From the right: So What Have We Learned? It’s all over and Brett Kavanaugh is now a Supreme Court justice. What, asks Jim Treacher…
From the right: So What Have We Learned?
It’s all over and Brett Kavanaugh is now a Supreme Court justice. What, asks Jim Treacher at PJ Media, has this whole sorry episode taught us? For one thing, any doubt that most of the news media are “actively working for the Democrats” was “completely erased by the events of the past month.” Second, “Democrats have no ideas, no principles, just tactics,” insisting their treatment of Kavanaugh “was no different than what those evil Republicans did to Merrick Garland.” Fact is, “the Republicans were the only ones fighting for American principles here.” And while Treacher is “glad that the Dems and their enablers didn’t get away with their repulsive, dishonest behavior this time, I don’t look forward to seeing what they do next.”
Foreign desk: America’s New Opportunity in Iraq
Iraq has a new government, which Bloomberg ’s Eli Lake says has “evoked two broad reactions in Washington: hope and dread.” Hope, in that the new president and prime minister “have longstanding relationships with the US government,” but dread in that some see Iran as “the clear winner,” given that the chief of Tehran’s Quds Force brokered the political deal. But neither the Iranians nor the Americans “got everything they wanted.” And since May’s election, “Iraqis are making it clear” though protests “that they don’t want to be a vassal state of Iran.” This, he says, is Washington’s opportunity: “The new Iraqi government will have to show its independence.” So “with a little skill and luck,” the US can give it the support it needs “to push back against Iran and address the economic misery in places like Basra.”
Conservative: Collins Gave the Lecture We Deserved
In her 43-minute speech to the Senate last Friday, contends Commentary’s Noah Rothman, Sen. Susan Collins “put a perfect period on this sordid chapter in American political history” by providing “a stern lecture to a nation that had earned every word.” After first demonstrating that Kavanaugh’s critics “had done him a grave disservice by labeling him an ideologue,” the Maine Republican laced into those she said had used Christine Blasey Ford’s “real pain to advance their own petty political agenda.” But while “the Democratic effort here backfired,” it “has not been ineffectual.” Because “the attempt to tar Kavanaugh with criminal, albeit un-prosecutable, allegations will have a deleterious effect on the American civic compact.” Says Rothman: “Everyone involved in this debacle deserved Collins’s lecture. But they didn’t hear a word of it.”
From the left: A Questionable Verdict That Feels Right
Friday’s verdict in the case of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke “doesn’t make sense” to the Chicago Tribune ’s Eric Zorn, but “does strike me as a fair compromise.” Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery for the 2014 on-duty shooting death of Laquan McDonald. But to convict of second-degree, instead of first-degree, murder, the jury had to accept — and then find unreasonable — Van Dyke’s explanation that he thought the victim was about to attack him. Yet the dashcam video “shows no indication McDonald was preparing or initiating an attack.” Van Dyke will now “will do serious time for needlessly taking McDonald’s life, particularly given the additional aggravated battery counts.” Zorn’s “gut feeling”: Fair enough.
Law prof: ACLU Sounding Its Own Death Knell
Among “the casualties” of the Kavanaugh affair, suggests Alan Dershowitz at the Gatestone Institute, is the American Civil Liberties Union, which claims to be “nonpartisan” yet spent $1 million to oppose his confirmation. Because the organization, which once was “cash-poor but principle-rich,” is now “all about pleasing the donors.” Since the rise of Donald Trump, it “has never become so cash-rich, yet principle-poor.” But the money “is not coming from civil libertarians who care about free speech, due process, the rights of the accused and defending the unpopular. It is coming from radical leftists in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and other areas” who care only about “political returns.” These days, the ACLU’s “heart and soul are in its wallet and checkbook. It is getting rich while civil liberties are suffering.”
—Compiled by Eric Fettmann
