In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Alan Dershoweitz has a new essay on Substack that is a condensed version of yesterday's YouTube post linked above. He makes several points that I think clarify the legal and moral background for potential reprisals by Israel against Iran. First, as I more or less intuited from the start, Iran's drone and missile attack on Israel over the weekewnd was an act of war, defined in Wiktionary as "An action that would justify the initiation of hostilities against the perpetrator; an action that by its nature comprises a cessation of peace." Dershowitz says, As a matter of law and morality, Israel is entitled to respond to this act of war by overwhelming, even disproportionate, force against Iranian military targets. Iran declared war on Israel by sending more than 300 bombs in Israel’s direction, aimed at civilian as well as military targets in Jerusalem and other locations. As a matter of law and morality, Israel is entitled to respond to this act of war by overw...

This pic, taken on May 1, 2011, has its own Wikipedia entry , which makes absolutely no reference to the widespread suspicion at the time that there must have been something hinky about it. In May 2012, graphic artist Mara Zebest -- who was reportedly “working closely” with Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio's quest to prove Obama's birth certificate a forgery -- posted articles at American Thinker claiming that two famous photographs taken in the Situation Room on the day of the Bin Laden raid had been Photoshopped in order to create “The Illusion of Obama's Bin Laden Situation Room Leadership.” . . . Six months before Zebest parsed the Situation Room photos, prominent conservative blogger Jim Hoft posted a story at his website headlined, “Swedish Paper: Obama Photoshopped into Famous Situation Room Photo.” Citing a comment thread at Free Republic, Hoft embedded a picture from Swedish tabloid Afton Bladet featuring a caption asking readers “Do you see what is wr...

Here's my puzzle. According to this link , the first wave of Iranian drones and missiles arrived in Israel about 2:00 AM Saturday morning Israel time, which would have been 5:00 PM Friday night on the US East Coast. I spend a lot of my day on my computer, and I check the news a lot. The only headlines I saw all day yesterday (Saturday) was breathless reports that an Iranian drone strike could happpen -- but as far as the US was concerned, the strike had already taken place, early Friday evening on the East Coast, midafternoon Friday on the West Coast. Yet the first reports that it had already taken place didn't appear, at least for me, until this morning, Sunday, nearly two days later. Nothing yesterday afternoon on YouTube, nothing on the conservative aggregators, nothing on Real Clear Politics. By midafternoon in Washington, nearly a day after the attacks began, the White House didn't quite know what to say: CORRECTION: Report that Biden will address the nation f...

Even writers for respectable media who are mildly supportive of Donald Trump, like Byron York of the Washington Examiner , are starting to worry: THE ANTI-TRUMP DREAM COME TRUE. Barring some last-second surprise, on Monday a dream will come true for the Democrats, resistance warriors, Never Trumpers, and lawfare specialists who have hoped for years to put former President Donald Trump on trial. It finally happens Monday in a courtroom in Manhattan. Many legal experts, and not just those on the Right, have said the case against Trump is weak. But that doesn’t really matter. The fact is, Trump will be on trial, charged with 34 dubious felonies, and a jury in deep-blue Manhattan will likely find him guilty of something. That’s the point. After this trial, if things turn out like Trump’s enemies hope, every single Democratic reference to the former president, every single political ad, every party utterance will refer to Trump as convicted felon Donald Trump. Even Alan Dershowitz see...

Yesterday I ran across yet another set of remarks from a former Obama-era staffer who'd gotten to know Joe as vice president. Mike McCormick, who served as Joe Biden’s stenographer traveling with him around the world including to Ukraine, recently published a book revealing what he saw, which included criminal activity in regards to the Burisma kickback scheme. “The Case to Impeach and Imprison Joe Biden” lays out probably the most comprehensive account ever written about the scheme. I'm less concerned about Burisma, because it really isn't figuring into the current campaign, and I'm still puzzled that the amounts of money involved are so trivial, especially when spread around among Hunter and maybe a dozen other family members. A vice president ought to be getting more than a million here and a million there -- how can this be worth his time? That's the really interesting question, and if we ever get an anmswer, it'll say a lot more about the roots ...

From the Gateway Pundit yesterday : This afternoon, President Trump shared an image of a 2018 letter from Stormy Daniels on his Truth Social Account. Above the image of the letter from the porn star, turned darling of the Democrat Party, President Trump wrote: “LOOK WHAT I JUST FOUND!” He asked, “WILL THE FAKE NEWS REPORT IT??” The image and part of the post are shown above. (Click on the image for a larger view.) It reads in part: Over the past few weeks, I have been asked countless times to comment on reports of an alleged sexual relationship I had with Donald Trump many, many, many years ago. The fact of the matter is that each party to this alleged affair denied its existence in 2006, 20011, 2016, 2017 and now again in 2018. I am not denying this affair because I was paid “hush money” as has been reported in overseas owned tabloids. I am denying this affair because it never happened. This piqued my curiosity, since I posted two weeks ago on Michael Avenatti's repor...

I mentioned David Gelernter, a Yale professor of computer science, Orthodox Jew, and Republican yesterday as someone I've followed in the past for his views on America and Israel. So far, I haven't found much from him on the current situation, but he wrote a 2006 essay that bears on the problem, Why do so many American Jews hate the president who stands by Israel? Here's his key point: For those who continue to insist on voting Democratic, the future is written in a recent column by Richard Cohen--who explains that the "greatest mistake Israel could make at the moment is to forget that Israel itself is a mistake." Who advises Israel to "hunker down," while "waiting (and hoping) that history will get distracted and move on to something else." It is hard to understand why Israel is a mistake if Switzerland isn't--or the United States, or any other nation or (for that matter) human being. Cohen himself is occupying space right now that s...