the Trump Organization out of $60,000. But although Cohen is the rickety foundation of DA Alvin Bragg's bizarre indictment, prosecutors have been abetted by Merchan, who keeps letting them remind the jury that Cohen pled guilty to federal campaign-finance crimes—evidence that is not admissible against Trump in a case supposedly about falsifying business records but is being hyped to establish the "other crime" that Bragg must prove to convict Trump of a felony (or, rather, up to 34 felonies). The jury should begin deliberations on Wednesday. It will end them then, too, in the unlikely event that Judge Merchan gives it sound instructions.
◼ Late in her primary campaign, Nikki Haley began deploying tough rhetoric against Trump's fitness for office that cemented her support among Democrats and die-hard anti-Trump Republicans. Now she says that she will vote for Trump, even though she takes back nothing she said about him because Biden is worse. It is a reasonable position, although we cannot help but wonder whether it reflects a political calculation that Trump is likely to win. Mike Pence, in contrast, has declined to endorse either Biden or Trump. Which side of the argument a voter takes will turn in part on his view of protest votes. The political impact of Haley's quasi-endorsement is likely to be small, affecting her recent fans' view of her more than of Trump.
◼ Ripping from its context discovery about the Mar-a-Lago search warrant that prosecutors in the federal document-retention case had provided to the defense, Trump claimed that Biden had authorized the FBI to use lethal force against him. It is one of the former president's more appalling outbursts, which is saying something. The FBI develops an operational plan whenever it executes a court-ordered search warrant. That plan customarily includes a refresher on the FBI's use-of-force guidelines, which have been developed over many years under administrations of both parties. Carrying out a search can be dangerous for both the agents and the people whose residences are entered. To protect the agents and others from harm, and protect the government from legal liability, reviewing the guidelines ahead of time is standard practice and common sense. What's more, in this instance, the FBI intentionally conducted the search when Trump was not present at his Mar-a-Lago estate: He was never in danger. The former president's outrageous rant undermines some sound complaints about the manner in which the search was conducted.
◼ Two cases related to January 6 reached the Supreme Court's docket this spring, including Donald Trump's request for presidential immunity. So the New York Times assigned four reporters to scrounge for an excuse to delegitimize Justice Samuel Alito's participation. First, they claimed that Alito flew an upside-down flag as a "stop the steal" symbol at his home in mid January 2021, although all evidence showed that it was his wife who briefly flew the flag in a dispute with abusive neighbors. The "stop the steal" connection to the symbol is dubious and, contra the Times, the election contest was over by then. Alito never ruled in favor of any of Trump's efforts to overturn it. Given that, the Times dredged up Google images of the "Appeal to Heaven" (or "Pine Tree") flag flying at the Alito family's Jersey Shore house last summer. The flag was personally commissioned and approved in 1775 by George Washington, and a version of it is still the official maritime flag of Massachusetts. The Times warned, breathlessly, that the flag's slogan was taken from John Locke—like Washington, undoubtedly a suspicious insurrectionist.
◼ The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, one of the country's most powerful bank regulators, has been under renewed scrutiny since the failures of Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank last year. It was something of an open secret that the FDIC had a toxic workplace. A Wall Street Journal investigation in November detailed a heavy-drinking culture, instances of sexual harassment, and lack of discipline for managers who broke the rules. A 234-page independent report released in May contains allegations from over 500 individuals who say they were abused or mistreated as FDIC employees. Finally, lawmakers have called for FDIC chairman Martin Gruenberg, a Democrat, to resign. But he says he will resign only once his successor is confirmed. If he resigned immediately, Vice Chairman Travis Hill, a Republican, would become acting chairman. Gruenberg should put partisanship aside and leave now. |
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◼ Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of Texas, issued a full pardon to Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant who, in 2023, had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of a Black Lives Matter protester in Austin. In an indignant statement, Abbott pointed to a recommendation by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which had suggested a full pardon, as well as to Texas's stand-your-ground law, which, Abbott said, had been "nullified by a jury." It is certainly true that this case was more complicated than the partisans on either side have allowed. It is also true that Abbott is one of the oversimplifiers. Rhetorically, he has cast the case for a reprieve as a self-evident proposition that he has dutifully followed; in reality, he criticized the verdict before it even arrived, and then he initiated a review within 24 hours of its publication. Ideally, the pardon power would be used to reverse conspicuous miscarriages of justice. Here, it has been used to put a finger on the scale. Prior to the day of the murder, Perry sent a text message in which he promised to "go to Dallas to shoot looters." In the end, he didn't do that. But, a few weeks later, he did shoot someone. Was it murder, worth 25 years in prison? Perhaps not. But it wasn't worth a full pardon, either.
◼ It might not have been good while it lasted, but what the Associated Press called the "social justice movement of 2020" is starting to fizzle. The AP's mournful verdict accompanied its reporting on the results of the Democratic primary elections in, of all places, Oregon. There the self-proclaimed "people's champion," state-attorney-general candidate Shaina Maxey Pomerantz, lost by nearly 50 points to a more conventional candidate. Mike Schmidt, the progressive prosecutor who allowed Portland to descend into squalor, was booted by the city's Democratic voters in favor of a former Republican who promised to enforce the law. Susheela Jayapal, the sister of progressive congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, lost a U.S. House primary notwithstanding the endorsement of lefty stars including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And the perennial candidate Jamie McLeod-Skinner, an insurgent who unseated an incumbent Democratic congressman in 2022, was defeated. Even voters in the Pacific Northwest have their limits, and it seems that progressives have found them.
