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Ruth King

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Leftist Violence Reaches Its Nadir The Left’s carnage-inducing words and images have reached their apotheosis. By Deroy Murdock

By on June 17th, 2017

‘Pretty soon, all of this assassination talk will get someone shot,” I told my Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson on Tuesday afternoon.

And on Wednesday morning, it happened.

James T. Hodgkinson, 66, opened fire on an Alexandria, Va., baseball diamond where Republican lawmakers practiced for their annual charity face-off against Democratic colleagues. Hodgkinson, a registered Democrat, shot House Republican whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, Capitol Police officers David Bailey and Crystal Griner, congressional staffer Zach Barth, and Tyson Foods lobbyist Matt Mika.

The would-be assassin, whom Officers Bailey and Griner fatally struck, was a far-left campaign volunteer for Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist., Vt.). To his credit, Sanders swiftly and forcefully declared: “I am sickened by this despicable act . . . and I condemn this action in the strongest possible terms.”

As the Daily Caller detailed, Hodgkinson clearly and explicitly hated President Donald J. Trump and other Republicans.

Via Facebook, Hodgkinson said of Scalise: “Here’s a Republican that [sic] should Lose His Job, but they Gave Him a Raise.”

Hodgkinson called Trump “Truly the Biggest Ass Hole We Have Ever Had in the Oval Office.”

“Trump is a traitor,” Hodgkinson wrote. “Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

The shooter belonged to a Facebook group called “The Road to Hell is Paved with Republicans” and another named “Terminate the Republican Party.” After Hodgkinson’s attack, members of the “Terminate” online forum rejoiced. “Lol . . . this was no surprise,” Darryl W. Riley cracked. “We all knew this was gonna happen.” An even more depraved Mari-Ellen Cain cheered: “And it’s one, two, three shots you’re out at the old ball game!!!”

Represenative Jeff Duncan (R., S.C.) said that as he left the ballfield on Tuesday, Hodgkinson “asked me if this team was the Republican or Democratic team practicing. He proceeded to shoot Republicans.” According to the Washington Examiner, Duncan added: “I’m going to take it he was targeting Republicans this morning.”

News accounts, led by the Daily Caller, indicate that law-enforcement officials found a hit list in Hodgkinson’s pocket. It specifically named GOP representatives Mo Brooks of Alabama, Jeff Duncan of South Carolina, and Trent Franks of Arizona, all members of the House Freedom Caucus. Brooks and Duncan attended Tuesday’s practice. The list strongly suggests that Hodgkinson deliberately targeted his prey.

While Hodgkinson’s behavior exceeded that of other liberals, his brutality built upon the Left’s statements and actions since Election Day 2016.

Liberals and Democrats have spewed toxic anti-GOP rhetoric, excreted assassination-chic “art” that celebrates the ritual murder of President Trump, physically beaten Trump supporters, and perpetrated anti-Republican riots, anti-Trump vandalism, and even “anti-Fascist” arson. For the Left, “Love trumps hate” is less than a punchline. It’s a cruel, vicious lie.

Hodgkinson’s roughly 50 pulls on the trigger of his SKS 7.62 rifle likely were eased by the constant drumbeat of left-wing violence, blood-soaked imagery, and hateful rhetoric about Trump. This venom did not ooze from obscure, fringe sources. Rather it cascaded from the mainstream: platinum-record-earning musicians, TV stars, and a taxpayer-funded drama company operating in the heart of Central Park.

Madonna, the world-wide pop sensation, told the January 21 Women’s March in Washington, D.C.: “Yes, I’m angry. Yes, I am outraged. Yes, I have thought an awful lot about blowing up the White House.”

Rapper Snoop Dogg produced a video in which he fires a gun beside the head of a clown dressed like Trump. Out pops a flag that reads: “BANG!”

“Can you imagine what the outcry would be if SnoopDogg, failing career and all, had aimed and fired the gun at President Obama,” President Trump replied via Twitter. “Jail time!”

Adam Pally, star of Fox TV’s Making History, told TMZ that if he could take a time machine and spend an hour with anyone, “I’d have to kill Trump or Hitler.”

Former CNN personality Kathy Griffin notoriously posed with a blood-drenched, mock-up of a severed head of Trump.

Lea DeLaria, a cast member of Netflix’s Emmy-award-winning Orange Is the New Black series explained how she would express herself politically: “Pick up a baseball bat and take out every fucking republican and independent I see.”

