Daily Digest

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• Insurrection, 2016
• Canceling Dr. Seuss
• Where is the best high school basketball played?
• What Do the People Think?
• No Wray of sunshine

Insurrection, 2016 Posted: 03 Mar 2021 04:54 PM PST (John Hinderaker) The Democrats’ pompous characterization of the mini-riot at the Capitol on January 6 as an “insurrection” is a transparent political ploy. The idea of appointing a “9/11-style” commission to investigate a riot in which no one was killed or seriously injured by the rioters is self-refuting. How about a “9/11-style” commission to investigate the murders of Trump supporters in Portland and Denver during the campaign? Or the people who died in the Minneapolis riots? That would make more sense. Actually, if you want to talk about insurrection, the violence and violent rhetoric that the Democratic Party marshaled after Donald Trump’s election in 2016 more nearly fits the definition. I recently looked at a couple of posts that I did in November 2016 that make the point. This one was titled Violence on the Left: In America, political violence is pretty much exclusively a phenomenon of the Left. The election of Donald Trump has precipitated a wave of violence, which the New York Times acknowledges rather grudgingly: Thousands of people across the country marched, shut down highways, burned effigies and shouted angry slogans on Wednesday night to protest the election of Donald J. Trump as president. The demonstrations, fueled by social media, continued into the early hours of Thursday. The crowds swelled as the night went on but remained mostly peaceful. I love how liberal reporters use “mostly peaceful” as a euphemism for “violent.” And of course, these are merely “protests” and “demonstrations,” all in the American tradition of free speech. British readers of the Daily Mail got a far more accurate picture of what went on: Violence has broken out at anti-Trump rallies across America overnight as tens of thousands marched against the President-elect before angry mobs attacked police, started fires and shut down highways. The streets of downtown Oakland in California were choked with smoke Thursday as police launched tear gas and protesters lit fires, in what became by some distance the most violent of the many protests against the election of Donald Trump. More than 6,000 protesters were seen on the streets of Oakland with an initially peaceful march down a cop-lined street turning nasty after some protesters threw bottles at officers and torched a police car. An office block was also attacked, daubed with ‘f*** Trump’ and ‘kill Trump’ graffiti and then set alight. The photographs tell the story: The Daily Mail describes Trump as “inflammatory.” This is what I call inflammatory: I’m so old, I can remember when people were being told they needed to accept the results of the election. This one came just three days later, titled Democrats: Vicious, Violent, Anti-Democratic. Across the country, Democrats disappointed at losing the presidential election are rioting, burning American flags, throwing Molotov cocktails at police officers, hurling bricks through windows, setting fires in urban streets, and attacking random passers-by. We wrote about the riots and posted photos here. Much more could be added in the three days that have gone by since that post. The photos could be multiplied endlessly. This rioter had a particularly ugly message, one that you might think would offend feminists: I’m just kidding about the feminists. Everyone knows feminism has nothing to do with women. It is all about extreme leftism. Lest you think “Rape Melania” is a uniquely evil manifestation of liberalism by one individual, check out the trending hashtags on Twitter. Many thousands of Democrats joined in the “#Rape Melania” movement. But that isn’t the worst, not by a long shot. Across America, vicious assaults have been carried out against Donald Trump voters. This one, in Chicago, was probably the worst. The Trump voter was beaten and kicked to within an inch of his life. When he crawled to his car to seek safety, one of the Democrats who had been assaulting him took the wheel and drove off, at speeds up to 65 miles an hour, while the Republican victim of the assault hung on for dear life. At last word, he is expected to live. I suppose there is an irony in the fact that YouTube deletes a video of Democrats beating the daylights out of a Republican. It violates their ever-shifting but always leftist standards. With this outrageous conduct by Democrats taking place, one might think that leaders of the Democratic Party would be scurrying to disavow their supporters’ violence. But that isn’t happening. Are you aware of a single prominent Democrat who has repudiated the Democratic Party riots going on across the country? I am not. Or who has tried to distance his party from vicious, felonious assaults like the one in the video above? I am not aware of any Democrat who has condemned the life-threatening beating of a random Trump voter in Chicago. As best I can tell, leading Democrats think this sort of Brownshirt behavior is just fine. U.S. Senator Cory Booker, often mentioned as a Democrat Presidential or Vice-Presidential nominee, hailed the vicious rioters, saying: “God bless the protesters.” That is today’s Democratic Party: the vicious, the violent, the anti-democratic, the bullies. The fascists. Which looks more like an insurrection? What a handful of Trump supporters, Antifa activists and random nuts with fur hats and horns did on January 6, or what thousands of Democratic Party activists did across the country after Donald Trump was elected in 2016? I would add that I don’t remember a single Democrat Party politician denouncing the violence of 2016. Not one.

