Pun Salad

… but fortunately, we have Justice Don Willett.

OTD 1788—

The U.S. Constitution became the supreme law of the land.

New Hampshire put ratification over the top. pic.twitter.com/K5TbsAlw3E

— Justice Don Willett (@JusticeWillett) June 21, 2017

If I were a presidential candidate, campaign promise number one would be: appoint Willett to the first available Supreme Court vacancy.

■ In Proverbs 24:6, we get a little Sun Tzu-style advice:

⁶ Surely you need guidance to wage war,
    and victory is won through many advisers.

This reminded me of something… Oh, yeah here it is.

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” who he talks with consistently about foreign policy, Trump responded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things."

Yeah, this is all starting to make sense.

■ I'm a little tired of the "but Democrats did the same thing" mantra, so I don't see how this is good. Peter Suderman at Reason: Mitch McConnell Might Hold a Vote on an Obamacare Rewrite Next Week. It’s Not Even Drafted Yet.

Is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell planning to hold a vote on the Senate's version of the American Health Care Act (AHCA), which would rewrite Obamacare, next week?

If so, that would be quite remarkable, given that there is currently no bill available for either the public or Republican lawmakers to see. It is even more remarkable given that Republicans spent the last seven years criticizing Democrats for having rushed Obamacare into place, on a party line basis, without sufficient debate or clear public support.

Suderman offers a number of theories as to why McConnell is embracing this strategy, and any might be correct. Most likely: McConnell doesn't care too much about whether the bill passes or not, he just wants to get it off the Senate's plate.

■ Daniel J. Mitchell likes (with caveats) the latest rankings of states by Government Dependency, as determined by WalletHub: Red State, Blue State, Independent State, Moocher State.

[…] if we look at their 25 least-dependent states, you see a very interesting pattern. Of the 10-most independent states, only three of them are Trump-voting red states (Kansas, Nebraska, and Utah).

By the algorithm used by WalletHub, New Hampshire is in ninth place.

The full WalletHub article is here. When other measures of dependency (financial, job-market, international trade, and "vice") are taken into account, NH rises to fourth place. Wallethub invites me to embed, so I shall:

■ Ben Shapiro writes at NRO on those, left and right, who seem to be Addicted to the Apocalypse. A point we've made before: if "we" adopt the tactics of the left, we're losing something important.

It’s far more dangerous when the self-stated guardians of Judeo-Christian morality declare war. Then nobody is left to stand for decent behavior — to remind us that we are brothers rather than enemies, that the proper response to an unhinged violent attack on members of Congress isn’t storming a stage at a play in Central Park, and that the proper response to a judicial verdict you don’t like isn’t setting local stores on fire.

There's only been sporadic nonsense from "our side", always rebutted and, when necessary, condemned. But it's worrisome nonetheless.

■ Just One Minute notes, with a certain amount of disgust, a recent New York Times story about the Navy sailors who died in the collision of their destroyer with a Japanese container ship: They All Died Serving Their Country, Even The White Ones.

The NY Times covers the deaths of seven US Navy sailors in a collision with a Japanese freighters and seizes an opportunity to advance their favored diversity narrative. Sadly, that means the two white male sailors who died are left to share one paragraph of a thirty four paragraph eulogy. No tearful interviews or fond remembrances from friends and family for these two. White privilege must always and everywhere be resisted.

Especially galling was the NYT's half-sentence brushoff of Gary Rehm Jr., who (as the Daily Beast reports) saved at least 20 sailors, and gave his life attempting to save more.