Jim Jordan’s Weaponization Subcommittee Keeps Firing Blanks
Jim Jordan’s Weaponization Subcommittee Keeps Firing Blanks
Plus: Piracy Isn’t an Ease-of-Access Issue.
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FREDERICK BARON AND DENNIS AFTERGUT: Jim Jordan’s Weaponization Subcommittee Keeps Firing Blanks.
Jim Jordan’s premise as chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government is apparent: If at first you don’t succeed with political stunts dressed up as “investigations,” change the subject and try again.
After an initial February 9 hearing airing old grievances, yesterday Jordan tried what had already backfired for his fellow MAGA committee chair James Comer: a disproven claim that the FBI had censored a Twitter story about Hunter Biden.
But, once again, Jordan’s investigative weapon was loaded with blanks. And he was hunting dead game anyway.
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SONNY BUNCH: Piracy Isn’t an Ease-of-Access Issue.
One thing that you hear a great deal when you write about the piracy of movies is that it’s not about people being “too cheap to pay for content.” It’s an issue of access. That people pirate stuff they can’t get immediately at home from the comfort of their living room. If it was easier to pay for stuff, people would happily pay for it!
This is why one of the arguments often deployed against windowing—that is, having discrete time periods in which a movie is in theaters, then available to buy on video on demand, then available to stream for “free” on services like Netflix—is that studios are really just stubborn idiots, costing themselves money. People who want to go to theaters will still go to theaters, and other people who want to wait will happily pay if only they could easily access it at home!
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BRUNO V. MANNO: The Truth About the New Consensus on American Education.
Education is one of the oldest battlefields in the culture wars, and in today’s fraught political environment, it’s sometimes hard to imagine it as anything else. The subject seems to create divisions everywhere: It pits left against right, old against young, teachers against students, and drags in still other groups of largely unwilling combatants.
Certainly, there are differences that divide us. But focusing on these flashpoints obscures important and pressing big-picture questions about what Americans want from education. If we shift our attention to these, we can begin to see an emerging consensus—one broad enough to include Americans of all ages and political persuasions.
🚨OVERTIME 🚨
Happy Friday! Are you ready for WBC baseball to come back? Not really? OK, well, indulge me, because I love me some WBC. Six years ago, the last go-around, I was a few years into my marriage and childless, which allowed me to stay up late and put out a print magazine in the wee hours. Not being able to sleep, I put on the World Baseball Classic and immediately fell in love with Team Israel.
The team? A ragtag band of aging players and relative nobodies. Their coach Jerry Weinstein? Entertaining as heck. Their hats? Best in the WBC, I bought one. I wore it to the doctor’s office today when we found out twins were on the way.
And the Mensch on a Bench? Instant classic. They should have lost most games. But they didn’t. In fact, they just kept winning.
While I’m first and foremost an American, I can’t wait to root for them again, though I will have to DVR it if the games are late. And this year’s team is actually expected to do pretty well. They have the second oldest player, Shlomo Lipetz, and you’ve gotta read his profile.
New and Old #100! Our colleague Addison Del Mastro has a wonderful newsletter called The Deleted Scenes which he started before he joined us. I’ve long been a fan and today marks the 100th “New and Old” update. Check it out and sign up if it’s also your thing.
The circumcision post did it? Today marks the end of Rod Dreher’s blog at The American Conservative. As it turns out, it was funded by one guy, he had carte blanche, which is how it got too, uh, “weird.” And, as regular readers know, it caused an international scandal in Hungary.
Thank God… The USAF discarded the gawdy “Trump Force One” redesign.
Lock them up! Matt Labash on Donald Trump, the January 6 Prison Choir, and the crimes they commit against music, and their country.
And a dollop of conspiracy… Makes it 5 years in prison! Turns out adding conspiracies to your plea for leniency doesn’t please judges.
What Tucker left out… Our friend Tom Joscelyn, who helped write the January 6th report, corrects the record.
Maybe he meant Mars, Texas? Elon Musk is going to build utopia. He chose Texas.
Masks work. The science is clear.
Michigan Democrats put the pedal to the floor… So many bills, so little time.
When AI comes to scam you… Will robots be more effective than humans? You betcha.
No thank you… Ranch ice cream is a bridge too far, even for me.
Your periodic George Santos Crime Allegation Update™: ATM skimming!
That’s it for me. Tech support questions? Email members@thebulwark.com. Questions for me? Respond to this message.
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Editorial photos provided by Getty Images. For full credits, please consult the article.