DeMint Out at Heritage Foundation

May 3rd, 2017

We now have confirmation of the rumors that were flying all weekend: Jim DeMint is out as head of the Heritage Foundation:

The Heritage Foundation’s Board of Trustees, by a unanimous vote, has asked for and received the resignation of Jim DeMint as president and CEO of the organization. The Board elected Heritage Founder Ed Feulner as president and CEO while we conduct a thorough search for his successor.

After a comprehensive and independent review of the entire Heritage organization, the Board determined there were significant and worsening management issues that led to a breakdown of internal communications and cooperation. While the organization has seen many successes, Jim DeMint and a handful of his closest advisers failed to resolve these problems.

This was a difficult and necessary decision for the Board to take. As trustees, we have governance and oversight responsibilities for this organization and our 500,000 members. We were compelled to take action.

Founder Ed Feulner will be reclaiming his old job, thought at 75 it remains to be seen how much gas he has left in the tank.

Many believe that DeMint was ousted for reasons of organization and approach rather than ideology:

DeMint isn’t being forced out because of his politics. The firebrand will be extinguished because of complaints about his leadership, several sources confirmed to the Washington Examiner.

When DeMint left Congress for Heritage in 2013, it seems that he never left the Senate behind. “The reason why the board got upset with him was his mismanagement,” a source with knowledge of the situation explained. “DeMint and his people just tried running the place like a Senate office rather than a think tank. It didn’t work.”

While few fault the South Carolina conservative for mixing it up with Capitol Hill, his critics complain that the former senator didn’t secure a proper policy footing before throwing political punches. That supposed disconnect manifested itself in the apparent disconnect between Heritage and Heritage Action, the organization’s 501(c)4 lobbying arm.

“The board just wants Action to keep doing its job,” the source explained. “But that means they need to be backed up by the think tank side of things.”

Ahead of a massive grassroots army, Heritage Action can easily blow up legislation they find ideologically unacceptable. But after the dust settles, those conservative politicos complain that their corresponding wonks haven’t equipped them with a policy substitute to offer lawmakers.

Others pinned DeMint’s ouster on Mike Needham, CEO of Heritage Action for America, the organization’s political arm, and DeMint’s apparent coziness to the Trump administration. That Atlantic piece says Needham wanted to take over from DeMint. This Washington Examiner piece says no, he was just trying to restore Heritage, having seen it go off the rails. It also paints Heritage as an organization in (cue Scott Adams persuasion word) chaos:

Just as Capitol Hill prepares to tackle healthcare reform, the biggest conservative voice in politics is choking on itself. Already DeMint’s influence seemed like it was waning. The Policy Services and Outreach Department (which DeMint founded and which regularly competed with Heritage Action for influence) curiously stood up congressional staffers for a meeting and inexplicably deleted its Twitter account.

Finally, here DeMint defends his tenure. It’s a bit pro forma.

This is all a shame, and a rather surprising outcome given that DeMint stepped down from the Senate to take the reigns at Heritage.

Heritage was a real powerhouse in the 1980s, providing much of the intellectual underpinning of the Reagan revolution. Their various Mandate for Leadership documents provided blueprints for much of Reagan’s reforms.

I rejoined Heritage as a supporter when DeMint in hopes that he could wake a sleeping giant. But I let my membership lapse because I never saw notable signs of action out here beyond the beltway.

Hopefully whoever takes over Heritage next can restore it to some of its former glory.