The Public Theater’s current production of Julius Caesar features a Trump-look-alike emperor being stabbed to death by Roman senators. As Polizette’s Edmund Kozak noted, “The play has reportedly received standing ovations when Trump/Caesar is assassinated.”

The Left tries to defend itself by claiming that “both sides do this.”

Nonsense.

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The Justice Department Is Killing Trump Four key decisions put Sessions on the sidelines and intensify a scandal. By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on June 17th, 2017

President Donald Trump’s missteps have intensified the scandal that is consuming his administration.

One is tempted to put scandal in scare quotes. Trump is somehow enmeshed in a scandal based on actions that a president is fully entitled to take — such as dismissing the FBI director and weighing in on the merits of continuing an investigation of his former national-security adviser. It is, in addition, a scandal born of Trump’s desperation to publicize information that is true and that a president is fully entitled to publicize — such as the facts that the president had been assured by the FBI director on multiple occasions that he is not a criminal suspect, that the FBI director made the same representation to members of Congress, and that a months-long investigation had turned up no evidence of “collusion” between his campaign and the Kremlin.

Yet, a scandal it is: A specter of impropriety is undermining Trump’s administration, tanking his favorability ratings, and stalling his agenda. True, his media-Democrat enemies cast every story in the worst possible light. But there’s always a story, isn’t there?

That is largely Trump’s doing. The tweet-tirades about phantom wiretaps (which undermined his credibility to raise what may be a real Obama-administration abuse of foreign-intelligence powers). The decision to fire FBI director James Comey, not timed to occur when Trump justifiably dismissed dozens of Obama Justice Department appointees at the start of the administration (the new broom that sweeps clean), but triggered by a fit of pique over Comey’s selective public commentary on the “Russia investigation” — thus fueling the “obstruction” narrative. The multiple conflicting explanations for Comey’s removal. The bizarre decision to meet Russian diplomats the day after Comey’s dismissal and, shamefully, to berate the former director in their presence. And, of course, more tweets, such as the self-destructive suggestion of a Watergate-resonant White House taping system (that almost certainly does not exist).

But if Trump is his own worst enemy, his Justice Department is not far behind.

Four key decisions, three of them made after the president was inaugurated and the Justice Department came under his control, at least nominally, have done immense damage to his administration — in conjunction with Trump’s belief that fires are best doused with gasoline.

To understand why, I will reiterate my two-part working theory for why we have a mess, albeit one that, as a matter of law rather than appearances, falls woefully short of obstruction. First, Trump lobbied for the investigation of Michael Flynn to be dropped — something he could lawfully have ordered to be done — because he (a) was feeling remorse over Flynn’s humiliating removal as national-security adviser and (b) thought further investigation and potential prosecution would be overkill. Second, Trump’s decision to fire Comey — something he was lawfully entitled to do — was not an endeavor to influence the FBI’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign; it was the result of exasperation over Comey’s skewed public statements about the investigation, which created the misimpression that Trump was a criminal suspect.

On the latter score, I am not saying that Comey intended to mislead the public, although I imagine Trump probably believes he did. For what it’s worth, I accept the former director’s explanation: After his (self-induced) nightmare over the Hillary Clinton e-mails investigation, Comey was reluctant to announce that Trump was not a suspect; he feared that if Trump’s status later changed, he would have to correct his announcement, thus making matters worse for Trump (as his similar flip-flop did for Clinton).

If that was his fear, though, Comey should have refrained from any public comments at all — which is what law enforcement is supposed to do. Instead, during congressional testimony, he made an unnecessary announcement about the Russia investigation that led the media to report, and much of the public to believe, that Trump was a suspect in possible crimes. Once he did that, it was unreasonable to refuse to correct this misimpression by publicly acknowledging that Trump was not a suspect. It is all well and good to agitate over a “duty to correct,” but Comey glides past the more basic duty not to make gratuitous prejudicial statements in the first place. Trump fired the FBI director because he was being badly hurt by that testimony. He wanted it publicly known that he was not a suspect (which Comey had privately assured him, multiple times).

Trump saw Comey as the obstacle to that disclosure. Whether too uninformed or too paralyzed, the president did not grasp that he was entitled to order Comey to make the disclosure, or to do it himself (as he eventually did, only upon firing the FBI director).

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Terrorists Threaten Family of Teen Who Tackled Suicide Bomber at School By Bridget Johnson

By on June 17th, 2017

The family of a brave teen who tackled a suicide bomber who was trying to enter his school is imploring the Pakistani government for protection as terrorists have warned them they are targets.

