Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellow,
@NR_Institute
/
@NRO
| Host of Econception
@aier
| From WI, which does not border Canada | Tweets are mine, not my employer's
Dan Klein and I are editors of a new book of quotations from Edmund Burke. In his final years, Burke wrote with burning vitality in defense of liberty and against radicalism. He seems to be speaking directly to us today. Get a taste in this new piece
@NRO
DeSantis drops out with a fake Churchill quote.
International Churchill Society: "We can find no attribution for either one of these . . . They are found nowhere in his canon . . . An almost equal number of sources found online credit these sayings to Abraham Lincoln"
Sears built the tallest building in the world less than 50 years ago. Think about that next time you're tempted to say a company has a permanent hold on power.
BREAKING: White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who has spent over two years as President Joe Biden's top aide, is preparing to leave his job in the coming weeks, said a person familiar with Klain's plans.
Instead of playing Donald Trump’s loyalty game, Brian Kemp went to work and ran on his rock-solid conservative record as governor of Georgia. Voters rewarded him with a victory. New from me
@NRO
Only 17% of Hungarians attend worship services at least monthly.
29% of New Yorkers attend worship services at least *weekly*. (Another 34% attend once or twice a month or a few times a year.) And that's on the low end for U.S. states.
The image on the left is Budapest last night, on the Feast of St. Stephen. The image on the right is NYC 1956, on Easter. My friend James Card observes:
"What was unthinkable in Hungary in 1956 is happening in 2023, and what happened in New York in 1956 is unthinkable in 2023."
6 miles is only a few minutes away because we have cars. For most of human history, 6 miles took forever.
It's pretty great to have a vehicle that goes exactly where you want to go, exactly when you want to, carries all your stuff, and greatly expands the area you can access.
Most car trips in America are under 6 miles, and they’re for things like groceries, appointments, shopping, and dining.
Our built environment requires people to spend thousands of dollars a year on vehicles just to drive a few minutes away.
There are towns like this all over the U.S.
Some random examples from a quick glance at Google Maps: Bainbridge, IN; Cottonwood, MN; Newman Grove, NE; Fowler, MI
A French farming village surrounded by farmland, with nobody more than a couple blocks from long views into the countryside. An allee of trees welcoming you to town, the nearby expressway skirting by, leaving the village unmolested. What needs to change to do this in the US?
The least interesting hypothetical in politics.
Say what you will about McConnell, he has never -- under any circumstances at any point in the last 40 years -- favored ending the filibuster for legislation. He rebuffed Trump on it when he was majority leader.
Acosta: Democrats could think about it this way: If Mitch McConnell were in their shoes, what would he do? Given what we know, would we see him letting the filibuster stand? Is the filibuster more important than election rights, women’s rights…
"money that we took from you through taxation that, in a grand display of benevolence, we have decided to partially return to you if you buy products made by companies that donate to our political party"
Gorsuch 🔥 in Jarkesy:
"The Court hardly leaves the SEC without ample powers and recourse. The agency is free to pursue all of its charges against Mr. Jarkesy. And it is free to pursue them exactly as it had always done until 2010:
In a court, before a judge, and with a jury."
Aside from getting the law right, this case is also good because we can now quote Sotomayor next time someone says an AR-15 is an automatic weapon.
From her minority opinion:
There's so much in this report from
@zach_kessel
and
@ariblaff
about the Washington Post's terrible coverage of the Israel-Hamas war, but this part might be the craziest:
In the likely narrow GOP House majority that will result when the dust settles, it’s possible that NY will have made the difference between GOP control and another term as speaker for Nancy Pelosi.
For that, we have Lee Zeldin to thank.
New from me
@NRO
The inheritance tax is based on two assumptions:
1. Your wealth is ultimately the state’s, or at least a big chunk of it is; and
2. The state knows how to distribute your wealth better than you do.
Conservatives should reject both.
New from me
@NRO
I feel like there’s a weird memory-holing of the fact last spring Congress distributed $123 billion dollars to K-12 schools for Covid preparedness. That’s nearly $1 million *per school*. So big q is: what was that used for?
Dear Heavenly Father,
Please be with Ryan Newman and his family right now.
Please be with the medical professionals in Florida, guide their thoughts and actions.
In Jesus' holy name,
Amen.