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Posted in Republicans | 1 Comment »

Texas Stabbing/Shooting Followups

May 2nd, 2017

Here’s followups on both of yesterday’s Texas attempted spree-killers:

Dallas shooter Derick Lamont Brown

  • The firefighter/paramedic he shot is still alive in critical but stable condition. “A bullet broke the firefighter’s leg and he lost a lot of blood. In surgery, he was resuscitated three times after his heart stopped.”
  • “A Dallas police officer, later identified as Sgt. Robert Watson, saved the firefighter’s life when he went in alone, pulled the firefighter out, put him in his squad car and took him to the hospital.”
  • Brown killed his godfather, 66-year-old Arthur Riggins. Still not seeing any report of the dead neighbor’s name.
  • Brown was “national minister of defense for the New Black Panther Party and once served as the chairman of that organization.” (As I reported yesterday.) Brown “also went by the name Brotha DK.”
  • More: “According to [Babu] Omowale, the founder of Dallas’ Huey P. Newton Gun Club, Brown was the Black Nationalist defense group’s gunsmith. “He put some of our weapons together and if we needed extra supplies or if we needed anything added to our weapons, he was the person who made that happen for us.”
  • Brown had “a long criminal history, including an assault charge, several DWIs, and gun offenses.” More:

    In 2008, he was involved in a car accident in Dallas, records show. Responding Dallas PD officers approached his vehicle. He yelled, “I’m high… I’m high and I have a gun!”

    Police arrested him for felony possession of PCP. Brown pleaded guilty and got two years of probation.

    Then, about two years ago, Brown obtained a concealed carry license from the state of Florida.

    In 2015, he was involved in another car accident in Dallas. This time, when officers approached the vehicle, they observed Brown “holding a loaded magazine in his (right) hand” and “a 9-millimeter semi-automatic handgun” in his left hand, according to records.

    In that incident, officers smelled what they thought was PCP. They arrested Brown for being under the influence of a narcotic and for unlawful carry of a weapon by a license holder.

    Brown went to jail and was released two months ago.

    • UT stabber Kendrix J. White

  • “The student killed in Monday’s stabbing attack at the University of Texas at Austin has been identified as freshman Harrison Brown of Graham.”
  • White was recently arrested for DWI and had taken Zoloft, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor (SSRI). There have been a small number of additional spree killings where the murderer was on a SSRI.
  • This piece, which suggests Kendrix J. White was an antifa protestor who deliberately stabbed frat boys, seems more speculative than not. And reports saying White stabbed “three whites and one Asian” appear to be wrong (or incomplete), as one black man (who did not appear to be badly hurt) was shown being carted away to an ambulance at the scene.
  • His Twitter feed doesn’t look like a typical Antifa supporter. Here’s one tweet he forwarded:

  • Weirdly enough, there were two other, completely unrelated stabbing incidents in west UT campus that same day. Plus a random dead body. (Hat tip: Dwight.)

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | 1 Comment »

    Stabbing Attack at UT

    May 1st, 2017

    What the hell is going on today? One dead, three wounded in UT stabbing spree.

    You can’t even blame the heat, as the last few days a nice cool front has been blowing through…

    (Hat tip: Dwight.)

    Update: Suspect in custody:

    Update 2:

    Unless this is the first five seconds of the arrest, why haven’t they already disarmed the suspect?

    Update 3: The person doing the stabbing was evidently a UT student.

    Here’s a Tweet showing one of his victims being tended to.

    Update 4: Accused stabber’s name is Kendrex J. White, a 20-year old student.

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    Posted in Austin, Crime, Texas | No Comments »

    Active Shooter in Dallas? Update: Dead

    May 1st, 2017

    One Dallas Fire & Rescue EMT killed and an unidentified civilian wounded in what police are describing as an active shooter situation.

    Demographically that area (east of Fair Park and South of I-30) is where the predominately black section of south Dallas comes closest to downtown.

    If you’re in the area, now would be a good time to go over Karl Rehn’s advice on dealing with an active shooter situation.

    Update: Current reports say the EMT is in critical condition in surgery, not dead as previously reported. Dallas Morning News is doing regular updates.

    Update 2: Description of the shooter: “The shooter was described as bald black male in a green shirt in jeans. He walks with a limp.”

    Update 3: Two more dead, including suspect and his neighbor.

    Shot Paramedic in “critical, but stable condition” after surgery.

