Starts about 32 minutes into AG Barr’s testimony. Worth listening to.

The New Hotness? Sacramento scheming:

● Sacramento wants to tax soda, tires, guns, water, pain pills, lawyers, car batteries…

—The L.A. Times today.

● California’s next frontier in fighting climate change: your kitchen stove.

—The L.A. Times, Thursday.

As John Sexton writes at Hot Air, “The purpose of this is to induce people to save energy. But the practical result is going to be much higher bills if I’m suddenly using electricity to heat water, cook, heat the house, and dry clothes on top of everything else. It’s hard to estimate what the increased price will be but I’m certain it’s going to be a lot more than my current gas bill, probably several times more. So on top of the cost of replacing appliances and adding new electrical wiring to my home, there’s going to be a higher monthly bill as well.”

Flashback: Calif. Power Rates Go Up 80 Percent.

From Ed Driscoll

SHOT: After 2016 loss, Democrats know they need white male voters.

CHASER: Bernie Sanders says he WOULD sign a bill to study reparations after claiming previously there were ‘better ways to help black communities than just writing out a check.’

HANGOVER: Ocasio-Cortez Pushes ‘Agenda of Reparations’ at Sharpton Conference.

HAIR OF THE DOG: Democratic 2020 candidates, speaking to black voters in NYC, pledge unanimous support for slavery reparations study bill.

TWELVE O’CLOCKTAILS: Reparations bill wins new momentum in Congress.

IT’S FIVE O’CLOCK SOMEWHERE: Kamala Harris says she will sign legislation studying reparations ‘when’ she becomes president.

KEG STANDS: O’Rourke, Castro talk reparations with Al Sharpton.

Looks a lot more like a full-blown reparations bender than an attempt to win back white male voters.

From Stephen Green

John Hinderaker:

Much of the Left’s current wish list–the Green New Deal, reparations–is fantasy. Those proposals are purely for political effect, and aren’t going anywhere. But there is an important exception: there is a serious risk that the Left will succeed in effectively abolishing the Electoral College.

That will never be done via constitutional amendment, of course. The small states, a majority, won’t vote for it. But liberals are promoting an Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote. This is how I described the proposed compact here:

States that subscribe to it pledge to choose their electors not according to the wishes of that state’s voters, but rather in obedience to the “national popular vote.” The Agreement goes into effect when it has been enacted by states having a majority of votes in the Electoral College.

What this means is that Minnesota will outsource its voters’ rights to residents of larger, sometimes predominantly one-party states like California, New York, Texas and Illinois. Minnesotans may vote for candidate X, but their votes won’t count–or at least, won’t have any particular significance in casting Minnesota’s votes for president. If enough voters in other states prefer candidate Y, then the votes of Minnesotans will be entirely disregarded, and the state’s electoral votes will go to candidate Y.

Constitutionally, there is no such thing as a “national popular vote.” It is essentially a journalistic construct. Still, it is easy to understand the liberal case for electing our president by a national popular vote. They consider it a straightforward application of “one man, one vote.” Of course, what is really driving the effort is the fact that the Democratic Party faces a serious structural problem: its voters are concentrated in a relative handful of urban areas.

What is the case against the National Popular Vote agreement?

1) It is an attack on federalism–the structure of the Constitution itself. The United States is just that, a union of states, not of atomized individuals. The states are important. Under the Constitution, all powers not delegated by the states to the federal government remain with the states and their subdivisions, local government units. The fact that a presidential candidate carries, say, Michigan is important.

Liberals have long disliked federalism and would like to erode the powers of the states, which often stand in the way of their grand schemes. Ideally, for liberals, the states would cease to exist except as administrative units of the central government. Effectively getting rid of the Electoral College would be an important step toward this goal.

2) The Electoral College promotes consensus. In most presidential elections, the national vote will be close, within a few percentage points. In 2012, to take just one example, Barack Obama won only 51% of the popular vote. But in the Electoral College, he dominated, winning 332 to 206. The Electoral College generally will transform a narrow presidential victory into a mandate. It minimizes controversy and encourages acceptance of the presidential election’s result.

