Reporter: What Stone Indictment Does (and Doesn’t) Say
Roger Stone’s indictment was hardly a surprise: As Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux notes at FiveThirtyEight, he’s been “predicting for months that he would eventually be criminally implicated” in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. The seven-count indictment is related to Stone’s communications with WikiLeaks, which released e-mails from Democratic officials allegedly hacked by Russian agents. On its face, though, the indictment “doesn’t include much information that wasn’t already in the public eye.” And Stone “hasn’t been charged with anything that actually occurred during the campaign, like conspiring with WikiLeaks,” only with making false statements to Congress. Nor does the indictment shed any new light on “whether Trump campaign officials — or even the candidate himself — actively coordinated with Russia.”
Foreign desk: Why Unpopular Netanyahu Will Survive
What Daniel Gordis at Bloomberg finds “most striking” about Israel’s election campaign is that “virtually no one is debating issues.” That’s especially surprising, since Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “isn’t perceived as unbeatable,” even though “his experience and smarts have served Israel well of late.” But he faces no formidable opposition; indeed, “no one on the left has much of a vision to offer.” Which is why the April 9 election is all “about personalities, not issues.” If Israelis re-elect Netanyahu, “it will be not because they love him, but because they believe he can keep them safe.” Fact is, Netanyahu’s” steady hand and stability have been in striking evidence since Israel narrowly avoided war with Hamas a few months ago” — even his critics give him credit for that.
From the right: Liz Warren’s Asset-Forfeiture Crusade
Revolutions “do not set out to be awful,” notes National Review’s Kevin Williamson, “they just end up that way.” And Sen. Elizabeth Warren is beginning her populist presidential crusade by launching “a campaign of economic terror based on force, not law. She wants to seize “a portion of the assets of some wealthy Americans” — a course of action the federal government “has no constitutional power to undertake.” This is “fundamentally different” from taxing income: Warren wants a version of the asset-forfeiture law, minus any allegations of criminal misconduct. And it would be both “universal and annual.” It is, in short, a “ridiculous and illegal course of action.” Warren “may not be the radical she pretends to be,” but then, she’s already “pretended to be a lot of things.”
Analyst: Why Turkey Is Watching This New York Knick
New York Knickerbockers center Enes Kanter is not the first player of Turkish heritage in the NBA. But as Steven Cook points out at Foreign Policy, he is the only one to be “targeted for arrest by Turkey as a result of his religion.” That’s because Kanter is “the highest-profile and most outspoken disciple in the United States of the cleric Fethullah Gulen,” labeled a terrorist by Turkey. But Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan “isn’t wrong to think of him as a threat.” That’s because Kanter’s high public profile allows him “to highlight the unprecedented wave of repression that has been under way in Turkey.” Erdogan may have legitimate cause for concern about Gulenites, but “there is nothing legitimate” about the way his government has responded — especially “its thuggish manner of hunting down its own citizens abroad.”
Political scribe: Dems’ Generational Split on Capitalism
The Democratic Party has “a yawning generational divide” that became obvious in the 2016 campaign, reports The Week’s Conor Lynch. To older voters, septuagenarian Bernie Sanders’ call for “democratic socialism” seemed like “a throwback to another era,” while younger Democrats found it “fresh and relevant.” Moreover, this divide “has grown only wider” and more obvious since: “If there’s one underlying issue that seems to divide these two generations most, it’s probably capitalism.” Baby boomers remain committed to “saving capitalism from itself,” having grown up during the Cold War, when socialism was associated with Soviet-style communism. But millennials came of age post-Cold War and during the worst financial crisis since the Depression. For them, the idea that the free-market system could come to an end is not remotely inconceivable.
— Compiled by Eric Fettmann