    Update 4: Dead shooter has been identified as Derick Lamont Brown, 36.

    The incident seems to have started as a dispute between neighbors.

    Note: A Derick Brown in the Dallas area was an active member of the New Black Panther Party for many years. Indeed, the ADL reported a Derick Brown proclaiming “We’re ready to die in self-defense” at a Black Panther rally in 2004, and here’s a pro-NBPP blog that calls Brown the chairman of the NBPP. Just about all the quotes that mention Brown and the New Black Panther Party seem to date from 2004-2008. It’s not certain the the two Derick Browns are the same man.

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    Posted in Crime, Guns, Texas | No Comments »

    Remembering Victims of Communism Day

    May 1st, 2017

    Once again it’s May 1, a very important date of observance: Victims of Communism Day.

    VictimsofCommunismDay

    Remember that communism killed some 100 million people.

    As Ilya Somin notes, this year will mark the 100th anniversary of the October Revolution:

    This year is a particularly important time to remember the victims of Communism because of the approaching one hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution – Bolshevik takeover of Russia. The Soviet Union was not the most oppressive communist regime. It probably did not match the even more thoroughgoing totalitarianism of the Khmer Rouge and North Korea. Nor did it kill the most people – a record held by Mao Zedong the Chinese communists. But the Soviet experiment was the principal model for all the later communist states, and it is hard to imagine communists seizing control of so much of the world without it. In addition to the significant material aid that the Soviets provided to communists in other nations, the communist seizure of power in Russia also greatly boosted the ideology’s prospects elsewhere.

    To this day, some claim that Soviet communism was originally a positive development and only went bad later, after Joseph Stalin came to power. But Stalin’s crimes were largely extensions of the earlier practices of Lenin.

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    Posted in Communism | 2 Comments »

    Breaking: John Wiley Price Walks

    April 28th, 2017

    Just after I hit post on today’s LinkSwarm, I see this:

    In a stunning defeat for federal prosecutors, John Wiley Price, the veteran politician who wields vast power and influence over Dallas County, was on Friday found not guilty of bribery and fraud.

    The jury that considered whether he was abusing his public office to rake in about $1 million in secret profits over a decade also couldn’t reach a verdict on charges of tax evasion. The judge declared a mistrial on the deadlocked charges.

    The U.S. attorney’s office will decide whether or not to retry Price on the tax charges.

    The prosecutors badly mishandled their case, being forced to turn over evidence withheld from the defense on multiple occasions. While I have ample reason to believe Price is guilty, I also believe the jury’s verdict was a logical one given how poorly the case had been presented.

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    Posted in Democrats, Texas | No Comments »

    LinkSwarm for April 28, 2017

    April 28th, 2017

    It’s been a week, so enjoy an extra-late Friday LinkSwarm

  • There’s lots of meat in President Trump’s tax reform proposal:

    Individual Reform

    Tax relief for American families, especially middle-income families:

  • Reducing the 7 tax brackets to 3 tax brackets of to%, 25% and 35%
  • Doubling the standard deduction
  • Providing tax relief for families with child and dependent care expenses

    • Simplification:

  • Eliminate targeted tax breaks that mainly benefit the wealthiest taxpayers
  • Protect the home ownership and charitable gift tax deductions
  • Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax
  • Repeal the death tax
  • Repeal the 3.8% Obamacare tax that hits small businesses and investment income

    • Business Reform

  • 15% business tax rate
  • Territorial tax system to level the playing field for American companies
  • One-time tax on trillions of dollars held overseas
  • Eliminate tax breaks for special interests
  • Texas House passes anti-Santuary City bill that fines officials for violating federal immigration laws.
  • North Korean ballistic missile test fails. Cue the sad trombone.