Canceling Dr. Seuss Posted: 03 Mar 2021 04:28 PM PST (John Hinderaker) Will there ever be a point where liberals look at each other and say, “It’s over. We were crazy. We need to find our way back to reality”? I don’t know. As liberalism in general, and cancel culture in particular, grow ever more absurd, one might have expected that moment to arrive some time ago. Possibly the current effort to cancel Dr. Seuss as a racist might be the one that causes liberals to look in the mirror and reflect. I don’t recall that Dr. Seuss’s books had human characters in them, let alone identifiable human races. They were gentle and well-intentioned, if on occasion liberal. Ted Geisel was a Dartmouth alum and gave the college a lot of money; they named the Dartmouth Medical School after him following the largest donation in the college’s history. So far Dartmouth has remained silent. There is no talk, as far as I know, of changing the Medical School’s name. Michael Ramirez comments wisely on this moment of insanity. Click to enlarge: I am tempted to say that if liberals don’t understand that they have gone around the bend when they try to cancel Dr. Seuss, there is no hope for them. And maybe not much hope for the rest of us.

Where is the best high school basketball played? Posted: 03 Mar 2021 09:56 AM PST (Paul Mirengoff) Ask any basketball fanatic in the Washington, D.C. area, and he will say the best basketball is played in the Washington Catholic Athletic Conference (WCAC). Of course, if you ask the same question of fans in a dozen or so other cities, they will identify their top league as the nation’s best. Last season (2019-2020), though, the WCAC’s claim had more behind it than just local chauvinism. Consider the way its top seniors are performing now as college freshmen. Let’s start with DeMatha, the city champions. Its two biggest stars were Hunter Dickinson and Earl Timberlake. Dickinson is now one of the top centers in all of college basketball. Playing for Michigan, the number 2 ranked team in the country, he is averaging 14.4 points and 7.7 rebounds per game. The other night, he outdueled player of the year candidate Luka Garza of Iowa, who also played high school ball in D.C. but not in the WCAC. (However, last night he was outplayed by Illinois’ Kofi Cockburn, another of college basketball’s top centers.) Timberlake went to Miami in the ACC. Before sustaining an injury, he was averaging 9 points, 5 rebounds, and 2.5 assists as a freshman. Paul VI was the runner-up to DeMatha in 2019-20. That team featured Jeremy Roach as its point guard. Roach went to Duke where he is playing starter minutes. Deployed mostly on the wing, he’s averaging just under 9 points per game. Gonzaga College High School, a 15 minute walk from the Capitol, has three seniors from 2019-20 playing major college ball this year. Chuck Harris, a wing guard, starts for Butler in the Big East. He’s the team’s leading scorer at 12 points per game. He hits on 39 percent of his three pointers. Gonzaga’s star player wasn’t Harris, it was Terrance Williams. After decommitting from Georgetown, Williams joined Dickinson at Michigan. He comes off the bench for that uber-talented team. Myles Stute of Gonzaga is the WCAC’s contribution to the SEC. He’s at Vanderbilt. Stute plays about 15 minutes a game, averaging 4.3 points and 2.4 rebounds. He’s making just under 50 percent of his field goal attempts. St. John’s College High School rounds out the WCAC’s big four. Last season, its star was Ishmael Leggett. He now plays for Rhode Island in the A-10. Leggett averages 6.5 points in 19 minutes, and makes 44 percent of his three-point attempts. His overall shooting percentage — 48 percent — is the highest of any non-center on the team. Having watched a few Rhode Island games, my view is that Leggett, a high energy player, should be getting more minutes. Mikey Square, the center for St. John’s in 2019-2020, plays 20 minutes per game for Farleigh Dickinson. He averages 6 points and 3.7 rebounds. As good as the WCAC was in 2019-2020, it might have been better the year before, when the players discussed above were juniors (but Roach missed the season due to injury). Here is a rundown of the top seniors who graced the league that season. DeMatha had Justin Moore and Jahmir Young. Moore averages 13 points per game for Villanova, ranked number 10 in the AP college basketball poll. Young, the fourth scoring option for DeMatha, averages 18.4 points per game at Charlotte. St. Johns was led by Casey Morsell who, I believe, was WCAC player of the year. At the University of Virginia, a top-25 program, Morsell hasn’t scored much. However, his stellar defense has kept him in Tony Bennett’s rotation to the tune of about 20 minutes per game the past two seasons. Hard-driving Anwar Gill was the unsung hero of Gonzaga’s WCAC championship team of 2018-19. Gill played prep school ball last season. Now, he averages 6 points in 20 minutes per game as a freshman for La Salle. Josh Oduro was Paul VI’s big man in 2018-19. He was overshadowed by that team’s guards, including Trevor Keels, a sophomore back then and now a McDonald’s all-American. A sophomore at George Mason, Oduro averages 10.4 points and 6 rebounds. Recently, he scored 27 in an upset win over then-first place VCU. Darius Maddox was a junior for St. Johns in 2018-19. A smooth jump shooter with range, he played his senior year at Oak Hill Academy as a starter for a team ranked in the top 10 nationally. Maddox is now at Virginia Tech. As I said, D.C. is far from the only city that can claim to have the best high school basketball. Baltimore, just up the highway, features hard-nosed hoops and produces many quality college players. In a typical year, its basketball might well be as good as Washington’s. However, one would be hard pressed to identify any city whose high school ball was superior to D.C.’s from 2018-2020.