◼ Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi and the nation's foreign minister were killed when their helicopter crashed in the fog. Raisi, known as the "Butcher of Tehran," was responsible for the deaths of thousands, going back decades, through his actions in Iran's domestic affairs and its support for terrorism around the world. We join others in expressing our deepest condolences to the helicopter.
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◼ The relative unity that has existed in Israeli politics since the October 7 attacks is ending. Benny Gantz, the chief rival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, joined the wartime government after the attacks but has now issued an ultimatum: He will leave the government if Netanyahu doesn't decide on a Gaza plan by June 8. The announcement follows complaints by another member of the war cabinet, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, that Netanyahu hadn't explicitly ruled out a role for the IDF in governing Gaza after the war ends. Netanyahu already had his share of political enemies before last fall. That thousands of Hamas terrorists were able to infiltrate Israel, kill more than 1,200 people, and kidnap 240 more implicated him in failures in intelligence and military planning. The immediate need to respond to Hamas's attack and widespread agreement on the need to eliminate the terrorist group, however, encouraged Israelis to put their differences aside. Eight months later, with Hamas still in power, more than 100 hostages still in Gaza, and no clear plan for the end of the war and its aftermath, those differences have resurfaced. While Netanyahu's coalition would still be large enough to survive Gantz's exit, it would make the government more fragile and elections more likely.
◼ In coordinated announcements in their respective capitals, the prime ministers of Ireland, Spain, and Norway announced on Wednesday that their nations will formally recognize a Palestinian state. In the U.S., spokespeople for the National Security Council affirmed that the Biden administration remains committed to a two-state solution but also to the requirement that Israel be involved in negotiations for the establishment of Palestinian sovereignty on its borders. The Spanish government made clear that its recognition of this nongovernment is meant to bolster the case for an immediate cease-fire—which in practice amounts to protecting Hamas from destruction. The Israeli foreign minister called it "a gold medal for Hamas terrorists," and it is hard to imagine what these countries have accomplished other than awarding it.
◼ With the Tories polling more than 20 points behind Labour, the decision by Conservative prime minister Rishi Sunak to call a snap election some six months earlier than required was a surprise. Now the Conservatives face a reckoning with the electorate on July 4, not a happy date for unpopular British governments. In 2019, the Tories won a victory that gave them the chance to reshape British politics, but no one had expected that they would do so by, in all probability, making Labour the natural party of government for a long time to come. They managed this by stumbling from blunder to blunder, interrupted mainly by bouts of internecine feuding. With so much choice, it's hard to pick out the Conservatives' worst error, but their unwillingness to take on Britain's dominant soft-Left orthodoxy runs through many of them. If all goes as expected, Labour is unlikely to waste its opportunity.
◼ An NFL player has gotten in trouble again. Not for beating his wife, using drugs, or hiring prostitutes, but for giving an aggressively traditionalist commencement address at a Catholic college. Addressing graduates of Benedictine College, Harrison Butker, the 28-year-old Kansas City Chiefs kicker, reinforced unpopular church teachings and drew some political conclusions. He warned of the "deadly sin [of pride] that has an entire month dedicated to it," as well as the sins of contraception, cohabitation, "abortion, IVF, surrogacy, euthanasia," and other "degenerate cultural values" and "dangerous gender ideologies." Saying that women had been told the "most diabolical lies" about what makes them happy, he gave the example of his wife, whose life "really started when she began living her vocation as a wife and mother." The speech certainly could have used an editor to cut a few strange remarks and fend off misinterpretations. Still, the reaction to the speech has been preposterous. Nearly 225,000 people have signed a petition calling for Butker to be fired. The NFL issued a statement explaining that Butker's views "are not those of the NFL as an organization." One teammate, Patrick Mahomes, defended him while expressing some disagreement, as did Chiefs head coach Andy Reid. For now, Butker's career appears to have survived the debacle, which may yet move the ball for opponents of cancel culture.
◼ Brigadier General Clarence E. "Bud" Anderson, the last surviving World War II triple-ace pilot, has died at the age of 102. Born in California, Anderson learned to fly at 19 and served two combat tours aboard his P-51 Mustang Old Crow. He flew 116 combat missions over Europe, escorting heavy bombers, and is confirmed to have downed at least 16 enemy aircraft as part of the 357th Fighter Group, a.k.a. the "Yoxford Boys." He had the most confirmed kills of any group in the Eighth Air Force, earning him the title of highest-scoring ace in his squadron. On the 357th's most active day, it protected B-17s over Brandenburg from an attacking force of 200 Luftwaffe fighters, claiming 56 of the enemy aircraft. Anderson was a lifer, retiring from the Air Force as a colonel in 1972. He later joined the McDonnell Aircraft Company before retiring fully in 1984. He received the Congressional Gold Medal in 2015 and was honorarily promoted to the rank of brigadier general in December 2022. An American aviator of awesome bravery and skill. Prosequor alis, indeed. R.I.P.
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