  • Obama’s Iran deal was even worse than we thought. “By dropping charges against major arms targets, the administration infuriated Justice Department officials — and undermined its own counterproliferation task forces.”
  • If Democrats keep moving left, they could experience another election like 1972:

    The highest-profile Democratic-party supporters are increasingly smug Hollywood actors, rich Wall Street and Silicon Valley elitists, and embittered members of the media, along with careerist identity groups and assorted protest movements — a fossilized 1972 echo chamber.

    Democrats’ politically correct messaging derides opponents as deplorable racists, sexists, bigots, xenophobes, homophobes, Islamophobes, and nativists. That shrill invective only further turns off Middle America. Being merely anti-Trump is no more a successful Democratic agenda than being anti-Nixon was in 1972.

  • If the election were held today, Trump would still beat Clinton.
  • Former Mayor of Hubbard, Ohio pleads guilty to raping a four year old. Go ahead, guess which party he’s a member of.
  • The Other McCain does his part for sexual assault awareness month.
  • The media does indeed live in a bubble, both geographic and ideological, of its own making.
  • Hundreds of illegal voters in North Carolina. (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Nancy Pelosi: tried, drunk or stroke? (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • 107 Cancer Papers Retracted Due To Peer Review Fraud. But don’t worry: All climate science is completely on the level…
  • When Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke swore up and down he never hire any campaign consultants, what he meant was he’d hire some.
  • “Facebook and Google confirmed as victims of $100M phishing scam.” (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • President Trump as a systems thinking President.
  • NYPD corruption scandal. Bribes? Check. Guns? Check. Prostitutes? Check. (Hat tip: Dwight.)
  • Marine Le Pen heads to a runoff with Emmanuel Macron on May 7. Is there a better figurehead for modern Globalism than a Socialist investment banker?
  • Dishonest medical equipment startup Theranos used a shell company to secretly buy outside lab equipment to actually run the lab tests they were faking as coming from their own equipment. And check out that picture caption: “[CEO] Elizabeth Holmes speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting.” Because of course she did.
  • Liberals love denouncing the imaginary Christian theocracy of The Handmaid’s Tale (now a miniseries) because it keeps them from having to think about the real Islamic ones oppressing women all over the world right at this very moment.
  • Related: “Lesbian Couple Discover Islamic Culture During Exciting International Trip.”
  • “When God sends a Plague of Wild Boars against you, he’s done sending messages, and is now sending armored bacon.”
  • Less than half of Democrats know a gun owner.
  • Richard Gere blacklisted in Hollywood on China’s orders.
  • Sonny Bunch has some “helpful” advice for Democrats. (Hat tip: Stephen Green at Instapundit.)
  • Nordstrom selling $425 fake muddy jeans. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • You too can own a baseball inscribed to Justice Antonin Scalia by Joe DiMaggio.
  • “My Boyfriend Ate Nothing But Pineapple For A Week And Now His Dick Is Covered In Bees.”

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    Posted in Border Control, Crime, Democrats, Economics, Elections, Foreign Policy, Guns, Jihad, Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors, Texas | No Comments »

    SchadESPNfreude

    April 27th, 2017

    You may have heard that ESPN has laid off at least 100 on-air employees. ESPN is the latest company to choose between being liberal and being profitable, and choosing liberal.

    You want to watch the Lakers game? Okay, but first you’re going to hear about Caitlyn Jenner. Want some NFL highlights? We’ll get to those eventually, but coming up next will be a discussion about how North Carolina is run by racist, homophobic bigots. You want to see the box scores of today’s baseball games? You can watch those at the bottom of the hour, but right now some D-list network talent would like to lecture you about gun control. After that we’ll have a panel discussion about how much courage it takes to turn your back on the American flag.

    The most interesting aspect of the mass layoffs on Wednesday isn’t that they happened, it’s who the network targeted. Not the high-priced carnival barkers and the know-nothing loudmouths doing their best to make Rachel Maddow proud. Nope. ESPN targeted sports reporters. In an effort to cut some fat from its bottom line, ESPN exchanged a scalpel for a chainsaw, skipped the fat entirely, and went straight to cutting out muscle.

