Forgot to mention an episode from last week. I was doing a Fox show and Rob Reiner and some hanger-ons were in the green room. We chatted pleasantly, and I did my hit, then I come back and Reiner and this other guy practically leap out of their chairs to say what I had just said was untrue. I was reacting to the Sharpton speech and had said it was playing on Democratic mythology–that the fact was that Gore asked for a recount only in those counties where he thought it would benefit him and in almost every scenario recounted by the media afterward, Bush had won. Now, both of these things happen to be flat out true. But we immediately got into the arcana of Florida. Reiner was very civil and well-informed, but eventually had to leave to get make-up. I was left with one of his sidekicks, a former Gore aide who was so raging mad that his hands were visibly shaking–really shaking–as he made his points. Now, it is kind of ridiculous how people on political shows pretend to be best of friends in green rooms, but, on the other hand, it is very, very bad form to raise your voice in a green room and shake with anger. It reminded me of dorm-room arguments I had in college. Anyway, this guy apparently forgot about the New York Times story that ran on November 12, 2001 titled, “Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote.” The Times reported that, “Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court’s order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.” The lesson I took away from it all is that Democrats are so used to plying nonsense on Florida, they can’t take it when someone calls them on it.
Most Popular

McConnell: Trump Will Sign Spending Bill and Declare National Emergency to Fund Wall
By Jack Crowe
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday that President Trump will sign the homeland-security-spending bill pending before Congress while simultaneously declaring a national emergency in order to fund his long-promised border wall.
The spending bill, which provides just $1.35 billion for the construction ...
Read More

Jussie Smollett Changes His Story Again
By Kyle Smith
The actor Jussie Smollett continues to talk about the alleged January 29 attack on him during a frigid night in Chicago, giving Good Morning America his fullest description yet of his claims. It differs substantially from what he told police initially after the alleged assault.
Smollett told GMA that the ...
Read More


We’ll Regret This
Mitch McConnell says the president will sign the budget deal and he will also declare a national emergency to build the wall, as I expected.
We’ll see the legal justifications he uses, but as a political and constitutional matter this is a long-term disaster. Oh, it might be good for Trump according to the ...
Read More

Trump’s Emergency Declaration Is Contemptuous of the Rule of Law
By David French
One thing that is abundantly clear from reading the full text of President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the southern border — he’s barely even deigning to explain why there is a particular crisis today, or why that crisis is so grave that it requires the military to combat it. At its heart ...
Read More

The Failure of the Deal
EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.
Dear Reader (But especially Sammie),
I had my say on the emergency declaration yesterday, and I’m sure I’ll have to say it all again not very far ...
Read More

Capitalism’s Cold War
The story of capitalism since the 1980s has been that of a kind of cold war between capital and politics.
In the decade prior, American government was at the nadir of its prestige and credibility. The so-called War on Poverty, launched with great fanfare and idealism in the late 1960s, quickly collided with ...
Read More

Trump Declares National Emergency to Fund Border Wall
By Jack Crowe
President Trump declared a national emergency on Friday in order to unilaterally appropriate $3.6 billion for the construction of his long-promised border wall.
The announcement, made during a televised White House Rose Garden ceremony, came after Congress passed a bipartisan homeland-security-funding bill ...
Read More