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January 2020

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The Democrats’ weird response to sending the impeachment articles to the Senate By Andrea Widburg

By on January 16th, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/01/the_democrats_weird_response_to_sending_the_impeachment_articles_to_the_senate.html

The past few years have disabused us of any notion that the American Congress is a solemn place, filled with statesmanlike, or at least decent, people working for the betterment of America and Americans. To those few who still clung to that outdated idea, the House Democrats’ behavior when sending the Articles of Impeachment to the Senate shows that Congress is no longer a serious institution.

People of a certain age remember a time when drunkenness was played for laughs. In the family-friendly show Bewitched, a running gag had a chronically drunk man invariably see Samantha practice magic — and, of course, no one believed him. Foster Brooks’ imitation of a drunk was also a perennial favorite in the 1960s and early 1970s:

Lately, it’s easy to suspect that the Democrat party has its own version of Foster Brooks. Don’t pay too much attention to what Nancy Pelosi is saying in this short video; just focus on her delivery:

This is not a well woman, and that’s true whether what bedevils her is a biological ailment or something else.

And then there was her word soup:

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How Fragile Is Iran’s Theocracy? By David P. Goldman

By on January 16th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/how-fragile-is-irans-theocracy/

Iran’s people barely can scrape together enough calories to keep body and soul together in the big cities, while entire parts of rural Iran are emptying out as rivers and wells go dry. Things are so bad that the number of babies born in Iran has fallen by nearly 25% in the past five years. Only Venezuela is worse off — but the wicked Maduro government remains in power. Regimes that are willing to shoot their people dead in the streets (as Iran shot 1,500 protesters last November) can cling to power even under desperate material circumstances.

As I wrote at Asia Times yesterday:

One average salary pays for a small apartment outside the center, utilities, enough calories to keep body and soul together, and bus fare, which is subsidized. Throw in cell phone service, clothing, fruits and vegetables, and one or two meat meals a month, and an Iranian couple will require two average salaries. According to official data, food price inflation was 28% year-on-year as of December.

Medicine is another matter. Some imported items, for example, insulin pens, can’t be found at pharmacies in some provinces, according to a Persian-language report by IRNA. The Chancellor of the University of Isfahan told the national news agency that imported medicine such as chemotherapy drugs was in short supply, but that most other medication was available.

Import controls to spare foreign exchange have put autos outside the range of most Iranians. A VW Golf costs the local-currency equivalent of $48,000, according to Numbeo, or about 14 years’ average pay.

Reduced consumption has taken a toll on Iranian family life. According to the Tehran Times, citing Mohammed Javad Mahmoudi, head of the committee on population studies of the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution. According to Mahmoudi, the number of babies born in Iran fell by nearly 25% between 2015 and 2019.

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Energy Paradoxes Put Europe in a Precarious Position By Victor Davis Hanson

By on January 16th, 2020

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/energy-paradoxes-put-europe-in-a-precarious-position/

Despite its cool Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas.

Oil output in the North Sea and off the coast of Norway is declining, and the European Union is quietly looking for fossil fuel energy anywhere it can find it.

Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. It likely has more reserves of shale gas than the United States, currently the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are either illegal or face so many court challenges and popular protests that they are neither culturally nor economically feasible.

The result is that Europe is almost entirely dependent on Russian, Middle Eastern, and African sources of energy.

The American-Iranian standoff in the Middle East, coupled with radical drop-offs in Iranian and Venezuelan oil production, has terrified Europe — and for understandable reasons.

The European Union has almost no ability to guarantee the delivery of critical oil and gas supplies from the Middle East should Iran close the Strait of Hormuz or harass ships in the Persian Gulf.

Europe’s only maritime security is the NATO fleet — a synonym for the U.S. Navy.

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Lessons from the United States’ Showdown with the Barbary Pirates By John Yoo

By on January 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/lessons-from-the-united-states-showdown-with-the-barbary-pirates/

Jefferson’s example in dealing with the pirates supports the Soleimani strike.

As a fan of The Editors podcast, my ears perked up in the last episode’s tussle between Rich Lowry and Charlie Cooke over the U.S. strike that killed Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. I had argued on NRO last week that President Trump had authority, under the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations to Use Military Force, to kill Soleimani, who not only was responsible for a series of attacks on American forces but was in the middle of planning more to come. Even if a critic, such as Speaker Nancy Pelosi, believed that killing fell outside those past acts, I argued that the Constitution gave the president the power as commander in chief and chief executive to use force without the need for congressional permission beforehand in the event that a foreign nation had already attacked U.S. forces.

Rich, I was pleased to hear, shared that view. It is the same understanding held by Republican presidents, such as Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes, as well as Democrats — until Obama. But Charlie, to my shock and dismay, disagreed. He argued that Congress’s power to declare war required that it authorize any uses of force abroad. Rich appealed to Charlie’s English respect for tradition by citing Thomas Jefferson’s attacks on the Barbary pirates as a precedent. Charlie responded that the Jefferson example did not support the Trump strike.

As someone who started his career as a law professor writing on war powers, and followed with a book on presidential power, I can’t resist the opportunity to come in on Rich’s side on the Barbary pirates question. While the precedent does not stand as clearly as other examples for the president’s commander-in-chief authority to use force without a congressional declaration of war, it comes very close. And when examined closely, it easily would support President Trump’s strike on General Soleimani with or without the AUMF.

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Postpone the Impeachment Trial until the House Finishes Investigating By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on January 16th, 2020

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/01/trump-impeachment-postpone-senate-trial-until-house-finishes-investigation/

Letting House Democrats string the process along is not fair to Trump, the Senate, or the people.

Two things happened simultaneously on Wednesday: (a) The House of Representatives transmitted to the Senate two articles of impeachment approved on straight partisan lines a month ago, and (b) the House’s impeachment inquiry — yes, it’s still very much alive — highlighted new, relevant evidence it has turned up about the activities in Ukraine of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and Giuliani’s associates.

The Democrats’ strategy is coming clear.

The House provided the Senate with two half-baked impeachment articles. House Democrats rushed through the investigation, forgoing salient witnesses and evidence, because of the political calendar. The charges are weak and the inquiry was needlessly short-circuited, so Democrats have continued investigating the premature allegations. Now they are publicly disclosing newly acquired evidence, with the promise of more to come. Transparently, their goal is to pressure the Senate not merely to conduct a trial but to complete the investigation that the House failed to complete — calling witnesses and gathering evidence, as if a trial were nothing more than an extension of an open-ended grand-jury probe.

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans should not let them get away with it. No trial court would allow itself to be whipsawed this way. A federal judge would tell prosecutors to go back to the grand jury, finish the investigation, and come back to the trial court when they have a case ready to be tried, not investigated.

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