3) Electing the president by a “national popular vote” would be an invitation to voter fraud. In recent years, voter fraud has become an increasingly important part of the Democratic Party’s playbook. These days, we have an Election Season, often lasting a month or more, rather than an Election Day. We have “ballot harvesting” that, in 2018, allowed the Democrats to tip the scales in close House elections.

Voter fraud is a huge problem, but there is a firewall in presidential elections: fraud can only swing one state. Thus, when Democratic precincts in Philadelphia report 100% turnout, including “voters” who have died or moved away, ballot box stuffing can help a presidential candidate carry Pennsylvania, but it won’t affect the outcome in Texas or California. Under a National Popular Vote regime, the incentive to commit fraud, anywhere and everywhere, will be immense. This is not a temptation that the Democratic Party can be expected to resist.

So the National Popular Vote Agreement is a bad idea. But is there a serious likelihood that it will go into effect? And will it work, i.e., is it constitutional?

The risk is serious indeed.

The popular vote movement is spreading like wildfire across the country. On Thursday, New Mexico became the 14th state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, joining California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington state and the District of Columbia. The states, which represent a whopping 189 electoral votes, have agreed to shift their voting allocations once the group amasses 270 votes, the threshold needed to decide a presidential election. If Ohio decides to join the Compact, the state’s 18 electoral votes would push that number to 207. A few large states or several small states could easily put them over the top.

My state, Minnesota, is another where National Popular Vote legislation has been introduced. My organization is opposing it, and I don’t think it will pass this year, only because the Republicans have a narrow three-vote majority in our state’s Senate. If that changes in 2020, Minnesota will most likely add its ten electoral votes to the National Popular Vote initiative. The same dynamic is in play in other states.

If enacted, will the National Popular Vote Agreement work as intended? I think so. Some argue that it is an unconstitutional end run around Article II of the Constitution, but Section 1 of Article II says:

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress….

I don’t see any reason why a state’s legislature can’t direct that the state’s Electors be selected based on a hypothetical national popular vote, which is what the Agreement does.

If there is a silver lining to this dark cloud, it is the fact that the Agreement, unlike a constitutional amendment, can be rather easily undone. What will happen in a given state the first time that its electoral votes are cast for a candidate that the state didn’t vote for? When, for example, a Democrat carries California by 30 points, but all of California’s electoral votes are cast for a Republican who narrowly carried the “national popular vote”? I suspect that “one man, one vote” principles would rapidly fly out the window.

In the meantime, however, the Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote represents a real threat to our federalist system.

UPDATE: A reader makes an interesting point that I hadn’t considered:

One issue that’s never addressed in regards to the Constitutionality of the so-called National Popular Vote compact is the limit imposed by Art. I section 10 paragraph 3. To wit, any compact or agreement between the states must be ratified by Congress. There’s no way such ratification would pass in the Senate. Any declaration that Candidate X was President Elect could be challenged in the courts on this basis.

Article I, section 10, paragraph 3 reads in part:

…no state shall, without the consent of Congress, enter into any agreement or compact with another state.

That language is, however, plainly overbroad. States have entered into an enormous number of agreements and compacts, most of which have not been approved by Congress. The Supreme Court articulated limiting principles in Virginia v. Tennessee:

The Constitution provides that

“No state shall, without the consent of Congress, lay any duty of tonnage, keep troops or ships of war in time of peace, enter into any agreement or compact with another state or with a foreign power, or engage in war, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent danger as will not admit of delay.”

Is the agreement, made without the consent of Congress, between Virginia and Tennessee, to appoint commissioners to run and mark the boundary line between them within the prohibition of this clause? The terms “agreement” or “compact,” taken by themselves, are sufficiently comprehensive to embrace all forms of stipulation, written or verbal, and relating to all kinds of subjects — to those to which the United States can have no possible objection or have any interest in interfering with as well as to those which may tend to increase and build up the political influence of the contracting states so as to encroach upon or impair the supremacy of the United States or interfere with their rightful management of particular subjects placed under their entire control.

