From the Right: Dem Leader Knows How to ‘Go Low’
Eric Holder last week rejected Michelle Obama’s advice for Democrats to “go high” when others “go low.” And, “if there is anyone who knows about ‘going low,’ ” notes National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, it’s Holder. McCarthy offers tons of examples: Holder was the first US attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress. He helped “a Democratic president spring” FALN terrorists from prison. He filed a court brief on behalf of an al Qaeda jihadist. He shared a podium as the Rev. Al Sharpton threatened mayhem. “In a better time,” laments McCarthy, Holder “would be dismissed as a fringe radical who endorses forcible, extortionist tactics against political adversaries.” But today, Holder is “a mainstream Democratic leader.” America, he says, needs more moderate Democrats “to take their party back.”
Foreign Desk: Confronting the Rising Threat From China
Never mind who Team Trump picks for the Supreme Court or its immigration policies; its “most significant and lasting decisions,” asserts Fareed Zakaria at The Washington Post, “will be about U.S. policy toward China” — which may soon become America’s “main rival for superpower status.” But though the administration “has the right instincts toward Beijing, “instincts do not make for grand strategy.” Indeed, the best way to confront that challenge is in the way America prevailed over the Soviet Union: through “revitalization at home.” While “tariffs and military maneuvers might be fine at a tactical level,” the US “desperately needs to rebuild its infrastructure, fix its educational system, spend money on basic scientific research and solve the political dysfunction.” If China is a threat, he concludes, that’s the best response.
Analyst: California’s Soon-to-Vanish Net-Neutrality Law
California Gov. Jerry Brown just signed a net-neutrality law, hoping to sidestep federal policy. It’s a bad law, argues economic analyst Bret Swanson at Forbes, but one that “won’t be law for very long,” given a Justice Department lawsuit filed in response. Consumers have long demanded “a free and open Internet,” but a 2015 FCC net-neutrality order led to “complex rules . . . asymmetric regulation, micromanagement of network interconnection, potential price controls, and bureaucratic supremacy.” Yet the Constitution “gives Congress authority over interstate commerce,” such as Internet traffic. Plus, the 2017 federal rollback of the 2015 order contained “a specific clause preempting ‘state or local’ measures” that run counter to it. Swanson cites Boston College law professor Daniel Lyons’ prediction that Justice “is likely to win” this case. The Internet, he assures readers, “will remain free and open. Even in California.”
Iconoclast: Dems Are Blowing It Again
Democrats’ burn-it-all-down approach during the Kavanaugh confirmation and since is killing them at the polls, notes The New York Times’ Bret Stephens. The GOP now has “at least a fighting chance of holding on to a majority” in the House and better odds yet for the Senate because “once again, American liberalism has pierced its own tongue.” Hillary Clinton’s “civility” comment; Rep. Jerry Nadler’s vow to hold hearings on Kavanaugh’s supposed perjury; Rep. Maxine Waters’ demand that people hound Republicans at restaurants and stores; a Times op-ed denouncing Sen. Susan Collins and other pro-Kavanaugh women as “gender traitors”: It all “meets the classic definition of a fanatic.” Stephens actually hopes voters will repudiate pro-Trump Republicans, but Dems are failing to be “a party that stands for sanity and moderation, not extremism and demagoguery.”
Fact-Checker: Drinkable Alcohol Beats Meteorites
Facebook users questioned the validity of a CNN story last week about a rock used as a doorstep that turned out to be a meteorite worth $100,000. But Holmes Lybrand at The Weekly Journal determines the report was “legitimate” — even if some people had trouble believing it. One user, for example, wondered why a rock from space would be valued at only $100,000, when a bottle of whiskey was recently sold for $1 million. “What’s the logic in that?!” the user asked. Yet Holmes had a ready answer: “To the journalist,” he explained, “the difference makes perfect sense: After all, can you drink a rock?”
— Compiled by Adam Brodsky
