Free Republic

Coronavirus is a significant public health issue, but the response to it, in many quarters, has been hysterical. Events of various kinds are being canceled or modified: schools are closing or going online, the NCAA basketball tournaments will be played without fans in the stands, New York’s St. Patrick’s Day parade has been canceled, countless businesses (like my old law firm) are closing their offices and telling employees to work from home. I think there are several reasons for this, beyond legitimate concerns about spreading the disease. First, a fear of liability that is probably misplaced. If other schools send...

In May 2018, in response to protests, Starbucks changed its policies nationwide to allow anybody to sit in their stores and use the bathroom without making a purchase. Using a large panel of anonymized cellphone location data, we estimate that the policy led to a 7.3% decline in store attendance at Starbucks locations relative to other nearby coffee shops and restaurants. This decline cannot be calculated from Starbucks’ public disclosures, which lack the comparison group of other coffee shops. The decline in visits is around 84% larger for stores located near homeless shelters. The policy also affected the intensive margin...

The big news over the weekend was not the coronavirus, contrary to what you might think from watching the news. The most consequential story of the weekend is the oil price war that has broken out between Saudi Arabia and Russia. Saudi Arabia has decided to increase its production and slash its price to punish Russia for not going along with OPEC quotas designed to prop up the price of oil, which has fallen by more than half over the last few months including today’s price collapse. (Can’t help reminding that all the certified “smart people” like John Kerry and...

There is one obvious difference between Warren and Gabbard: Warren’s candidacy was welcomed and favored by the Democratic establishment, while Gabbard’s was continually subverted. Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — the last remaining woman in the Democrats’ presidential race — has been shut out of the party’s next debate with a rule change that makes it mathematically impossible for her to claim a podium. Under the party’s most recent set of debate rules, any candidate who had won at least one delegate in the party’s first 25 nomination contests had the right to take the stage. Gabbard, who gained two delegates...

There has never been a moment during the campaign when I have taken Biden seriously as a candidate for the Democratic nomination, let alone the presidency. Despite today’s win, his decrepitude seems to be accelerating. No doubt you have seen reports of his inexplicable ramblings on the stump, most notably, perhaps, his looking forward to appointing the first female black senator. Having served in the Senate since he was 30, Biden seems not to have noticed that senators are elected, not appointed by the president. And at least one long-retired female black senator campaigned for him in South Carolina. But...

Democratic Party media are claiming that last night in South Carolina, President Trump said that the coronavirus epidemic is a hoax. Politico headlines :Did Trump actually say the corona virus is a hoax? Of course not. The claim is idiotic. If the president thought the virus is a hoax, why did he do a press conference on it last week, along with various medical personnel? And why did he ban travel to China at the beginning of the outbreak? This is what Trump actually said in South Carolina, according to the New York Post: President Trump jeered Democrats Friday night...

The Berkeley-IGS poll, overseen by my former office suite-mate pollster Mark DiCamillo, is out with new numbers today showing Bernie Sanders running away with the California primary next week, where 415 delegates are at stake: Sanders is now the choice of 34% of likely voters in the primary, twice the support of Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, his nearest rival who is preferred by 17%. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg receives 12% and former South Bend Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg is at 11%. Further back are former Vice President Joe Biden at 8% and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar at...

Great news from the Washington Examiner: President Trump is opening 15 urban campaign field offices in an aggressive bid to improve his performance with black voters, who for decades have been an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency. Sleek and situated in retail shopping districts to generate foot traffic, this unique collection of regional “community centers” is a critical component of the Trump campaign’s multimillion-dollar strategy to double in 2020 the 8% support the president received from black voters nearly four years ago. Where will these “community centers” be? Five offices are slated for Florida: Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. In North...

Over the last few days we have seen news reports alleging that members of the “intelligence community” have delivered briefings to the effect that the Russians are 1) trying to help President Trump in the 2020 election, and 2) trying to help Bernie Sanders in the same election. I don’t take seriously anything that is leaked from the “intelligence community,” but in any event, we don’t need the CIA to tell us where Vladimir Putin stands on American politics. Donald Trump is anathema to the rulers of Russia. Not only has he armed the Ukrainians, he has re-invigorated NATO by...

This morning one of my really smart lefty friends (someone I have really good arguments with—more people should try for this—who needless to say really hates Trump), sent me this note: Last night was the first Dem debate I tuned into, and it was horrifying. Bernie was an angry uncle. Bloomberg was an arrogant asshole. Warren was a ballbusting bluestocking. Pete was a glib greenhorn. Biden was barely alive. And Klobuchar was a smirking SNL character. . . It’s a f—— catastrophe! I agree with all of this, and this is, of course, why I’m really happy today. There’s been...