There are many matters upon which different states may agree that can in no respect concern the United States.
***
If, then, the terms “compact” or “agreement” in the Constitution do not apply to every possible compact or agreement between one state and another, for the validity of which the consent of Congress must be obtained, to what compacts or agreements does the Constitution apply?
***
Looking at the clause in which the terms “compact” or “agreement” appear, it is evident that the prohibition is directed to the formation of any combination tending to the increase of political power in the states, which may encroach upon or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States.

A threshold question is how to read the provisions of Article I, Section 10, and Article II, Section 1, together. Arguably, Article II’s unqualified delegation of the manner of selecting electors to the states is not limited by the terms of Article I, Section 10.

Assuming nevertheless that Article I, Section 10 would be read as a limitation on Article II, Section 1, I haven’t undertaken research to determine whether subsequent cases have shed any further light on the “compact” clause. Assuming the Virginia v. Tennessee formula still holds, it seems clear that the popular vote agreement does not “encroach on or interfere with the just supremacy of the United States,” since the Constitution empowers states to choose presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.”

There is another possible issue: read literally, the Virginia opinion refers only to agreements that “may tend to increase and build up the political influence of the contracting states” to the disadvantage of the federal government. I think it is clear that the Popular Vote Agreement doesn’t do that. But what if it “tend[s] to increase and build up the political influence of the contracting states” to the disadvantage of the other states? At first look, that isn’t what the Agreement does. On the contrary, the states that enter into the Agreement arguably are disadvantaging their own voters and empowering non-contracting states. In effect, they are outsourcing their presidential votes to all 50 states. On the other hand, states that are not parties to the Agreement might argue that they are entitled to the constitutional process for electing a president and thus their “political influence” has been diminished by an agreement to which they are not parties.

On balance, based on only partial research, I doubt that the “compact” clause would render the Popular Vote Agreement unconstitutional. However, nothing remotely like the Popular Vote Agreement was before the Supreme Court in Virginia v. Tennessee. Given that the obvious purpose of the Agreement is to negate the method of electing a president set forth in Article II, and given the broad language of Article I, Section 10, paragraph 3, a Supreme Court reviewing the validity of the Popular Vote Agreement–likely in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election–would not be bound by the phrases used by the Court in 1893. It might see its way clear to using the “compact” clause to negate the Popular Vote Act.

This is a nightmare scenario, however. It could lead, for the first time in American history, to serious doubt as to who is the rightful president.

Original

RICHARD FERNANDEZ:

“…Our expectations of the future are set by the past. When Stephen Hawking died in 2018 his final warning to humanity was to beware artificial intelligence, climate change and a meteor strike from outer space. Although these are now familiar terms no newspaper editor before 1970 would have heard of them. Until the early 1980s global warming fears did not exist: it was global cooling the press warned about. The now familiar dinosaur killing Chicxulub impact crater was only found in 1978 by “geophysicists Glen Penfield and Antonio Camargo … as part of an airborne magnetic survey of the Gulf of Mexico north of the Yucatán peninsula”. Fears of runaway AI only became mainstream in the 21st century. None of these fears are more than 40 years old.

If Stephen Hawking time traveled to whisper his final warning to Albert Einstein the 20th century genius would probably not have had a clue what the 21st century physicist was talking about. . . .

Maybe governments shouldn’t embark on 50 year plans given the revelatory power of new information. While people can’t help but express the future in terms of the past it is more than likely that politicians who embark on huge programs based on multi decade predictions will be sorely disappointed. It’s entirely probable we’ve never even heard of whatever will worry the world of 2080. Tomorrow, like the Russian sky, is full of surprises…”

Original

Victor Davis Hanson:

Right after the 2016 election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein—cheered on by Hillary Clinton dead-enders—sued in three states to recount votes and thereby overturn Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. Before the quixotic effort imploded, Stein was praised as an iconic progressive social justice warrior who might stop the hated Trump from even entering the White House.