The kin of Pakistani teenager Aitzaz Hassan called the 15-year-old “pehlwan” — or wrestler — because of his heavy-set frame. On Jan. 6, 2014, Aitzaz, who had talked about becoming a soldier one day, used his might to keep a suicide bomber from blowing up his classmates.

Aitzaz was standing outside his government school in the northwestern district of Hangu when the terrorist, claimed by Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a group with ties to al-Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban (TTP), tried to enter the gates and reach the morning assembly.

The teen quickly tackled the bomber, preventing him from entering the school and reaching some 1,000 students inside. Aitzaz died later at a hospital from injuries suffered in the bomb blast.

Aitzaz’s father, Mujahid Ali Bangash, was working in the United Arab Emirates at the time. He told Agence France-Presse he was “happy that my son has become a martyr by sacrificing his life for a noble cause.”

“Aitzaz has made us proud by valiantly intercepting the bomber and saving the lives of hundreds of his fellow students,” he said.

The teen was posthumously awarded the country’s Sitara-e-Shujaat, or Star of Bravery. The family has been lobbying to make Jan. 6 Aitzaz Day in Pakistan, so all will remember his ultimate sacrifice to stop terrorism.

This April, the family received a threat from Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan: “Aitzaz Hasan is not a hero nor a martyr,” the letter said. “If Aitzaz’s brother Mujtaba does not stop meeting media and officials of government institutions, he will be responsible for any loss.”

The TTP shot Malala Yousafzai, a teen advocate for girls’ education, in the head in an Oct. 9, 2012, assassination attempt. She survived and went on to become the youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient in history.

Aitzaz’s brother Mujtaba went to local authorities shortly after receiving the threat to ask for government protection for the Hasan family. According to Pakistan’s The Nation, authorities are still mulling over the request.

“Despite my plea to the relevant security institutions informing them of the threat, I have not yet received a reply from any of them,” Mujtaba said. “Right now my family only has one guard for protection, provided by the district administration. It is a request to the authorities to give us the required security. My family is going through trauma and need their support.”

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Jihadist Arrests in EU Doubled Last Year, Rising for Third Year in a Row By Patrick Poole

By on June 17th, 2017

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/2017/06/16/jihadist-arrests-in-eu-doubled-last-year-rising-for-third-year-in-a-row/

A new Europol report today on terrorism in eight European Union member states finds that jihadist arrests doubled in 2016, rising for the third year in a row: SEE AT SITE

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Liberal Columnist Complains: ‘Women Get Manterrupted All The Time!’ By Michael van der Galien

By on June 17th, 2017

TO BE A woman is to be interrupted.

Correction: To be female is to be interrupted. By the time most girls reach their first day of school, they already know how it feels to be drowned out by a chattering group of boys.

From classrooms to corporate workspace to the chambers of the US Supreme Court, women often find themselves asking a question or making a salient point when a man decides that what he has to say is more important. Maybe she “isn’t telling the story the right way,” which means his way. Most threatening of all, she may be challenging him in a way he simply can’t abide.

There’s a word for it: “manterrupting,” a cultural sibling of the equally annoying “mansplaining.” And there’s even an app for that: Woman Interrupted, which tracks how many times a man cuts off a woman in a conversation.

The author of the piece, Renée Graham, is a feminist. Although men are not allowed to comment on women and their issues, she clearly believes she knows exactly how we think. Who gave her that insight into the male psyche? Well, she did, of course. After all, she’s a woman. And women are now deemed superior beings, whereas men are little more than cockroaches.

One of the examples she offers of “manterrupting” is this:

Women seethed when Kamala Harris, a former prosecutor who now represents California in the Senate, was forced to end her tough questioning of Attorney General Jeff Sessions during a hearing on possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. When Sessions sputtered, “I’m not able to be rushed this fast. It makes me nervous,” John McCain and Richard Burr swooped in quickly to cut Harris off. One might have thought “nervous” was Sessions’s safe word.

According to Graham, it was the second time a man had the audacity to “shut down” Senator Harris. In both cases she firmly believes that the reason for it was, wait for it, her being a woman.

After this latest incident, her colleague Ron Wyden tweeted: “Again [Harris] was doing her job. She was interrupted for asking tough questions.”

Harris was also interrupted because she’s a woman.

