Author Archives: Bok
Awesome Beautiful Presidential Power
President Obama banned oil drilling in parts of the Atlantic and Arctic Oceans. His proclamation is permanent and irreversible. The president says he derives this power from the Continental Outer Shelf Land Act.
He commanded the planet to heal and the oceans to slow their rise eight years ago. So this would seem a minor extension of his mandate.
But not everyone agrees he has the power to enforce his will on future presidents and Congresses. Here’s Kevin Williamson in National Review:
Legally speaking this is, as Professor Patrick Parenteau of Vermont Law School wryly put it, “uncharted waters.”
Awesome Beautiful Presidential Power
David Harsanyi in The Federalist agrees the president can’t have have his way with those who come after him. But he fears that future presidents may not want to overturn Obama’s will. So much the better to expand their own awesome beautiful presidential power:
So Republicans could likely overturn this diktat as they can the rest of Obama’s rickety legacy, predominately built on circumventing the law-making branch of the United States government. The problem is that Trump (and anyone else who comes along) has little reason not to adopt Obama’s unprecedented use of the executive power.
Ezekiel Elliott’s Leap of Faith
You may throw your loose change into a Salvation Army Kettle this time of year. But Ezekiel Elliott scored a touchdown and threw himself in. The ref penalized him for excessive celebration but the NFL elected not to fine him. Presumably with Commissioner Roger Goodell’s approval.
Anyway, who says the NFL is no fun? Here’s a clever clip of Zeek’s stunt spliced onto video of earlier red kettle choreography by Terrell Owns. (It’s the second video on the page.)
Elliott’s Leap of Faith
The Salvation Army says contributions jumped 61% after Elliott’s leap of faith.
Facebook Fact Checks Santa Clause
The world’s most famous newspaper editorial, published in the New York Sun Sept. 21, 1887, could get busted by Facebook.
In an effort to stamp out the scourge of fake news, Facebook is outsourcing fact checking to PolitiFact and others .
Facebook Fact Checks Santa Clause
The editorial in question (by me) was in response to a letter to the editor from eight year old Virginia O’Hanlon:
DEAR EDITOR: I am 8 years old.
Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.
Papa says, ‘If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.’
Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?VIRGINIA O’HANLON.
115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET.VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy…
You can read the rest of the editorial here at the Newseum site.
“If you see it in THE SUN it’s so.” – Maybe.
Bitter Deplorable Hacks
The Clintons seem bitter.
Bill chatted up a reporter among others at a small bookstore near his home in Chappaqua NY. He said this about Trump: “One thing he does know is how to get angry white men to vote for him.”
Not sure if that was a complaint or a compliment. In 2008 he told Ted Kennedy, “A few years ago this guy (Obama) would be getting coffee for us.”
Rather than reaching out to the non-elite, Hillary characterized Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”
Deplorable Hacks
Meanwhile, back at the bookstore, Bill wasn’t finished:
On the question of Russian cyberattacks damaging the candidacy of his wife, Hillary Clinton, the former president said “you would need to have a single-digit IQ not to recognize what was going on.”
Bill didn’t blame deplorables for Hillary’s loss. He blamed FBI Director Comey.
But he didn’t mention the IQ required to recognize what was going on on that tarmac in Arizona.
