Jonathan V. Last, of the Weekly Standard, wonders why would anyone trust Donald Trump’s Supreme Court promises:
Pretty much the only reason conservatives have for supporting Donald Trump is the Supreme Court. “Think of SCOTUS!” is a superficially compelling argument. But only superficially.
For starters, conservatives have no reason–none–to believe that Trump would appoint a conservative justice. I point you here to Ramesh Ponnuru’s depressingly compelling assessment of Trump’s views of the high court:
Trump’s word is meaningless. He stiffs creditors and contractors. He lies about matters small and large: about having told Republicans to hold their convention in Ohio, about letters he supposedly received from the NFL and about having opposed the Iraq war from the start. Trump isn’t even trustworthy on his signature issue of immigration: He flip-flopped twice in one day during the campaign about whether high-skilled immigrants should be kept out as a threat to American jobs or welcomed as a boon to our economy.
Why would he keep his word on the courts? He doesn’t care about the Constitution or the proper role of judges. When he talks about the Constitution, it’s glibly and dismissively. When it’s suggested that the Constitution might pose an obstacle to his plans, he says it “doesn’t give us the right to commit suicide.” He knows almost nothing about the law: He can’t tell the difference between a judicial opinion and a bill.
The few times he has taken an interest in constitutional issues, he has been on the other side from most conservatives. He thinks the government should have broad power to take people’s property and give it to developers; they don’t. He has used courts as a weapon to silence critics, and thinks it should be easier to use them that way. Most conservatives find that record and that idea appalling. If President Trump asks his aides to find him a judge who agrees with him on these issues, they will start by scrapping his list.
The next part of “Remember the SCOTUS!” insists that Republican senators–the same group of sell-out, RINO elites that are always being blamed for Trump’s rise–will somehow discover the backbone to force Trump into picking a conservative. What in the history of Trump’s relationship with institutional Republicans might lead one to believe that they, the GOP, could bend Trump to their will? Search me.
Last week David Frum wondered if the dynamic might not run the other way, actually: “Isn’t it more likely that President Trump will choose his judicial nominees to spite Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell than to please them?”
After watching Trump attack Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte, and John McCain last week, the answer to this question has got to be–at least–maybe?
And here’s Ponnuru again, gaming out a much more plausible scenario for what Trump might do:
To get a conservative on the Supreme Court would require a President Trump to wage an ideological war with Senate Democrats, even though he says he would prefer to be a dealmaker, and even though that war would turn on issues for which he has never in his life shown the slightest concern. Instead of making good on his promise, he could cut a deal with the Democrats. His nominee could then win confirmation with the support of most Democrats, moderate Republicans, and some conservative Republicans who will want to be on the same side as Trump.
Guitarist Eric Clapton (who knew?) is evidently a salmon fisherman, and caught this year the biggest fish, 28 lbs. (12.7 kilo.) 42.5″ (108 cm.), taken in Iceland’s Vatnsdalsá River on August 5th.
“Clapton had to run a good kilometre down river with the salmon before he was finally able to draw it ashore, the salmon was hooked and after an exciting hunt came ashore just over an half hour later.”
Comments indicate that Clapton is partial to Marc Aroner’s fly rods.
Nice fish, even if it has been in the river quite a while and is getting very close to “wearing the Brodie tartan.” Look at the kype on him! If I were Clapton, I’d smoke this one.
On July 8, 2016, 27 year-old Democratic staffer Seth Conrad Rich was murdered in Washington DC. The killer or killers took nothing from their victim, leaving behind his wallet, watch and phone.
Shortly after the killing, Redditors and social media users were pursuing a “lead†saying that Rich was en route to the FBI the morning of his murder, apparently intending to speak to special agents about an “ongoing court case†possibly involving the Clinton family.
Seth Rich’s father Joel told reporters, “If it was a robbery — it failed because he still has his watch, he still has his money — he still has his credit cards, still had his phone so it was a wasted effort except we lost a life.†…
On Tuesday Wikileaks offered a $20,000 reward for information on the murder of DNC staffer Seth rich.
Now this…
Julian Assange suggested on Tuesday that Seth Rich was a Wikileaks informant.
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Anti-Hillary Wikileaks DNC emails: 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the top of the US Democratic National Committee. The leaks come from the accounts of seven key figures in the DNC: Communications Director Luis Miranda (10770 emails), National Finance Director Jordon Kaplan (3797 emails), Finance Chief of Staff Scott Comer (3095 emails), Finanace Director of Data & Strategic Initiatives Daniel Parrish (1472 emails), Finance Director Allen Zachary (1611 emails), Senior Advisor Andrew Wright (938 emails) and Northern California Finance Director Robert (Erik) Stowe (751 emails). The emails cover the period from January last year until 25 May this year.
Trump has run for the presidency several times, only capturing a nomination because President Barack Obama paved his path via eight straight years of mendacity, dishonesty, verbal trickery, and deceit. Nothing means anything anymore, so it’s impossible to hold Trump to account for anything at all.