Nonsense. Harris was interrupted because she went berserk during the hearings. It doesn’t matter that she’s a woman; what matters is that she’s a leftist hack who uses her power and influence to discredit Republicans. There’s literally nobody who is thinking about her reproductive organs — well, except for gender-obsessed leftists like Ms. Graham, that is.

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Albany Students Who Fabricated Hate Crime Avoid Prison By Debra Heine

By on June 17th, 2017

Two of the three SUNY Albany female students who fabricated a racial hate crime in Albany, NY, early last year have been sentenced for falsely reporting the incident. The third woman accepted a plea deal.

Ariel Agudio and Asha Burwell were sentenced Friday to serve “three years of probation, pay a $1,000 fine, and perform 200 hours of community service.” The two women had been facing up to two years in prison, but neither will have to spend a moment in jail. Alexis Briggs, the third woman, agreed to apologize and was sentenced to perform community service as part of her plea deal with the district attorney.

The three African American students had claimed that they were victims of a racially motivated attack while riding a CDTA/UAlbany bus back to campus from the bars in Albany on January 30 of last year.

Early that Saturday morning, Agudio, Briggs, and Burwell reported to the police that a mob of 10-20 white people punched and kicked them while yelling racial epithets:

After the alleged assault, at least two of the women took to Twitter and Instagram with their claims.

“I just got jumped on a bus while people hit us and called us the ‘n’ word and nobody helped us,” wrote one of the students.

“I got beat up by 20 people screaming racial slurs,” wrote another, later adding that “a whole bunch of guys started hitting me and my two friends.”

One of them also wrote on Twitter: “I begged people to help us and instead of help they told us to shut the (bleep) up and continuously hit us in the head.”

Cell phone video and bus surveillance cameras would later tell a different story. The women themselves had perpetuated the racial hatred and violence.

In the face of protests and a fake news media circus, New York-based blogger Rusty Weiss of the Mental Recession was one of the first to report that the incident was likely a hoax:

The incident sparked protests at the school.

Protesters, including members of the National Congress of Black Women and the Albany chapter of Black Lives Matter, showed signs of support for the women, demanding change in the form of hiring minority faculty and providing sensitivity training for University police.

Burwell and her fellow alleged ‘victims’ gave tearful speeches on campus.

SUNY Albany president Robert Jones, before having any of the facts straight and going solely on what he heard from Burwell and her companions, issued a statement saying he is “deeply concerned, saddened and angry about this incident.”

People showed support for the trio on Twitter using the hashtag #DefendBlackGirlsUAlbany. Meanwhile, the students who were falsely accused of a racist attack were ostracized and threatened. San Diego Chargers lineman Tyreek Burwell — Asha Burwell’s brother — tweeted a threatening message to a student whom she had named as one of the attackers. That individual reportedly left campus — at least temporarily — out of concern for his safety.

Public figures, including then-candidate Hillary Clinton, used the highly questionable incident for racial pandering:

All of the people who jumped on the Albany hoax bandwagon should be ashamed of themselves.

The allegations never passed the smell test to begin with, and began to unravel almost immediately. It is only one of hundreds of fake hate crimes that have have been documented in recent years. What makes the Albany bus hoax so egregious is the fact that the accusers were actually guilty of the crime they were projecting onto others — and those innocent lives were adversely affected.

The disgraceful episode should be kept in mind the next time an unsubstantiated report of a hate crime hits the news — especially if it occurs anywhere near a college campus — because the fake hate crime epidemic shows no signs of stopping anytime soon. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Helmut Kohl His vision shaped post-Cold War Europe for the better.

By on June 17th, 2017

Among the many leaders who shaped modern Europe, few have been as consequential as Helmut Kohl, who died Friday at age 87. He saw his country through the death of the Cold War and the birth of a reunited Germany at the center of a more deeply integrated European Union.

Born in 1930, Kohl came of age amid the furies of a nihilistic German nationalism and then amid the wreckage of its defeat. He was compelled to join the Hitler Youth, as were all boys in that era, but was part of the first generation of Germany’s postwar leaders too young to have fought in the conflict. His parents instilled in him a devout Catholicism that shaped his later political outlook.

He entered politics in the Christian Democratic Union, which with its Bavarian sister party the CSU became Germany’s main center-right party. He rose to the Chancellorship of West Germany in 1982, a position he would hold for a postwar record of 16 years.

He took power after years of Social-Democratic Ostpolitik, or engagement with East Germany, and when the anticommunism of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II still faced considerable skepticism among putative foreign-policy experts. One of Kohl’s early contributions was to defend plans to deploy Pershing II missiles in West Germany against fierce protests across Europe.

