Crazy Joey: His Prices Are Demented!

On that topic, a belated thanksgiving suggestion from Andrew C. McCarthy: Democrats Can Thank Themselves for the ‘Preemptive Pardon’ Histrionics. ACMC notes that attempting to blame the pardon (and perhaps upcoming "blanket" pardons) on Trump's hypothetical lawfare campaign will not fly:

Let’s start with Hunter Biden. Kash Patel’s nomination has nothing to do with Hunter’s sweeping pardon. As Rich and I just discussed on the podcast, the immunity shower that Daddy Biden gave his son is exactly the one that Biden DOJ prosecutor (and faux special counsel) David Weiss did not have the temerity to describe in public court when Judge Maryellen Noreika asked him to state which exact crimes the proposed sweetheart plea deal was immunizing Hunter from.

The immunity provision is a standard, critical term in any plea agreement, but Weiss and Hunter’s lawyers tried to hide it in this one. Once she located it, Judge Noreika was mystified by the hieroglyphics in which it was expressed. Why the intrigue? Because the Biden-Harris DOJ did not want to damage the president’s reelection bid and knew it would be a PR problem if prosecutors acknowledged their intention to assure that the president’s son could not be charged with eleven-years’ worth of felonies under circumstances in which they were trying to plead him out on two trivial tax misdemeanors with no jail time. Alas, Hunter’s lawyers, seeking certainty, wanted Weiss to spell it out (foolishly, in my view). That’s why the plea bargain imploded.

This was back in July 2023. So, . . . why is a proposal which was too toxic to be uttered in court a year and a half ago now written so explicitly in the pardon? Because the election is over.

You know who would make an excellent FBI Director? Andrew C. McCarthy.

Also of note:

  • She was correct to observe she's not a biologist. Megan McArdle observes that A civil rights debate won’t be enough to protect transgender people.

    But the gem I want to excavate is different. Remember when Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked by Senator Marsha Blackburn to define 'woman'?

    And Justice Brown Jackson replied "I'm not a biologist"?

    Further confirmation of her answer was provided in the oral arguments in U.S. v. Skrmetti, where Uncle Stupid is arguing against a Tennessee law that prohibits minors from taking puberty blockers or hormones for the purposes of gender transition.

    Two hours in, Tennessee Solicitor General J. Matthew Rice remarked that giving testosterone to a biological male with a hormone deficiency is different from giving it to a biological female with gender dysphoria. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked what basis he had for saying that. Didn’t they do the same thing in the body?

    No, said the solicitor general, who sounded faintly surprised. “If you give a boy testosterone … that allows him to go through and develop the reproductive organs associated with being a male,” Rice said. “If you give it to a girl, it renders the girl infertile.”

    I'm sure she was gobsmacked by biology's refusal to act the way her ideology assumed it would.

  • Ketanji may have a subscription. Jeff Jacoby writes about a mag that may have to change its name: Not-so-scientific American.

    WHEN LAURA HELMUTH was hired as editor-in-chief of Scientific American in the spring of 2020, anyone looking at her formal credentials would have thought her ideally suited for the job. She had earned a PhD in cognitive neuroscience from the University of California at Berkeley, had been a staff writer and editor at Science and National Geographic, and for several years was The Washington Post's editor for coverage of health, science, and the environment.

    But on Helmuth's watch, Scientific American —the nation's oldest mainstream science magazine, published continuously since James K. Polk was in the White House — has increasingly abandoned its commitment to rigorous science reporting and become just another outlet for progressive tendentiousness. Earlier this month, following an unhinged election night rant on social media, Helmuth announced that she was resigning from the magazine and would "take some time to think about what comes next."

    It was a sad but suitable end to Helmuth's tenure at SciAm. During her reign, the publication deteriorated into a journal less concerned with careful science reporting than with playing the part, to quote the liberal journalist Jesse Singal (a former Globe opinion colleague), of "a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day's social justice cause du jour" and contributing in the process to "the self-immolation of scientific authority — a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time."

    I was devoted to Scientific American when I was a youngster. But even back then it threw its weight against American development of anti-ballistic missile systems, aka "Star Wars". But, on that topic, they also recently explained Why the Term 'JEDI' Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion.

  • We promise to say something nice about Kash Patel. Someday. Not today. Jacob Sullum weighs in on the nominee: Kash Patel threatens journalists, making him an alarming choice to run FBI.

    Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump's pick to replace Christopher Wray as director of the FBI, has threatened to "come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens" and "helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections." What exactly does he mean by that? Given the position that Patel will hold if he is confirmed by the Senate, the answer could have serious implications not only for the anti-Trump journalists he has in mind but also for freedom of the press generally.

    Seriously, I will link tomorrow to an explanation why this shouldn't bother me (and Sullum) as much as it does. Promise.

  • The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00 That's what the New York Times opined back in 1987. And now Reason has gone there too. Billy Binion says we should Abolish the Minimum Wage.

    The idea that the federal minimum wage should exist in some form may sound beyond debate to most Americans, the vast majority of whom have not lived in a time when it wasn't a political reality. The debate is arguably settled, but maybe not in the way most think.

    "There's a virtual consensus among economists that the minimum wage is an idea whose time has passed," wrote a prominent newspaper's editorial board a few years back. "Raising the minimum wage by a substantial amount would price working poor people out of the job market….If a higher minimum means fewer jobs, why does it remain on the agenda of some liberals?"

    Binion credits the NYT for its nearly 38 year old insight, which remains applicable.