Hillary Clinton lost the nomination last time around to a smooth-talking rookie, despite her claim to be the Smartest Woman in the World. This time she struggled to put away an avowed Communist who possesses all the personal charm of a tapeworm.
Visually, both are terrible on TV. Trump has the worst hair ever. Hillary has the worst voice ever. He has permanent bed head. She sounds like a screech owl with hemorrhoids. …
Whichever one wins, a majority of the nation will despise them. And their voting base will be, at best, indifferent once the shine of victory wears off five minutes after inauguration.
Trump lets his mouth get so far ahead of his brain that he’s likely to troll his way into a war. Hillary Clinton beat him to that, though, with her insane intervention in Libya — an actual war that has created a terrorism Dante’s Inferno.
Trump is a serial philanderer who, until this current run for president, bragged about all the women he bedded while he was married. Hillary is the enabler of a serial philanderer and probable rapist who, when her cheating husband ran for and was president, ran operations on the taxpayer’s dime to destroy his mistresses and victims.
Trump is known for the “art of the deal,†an art that as often as not comes down to using bankruptcy laws to screw his partners and investors while he keeps getting paid. Hillary takes Mandarin opacity to glorious new extremes. From hiding subpoenaed law firm records to lying about why Americans died in Benghazi with their corpses behind her and their grieving families in front of her, she is a heartless ghoul and a cover-up artist without peer.
Trump gets himself into trouble by trolling the media and Hillary over her illegal email server and dangerous mishandling of classified information. But Hillary actually used the illegal server, with the obvious intent of skirting freedom of information laws so she could hide her doings and the operations of the Clinton criminal Foundation from the public — which might ask about all that — and the media, which we all know never, ever will.
Trump’s core argument for being president comes down to a string of absurdities. He’ll make Mexico pay for a wall to be built in the middle of a river, he’ll fix everything that’s bad (but don’t ask him for a plan!), and he’ll wipe out terrorists while being resolutely anti-war.
Hillary’s core argument comes down to “First Woman President Yay!†atop a party that now thinks gender is entirely fluid and not biological, and “competency!†which does not extend to how she actually performed in every job she has ever had, as she has always performed miserably. She was a lousy senator. She was a terrifying secretary of State. She would be a horrible president.
These are two awful people who could only beat each other. Their respective ascents are evidence that the nation has gone morally bankrupt. They are evidence that character does not matter.
But … could we do worse?
No. We could not.
Well, maybe if we pulled two convicts out of maximum security prison and nominated them. But convicted felons might have a contrition that lifelong scofflaws like Trump and Hillary will never know.
Otherwise, adjusting for the Kim Jong Un’s of the world … no, America. We could not do worse.
The Obama administration secretly organized an airlift of $400 million worth of cash to Iran that coincided with the January release of four Americans detained in Tehran, according to U.S. and European officials and congressional staff briefed on the operation afterward.
Wooden pallets stacked with euros, Swiss francs and other currencies were flown into Iran on an unmarked cargo plane, according to these officials. The U.S. procured the money from the central banks of the Netherlands and Switzerland, they said.
The money represented the first installment of a $1.7 billion settlement the Obama administration reached with Iran to resolve a decades-old dispute over a failed arms deal signed just before the 1979 fall of Iran’s last monarch, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
The settlement, which resolved claims before an international tribunal in The Hague, also coincided with the formal implementation that same weekend of the landmark nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, the U.S. and other global powers the summer before.
“With the nuclear deal done, prisoners released, the time was right to resolve this dispute as well,†President Barack Obama said at the White House on Jan. 17—without disclosing the $400 million cash payment.
Senior U.S. officials denied any link between the payment and the prisoner exchange. They say the way the various strands came together simultaneously was coincidental, not the result of any quid pro quo.
“As we’ve made clear, the negotiations over the settlement of an outstanding claim…were completely separate from the discussions about returning our American citizens home,†State Department spokesman John Kirby said. “Not only were the two negotiations separate, they were conducted by different teams on each side, including, in the case of The Hague claims, by technical experts involved in these negotiations for many years.â€
But U.S. officials also acknowledge that Iranian negotiators on the prisoner exchange said they wanted the cash to show they had gained something tangible.
Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas and a fierce foe of the Iran nuclear deal, accused President Barack Obama of paying “a $1.7 billion ransom to the ayatollahs for U.S. hostages.â€
“This break with longstanding U.S. policy put a price on the head of Americans, and has led Iran to continue its illegal seizures†of Americans, he said.
Since the cash shipment, the intelligence arm of the Revolutionary Guard has arrested two more Iranian-Americans. Tehran has also detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K. in recent months.
Three West German police officers, wearing old time helmets, back down seven East German Stasi armed with submachine guns after a young woman made it across the line. The West German foreground cop has unholstered his P-38.
Bomb Sight is an interactive map project of the University of Portsmouth, allowing to viewer to see where each of more than 30,000 German bombs fell on London between 7 October 1940, and 6 June 1941, killing 30,000 people.