Kohl also built on the work of his predecessors in reconciling Germany with the rest of Europe. His friendship with French President François Mitterrand was legendary, and that proved crucial in persuading other European leaders to accept a reunified Germany after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

That reunification—and the creation of the euro, which Kohl accepted as its price—remains controversial. Economists are right that the euro and many economic-policy decisions governing reunification created challenges that still dog the EU. Kohl was right that peaceful German integration was worth the price.

Europe’s first tasks after 1989 were political, not economic: to welcome the formerly subjugated people of Eastern Europe back into Western civilization, and to find a way for Germany to be a nation again without being a threat. Kohl, driven by his commitment to European unity, aided both projects with his policy of rapid reunification and the euro. The result was a Continent that weathered the collapse of a malign neighboring superpower while remaining at peace with itself.

Historians will remember that achievement more than the commonplace political scandals that engulfed Kohl later in his long career. Rarely does a leader change his nation as dramatically for the better as Helmut Kohl did.

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Robert Mueller’s Mission The special counsel needs to rise above his Comey loyalties.

By on June 17th, 2017

“We relate all this because it shows how Mr. Mueller let his prosecutorial willfulness interfere with proper constitutional and executive-branch procedure. This showed bad judgment. He shares this habit with Mr. Comey.”

That didn’t take long. Barely a week after James Comey admitted leaking a memo to tee up a special counsel against Donald Trump, multiple news reports based on leaks confirm that special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the President for obstruction of justice. You don’t have to be a Trump partisan to have concerns about where all of this headed.

President Trump has reportedly stepped back this week from his temptation to fire Mr. Mueller, and that’s the right decision. The chief executive has the constitutional power to fire a special counsel through the chain of command at the Justice Department, but doing so would be a political debacle by suggesting he has something to hide.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mr. Mueller, would surely resign, and other officials might resign as well until someone at Justice fulfilled Mr. Trump’s orders. The President’s opponents would think it’s Christmas. The dismissal would put the President’s political allies in a terrible spot and further distract from what are make-or-break months for his agenda on Capitol Hill. His tweets attacking the probe are also counterproductive, but by now we know he won’t stop.
There are nonetheless good reasons to raise questions about Mr. Mueller’s investigation, and those concerns are growing as we learn more about his close ties to Mr. Comey, some of his previous behavior, and the people he has hired for his special counsel staff. The country needs a fair investigation of the facts, not a vendetta to take down Mr. Trump or vindicate the tribe of career prosecutors and FBI agents to which Messrs. Mueller and Comey belong.

Start with the fact that Mr. Comey told the Senate last week that he asked a buddy to leak his memo about Mr. Trump specifically “because I thought that might prompt the appointment of a special counsel.” Did Mr. Comey then suggest Mr. Mueller’s name to Mr. Rosenstein? He certainly praised Mr. Mueller to the skies at his Senate hearing.

The two former FBI directors are long-time friends who share a similar personal righteousness. Mr. Mueller, then running the FBI, joined Mr. Comey, then Deputy Attorney General, in threatening to resign in 2004 over George W. Bush’s antiterror wiretaps.

Less well known is how Mr. Mueller resisted direction from the White House in 2006 after he sent agents with a warrant to search then Democratic Rep. William Jefferson’s congressional office on a Saturday night without seeking legislative-branch permission. The unprecedented raid failed to distinguish between documents relevant to corruption and those that were part of legislative deliberation. GOP Speaker Dennis Hastert rightly objected to this as an executive violation of the separation of powers and took his concerns to Mr. Bush.

The President asked his chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, to ask Mr. Mueller to return the Jefferson documents that he could seek again through regular channels, but the FBI chief refused. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was also unable to move the FBI director. When Mr. Bolten asked again, Mr. Mueller said he wouldn’t tolerate political interference in a criminal probe, as if the Republican Mr. Bush was trying to protect a corrupt Democrat. Mr. Mueller threatened to resign, and the dispute was settled only after Mr. Bush ordered the seized documents sealed for 45 days until Congress and Mr. Mueller could work out a compromise.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals later ruled that the FBI raid had violated the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause and Mr. Jefferson’s “non-disclosure privilege” as a Member of Congress, though the court let Justice keep the documents citing Supreme Court precedent on the exclusionary rule for collecting evidence.