“The cult of the American founding has no parallels in other English-speaking democracies. A British prime minister who declared that 21st-century Britain must turn for guidance to Horace Walpole or Pitt the Younger would be considered daft…”/1
At the same time that world leaders play armchair general with the Ukraine conflict, their own societies are decaying.
Not a single country - not even the US - within the NATO alliance has birthrates at replacement level. We don't have enough families and children to continue as
The U.S. and Argentina have little in common, Milei and Trump have little in common, and hard as it may be for the American media to believe, everyone on the planet isn’t as obsessed with Donald Trump as they are.
New from me
@NRO
Yuval from the top rope:
"The American and French revolutions were 'fueled by the same aspirations' in the sense that the fire in the hearth of a warm and stable home is fueled by the same oxygen as a raging inferno that burns down a city."
Look, I’m a capitalist.
I have no problem with companies making reasonable profits.
But not absurd levels on the backs of working families and seniors – it's about basic fairness.
I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way.
It's time to put an end to this nonsense.
I suggest every American who wants to know what’s *actually* going on in Russia and Ukraine, read this transcript of Putin’s address. As I’ve said for month— NATO (under direction from the United States) is violating previous agreements and expanding eastward. WE are at fault.
Far as I can tell, Democrats believe:
1. Americans use too much fossil fuels
2. Fossil fuels should be as cheap as possible
3. Fossil fuels should be harder to produce domestically
4. Foreign producers in OPEC should produce more
5. Nuclear power is bad
It's incoherent nonsense
Studying the writings of Edmund Burke, the father of modern conservatism, reveals something important: that right-wing intellectual thought is little more than a series of dressed-up defenses of conventional social relations and traditional hierarchies.
@JosephPolitano
The reason we have models is to simplify complex things so we can learn about them. "Haha your model leaves stuff out" -- yeah of course it does, that's why it's useful.
Tucker Carlson's amazement at the prices of Russian groceries doesn’t demonstrate Russia is doing something great. It demonstrates that Americans in foreign countries are rich.
New from me
@NRO
Senators Vance, Hawley, and Rubio have been among Pete Buttigieg's most vocal critics after the Ohio train accident. Yet today they introduced a bill that would give him more power and enact many of his rail-policy ideas into law.
New from me
@NRO
Aside from cheering for further chaos in the NEA, I’ll just note that in this battle between a despicable union and the despicable union’s union, the interests of one group of people — students — seem absent.
New from me
@NRO
A rare admission from the UAW that, contrary to its blue-collar image, a large segment of its membership (about 100K out of 370K total) is in higher education.
Remember that line of ships waiting off of southern California that people have mostly stopped talking about? It's longer than ever before. New from me
@NRO
It's hard to imagine how housing could be more governmentalized than it already is in the U.S.
People should be upset with government for raising housing costs. Getting government out of the way must be part of the answer to lower them.
New from me
@NRO
That deal Joe Biden and Marty Walsh celebrated to avert a rail strike? It's breaking down.
Unions and Democrats have moved the goalposts repeatedly.
Carriers have basically said they're done. It's hard to blame them.
New from me
@NRO
If opposing Hamas's terrorism fuels anti-U.S. sentiment in the Arab-Islamic world, that says more about the Arab-Islamic world than it does about the U.S.
I think the US is reacting to events in Israel-Palestine in ways that are leading to a very sharp rise in anti-US sentiments across the Arab-Islamic world and Global South that’ll last a long time. Not sure Biden administration officials quite realize this.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is an anti-worker, pro-Democrat, corrupt, and dying union.
Republicans should be happy to let Democrats try to sell unions’ crap sandwich.
New from me
@NRO
Justice Sotomayor's dissent in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson illustrates the emerging progressive view of governance:
Lawless public spaces and micromanaged private spaces.
New from me
@NRO
The case for protectionism can be framed as the government making you a little poorer for your own good.
The problem is that the “making you a little poorer” part usually happens, and the “for your own good” part usually does not.
New from me
@NRO
To give you an idea of how arrogant Joe Biden is, he says here that if God personally left the throne in heaven to tell him to do something, he *might* do it.
George Stephanopoulos: “If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?”
President Biden: “It depends. If the Lord Almighty himself comes down and tells me that, I might do that.”
Instead of getting mad at government for failures in air traffic control, we should ask why government runs it at all. It's not a public good in economic theory, and Canada has proven that privatized ATC works.