• One more thing about Bloomberg: He isn’t merely trying to buy the Democratic nomination; he’s also starving the Democratic Party into submission. The Intercept notes that Bloomberg is hiring so many Democratic political staff people, with guaranteed salaries through November whether he gets the nomination or not: Bloomberg’s spending is having a shockingly disruptive effect on Democratic politics throughout the country: He is hiring armies of staffers and canvassers in nearly every state in the country at eye-popping salaries, poaching talent from other campaigns and progressive organizations that are now struggling to fill jobs. In just three months, the...

In what many deem a stroke of political genius, President Trump served today as Grand Marshal of the Daytona 500 NASCAR race. He vowed to take a lap in the armored presidential limousine serving as a pace car, and did. Here are two short videos that show some of the action: https://twitter.com/FOXSports/status/1229135814946410496 https://twitter.com/NASCARONFOX/status/1229137604593037314 As you would expect, the president got an enthusiastic reception from the crowd of up to 200,000. NASCAR is famously patriotic, and Trump is a patriotic president. That may turn out to be the most fundamental difference between Trump and his Democratic opponent in November. In 1972,...

Michael Bloomberg’s campaign has leaked to the Drudge Report that Bloomberg is considering asking Hillary Clinton to be his running mate. This story doesn’t have much significance, on its face; the fact that a candidate is “considering” something isn’t exactly news. But it does reflect a few things: 1) I take it that Bloomberg is trying to beef up his bona fides as a “real” Democrat. It isn’t going to work: Democratic voters are not going to turn out for someone who endorsed George W. Bush in 2004 and enthusiastically advocated stop and frisk, among other heresies. 2) The Democrats...

Recent surveys show Americans to be more optimistic than they have been in years, and it is not hard to understand when you take in some of the good news stories out today. Starting with the bankruptcy filing of the McClatchy newspaper chain. Aside from CNN and the New York Times, it is hard to think of a media organization that deserves flushing down the sewer more than McClatchy, whose news pages have embraced open partisanship against Devin Nunes, and which refused to retract or correct a completely false story that Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had traveled to Prague in...

Collins was prominent during the House impeachment proceedings as an aggressive questioner on President Trump’s behalf. I didn’t find his questioning particularly cogent, but that’s just my opinion. He did his best, and gained good will from the president and the party for his efforts. But there are good reasons not to support Collins over Loeffler. For one thing, Collins’s record on immigration leaves plenty to be desired. He is part of a group of GOP Senators and congressman that has pleaded with DHS Secretary Chad Wolf to bring more foreign workers to the U.S. to compete against Americans for...

The results of our reader survey about adding a regular mid-week TWiP are in and have been tabulated by the Des Moines Register and the Iowa Democratic Party. While adding a mid-week TWiP won the popular vote, it lost both the electoral college and new and “transparent” party allocation rules, so for now we’re going with the status quo, and only doing a mid-week edition on weeks like this. And what main theme emerges this week? Probably that Trump had the best week of his presidency. You might say the MAGA-man had a mega-week.

<p>James Carville: I want to give you an example of the problem here. A few weeks ago, Binyamin Appelbaum, an economics writer for the New York Times, posted a snarky tweet about how LSU canceled classes for the National Championship game. And then he said, do the “Warren/Sanders free public college proposals include LSU, or would it only apply to actual schools?”</p>

Late Tuesday, the board for the Milwaukee 2020 Host Committee terminated President Liz Gilbert and her chief of staff, Adam Alonso. The move comes just one day after the board suspended the pair and launched an investigation into “toxic workplace” allegations. Alonso and Gilbert had previously come under criticism for continuing to do work for New Jersey Democrats while leading the host committee full time. The New Jersey Democratic Party connection does not inspire a lot of confidence. In interviews, the two experienced political hands described the host committee as having a toxic culture rife with power struggles, backbiting and...

Since President Trump was inaugurated, leftists have brought a series of lawsuits on behalf of supposedly aggrieved parties–themselves, mostly–seeking to enjoin enforcement of administration policies. District Court judges in venues remote from the issue at hand, like a federal judge in Hawaii who purported to block implementation of the administration’s “travel ban,” have issued nationwide injunctions far exceeding the scope of any case or controversy actually before them (if any). This is a perversion of our legal system that encourages, to put it mildly, judge shopping. As a 41-year litigation veteran, I can tell you that judge shopping happens all...

Yesterday afternoon the New York Post published Ebony Bowden story’s “FBI reviewing claims Ilhan Omar married her brother.” The Daily Mail quickly followed up with Lauren Fruen’s “FBI is looking into claims Ilhan Omar married her brother and ‘will share their findings with ICE.'” Both of these stories are based on David Steinberg’s Blaze article “Finally. The Feds — including ICE — appear to be investigating Rep. Ilhan Omar.” I noted David’s article upon its publication last week in the post “David Steinberg reports: The Omar investigations.” Bowden’s New York Post article was highlighted by Xerta Shekh on Facebook for...