Digital Editor: The Rise of Modesty Chic

Is modesty making a comeback? If the recent trend spearheaded by Muslim women’s fashion is any indication — yes. “Burberry, DKNY, and other brands have released special Ramadan collections,” Siraj Datoo writes at Bloomberg. Uniqlo has a line trumpeting “traditional values.” And a “modest fashion” show was held in London during Fashion Week. Perhaps we should be most surprised it took this long, says Datoo: “In 2015, Muslim women are estimated to have spent $44 billion on modest fashion alone, according to a Thomson Reuters report.” And it’s not just Muslims. “I think we need to take Muslim out of it,” popular Islamic fashion blogger Dina Torkia told Datoo. “I’m pretty sure every religion promotes modesty.”

Investigative Journo: Media Ignores Clinton’s Russia Ties

It’s certainly legitimate to look into Team Trump’s ties to Russia, writes investigative reporter Peter Schweizer at Fox News. But the media focus throughout the campaign on Donald Trump contrasts sharply with the lack of such attention to Hillary Clinton’s own troubling Russia ties. For starters, Schweizer notes, “Bill and Hillary Clinton received large sums of money directly and indirectly from Russian officials while Hillary Clinton was Secretary of State.” Then there’s “the fact that the Clinton Foundation also scored $145 million in donations from nine shareholders in a Canadian uranium company . . . sold to the Russian government in 2010.” That deal, which ended up providing the Russians with 20 percent of US uranium, was approved by Hillary’s State Department. Then there’s John Podesta, who joined the board of an energy company just before a fund started by Vladimir Putin put millions in it.

From the Right: Now Liberals Miss Dubya

When George W. Bush criticized President Trump’s attacks on the press, liberals from The Washington Post to The Guardian to ThinkProgress leapt to praise the 43rd president, notes Kim Strassel at The Wall Street Journal — “though only in the most self-serving way.” Indeed, Strassel reminds readers of the excesses of Bush Derangement Syndrome while he was in office: “He was compared to Hitler and terrorists, accused of racism, homophobia and sexism.” Liberals claimed he was “out to rip off the nation’s old and poor. He orchestrated conspiracies ranging from 9/11 to the spread of avian flu.” Of course, as Strassel writes, “none of this was true, but the goal of the media and the left from the start of the Bush presidency was to demonize and delegitimize the man and his agenda.” That they’re now cynically using Bush to do the same to Trump should give pause.

Conservative Take: Campus Loonies Hurting Themselves

Four decades after City Journal’s Myron Magnet stopped teaching at Vermont’s Middlebury College, the students shouted down a speech by conservative intellectual Charles Murray, showing the “anti-intellectualism” there hasn’t abated. But the students will likely regret this one, says Magnet: As Murray argues in his most recent book, White American is split: “There are the Middlebury kids and their ilk: moneyed, well-credentialed” and “the high-school grads or dropouts, whose low-skilled jobs have vanished, who either never marry or get divorced.” It was the arrogance and entitlement of that first group that led the second to elevate Donald Trump to the presidency and threaten the elite status these Americans take for granted. “So enjoy your run down the mountain today, students of Middlebury,” Magnet warns. “Nothing lasts forever.”

Lawmakers: Crack Down on Iran-al Qaeda Nexus

The Obama administration appeased Iran, argue Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Michael McCaul, both Texas Republicans, in USA Today. And now President Trump should reverse that trend. He should designate the Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. Iran is the chief patron of Hezbollah and Hamas, but Tehran’s “long-standing support for al-Qaeda is what always seems to fly under the radar.” According to the 9/11 Commission, Iran helped the 9/11 hijackers before the attack. And after the US invaded Afghanistan, some of al Qaeda’s top leaders fled to Iran, which refuses to bring them to justice. Therefore, Cruz and McCaul say, “any engagement with Iran, such as further negotiations on the Obama-era nuclear deal, must address Tehran’s harboring of al-Qaeda members.”

Compiled by Seth Mandel