What Do the People Think? Posted: 03 Mar 2021 09:39 AM PST (Steven Hayward) I’m looking over the 189-page results of a recent Harvard-Harris poll of 1,778 voters conducted last week, and there are some interesting findings to pass along: Andrew Cuomo: Very Favorable/Favorable— 31%; Unfavorable/Very Unfavorable—42% (Note: the poll finished on Feb. 25, before most of the sexual harassment stories hit the media.) This question is interesting for its even split: “Do you agree or disagree with the following statement: The 2020 election was unfair because big tech companies, Hollywood, big corporations, and the media worked together to hold back information from voters and change the rules against Donald Trump, or were their actions fair?” Agree: 49%; Disagree: 51% Now here’s where it starts to get interesting: “Which do you find more concerning—the violence that occurred in American cities over the summer of 2020, or the incident at the U.S. Capitol on January 6?” Violence in American cities: 55%; Incident at the Capitol on Jan. 6: 45%. More: “Do you think the perpetrators of violence in American cities over the summer are being looked for and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law?” Yes: 48%; No: 52%. “Do you think Antifa is a domestic terrorist group or not a domestic terrorist group?” Terrorist group: 71%; Not a terrorist group: 29%. “Do you think that the events at the U.S. Capitol are being used by politicians to suppress legitimate political movements or do you think there is no such suppression of legitimate movements? Being used to suppress legitimate movements: 64%; Not being used to suppress: 36% “Do you think the riots are being used as an excuse to silence political voices on the right or is the reaction to them a legitimate response to the violence?” Being used to silence the right: 59%; Legitimate response, 41%. There are several immigration questions that suggest huge vulnerabilities for Democrats. Start with: “Do you think that coming into the United States without any documentation should be a crime or not a crime?” Crime: 65%; Not a crime, 35%. “Do you think that any holes in the border wall with Mexico should be patched, or should be left open?” Patched: 73%; Left open, 27%. “Should the hundreds of miles of border wall that have been constructed over the last few years be left in place or dismantled?” Left in place: 79%; Dismantled, 21%. Score one for Trump. Finally (for now): “Do you think Amazon should be able to ban the selling of books and movies on its platform based on their political viewpoint or should they not be allowed to ban the selling of books based on their political perspective?” Amazon should be allowed to ban: 40%; Amazon should not be allowed to ban: 60%. Then the survey asked specifically about the banned Ryan Anderson book: “Recently Amazon pulled off its store a book challenging some of the assumptions of the transgender movement. Do you think Amazon should be taking such books out of its online store or should be allowing the book to be sold on its platform?” Amazon should remove the book: 39%; Amazon should not remove the book, 61%. There’s a lot more in this very long survey that comes at most questions from several angles, producing a lot of confusion and contradictory results, but the deficiencies of this kind of opinion survey are a subject for a rant on another occasion.