    If ESPN wants to once again be the worldwide leader in sports, it should refocus on covering sports, which used to be a refuge from politics and the news. America is politicized enough already, and if its citizens want political news, several cable outlets do political news far better than ESPN ever could. Instead of doing sports and politics poorly, perhaps the network could return to the thing that it used to do better than everyone else in the world: cover live sports.

    To be sure there were a lot of other contributing factors (rising fixed costs from overpaying for sports, people dropping cable, etc.), but the relentless left-wing culture war slant was among the most avoidable of all ESPN’s self-inflicted wounds.

    More reactions:

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    Posted in Media Watch, Social Justice Warriors | 1 Comment »

    A Bad American Thinker Piece on Marijuana

    April 26th, 2017

    Paul Ingrassia makes “The Case against Legalizing Marijuana.” It’s a bad piece because it asks the wrong questions, and thus comes to the wrong conclusions. It approaches the question from a harm/benefit analysis angle, without ever pausing to ask: Why is this the government’s concern?

    The question it doesn’t ask is: Is it the federal government’s job to continue federal marijuana prohibition?

    Missing from this piece: Any mention of the Constitution. Where in the Constitution did the founding fathers list control of what people might grow in their own ground as an enumerated power of the federal government?

    Nowhere.

    The statutory standing of the federal government to do so rests on a tendentiously expansive reading to the commerce clause in Wickard vs. Filburn, which radically expands the power and scope of the federal government. Absent interstate commerce, federal marijuana regulation is neither necessary nor proper.

    The question of benefit or harm of marijuana is irrelevant to the question of whether the federal government has the enumerated constitutional power to regulate marijuana if it is not being sold across state lines. It does not. Therefore, under the Tenth Amendment, federal marijuana prohibition should be ended and the power of non-interstate commerce regulation on marijuana should devolve to the states, to regulate or not as voting citizens and their representatives see fit.

    Further nits:

  • “Additionally, with legalization follows an implicit societal acknowledgment that marijuana use is benign or even advantageous.” No it doesn’t. Ingrassia makes the erroneous assumption that it is government’s job to decide what’s “good” or “bad” for people. Spending all your time drinking and watching reality TV is unquestionably bad for you, but it’s not government’s job (much less the federal government’s job) to regulate such behavior.
  • “Libertarians likewise should take a guarded outlook when evaluating Colorado, their magnum opus. Indeed, tax revenues are up – but at what cost? Is the inevitable uptick in pot users an opportunity cost worth having for such revenues? Given its novelty, the wider societal implications are not fully explored, and the economics of the issue is far from definitive.” This makes the erroneous assumption that Libertarians believe that all that is not permitted should be forbidden rather than the reverse.

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    Posted in Crime, Regulation | 3 Comments »

    Chelsea Clinton Watch: “Please, God, Stop”

    April 25th, 2017

    The worst thing about doing a Chelsea Clinton Watch is that anyone, anywhere, would ever need to do a Chelsea Clinton Watch. Yet here we are.

    Conservatives would be happy to ignore Chelsea Clinton (at least when she’s not aiding and abetting bribery at the Clinton Foundation) if only the mainstream media would do the same.

    Alas, the Democratic Media Complex doesn’t want to hold up their end of that bargain.

    So enjoy(?) this first (hopefully only?) roundup of Chelsea Clinton news:

  • “Please, God, Stop Chelsea Clinton from Whatever She Is Doing. The last thing the left needs is the third iteration of a failed political dynasty.”

    Also:

    “Increased Chelsea exposure is tied closely to political despair and, in especially intense cases, the bulk purchasing of MAGA hats.”

    Thanks you sir, may I have another?

    “Reading anything by Chelsea Clinton—tweets, interviews, books—is best compared to taking in spoonfuls of plain oatmeal that, periodically, conceal a toenail clipping.”