New from me
@NRO
5 U.S.C. § 7311
"An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States...if he...participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States"
@EsotericCD
I think it would be cool to have high-speed trains that fly through the air so they can directly connect two cities with no stops. You wouldn't have to worry about terrain or private property in between. They could fly super high, like 30,000 feet, and go over 500 mph...
Ds are going to call Rs entitlement-cutters no matter what, so Rs might as well have a plan to reform the programs.
By doing nothing, both parties are committed to a 23% Social Security benefits cut in 9 years.
h/t
@Brian_Riedl
New from me
@NRO
Try explaining this to someone from 2007:
"Congress is impeaching Pres. Donald Trump, and Rudy Giuliani is his lawyer, and Alan Dershowitz is defending him before Congress, and Republicans are against John Bolton. Oh, and most people don't really care about any of it."
Privatizing airports is not as radical as it sounds.
As
@marcscribner
@ReasonFdn
points out, the U.S. is actually an outlier for having nearly all passenger traffic go through government-owned airports.
New from me
@NRO
Several of
@Heritage
’s own policy experts were making arguments similar to mine in the very recent past, yet I am now being smeared as one of the “neocons” whose analysis is “flawed.”
New from me
@NRO
Griner’s experience at the hands of an authoritarian state seems to have changed her perspective on the flag, what it means, and why Americans honor it.
New from me
@NRO
Even forgiving $10K in students loans for borrowers making under $125K would likely wipe out the entire deficit reduction from the reconciliation bill that Biden just signed a week ago. New from me
@NRO
Want to build an elevator in the United States?
Good luck.
A new report sheds light on our uncompetitive, globally isolated elevator industry, with a powerful union and a patchwork of regulators standing in the way of construction.
New from me
@NRO
Yesterday in DC:
-three police officers were shot
-National Archives was vandalized
-two armed men robbed someone near Capital One Arena
-three people were found shot dead in an apartment
-three more people were shot on the street
New from me
@NRO
U.S. Steel is not owned by U.S. senators.
Warm fuzzies about America’s industrial past and bluster about national security are not sufficient causes to prevent property owners from doing what they please with their property.
New from me
@NRO
The two examples of "market fundamentalism" in the screenshot are from . . . Robert Solow and Larry Summers.
Nobody who has engaged with their work believes them to be market fundamentalists.
A scenario where China takes over Taiwan without a full invasion is scary because it is so plausible.
A report from
@AEI
and
@TheStudyofWar
walks through how that could happen, and how to prevent it.
New from me
@NRO
"To her credit, Haley does not appear to think that you will shatter upon contact with a problem that does not have a pat solution with no trade-offs or downsides."
@NoahCRothman
The Secret Service has a track record of failures and misconduct.
Especially after the attempt on Trump's life, it is in need of serious questioning and accountability from taxpayers and their elected representatives.
New from me
@NRO
If Republicans don't vote for black politicians, that's evidence that they're racist.
If Republicans do vote for black politicians, that's also evidence that they're racist.
“Constitutional crisis” is not a term to throw around lightly, but the Supreme Court averted one today with its rulings on student loans.
Also, Miguel Cardona should still be impeached.
New from me
@NRO
Abigail is a great editor and writer. Count me among those who would have never guessed she was going through so much pain.
Hope this piece helps raise awareness to better treat endometriosis, and happy to hear she is healing.
The captain of the U.S. national cricket team was running an Asian-food restaurant a few years ago.
The best bowler works full-time at Oracle and will need to request more time off if the U.S. advances.
And they beat Pakistan.
New from me
@NRO
The planning process for Thanksgiving turkeys is decentralized through markets. Millions of people plan small things that are within their power to control, and with the aid of the price system, people get the turkeys they want.
New from me
@NRO
Kevin Williamson is right about a lot of things, but one of the things he is most right about is the lack of will among prosecutors to go after straw buyers of firearms. Astonishing (or maybe not so astonishing) stuff from Illinois:
Wisconsin is holding an election today.
No weeping and gnashing of teeth from the national media this time around.
No spike in coronavirus cases from the April election.
Will anyone admit they were wrong? Will anyone be held accountable for crying that democracy was over?
Trump Saturday: The voters know that Daniel Cameron isn't really a "McConnell Guy"
Trump today: "Daniel Cameron lost bc he couldn't alleviate the stench of Mitch McConnell"