No Wray of sunshine Posted: 03 Mar 2021 08:29 AM PST (Scott Johnson) While reserving my own comment to the bottom, I want to quote Byron York’s excerpts from the testimony of FBI Director Christopher Wray before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday along with Byron’s notes (emphasis in original): Grassley asked Wray two simple questions: “Have you determined the exact cause of death and is there a homicide investigation?” Wray would not answer either one. Here is what he said: WRAY: So I will take the last part of your question first. There is an ongoing investigation into his death. I have to be careful at this stage because it’s ongoing not go get out in front of it, but I certainly understand and respect and appreciate the keen interest in what happened to him. After all, he was protecting all of you, and as soon as our information that we can appropriately share we want to be able to do that, but at the moment the investigation is still ongoing. GRASSLEY: So does that mean since the investigation is going on you have not determined the exact cause of the death? WRAY: That means we can’t yet disclose the cause of death at this stage. GRASSLEY: But you have determined the cause of death? WRAY: I didn’t say that. We are not at a point where we can disclose or confirm the cause of death. The short version: Wray revealed nothing. When Grassley asked if there was a “homicide investigation,” Wray said there was an “investigation.” When Grassley asked if a cause of death had been found, Wray would not say, but made clear he would not tell the Senate in any event. Grassley had more questions. He wanted to know about the percentage of FBI domestic terrorist investigations that are based on racially-motivated extremists versus those based on jihadist ideology. Wray did not answer. Grassley wanted to know why the FBI had not given to Congress the bureau’s January 5 memo warning of possible violence at the Capitol on January 6. Wray said it was “law enforcement sensitive,” but that he would “get with [his] staff to check on it.” Grassley noted that on February 2, he and committee chairman Senator Richard Durbin — the top Democrat and top Republican on the committee — had written the FBI seeking documents and information about the Capitol riot. They have gotten nothing. “It’s difficult to hold a hearing today without records,” Grassley said. Other senators, notably Republicans Mike Lee and Josh Hawley, wanted to know about the surveillance measures the FBI had used to identify suspects in the Capitol riot investigation. Wray professed to know little or nothing about it. But the complaints from Grassley, Lee, and Hawley were minor compared to those from Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse. When his turn came to question Wray, Whitehouse began by explaining that senators ask questions during hearings but often submit further queries in writing, so-called questions for the record, that the witness is expected to answer. The FBI, Whitehouse complained, simply ignores questions for the record. Here is how the exchange began: WHITEHOUSE: Do you know how many questions for the record the FBI failed to answer in the last four years? WRAY: I do not. WHITEHOUSE: Well, I’ll tell you. There were nine hearings in this committee in which the FBI was a witness. And in seven of them the committee got exactly zero questions for the record — seven, zero questions. Can you explain that? WRAY: I cannot. I will say — WHITEHOUSE: Are you going to do any better with the questions that we are getting right now? You have been asked questions for the record. Are they going to go into the same whatever-it-was hole where questions for the record go to die at the FBI? Backtracking, Wray tried to explain that the FBI’s answers have to go through an “elaborate interagency process” before they can be sent to Congress. Whitehouse asked Wray to cite whatever policy requires that process. “I can’t cite you the reg or the rule,” Wray said. Whitehouse complained that the FBI only answers questions when it sees a political advantage in doing so. Otherwise, “We have run this rigmarole with that interagency process in which we don’t get answers.” Wray said that he, too, was frustrated by the slowness of the process — a claim that, it is fair to guess, no one on the committee really believed. Whitehouse vowed to do “whatever it takes,” including blocking nominees, to force the FBI to begin answering questions. I will only add that it appears to be past time to do away with the FBI — or with its Washington headquarters — and start over. Whole thing here.

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