When that did not work, B-list Hollywood celebrities mobilized, with television and radio commercials, to shame electors in Trump-won states into not voting for the president-elect during the official Electoral College balloting in December 2016. Their idea was that select morally superior electors should reject their constitutional directives and throw the election into the House of Representatives where even more morally superior NeverTrump Republicans might join with even much more morally superior Democrats to find the perfect morally superior NeverTrump alternative.

When that did not work, more than 60 Democratic House members voted to bring up Trump’s impeachment for vote. Trump had only been in office a few weeks. Then San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer toured the country and lavished millions on advertisements demanding Trump’s removal by impeachment—and was sorely disappointed when he discovered that billion-dollar-fueled virtue-signaling proved utterly bankrupt virtue-signaling.

When that did not work, celebrities and politicians hit social media and the airwaves to so demonize Trump that culturally it would become taboo even to voice prior support for the elected president. Their chief tool was a strange new sort of presidential assassination chic, as Madonna, David Crosby, Robert de Niro, Johnny Depp, Snoop Dogg, Peter Fonda, Kathy Griffin, and a host of others linguistically vied with one another in finding the most appropriately violent end of Trump—blowing him up, burning him up, beating him up, shooting him up, caging him up, or decapitating him. Apparently, the aim—aside from careerist chest-thumping among the entertainment elite—was to lower the bar of Trump disparagement and insidiously delegitimize his presidency.

When that did not work, during the president’s first year in office, the Democrats and the media at various times sought to invoke the 25th Amendment, claiming Trump was so mentally or physically impaired that he was not able to carry out the duties of president. At one point, congressional Democrats called Yale University psychiatrist Dr. Bandy X. Lee to testify that Trump was unfit to continue. In fact, to prove her credentials, Lee edited The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump that offered arguments from 27 psychiatrists and other mental health experts. In May 2017, acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein met secretly in efforts to poll Trump cabinet members to discover whether they could find a majority to remove Trump from office—again on grounds that he was mentally unbalanced. According to McCabe, Rosenstein offered to wear a wire, in some sort of bizarre comic coup attempt to catch Trump off-guard in a confidential conversation.

When that did not work, 200 congressional Democrats in late 2018 sued in federal court to remove President Trump, claiming he had violated the esoteric Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that forbids federal officials from taking gifts, jobs, and titles from foreign governments. They alleged Trump’s presidency has enhanced his overseas real estate holdings and interests. Yet, according to some sources, the various Trump companies have lost some $1 billion in value after he took office—to the delight of the same critics who swore he has profited enormously as president.

When that did not work, the ongoing “Resistance” both covertly and overtly sought ways to retard or destroy the Trump presidency—often by leaking presidential memos, conversations, and phone calls. An anonymous op-ed published in the New York Times on September 15, 2018 boasted of a plan of resistance to his governance and initiatives from those in the administrative state from inside the Trump Administration, most of them allegedly establishment Republicans.

When that did not work, progressive heartthrob lawyer and now indicted Michael Avenatti reintroduced pornographic film star Stormy Daniels to the public. He claimed that Daniels had somehow been tricked into signing a supposedly improper and now invalid non-disclosure agreement not to talk about an alleged sexual encounter of a decade earlier with private citizen Trump in an exchange for a payment of $135,000.

Allegedly, Trump’s acquiescence to Daniels’ veritable blackmail demands had now impaired her own opportunities of further profiting to a far greater degree from the past alleged tryst with a now President Trump. Until his recent indictment for a number of felonies, Avenatti himself had translated his work with Daniels into media celebrity-hood, appearing over 100 times on cable news shows to damn Trump, predict his impeachment, and prep his promised 2020 presidential run against Trump.

When that did not work, federal law enforcement officials stormed the offices of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, in search of incriminating materials. Cohen quickly was leveraged by federal attorneys, flipped, and offered anti-Trump testimonies and documents in exchange for leniency. He produced stealth tapes of private conversations with his own client Trump—and shortly afterward was disbarred by the New York State Supreme Court for pleading guilty to a series of felonies.

When that did not work, Russian collusion hysteria continued to sweep the country. The moribund phony Steele dossier (that had failed to derail the Trump campaign and transition) was reignited by the media and progressive politicos after the firing of FBI director James Comey, leading to the recusal of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the emergence of Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein.

