Politics

Syria strike came four years late, Trump’s low-key victories, and other comments

Obama official: US Syria Strike Was Four Years Late

Military action “to reestablish the prohibition against gassing civilians” is “the right thing to do,” and President Trump “was right to do it quickly,” asserts Tom Malinowski at The Atlantic. Because, says Malinowski — the Obama-era assistant secretary of state for human rights — “when dealing with mass killing by unconventional or conventional means, deterrence is more effective than disarmament,” the path chosen by his former boss. After Bashar al-Assad’s 2013 sarin gas attack on civilians, Washington should have launched “both punitive and preventive strikes against his military” to “eliminate as many as possible of the aircraft that could be used to deliver chemical weapons,” followed by “a threat to strike again should he use ground-based weapons to launch chemical strikes in the future.”

From the right: Trump Isn’t Floundering — He’s Winning

Despite suggestions to the contrary, suggests Matt Lewis at The Daily Beast, “President Trump is making changes in his first 100 days that will affect America for decades to come.” Perhaps, he adds, Trump might get more respect if they held “Rose Garden signing ceremonies when a governmental regulation is repealed.” Trump’s key weapon has been the Congressional Review Act, a 1996 law allowing Congress to repeal new regulations within 60 days of being notified. And repeal also bans agencies “from issuing new rules that are ‘substantially similar’ to the one that was just vetoed.” Trump already has signed 11 CRAs, with far-reaching effect. Seems “the greatest trick Donald Trump ever pulled was convincing the world that his presidency was floundering.”

Security writer: The Frivolous Case v. Devin Nunes

Eli Lake at Bloomberg admits Democrats “appear to have collected another trophy” with House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes’ recusing himself from investigations involving President Trump, Russia and Obama administration surveillance. Yet, while Nunes clearly “compromised the integrity of his investigation,” the fact is the “unmasking” information he received was “serious enough that the ranking Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have now agreed” to look into it. As for the Ethics Committee probe against Nunes, which led to his recusal, it’s “a ruse, meant to distract from the bigger question of how the Obama White House was receiving raw intelligence reports on the activities of Trump and his advisers after the election.”

Conservative: Al Gore’s Still Using Phony Lincoln Quote

Back in 2007, notes John J. Miller at National Review, ex-Vice President Al Gore used a quotation from Abraham Lincoln about the supposed evils of corporate power in his book, “The Assault on Reason.” But it was quickly debunked as bogus by The Washington Post. Now Gore has released a new edition of the book, and the quote is still there — with a slight modification that Lincoln “may have” said it instead of a flat assertion that he did. “Good historians know the truth,” says Miller. “So does Gore — but rather than fix an error, he now chooses to spread rotten information. Even his old footnote remains, unchanged.”

Policy wonk: Penn Station’s Real Train Wreck

This week’s Penn Station derailment fiasco, which plagued commuters on NJ Transit, Amtrak and the Long Island Rail Road, is yet another “part of the story of how the political culture of one of the nation’s richest regions has managed to squander its resources so thoroughly over the past several decades,” says Steven Malanga at City Journal. For all the talk about the need to invest in more infrastructure, you don’t hear much about “what resources we already have and how our political culture — the product of our voting habits — has frittered them away.” That’s resulted in “higher taxes . . . without reform, “guaranteeing that many of the same practices that led to trouble in the first place will continue.” Which is why, “faced with a political system rigged against reform,” people in New York and New Jersey “are voting with their feet.” Both states, he notes, “are leaders in outmigration of residents.”

— Compiled by Eric Fettmann