Brave Conservative Writers Are Punished By The New York Times, Which Gives Them Columns
Out on the weekend, where the conservative persecution complex knows no bounds.
(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favourite Living Canadian)
I honestly don't know what to make of the Democratic National Committee's lawsuit against practically everybody involved on the other side of the 2016 presidential election. Part of me thinks it's a waste of time and money; even if the DNC prevails, it likely may not prevail until the second term of President Malia Obama. And it seems to me that Priorities one-through-Eleventy-Billion should be the 2018 midterms.
On the other hand, any proceedings that puts certain people under oath is also OK by me, and this is certainly a massive and asymmetric attack that very few people saw coming. This is the first time in a long time that the DNC caught anyone unawares. From the NYT:
The 66-page complaint, filed in federal court in New York, uses the publicly known facts of the investigation into Russia's election meddling to accuse Mr. Trump's associates of illegally working with Russian intelligence agents to interfere with the outcome of the election. In the document, the committee accuses Republicans and the Russians of "an act of previously unimaginable treachery." The sweeping lawsuit startled Republicans in Washington as well as Democratic leaders, who were only briefed at the last minute about the D.N.C.'s plans to pursue civil litigation. Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic Party, said the committee had alerted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrats in Congress, "when we were about to file."
At the very least, the complaint itself is a very clear window into the damage that the hacking of the DNC and the publishing of purloined emails did to the committee and to the people working there. It traces the Russian ratfcking back to critical comments then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made during 2011, when Russians were in the streets protesting the triumph of Vladimir Putin's political party in what were odiferous election results, even by Russian standards. At this point, the complaint alleges, Putin decided to do sabotage HRC's attempt to become president. All he needed was a useful idiot. (Good call, Vlad.)
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In addition to monkeywrenching the campaign, according to the complaint, the hacking of the emails and their subsequent publication by WikiLeaks made life miserable for the people within the DNC, who suddenly found themselves in the slaughterhouse.
On July 23,2016, multiple DNC employees received an e-mail stating, "I hope all your children get raped and murdered. I hope your family knows nothing except suffering, torture, and death.
There are a number of people who were complicit in this assault on the democratic process, and they're not all connected with the Trump campaign, or even with the Republican Party. They know who they are. They know the damage they've done. There's no basin big enough for them all to wash their hands. If they get dragged through five years of discovery, it's nothing compared to what they helped unleash on the country.
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Noah Rothman gets the award for the Worst Performance By A Pundit In A Supporting Role this week for leaping to the electric Twitter machine in order to send this baby aloft.
If there is one thing the experiences of Stephens, Weiss, McArdle, and Williamson has clarified for all objective observes, it is what true courage in writing really is. The kind with personal and professional consequences.
(Bret) Stephens and (Bari) Weiss bravely write for the New York Fcking Times. (Megan) McArdle bravely writes for The Washington Post. Kevin Williamson's snowflakery, which apparently prompted Rothman's tweet, appears in Friday's Wall Street Fcking Journal. True courage, dude? Veronica Guerin would like a word, and Maxim Borodin is holding on Line 1. Jesus Christ on a three-year contract, what a bunch of histrionics.
Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Weed" (Bea Foote): Yeah, I still pretty much love New Orleans.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here's Senator Lowell Weicker, lowering the boom on H.R. Haldeman in 1973. There are modern parallels, at least to Haldeman's squirming, anyway. Weicker was a Republican, by the way. History is so cool.
Florida Man is, of course, a problem. But Florida Snake is becoming a crisis. From The Tampa Bay Times:
SClBBiologists are capturing the snakes by using a white male python, named Argo, who has a tracking device implanted in him, according to WINK. Ian Bartoszek, a wildlife biologist with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida's Environmental Science Department, told WINK that 10,000 pounds of snakes have been captured within a 40-mile area during the last five breeding seasons. Argo recently led Bartoszek's team to a group of snakes at a large breeding ground — one of which was a female that was about to lay 40 eggs, according to WINK. "Eight pythons that added up to 280 pounds of snake all together," Bartoszek told WINK. Less than a week later, Argo led them to another group of snakes that Bartoszek told WINK was one of the largest ever found in Collier County. It included six male pythons and one massive egg-laying female. "One python had the remains of a possum and a bobcat, many others are deer and fawn," Bartoszek told WINK. "They are definitely eating all the way up the food chain and that's very worrisome, because if they are impacting deer, that's panther food."
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If Argo: Undercover Python isn't a Netflix series by next fall, there's something seriously wrong with all popular entertainment.
Coming Attractions: Among fans of The Who, the live tapes recorded at Fillmore East in 1968 have been something Grail-like. This was the band before Tommy blew them into the stratosphere, when they were still in the throes of inventing what would later devolve into power-pop—highlighting, among other things, Roger Daltrey's affection for Eddie Cochran. Now, finally, thanks to genius soundman Bob Pridden, and the band's collective ability to continue to make money off their old material, there comes a three-CD set from the second night The Who played the Fillmore on the weekend of Martin Luther King's murder. I'm not sure I need a 33-minute "My Generation," but the sheer energy of the band at that time is very hard to resist.
Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Economist? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!
The animals' long reign through the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods was enabled by another, albeit smaller, period of mass extinction, which happened between 234m and 232m years ago during the Triassic period. This extinction is thought to have been caused by a period of unstable climate called the Carnian Pluvial Episode (CPE), in which the climate went from dry, to wet, to dry again four times over the course of 2m years. As is often the case in matters palaeontological, the effects of such changes are easiest to see at sea, because most sedimentary rocks (the sort that the bulk of fossils are found in) are marine, and also because the composition of such rocks reflects that of seawater at the time, which in turn reflects matters such as temperature, rainfall and carbon-dioxide levels. Marine rocks laid down at this time show a huge turnover of species, and that this coincides with the CPE.
Nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum, and the dinosaurs filled this one admirably, until that unfortunate event down by Yucatan. However, they filled their time by living then to make us happy now.
The Committee was dazzled by the contribution of Top Commenter Melinda Koester Ross to our item about how people are using Whitey Bulger as a club on Robert Mueller. Ms. K-R apparently grew up in a George V. Higgins novel.
Way back in the '60's my suburban high school did some kind of swap with kids from Revere. I only remember two things from it - that the high school was so crowded that they had to double up with morning sessions and afternoon sessions. The other was that my Revere host lived next to a vacant lot that was under an overpass. He said it wasn't unusual to hear a car door slam, a thud on the ground at night, and find a body dumped there the next day. Good times!
We award her 91.88 Beckhams in the memory of Jackie Brown who, at 26, with no expression on his face, said he could get some guns.
I'll be back on Monday, preparing to go to DC for some hot SCOTUS action in the middle of the week. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline, or you can't use the car 'cause you wouldn't work late.
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