Rosenstein then appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel—in a series of events prompted by none other than fired James Comey, who admitted that he illegally leaked confidential, if not some classified, presidential memos to create the conditions necessary for such a special appointment. Mueller’s subsequent media darling attorneys—praised as the “dream team,” “all-stars,” “army,” “untouchables,” and “hunter-killer team”—of mostly Democratic partisans, some Clinton donors, and a few who had defended either the Clinton Foundation or Clinton aides then spent 22 months, and between $30-40 million trying to build a case. In the end, they leveraged mostly minor Trump satellites on process crimes, misleading testimonies, or past business deals in hopes of finding collusionary guilt. Leaking was a Mueller team trademark as each week the collusionary media announced another “bombshell” or “noose tightening” around the neck of Donald Trump—or mysteriously showed up at the home of the next Mueller victim, to wait for the arrival of SWAT teams to swoop into make an arrest.

When that did not work, congressional committees and the left-wing mob next went after William Barr, Trump’s “hand-picked” attorney general (are not all AGs “hand-picked” by the president?). Barr’s crime was that he had followed the law to the letter. And so Barr spent a few days after the arrival of the exonerating Mueller collusion report to ensure first, before releasing it to the public, that it did not endanger national security or besmirch the reputations of innocent named individuals. If in a blink, “collusion” had died, soon in its death throes it birthed “obstruction”—as if Trump’s objections to vast resources wasted on chasing an imaginary non-crime of collusion was obstruction

When that did not work, congressional committees mobilized to sue and force Trump to release at least six years of his private income tax records, elements of which already in bits and pieces had been leaked.

Are such efforts in the future to be institutionalized?

Will the Left nod and keep still, if Republicans attempt to remove an elected Democratic President before his tenure is up? Are appeals to impeachment, the 25th Amendment, the Emoluments Clause, the Logan Act, and a Special Counsel the now normal cargo of political opposition to any future elected president?

Is it now permissible in 2020 for Trump’s FBI director to insert an informant into the campaign of the Democratic presidential nominee? If Joe Biden is the 2020 nominee, will the Trump Justice Department seek FISA warrants to monitor the communications of Biden’s campaign team—in worries that Biden son’s business practices in the Ukraine had earlier compromised Biden who had intervened on his behalf by threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine? Will they investigate Biden’s propensity to hug and kiss under-aged girls? Will Trump’s CIA director contact foreign nationals to aid in spying on Biden’s aides? Will National Security Advisor John Bolton request that the names of surveilled Biden campaign officials become unmasked as a way of having them leaked to the media? Will Trump hire a British ex-spy to gather together rumors and gossip about Biden’s previous overseas trips and foreign contacts, especially in the Ukraine, and then see them seeded among the Trump CIA, FBI, Justice Department, and State Department? Is that the sort of country we have now?

America over the last half century had been nursed on the dogma that the Left was the guarantor of civil liberties. That was the old message of the battles supposedly waged on our behalf by the ACLU, the free-speech areas on campuses, and the Earl Warren Court.

Not now. The left believes that almost any means necessary, extra-legal and anti-constitutional or not, are justified to achieve their noble ends. Progressive luminaries at CNN and the New York Times have lectured us that reporters need not be disinterested any more in the age of Trump—or that it might be a crime to shout “lock her up” at a Trump rally. Will those standards apply to coverage of future Democratic presidents?

No reporter seems to care that Hillary Clinton hired a foreign national to work with other foreign nationals to sabotage, first, her opponent’s campaign, then his transition and his presidency, along with the wink and nod help from key Obama officials at the Department of Justice, State Department, National Security Council, FBI and CIA.

The final irony? If the CIA, FBI, and DOJ have gone the banana republic way of Lois Lerner’s IRS and shredded the Constitution, they still failed to remove Donald Trump.

Trump still stands. In Nietzschean fashion what did not kill him apparently only made him stronger.

Original

They should add a sign that says “Gun Free Zone”

NASA wants to go check out the poop the Apollo missions left on the moon