From the right: Media Hysteria Is Only Helping Trump

There’s “a 99 percent chance” President Trump serves out his term, predicts James Morrow at the Daily Telegraph. And unless Democrats and “large sections” of the news media “stop baying for the president’s head in ever shriller terms, he’s not a bad chance for a second term, either.” Morrow doesn’t so much defend Trump as plead “for some sense of reality on the part of his critics, who see in every scandal a magic bullet that might restore the world to the way they think it should be.” He warns that “the constant high-volume hysteria” is “inoculating Trump against charges that might hold water down the track.” A loyal opposition “argues ideas,” not that the side in power “is, by definition, illegitimate.”

Foreign desk: Syrian Atrocities Are Obama’s Crimes

Top Obama administration officials are piling on against President Trump, noting that Russia is working against US interests in Syria. True enough, says Noah Rothman at Commentary, “but the admonition comes far too late to be taken seriously.” Because “for six long years, the Obama administration presided over the chaos and death that typifies the Syria crisis” — and “history will not reflect kindly upon” it. Between 2011 and 2015, the Assad regime “abducted between 65,000 and 117,000 people and executed thousands of prisoners without trial” and in 2013 installed a crematorium to destroy the remains. What’s especially “galling” now is that Obama & Co. “did their best to ignore these systemic abuses of human rights, not out of cowardice but a myopic desire to achieve a greater end: the nuclear accords with Iran.”



Ex-prosecutor: Double Standards on Intel Lapses

The key issue surrounding Trump’s intelligence disclosure to the Russians isn’t legality but “competence,” argues Andrew McCarthy at National Review. Which raises the question: “How unusual is this sort of thing, really?” Not very: Less than a year ago, President Barack Obama “was offering to share with Russia intelligence about ISIS operations in Syria” — “which sounds an awful lot like what Trump was doing.” And the Obama team’s leaks disclosing Gen. Michael’s Flynn’s talks with the Russian envoy gave Moscow “valuable information that its ambassador was under surveillance and that whatever countermeasures the Kremlin’s intelligence services had been taking had failed.” It seems that “when Democrats mishandle classified information, they are earnest progressives who understandably suffer the occasional lapse,” while Republicans who do so “are incompetent morons.”

Numbers-cruncher: Beware Albany’s Single-Payer Plan

The single-payer health-care plan just passed by the New York Assembly “would require massive tax increases to double — or possibly even quadruple — the state’s current annual revenue levels,” notes Eric Boehm at Reason. Yet this year, “the bill might get a vote in the state Senate.” New York “collected about $71 billion in tax revenue last year” and expects to hit $82 billion in 2019, when a single-payer plan would kick in. But the most optimistic cost estimate requires “another $91 billion annually,” while a more realistic prediction is $226 billion. Advocates suggest massive tax hikes to cover the cost — just the prescription that sank Vermont’s single-payer plan. Yet any gains “would be quite limited,” since even back in 2014, only 8.7 percent of New Yorkers lacked health insurance.

Culture critic: Did ABC Just Target Conservative Show?

Questions are being raised — by Karin Agness Lips at Acculturated, among others — over ABC’s cancellation of “Last Man Standing,” one of TV’s few conservative-friendly comedies, after six seasons. Says Lips: “There is much speculation that the show is being cancelled for its (and Tim Allen’s) conservative politics.” After all, it’s the network’s “second-most-watched comedy and third-most-watched scripted series.” Star Allen “plays a conservative dad and grandpa . . . who intertwines talk of family, hunting and conservative politics with humor.” It’s a rare show that “doesn’t paint conservatives as Neanderthals.” And “that’s what makes it so successful.”



— Compiled by Eric Fettmann