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DAVID FROMKIN: AUTHOR OF “A PEACE TO END ALL PEACE” IS REMEMBERED BY ROGER KIMBALL

By on June 17th, 2017

The Great War’s Great Historian Appreciated the Good LifeDavid Fromkin’s ‘A Peace to End All Peace’ was a masterpiece. But I wish I’d eaten at his restaurant.

The historian David Fromkin died last Sunday, a couple of months shy of his 85th birthday. I first met him over lunch in 1986, when he was working on the book that would be his magnum opus, “A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East.” That book, about how France and Britain endeavored to impose a new political dispensation on the Middle East in the aftermath of World War I, was published in 1989, to near universal commendation.

All of Fromkin’s signature virtues were on display in “A Peace to End All Peace.” It was the product of prodigious but lightly worn research. It was politically canny about the realities of power (Fromkin had been a student of Hans Morgenthau at the University of Chicago). And it was beautifully written. It is worth stressing this last point. He commanded a light, allegro prose, spare but deeply evocative, clear as an Alpine spring.

“A Peace to End All Peace” was also shot through with a recurring leitmotif typical of Fromkin, at once nostalgic and admonitory. The nostalgia focused on the lost sense of innocence and amplitude that marked the decade before the outbreak of war in the summer of 1914—“Europe’s Last Summer,” as he put it in the title of his 2004 book about who started the Great War. (Spoiler: there were really two wars. One was started by the Hapsburg Empire when it attacked Serbia, the other by the Germans.)

The innocence had to do with the political easiness of the time. The opening decade of the 20th century was a time of apogees and consummations. There was a shared sense, Fromkin wrote in his book “The Independence of Nations” (1981), that Europe, finally, at last, had become civilized. Sweetness and light reigned, and would reign, forever. He quotes the historian A.J.P. Taylor: “Until August 1914, a sensible, law-abiding Englishman could pass through life and hardly notice the existence of the state. . . . He could live where he liked and as he liked. He had no official number or identity card.” For the most part, there were no passports. One didn’t even need a business card when traveling. A personal card would do. This was an age before the income tax, before exchange controls and customs barriers. In many ways, Fromkin notes, there was more globalization than there is now.

There was also immensely more security—or so it seemed. In several of his books, Fromkin quotes a melancholy passage from the Austrian author Stefan Zweig about the decade before the Great War: “The Golden Age of Security,” he called it, “Everything in our almost thousand-year-old Austrian monarchy seemed based on permanency.”

Except, of course, that it wasn’t. The admonitory current that flows through Fromkin’s writing has to do with the real permanencies in life: the intransigence of competing cultures, the unyielding imperatives of power, the awful awakenings of shattered illusions. It is appropriate that one of his abiding passions was ancient Greek civilization—he was involved in several archaeological digs in the islands off the Turkish coast—for the old teaching that nemesis was the inevitable result of hubris was a recurring theme in his work.

In politics, Fromkin was a species of Democrat that scarcely exists today. He was an unapologetic American patriot of decidedly cosmopolitan tastes. He adulated FDR and clear-eyed, disabused politicians like Scoop Jackson and Pat Moynihan. He admired much about Bill Clinton, was repelled by Mr. Clinton’s wife, and regarded Barack Obama with a mixture of curiosity and revulsion (though he undoubtedly voted for him). Unlike so many politicians of both parties today, he had the supreme political wisdom to understand that when politics becomes all-important it has failed in its primary duty: to safeguard and promote the good life.

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Scalise Remains in Critical Condition but Prognosis Has Improved Doctor says lawmaker was near death when he arrived at hospital after shooting

By on June 17th, 2017

By Natalie Andrews and Kristina Peterson
https://www.wsj.com/articles/scalise-remains-in-critical-condition-but-prognosis-has-improved-1497645790

WASHINGTON—Rep. Steve Scalise (R., La.) remained in critical condition on Friday but his prognosis has improved, a hospital official said, two days after a gunman shot the third-ranking House Republican at a baseball practice.

Jack Sava, the director of the surgery team at MedStar Washington Hospital Center, told reporters Friday that Mr. Scalise had been near death after he was shot in the hip Wednesday, as the bullet caused extensive damage and bleeding.

Dr. Sava said that the lawmaker arrived at the hospital unconscious and “in critical condition with an imminent risk of death,” but that his condition has improved significantly in the past 36 hours.
Mr. Scalise has undergone numerous surgeries and is expected to continue recovering, with the length of his hospital stay unknown. “My understanding is that he will be able to walk and hopefully run,” Dr. Sava told reporters in a briefing on Friday afternoon.

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