    And this:

    The crude conventional wisdom is that Bill Clinton craved adoration and Hillary Clinton craved power. But Chelsea Clinton seems to have a more crippling want: fashionability—of the sort embraced by philanthropic high society. So you tell The New York Times that your dream dinner party would include James Baldwin, Shakespeare, Franz Kafka, Albert Camus, Jane Jacobs, and Jane Austen, and discussion would be about how “people and communities can evolve to be more inclusive, more kind, have a greater and broader sense of solidarity, while still respecting individual liberties; what provokes or blocks those changes; and what stories might resonate today to encourage us toward kindness, respect, and mutual dignity.” You almost have to bow down before someone who could host Shakespeare for dinner and make the agenda wind up sounding like a brochure for the Altria Group. At least Kafka would be on hand to capture the joy of the evening.

  • Kevin D. Williamson is also not a fan:

    Chelsea Clinton, most recently lionized on the cover of Variety, is a 37-year-old multi-millionaire who has never uttered an interesting word about any subject at any time during the course of her life. Judging from the evidence of her public statements, she has never had an original thought — it isn’t clear that she has had a thought at all. In tribute to her parents, she was given a series of lucrative sinecures, producing a smattering of sophomoric videos for NBC at a salary of $600,000 a year. She later went more formally into the family business, leaving her fake job at NBC for a fake job in her parents’ fake charity. She gave interviews about how she just couldn’t get interested in money and bought a $10 million Manhattan apartment that stretches for the better part of a city block.

    And, since her mother’s most recent foray into ignominious defeat, she has been inescapable: magazine covers, fawning interviews, talk of running her in New York’s 17th congressional district. The Democrats are doing their best to make Chelsea happen.

    And, who knows, it might work. It would be tempting to write her off as a know-nothing rich kid who has made a living off her family connections while operating one of the world’s most truly asinine Twitter accounts, but . . . well, you know.

    But, for Pete’s sake, stop it. Have a little self-respect, Democrats. Build Bill Clinton a statue or . . . whatever. Send him your daughters like a bunch of bone-in-the-nose primitives paying tribute to the tribal chieftain. But stop trying to inflict this empty-headed, grasping, sanctimonious, risible, simpering, saccharine little twerp on American public life.

  • “The problem with Chelsea is the same one Democrats faced with Hillary. She’s unapproachable and scripted, unnatural in a crowd, and seemingly condescending to the camera. Anyone not previously employed by the Obama or Clinton administrations can see it. They can smell it. And they’ve made it clear (twice now) that they don’t like it.”
  • The American Interest tells us why the Chelsea boom won’t go away.

    The loyalists who make up this apparatus want—or even need—for the gears to keep spinning. And for that, the machine needs to offer the promise of future influence. Otherwise, donations to the Clinton Foundation would dry up; speaking engagements would become less lucrative; Clinton-backed spin organizations would wither; and dozens of jobs would disappear. All this is to say that the strange persistence of Chelsea boosterism does not come out of nowhere; it is the product of a supremely well-organized political organization revving its engines. And it will not be shut down voluntarily.

    (Hat tip: Director Blue.)

  • Video game writer Ian Boudreau offers the case against Chelsea Clinton in Tweet form:

  • Finally, if the MSM is going to push Chelsea as a “glamorous icon,” then we need to puncture that idea with the cruel truth of how absolutely devoid of glamour she is.

    How cruel? This cruel:

    • Ending the baleful influence of the Clinton family should be a bipartisan issue. Evidence suggests that from, oh, 1994 on (and 2001 at the outside), Democrats have suffered for the misdeeds of the Clintons far more than Republicans. Indeed, it is far more in Democrats interests than Republicans to see the irrational boomlet for Chelsea Clinton end, as she sucks time and attention from potential Democratic candidates with actual talent and ability.

    And it’s in my interest to see her go away, as I really don’t want to make Chelsea Clinton Watch a regular item…

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    Posted in Democrats, Media Watch | 2 Comments »

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